Demagoguery

At the Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein lists what appear to be his leading complaints about Congress, including,

General demagoguery, e.g., Democratic members anytime Medicare or Social Security reform comes up, and Republican members on federalizing criminal law, the War on Terror, flagburning, etc.

I have no problem with criticizing demagoguery, but to me I can't think of an issue where you can't find sins on both sides. By way of example, I don't know what Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow has stated about her motivation to vote in favor of a constitional amendment against "desecrating the flag", but her vote is a matter of record.

To present a list like this, where demagoguery on "Medicare and Social Security" is attributed to the Democrats tells you more about the speaker than it does about actual demagoguery. The Republican Party opposed Social Security from its earliest days, describing it as socialism and even communism. The Republican party has attacked Medicare as "socialized medicine". Early fearmongering about Medicare came from none other than Ronald Reagan,

And if you don't do this and if I don't do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free.

Back during Bush's attempt to privatize Social Security, you could hardly turn around without hearing a Republican complain that the failure to "reform" Social Security would result in fiscal ruin.

I suspect that the explanation is that, on a subconscious level, people tend not to recognize demagoguery when they agree with it. To get past that, people have to actually think about the issues... good luck, right?

Better To Keep Your Mouth Shut And....

David Bernstein blesses us with words of wisdom on affirmative action and India's caste system. Referencing a news story in which the Gujjars (a farming caste) protested that they should receive the same type of set-asides and proferences as the dalits (a/k/a the "untouchables"), Bernstein comments,

Affirmative action has its good points and bad points, but I think it's undeniable that when government distributes benefits based on particular characteristics, lots of people will want to be identified as having those characteristics, there will be lobbying to ensure that the relevant characteristics become legally immutable at a minimum ,or broadened, and people will organize and lobby around their common claim to the relevant characteristic. This all makes it a lot less likely that the relevant societal distinctions that led to the need for the affirmative action policies to begin with will wither away.

It is difficult to imagine a more obtuse statement about India's caste system. If "doing nothing" were going to to a whit of good for the lower castes, you would think that after this many centuries we wouldn't still be reading this:

Human rights abuses against these people, known as Dalits, are legion. A random sampling of headlines in mainstream Indian newspapers tells their story: "Dalit boy beaten to death for plucking flowers"; "Dalit tortured by cops for three days"; "Dalit 'witch' paraded naked in Bihar"; "Dalit killed in lock-up at Kurnool"; "7 Dalits burnt alive in caste clash"; "5 Dalits lynched in Haryana"; "Dalit woman gang-raped, paraded naked"; "Police egged on mob to lynch Dalits"....

India's Untouchables are relegated to the lowest jobs, and live in constant fear of being publicly humiliated, paraded naked, beaten, and raped with impunity by upper-caste Hindus seeking to keep them in their place. Merely walking through an upper-caste neighborhood is a life-threatening offense.

Nearly 90 percent of all the poor Indians and 95 percent of all the illiterate Indians are Dalits, according to figures presented at the International Dalit Conference that took place May 16 to 18 in Vancouver, Canada.

And so it goes. Bernstein's answer to this is to do nothing, because the caste system will magically vanish on its own if nothing is done for a few more... centuries?

Really, though, we shouldn't expect that his argument would be sensible within its contrived context. Bernstein's not writing about India. He's writing about the United States. He elaborates,

Query: If the Irish, Scandinavians, and Italians in the United States--all groups that were once suffered a great deal of discrimination and were relatively disadvantaged compared to the Anglo-Saxon/German majority (plurality?)--had been offered government benefits based on their ancestry one hundred years ago, would these groups be as integrated into American life as they are today? If not, then this is a cost to such policies that must be weighed against the benefits.

The obvious inference is that we are to compare the experience of Irish, Scandinavians and Italians over the past century to other groups of Americans who have been beneficiaries of affirmative action.

Now, Bernstein did not have to say "Anglo-Saxon/German majority" - he could have said "white" or "European". That would diminish his argument, as once various "disadvantaged" European groups shed their ethnic garb, learn the language and lose their accents, they blend in pretty well with other Americans of European extraction. But note that the most obvious implicit "other" group - beneficiaries of affirmative action whose name Bernstein apparently dares not speak - are "African Americans". If we're going to speak of Africa as a unit, it seems reasonable to speak of Europe as a unit. This would change the argument to, "Europeans assimilate with other Europeans without affirmative action, so what's different about Africans?" I'll assume at this juncture that Professor Bernstein is a proponent of the "color-blind Constitution".

David Bernstein Attacks Presidential Signing Statements

Bernstein decries signing statements as reflecting the attitude of, "Whatever. It's only a law." Well, not really. But if you're a Volokh reader you already suspected that.

Insults Between Academics

Prof. David Bernstein writes of an insult once uttered by one of his law professors:

When I was a student at Yale, one of my professors, the author of eminently forgettable and inconsequential works on law and economics, referred to Prof. Siegan as "that nut from San Diego, what's his name?"

Calling another academic a "nut from San Diego"? How inappropriate.

A Seat At The Table

Is a seat at the big table enough? David Bernstein seems to think so:

Oh, and there's an EXCELLENT reason for a black conservative, especially a political activist, to be a Republican: if you want the GOP to pay attention to the interests of African Americans, it's very helpful if there are some blacks in the party who are in the room when important decisions are made.

Eugene Robinson suggests otherwise:

You could rationalize working for someone like Helms by telling yourself that you could do more good for the African American community from the inside, next to the seat of power, than from the outside. You could tell yourself you were advancing the interests of black people, even if most black people disagreed. You could ignore racism or pretend it was something else. You could tell yourself that you were making compromises and sacrifices for the greater good.

Finally, you could arrive at the White House, with a big job and regular access to the president. But it might be a White House where all the big decisions were made by just a few people, and you weren't one of them.

Then what?

But really, how often does this actually happen in any context. Somebody who wants to be political active and be a force for change in the world, who (strategically) never joins the political parties or organizations with which he agrees, who goes under deep cover in the opposing party where he rises to a position where he has access to its leaders, and who then tries to influence the party's decision-makers to take the positions he has hidden throughout his life (and to at least some degree must continue to hide in order to protect his position)?

Even if such covert work were effective, how often would your time and energy have been better spent working for the causes in which you believe?

Both the Bernstein and Robinson positions seem to assume a compromise of ideals.