It doesn't matter whether or not Jews are considered a "race" based on some social science theory or genetic assessment. The Nazi's considered Jews as well as Poles and other Slavic peoples to be "inferior races" and that is what drove their policies. To say that the Holocaust and genocide the Nazi's practiced was not racially driven shows an egregious ignorance of history and a partisan attempt to rationalize away Goldbergs uninformed comments and views.
Whoa - Eric - you did not answer my main point. I said the selection process results in a qualified Justice joining the Supreme Court.
Are you saying the last three Justices are unqualified?
Does being "conservative" equal unqualified?
You had a conservative (wacko) president with a conservative (wacko) senate resulting in the selection of three qualified conservative Justices. Want to blame someone - blame the American voters who put these folks in power. But show me these 3 folks are not qualified to be Justices.
So far all you got is political sour grapes. The system worked and reflected the political will of voters. (Not saying they were right - just saying what they waned).
Does anyone else think that Jesse Sharky is planning to build a political organization to place a slate of candidates on the elected school board? Maybe even with himself as the leader of the slate? It was just the first thing that crossed my mind when he announced his decision not to run for reelection to the union leadership. Hard for me to imagine that he or CTU just want to wait and see who will run for the board.
The 'distorted and undemocratic defects built into our republic' are part of the genius of the Founders in creating a stable government that is capable of continuous progress, meeting the needs of the country, and avoiding emotional swings and the 'tyranny of the majority'. This occasionally slows progress as it enforces the need to move no faster than a very large majority of the population desires. This also strengthens the 'middle' and weakens the fringes. There are only a handful of governmental structures that are comparably successful and none that are superior. I think the best improvement to address partisanship and factionalism would be the adoption of ranked-choice-voting, which I believe would help to elect a government that is more in line with the broadest center of the population and far less amenable to the fringes.
Conservative / Libertarian leaning economist Thomas Sowell has always theorized the holocaust wasn't about "inferior race", but resentment over the economic & social roles of "middleman minorities": clannish non-natives who tend to play the valuable yet often misunderstood role between producer and consumer. Similar hostilities have been directed at groups that have played that role throughout history: Armenians, Ibos, Lebanese, Koreans, etc.
With regard to Nazis considering Jews a different race that reminds me of 20-30 years ago in Major League Baseball when I heard that some Blacks were decrying the lack of Black players. I looked and saw plenty. That’s when I learned that white people like myself saw Sammy Sosa and other Latin players as Black, but African Americans saw them as Hispanic. Is that a good comparison?
“. . . And while there’s little doubt that diversity of all sorts — not just racial but ethnic, geographical, socio-economic, religious and gender — makes for a richer and more stimulating educational environment, it’s hard to realize diversity without abandoning some of our conventional notions of fairness.” --Zorn
Capitalism and democracy: Is it the nature of competition that one person prevails over another? Applied to economics, in America it seems like we have a system of inequality by definition. If “equality” supersedes capitalism, what economic system is being presented to us? Is this ideology exposed, or do we only see the fruit of it?
As to indirect democracy, at least in theory, it does seem to provide for political equality but does not guarantee economic equality. Is the societal criticism of “inequality” equivocation used to justify programs that are constitutionally -- by definition -- on unequal economic ground? How is this justified?
I think constitutional equality speaks to one’s lawful political opportunity – say, to fulfill the American dream -- primarily through economic competition and political/legal guarantees. How is this rewarded in our system?
The more ontological question about equal individual worth . . . well, why should we accept personal “equality” on its face without a thorough explanation of the facts – certainly most people can think of the moral polarity between the lives of some prominent individuals like, say, Mother Teressa or Joseph Stalin. Are they “equal” in the sense that the Constitution speaks of?
EZ - Your examples of statements of political malpractice prompt me to suggest that you should keep an archive of them that we can pore over from time to time in fond remembrance. Here's a contribution to your collection for us oldsters:
Gerald Ford: (October 1976 debate with Jimmy Carter) ...There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.
(Debate moderator): I'm sorry, could I just follow -- did I understand you to say, sir, that the Russians are not using Eastern Europe as their own sphere of influence in occupying most of the countries there and making sure with their troops that it's a Communist zone...?
Gerald Ford: I don't believe, Mr. Frankel that the Yugoslavians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Rumanians (sic) consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. Each of those countries is independent, autonomous; it has its own territorial integrity. And the United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union. https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/speeches/760854.asp
If you need one from the other side to balance things out I'd nominate Terry McAullife's "I don't believe parents should be telling schools what they should teach..."
In both cases partisans can argue that what he MEANT to say was.....But, as the adage goes, if you're explaining, you're losing.
You could write a crowd-sourced book EZ. Seriously.
1. Whoopi should not have been sent to her room for her mistake, but, gosh, you must have missed a few important days in school if you don't see the Nazis as quintessential racists and the Holocaust as a quintessentially racist act. To be clear, it's not a question of how Jews define themselves; few would consider their Jewish ancestry their race today, perhaps an ethnicity. No matter. The point is that the Nazis (and they were not the first, only the most extreme) treated Jewishness as a racial stain that could not be wiped away with conversion or assimilation -- Jewish "blood" marked you for persecution and death -- and, to their own practical detriment, they held the maniacal view that Jews were not only at the bottom of their racial hierarchy but their fundamental racial enemy, inherently and naturally parasitic vermin that had to be destroyed at all costs. They were steeped in racial theory, much of it pseudoscientific, and absolutely obsessed with race. Racism was their whole guiding principle. I mean, does "master race" ring a bell?
2. Yes, the Supreme Court has permitted hate-motivated sentencing enhancements. I'm not entirely convinced though by the reasoning in that case, nor by the hard line between criminalizing speech as such on the one hand and punishing acts that are already crimes more severely for their speech aspect on the other, especially in cases where the crime involved is chiefly expressive conduct (as with spray-painting a slogan or burning a flag). Do you think the First Amendment would or should permit a law that punished anti-government graffiti more severely than other graffiti? Or permit a law that punished burning a flag more severely than burning leaves? (As Scalia pointed out in RAV, the government may outlaw obscenity but it may not outlaw only anti-government obscenity.) In those cases, I don't think the distinction would hold, and yet you could argue that a crime has already been committed (vandalism, illegal bonfire) and that the speech is plausibly more inimical to order and harmony. If your argument is that anti-government speech has no victims to be distressed or moved to retaliation, unlike hate crimes, what about the anti-cop example I suggested or graffiti that says, say on the side of the RNC headquarters, "Thanks Covid! Fuck Trump Voters"? I understand that we don't currently punish those acts of vandalism more severely as they are not defined as "hate crimes." But would you be comfortable with a law that did punish them more severely as hate crimes? The state could quite easily expand the definition based on similar justifications you quote from the Wisconsin case. If not, why not?
3. My point about the New York Times story was a narrow one. I was not saying that the Times should have gone out of its way to interpret the RNC's asinine resolution in the most generous way. I was saying that they should have refrained from interpreting it in the least generous way. Indeed, they should have refrained from interpreting it at all. The RNC quite simply did not say in their statement that the rioting at the Capitol was legitimate discourse. They said that the Jan. 6 Commission was engaged in persecution that targeted legitimate discourse. The Times should have simply said what they said, as most outlets did. It's crazy enough.
The quality of the excellent Tweets of the Week this week was so uniform high that you ought to declare this the "Tweets of the Week" Week of the Year. Voting for all of them would have defeated the purpose of voting, but it was way harder to choose than usual.
Sorry, late to the party this week. But regarding the the Nazis and racism, it was obvious and in line with the views of many people and leaders in Europe (and America). And yes, economics was part of it…easier to justify taking property of subhumans. Ida B. Wells-Barnett wrote about that as a journalist covering lynchings in the south in the late 1800’s. She had to flee to Chicago to escape the Klan because of her articles, but the economic factor in racism has been well documented in American racism and Nazi antisemitism. Americans of all stripes and colors need to learn ours and the world’s history. It is nearly always relevant.
The concept of medieval sleeping habits is getting attention in print media now. I read about this a few months ago in a new book by Colson Whitehead, “Harlem Shuffle”. Good book where the primary character practices “biphasic” sleep.
It doesn't matter whether or not Jews are considered a "race" based on some social science theory or genetic assessment. The Nazi's considered Jews as well as Poles and other Slavic peoples to be "inferior races" and that is what drove their policies. To say that the Holocaust and genocide the Nazi's practiced was not racially driven shows an egregious ignorance of history and a partisan attempt to rationalize away Goldbergs uninformed comments and views.
And please cancel my subscription.
Whoa - Eric - you did not answer my main point. I said the selection process results in a qualified Justice joining the Supreme Court.
Are you saying the last three Justices are unqualified?
Does being "conservative" equal unqualified?
You had a conservative (wacko) president with a conservative (wacko) senate resulting in the selection of three qualified conservative Justices. Want to blame someone - blame the American voters who put these folks in power. But show me these 3 folks are not qualified to be Justices.
So far all you got is political sour grapes. The system worked and reflected the political will of voters. (Not saying they were right - just saying what they waned).
Does anyone else think that Jesse Sharky is planning to build a political organization to place a slate of candidates on the elected school board? Maybe even with himself as the leader of the slate? It was just the first thing that crossed my mind when he announced his decision not to run for reelection to the union leadership. Hard for me to imagine that he or CTU just want to wait and see who will run for the board.
Thanks again for the visual tweets. It feels great to laugh out loud.
The 'distorted and undemocratic defects built into our republic' are part of the genius of the Founders in creating a stable government that is capable of continuous progress, meeting the needs of the country, and avoiding emotional swings and the 'tyranny of the majority'. This occasionally slows progress as it enforces the need to move no faster than a very large majority of the population desires. This also strengthens the 'middle' and weakens the fringes. There are only a handful of governmental structures that are comparably successful and none that are superior. I think the best improvement to address partisanship and factionalism would be the adoption of ranked-choice-voting, which I believe would help to elect a government that is more in line with the broadest center of the population and far less amenable to the fringes.
Conservative / Libertarian leaning economist Thomas Sowell has always theorized the holocaust wasn't about "inferior race", but resentment over the economic & social roles of "middleman minorities": clannish non-natives who tend to play the valuable yet often misunderstood role between producer and consumer. Similar hostilities have been directed at groups that have played that role throughout history: Armenians, Ibos, Lebanese, Koreans, etc.
With regard to Nazis considering Jews a different race that reminds me of 20-30 years ago in Major League Baseball when I heard that some Blacks were decrying the lack of Black players. I looked and saw plenty. That’s when I learned that white people like myself saw Sammy Sosa and other Latin players as Black, but African Americans saw them as Hispanic. Is that a good comparison?
Regarding words you can’t say, I heard the following at an open mic stand up last night.
‘I avoid the word cocoon because I don’t want to appear to be a stuttering racist.’
“. . . And while there’s little doubt that diversity of all sorts — not just racial but ethnic, geographical, socio-economic, religious and gender — makes for a richer and more stimulating educational environment, it’s hard to realize diversity without abandoning some of our conventional notions of fairness.” --Zorn
Capitalism and democracy: Is it the nature of competition that one person prevails over another? Applied to economics, in America it seems like we have a system of inequality by definition. If “equality” supersedes capitalism, what economic system is being presented to us? Is this ideology exposed, or do we only see the fruit of it?
As to indirect democracy, at least in theory, it does seem to provide for political equality but does not guarantee economic equality. Is the societal criticism of “inequality” equivocation used to justify programs that are constitutionally -- by definition -- on unequal economic ground? How is this justified?
I think constitutional equality speaks to one’s lawful political opportunity – say, to fulfill the American dream -- primarily through economic competition and political/legal guarantees. How is this rewarded in our system?
The more ontological question about equal individual worth . . . well, why should we accept personal “equality” on its face without a thorough explanation of the facts – certainly most people can think of the moral polarity between the lives of some prominent individuals like, say, Mother Teressa or Joseph Stalin. Are they “equal” in the sense that the Constitution speaks of?
EZ - Your examples of statements of political malpractice prompt me to suggest that you should keep an archive of them that we can pore over from time to time in fond remembrance. Here's a contribution to your collection for us oldsters:
Gerald Ford: (October 1976 debate with Jimmy Carter) ...There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.
(Debate moderator): I'm sorry, could I just follow -- did I understand you to say, sir, that the Russians are not using Eastern Europe as their own sphere of influence in occupying most of the countries there and making sure with their troops that it's a Communist zone...?
Gerald Ford: I don't believe, Mr. Frankel that the Yugoslavians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Rumanians (sic) consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. Each of those countries is independent, autonomous; it has its own territorial integrity. And the United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union. https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/speeches/760854.asp
If you need one from the other side to balance things out I'd nominate Terry McAullife's "I don't believe parents should be telling schools what they should teach..."
In both cases partisans can argue that what he MEANT to say was.....But, as the adage goes, if you're explaining, you're losing.
You could write a crowd-sourced book EZ. Seriously.
1. Whoopi should not have been sent to her room for her mistake, but, gosh, you must have missed a few important days in school if you don't see the Nazis as quintessential racists and the Holocaust as a quintessentially racist act. To be clear, it's not a question of how Jews define themselves; few would consider their Jewish ancestry their race today, perhaps an ethnicity. No matter. The point is that the Nazis (and they were not the first, only the most extreme) treated Jewishness as a racial stain that could not be wiped away with conversion or assimilation -- Jewish "blood" marked you for persecution and death -- and, to their own practical detriment, they held the maniacal view that Jews were not only at the bottom of their racial hierarchy but their fundamental racial enemy, inherently and naturally parasitic vermin that had to be destroyed at all costs. They were steeped in racial theory, much of it pseudoscientific, and absolutely obsessed with race. Racism was their whole guiding principle. I mean, does "master race" ring a bell?
2. Yes, the Supreme Court has permitted hate-motivated sentencing enhancements. I'm not entirely convinced though by the reasoning in that case, nor by the hard line between criminalizing speech as such on the one hand and punishing acts that are already crimes more severely for their speech aspect on the other, especially in cases where the crime involved is chiefly expressive conduct (as with spray-painting a slogan or burning a flag). Do you think the First Amendment would or should permit a law that punished anti-government graffiti more severely than other graffiti? Or permit a law that punished burning a flag more severely than burning leaves? (As Scalia pointed out in RAV, the government may outlaw obscenity but it may not outlaw only anti-government obscenity.) In those cases, I don't think the distinction would hold, and yet you could argue that a crime has already been committed (vandalism, illegal bonfire) and that the speech is plausibly more inimical to order and harmony. If your argument is that anti-government speech has no victims to be distressed or moved to retaliation, unlike hate crimes, what about the anti-cop example I suggested or graffiti that says, say on the side of the RNC headquarters, "Thanks Covid! Fuck Trump Voters"? I understand that we don't currently punish those acts of vandalism more severely as they are not defined as "hate crimes." But would you be comfortable with a law that did punish them more severely as hate crimes? The state could quite easily expand the definition based on similar justifications you quote from the Wisconsin case. If not, why not?
3. My point about the New York Times story was a narrow one. I was not saying that the Times should have gone out of its way to interpret the RNC's asinine resolution in the most generous way. I was saying that they should have refrained from interpreting it in the least generous way. Indeed, they should have refrained from interpreting it at all. The RNC quite simply did not say in their statement that the rioting at the Capitol was legitimate discourse. They said that the Jan. 6 Commission was engaged in persecution that targeted legitimate discourse. The Times should have simply said what they said, as most outlets did. It's crazy enough.
The quality of the excellent Tweets of the Week this week was so uniform high that you ought to declare this the "Tweets of the Week" Week of the Year. Voting for all of them would have defeated the purpose of voting, but it was way harder to choose than usual.
I read your tweets of the week and was wondering how you choose them.
That's not true. I was wondering how I can get mine considered?
Sorry, late to the party this week. But regarding the the Nazis and racism, it was obvious and in line with the views of many people and leaders in Europe (and America). And yes, economics was part of it…easier to justify taking property of subhumans. Ida B. Wells-Barnett wrote about that as a journalist covering lynchings in the south in the late 1800’s. She had to flee to Chicago to escape the Klan because of her articles, but the economic factor in racism has been well documented in American racism and Nazi antisemitism. Americans of all stripes and colors need to learn ours and the world’s history. It is nearly always relevant.
The concept of medieval sleeping habits is getting attention in print media now. I read about this a few months ago in a new book by Colson Whitehead, “Harlem Shuffle”. Good book where the primary character practices “biphasic” sleep.
You and George Will, EZ. Who'd a thunk it?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/11/university-illinois-chicago-cowardice/