Project, much?

Ross Douthat...it's hard to say why he has a job in the New York Times though his work there makes it easier to understand why the Times killed Times Select. Anyway, he has gone from insisting that liborals love them a Culture War as much as his co-polireligious friends do, to today's edition of "We're all tribalists now."

Imagine, for a moment, that George W. Bush had been president when the Transportation Security Administration decided to let Thanksgiving travelers choose between exposing their nether regions to a body scanner or enduring a private security massage. Democrats would have been outraged at yet another Bush-era assault on civil liberties. Liberal pundits would have outdone one another comparing the T.S.A. to this or that police state. (“In an outrage worthy of Enver Hoxha’s Albania ...”) And Republicans would have leaped to the Bush administration’s defense, while accusing liberals of going soft on terrorism.

But Barack Obama is our president instead, so the body-scanner debate played out rather differently. True, some conservatives invoked 9/11 to defend the T.S.A., and some liberals denounced the measures as an affront to American liberties. Such ideological consistency, though, was the exception; mostly, the Bush-era script was read in reverse. It was the populist right that raged against body scans, and the Republican Party that moved briskly to exploit the furor. It was a Democratic administration that labored to justify the intrusive procedures, and the liberal commentariat that leaped to their defense.

Note, he doesn't link to anyone in that quote about Albania. And the hoards of liberals defending the TSA? He links to a grand total of two: those raving anti-establishmentarians, the Post's Ruth Marcus and Politico's Michael Kinsley. On the contrary, many leading voices on the Left have been quite noisy in the opposition and the "liberal" response has hardly been monolithic.

Moreover, contrary to Douthat's easy formulation, I don't recall liberals expressing the kind of outsized outrage we saw the last couple of weeks when, during the Bush administration, we were told to take off our shoes and forfeit our lotions and creams. I do recall progressive outrage at things like warrantless wiretaps, indefinite detention without recourse to the courts, and Guantanamo Bay. If Douthat thinks those are akin to Rapidscan or a frisk at the airport, then he has an odd view of the Constitution. And if he's unaware that liberals oppose these things regardless of who inhabits the White House, then he's a liar or an idiot.

After all, what's with those hats?

It's funny, in Ross Douthat's latest supply of laxatives to New York Times readers, in which he extols the benefits of nativism (i.e., xenophobia and bigotry) and calls into question the ability of American Muslims to properly "assimilate" unless they are "pressure[d] to conform to American norms, exerted through fair means and foul," he makes virtually no mention of other Americans who resist assimilating with American culture and religious traditions.

This is typical of how these debates usually play out. The first America tends to make the finer-sounding speeches, and the second America often strikes cruder, more xenophobic notes. The first America welcomed the poor, the tired, the huddled masses; the second America demanded that they change their names and drop their native languages, and often threw up hurdles to stop them coming altogether. The first America celebrated religious liberty; the second America persecuted Mormons and discriminated against Catholics.

But both understandings of this country have real wisdom to offer, and both have been necessary to the American experiment’s success. During the great waves of 19th-century immigration, the insistence that new arrivals adapt to Anglo-Saxon culture — and the threat of discrimination if they didn’t — was crucial to their swift assimilation. The post-1920s immigration restrictions were draconian in many ways, but they created time for persistent ethnic divisions to melt into a general unhyphenated Americanism.

Nor, curiously, did he mention American religious leaders who, like the Burlington Coat Factory Park51 Muslim Center leader, openly questioned whether American behavior and policies had a hand in motivating the murdering crazies who flew two planes in to the World Trade Center.

And yet, for Douthat, only one religion is required to answer for their co-religionists' crazy.

But if that's not the case, what is it with those Murder Caps?

Nativism's blessings

I'm sure you've seen this all over the blogosphere this morning, and I hate to link to it as it only encourages them, but...what the fuck?

The same was true in religion. The steady pressure to conform to American norms, exerted through fair means and foul, eventually persuaded the Mormons to abandon polygamy, smoothing their assimilation into the American mainstream. Nativist concerns about Catholicism’s illiberal tendencies inspired American Catholics to prod their church toward a recognition of the virtues of democracy, making it possible for generations of immigrants to feel unambiguously Catholic and American.

Really? Comparing Mormons' (illegal) polygamy to...what...Ramadan? The U.S. government didn't "persuade" Mormons to give up polygamy, they demanded it in return for admission to the Union*. What Islamic practice are we to pressure Muslims to abandon, "through fair means and foul?"

Ross Douthat: determining who may assimilate and who may not.

* But still practiced by many fundamentalist Mormons.

The once weekly Douthat column

Ezra Klein, who each and every day writes the equivalent word-count of a dozen Ross Douthat weekly columns, is, I believe, employing a euphemism when he calls Douthat's latest "interesting." I think he means, "inane drivel."

Barefoot. Pregnant. Divorced. It's the Real American way

That seems to be what Ross Douthat is saying.

Whether it’s attainable for most Americans or not, the “blue family” model clearly works: it leads to marital success and material prosperity, and it’s well suited to our mobile, globalized society.

By comparison, the “red family” model can look dysfunctional — an uneasy mix of rigor and permissiveness, whose ideals don’t always match up with the facts of contemporary life.

But it reflects something else as well: an attempt, however compromised, to navigate post-sexual revolution America without relying on abortion.

In fairness, Ross does elude to the "practical" as well as "moral" challenges abortion poses in those states. Because commentor-par-excellence, R Porrafatto, does the research.

Over all, the abortion rate is twice as high in New York as in Texas and three times as high in Massachusetts as in Utah.

Obviously a follower of David Brooks Statistical Method: The Power of Selective Facts and Even More Selective Comparisons.

Gee, let’s see what happens if, instead of comparing Massachusetts to the small Mormon enclave of Utah, we compare it to red-state Texas.

In 2005, 85,760 women obtained abortions in Texas, producing a rate of 17.3 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age.

In 2005, 27,270 women obtained abortions in Massachusetts, producing a rate of 19.9 abortions per 1,000 women

Why, that’s pretty damn close — no multiples there. Gee, I wonder how MA compares to the U.S. as a whole:

In 2005, 1.2 million American women obtained abortions, producing a rate of 19.4 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age.

Gosh, that’s practically identical to the national rate. So much for liberal baby-killin’.

And here are a few other little comparisons Brookshat oddly ommitted:

In 2005:
14% of Massachusetts counties had no abortion provider
93% of Texas counties had no abortion provider.
93% of Utah counties had no abortion provider
There were 6 abortion providers in Utah.
There were 45 abortion providers in Massachusetts

Can’t for the life of me figure out why he’d leave all this stuff out

Ross has been on this beat a long time, but really, make him stop.

From Ross Douthat, Privilege, bottom of p. 184: One successful foray ended on the guest bed of a high school friend's parents, with a girl who resembled a chunkier Reese Witherspoon drunkenly masticating my neck and cheeks. It had taken some time to reach this point--"Do most Harvard guys take so long to get what they want?" she had asked, pushing her tongue into my mouth. I wasn't sure what to say, but then I wasn't sure this was what I wanted. My throat was dry from too much vodka, and her breasts, spilling out of pink pajamas, threatened my ability to. I was supposed to be excited, but I was bored and somewhat disgusted with myself, with her, with the whole business... and then whatever residual enthusiasm I felt for the venture dissipated, with shocking speed, as she nibbled at my ear and whispered--"You know, I'm on the pill..."

"A new policy synthesis"

I avoid linking to the Times' latest New. Young. Conservative. Columnist. But this week's offering is a good example of the soft bigotry of low expectations that the Times employs for its New. Young. Conservative. Columnist. Seat.

A billion-odd Chinese had a pretty good decade, and so did a billion Indians: their economies just about doubled in size, minting new millionaires and lifting countless peasants into a growing middle class. Brazil boomed, Indonesia prospered, and even Africa enjoyed a season of substantial growth. Nobody would mistake Vladimir Putin’s Russia for a liberal democratic paradise, but most Russians seem to prefer its stability to the basket-case republic Putin inherited from Boris Yeltsin.

Now that is pretty remarkable. I'm sure the "billion-odd" or so Chinese living here would raise a glass with you, young Ross, toasting their good fortune. Ditto the "billion" or so Indians not employed by an American company outsourcing their back office operations to the country. Brazil's economy is growing, but I doubt very much that Ross is planning a jaunt there anytime soon. Whoever wrote the headline to your piece, at least, was accurate, as "Decline" certainly is "relative."

Seen in this light, America’s lost decade looks less like a big zero and more like an inevitable corrective to the high-flying 1990s. The enormous Clinton-era gulf between the United States and its competitors was bound to narrow eventually. For now, at least, our decline is only relative — from hyperpower back to superpower, from the only nation that mattered to the one that matters most.

Wait. Was that praise for the "Clinton-era" posing as a condemnation of "the enormous gulf?" Curiously, the gulf was "bound to narrow eventually," avoiding any mention of what precipitated that narrowing. And, oh, by the way, is the 28 year old Reagonaut rejecting what Clinton's economic team overcame?

Nah.

But as the 2010s begin, there’s reason to worry that America has further to fall. Our politics are polarized, our finances are still overleveraged, and our society is increasingly segregated — by income, education and family structure — between a thriving elite and a struggling working class. Worse, neither political party seems capable of forging a new policy synthesis to reckon with our domestic challenges.

In the unhappy aughts, we witnessed the exhaustion of Reaganomics. A quarter-century after Ronald Reagan’s mix of tax cuts and deregulation revived American competitiveness, George W. Bush’s attempt to imitate the Gipper produced only wage stagnation and skyrocketing debt.

Competitiveness, particularly in the area of our arms race with the already bankrupt Soviets. Leading to a massive budget deficit that doesn't get talked about much in conservative circles these days, sort of like Reagan's tax increases.

This failure helped cost Republicans their majority. But instead of seeking a new post-Reagan consensus, the Obama Democrats are returning to their party’s long-running pursuit of European-style social democracy — by micromanaging industry, pouring money into entitlement and welfare programs, and binding the economy in a web of new taxes and regulations.

These policies may help smooth over the inequalities that have opened in our national life since the 1970s. But they threaten to cost America its position in the world along the way.

"Post-Reagan consensus?" What is he talking about? And oh yeah, the Dems' long-running pursuit of European-style social democracy is certainly evident in the government being forced to take over failing car companies, bail out banks, and provide badly needed economic stimulus to battle an economic collapse brought on by his party's faith in Reagan-era "voodoo economics." Or perhaps the effort to copy Switzerland's universal health care through private health insurers is way too much like France. Or something. And how, pray tell, does an effort to smooth over the inequalities that really began in the 1980s, not the 1970s unless you're using some odd math -- under the less-than watchful eye of your cowboy Ron hero -- the same inequalities you worried about a half-dozen paragraphs earlier, threaten to "cost America its position in the world?" Oh right, the specter of European "stagnation."

Finally, we get to Douthat's policy prescriptions: "unwinding" the partnership between "Big Government and Big Business," "contain busts," and charter schools.

New. Young. Conservative. Columnist. Ideas.

It would be far easier to criticize Douthat's column's if the logic in them were consistent from paragraph to paragraph.

European "elites"

Ross Douthat, as you likely know by now, is paid to write a single column each week (no link, find it if you dare). Apparently, this is so the NY Times can feature a "voice of young conservatism," or something. It's pretty pathetic. I will leave the usual weekly takedown to DH Riley, but I was struck by this:

The immigrants came first as guest workers, recruited after World War II to relieve labor shortages, and then as beneficiaries of generous asylum and family reunification laws, designed to salve Europe’s post-colonial conscience. The European elites assumed that the divide between Islam and the West was as antiquated as scimitars and broadswords, and that a liberal, multicultural, post-Christian federation would have no difficulty absorbing new arrivals from more traditional societies. And they decided, too — as Christopher Caldwell writes in “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe,” his wonderfully mordant chronicle of Europe’s Islamic dilemma — that liberal immigration policies “involve the sort of nonnegotiable moral duties that you don’t vote on.”

Better if they had let their voters choose. The rate of immigration might have been slower, and the efforts to integrate the new arrivals more strenuous. Instead, Europe’s leaders ended up creating a clash of civilizations inside their own frontiers.

Millions of Muslims have accepted European norms. But millions have not. This means polygamy in Sweden; radical mosques in Britain’s fading industrial cities; riots over affronts to the Prophet Muhammad in Denmark; and religiously inspired murder in the Netherlands. It means terrorism, and the threat of terrorism, from London to Madrid.

It would seem that Ross, voice of young conservatism, is too young to remember the IRA or the Basque separatist movement.

The column, I suppose, is "inspired" by last week's vote to ban minarets in Switzerland, a country long known for its tolerance. No word yet on what Ross thinks of banning Jewish cemetaries.