cognitive dissident

George Will is the sort of political writer I enjoy: one who, while not completely eschewing sound-bites and slogans, occasionally mentions an actual idea. Although I frequently disagree with his analyses, I still wish there were more writers like him.

I have a few comments on his recent piece, "Bad News for Kerry:"

“the ‘feminization’ of politics”

Concerns for justice or the general welfare (to pick a few phrases from the Preamble) have often been derisively referred to as “feminization,” a la the infamous “nanny state.” Gender stereotyping is a hindrance to political discourse - except to prop up simplistic stereotypes that “femininity” equals weakness, and concern for our common defense is “masculine.”

“Bush says, ‘liberty is the design of nature’ and ‘freedom is the right and the capacity of all mankind’” […] “Kerry is the candidate of the intellectually vain — of those who, practicing the politics of condescension, consider Bush moronic. But Kerry is unwilling to engage Bush's idea.”

No, intellectual vanity is supposing that the Greek principle of natural rights (via John Locke) is “Bush’s idea.” Support for natural rights is so broad that I have trouble identifying any reputable person who disagrees with it. If Will is trying to imply that Kerry is such a person, he hasn’t provided any evidence.

“he is allowing Bush to have what he wants, a one-issue election”

Kerry isn’t making this a one-issue election, Bush is…with the complicity of the media. It’s disingenuous to blame Kerry for the media’s failings. I recommend “Dumbest. Election. Ever.” by William Rivers Pitt for some commentary on what’s being left out of the campaign due to the myopic obsession with who-did-what during Vietnam.

“the risible incoherence of his still-multiplying positions on Iraq”

Just because a political position doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker doesn’t mean it’s incoherent. (Kerry’s pandering is a disappointment, but I haven’t yet seen a candidate who doesn’t occasionally tell an audience what they want to hear.) Bush’s strong-and-wrong stance on Iraq makes for better and more consistent sound-bites, but it’s as miserable a failure as his other policies. (As I mentioned previously, I’m looking forward to the debates. They won’t be perfect, but I can’t imagine them being worse than the campaign ads.)

"the antiwar candidate"

I don’t have enough free time to research every instance where Kerry may have described his stance as “antiwar,” but I did find this exchange with Chris Matthews, which has recently spawned some deliberate misrepresentations:

MATTHEWS: Do you think you belong in that category of candidates who more or less are unhappy with this war? The way it‘s been fought? Along with General Clark, along with Howard Dean, and not necessarily in companionship politically on the issue of the war with people like Lieberman, Edwards and Gephardt? Are you one of the anti-war candidates?

KERRY: I am. Yes. In the sense that I don‘t believe the president took to us war as he should have, yes. Absolutely. Do I think this president violated his promises to America? Yes, I do, Chris. Was there a way to hold Saddam Hussein accountable? You bet there was and we should have done it right.

“the Vietnam War, which those activists detested then or have learned to detest through liberalism's catechism”

This is rather humorous: the Right usually insists that the Left has no fixed principles, but now Will says there’s a liberal catechism. That’s great to know…I wonder if he can tell me where to get a copy?

That’s about all the time I can spend on a single op-ed piece.

UPDATE:

Utilitarians are generally exceptions to the concept of natural rights, ever since the days of Jeremy Bentham. (He wrote in Anarchical Fallacies that natural rights are "simple nonsense," and that "natural and imprescriptable rights" are "nonsense on stilts.")

I suspect that Jefferson's "Laws of Nature" phrase from the Declaration may be largely responsible for Americans' predilection for the terms "natural law" and "natural rights," even though the concepts themselves remain largely unexamined.