Respectability Politics and the Causes of Anti-Semitism

The civil rights leaders were saying to the country: “Look, you guys are supposed to be nice guys, and we are only going to do what we are supposed to do. Why do you beat us up? Why don’t you give us what we ask? Why don’t you straighten yourselves out?” For the masses of black people, this language resulted in virtually nothing.

-- Stokely Carmichael & Charles Hamilton (1967)

I've been doing some more thinking about Rev. Shipman's letter about which I posted on earlier. The letter posited that the best thing Jews (or "Israel's patrons") could do to stop anti-Semitism abroad would be to lobby for changes in Israel's policies. Many people, myself included, lambasted Rev. Shipman for victim-blaming.

The primary defense of Rev. Shipman has been to assert that his was a mere descriptive observation that anti-Semitism spikes when Israel takes actions that anger others (in a semi-apology Rev. Shipman refers to it as a "correlate"). See, for example, the comments here or Phoebe Maltz Bovy's interlocutors. What's so objectionable about noting a correlation? The first answer is that his letter wasn't just a descriptive observation but actually focused on a normative prescription -- objectionable Israeli acts correlates with anti-Semitism, therefore, people should object more strenuously to objectionable Israeli acts. The description does not lead to the prescription -- if such a correlation exists, the prescription could just as easily be objectionable Israeli acts correlates with anti-Semitism, therefore, people should be exceptionally vigilant against and display zero-tolerance towards those who target Jews writ large under the guise of "objecting to Israeli policies". It may or may not be true that female alcohol use "correlates" with sexual assault; nonetheless, the right prescriptive response is to take a stronger stand against those who would exploit vulnerable women, not "women shouldn't go to bars."

But I also want to unpack the alleged correlation on its own terms a bit, because I think doing so leads to some interesting observations. The argument is basically one of "respectability politics" -- that the way for a group to overcome prejudice against it is to act in ways that earn the respect and esteem of their fellows. And on the one hand, there's a degree to which the descriptive claim is true to the point of banality -- Jews are less likely to be disliked if prominent Jewish actors don't take actions that people dislike. The problem is that this framework enforces anti-Semitic impulses in that it tacitly accepts the entitlement of non-Jews to dictate Jewish behavior. When a group is forced to tailor its behavior to match the preferences of dominating outsiders, the outsiders will be very likely to view such acquiescence as its birthright and be more incensed if and when the dominated group does take independent and disapproved actions. This, as I argued recently, lies at the core of modern anti-Semitism and its linkage to Israel:

It is a unique feature of the past 60 or so years that . . . . sometimes, in some contexts, Jews can criticize Christians without the automatic specter of a massacre looming. Or -- and this I suspect is worse than Jewish criticism -- Jews can sometimes ignore Christian criticism without immediate and obvious consequence. For people who view their power over Jews as an entitlement, this I think is what really rankles: there is an entity, that is Jewish, that Christians criticize, that sometimes does not listen.

If being seen as an equal requires acting as if one is an equal, a huge part of that is not adhering to the demands and mores of the dominant group but rather (when appropriate, not for its own sake) making conscious decisions to sometimes disregard them. This was a key part of the argument that Zionism would reduce anti-Semitism over time -- like the picked-on kid who stands up for himself and thus earns the respect of the bullies, the existence of Israel places Jews in a historically near-unprecedented position of political and social agency akin to that enjoyed by various gentile majorities through much of history. Expressing that agency and autonomy places Jews on the same plane and therefore creates a descriptive equality which (the hope goes) will change attitudes to match. The call -- from non-Jews at least -- for "respectability politics" is really just a call for Jews to revert to the subordinate state of affairs where they do, as a matter of course, listen to gentile demands.

Put another way, it probably is the case that a non-Jew is less likely to punch a Jew in the face if he perceives Jews (as a group) as largely behaving in ways he sees as salutary. But that does not mean there is necessarily less anti-Semitism in such a state of affairs, if this view is transformed into an entitlement to such agreeability from Jews. That's just anti-Semitism in a different form; the "safety" it provides to Jews purchased at the price of their independence. Anyone can have positive attitudes towards groups who behave in ways they like; the true test of egalitarianism is respecting the minority when it behaves differently than how you'd want it to.

I don't mean to minimize the difficulties here -- there might be no more nettlesome problem facing pluralists than deciding when we must defer to alternative political practices we find distasteful versus when we're obliged to speak out against them. I don't take the view that people from one group can never criticize those of another -- including members of traditionally privileged groups vis-a-vis their historic subordinates. But respect for pluralism means there must be that basic acknowledgment of the right of differentiation, the right of the other to make choices different from those which we imagine we would make were we in their shoes. And perhaps more difficult than that, due accord for history means being appropriately skeptical that the dominant group has it right in every case where majority and minority disagree (even passionately) about important normative questions:

Privilege -- gentile or otherwise -- means that one can always choose to maintain the primacy of one's own perspective on matters affecting the marginalized group. A very large part of anti-oppression analysis is about convincing the privileged to at least suspend that outlook and recognize that it is possible -- maybe even likely -- that the marginalized person is epistemically more credible on the subject, and that our own view -- even if honestly arrived at, even if fervently held -- may be suspect after all. Persons consistently unwilling to engage in that "quietude" towards Jewish voices cannot claim any presumption of egalitarian views vis-a-vis Jews.

It is precisely because we have the duty to hold these things together -- our right to be critical of others, our duty to respect difference, and our obligation to be mindful of our privilege -- that I have asserted the need to foreground discussions of anti-Semitism when discussing Jewish institutions. It ensures that the positions we take about Jews "seriously grapple with the ways in which historical and present anti-Semitism implicate the positions that [we] hold and how [our] arguments account for the actual facts of Jewish existence and what they need to exercise their individual and collective rights as a people." Such grappling, I suggest, is a prerequisite to thinking about Jews well.

As for me, I tend to doubt both the respectability politics position (that if Jews behave well, people will like us and anti-Semitism will go away) and the muscular Zionist counter (that if Jews vigorously demonstrate their independent agency, people will respect us and anti-Semitism will go away). In many ways, I view anti-Semitism as a constant -- I'd like it to disappear, of course, but I don't think Jewish political energies are best spent trying to convince non-Jews to "straighten yourselves out." Zionism is important not because Jewish agency makes people respect us but because it makes it matter less if they do or not -- they can fulminate all they want about how much they hate Jews, because unlike years past we've got some big fucking tanks backing us up. And in turn, I don't support Palestinian equality and national aspirations because I think being nice to Palestinians will make people like Jews more. I do it because, well, the whole point of being an autonomous agent is that we get to make the choices, and I want to choose to do the right thing. People who say that we can't create a Palestinian state because of this or that thing Palestinians do or refuse to do drive me nuts: what's the point of Zionism if Jews are going to sit on their hands and complain while waiting for someone else give us permission to make a decision? (You may sense the roots of my support for unilateral withdrawal). As the black nationalist saying goes: "do for self."

The Tan Man

Let's be real: That was an ugly-ass tan suit. That being said, Rep. Michael Kors Peter King (R-NY) seriously needs to get a grip:

"There's no way any of us can excuse what the president did yesterday," King said on NewsMaxTV on Friday. The interview was flagged by Buzzfeed. "When you have the world watching … a week, two weeks of anticipation of what the United States is gonna do. For him to walk out —I'm not trying to be trivial here— in a light suit, light tan suit, saying that first he wants to talk about what most Americans care about the revision of second quarter numbers on the economy. This is a week after Jim Foley was beheaded and he's trying to act like real Americans care about the economy, not about ISIS and not about terrorism. And then he goes on to say he has no strategy."

You're not trying to be trivial? Try harder. Geez.

More On Christian Contributions To Combating Anti-Semitism

Responding to Deborah Lipstadt's column on the rise of anti-Semitism and "why Jews are worried", Episcopalian Reverend Bruce M. Shipman (affiliated with Yale University) had this to say:

Deborah E. Lipstadt makes far too little of the relationship between Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza and growing anti-Semitism in Europe and beyond.

The trend to which she alludes parallels the carnage in Gaza over the last five years, not to mention the perpetually stalled peace talks and the continuing occupation of the West Bank.

As hope for a two-state solution fades and Palestinian casualties continue to mount, the best antidote to anti-Semitism would be for Israel’s patrons abroad to press the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for final-status resolution to the Palestinian question.

Institutional Christianity continues to display its unrivaled expertise in the field.

H/T (among others) Paul Horwitz.

Thinking Critically About "Uncritical"

One hears the refrain thrown out repeatedly, even casually -- the great mass of Jews (or perhaps most Americans, but mainly Jews) who are "uncritical supporters of Israel." Often times it comes from Jews who claim to have been blind before they learned to see. Here's Antony Lowenstein:

Although support for the Jewish state has been an unofficial second religion for Jews for decades – in my own family it was simply expected that Israel would be uncritically backed in times of war and peace, with Palestinians demonised as unreasonable and violent – times are changing.

And here's Bonnie Honig: "Too many of us are too committed to being uncritical of Israel."

It comes in academic tomes -- Laurence Silberstein's chapter on "American Jewry's Identification with Israel" uses variations on the word "uncritical" (or synonyms) four times in its first page. It comes in pleas that I might generally support, such as in this letter from Israelis for a Sustainable Future: "The belief that being “pro-Israel” means uncritically supporting the actions of the Israeli government and military does not help the Israeli people."

And so it is that Gil Troy, responding to (natch) Joseph Palermo calling him "an uncritical booster of Israel", writes the following:

Calling me “an uncritical booster” suggests I am more propagandist than analyst, more cheerleader than thinker. It plays into stereotypes of pro-Israel types as monolithic and blind to any Israeli faults – an absurdity considering the many passionate debates constantly roiling the Zionist community. It legitimizes the delegitimization of Israel through a perverse reverse projection. While escalating every Israeli imperfection into proof that Israel should not exist, delegitimizers project their absolutist all-or-nothing attitudes onto Israel’s supporters. Underlying this is an unfair singling out of Israel as a country on probation, acceptable only if it behaves well. The charge also reflects an anti-Zionist prejudice assuming that thinking people can only support Israel by bypassing logic.

Contrary to Palermo’s caricature, I have publicly criticized Prime Minister Bibi Netanhyau for failing to lead boldly, charging him with acting like a Chicago ward heeler rather than a statesman. I have said that Israeli leaders should be driving the peace train rather than Barack Obama or John Kerry, tapping Israel’s world-famous creativity to find solutions. I criticized anti-Arab violence long before the horrific revenge killing last month. I have criticized the chief rabbinate for being too rigid.

In short, just like a patriotic American criticizes the United States – while still loving it; just like a devoted wife criticizes her husband while still loving him; I criticize Israel – without questioning Israel’s right to exist. To support Israel one need not mortgage one’s soul or override one’s critical faculties. In fact, democratic Israel invites thoughtful supporters, loving critics, ardent advocates for different solutions to the country’s various problems.

He's right of course. But there's something deeply pathetic about this laundry list of times he's criticized Israel -- as if this will at all alter the refrain; as if proof that Jews (and not just the Naomi Klein fans of the bunch) criticize Israel on a regular basis is even relevant to the belief in question.

Because on face, the idea that there is any significant subset of Jews who are "uncritical supporters of Israel" is not just untrue; it's transparently ludicrous. Anybody who's had an opinion on Israel is critical of it, at least some of the time -- the odds that multi-million person sovereign nation would always in all cases map on precisely to anyone's idiosyncratic policy preferences (much less somehow managing to unite the entire Jewish community writ large in "uncritical" support) is obviously absurd.

"Israel critic" is an incredibly broad term that probably encompasses every single person who has ever had an opinion on the subject -- including Israel's defenders. I am a defender of Israel, I am also a critic of Israel. Caring about something means having opinions about it, it would be a remarkable coincidence if my opinions about Israel (or any other country, or institution, or person) perfectly tracked Israel's actions. ZOA is a critic of Israel, as it has every right to be. The point being, first and foremost, that those who adopt the mantle "critic of Israel" are in reality a narrow and provincial subset of the class, who should not be allowed to insist that the vast majority of Jews are mindless zombies "incapable of criticism of Israel."

When they say "uncritical of Israel", they mean "not criticizing the things I want criticized, in the manner I want to see them criticized." But that Jews reject particular forms of criticism does not make them "uncritical", that's an exercise of critical faculties.

Simply put, I'm sick of hearing about this mythical sector of uncritical Israel supporters. It doesn't exist. But the people who partake in the refrain are people who seemingly can't make the, dare I say critical, distinction between disagreeing with a specific criticism and being incapable of criticism.

Blurring the DREAM

Rand Paul has just come out in favor of deporting hundreds of thousands of undocumented Latinos who came to America as children. But he also traveled to Guatemala to give medical examinations to some lucky locals. Jon Chait smells a new policy:

The 2016 hopeful opposes universal health insurance, and he wants to deport half a million people who grew up in America. But Rand Paul will personally provide every deported immigrant with a free eye exam. Call it compassionate paleolibertarianism.

That youth support is around the corner!

The Apostates

A very interesting review by Adam Kirsch of three books which touch on the theme of Jewish apostasy -- Jews who betray the Jewish community to hostile gentiles. This, of course, must mean something beyond criticizing Jews -- Kirsch immediately draws the distinction between those who criticize from within the community as an attempt to make it better, and those who remove themselves from the community and seek to tear it down. Moreover, he observes that their is a significant qualitative difference between how one criticizes Jews when they are purely in a position of marginalization and weakness versus when they have gained some measure of power and influence (not the least of which comes in the form of a state with an army).

But the key point Kirsch returns to is that Jewish apostasy has been the source of some of the gravest threats to Jewish lives and livelihoods across history. It was medieval Jewish apostates who could credibly claim "insider" status whose polemics against the Jewish community and the Talmud sparked some of the most aggressive anti-Semitic campaigns by the Church. This is in many ways the violent cousin of Derrick Bell's concept of superstanding -- the heightened authority African-Americans receive when they speak out against the majority of the African-American community. Likewise, there is always a healthy audience for Jews who will eagerly tell non-Jews exactly what they've always yearned to hear about Jews; that even a Jew will affirm that most Jews are worthy of contempt.

I don't mean to minimize the difficulty of the question: freedom for Jews, or any minority group, includes the freedom to dissent from the orthodoxy of one's own community. No doubt there are strong vested incentives for those currently in positions of authority within a community to take a broad view of what counts as apostasy against it. This is an age-old problem -- one not limited to Jews -- and I don't pretend to have an easy answer other than adopting a principle of anti-tokenization. It is fine to be a Jew who is deeply critical of mainstream Jewish practices. But it is not okay for people to treat such voices as emblematic of Judaism such that it replaces their need to engage with the Jewish community writ large.

Pretend-Standard

To everyone furiously parsing Rule 35 of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure in order to argue that Halbig v. Burwell (also affectionately known as the "moops" case) is or is not en banc worthy -- stop. We all are well aware that the standard for en banc review is no more and no less than "if the court feels like it." That's it. Indeed, when I clerked on the Eighth Circuit a panel once asked for supplemental briefing on whether a case should go en banc (some of the judges disliked a prior Eighth Circuit precedent that granted jurisdiction over the appeal in the first place), and the lawyers' really had no way to argue one way or the other because granting en banc review is for all intents and purposes a pure exercise of unfettered discretion.

A Ship Docks in Oakland

Protesters in Oakland have blocked an Israeli-owned ship from unloading. The ship is owned by ZIM, the 10th largest shipping company in the world. Notably, ZIM is privately-owned (the Israeli government divested its minority ownership in 2004) and to my knowledge there is no claim that the company is implicated in the occupation other than by its nationality.

Protesters claim that local unionized dockworkers (members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, I believe) honored the picket line and refused to unload the ship; with one leader saying "[t]his is the first time in history that this has happened." If indeed the workers made a voluntary decision to refuse to unload the ship in deference to the picketers, that would be a first -- but only because the last time time this happened the picket temporarily succeeded only because the union workers feared for their personal safety if they unloaded the ship.

UPDATE: This news story indicates that we're in roughly the same boat as we were in 2010 -- union workers did not cross the picket line "for safety reasons." The ILWU confirmed that it had not taken a stance favoring (or disfavoring) the picket.

UPDATE x2: The ship was unloaded last night, when the union concluded there was no longer a "safety issue." Basically, this great non-violent BDS "success" was that they successfully created a safety hazard for union workers which kept them off the job. Hurray!

Return of the Mack

I've already stated my view that the revocation of Steven Salaita's offer to teach at Illinois was a violation of academic freedom. So I think Corey Robin is surely right that whether or not Steven Salaita's tweets are anti-Semitic has no bearing on the legal (or normative) argument regarding whether he should have had his offer revoked. But his claim that Salaita has "a long history of not only denouncing anti-Semitism in general but also confronting specific instances of it on Twitter" because (in addition to non-specific bromides about equality) he courageously called out Macklemore defies parody.

The blogger he links to, far from providing a "monumental analysis" demonstrating the lack of any anti-Semitism in the tweets, instead provides a textbook demonstration of what (in the racial context) Ian F. Haney Lopez has called the inference of innocence (or what I have labeled innocent until proven Nazi). No matter how sharp the impact on the minority group or how it is perceived by them, if there is any reading of the statement which with a straight face can be attributed to a rationale other than overt antipathy, then the act or statement is an "innocent" one and any claim of discrimination is spurious. Much of the apologia comes in the form of ludicrously fine parsing that would make Kevin "but humans are primates too!" Williamson blush. The defense of the "anti-Semitism is honorable" tweet actually takes two contradictory positions -- he both argues on the one hand that Salaita was mocking people who think Zionism has made anti-Semitism "honorable" and, on the other, that he agrees with such people because "Zionism" has labeled things that he considers to be "honorable" anti-Semitic (how any ideology, as opposed to individual persons who may or may not identify as Zionists and may or may not be representative of the broad spectrum of Zionist beliefs, could have that effect is left unsaid I misremembered the tweet -- he attributed this to Zionists rather than Zionism. Even still, this remains a gross overgeneralization of a huge swath of the Jewish community who stand accused of persistently deploying anti-Semitism in bad faith). In any event, the latter view is clearly the correct interpretation; it is also not fundamentally distinct from people who claim to wear "racist" as a badge of honor because they accuse Al Sharpton of being too quick to cry racism; and consequently feel justified in adopting a blanket policy that virtually any time any Black person says something is racist they're probably lying and/or insane. Which is itself anti-Semitic.

Simply put, anti-Semitism (like most -isms) always comes couched in platitudes about how the speaker is not anti-Semitic and is in fact deeply horrified by the real anti-Semitism (defined as Hitler and/or some safely trivial event far from any political or social positions of value to the speaker). As we found out today, one can claim one is not an anti-Semite at the same time as one calls for each civilian death in Gaza to be met "eye for an eye" against the largest Jewish communal organization in another country. To engage in such "monumental" efforts to find a twisted path where the statements are in fact fully compatible with totally egalitarian attitudes towards Jews and Jewish equality is difficult to square with any sort of politics which respects either the history of anti-Jewish oppression or the right of Jews to be taken seriously when they describe their own experience.

Conveying a Final Message to the Jews of South Africa

The other day, I noted an ultimatum delivered by the head of the ANC's Western Cape branch to the South African Jewish community. It gave them "until the 07 August 2014 to stop their Zionist propaganda in Cape Town, failing which we will boycott and call strikes at all of their member – and supporting companies and organisations."

On the one hand, the official (Tony Ehrenreich), gave the Jews an extra week to respond. On the other hand, he also raised the stakes well beyond a "mere" boycott:

Ehrenreich wrote that South Africa’s Jewish Board of Deputies, the national Jewish communal organization, should suffer for its support of Israel.

“This makes the Jewish Board of Deputies complicit in the murder of the people in Gaza,” he wrote. “The time has come to say very clearly that if a woman or child is killed in Gaza, then the Jewish board of deputies, who are complicit, will feel the wrath of the People of SA with the age old biblical teaching of an eye for an eye.”

And now we have a call for a pogrom. Lovely.

In case you're curious, yes the SAJBD is accusing him of hate speech and incitement. Ehrenreich, for his part, says he will sue the SAJBD "for supporting crimes against humanity in Gaza, and for being complicit through their actions or inactions, in the killing of women and children in Gaza" (emphasis added).

Finally, Ehrenreich also gets off the obligatory denial that he is in any way anti-Semitic for calling for mass violence against the South African Jewish community. While he contends he is attacking only the SAJBD for "condoning" the Gaza campaign, it is notable that his verbiage (which equates silence with active support of alleged war crimes) would apply to any Jew (really, any person, but of course Ehrenreich only focuses on Jews) who has not spoken out against the Gaza campaign in a manner Ehrenreich finds acceptable. See also Bongani Masuku's statement that "silently consenting or grumbling under tables" would not be sufficient for Jews to "imagine [South Africa] to be their home."

So What if Just War is Impossible?

From time to time one hears the following apologia for various Palestinian war crimes (this is one example, but it's decently representative):

Based on the fact that the West Bank and Gaza are occupied territories that are economically and politically controlled by Israel – and where there is no freedom for its residents – I believe they have the absolute right to fight for that freedom. I personally do not think Hamas’s rockets are a productive strategy of resistance, but it still has the right to respond in such a manner – as does any liberation movement against colonialism.
[...]
The argument that Hamas is using human shields has no weight. There is no evidence that this is actually occurring en masse. Gaza is tiny – about the size of the Cape Flats. It is one of the most densely populated places on the planet. There is no place where Hamas could stockpile arms away from a population centre.

This argument, in essence, is that Palestinians have a "right to fight" against Israel, and since the only way that they can functionally exercise that right is by indiscriminate rocket fire and by intermingling their fighters within the Palestinian civilian population, those activities are acceptable.

This is, of course, nonsense. The laws of war do not contain an exception for when following them means one's preferred side won't win. The laws of war are, by design, indifferent as to which side "should" win, operating off the reasonable presumption that each side in any armed conflict will think itself just and therefore view itself as exempt from the strictures of the laws of war. This is why we largely no longer adopt the Augustinian approach to just war theory. The point being, if you can't win a war while obeying the laws of war, then don't fight it. There is no right to win an armed conflict.

But here's the thing -- this cuts both ways. One also often hears defenses of Israeli strikes which have crippling civilian casualties on the grounds that, well, Hamas uses human shields and stockpiles its weaponry in civilian areas. Quite true! But that is not carte blanche authority for Israel to do whatever it will. There are valid questions over who should be considered responsible for civilian casualties when Party A strikes Party B's military targets embedded in a civilian population -- if for no other reason than to deprive B the incentive to do just that. Nonetheless, it cannot be the case that infinite civilian casualties are justified simply because of B's (admitted) legal violation. Considerations of proportionality need to come into play. And if that limits Israel's ability to effectively prosecute a war on Hamas -- well, the laws of war don't guarantee you get to win a war.

Immigration versus Colonization

Periodically, one hears some, er, "reactionary" elements describe the movement of non-White persons into the United States or Europe as "colonization". "The Mexicans are colonizing Texas!" "The Arabs are colonizing France!" Given the history of how the United States got control of Texas, there is irony here. But it also got me to thinking -- when a person moves from the place they were born to another country, what distinguishes "immigration" from "colonization"? Both involve people permanently moving from political jurisdiction A to political jurisdiction B. But the former term is positive, happy, pursuit-of-happiness and land-of-opportunity. Even said reactionaries usually characterize their opposition as being to illegal immigration; as opposed to immigration generally which was the foundation of our nation. Colonization or colonialism, by contrast, is bad, evil, sounding in injustice if not outright theft of lands that rightfully belong to others.

So what is the difference? One answer is that we call the movement of people we approve of "immigration" and that which we disapprove of "colonialism". But that's not satisfactory -- it seems like there is an actual distinction here worth preserving. Another answer is that immigration is colonization where it does not come with the permission of the members of the destination polity. But if that's right, then the conservative immigration critics are right that illegal immigrants are engaging in acts of colonialism, which really doesn't sound correct to me.

Drilling further, it seems that a large part of colonization has to do with control. So maybe immigration becomes colonization if the new immigrant group wrests control over political outcomes from the prior residents. But once again, on reflection that can't be right -- it cannot be the immigration is permissible so long as the immigrants never end up winning elections.

Perhaps what's missing is the element of external control. When we talk about "colonialism", we usually have reference to a mother country. The United States was a British colony, Indonesia was a Dutch colony, the Congo was a Belgian colony, etc.. So maybe the mark of colonialism is that the new population wrests control over political outcomes and transfers it to a foreign entity. One colonizes on behalf of somewhere, one does not immigrate on behalf of anywhere. That seems to me to be the cleanest distinction, and the one that most closely coheres to the traditional model of colonialism (colonies and parent nations). But maybe it also suffers from inadequacies -- I'm happy to hear suggestions. But the point is it seems like we don't have a strong distinction of when people have a right to move to a new location (indeed, it's praiseworthy or at least respectable) versus when it is improper. This leads to considerable conceptual fuzziness; it also buttresses anti-immigrant sentiment insofar as it poses too-strong rights claims on behalf of those who happen to be residing on a plot of land at some arbitrary prior point in time.

Sometimes Conservatives Win Elections. In Conclusion, Jewish Self-Determination is a Failure

I've been wanting to link to this Tablet piece by Eylon Aslan-Levy on why Europe has so much trouble wrapping its head around anti-Semitism for days now, but I've never had the opportunity. The point is, it's really good -- in particular in noting the fact of Jewish history that serious anti-Semitism has typically co-existed with relative Jewish prosperity. But I didn't have much more to say than that, and that seemed thin gruel.

So let's just use the rightness of that post as a counter-balance to the embarassing wrongness of this one. It starts off well enough, with the writer admitting (after a commenter's challenge) that "There is no reason to assume that all Zionists support Likud's policies." Indeed! In fact, we can safely assume that the 77% of Israelis who voted for parties other than Likud oppose its policies at least some of the time, and the roughly 50% of Israelis who cast ballots for parties outside Likud's coalition oppose these policies most of the time.* So while this shouldn't have exactly been some sort of mind-bender, good work nonetheless!

But then we get this howler:

That said: if you support creating a religiously ethno-nationalist and democratic state, you can’t simply disavow any responsibility for the conduct of a right wing nationalist party. In democracies, one faction never retains control forever. The ideology, conduct, and treatment of perceived enemies of the nation we find in Likud seem pretty typical of right wing nationalism generally (they seem worse because the occupied territories and Hamas belligerence provide some unique opportunities for bad behavior). You simply can’t count on a state with a religious ethnonationalist identity that isn’t going to have a belligerent conservative faction in charge occasionally.

Hmmm. Interesting point. But perhaps it could use some editing:

That said: if you support creating a religiously ethno-nationalist and democratic state, you can’t simply disavow any responsibility for the conduct of a right wing nationalist party. In democracies, one faction never retains control forever. The ideology, conduct, and treatment of perceived enemies of the nation we find in Likud seem pretty typical of [the] right wing nationalism generally (they seem worse because the occupied territories and Hamas belligerence provide some unique opportunities for bad behavior). You simply can’t count on a state with a religious ethnonationalist identity that isn't going to have a belligerent conservative faction in charge occasionally.

Consilience is your friend!

Seriously, can anyone tell me what work "religiously ethno-nationalist" is doing here? For starters, modern Zionism isn't -- or at least isn't necessarily, and was not originally -- a religious ideology. I know that Jews' unique status as both a religion and an ethno-national group can be confusing, but let's put in a modicum of effort shall we? The author later on admits to some basic misunderstandings of the structure of religious Jewish politics in Israel anyway, but he really should know that founding-era Zionism in particular was sharply secular. Indeed, most of the explicitly religious elements of Israel's current political structure (such as devolving control over family law to religious authorities) is an Ottoman era holdover. Is it one I'd love to see repealed? Yep. Is the most fervent advocate favoring such a repeal in the current Likud-led coalition? You bet.

Okay, how about "ethno-nationalist"? I take the author's point to be that states which specifically are founded on nationalist principles are more vulnerable to reactionary right-wing elements which oppress minorities. Is that true? One problem with figuring it out is that most states today remain founded on ethno-nationalist principles. But even those states which plausibly are not founded on that concept or do not currently identify that way (e.g., the United States, the former USSR, China -- it's notable that all of these cases are at best arguable ones) also periodically see right-wing coalitions come to power and act in ways hostile to minorities. That seems to be a unifying feature of states and polities. Indeed, the real moral of the story here is that a state does not need to explicitly identify itself in ethno-nationalist terms in order for an ethno-nationalist element to have appeal amongst members of a majority ethnic class. Israel, after all, famously does not characterize itself as a Jewish state in its Basic Laws -- it is neither unique nor surprising that this does not eradicate the potency of right-wing ethno-nationalist claims within the Israeli polity.

A great pet peeve of Israel supporters is when people take attributes common across many or all states and single out Israel for special opprobrium. Israel does have a reactionary right-wing nationalist element in it, one that I think is repulsive on its own terms and destructive to the long-term wellbeing of both Israelis and Palestinians (not to mention the Jewish self-determination project more generally). But there's nothing unique or strange about that. Pretty much any democratic polity has elements like that; using their existence to say that the whole group's desire for self-determination is doomed to failure is ludicrous on its face and obviously not going to be applied consistently in practice.

* This is a simplification of course, but its worth noting that in the current coalition only two of the four members of the current coalition (Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu and Jewish Home) are really committed to the settlement and greater Israel project that the author is most angry about. Together, these two entities combined for about 32% of the vote. Yesh Atid (14%) is somewhat ambivalent, while Hatnuah (5%) ran specifically as a pro-negotiations, pro-peace party.

Academic Freedom versus Academic Legitimacy: The Case of Steven Salaita

Earlier this year, I published a short piece in the Florida International University Law Review's microsymposium on academic freedom titled "Academic Freedom versus Academic Legitimacy." The piece unfortunately isn't available online (UPDATE: here it is!), but it's short so I'll just repost it below:

What does it mean when a university department invites a person to speak? It clearly does not mean is that the department endorses the speaker’s views. Persons are regularly invited to speak in a university setting whose views are opposed by many if not most of their audience—often including the very people who invited them. Rather, the invitation indicates that the department believes the speaker is academically legitimate: their contribution is one that, whether right or wrong, usefully advances scholarly discussion. It is probable that most members of a university community believe that both Newt Gingrich and David Duke are “wrong”, but only one’s views are illegitimate.

Academic freedom and academic legitimacy map imperfectly onto one another. Academic freedom is content-neutral: it does not attempt to distinguish between “correct” and “incorrect” views. Academic legitimacy, by contrast, is very concerned with content: it asserts that certain views should not be considered valid entrants into a productive scholarly discussion. But these two concepts are often conflated. A university facing criticism over a controversial speaker will often respond by invoking “academic freedom.” This is a valid response at one level: academic freedom implies that even a David Duke cannot be barred from speaking if invited by an authorized member of the university community. But at another level, it misses the point entirely. The problem is not that Duke was allowed by some higher university authority to speak, the problem is that he was invited in the first place; that a department or research center or student group believed his views were academically legitimate. To structure the question in terms of academic freedom—should he be banned—misstates the good being pursued. The demand is not for formal barriers against such horrible views but to not need such barriers at all.

To see why this distinction matters, consider another obvious truth: David Duke is not invited to speak at colleges. This is not because “academic freedom” is being systematically breached, but rather because the academic community has voluntarily decided that Duke’s views do not make any useful scholarly contribution. And that we’ve made that decision is a very good thing—we would rightly worry about the caliber of an academic community that could not come to a general intersubjective agreement that Duke’s views are illegitimate.

But what happens when this consensus doesn’t exist? Efforts to restrict allegedly malign ideologies are assumed to be a tool of the strong, but often they are a tactic of the weak—people who are not confident that their community will unify in agreement that the ideology is in fact oppressive. That there now is massive intersubjective agreement that overt White supremacist ideology is illegitimate gives people of color nothing more than what Whites long enjoyed effortlessly, and if that consensus were threatened minority students would be rightly concerned.

Many controversies labeled as ones of “academic freedom” are actually about academic legitimacy. Is Pat Robertson properly analogized to David Duke? Is Gilad Atzmon? The Black Panthers? BDS activists? David Horowitz? What about “scientific” creationists or climate change denialists? It is fair game to argue that a well-functioning university community would not view any or all of these persons as academically legitimate, and that position itself is perfectly consistent with believing that agreements regarding academic legitimacy cannot be enforced through explicit bans or sanctions. That is all that “academic freedom” contributes to the discussion: a constraint on remedies. Enlisting it to do more confuses two distinct questions and sidesteps the true nature of many academic controversies.

David Schraub, Academic Freedom versus Academic Legitimacy, 9 FIU L. Rev. 71 (2013)

Today I read the story of Steven Salaita, whose offer to teach at the University of Illinois was rescinded after review of "uncivil" tweets about Israel, Jews, and anti-Semitism (Salaita previously taught at Virginia Tech). Corey Robin is appalled; he labels this "a symptom of the effects of Zionism on academic freedom, how pro-Israel forces have consistently attempted to shut down debate on this issue, how they 'distort all that is right.'" Salaita provides an "unapologetic defense of the rights of Palestinians", while some of his tweets may "jar or shock a tender sensibility", that's part and parcel of writing on social media. The overall theme of the post is that Salaita is a sometimes brash but valuable contributor to scholarly discourse who is being "punished" for being critical of Israel.

And then we read some of the tweets in question. I'll focus on two of the most egregious:

"By eagerly conflating Jewishness and Israel, Zionists are partly responsible when people say antisemitic shit in response to Israeli terror."

"Zionists, transforming 'antisemitism' from something horrible into something honorable since 1948."

Calling anti-Semitism "honorable"? Yeah, I think we're a bit beyond "uncivil" here. The fact that it is couched in a "critique" of a particular sector of Jewish experience and comes with a healthy dose of victim-blaming hardly changes the analysis: if I wrote "Al Sharpton, transforming 'racism' from something horrible into something honorable since 1991," I would not simply be criticizing the National Action Network. One would hope we'd have little trouble understanding the racism latent in such a statement (though admittedly I suspect a significant segment of the American political right would fervently deny there is any such racism in that statement. Needless to say, emulating the right-wing definition of racism as "Klan members, and then only if they are chanting 'White Power' while actually lynching someone" is hardly a ringing endorsement).

But here's the thing -- this observation doesn't change Robin's analysis either. And that's what I find frustrating. This debate seems to be, on the one hand, "Salaita's views are abhorrent and therefore Illinois was right to rescind his offer" versus "Salaita is a valuable contributor to scholarly discourse who is being wrongfully punished for his unpopular views." In other words, both sides are conflating Salaita's academic freedom -- the freedom not to be punished in the academic context due to one's political opinions -- and his academic legitimacy -- whether his statements should be considered in-bounds when we think about what positions are valid in political discussion. The right answer, it seems to me, is that "Salaita has said some horrifying, anti-Semitic stuff, but Illinois made its bed and now it has to lie in it." Academic freedom still protects people who say racist or anti-Semitic trash. I can say from my time teaching at Illinois, no less, that I was the periodic recipient of blast emails from a tenured faculty member who liked to go on about the Zionist Fascist Neo-Con Straussian Rockefeller Evangelical conspiracy of war and world domination. Tenure is a beautiful thing. The point being, said faculty member had the right to say those things, but one would hope that everyone else recognized him as a lunatic (which they did). It wasn't scary that he wasn't fired, but it would have been very scary if most other faculty members thought he had a point.

Turning back to Salaita's case, if one wanted to there are ways to distinguish it from the "academic freedom" paradigm. The tweets in question are not part of any scholarly discussion, they were mere social media outbursts. For obvious reasons though I have no interest in seeing academics targeted due to their social media postings, so as far as I'm concerned that's out. Another difference is that Salaita was only not hired at Illnois, he was not fired for his positions. That would be a valid distinction, I think, had this decision been made at the department level. I addressed this issue previously in the context of supposed "discrimination" against faculty candidates who oppose LGBT rights:

Being a law professor is an academic, policy-oriented position. The question of LGBT rights is a normative, political question. It goes to the heart of what a professor does. If someone gets that question "wrong", is there any reason why I can't evaluate them more harshly on the merits of their candidacy? How else is one supposed to evaluate it? This gets to the deep tension within academia: academic freedom means letting people take whatever position they like and pursue any line of inquiry they desire; academic merit necessarily requires judging those positions and inquiries as good or bad. I don't mean to discount the possibility that somebody can take a position that I think is wrong while conceding that they argue for it in a powerful and sophisticated fashion. I do mean to say that the deeper ingrained a particular commitment is, the less likely that one will believe the dispute to be one of reasonable disagreement, rather than simply the other side making a profound moral error.

Indeed, I think this gets at a large part of the discomfort over Salaita's hiring -- that functionally in hiring Salaita they're saying (at least in part) that viewing anti-Semitism as an honorable calling is a valid, legitimate position in the constellation of academic debate, just one of many positions that we might have political disagreements about. That judgment is a concerning one. Whether or not a professor could get hired if she had written that "Hamas has made Islamophobia something honorable" or "Louis Farrakhan has made racism something honorable", I'd certainly hope that she wouldn't be -- that we would view that position as outside the bounds of good legitimate scholarly debate. That distinguishes the decision to hire from the decision to fire -- it is well-known and agreed that not firing an academic for his or her appalling opinions does not signal any endorsement of the validity of those views. By contrast, making the affirmative step of hiring an academic inevitably contains some such endorsement. Consequently, one has to wonder how it is that viewing anti-Semitism as "honorable" rather than "horrible" for the past 65 years has come to be a position smart, well-connected academics are willing to endorse.

So on the one hand, if Salaita had written this after already having been hired at Illinois, it would be both protected by academic freedom and abhorrent. If the hiring committee had decided they didn't want to hire him because they didn't think viewing anti-Semitism as "honorable" was up to their standards of merit, they'd be equally justified (and right). Salaita is somewhere in the middle given that he had been offered the job but had not yet formally gotten upper-administration approval; but I'm inclined to agree that this was too late. It is well-known that this approval is pro forma; like Salaita I too announced my departure from my prior job before getting final approval by the Chancellor (or whoever) for my position having relied upon the offer from the folks at the law school. Nobody views the chancellor's approval of the hiring decision as an endorsement; it is a rubber-stamp. That's why anyone inside the academic community views this as having taken something away from Salaita, which in turn raises academic freedom concerns. And since, to reiterate, racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic views are as protected by academic freedom as any other, this should in no way stop anyone from recognizing the anti-Semitism in Salaita's writings.

Long story short -- academic freedom protects anti-Semitic statements such as the claim that anti-Semitism has become "honorable." Viewing that statement as anything other than an abhorrent view that is nonetheless protected by academic freedom is frightening. That people on both sides of the debate over Salaita's hiring continue to conflate these two concepts blurs both of these important conclusions.

UPDATE: The Illinois AAUP committee on academic freedom has released a statement supporting Salaita. It's mostly unobjectionable, but it does fall into the trap I outlined above. Salaita's statements were less a "plea to end the violence" so much as to redirect it ("Jeffrey goldberg’s story should have ended at the pointy end of a shiv."; "I wish all the fucking West Bank settlers would go missing" -- said in the aftermath of the kidnapping of three Jewish teenagers in the West Bank who were later found dead). And the end paragraph, which expresses concern "if a university would void a contract of a professor exercising a right of citizenship in protesting actions of another country that much of the global community including the U.N. Secretary General and even the U.S. State Department have found 'disgraceful,'" is another entry in the long history of conflating everything from "anti-Semitism is honorable" to tactical critiques of military operations into an indistinguishable glob known as criticism of Israel.

None of which alters the broader point -- but again, I don't know why it is so hard for people to defend academic freedom without affirmatively arguing that the speech in question is actually great. That's not what academic freedom is about.

Conveying Another Message to the Jews of South Africa

The Western Cape branch of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is threatening a widescale boycott of the Jewish community -- and urges them to leave South Africa outright:

If the Jewish Board of Deputies wants to advance a Zionist agenda, they should leave South Africa and go advance their agenda elsewhere. To let these funders of a war against a defenceless people act with impunity in South Africa, is against South Africa’s commitment to the people of Palestine. The Jewish Board of Deputies must be advised in no uncertain terms that if they are not part of the solution then they are part of the problem.

The Jewish Board of Deputies are given until the 07 August 2014 to stop their Zionist propaganda in Cape Town, failing which we will boycott and call strikes at all of their member – and supporting companies and organisations. The Jewish Board of Deputies should know that just because Premier Zille supports them, it does not mean that they can act with impunity against the will of the majority of South Africans.

This is reminiscent of another COSATU official, Bongani Masuku, who stated he wished

to convey a message to the Jews in SA that our 1.9-million workers who are affiliated to COSATU are fully behind the people of Palestine… Any business owned by Israel supporters will be a target of workers in South Africa.

He later rumbled that "none of those who tolerate Israeli apartheid and racism should ever imagine it [South Africa] to be their home." In terms of what it meant to cease support for Zionism, Mr. Masuku was clear that it would not be enough to be "silently consenting or grumbling under tables." For this, Masuku was found to have engaged in hate speech.

Incidentally, Western Cape is also the province where an ANC official posted on Facebook that Hitler "was right". The ANC and COSATU are two of the three members of the "Tripartite Alliance" that has been the dominant political player in South Africa since emerging from apartheid in 1994.

Corporate Governance

Much of the liberal dismay over Hobby Lobby (and before that the campaign finance cases) has centered around the question of "corporate personhood" -- whether a company, like an individual, has the various rights protected by the Constitution. I've always thought this was the wrong question. I think everyone agrees that corporations should not have the right to vote, on the one hand. And on the other hand, I think everyone does agree they have the right to the freedom of the press -- shutting down the New York Times and justifying it because "it's a corporation" wouldn't fly with anyone.

So really the question isn't "do corporations have 'individual' rights", it's "what rights do corporations have." But even that, I think, doesn't get at the dismay so many felt over Hobby Lobby. I don't think the problem is necessarily even that Hobby Lobby asserted a freedom of religion claim. There are corporate-religion claims that I can imagine many people finding plausible and worth endorsing -- a kosher butcher suing over state restrictions on meat slaughtering. Another would be the efforts of Jewish-owned businesses to be exempt from Sunday closing laws (efforts that were almost entirely unsuccessful, at least in the courts).

The problem is that Hobby Lobby's decision feels less like "respecting an individual's choice of conscience" and more like "government imposing its religious beliefs onto me." And here's the important point: from the vantage point of its employees, Hobby Lobby bears a much closer resemblance to government than to a fellow citizen.

As a private citizen I might be able to request a religious exemption to, say, wear a beard at work or have Saturdays instead of Sundays off. This has at best an incidental effect on people-not-me. By contrast, if I assert that an entire highway needs to be moved to accommodate my religious sensibility, affecting thousands of other people, I'm going to encounter far more skepticism. We tolerate religious accommodations where they are primarily private matters that have an at most incidental impact on other members of the polity (which I support -- why not?). But Hobby Lobby's decision is hardly private; the primary effect of its decision is felt by its workers. In its ability to seriously and materially impact the lives of thousands of other people, Hobby Lobby is approximating a government far more than a person.

The broader point is that for most people, most of the time, the entity that "governs" their daily lives and conduct is not Congress, its their employer. Your boss largely decides how much you're paid, what benefits you are entitled to, when you can come and go, even what you must wear. There are differences, of course. A business relationship is contractual; I can leave for a new job. But then again, in the formal sense I can move to a new state or country. And in this economy, it is hardly a given that (practically speaking) people can willy-nilly move about jobs or countries. Ultimately, the ability to exit is somewhat more robust in the corporate context. But there are other areas where government has the advantage. I have many routes to influence my government, including voting, campaigning, writing letters, and protesting -- in fact, I have a right to submit grievances. There is typically no functional analogue in the corporate context, and many of the above options are a quick route to being canned for insubordination. Advantage: government.

In any event, the point is not to say whether government or corporations on net do or can deprive us of more liberty. Functionally speaking, most of us most of the time are subjected to corporate, not congressional, governance. That the company plays this role in our lives means people are -- justifiably -- going to mentally slot it in as a ruler rather than a peer when it starts making decisions that impact us. Fundamentally, it's a rejection of the libertarian conceit that economic relations are the free interaction of coequals. Rather, we're talking about what powers "government" -- defined functionally rather than formally -- has over individuals. And when the government tries to say "we're going to obstruct your access to contraception because we find it religiously immoral", people are going to have the same reaction as if an old-school government made the same decision.

The Pros and Cons of Being Pro

Or "anti" for that matter. Paul Waldman has an incisive post critiquing the concept of being "pro-" or "anti-" Israel. That's a slight over-simplification -- Waldman argues that "pro-Israel" should be limited to the narrow question of whether "Israel ought to exist." This is no longer a debate in mainstream western circles (so Waldman asserts, anyway), and beyond that the terminology distracts us from specific policy questions like, e.g., should Israel withdraw to 1967 borders, should Israel engage in military operations against Hamas, should Israel maintain its blockade of Gaza, and so on and so forth. One can take a variety of a positions on these questions while still believing that "Israel ought to exist", so what good does the label do us?

I think there is a lot to Waldman's argument. It tracks Phoebe Maltz Bovy's narrow definition of Zionism, that the creation of Israel was a good idea and it shoudl stick around. Of course, I think Waldman might understate the contemporary salience of the "Israel should not exist position." In the west this depends on what one considers "mainstream", but of course the world does not consist of only the west. Both regionally and internationally, the debate over Israel still very much encompasses the question of whether it should be there at all. And because that debate does, in fact, remain very live, it is understandable that even on policy questions where people on both sides genuinely believe that Israel ought to exist; coming to the right conclusion (or at least not getting it catastrophically wrong) has real impacts on whether Israel will in fact be around as a Jewish democratic state in 20, 50, or 100 years.

But none of that diminishes the important point, which is to not think of Israel in terms of bare-bones "solidarity" politics. Caring about something means having opinions about it. If you care about Israel, as many people do, you should have opinions about it, and it is highly unlikely that those opinions will perfectly track those of any particular governing coalition.

Trains and Their Alternatives

By far, my favorite species of libertarian writing is the article which attacks a government spending project by articulating all the other spending projects -- also opposed by libertarians -- that could instead receive the money. This Reason article making fun of a new light rail project in downtown Detroit is a great example of the genre.

I don't know enough about the particulars of Detroit to know if the project makes sense or not. I do note that reviving urban cores via densification around light rail hubs has a very strong record of success and plays into the increasingly car-less preferences of the millennial generation. Given that this is pretty much the trend in urban revitalization, you'd think the article might mention it somewhere, but alas. Indeed, the article seems peculiarly attached to the thesis that "downtown" is a doomed concept which fell apart in 1967 and will never rise again -- a theory that seems to my ears to be, what, a decade out of date? At least? The trend in the United States has been towards restoring the central nature of "downtown" areas, as young professionals like being able to walk (or take a quick hop on public transportation) to their jobs, their favorite restaurants, or their after-work hangouts. So the idea that Detroit would benefit from following this path is hardly some sort of absurdist boondoggle.

The real joy though, comes in all the caveats that are snuck in throughout the article, much as a parent might hide vegetables under the mashed potatoes. "Detroit's light rail line could be written off as a typical government pork fest, if only a large share of the construction funds weren't coming from private sources." Uh-oh -- sometimes private benefactors make choices with their money that don't perfectly align with Reason's read on Rational Choice Theory? Say it ain't so! What about convenience? Well, obviously, the best way to think about that is their absurd hypothetical where a local business magnate uses his god-given right as a Free Market Maker issues some sort of decree to "mandate that his employees utilize the new light rail line in their daily commutes after it opens in 2016." The idea behind these light rail projects typically is that people move close to the train stations and don't drive anywhere, but that really basic concept is again nowhere to be seen.

And what about the "26 percent of Detroit households that don’t own cars"? Here, Reason suggests that further investment in the city's bus lines would be a better use of the money. And maybe so -- there are a lot of reasons to favor rapid-bus transit over train lines, greater flexibility being among the most prominent! But of course, if that was on the table it would be another government spending atrocity Reason would oppose on principled libertarian grounds. And even if Reason was remotely likely to offer its full-throated support to massive government subsidies to local bus lines -- which I don't think we'll see in any form except as a hypothetical counterplan to actual proposed projects -- the fact is one of these projects is on the table (thanks to private money, no less), and one isn't.

So yes, color me skeptical that their problem with the rail project stems either from Reason's deep understanding of contemporary urban redevelopment policy or their heartfelt commitment to bus service.

Religious Mantras

The former editor-in-chief of Newton, Iowa (pop. 15,254) was fired after he wrote comments describing his fight against the "Gaystapo". Now he's claiming religious discrimination and filing suit. Here's his statement:

On April 28, 2014, I penned a theologically based article stating my sincerely held religious beliefs about efforts by some to criticize and remold my faith through what I believe is false teaching. In my article, I quoted at length from a variety of sources, most prominently, from the Holy Bible.

That blog post described my sincerely held religious beliefs regarding Holy Scripture and the definition of marriage. My comments on my blog were personal in nature and reflective of my sincerely held religious beliefs. Furthermore, I felt compelled by my sincerely held religious beliefs to share my Biblical view with the few folks who read my blog.

I'm probably reading too much into this, but the way he's repeating "sincerely held religious beliefs" after Hobby Lobby reminds me a lot of shooters after Trayvon Martin who kept saying "I'm standing my ground" right before blowing some "threatening" kid away. It's interesting to watch legal doctrine percolate down into the public consciousness and how they are understood (and misunderstood) by average people. I am quite skeptical that a religious discrimination claim will go anywhere based on these facts; "sincerely-held" beliefs notwithstanding.

Bonus fun fact: The man is being represented by the Liberty Institute -- formerly known as the "Free Market Foundation". Because when I think "conservative ideals about the free market", I think "judicial intervention to stop private businesses from voluntarily deciding who they employ as their Editors".

I Will Never Yield in My Commitment to Compromise My Principles

A new poll asks what sort of people Americans wish had a greater presence in Congress. There's some interesting findings, but the one that immediately struck me was this:

Gallup finds that by a margin of 63% to 30%, Americans believe the country would be better (as opposed to worse) governed if in political office there were more “people who think it is more important to compromise to get things done than to hold firm to their principles.” Okay. But by a margin of 56% to 38%, they believe life would be better if there were in political office more “people who think it is more important to hold firm to their principles than to compromise to get things done.” These would appear to be diametrically opposed and exclusive propositions, unless “Americans” are saying they want more highly conflicted people in office, or just want more of everything.

I really, really, really wish I could get into the head of the people who prefer both the pro- and anti-compromise positions.