Levis Hot Dogs in Philadelphia, a brief photoessay

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wLoprKhEtQG-7Z308Ip1hWQY07xsc74cbn6l6lzMSlk/pub

Response to Seth Tillman on proportional representation

I am an Israeli political scientist, where proportional representation (henceforth PR) has been used for legislative elections since the beginning of the state, with a slight departure for direct election of the Prime Minister. Some of what Prof. Tillman writes on his New Reform Club blog post (archive) I agree with, some of this I disagree with, some of it I don't understand

1) "Under proportional representation, the members of the governing coalition having executive power or forming the cabinet is not under the control of the voters. Rather, it depends on the bargaining positions and skills of the elected parties after the election." 

It is true that in Israel the legislative elections do not completely determine the makeup of the postelection governing coalition. But nothing in the system stops voters from giving a majority to one party (in the 1950's Ben Gurion's party came close); factions pledging with whom they hope to enter in coalition in order to win votes; or factions uniting pre-election to form what they hope will be a majority list.

Also, in the pure Westminster system, I elect only one representative -- how much more influence, if any, does this give me over the eventual composition of government than as a PR voter?

2) “Proportional representation has advantages if your nation has no external enemies or has farmed out its defense to third parties.“

Israel has PR even though it has serious and desperate external enemies and is not in NATO or an alternative formal alliance structure. It is not obvious to me what price we have paid in foreign and security matters as a result.

3) “On the other hand, where a nation faces actual external threats, proportional representation inhibits decisive action by the executive during war time and other emergencies. Proportional representation makes decisive action during war time and other emergencies difficult because different parties within the governing coalition or cabinet have different interests, will shift blame, and will look to their position in the next poll and in the next election.“

We haven’t seen this very much in Israel, because in fact the parties in cabinet have the same overwhelming interest in the survival of the country. While we have a lot of blame-shifting it occurs, as in the UK and other Westminster countries, mostly among members of the major coalition party. What has prevented decisive action is the absence of consensus as to means of securing peace and security.

4) “proportional representation undermines collective cabinet responsibility”

True, but collective responsibility is only relevant insofar as people get booted and stay booted from cabinet for failure or incompetence. When faction leaders retain power for reasons other than their performance as ministers, they will have to be appeased with cabinet seats even when they aren’t much good as cabinet ministers, and I don’t think it matters much whether the faction is a intraparty fraction or a separate party list.

5)  "If the greatest threat your nation fears is a portion of its own citizens, then proportional representation may be the best way to organize your elections."

I am not clear on what Prof. Tillman means by this, but it is true that under PR, “extremists” have an incentive to create their own party, which can then readily be banned, as in Israel and Germany. In the US (which does not have PR), the candidates the establishment loathes can infiltrate major parties, but the institutional tools exist to ban individuals and disenfranchise their supporters -- however, their use has been infrequent and is not yet normalized. I expect that things will be different when the Democrats get simultaneous control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress.

Five preliminary thoughts on Nolan’s Oppenheimer

1. The movie is smoothly put together. The narration is told in multiple interweaving strands with at least two layers of retrospection, as in every Nolan movie, but it is easy enough to follow -- at least if you have been reading Manhattan Project history for four decades.

2. There is a lot of atomic fanservice, with many of our favorites such as Szilard, Fermi, and Feynman shown (and in the case of Feynman, caricatured) briefly.

3. There is even “Jewservice”: Oppenheimer is presented as more open about and concerned with his Jewish identity than he is usually portrayed, while his sense of his own Jewish and American identities is challenged by Rabi, by Einstein and by the film’s main antagonist, Lewis Strauss.

4. To understand the film one has to understand the Oppenheimer character's complex, changing, and even contradictory views of the politics and morality of nuclear arms and nuclear war. One also needs to decide whether Nolan, usually more explicitly didactic, wants us to think that his Oppenheimer is right -- and, if so, which Oppenheimer is right.

5. Spoiler alert: when you see the flash, cover your ears.

Maimonides and his Demons

1. The Rambam's knowledge of the world was generally inferior to that of Chazal.
2. Like rationalists generally, the Rambam claimed to be open to evidence but in fact used his awesome reasoning powers to insulate his prejudices from evidence.
3. The evidence for the existence of demons comes from our experience of demonic possession and exorcism, both within and outside of the Jewish community, from ancient times down to the present day.
4. The claim that there is some connection between belief in demons and avoda zara is a claim made by contemporary scholars and pseudoscholars, most of them themselves scoffers at the tradition. There is no psak that forbids belief in demons or the practice of exorcism.

Robert Heinlein on the Education Doctorate (1980)

             Hilda said loudly, "Zebbie! You never told me you went to Heidelberg."

            "You never asked, Sharpie.

            Zebadiah, was that where you took your doctorate?"             

My husband grinned and sat down, still wearing sword. "No, another school ." "M.I.T.?" inquired Pop.

"Hardly. Pop, this should stay in the family. I undertook to prove that a man can get a doctorate from a major university without knowing anything and without adding anything whatever to human knowledge."

 "1 think you have a degree in aerospace engineering," Pop said flatly.             "I'll concede that I have the requisite hours. I hold two degrees-a baccalaureate in humane arts. . . meaning I squeaked through. . . and a doctorate from an old and prestigious school-a Ph.D. in education."

             "Zebadiah! You wouldn't!" (I was horrified.)

             "But I did, Deety. To prove that degrees per se are worthless. Often they are honorifics of true scientists or learned scholars or inspired teachers. Much more frequently they are false faces for overeducated jackasses."

             Pop said, "You'll get no argument from me, Zeb. A doctorate is a union card to get a tenured job. It does not mean that the holder thereof is wise or learned."

             "Yes, sir. I was taught it at my grandfather's knee-my Grandfather Zachariah, the man responsible for the initial 'Z' in the names of his male descendants. Deety, his influence on me was so strong that I must explain him- no, that's impossible; I must tell about him in order to explain me. . . and how I happened to take a worthless degree."

[....]

            "I went to Manhattan and signed up for school again. Doctoral candidate. School of Education. Not serious at first, simply intending to use my veteran's benefits while enjoying the benefits of being a student-and devote most of my time to piling up cash to qualify for the trust.             "I knew that the stupidest students, the silliest professors, and the worst bull courses are concentrated in schools of education. By signing for large class evening lectures and the unpopular eight am. classes I figured I could spend most of my time finding out how the stock market ticked. I did, by working there, before I risked a dime.

             "Eventually I had to pick a research problem or give up the advantages of being a student. I was sick of a school in which the pie was all meringue and no filling but I stuck as I knew how to cope with courses in which the answers are matters of opinion and the opinion that counts is that of the professor. And how to cope with those large-class evening lectures: Buy the lecture notes. Read everything that professor ever published. Don't cut too often and when you do show up, get there early, sit front row center, be certain the prof catches your eye every time he looks your way-by never taking your eyes off him. Ask one question you know he can answer because you've picked it out of his published papers-and state your name in asking a question. Luckily 'Zebadiah Carter' is a name easy to remember. Family, I got straight 'A's' in both required courses and seminars. . . because I did not study 'education,' I studied professors of education.

             "But I still had to make that 'original contribution to human knowledge' without which a candidate may not be awarded a doctor's degree in most so-called disciplines. . . and the few that don't require it are a tough row to hoe.

             "I studied my faculty committee before letting myself be tied down to a research problem. . . not only reading everything each had published but also buying their publications or paying the library to make copies of out-of-print papers."

             My husband took me by my shoulders. "Dejah Thoris, here follows the title of my dissertation. You can have your divorce on your own terms."

            "Zebadiah, don't talk that way!"

             "Then brace yourself. 'An Ad-Hoc Inquiry Concerning the Optimization of the Infrastructure of Primary Educational Institutions at the Interface Between Administration and Instruction, with Special Attention to Group Dynamics Desiderata."

             "Zebbie! What does that mean?"

             "It means nothing, Hilda."

             "Zeb, quit kidding our ladies. Such a title would never be accepted." 

            "Jake, it seems certain that you have never taken a course in a school of education."

             "Well. . . no. Teaching credentials are not required at university level but-"

             "But me no 'huts,' Pop. I have a copy of my dissertation; you can check its authenticity. While that paper totally lacks meaning it is a literary gem in the sense in which a successful forging of an 'old master' is itself a work of art. It is loaded with buzz words. The average length of sentences is eightyone words. The average word length, discounting 'of,' 'a,' 'the,' and other syntactical particles, is eleven-plus letters in slightly under four syllables. The bibliography is longer than the dissertation and cites three papers of each member of my committee and four of the chairman, and those citations are quoted in part-while avoiding any mention of matters on which I knew that members of the committee held divergent (but equally stupid) opinions.

             "But the best touch was to get permission to do field work in Europe and have it count toward time on campus; half the citations were in foreign languages, ranging from Finnish to Croatian-and the translated bits invariably agreed with the prejudices of my committee. It took careful quoting out of context to achieve this, but it had the advantage that the papers were unlikely to be on campus and my committee were not likely to go to the trouble of looking them up even if they were. Most of them weren't at home in other languages, even easy ones like French, German, and Spanish.

[....]

            'Five months later I was awarded the degree of doctor of philosophy, summa cum laude, And that, dear ones, is the shameful story of my life, Anyone have the energy to go swimming?"

             "Son, if there is a word of truth in that, it is indeed a shameful story.

"            "Pop! That's not fair! Zebadiah used their rules-.-and outsmarted them!"

             "I didn't say that Zeb had anything to be ashamed of. It is a commentary on American higher education. What Zeb claims to have written is no worse than trash I know is accepted as dissertations these days. His case is the only one I have encountered wherein an intelligent and able scholar-you, Zeb- set out to show that an 'earned' Ph.D. could be obtained from a famous institution-I know which one!-in exchange for deliberately meaningless pseudoresearch. The cases I have encountered have involved button-counting by stupid and humorless young persons under the supervision of stupid and humorless old fools. I see no way to stop it; the rot is too deep. The only answer is to chuck the system and start over." My father shrugged. "Impossible."

---Robert A. Heinlein. The Number of the Beast (1980)

A Brief History of the Quarrel of Philosophy and Poetry

From Plato and Aristotle to the 18th century, literature submitted to the judgment of philosophy.

We then had 140 years of Romanticism, from Rousseau to Nietzsche, with literature on top.

Then 70 or so years of modernism: literature on top in the West, philosophy in the guise of Marxist theory on top in the Communist block.

Then 40 years of postmodernism, from Foucault and Derrida to 9-11: philosophy on top once again.

Since 9-11, Chaos Years, culminating in the conquest and occupation of literature by Woke Theory. 

Trouble is that the best of woke contemporary stuff would have been turned down for lack of talent by the Union of Soviet Writers. 

{Note that who rules does not determine literary merit (pace the Romantics): 

Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare and Molière were under the thumb of Plato and Aristotle; Coetzee the po-mo is the equal of both the great modernist writers and the great modernist critics}

Five Rules for Conservative Culture Warriors

1. Reinforce victory (on, say, abortion, where the culture shifted a long way from Fast Times at Ridgemont High to Juno)

2. Know the other side's arguments better than they do.

3. Always challenge -- never back down -- except in the face of superior reason (my conduct in the academy since I entered college at 15).

4. When accused of something, your first impulse should be to admit it.

5. Study the abuse of power not just to protest abuse but to learn how to gain and keep power.