My inner cynic was pleased to discover that the back cover of Evgeny Morozov’s latest book, To Save Everything, Click Here, included a blurb from noted war journalist and scholar David Rieff. The curmudgeonly critic was a professor of mine at Sciences Po in Paris two years ago, and his class was a weekly tour de force of disillusionment with the modern human rights-industrial complex.
In praise of Morozov’s latest effort, Rieff wrote, “Against the reigning consensus — that there is a digital fix for every social and political problem, and that thanks to the technologies that we group together for convenience’s sake as the Internet, the brave new world of the future will be one of endless, limitless improvement in every realm of life — Morozov offers a sophisticated, eloquent, and definitive rebuttal.” This was the Rieff I remembered from my time in grad school, as I heard him wearily repudiate the moralist cri de coeur of peers like Michael Ignatieff and even Bernard Kouchner. It’s the same Rieff I read with great interest in the virtual pages of Foreign Policy, where he took a moment between excoriations of “Kony 2012” and the Singularity movement to dub Morozov “cyber-utopianism’s severest and most eloquent critic.”
That may not be inaccurate. But it is hardly the whole story. A mid-sized hamlet’s worth of straw men make brief cameos in To Save Everything, Click Here, only to be set ablaze by Morozov’s rapid-fire denunciations. Intellectual broadsides are not innately problematic, of course. But like fellow fire-breather Glenn Greenwald — whom Morozov, in his book, dubs “a terrific polemicist…[with] a tendency to overstate his case” — theBelarusian-born author often employs scorched-earth rhetoric against stunning illogic. Continue reading To Blame Everything, Read Here: The Folly of Technological Defeatism→
Sam: Finally! The Homeland I’ve been waiting for is back. How can we not start at the end?
Did you see Carrie playing an undercover role here at all? Did she not seem off her rocker, for real? All the promos and stories so far this season have pitted Carrie against Saul, and I didn’t think for a minute they might be in on the whole thing together.
Jay: Episode 3 was a strange beast. You’d think that, after two Brody-less episodes, I’d be thrilled to finally get one in which he’s onscreen for most of the hour. (Even more so considering the utter absence of his family, which I think everyone can agree was a pleasant development.)
And yet at times his scenes seemed to drag on (a notable achievement given the clear –and successful — attempt at eye candy with the inclusion of Martina García as Esme), without any clear sense of direction. I suppose it was inevitable that a substantial amount of time would be required to reestablish Brody in the viewing audience’s consciousness. But something about his interactions with the doctor, as well as with Esme’s father, left me feeling slightly disengaged by about 30 minutes in.
Fortunately, the duller moments were broken up by some truly spectacular vistas of downtown Caracas, including a breathtaking view of the Tower of David itself from the outside. But phenomenal cinematography aside, I was still left with a lot of questions. For example, how did Brody end up in Colombia in the first place, before getting shot and making his lucky way into Venezuela? And who, exactly, was the guy that visited Carrie in the mental hospital? (And why did he call her — at least, it sounded like he did — Franklin when he first saw her?) And who, or what, is really keeping Carrie in the institution? Is it really Saul, or is it simply the doctor out of concern for her condition? Continue reading “Tower of David:” Homeland catches up to Brody→
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette will defend Proposal 2, which changed the state constitution to ban affirmative action in public education, before the Supreme Court Tuesday. (Picture via Detroit Free Press)
Tomorrow afternoon, the Supreme Court will once again tackle the thorny question of affirmative action in higher education, less than four months after bouncing Fisher v. University of Texas back to a lower court for a newly-tightened and more rigorous examination of the constitutionality of Texas’ race-conscious undergraduate admissions process. ((Fisher will be heard on remand by the Fifth Circuit on November 13th of this year.)) While the central dispute in Fisher involved the limits of one university’s specific plan to use race as a factor amongst others to achieve a diverse student body, the question in Schuette v. Coalition to DefendAffirmative Action comes at the issue from a different direction: can a state’s voters change their constitution to ban public universities from considering race in their admissions plans at all?
In 2006, Michigan voters did precisely that by passing Proposal 2, which amended the state’s constitution to prohibit preferential treatment on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity or national origin in its public education system. ((Other parts of Proposal 2 also barred preferential treatment for the same categories in public employment and public contracting, but the challengers in Schuette are only questioning the validity of the affirmative action ban in the context of public education.)) Proposal 2 was written as a direct response to Grutter v. Bollinger, the 2003 Supreme Court decision that reaffirmed the constitutionality of universities considering race as one factor in holistic admissions policies, while simultaneously noting that such plans, if challenged, were still subject to strict scrutiny, the toughest level of judicial review. Under the strict scrutiny standard, a university (in Grutter, the University of Michigan Law School) must do two things: it must show that it has a compelling interest in the challenged admissions scheme, and then show that it has narrowly tailored its admissions process to fit that interest.
In the Grutter opinion, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote that the First Amendment right of a university to attain a diverse student body–a principle first laid out in 1978’s Regents of the University of California v. Bakke–sufficed as a compelling interest in the context of higher education. “[U]niversities occupy a special niche in our constitutional tradition,” she asserted, and are therefore entitled to “educational autonomy” that allows them to “make [their] own judgments as to … the selection of [their] student body.” Because of this First Amendment right,the Supreme Court should in the process of applying strict scrutiny accord a great deal of deference to the University of Michigan’s “educational judgment that diversity is essential to its educational mission.” In fact, where diversity is the compelling reason for an affirmative action plan, courts should presume the school has acted “in good faith” in narrowly tailoring the plan to that interest. Using this standard, the Grutter court deemed constitutional the University of Michigan Law School’s admissions plan.
Three years after Grutter, opponents of affirmative action successfully pushed through Proposal 2 in order to stop the state’s universities from implementing such plans. In turn, the day after the amendment’s passage, a number of individuals and interest groups (including the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action) banded together to file suit against Proposal 2 as it pertained to higher education. A federal district court upheld the affirmative action ban, but an en banc Sixth Circuit subsequently overruled that decision, 8-7, in 2012 on the basis that the prohibition violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Whose rights were being violated? Was it the universities’ rights to put together a diverse student body in order to fulfill its educational mission–an academic freedom that, as Bakke and Grutter told us, long has been viewed as a special concern of the First Amendment? Given what Justice O’Connor had written in 2003, one might have assumed so, but the Coalition and its allies had decided to take a different tack. Instead, they–and the en banc Sixth Circuit opinion, in turn–relied on the “political restructuring” doctrine first set out in 1969’s Hunter v. Ericksonand later reaffirmed in 1982’s Washington v. Seattle School District No. 1to find that Proposition 2 had unconstitutionally deprived minorities of equal access to “the tools of political change.”
In Hunter v. Erickson, the citizens of Akron, Ohio overturned a municipal fair housing ordinance and changed the city charter to require a citywide vote on any similar laws in the future. The Supreme Court invalidated the amendment, ruling that “the State may no more disadvantage any particular group by making it more difficult to enact legislation in its behalf than it may dilute any person’s vote or give any group a smaller representation than another of comparable size.” In Washington v. Seattle, the Supreme Court struck down a voter-approved state law that banned the use of mandatory busing in general, non-racial terms, but included so many exceptions that its true effect was to prohibit busing for the racial integration of public schools. Applying Hunter, the Seattle Court found Washington state had placed “unusual burdens” on the ability of racial minorities to enact legislation “specifically designed to overcome the ‘special condition’ of prejudice.” Because the majority of voters had created an extra obstacle in the political process that specifically targeted a minority group unlikely to win at the ballot box, the judiciary was obligated to step in and “[safeguard] the interests of those groups that are relegated to such a position of political powerlessness as to command extraordinary protection from the majoritarian political process.”
Taken together, Hunter and Seattle created a two-part rule for determining when an enactment has engaged in impermissible political restructuring: (1) the law in question has a racial focus that targets a program that “inures primarily to the benefit of the minority,” and (2) reallocates political power in a way that puts special burdens on the minority group. Applying this test, the Sixth Circuit found that Michigan’s Proposal 2 disadvantages minorities in this exact manner, by removing the decision of whether to use race consciousness in university admissions from the educational institutions and fixing the ban in the state constitution. Now, a citizen of Michigan who wants a public college or university to consider race as one factor in the admissions process–a practice still constitutional under Supreme Court precedent–cannot merely lobby the university for such a policy, as an individual who desires special preferences for legacies or athletes can do. Rather, he or she must undergo the expensive and time-consuming process of amending the state’s constitution as well. This showed, the Sixth Circuit concluded, the majority had “not only won, but has rigged the game to reproduce its success indefinitely.”
University of Michigan students at a pro-diversity rally on October 9, 2013. (Picture by AP Photo/The Ann Arbor News, Melanie Maxwell, via Monroe News)
Whether the Supreme Court agrees with the Sixth Circuit opinion will depend on how it distinguishes Proposal 2 from the laws challenged in Hunter and Seattle. Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette (rhymes with ‘duty’) argues that the Sixth Circuit misapplied the political restructuring rule, which is only relevant to laws that create political obstacles to equal treatment, not laws that bar preferential treatment as Proposal 2 does. Rather, by “prohibit[ing] the State from classifying individuals by race or gender,” Proposal 2 actually furthers, not subverts, the goals of the Equal Protection Clause. “It is curious to say that a law that bars a state from discriminating on the basis of race or sex violates the Equal Protection Clause by discriminating on the basis of race and sex,” the Schuette brief states, in an unmistakable echo of Chief Justice John Roberts’ most famous line in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, a 2007 case involving affirmative action at the elementary school level: “The only way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” In addition, Schuette maintains that Proposal 2 could not have targeted a politically powerless minority, as the amendment bars both preferential treatment for race and for gender. “[T]o the extent [Proposal 2] can be characterized as ‘disadvantaging’ any groups, those groups constitute a majority of Michigan’s population,” the brief states, arguing that it would be much easier than the Sixth Circuit suggests for Proposal 2’s opponents to overturn the amendment.
Given the way that each Justice has voted on affirmative action programs in the past, there is good reason to believe that Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Thomas and Scalia will be sympathetic to Attorney General Schuette’s arguments. Though the Sixth Circuit’s en banc opinion purposely avoided revisiting Grutter and discussing the constitutionality of affirmative action, focusing solely instead on the political restructuring arguments, it is hard to imagine that Roberts, Alito and Scalia’s unease with race-conscious admissions policies will not come out in the oral argument tomorrow. Justices Sotomayor, Ginsburg and Breyer, on the other hand, are likely to be skeptical of Schuette’s position. Since Justice Kagan has recused herself from this case and there are only eight justices voting, a 4-4 split would allow the Sixth Circuit decision invalidating the affirmative action ban to stand–making Justice Anthony Kennedy, once again, the likely decider.
As I explained in a piece on Fisher and affirmative action last year, Justice Kennedy has long harbored conflicting feelings about affirmative action programs. Just last Thursday, Jess Bravin of The Wall Street Journal asked the justice whether the inclusion of women and ethnic minorities on the Court had benefited the institution. Kennedy replied: “Sure, I think it’s helpful that we have different points of view. I’m not sure that rigid categories of gender and ethnic background are always proxies for diversity, but it gives legitimacy to what the court does.” This, in a nutshell, is Kennedy’s continuing attitude toward affirmative action in public education–it’s somewhat good, but it’s also a somewhat lazy way to achieve true diversity. He doesn’t have a definite answer about how exactly schools can work around this contradiction, but he knows that he wants them to try harder. How well Proposal 2’s challengers fare at tomorrow’s oral argument may hinge on their ability to convince Kennedy that these schools should not be barred from even giving it a shot.
So where does all of this lead us? Personally, I find it most helpful to view Fisher and Schuette as parallel cases that hammer away at affirmative action from two different sides. When the 7-1 Fisher decision was first handed down in June, many supporters of affirmative action breathed a sigh of relief, as they had feared a wider-ranging decision ruling racial affirmative action unconstitutional outright. However, with Kennedy’s majority opinion in Fisher ordering the lower court to give “no deference” to the University of Texas’ narrow tailoring on remand, the public university’s First Amendment right to a diverse student body has been all but gutted, making it much harder for schools to defend race-conscious admissions policies. Schuette now presents another possible alternative for states to defeat affirmative action by pre-emptively prohibiting it, thus eliminating the need to even bring the university to court. In other words, the Roberts Court may well choose a “death by a thousand cuts” strategy rather than one fatal body blow–especially with Justice Kennedy’s ongoing ambivalence–but the result remains the same.
Much ink has been spilled over the relative blame that should be assigned to various parties in the current government shutdown / impending debt-ceiling fiasco from hell. (About that spilled ink, I’m speaking virtually, of course: no one still publishes on physical paper anymore, do they?)
Aside from the predictable litany of “both sides need to compromise” bullshit from the zombie lords of political commentary — which The Atlantic‘s James Fallows, Al Jazeera‘s Dan Froomkin, and NYU professor Jay Rosen continue to eviscerate brilliantly — perhaps most distressing still are the results of today’s Gallup poll:
Americans are now more likely to name dysfunctional government as the most important problem facing the country than to name any other specific problem. Thirty-three percent of Americans cite dissatisfaction with government and elected representatives as the nation’s top issue, the highest such percentage in Gallup’s trend dating back to 1939. Dysfunctional government now eclipses the economy (19%), unemployment (12%), the deficit (12%), and healthcare (12%) as the nation’s top problem.
This is, in its own way, tantamount to a Republican victory — and one that could have more profound long-term implications than whatever short-term turbulence the GOP has inflicted upon itself courtesy of its decreasingly fringe-y “wacko bird” fringe. Indeed, although early indications suggest that House Republicans may suffer for their intransigence in next year’s midterms, there are plenty of reasons to bet against the Democrats’ chances of retaking the lower chamber in 2014.
Meanwhile, the broader national disgust with governmental dysfunction plays directly into Republicans’ hands: in fact, it could be argued that the GOP will always have a home-field advantage of sorts over the Democrats when the two parties are at loggerheads over just about anything of consequence. When bitterly contested policy issues cause Americans to blame government generally (even if, as is the case now, one side is clearly precipitating the immediate crisis), Republican ideology wins the day. Time will tell if this triumph is more durable than the Democrats’ current advantage in generic horse-race Congressional polling.
But there is yet another component to this struggle that’s extremely apparent but is somehow not gaining the traction I’d expect, especially from left-leaning media outlets. And that is the direct line connecting President Obama’s decision to negotiate the debt-ceiling increase in the summer of 2011 with the current crisis. While there is no question that Republican lunacy is the immediate cause of the budgetary and debt-ceiling impasses, much longer-term blame rests directly on the shoulders of Barack Obama.
Today’s manufactured crisis was an entirely foreseeable outcome of Obama’s capitulation two years ago. In fact, Paul Krugman predicted exactly this sort of future as soon as the 2011 deal with Republicans was announced. In an August 1, 2011 column titled “The President Surrenders,” Krugman wrote:
For the deal itself, given the available information, is a disaster, and not just for President Obama and his party. It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status.
…
Republicans will supposedly have an incentive to make concessions the next time around, because defense spending will be among the areas cut. But the G.O.P. has just demonstrated its willingness to risk financial collapse unless it gets everything its most extreme members want. Why expect it to be more reasonable in the next round?
In fact, Republicans will surely be emboldened by the way Mr. Obama keeps folding in the face of their threats. He surrendered last December, extending all the Bush tax cuts; he surrendered in the spring when they threatened to shut down the government; and he has now surrendered on a grand scale to raw extortion over the debt ceiling.
And this is exactly what ended up happening. Two days ago, Jonathan Chait explained this very phenomenon:
They see the debt-ceiling fight as being mainly about the long-term question of whether Congress will cement into place the practice of using the debt ceiling to extort concessions from the president. The price of buying off a debt-ceiling hike would surely be less than the risk of a default. But doing so would enshrine debt-ceiling extortion as a normal congressional practice. This both skews the Constitutional relationship between branches — allowing an unscrupulous Congress to demand unilateral concessions at gunpoint rather than having to compromise — and creates endless brinksmanship that would eventually lead to a default.
The administration’s stance, then, is that submitting to ransom now creates the certainty of default eventually.
The primary quibble I have with Chait’s explanation — as I do with most analyses I’ve read of the situation thus far — is that the time to establish this stance was two years ago, not now. Of course, now is better than never, but the risk of actual default does appear to be greater now than it was back in 2011, and this is primarily due to Republicans’ increased confidence — based on very recent history — that the White House and Congressional Democrats would simply capitulate once again. And this very expectation, paradoxically enough, made it more dangerous for the Democrats to actually stand firm and demand that the Republicans raise the debt limit without preconditions — precisely because the overly-confident Republicans had virtually locked themselves into a rhetorical corner over raising the debt ceiling.
So what’s the point? Aside from the fact that President Obama is quite clearly a disastrous negotiator, the primary point is that — contrary to “centrist” notions of endless compromise that are entirely unmoored from the empirical reality of each party’s ideological flexibility — giving away the bank to a party steered by radicals absolutely does not guarantee healthy compromises or even engender good-faith efforts in the future. To the contrary, when confronted head-on with the awesome incoherence of Tea Party rage, the worst possible weapon is the one President Obama wielded back in 2011: procrastination.
Sam: You know what I thought this week? Did Homeland start taking a page from The Americans?
Is it just me or has this season been super charged with emotional relationships so far? As you pointed out, the storyline with Carrie being off her meds and having to be committed again is not new. Nor is Dana’s bickering with her mom.
Having said all that, it does make sense that deep rooted issues like the ones they are dealing with aren’t “fixed” overnight. It’s just the heavy emphasis on relationships that’s taking away from the thrill of Homeland as a covert operations show that’s starting to get to me.
I’m going to try something new and share my winners and losers this week:
Winner — Quinn. I sort of panned him last week for not being a cold blooded assassin. But it’s exactly his heart that’s got him in the winner’s seat. Loved his confrontation with the bank big wig and his subtle defense of Farah (sp?).
Loser — There were a few candidates here, but I’m giving it to Saul this week. In the sense of character development for Saul, you could argue he actually belongs in the winners column. I put him in the losers column this week because of the racist and condescending bit he threw at Farah (hey, I get to make up the rules for my winners and losers picks, right?).
Sam: In our prognostications after the season two finale about what we might expect in season three, I have to say: I was pretty wrong about Brody’s family disappearing from the story a bit. Not only are they back in the picture, but they also got way more screen time than Brody himself (you surprised at his no-show?).
I have to believe that the writers just wanted to find some way of getting moody (and as we have clearly come to see, depressed) Dana back into the picture. Poor Chris still gets one or two dopey lines.
As for the Saul-Carrie relationship, what you said at the end of season two about Saul’s dark horse potential for being something more than what we have seen, I couldn’t help eyeing him with suspicion throughout this episode, particularly with all the CIA leaks to the press.
