Show me some Spine: “In any case, Herf’s posting on why so many did not recognize or wish to acknowledge the peril Nazism posed to civilization is well worth reading. But his real point seems to me to be the virtual identity of this phenomenon in the thirties and the eagerness of many right now to deny or underplay the menace that Ahmadinejad and, for that matter, Hugo Chávez are to liberal society.”

How Chavez has managed to go from continuing Venezuela’s longstanding tradition of semi-authoritarian rule (yes, it may shock some to learn this, but the country wasn’t a model liberal democracy even before el diablo himself came to power there) and implementing arguably unwise and unsustainable economic policies to being a menace to liberal society is a great mystery to me. Venezuela’s a second-rate country, power politics-wise, by Latin American standards. It doesn’t even rise to the order of being able to threaten Brazil or Argentina or Chile or Mexico, much less liberal society as such.

At any rate, you might have read my brilliant post on the “lessons of history” when I was guest-writing Talking Points Memo, but it’s still true today. There surely are lessons to be learned from the history of Europe in the 1930s. But there’s simply no reasonable basis for the belief that history supports the view that it’s a good idea to take a maximally alarmist view of each and every thing that happens. After all, nobody looks back at the events of 1937-39 and says “if only the West’s leaders had been more alarmist about the USSR.”

Cliff May really is a fool: “And had the US not toppled Saddam Hussein, these people now enlisting as terrorists would be doing what right now? Enrolling in law school, watching football games, and investing in 401K’s?”

This is just silly. Radicalization is a complicated process with multiple stages. No doubt there are lots of people, had the US not invaded Iraq, would have had more-or-less positive views of American foreign policy who are now sitting around stewing about the evils of the United States. And there are other people who, had we not invaded, would be sitting around stewing about the evils of the United States who are, instead, taking up arms against us. There are also bound to be some people who were already committed radicals who used to think the focus belonged on the “near enemy” — Arab apostate dictatorships — who now agree that there’s a Zionist/Crusader alliance that’s pulling the strings in the region and needs to be targeted.

You’re talking about millions of people — hundreds of millions, probably, if not billions — all over the world who have each in their own way been pushed a notch or two in the direction of hostility to the United States of America. This should be obvious. Massively unpopular actions have consequences. In particular, the United States has unmatched military power. This is, potentially, something that people everywhere — Muslims or not — could find threatening. Insofar as we used that power in a way that others regarded as reasonable, though, nothing was likely to happen. Insofar as we’ve started using in ways that most people regard as utterly unreasonable and that many — especially including Muslims in this instance — regard as being hostile to their interests and those of their co-religionists, there’s going to be a price to be paid. That includes more terrorists, more terrorist sympathizers, and fewer and fewer people interested in helping us fight the terrorists.

I was unsure whether I should write about this, since it’s kind of delicate, but the conclusion of Mark Kleiman’s Rosh Hashanah post has inspired me:

Personally, I identify as Ashkenazi. The Zionist project has much to be said for it, but it’s not especially my project. I don’t regard visiting Jerusalem as an ascent, and in my opinion the Holy One (blessed be He), desiring that there be a national home for the Jews, in His infinite wisdom and mercy created Long Island.

A bit flip, to be sure, but something I fundamentally agree with. By contrast, my most recent visit to Temple Rodef Shalom with my aunt, uncle, and cousins in Northern Virginia made me genuinely uncomfortable along a variety of dimensions, despite it being a totally standard Reform synagogue seemingly populated by the same none-too-observant Askenazi liberals as all the others I’ve attended. Let me count the ways . . . well, there were really only three.

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Really the craziest idea to strike America’s governing class in the 21st century has been that we could improve intelligence by wildly lowering the evidentiary thresholds required for various sorts of action. No more need to demonstrate probable cause. Coercived interrogations now permitted. Hearsay’s in, confronting your accusers is out. The idea of all this, I suppose, is that it will generate more information. Which, of course, it will. Much more. But it will also be much less accurate information. Which brings us back to the tragic tale of Maher Arar:

When the United States sent Maher Arar to Syria, where he was tortured for months, the deportation order stated unequivocally that Mr. Arar, a Canadian software engineer, was a member of Al Qaeda. But a few days earlier, Canadian investigators had told the F.B.I. that they had not been able to link him to the terrorist group.

And guess what — turns out they “had not been able to link him” to the terrorist group because he had nothing to do with terrorism. They kidnapped, deported, and tortured the guy all for nothing. And just imagine if he had “broken” under torture and “confessed” to his involvement in an al-Qaeda plot directed by the government of Iran. Just imagine how excited some folks in the OVP would be about that “information.” And then off we go to war! To think you should run a country this way, you’d have to ladel an extraordinary level of stupidity atop the basic layer of crass imorality.

As part of its awesome attempt to make large-scale public policy based on a mixture of cynicism and ignorance, the Republican Party in its wisdom created a presciption drug benefit for Medicare recipients featuring a “doughnut hole” in the coverage. They wanted the program to be universal, and therefore popular, so every senior with any drug expenses — even if they’re really cheap — gets some coverage. They also wanted the program to save money. But they didn’t want to save money through any methods that might imperil the financial interests of pharmaceutical companies or insurance firms. So they made the benefit actually phase out as your costs grow, which is the reverse of how an insurance program is supposed to work. Then if your costs get super-high, the benefits come back.

Lurking in the middle, though, is the doughnut hole and people aren’t happy about it. This is going to be important politically. The GOP essentially sold its soul to pass this bill and win votes from seniors, but they’re also the bought-and-paid-for stooges of the private health care industry. If they can manage to please both constituencies at once, they’re in pretty good shape. If not, then not.