Critical Thinking still Prevails
In a recent excellent post by Jane Galt, she wonders if the left is out of ideas:
Sometimes, when I lament to myself about the lack of critical thinking skills that go on in our educational system, I remember that in the United States, ideas still prevail when it comes to choosing our political systems.
The left used to have a Big Idea: The free market doesn't work, so the government will fix it. The social democrats disagreed with the Socialists and the Scoop Jackson democrats about how much fixing was necessary, but they all agreed on a basic premise, and could sell that simple message to the public. Then, after fifty years or so, people noticed that the government didn't seem to work any better than the free market . . . worse, actually, in a lot of cases . . . and it was awfully expensive and surly. Conservatives stepped in with their Big Idea: the government screws things up, so let's leave more stuff up to individuals, which, if nothing else, will be a lot cheaper. Obviously, liberals disagree with this . . . but they have not come up with a Big, Easily Sellable, Idea With Obvious Policy Prescriptions to replace it. Some of them have just kept repeating the old Big Idea, which it seems to me that fewer and fewer people believe, as the US continues to pull ahead of its economic peers. Others have focused on coming up with lots of little ideas . . . but those take up too much time and energy to attract voters. Gore tried to whang up anger against pharmaceutical companies, and Kerry tried to stoke anger against Bush, as replacement. But in politics, there's just no replacement for the Big Idea.
Sometimes, when I lament to myself about the lack of critical thinking skills that go on in our educational system, I remember that in the United States, ideas still prevail when it comes to choosing our political systems.
posted by Helen at 8:34 AM
45 Comments:
"why is it, that the Left...hasnt yet figured out that Islamic extremist terrorism, and extremist islamic ideology is a danger, not only to the USA, but to the entire civilised world?"
In my experience they used to know this, but have "forgotten" it because they regard conservatism and classical liberalism as far greater threats to their idea of civilization. In their minds Bush and Rove are virtually slavering in anticipation of the day when they will stone all the sodomites, reenslave all the blacks, and send the women back to the kitchen (barefoot of course.)
It is, of course, also true that the left's thinking processes have been crippled by a fog of multi-culti relativism which interferes with their ability to distinguish between criticism and terrorism, but they are just as able to change their minds now as they were in the days of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. How ironic that a philosophical tool intended to sabotage the society the left hated now interferes with the left's ability to recognize a true enemy.
Big ideas are usually bad ideas. leave well enough alone.
Conservatives stepped in with their Big Idea: the government screws things up.
Yes, they have proved it beyond all doubt. Now it's time for something new.
cubanbob is right.
I think Critical Thinking should be a subject itself in schools. Qualifying in critical thinking to my mind should be a core skill, as essential as are numaracy and literacy. It should be formalised as a pre-requisite to study to at advanced level, most subjects, including law and science - both the hard and soft sciences.
It's all well and good knowing the Periodic Table off rote, being able to regurgitate from memory UVAST, formula rattle off the capitals of the World. However without critical thinking - including a full, internalised understanding of scientific thinking, scientific method, and the value of scepticism (often confused for cynicism), our minds and our intelligence is as bull in a china shop.
Any educated person should know the basics, including - the range of logical fallacies - all should know be able to identify a non sequitur from using an argument-ad-baculum, how to take an iffy argument apart using reductio-ad-bsurdum as a technique. The Carl Sagan 'Baloney Detection Kit' should be second nature, Karl Popper's falsification should spring immediately to mind when Intelligent Design is compared to Darwinism. This and more should be at the Critical Thinker's fingertips - including The Socratic Method, Occam’s Razor, knowledge of the different types of bias, the difference between science and pseudoscience, the skill of reasoning etcetera.
Most successful human endeavours operate on a corrective feedback loop - including businesses, all the hard and soft sciences and hell ….even child rearing and successful social interaction; indeed, democracy itself is a feedback loop system. This is largely what makes it better than systems where the corrective feedback loop is stymied – such as dictatorships, theocracies and other authoritarian systems. Better critical thinking skills generally will pay dividends in giving us better government, faster technological improvement, it will increase the quality of civil discourse. It has to be a good thing!
I suspect Critical Thinking is not part of core school subjects largely because some would see it as dangerous and resist it – look at the palaver in the US over the teaching of Darwinian evolution - something completely un-contentious in the scientific community. Critical Thinking studies I suspect, would stir up much greater controversy than Darwinism in the faith based community, as critical thinking tends to lead to the rejection of supernaturalism and thus towards atheism, even more so than Darwin's seismic 1859 work 'On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life'. To wit, the vast majority of scientists, US
scientists are atheist, especially pronounced in top scientists. A trend that is increasing. It’s probably higher elsewhere as the US population is perhaps more religious than that in any other developed country.
An interesting topic, well worthy of debate.
Dave,
Yeah, really. No one invested in critical thinking could have swallowed a line like, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees."
Critical thinkers still have another three years to ponder this one: "We're committed to the goal of a unified Iraq, with democratic institutions of which members of all ethnic and religious groups are treated with dignity and respect."
"..I think Critical Thinking should be a subject itself in schools. Qualifying in critical thinking to my mind should be a core skill, as essential as are numaracy and literacy.."
I don't know why you think it isn't? You must not be paying attention. All the bright lights in eduworld claim to teach "critical thinking" now. It was even enshrined in my state's "quality of education" statute as the primary goal of public education. I think it should be found void for vagueness.
What does it mean, exactly? Don't believe everything you hear? Question authority? If it ever had any meaning, it's been drained away by education progressivists. And they still don't know how to teach *critical thinking* to children. Obviously some fringe types think it means teach children to distrust their government, hate their country, and feel guilty for being white.
I agree that basics of deductive logic should be required..but what good is it with faulty premises, which is where 90% of people go wrong? People need to know *facts*, the one thing our schools do NOT want to teach because they're "boring."
I call BS. We need a good subject-matter "based *core* curriculum in all our schools, and the rest will follow.
Sorry if that was a little too much *critical thinking* on my part.
ronin1516: Given the differing interestes of the main ethnic/religious groups in Iraq, and the animosity that has been generated over time (especially during Saddam's reign), I wonder if they will ever be able to reconcile their differences.
If this is true, why commit America to the impossible?
Because, Greg, it gives you something to kvetch about.
It's all about you and your massive all knowing intellect.
Could we minimize that sort of stuff, 2:19? Like someone else wrote, Greg Kuperberg has his drum to beat.
So do we all.
If we want folks to respectfully listen to us, we should do the same for others.
unless you're the kind of emotional toddler who wants to take other people's things away just because you can't have them.
I have to wonder how many liberals fall into this category. Many of the ones I know do. During a recent mayoral election I asked some liberals why they opposed a certain candidate. The first words out of their mouths were, "He's rich."
He was rich because he and his father successfully started and ran a large business. Seems to me that a person with good business skills might make a good mayor, rich or not.
I also find it ironic that so many liberals hate the people that many Americans aspire to become, the rich. Of course, if your name is Kennedy or Kerry you're exempt from this hatred.
It's also interesting that many of the least generous states in terms of charitable giving are the most liberal. Kerry and Kennedy's home state, Massachusetts, is 49th out of 50.
Nick's right that critical thinking should be an independent subject in our (US) schools - it is taught here but, at least in my experience, in other classes (english and social studies classes when I was in high school). But you should have stopped there Nick.
As to the "most US scientists are atheists" statement", I don't need my baloney detector to say that's baloney - let's see some stats or something (the sentence looks like a link, but it doesn't work). I'll bet not even a plurality of scientists in this country, top or otherwise, are atheists. Ask Karl Popper: If you could falsify atheism could you still be an atheist?
Sorry for the drift. The left has been out of ideas for a long time, and when they did have ideas most of them were bad, with collectivist economic theory at the top of the list. At this point the core of the Democratic party seems to have surpassed even the looniest of the Clinton haters in their hatred of Bush II, and it'll be interesting to see how they react if (when, actually) Bush II is replaced by another Republican with a congressional majority. The Repubs are far from perfect, but at least they seem to understand that we want terrorists hunted down and killed, not arrested and prosecuted; that we're sick and tired of being told to be tolerant of cultures that execute homosexuals or make it a crime to educate girls or burn embassies over a freaking cartoon.
Whether scientists believe in God is an interesting question. There is more than definition of "scientist" of course, and you can get different answers depending on whether you take a narrow or broad definition.
Here are the results of a survey of a very narrowly chosen group: members of the National Academy of Sciences. The NAS are chosen by the federal government as the "advisers to the nation"; they are meant to be the most succesful scientists, like Nobel Laureates. So they are not a representative sample. The belief patterns in this group are totally different from the American average. According to the poll, 72% are atheist; another 21% are agnostic. That leaves only 7% who believe in God.
The same surveyers also chose a sample of scientists at random from "American Men of Science", with the conclusion that 39% believe in God. I don't know what kind of sample you get from "American Men of Science". (At some point they changed the name to "American Men and Women of Science".) I can say, qualitatively, that Christian belief is somewhat unusual among research mathematicians (which is my line of work). It's not quite unheard of. It's possible that a larger fraction of NAS mathematicians believe in Judaism than in Christianity.
A lot of Republican politicians have enacted socialist, collectivist, and statist policies, so one shouldn't exclusively beat up the left on that count. Granted, a lot of the rhetoric comes from the left but a lot of the actual spending and policies come almost just as often from the right.
My interest was in Critical Thinking in education, not starting a debate theism. My point was that teaching Critical Thinking tends to result in atheim and that this may be why it’s taught sparsely.
I do stand by my point of lack of theistic belief in top scientists….
>I'll bet not even a plurality of scientists in this country, top or otherwise, are atheists<
I’m fairly convinced that you'd lose. The Nature study cited below suggests that belief in deities is an increasingly minority view in the scientific community, increacingly so since the first 1914 study of this.
Anecdotal evidence from well known scientists would it seems tend to support this. I’m thinking off the top of my head of Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein, James Watson and Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking …the list goes on.
>let's see some stats or something (the sentence looks like a link, but it doesn't work). <
Sorry the link didn't work. Let me try again..Link
Also here is the link to copy and paste (Greg's link cites the same source – from a 1997 Nature magazine article).
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v394/n6691/full/394313a0_fs.html
>If you could falsify atheism could you still be an atheist?<
Atheism – defined as ‘being without belief in any deities’. That indeed is the point, atheism is falsifiable – that’s not really a very challenging thought experiment. Most superstitions are NOT falsifiable. That's one reason why 'Intelligent Design' does not cut it as a scientific theory, it isn't falsifiable – it’s religious dogma masquerading as science. Darwinian evolution is falsifiable, but thus far it hasn’t been…the evidence displays superb congruence with the theory, from the fossil record, DNA evidence, taxonomy, species distribution and so on…
If folks had better critical thinking skills the ID proponents – who seek to advocate that it be treated equitably with science, wouldn’t be given the time of day, and that’s rather the sort of point I was getting at apropos of Helen’s post.
as a british man, i know a bit about india and pakistan, the brits used to own all of india, until they wanted independence, which we said yes go on, have it, then due to the internal pressures they split their own country into pakistan and india. and look at all the troubles there since then.
thats as an aside, there will be no teaching of thinking, as thats i think its a threat to the policitical powers, if you think and are taught to think then you may not vote for the next leader for whichever party. they dont want people to say hang on, this is wrong look at all the anti war demonstrations.
critical thinking is a dying art, its all about feelings now in then political world its happening here in the UK as well.
Mike Royko said it simply in one of his columns.
Let's list the things the US government does well.
1. Wage war.
As you can see, it is a very short list.
>As you can see, it is a very short list.<
Indeed it is; and it immediately struck me as more of an insight into the mind of Frank Borger than on any failings in the US government!
"Atheism – defined as ‘being without belief in any deities’."
Fair enough - our disagreement is about definitions. I would call someone without belief in any dieties who acknowledged that such a belief could be falsified an agnostic, an atheist being someone who actively believes as a matter of doctrine that there is no God. (http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/atheism) The Nature article appears to conflate the two.
More importantly, I question the survey given it's methodology (the article suggests that respondents could be identified) and the nature of the academic world in this country and probably most others, along with clear biases. Take a look at this paragraph from the Nature article:
"Leuba attributed the higher level of disbelief and doubt among "greater" scientists to their "superior knowledge, understanding, and experience"2. Similarly, Oxford University scientist Peter Atkins commented on our 1996 survey, "You clearly can be a scientist and have religious beliefs. But I don't think you can be a real scientist in the deepest sense of the word because they are such alien categories of knowledge.""
As a proponent of critical thinking, I can't believe this paragraph doesn't have every BS detector you own flashing. This survey is about as objective and accurate as an O'Reilly Factor poll.
An example from my own experience -I'm not an academic, but I am in a union and work under a union contract. The last contract we ratified was concessionary and somewhat controversial. In the years since it was ratified, I have come across less than ten co-workers (out of hundreds in my group, and thousands who voted on it)who admit they voted in favor of it. That contract passed by a three to one margin.
Back to the original posting question - the problem for the left is coming up with a new Big Idea that does not conflict with their former Big Idea, because our electoral system makes it very difficult for politicians to change course, which is a problem.
The voters don't reward politicians for acknowledging and correcting a mistake, thus creating a strong incentive for stubborn refusal to re-examine any decisions. There's a fine line between determined and bullheaded leadership.
But that quote from Leuba is 70 years old. Larson and Witham don't see it the same way. At least Larry Witham doesn't. He is the author of a book that claims that "fewer and fewer" scientists are atheists.
Witham's claims about science are completely wrong, but he is at least honest enough to stand by the poll that he took with Edward Larson.
Actually the second one is from the 1996 survey. In any case, I think Nick is probably right given his definition - I just disagree with the definition. Whether the premise in the Nature article is correct or not, the "evidence" they present doesn't support it or any other position - it just represents the opinions of those who chose to respond. Hence the O'Reilly comparison.
Back to the left. Do they think they have no "Big, Easily Sellable, Idea With Obvious Policy Prescriptions"? I doubt it. Their trouble appears to be a self-reinforcing feedback loop. I see today that Time has published another article about a Gitmo prisoner being tortured (and yes, I consider Time, and most other media outlets part of the left). They, and the non-media leftists who will beat the drum on this, need to talk to people outside the media industry who can explain that telling the public that the Army/CIA is torturing terrorists does not harm the president politically (and that the public does believe they are terrorists). Nor does telling the public that the NSA is listening to phone calls to/from the middle east without a warrant. And a conservative in the media business can't help. I heard Tony Snow talking about how poorly the VP handled his shooting incident, without any explanation of why he thought so, or comprehension of the extreme damage David Gregory did to the credibility of the White House Press Corps.
Lets see, 25 years of the Dept. of Education and Johnny still can't read? Mind you this has been a problem since the mid-1950's and billions of dollars get poured into it.
As I pointed out, that is the problem. I do offer a solution that should be workable, amenable to the Constitution, satisfy those who worry over-much about religion and generally get the job done while enforcing accountability.
But to do that we have to get rid of the Dept. of Education since it does not have a goal of *solving* the problem, just making it a teensy-bit less bad while serving as a backdrop for politicos to claim they are doing something.
Dissolve it, block grant half of what was spent and performance adjust the payments. Let the states and schools figure it out, educate well, and get paid for accordingly. Do poorly and see your funding disappear slowly. If parents aren't willing to take an active role in helping to figure out how best to educate their children, then they can point *all* the fingers of blame at themselves.
Othewise it is buck-passing up to bureaucrats and *experts* who have zero interest in solving the problem and a large, large stake in keeping it going just as it is. Every generation since the late 50's chose buck passing, and Johnny *still* can't read.
How can that be with *so* many experts around?
Dr. Helen,
Since you are a critical thinker. Please tell me:
1) Why Saddam wasn't abominable when he gassed Kurds in the early eighties. Rumsfeld met him after that event as an envoy of the US and shook his hand. The US kept supplying him with weapons and material to make chemical weapons with. He was considered an ally of the US till 1991. Why did he suddenly become abominable in 2003?
2) Why Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are allies of the US against the war on terror and Iraq and Iran are enemies. The governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are responsible for most of the money / training / ideology of the 9/11 terrorists. The madrassas in Pakistan all run on Saudi money. Saudi Arabia has been funding Islamic terrorism all over the world for the last couple of decades. Bin Laden is a Saudi. 15 of the 19 9/11 terrorists were Saudi. etc.
3) There has been Islamic terrorism in countries like India and Russia for the last 20 years or so. Why did the US always try to play down terrorism back then. For instance, regarding Russia, all we ever heard from the US was concern about the human rights abuses against the Islamic population of Chechnya.
4) If what we saw in Abu Ghraib, and heard of in Gitmo, wasn't torture, then what was it? Is it OK if the US does the torturing, but not OK if "Saddam" does it?
5) After the US freed Al Sadr to do whatever he pleased, and he turned against the US (in Fallujah), the US went after him in just the typical way that Saddam would go after the people he oppressed. That is, with brute force. Why was it OK for the US to put down opposition with brute force, but not OK for Saddam to do the same?
Sorry I didn't mention Israel anywhere here. So you can't use the anti-semite card against me. I'm actually quite the philo-semite.
I have one more (see previous post above).
6) Why did the US help aid the downfall of a democratically elected government in Iran and help to reinstate the Shah of Iran in the 1960s? (Yes, my dear critical thinkers, Iran used to have a democratically elected government, and the US helped to get the Shah back in power).
Dear Anonymous:
Sigh.
I don't mind you pointing out hypocrisies. That is good, and makes for a healthy political system. What I mind is when you give a "free pass" to a politician you like for doing the same sorts of things you hate, or when you make equivalent very different events.
It seems to me that the gist of your argument is the very teenager/Kos/hardleft concept that you hate Daddy as personified by the United States government. Your tired arguments (forgive, I teach college freshman and these attitudes are sadly common, year after year) have all the hallmarks of teenage angst: relativism, emotionalism, and a persistent lack of factual information.
I'm not going to argue with you, point by point, but on one subject you make a simply despicable argument: equating the actions of Saddam Hussein to the actions at Abu Ghrab or Gitmo. If you had read anything at all about what Hussein had done, you would be so deeply ashamed you would would run away and never come back.
Oh, I don't expect you to agree. It all comes back to your psychological hatred of the system that gives you the freedom and wealth to curse it. I simply don't understand it.
If we are as awful as you say, why live here? If I hated my own country the way you so clearly do, I could not accept a cent of government money, and I would indeed emigrate to a country of which I could be proud.
Clearly, you are in the tertiary stages of Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Honestly, I hope that the medication starts working for you soon. Equating anything at all done in Gitmo or Abu Ghrab to the actions of Hussein's butchers is either a sign of your utter ignorance, or a bizarre level of partisanship needing professional help.
Anonymous 7:36PM: the very teenager/Kos/hardleft concept that you hate Daddy as personified by the United States government.
But this is backwards! The posting at the top of this page says that it's the Big Idea of the conservatives that the government screws things up. So how it is now a "hard left" concept that the government should not be Daddy? Is it that conservatives agree with the hard left? If so, I'm happy to agree with both of them!
Wow! This person tells me to leave this country if I don't agree with his/her policies. Wow!
"If you knew what Saddam had done, you would be so deeply ashamed you would would run away and never come back"
Bwahahahahaha... that's one of the funniest things I've ever read. Funny thing is that this other "anonymous" probably thinks he/she really knows how to make a legitimate argument.
And dude, I'm not exactly "equating" the two. I'm just asking, why is it OK for the US to torture, but not Saddam. Got an answer?
You're trying to bypass the issue by talking about the intensity of torture.
You are such an ass, Kuperberg. As you know quite well on campus, the Left loves central planning and complete control by Those Who Know Better.
So when people who are NOT leftists are in control, the leftists scream and yell...just as they did as teenagers when Daddy insisted that they earn their allowance.
I could care less if jackasses like you relativists whine and carry on. You are the precise definition of Lenin's "useful fools." And that is fine.
What I objected to---and you know this perfectly well--are people who equate showing a bloody menstrual rag to a Muslim to removing fingers with tin snips. Both of those are specific examples of "torture" by both parties.
You are the folks calling them the same things.
It just amuses me no end that leftists like you SUPPORT regimes that would literally cut you into dogmeat. Funny, really.
Hey, 1:46, chill out.
It's the usual Kossack stuff. Let 'em do their thing. Remember that Kuperberg talks a big line here, but doesn't ever speak out on the Davis campus about non-PC things. Think "fellow traveler." So he is just carrying on the party line. The other fella is just trying to get you upset. It worked, I see.
It's the usual bit: nasty-wasty US is just as bad (actually, they think worse) then any given foreign regime. And besides, our cultural imperialism or former foreign policy *made* them they way they are. They are not responsible for their own actions.
All the while, they will sip lattes, listen to protest music on their iPods, and ride titanium bicycles around.
Don't let it get you.
A *different* professor from Davis....
Anonymous 1:46 does have a point about the relativists, friends. Try reading:
http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001068.html
Of course, the knee jerk lefties will claim first it is all lies, then they will claim that we "made" Hussein do all that (because, of course, he and his cronies are not responsible for their own actions...and, of course, the US is the source of all evil on earth).
Read the article. You can---and you should---reject any mistreatment of prisoners. But to attempt to make "waterboarding" or even kicking prisoners around the equivalent of genocide is....well....a sign of people who are blinded by their own hatred of the current administration.
And it minimizes and hides the true extent and horror of genocide, as Holocaust survivors have been telling us for decades.
And we who sit here in this country, fat and happy, well, it is easy for us to second guess generals and soldiers. Because we know so much better what they ought to do...from our current cushy, safe, and non-informed position.
Oh well.
All these anonymous folks - it really is most confusing!
yes,well if they'd just pick a name and type it we culd keep them straight. All that verbiage and all those concepts and people apparently can't spare the typing to put in a pseudonym or can't figure out that if they don't use their own name, they're still anonymous.
In this case, it looked like a whole bunch of trolling followed by angry responses. Not much to comment upon, other than the fact that it fit the subject of the post: is there less critical thinking nowadays?
On the other hand, I kinda liked whoever it was that claimed to be a prof at Davis. I wonder if he/she knows Kuperberg well?
I see the internet as a Walter Mitty gig. I can imagine some very quiet aquiescent folks who turn into Conan the Barbarian online.
Heck, maybe even me, like alone Our Greg.
SW: and... the few soldiers that "tortured" the prisoners in Abu Graib have been prosecuted.
The Bush Administration has promised and implied this many times, but it is not true. It is true that the most visible criminals among the soldiers at Abu Ghraib were prosecuted: Charles Graner, Lynndie England, and so on. However, the soldiers and CIA agents who committed the most serious crimes there have either not been prosecuted at all, or not effectively.
Here is a picture of Graner with the dead body of an Iraqi prisoner named Manadel al-Jamadi. His death was ruled a homicide by the Defense Department, but Graner didn't kill him. As Jane Meyer documented in the New Yorker, he was probably tortured to death during CIA interrogation. When he came to Abu Ghraib, he had been beaten by Navy SEALS; he had six broken ribs and he was bleeding from his face. Instead of receiving medical treatment, he was taken straight to questioning. He was hooded and left leaning from a wall with his arms pinned behind his back. He died in this position, probably from asphyxiation. Because he was hooded, Mark Swanner, the CIA agent who was interrogating him, thought that he was "playing possum". But when they removed his hood, he was dead.
Some of the Navy SEALS were prosecuted for murder of al-Jamadi, but they were acquitted. Their lawyers blamed the CIA. But Swanner has not been prosecuted.
Al-Jamadi is not the only case like this. The Pentagon has investigated dozens of homicides in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the most that any American has gotten in any of these cases is five months in jail, according to Human Rights First.
I am not going to compare this sorry record to Saddam Hussein. Hussein was incomparably worse, but that's not the point. The point is that the Bush Administration could and should have zero tolerance for torture. They imply that they do, but they are lying. They care more about the appearance of respectability than the real thing. Their lack of concern has done great damage to American interests. It could in the long run make the difference between winning and losing the war on terrorism.
It's interesting. Every time a person like the previous commenter wants to be taken seriously, he or she will claim that his or her detractors have a point...but....
I honestly question whether a math professor---who perhaps should be spending more time on writing papers and supervising graduate students on university time, instead of discussing politics---actually is anything remotely resembling an authority on military jurisprudence.
Think I am unfair? How many folks in real jobs have been fired for using company computers for personal reasons?
Oh, right. I am criticizing a lack of credentials. But all of our mathematician-with-time-on-his-hand's references are from wikipedia, the New Yorker, and a magazine that appears to have a political axe to grind.
The man could be right, and tons of evil Americans are beating innocent people to death. But I am not convinced from the evidence.
The point that was being made earlier was the frankly put evil that allows someone to make equivalent what he is discussing to what Hussein and his henchmen did.
But I guess that depends on your definition of is. America is evil. Anyone else is good. End of discussion.
Hey, 12:59....not nice!
I rambled over to the Davis website, and Professor Kuperberg only has one class to teach this semester in his department, and it isn't scheduled. So knock it off that he is "cheating" students out of his time.
That's sorta Horowitzian.
More speech, not less, is the answer. As I recall, Professor Kuperberg does not care for the group FIRE, but they certainly would defend his right to speak out as an academic (and they use the "more speech..." line quite often).
Let him talk. Lots of sources suck. Not just the ones you disagree with.
I can see why Glen Reynolds doesn't bother with comments on Instapundit!
Having run a busy on-line forum for a around 3 yrs I decided early on to only allow comments by registered users and to insist that users register under their real names.
It's not perfect, but it definitely helps.
But I guess it depends what one’s goals are; clearly one of Helen’s prerogatives is feedback. Hardly surprising, given her profession.
To use a Brit-ism…It’s a bit of a bugger!
SW: Greg, it is called war, one side wins, one side looses, I'd rather be on the winning side. As soon as we start prosecuting our soldiers for killing the enemy we might as well give up.
But there is a difference between war and war crime. If an enemy soldier shoots at American soldiers and they shoot back and kill him, that's war. If American troops arrest an enemy soldier, or in this case a suspected enemy soldier, then an interrogator hoods him and strings him up until he stops breathing and dies, that's a crime. Even if the man really is an enemy soldier, or even a terrorist, it's still a crime and it's still wrong. Not only is it abstractly immoral, it's bad for America. It makes the war in Iraq, and the war on terrorism in general, go worse rather than better.
After all, the Pentagon already agreed that it was a crime to torture and kill Manadel al-Jamadi. They just didn't punish anyone for it yet, probably because they didn't put the worst offender on trial. In fact the Pentagon has already agreed that American troops have murdered dozens of people in Iraq and Afghanistan. But as the report said, the worst punishment so far has been five months in jail. You are right that I can't mathematically prove that that report is correct — that's an impossible standard. But neither the Pentagon nor the White House has said that it's wrong. All they do is grandly promise that they don't condone torture and that all crimes will be prosecuted. If some soldier or CIA agent really has been sentenced to more than five months for murdering detainees, it shouldn't be a secret. All they have to do is say who.
It's just simple critical thinking not to trust unproven government claims. After all, the Big Idea of the conservatives, supposedly, is that the government screws things up. Why wouldn't it screw up murder prosecutions in a war? Why wouldn't government apparatchiks scramble to cover their rears when their men commit deadly crimes? (Even friendly fire cases, like what happened to Pat Tillman.) But people here are taking it as a betrayal to doubt unproven government claims. I understand that Republicans used the war in Iraq to win in 2002 and 2004, but I don't think that critical thinking was their real case. Their real case was that we should be "optimistic" and loyal, and to hell with both critical thinking and limited government.
SW: I am well aware that American troops treat most of their detainees pretty well by Middle Eastern standards. (I am less sure that they are treated well by American standards.) But at the beginning of this conversation, you said more than that. You said:
The few soldiers that "tortured" the prisoners in Abu Graib have been prosecuted
You could only have gotten that claim, directly or indirectly, from the Bush Administration itself. But the claim is not true. Now you swing from the strong and untrue claim that all torturers in the US operation are punished, to the correct but weak defense that the vast majority of the US Army treats detainees tolerably well. You also had scare quotes around the word "torture", as if it stretches the truth to call it torture at all. But the truth is that if a man stops breathing when he is hooded and strung up, that's unreconstructed torture, not some wobbly new definition.
Why is it so weak to argue that at least our soldiers treat detainees better than the enemy does? One reason is that they don't even know which detainees are the enemy. A lot of detainees have been released without any explanation of why they were ever arrested. If they keep an 11-year-old boy at Guantanamo for two years (as they in fact did), how can they tell his family, "Hey, at least we treated him better than terrorists treat us"? Maybe al-Jamadi was a terrorist; unfortunately he died before anyone at Abu Ghraib could find out. Again, no one has yet been punished at all for his murder, not just punished too little.
Anyway, no, I don't think of American soldiers as the bad guys. I think that most of them are making the best of an impossible mission in Iraq. I blame the people at the top, who committed the Army to squaring the circle, and who tell both the public and the soldiers themselves that doubt is betrayal. To be sure, even a logical mission has a few bad apples, but when the mission is unsound, that's when the bad apples are coddled and thrown back in the barrel, and more of the barrel spoils.
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