(sorry, I'm deep into Finals Week...)
1. Martin Peretz of the New Republic is about as knee-jerk an Israel-booster (and Arab-basher) as they come. But, when he's not busy looking through his thesaurus for every more sesquipedalian words with which to assert that the Arabs are barbarians and should be deprived of the right to organize themselves into nation-states, he occasionally makes a good point.
Here is one such instance. Peretz asks, with the Palestinians launching into a low-scale civil war, how ostensibly reasonable experts like Jimmy Carter can berate Israel for refusing to negotiate with the Palestinians. When the Palestinians were reasonably united under Arafat's authority, Israel was perfectly willing to negotiate. It's easy to repeat slogans like "peace, not apartheid," but it's pretty difficult to make peace when the faction that you make peace with is getting shot at by another faction.
What's clear to me is that only a UN mandate and UN-led international armed intervention can save the Palestinian territories and ensure the formation anything like a stable Palestinian state. It has to be the world's responsibility, not Israel's, because there's frankly just not much Israel can do at this point.
2. This is a tad late, but Kevin Drum made an excellent point in this column three weeks ago, when he claimed that the Republican party has been "Texified".
Much has been said since the election about how the Republicans are in danger of becoming a "regional party," limited to the Deep South. I'm not so sure about that; these one-election swings are notoriously hard to interpret. But it's been clear to me for years now that Texas is the headquarters, both ideological and financial, of the modern Republican party. Bush's brand of "conservatism" is neither classic Northwestern anti-tax conservatism, nor crypto-racist Southern conservatism, but something more akin to the military, authoritarian culture of Texas.
Take it from someone who grew up there. Although Texas is far less culturally monolithic than the Deep South - it's home to plenty of liberals, progressive Christians, racial minorities, etc. - its native brand of conservatism has always been sterner, more aggressive, and more assured of its own invincibility. Texan culture - especially in medium-sized towns like my hometown of College Station - is fundamentally based around the military. The "Corps of Cadets," half ROTC and half college fraternity, marches through College Station on constant parade. In the public schools, it's the principals' way or the highway. George Bush would feel right at home (and not just because one of the main streets is named after him).
But, like the Arab states and Iran, it's oil that makes Texas strong. Texas' oil companies, based in Houston, provide the financial backing not just for Bush but for much of the modern conservative movement. And that is why alternative energy is such an anathema to conservatives; it doesn't just mean breaking the power of the Arabs, it means breaking the power of Texas over U.S. politics.
3. In a recent post, Matt Yglesias worries that Western pundits and thinkers are drifting dangerously close to the view that racist nationalism is needed in order to get Western women to have more children to counter high Islamic birthrates (note the length of this magnificent sentence, by the way).
I responded:
[H]igh birth rates in many poor countries (mostly Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East) tend to create instability and conflict. The same is also true in poor (mostly Muslim) minority communities in Europe. High birthrates in those communities lead to a surplus of poor unemployed angry young men, some of whom then turn to violence.
The solution is not to raise fertility rates in the West (especially not by appealing to racism or nationalism!). It's to lower fertility rates in poor countries and in poor communities, through the dissemination of birth control and women's education and opportunity. That will enrich the poor folks, as well as making them less prone to violence.
Matt seemed to like my idea.
Take a look at this map of fertility rates. Note that the regions with the highest rates just happen to include all the places where there are wars going on (there's some degree of reverse causation there, since war temporarily increases fertility rates). They also happen to include the countries where women are the most fiercely oppressed and enslaved. Our course of action should be clear.
4. Democrats cutting aid for AIDS programs? Say it ain't so...
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