Steven Douglas Maloney

Posts Tagged ‘Deliberation’

The Washington Post is up in arms about the truth with an article about falsehoods perpetuated by both campaigns and the EJ Dionne question “Does the Truth Matter Anymore?” Candidates poison the information market for their own gain, embarrssing themselves with such nonsensical logic as Republican Strategist Mr. John Feheery’s analysis in the article:

“The more the New York Times and The Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there’s a bigger truth out there and the bigger truths are she’s new, she’s popular in Alaska and she is an insurgent,” Feehery said. “As long as those are out there, these little facts don’t really matter.”

I do regret missing that day in philosphy when we examined the relationship between the varying sizes of facts. Of course, the reason why men and women of great accomplishment are forced to engage in such mind-numbing behvaior every election season (and it would be impossilbe to say that anyone who ran for President in either field was not a person of remarkable accomplishment) is because the competition for elective audience demands it.

No matter that a free and independent mind should rather incur physical pain than say such stupid things without accepting correction and apologizing, the core problem is the Mr. Feehery is, in his own perversley put way, telling the truth about what does and does not work in democratic politics in our age.  What he does for a living works. And before you start thinking up examples of people victimizing others that “work” for the vicitimizer like a sotry about an excellent bak robber or some such thing, you can spare me right now. It seems quite obvious that there is a “pull” in the information market for such lunacy, and Mr. Feehery and his colleagues and oppostie numbers on the Democratic side are as much rushing to fill demand as they are to create it. It is way harder to create demand for something than it is to supply something that people already want.

Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of people presume from my courses that I am a member of either the Republican or Democratic Party in the United States.  In full disclosure, when I was 18, young, and foolish, I registered as a member of the Democratic Party, and it might be the case that my formal registration still says “Democrat” just due to the fact that I have been lethargic about updating it.  As a general rule, I’d like to think that conservative students that I have believe I’m a conservative and liberal students believe I’m a liberal because of a commitment to reasonableness that makes me come off as an ally even in disagreement due to the my attempt to show proper respect to their arguments. In my interpretation of my own experiences with such things, people who hear their arguments treated as if they might actually be correct feel as though someone must “be of their kind.”  

However, my commitments to a “kind” do not extend too much beyond the commitments of reasonableness in and of themselves (which one owes to everyone), nor do I see them having the need to do so.  To quote my friend Robert Talisse, 

A pragmatic deliberativism cannot be a politics of policy advocacy or a politics of the “Left” or “Right”; it must go beyond these categories, for they are blocks to inquiry.

With that in mind, here is why I am not a member of the Democratic Party. I cannot in good conscience belong to an organization that votes in favor of legislation such as the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (House Votes here/Senate Votes here) or the recent FISA reform bill that has passed the House of Representatives. Particularly given the insulting attempts by the Democratic Party at reason-giving in support of their “compromise.”  In belonging to a state, the state will make grievous errors at times and I may not be able to exit for a variety of reasons, and so I must force to remain a member. I am under no such constraints with regards to a political party.  I will not endorse a political party that does not seem to care whether or not we have progressed beyond a “Tower of London” politics.   

It should go without saying, as the Republican Party initiated these bills, I cannot be a member of their party either. In fact, it is just as well. For writing objections, people like Julian Sanchez and Professor Lederman may one day face imprisonment for expressing their views against FISA reform. There is no reason to expect that this polity will continue to hold either public dissent or ex post facto laws in any sort of esteem if they cannot hold the right to a private conversation without legitimate justification as sacred. Things will not get better with more Democrats or with more Republicans. They will only get better if we can cultivate a more reasonable electorate and/or a more reasonable set of principles that politicians from both parties can congregate around and still secure enough votes to win.  

The Volokh Conspiracy dares to infringe on my political theory/soccer crossover blogging. The comments section is unsurprisingly hostile towards anyone dare pretend soccer is interesting. All I can say is: hurray for the market–which allows me to watch the beautiful game even if a majority of Americans think that I should not (so long as there are enough people like me to make commercial transaction possible).

On a “paging Cass Sunstein” note, let me simply reply to all messages of this type:

As my high school football coach would say whenever the soccer sissys ran by our practice field: “Soccer: the official sport of failed socialist republics.”

by saying that what I like is in fact, not stupid. You are stupid. We could carry on this conversation on more adult terms, but I fail to see the point.