(if I were the) King of the Forest

So colleges are supposed to open minds unless it makes them open to this particular brand of religion?

Colleges provide a forum for expression of different opinions and varying religious views — excepting that those particular opinions and religious views are to be silenced?

Proselytizing and recruitment by a Christian group with no university affiliation or endorsement — but not proselytizing and recruitment on behalf of Marxism or Utilitarianism or Feminism or Afro-Centrism or any of the other myriad -isms that contend for the students’ attention and commitment in the classroom and through student organizations with the official imprimatur and blessing of the university — constitutes an appalling imposition of those views?

The perception and appreciation of analogy – of discerning the common characteristics that make two superficially dissimilar situations or events essentially similar, or the divergent characteristics that make two superficially similar situations or events essentially dissimilar – is one of the fundamental skills of human reasoning that allows us to learn from history, to avoid the mistakes of the past and to progress despite those mistakes. It has been my observation that in our modern approach to education we no longer emphasize the teaching or the learning of those skills – and that therefore those skills have atrophied in Western culture – or at least in American culture – to the point that we are in danger of losing their benefit entirely.

In October of 2004 Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus published a critique of the environmental movement, which they claimed was too focused on technical and policy arguments over regulations and not focused enough on presenting a positive vision that inspired people to their cause. They had become the dour uncle focused on limits and sacrifice, presenting a grim future with a message of “just say no” to progress.

Salon.com wrote about their article and about the ensuing debate within the environmental community over the future of environmentalism. I thought the self-critique was insightful and overdue, but I thought they overlooked one aspect of modern environmentalism that contributes to its decline within the broad American population.

Here’s what the Democrats really need to acknowledge: “values” – whatever they may be – are a huge part of our “interests” and most of us are willing to sacrifice some (or even a lot) of economic advantage to have the “values” of society reflect our own – or at least to secure our freedom to live by our “values” without interference from people who think they know better than we.

I listened to the debates in the 2004 presidential election hoping to hear that one of the candidates was not as pathetic as they appeared. I was disappointed.
During the “debate” on national security issues in particular not only was neither candidate personally reassuring, but there seemed to be almost no substance to the actual argument. That was particularly frustrating because the talking heads of the media, and all the news stories the following day, kept referring to the “substantive” discussion. I wondered if I’d somehow tuned in to the Cliff Notes version of the debate, or perhaps the “Debate for Dummies” channel.

At one point during the Bush/Kerry presidential campaign, well after it was clear we would not find any significant stash of chemical or biological or nuclear agents in Iraq, The Boston Globe published an editorial in which they opined that what we needed to know about John Kerry was what he would have done about Iraq “knowing what he knows now”. I thought the suggestion was rather stupid: no one ever gets to go back and redo their important decisions based on what he learns later. The question we really needed answered was how John Kerry would make decisions in the face of inevitable ambiguity, not how he would re-think those decisions in the clarity of hindsight.

In all the criticism I have heard about the analysis and use of the Iraq intelligence, and especially about the political decisions based on that intelligence, the one thing that never seems to be mentioned is the context in which that analysis and decision-making was taking place. We talk about it as if the analysis and decision-making process were a matter only of political consequence, or as if the option to do nothing implied zero cost so the only question to answer was whether doing something – that is whether going to war – would make things better or worse. But that is not the environment in which events unfolded.

Yet another story (from The Boston Globe) in which some mathematical or statistical analysis is reported with no critical evaluation. And yet again I register my protest…

When the commission investigating the events leading up to the World Trade Center attack released their interim staff report headlines across the country declared that it “contradicted” what the President had said about Iraqi involvement in the attacks – and when the President and his staff disputed that contention the story became the “dispute” between he and the commission rather than what the commission had actually found.

After looking at what the report actually said I concluded that there was not, in fact, a dispute: what the report said and what President Bush had said were consistent; the only contradiction was between what the report said and the words that the news media, against the evidence, insisted on putting into the President’s mouth. I believe that represents a kind of bias that ill-serves us. When we are debating such important matters as war and peace we need and deserve the unblemished truth.

The war in Iraq has elicited all kinds of nonsense from people on both sides of the issue, and almost every day I find myself exasperated by someone missing the point. Often missing the point requires a pointed effort of will – as with people who insist the entire war effort was about oil; if all we wanted was Iraqi oil by far our best policy by any measure would have been to lift sanctions and buy it – but sometimes underlying patterns are obscured by superficial features and are reasonably missed.