Nation piece about J Street and such mentions me in a complimentary light. Woo.

I’m trying to think about this a bit since I’m going to be speaking at the J Street Conference pretty soon. One thing that I think is underdiscussed in this context is the domestic political shifts in Israel. I got the lion’s share of my Zionist indoctrination in the early-to-mid 1990s. At that time, the peace process was a hot-button partisan political controversy in Israel. And the incumbents were the pro-peace, secular, social democratic Labor Party. For the members and leaders of a Reform synagogue in Greenwich Village, it was obvious that to be “pro Israel” meant to be supportive of the pro-peace, secular, social democrats who ran Israel. That also meant being sympathetic to their partners in the Arab world (moderate PLO leaders, the King of Jordan, the government of Egypt) and being hostile to their antagonists on the Greater Israel right. Hostile as well, of course, to the suicide bombers and murderers of innocent Jews.

But being supportive of Israel had relatively little to do with adopting a favorable stance toward tribal nationalism and violence. Yitzhak Rabin and Anwar Sadat were, in some sense, on the same side—the side of peace, reason, and negotiation—while their respective murderers were on the side of violence, fanaticism, nationalism, and war.

Today, though, Israeli politics consists primarily of a debate between two factions of the right-wing opposition to Rabin. The country is governed by what amounts to a right-wing splinter faction from the right-wing party in alliance with a further right-wing party. Obviously, a dramatic rightward lurch is something a democracy is allowed to engage in. But for an American raised on an Oslo-era vision of Israel, working in a context where US politics is moving away from aggressive nationalism it’s a disorienting situation.

Some decent thoughts from John Quiggin on the general subject of “contrarianism.”

I think from a standpoint of pure rhetoric the key issue here is that you need to correctly identify the status quo. If your position is that we should allow people polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gasses to continue doing so unchecked, then you’re reenforcing the status quo. That’s fine. Sometimes the status quo is right. Sometimes all the money and political expediency and the overwhelming biases of the political system are on the right side. But still, if you take up the side of the status quo and join forces with the politically and economically powerful, you don’t get to don the mask of the bold truth-teller willing to speak out against ingrained prejudice. And you see this kind of thing a lot—people who want to both argue that gender inequality is the result of innate, ineradicable biological differences and who also want to pretend that they’re being incredibly brave for taking a bold stand in favor of existing inequities.

At any rate, Felix Salmon notes an instance of sloppy work for the purpose of slamming environmentalists from back in the original Freakonomics. It just wasn’t on a particularly high-profile subject of public debate.

One of the reasons Levitt & Dubner give for thinking that avoiding catastrophic global climate change via binding emissions reductions isn’t workable is “the fact that greenhouse gases do not adhere to national boundaries.” In other words, the fact that there’s a difficult coordination problem. And it’s true, there is a tricky coordination problem. That said, one shouldn’t actually overstate the degree of difficult coordination involved. The fact of the matter is that global economic output is pretty highly concentrated. Look up the IMF’s figures for 2008 GDP and you’ll see that the United States and the EU together account for a majority of the world economy:

The dropoff after the big four is pretty enormous with Russia, Canada, and Brazil clocking in at around a third the size of the Chinese economy. Realistically from a legitimacy point of view you’re not going to see those four large economies get together on an agreement and then coerce everyone else into following suit. But coordinated and determined coercion by those four—or even by the US and EU alone—could probably be made to work. More realistically you can go from a Big Four to a Big Eight that includes Russia, Brazil, India, and Indonesia and you’re looking at about all the coordination that’s needed. A Canada or South Korea or Mexico or Cambodia isn’t in a position to play spoiler and just refuse to play by whatever general set of rules fit high-, medium-, and low-income countries.

Back to Levitt & Dubner, for some reason they write during the course of this discussion that “the United States has in recent years sporadically attempted to lower its emissions,” which is false, and then implies that the issue is that China and India won’t go along. It’s true that we could wind up in a situation where Sino-Indian recalcitrance is the key obstacle to progress, but in reality the United States of America, historically speaking by far the largest contributor to the problem, has made no attempt to lower its emissions. Nor has the USA made any effort to play a constructive role in solving the global coordination problem. Fortunately, thanks to the Waxman-Markey bill that’s passed the House, the Kerry-Boxer bill pending in the Senate, and the looming negotiations in Copenhagen that stuff might change. But it won’t if people listen to Levitt & Dubner and give up in advance, concluding that past efforts have failed when in fact no efforts have been made.

Paul Krugman writes: “I almost wonder whether Karen Ignagni is a progressive mole; that AHIP study has turned out to be extremely helpful to the other side.”

This is actually a more plausible theory than you might think. Look at her bio:

Prior to joining AAHP in 1993, Ms. Ignagni directed the AFL-CIO’s Department of Employee Benefits. In the 1980s, she was a Professional Staff Member on the U.S. Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, preceded by work at the Committee for National Health Insurance and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

What’s the Committee for National Health Insurance? Well:

The Committee for National Health Insurance was organized in 1969 through the efforts of UAW President Walter P. Reuther. After the passage of Medicare in 1965, enthusiasm for further health insurance changes waned. Escalating costs and competing health care made it increasingly difficult for the UAW leadership to improve health care benefits for their members through collective bargaining. The CNHI, a lobbying organization independent of, but closely affiliated with the UAW, conducts research and prepares legislation in support of national health insurance.

CNHI was primarily active in the 1970s and was formally disbanded in 1988.

The specifics of the case aside, it does seem like a strong-willed individual or two could do an enormous amount of good by infiltrating corporate advocacy organizations.