Obligatory Alumni Trustee Election Post

Joe Asch '79 is running as a a petition candidate for Dartmouth's board. He will be challenging John Repogle '88, current CEO of Burt's Bees. He will not challenge journalist Morton Kondracke '60. His campaign website is here; if you'd like to support him by signing a petition, you can download one there.

I'm generally inclined to be liberal about signing petitions like this. The more voices in an election, the better; I'd prefer to save agonizing about whether Asch really is the best candidate until the merits stage. But even if I were ordinarily inclined to apply more exacting standards of review, I'd perhaps be inclined to be nice to Asch anyway.

As he notes in his campaign statement, Asch moved back to the Hanover area as an adult and has audited a number of classes at Dartmouth in the last few years. Among them was Art History 40, The Art of the Early Italian Renaissance, in summer 2002. Out of thanks to Professor Randolph for a good summer, he invited the professor and the 5-6 students from the class who'd gotten the highest grades on the midterm and the paper over to his house for dinner. I was among them. The menu involved filet mignon, baguettes, and (if I recall correctly) chocolate mousse. It was an unusual gesture on Asch and his wife's part-- it wasn't exactly cool to be that openly meritocratic about honoring high grades at Dartmouth -- and a touching one. My signature for a petition can easily be plied with filet mignon and chocolate mousse.

(Aside: one of the other students at that dinner went on to found her own jewelry design line, Lulu Frost, which has been prominently featured in Vogue and other smart magazines. I was a little afraid of Lisa when we shared that class, and I'm not surprised she went on to do something more glamorous than average. But I digress... )

Back to Asch. Because he's been so active on campus, I imagine many recent alums have stories similar to my dinner party tale. That'll help him. Perhaps more interestingly, in contrast to the past four petition candidates, Asch has said and written almost nothing about national politics. He has a long paper trail of writings on Dartmouth issues, but I found nothing in that D archive about politics beyond Dartmouth. It's been a few years, but I can't remember Asch waxing right-wing crankish in that art history class. (I'd very likely remember if he had. I usually keep my ears open for right-wing cranks.) Bottom line, he comes across as a pragmatist who wants to do the right thing for a college that he loves. Again, I think that will help him.

There is also an AoA petition slate. I know several of the younger candidates. They're smart, qualified people who could fulfill these roles well. It's a slate that's heavy on conservative Christians, if memory serves, and light on libertarians. This is not to say, of course, that a slate which was imbalanced the other way would be better, given the realities of coalition politics.

And no, I haven't read the summary judgment order from the alumni lawsuit yet. Perhaps tomorrow.

Should Libertarians Hate Government?

Will Wilkinson has a link to an interesting piece on libertarian self-defeating habits by William Eggers and John O'Leary, formerly of the Reason Foundation. I'm underwhelmed. Some scattered thoughts:

1)As some of Wilkinson's commenters point out, what he calls libertarian schizophrenia is actually quite common to other movements. I'd go further and say that schizophrenia between incrementalists and radicals is actually a positive good. I came of age among The Dartmouth Review crowd (although I never wrote for them). Dinesh de Souza once said that he thought that the Review was good for Dartmouth's more moderate right in that it helped moderates say, "Oh, yes, I'm a conservative, but I wouldn't go as far as those guys. Here's why you should listen to me." It helps to have some extremists dragging the spectrum of public opinion out to one side, and other, more practical-minded people bringing them back to earth.

Also, I suspect whether you're an incrementalist or a radical is largely a matter of personality. I have sat through my share of turgid seminars on MARKETING libertarian ideas and BRANDING them, and also maybe having a TWITTER or some FACEBOOKS, about them. Because, you see, libertarian ideas are totally not scary, and we could totally get our friends and other grandmothers excited about them, if we were just pragmatic enough! These seminars frankly make me want to spend the next eight years hiding in a closet re-reading Ayn Rand novels. I'm much more comfortable just shouting my crankish ideas into the wind and hoping I move the center of the debate libertarian-ward. Yet there are people who seem to like "pragmatic" seminars like these and think them valuable. We all serve, in our different ways.

2)Relatedly: I can't tell to what extent Eggers and O'Leary are talking about a mere communications strategy -- "Look! Libertarians don't have to be scary!" -- or about actual changing our policy ideas. They say "Our Founding Fathers, fondly quoted by limited-government advocates, didn’t view government as evil, but as a flawed institution with some important jobs to do." Yes, but... most libertarians think of government this way. I don't know many serious libertarians who don't.

3)I don't really disagree with any of their points about why market-based reforms aren't self-executing.

4)Regarding their #4 about government bashing alienating those whom you want to reach: yes, that's true up to a point. But the stupidity and inefficiency of government also resonates powerfully with the not particularly ideological. See, e.g., the pleasant and highly efficient process of hanging out at the DMV to get one's license renewed. And, yeah, many people might love police officers and teachers. But many people have also gotten pulled over by police officers who run speed traps, or fought absurd battles to remove a public school teacher who wasn't performing in her job. This message is more intuitively attractive than O'Leary and Eggers think.

5)The moon landing as an example of good government: This example may be more complicated than Eggers and O'Leary think. Yes, the moon landing was a visually stunning achievement and an unparalled demonstration of technical prowess. At the same time, we'll never know what benefits the millions (billions?) of dollars invested in the private sector might have yielded. True, private investment probably wouldn't have gotten us the moon landing in 1969. But all that cash freed up might well have gotten us different and interesting products instead. We'll just never know.

6)I was a Koch Summer Fellow in 2007. And I, uh, work for the federal government now. So we are out there.

Also, I worked for a public interest law firm my Koch summer, but there was at least one young woman in my class who worked for the Department of Commerce. There may have been one other. So maybe someone was listening to Will after all.

Martha Coakley, Ethics, and the Amiraults

On Friday, the WSJ published an excellent column questioning Martha Coakley's judgment regarding her handling of the Amirault child sex abuse prosecutions. As Rabinowitz writes, the evidence against the Amiraults was extremely flimsy, and public opinion eventually turned against the prosecutions. Coakley's continued zeal to press the case should therefore raise questions about her judgment, especially among left-wing types who are normally concerned about prosecutorial abuses of power.

Or... not. The ever-intelligent Radley Balko links to a post by a left-leaning feminist blogger M. LeBlanc who wrestles with these issues. Balko hits many nails squarely on their heads in his response to her.

One point that Balko and LeBlanc have overlooked: LeBlanc writes "So, what's the moral status of advocating that someone who is likely innocent remain in prison? It's a tough question. As far as I known, it's something that's routinely done by prosecutors everywhere.."

Actually, there already are canons on legal ethics that address this "tough question," including in Massachusetts. See Canon 3.8 (a), which provides that "The prosecutor in a criminal case shall refrain from prosecuting a charge that the prosecutor knows is not supported by probable cause." That is to say, if Coakley knew that the charge against the Amiraults wasn't supported by probable cause and went ahead anyway, then she violated Massachusetts's Rules of Professional Conduct for lawyers. I'm not sure that I can say she did or didn't; I'd want to know more facts about what exactly she knew, and how strong the factual basis has to be for the "probable cause" requirement to be met in this context.

Not a criminal lawyer, but I always understood the "probable cause" standard in other contexts as not totally toothless/not requiring total deference to the government. If I'm wrong, I'd appreciate being schooled by real criminal lawyers.

Now, the canon is worded in a strange way; "prosecute" and "charge" both suggest that it might be meant only to apply to prosecutors' conduct in the trial court, rather than at the appellate level. Still, the public policy undergirding the rule seems to be something to the effect of "It's bad for prosecutors to send clients to jail based on flimsy charges." The canons of professional conduct are also meant to guide lawyers' conduct even in situations in which the rules aren't binding. So even if the text of the rule, narrowly constructed, isn't meant to apply to appellate proceedings, it's still strong guidance to Coakley as to what an ethical prosecutor ought to do.

Maybe M. LeBlanc disagrees with the current formulation of the relevant rule of professional conduct. That's perfectly understandable; there's plenty there that I disagree with too. I write this post to emphasize that Coakley wasn't trying to figure out her moral duties in this situation in a total vacuum. There are laws meant to cabin prosecutorial zealous advocacy. That there are non-trivial arguments that Coakley disregarded these binding ethical obligations makes the case against her judgment even slightly stronger than Balko claims.

Ayn Rand Anti-Defamation League

Despite my blog title, I regard myself as ex-Randian. I still have (mostly) warm memories of my Randian adolescence -- or, well, as nearly warm as are possible, given that I'm reminiscing about an unfortunate stage of life defined by acne, near-sightedness, and inability to talk to boys. So I was intrigued to read this attempt to denounce Rand for inculcating incuriosity in her followers.

With all due respect for Mr. DeBoer, I don't think his former college classmate's case is typical. I won't attempt to defend myself from allegations of incuriosity. I'm all too aware of the limitations of my own meager mind. But I would point to friends of mine, including Josh Blackman (who rejects Rand's dogmatic anti-religion views in the linked post) and David Bernstein, who in the linked post describes how Rand spurred his academic career and has served to inspire others to be their best. I know, I'm just offering anecdotes -- but so too is Mr. DeBoer, and I'm not aware of any more systematic attempt to study Rand's influence on her adherents' curiosity.

Second, Mr. DeBoer's paragraph on the substantive content of his friend's views is odd:

And, you know, if you peruse Mr. Cropper's videos for awhile you'll learn that he thinks poor people choose to be in poverty and deserve it, that we should not feed the starving, that the American Indians were a collection of idiots who were rightly colonized by a superior power, that war is often preferable to peace, that religion is a mental disease, that modern cosmology and particle theory are a scientific conspiracy, that we won the Vietnam war, that we are and should be at war with Islam (because Muslims are inherently irrational and hateful), that nuclear armed nations should enforce their advantage in the capacity for physical violence against other nations without conscience, that global warming is a myth, that child labor should be reinstated as it is a moral and rational edifice, that poetry always must rhyme or is not poetry, and his most cherished and frequently expressed idea, that the edifice of modern higher education is in total a conspiracy against the people, perpetrated by educators who knowingly disseminate nonsense, and that this is the reason for his failure to ascend to the pinnacle of intellectual achievement.

Let's break some of these down:

1)"That poor people choose to be in poverty and deserve it" -- Rand certainly thought that of some poor people, yes. But I suspect that even the most bleeding hearted libs concede that there are some poor people who are in their current situation due to their own shiftlessness and laziness. Rand did show plenty of characters in Atlas Shrugged who are poor because of failed government economic policies. Others are poor due to others' inability to recognize their talents -- the formerly successful Henry Cameron in The Fountainhead, and also the struggling Steven Mallory in the same novel. It's notable that hero Howard Roark gave Mallory financial aid while he was struggling to launch his sculpting career, and that Rand was perfectly fine with such aid given to a poor person.

2)"That we should not feed the starving" -- See above about Mallory. Rand was against charity that enables shiftlessness, as I think even many left of center types are. But she was okay with financial support given to the poor in circumstances where such wouldn't be counterproductive.

3)"That American Indians were a collection of idiots who were rightly colonized by a superior power" -- Again, I'd be careful. I can't recall anything that Rand ever wrote specifically about American colonization. But she was a firm believer in property rights and in non-initiation of the use of physical force. Adherence to the latter principles would indicate that Randians shouldn't see the American colonization as unambiguously good.

4)That war is often preferable to peace -- See above.

5)That religion is a mental disease -- Yes, it's true Rand was fervently anti-religion. She wouldn't have used the disease formulation, though. And many of her followers have also found ways of synthesizing pro-religious and objective views -- see Mr. Blackman's post above.

6)That modern cosmology and particle theory are a scientific conspiracy -- I will defer to others on this, but I can't recall anything in Rand that questioned the validity of modern cosmology or particle theory. Indeed, in general, Rand was all for scientific inquiry and technological advancement.

7)That we are and should be at war with Islam (because Muslims are inherently irrational and hateful), that nuclear armed nations should enforce their advantage in the capacity for physical violence against other nations without conscience -- See #3, above.

8)That global warming is a myth -- Yes, Rand was skeptical of much of 1960s and 1970s environmentalism. She didn't write on global warming specifically to my knowledge because it was simply less of a hot issue among environmentalists then.

9) That child labor should be reinstated as it is a moral and rational edifice -- Rand did favor abolishing bans on child labor. She claimed that, as post-Industrial Revolution societies grow richer, individual families were more likely to send their children to school instead of having them work in unpleasant conditions. All things being equal, Rand would have preferred to live in a wealth, modern society where few or no families found it economically exigent to make their children work.

To Mr. DeBoer's credit, he concedes that "Some of these [ideas] can be directly attributed to Rand's philosophy; many can't." Still, I do think it's worth highlighting how far astray some of these go from Rand's actual ideas. The discrepancies suggest that much of Brandon's approach to Rand may reflect his own idiosyncrasies, rather than anything inherent in Rand's work.

Hanover Anti-Defamation League

From the ages of about 22 to 24, right after I first moved to D.C., I tried to defend the proposition that Hanover, N.H. is cosmopolitan. "It's like Georgetown!" I would protest, "except it's just like a random five or six blocks of Georgetown thrown in the middle of New Hampshire! And how regularly do you, proud Georgetown dwellers, actually venture beyond a five-block radius of your townhouse to try different shops and restaurants in the vast metropolis in which you live? You eat at the same Thai restaurant over and over, I bet! So living in Georgetown and going to the same neighborhood Thai restaurant over and over is not actually different from living in Hanover and going to the same single Thai restaurant over and over!"

Some of my friends who are sticks in the mud had to concede this point. But others who are more adventurous did not. They in fact tended to look at me as though I suffered from lack of imagination and smallness of spirit -- two of the few vices of which I am rarely accused. So, after about two years as a one-woman Hanover Anti-Defamation League, I gave up trying to defend its cosmopolitanism.

Comes now news that we have inspired a chic designer handbag. Referring to the city's dream winters is perhaps optimistic, given that Hanover's population was around 10,000 the last time that I checked. But we are sporty and sophisticated, and I am glad to see that the designer noted that cider carried in it should be spiked. I wouldn't have anything Hanover-inspired any other way.

S.E. Cupp is no Florence King, either...

I've said nice things about Conor Friedersdorf's work here before. But this piece on The Daily Caller's S.E. Cupp is too harsh. See also this at True/Slant, which makes the same argument in more detail.

Okay, so I am not a great fan of Cupp's piece either. The "real Americans" stuff is obnoxious and over the top. But posing as a misanthrope for entertainment value who hates liberal pieties can be quite entertaining. See, e.g., everything Florence King ever wrote. I love King half to death, to the point that I tend to give copies of Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady to every single one of my female friends at some point.* For a shorter taste of why I love King, go read this essay of hers, which remains one of the best five 800-or-so-word essays that I've ever found online. I can't help but wonder if Cupp's trying to channel Florence King. If she is, I support that; would that there were more conservative and libertarian writers trying to do so.

What really distinguishes King from Cupp is that King was, above all, an unabashedly elitist conservative misanthrope. Florence doesn't let you forget that she's read more than you have; the rich array of literary and cultural references found in the anti-Ann Coulter broadside I found above are typical of her essays and books. Cupp is an unabashedly populist conservative misanthrope, who's all too eager to defend the common people over effete Manhattan snobs. It's interesting -- and sad -- to think that the differences between the two represent a decline in the intellectual aspirations of the conservative movement. Of course, maybe neither represents anything larger than herself -- Pnin is doubtless yelling sentences that have the word "non-systematic" in them at this point in reading my post, and I am yelling back sentences that have the word "Zeitgeist" in them. ** But maybe they both do, and I deeply regret the increasingly populist tone that dominates even lighter conservative discourse.


*To any female friends of mine reading this, to whom I might give a copy of Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady in the future: I apologize if this post ruins the surprise. However, I only give Florence King books to women I consider both strong and interesting and whom I really like. I meet all too few women like this, so consider it a honor...

**If our debates could be summarized in two words, I'd pick those two. This is what happens when someone who studied art history in undergrad takes a fiance who studied political science.

Brief dating advice round-up

1)Good advice on how to get girls.

2)Conversely, observe from idiot Dominic's example how NOT to get girls. I feel like I have had variations on the theme of this guy after me at various points in my life. I highly encourage learning from his negative example.