David Ernst Chats with the World

President Bush is apparently on a speaking tour of the US, and apparently the focus is on this “domestic spying” issue. He’s talking a lot about how important it is that we listen to these people, because they are suspected terrorists, and we need to interfere with the terrorists’ plots. I’m ok with all of that, and I suspect most people are. Everyone knows that the FBI uses wire taps and lots of other things to spy on suspects.

The question is not “why are you listening to these conversations?”

The question *is* “why didn’t you get a warrant?”

Too slow and cumbersome? He’s been doing this for years! He’s re-authorized this repeatedly, several times per year, for years. If he were saying “Yes, right after Sept. 11, we wanted to start this program immediately, so I authorized it before we had the warrant because I felt that our national security was on the line” I don’t think anyone would be bothered. But, come on! If he’s asking us all to believe that it takes years to get an answer from a judge about this, he should come out and say it. But he’s not, he knows it’s not true and we wouldn’t buy it. So, the question remains: “Why didn’t you get a warrant?” Hopefully the Senate will be hammering on *this* question next week.

I do not expect next week’s Senate debate about Samuel Alito’s nomination to the US Supreme Court to be very interesting. Republicans will praise his experience and tout the endorsements from several federal judges (including many who are considered left-of-center) and the American Bar Association. Democrats will criticize him for being conservative, criticize Bush for caving to pressure from the religious right, and note that replacing a relative centrist with someone so far to the right will tip the balance of the court. Republicans will whine that some of them voted for then-nominees Ginsburg and Breyer. Democrats will counter that those nominees were pre-approved by judiciary committee chair Hatch in conversations with Clinton, and Bush certainly didn’t look for a similar level of input from Democrats in the Alito nomination. I doubt any Senators will make this case, but some Republicans somewhere will point out that Bush doesn’t need to seek approval from Democrats, because the Republicans control the Senate.

As far as can see, all of this stuff is simple fact, especially by the standards of public debate. In short: everyone is right about Alito.

Both sides of the abortion debate are right that Roe is much more likely to be overturned under Alito. My personal opinion is that this is not a good thing. That’s one part (only one part) of why I never voted for Bush. The candidates I voted for lost. The Republicans won. Even with the large question marks of the 2000 elections, it’s clear that Republicans held onto control of the Senate in 2002, and even those who question the vote of 2004 have to admit that a majority of voters voted for Bush and the Republicans who won Senate seats. The GOP controls the White House and the Senate. So, why wouldn’t they nominate a conservative?

Somewhere shortly after the 2000 election, Bush stopped calling himself a “uniter, not a divider”. Shortly after the 2004 election, the left stopped joking that Bush was a “uniter” of bring people together against him. The nation is not united, it is divided. In over-simplifed terms, I am on the side of the fence that is not in power right now. But I do not want to be a sore loser. And I hope that Senate Democrats won’t want to be either.

Yes, Senate Dems, make sure that people understand that this is a conservative nominee. Yes, make predictions about how he will vote and describe why you think that it will be bad for our nation. And then, wrap up your presentation, and if you want to, go ahead and vote against him. But don’t act like this is a travesty. This is how the system works. This is democracy in action. We don’t have to like it, and you Senators don’t have to vote for it if you don’t want to. But I don’t see any reason that Alito shouldn’t be confirmed, given his credentials and the support he has in the Senate. And, if he was defeated, the next nominee would be someone similar. If you think this all is against the will of the American people, remind the American people of that next time they are getting ready to visit the polls. And then, maybe, if there’s a Supreme Court vacancy in 2007, Bush will have to get serious input from a Democratic committee chair before he presents a nominee. Or maybe, in 2009, I’ll be referring back to this article when I write about how the Republican minority should limit their complaining about the social liberal nominee before them.
In the mean time, deal.

Theater Reviews:

Our Town Quick Review: This classic American play would work better as a *Twilight Zone* episode.

*Dinner with Friends* Quick Review: It’s rare that drama succeeds so well at creating deep and realistic characters who are neither heroic nor flawed, neither good nor evil, and neither right nor wrong.

It’s not every week one can see live productions of two Pulitzer Prize winning plays in Bloomington. On Friday the 13th, I saw Thorton Wilder’s 1938 classic *Our Town*, which was the debut production of the new Cardinal Theater Company. Then, on Thursday the 19th, Donald Margulies’s *Dinner with Friends* from around the year 2000, and was produced by some weird collaboration between the Bloomington Playrights Project (BPP), the Bloomington Area Arts Council (BAAC, a.k.a. “the Waldron”) and Miro Productions. The contrast between the shows was striking to me, in many ways:

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I’m one those people who was brought up to respect the value of
things. Put a different way, it’s hard for me to get rid of something
if it still works. I drive my cars until they die. I use my
appliances as long as they still work. Etc.

When I visit friends houses, I am often struck by how new much of
their things seem. Take stoves, for instance. It seems like all the
homeowners I know have stoves that are less than 15 years old, and
they have all these crazy features that mine doesn’t have. Mine must
be 40 years old or so. It’s very simple. It’s a gas range, my
biggest complaint about it is that it’s hard to adjust the flame
without having it go out. But, it works, I cook on it happily, and I
just don’t think that spending $500 on a new stove would bring me $500
of happiness. So, I don’t.

Refrigerator, same thing. I’m sure there are other examples, but
really, that’s not the point here. The point is: why is everyone
using such old toilets?

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For quite a while, I’ve been frustrated with how the Whitehouse has handled information about Iraq. Well, yesterday, I’ve gotta say, the President took a step for the better, willingly taking questions from an unscreened audience and giving straight answers. According to this NPR report, Bush surprised the audience when he invited questions after his prepared speech on the US’s Iraq policy. Apparently, the first questioner asked how many Iraqis had been killed in Iraq.

I literally jumped up and down in circles hearing this question. It’s a question I’ve been using as an example of how lame the media has been on Iraq coverage. There was a time, relatively early in the entanglement, that the Pentagon announced that it was no longer going to count Iraqi casualties. That was just about the last I heard about the subject, except for reports from a variety of NGOs, who mostly have their own agendas. The American media, though, seemed to just take the attitude of “Oh, the Pentagon isn’t counting anymore, I guess we won’t report on it anymore.” Twerps…

Anyway, there it was! One brave citizen stood right up and asked the Commander in Chief that very question! I was so pleased. Thank you, whoever that was!

Bush didn’t seem taken back. He seemed impressively composed, actually. I am one who thinks he’s pretty poor at speaking, and especially on the spot, so I was impressed that he didn’t shy away from the question. He gave a straight answer, about as straight as I could imagine, really.

30,000 dead.

He quickly added, again with confident composure, that if he had to make the decision again, he would make the same decision. So, I guess, there’s my answer. If anyone had asked the President the following in 2003, he would have said “yes”:

Mr. President, do you think that the overthrow of Saddam is important enough to justify the sacrifice of 2000 US troops, the serious injury of countless more, and the killing of 30,000 Iraqis, even if no weapons of mass destruction are found, and even if no link between Iraq and the September 11 attacks is found?

Well, I disagreed then, and I still disagree now. The difference of opinion couldn’t be any more stark, really. But, I gotta say, at least I’m glad that he accepted the question and answered it straight on. We just disagree on what justifies the sacrifice of at *least* 32,000 lives… At least ten times the number of people killed in the September 11 attacks, and from a country that wasn’t even involved. I don’t understand how someone believes that to be ok, but our country (led by a bunch of proud followers of Jesus Christ) went ahead and re-elected him. Doesn’t make sense to me, but it is the way it is.

I’m such a nerd. I’m a total goober about civic engagement. Yes, I am one of those people who was glad to get summoned for Jury Duty… in the month of my 36th birthday, now that I’ve spent half of my life as an eligible juror, I finally got my call. Here’s my review of the way that my local government handles this stuff, as well as some general stories about the experience. In general, it was a very positive experience for me, and I don’t think I’m just saying that because I’m such a goober.

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[Glenn Hubbard](http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/ghubbard/) is the Dean of the Columbia University
Graduate School of Business, and was also a member of Bush’s National Economic Council from 2001-2003. I heard this commentary by him on [*Marketplace*](http://marketplace.publicradio.org/) Monday evening. I was bothered quite deeply by it, and should really have written to the show to express my reaction. But, I didn’t do it in time, Thursday is their letter day, so I lose. So, I’ll have to get out my frustrations here.

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As I was about to roll out of town for the ~4 hour drive to Chicago, I visited the library, in a last ditched effort to listen to *Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire* before the movie comes out in November. They didn’t have it. Dang. Well, I still needed something to listen to, so I just browsed.

I saw the audio version of [Ann Coulter](http://www.anncoulter.org/cgi-local/welcome.cgi)’s book [*How to talk to a Liberal (if you must)*](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1400054184/qid%3D1105923271/sr%3D8-1/ref%3Dpd%5Fcsp%5F1/002-3137557-8036860?v=glance&s=books&n=507846). I had seen this book on some best-seller shelf a while ago, and thought “Woah, apparently I should know who this person is”. So, I thought I should learn more. Of course, here was my opportunity, and I didn’t really feel like it. After all, my real goal here was to ease the lonely drive, not to educate myself on current public figures. If it was bad, annoying, etc., what was I going to do?

I kept browsing, and then found [*Michael Moore*](http://www.michaelmoore.com/)’s *Stupid White Men*. To be honest, I never thought I would read this book. Although Moore is certainly a hero to many of my friends, and while I certainly am more inclined to agree with him on political issues than I am someone like Ms. Coulter, he is not a hero of mine… I find many of his tactics offensive, and many of his fundamental ideas don’t appeal to me at all…

But, I thought, maybe I should try an experiment… I’d get both of these books on tape, and then alternate listening to them. They represent what most Americans view as the far, opposite ends of the political spectrum, so much so that I think many people on the left and the right don’t really want to be associated with the one people might naturally associate them with. So, I decided to go for it, also picking up *In the Time of the Comet* by H. G. Wells, in case I couldn’t take it.

Well, basically, I couldn’t take it. I did make it through one tape of each one on the way up there before it just got to be too much, though, so I’ll say a bit about the first couple of chapters of these books and what it was like to listen to them “side-by-side” like that.

Oh, and before the start, in case it’s not obvious, I’m aware that I’m biased in this review, so if you’re tempted to write and tell me that I’m biased, don’t expect a reply.

The first chapter of Coulter’s book was certainly more annoying than what followed. I think the most troublesome thing about it to me is that she talked about liberals as if they are all exactly the same, so if Ted Kennedy did something wrong, then so did I, because she would consider me a liberal. Some of her assertions made me laugh out loud, like that liberals won’t engage in a real argument but instead will only focus on a catch phrase like “Bush Lied”. I can’t help but wonder if she can’t tell if a liberal will argue or not because she wouldn’t give them time to speak. I imagined myself on a talk show with her, and had trouble imagining how I’d be allowed to get a word in edgewise. The official amazon.com review summarizes some of her advice as “don’t be defensive, always outrage the enemy, and never apologize to, compliment, or show graciousness to a Democrat” and while I can’t say that’s an exact quote, I bet she’d think it was at least a fair summation. She offered a few examples of how some Democrats had been rude to Republicans who had shown graciousness. I agree that some of those were rude, but I was not at all convinced that this was the rule rather than the exception.

What’s certainly more striking — and, I must say, more interesting — about her writing is her actual positions on some of the issues of the day. It’s a bit hard to tell her position sometimes, because she is mixing humor with political commentary, which doesn’t bother me, but it’s sometimes hard to tell what’s hyperbole and what’s her actual position (turns out there doesn’t appear to be a website called “ihateanncoulterwithahothothate.com” (I tried google and several variations in case I was remembering it wrong, but I certainly couldn’t find it. If someone can correct me, I’d be most appreciative), but if there was, I’m sure she wouldn’t be seriously believe that the author was trying to present something unbiased).

So, for instance, I bet she doesn’t really think that the US should invade France… Like, I don’t *think* she’d support sending actual American troops to France and actually trying to topple their government. But, it doesn’t matter, because this is a good lead-in to what I have to say that’s positive about her: she presented a nice, thorough argument for why France is not a good friend to the US. I don’t agree with her, but I do respect her for presenting a historical account of all the ways that she thinks that France has hurt the US. During the whole “Freedom Fries” thing, with right-wing Americans pouring french wine down sewers and stuff, I took it as very simplistic frustration with France opposing the Bush administration’s intent to invade Iraq. Coulter’s presentation certainly made more sense than anything I heard anyone say at the time. I could say the same thing, actually, about the case for invading Iraq: I listened to most of Colin Powell’s speech before the UN, to all of Bush’s “Cincinnati” speech talking of the urgency of going into Iraq, and read/heard countless essays advocating that position. None of those made as much sense as Coulter’s presentations. So, nice work, Ann.

But, at the end of the day, I do not feel bad about not ascribing to her feelings about how to deal with Islamic nations: “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” I don’t recall any lip service in what I heard to respecting Islam, or that the majority of Muslims are not terrorists. Her case really seems to be that we should irradicate the religion, not by killing all Muslims, but I guess by killing enough of them to control Islamic countries, and then deliberately converting them to Christianity. No, I don’t see that as good. I believe in the freedom of religion, not just for Americans, but for everyone. Furthermore, I do not see the survival or prosperity of the United States as being fundamentally threatened by this religion. And, I guess I just need a really good reason to think that we should be risking American troops and overthrowing other nations. So, I guess I’m definitely a liberal to her. For this, according to her, I hate my country (I even hate homosexuals!) and I don’t want to engage in reasoned debate. I don’t know, maybe she’d make an exception for me. *chuckle*

Ok, after finishing the first tape of Coulter’s book, I put in Michael Moore. It’s a difficult comparison. I think Moore is probably just as set in his ways as is Coulter, I’m not sure I could say which one is more fundamentally biased. But, the parts of Moore’s book that I heard were much more about bashing the Bush administration specifically, not conservatives in general.

I liked both books best when they were being specific, and the least when they were generalizing. So, Moore went into detail about his understanding of how the Bush team won the 2000 election illegitimately. I don’t know if all of his facts are true or not (I suspect that at least some of them aren’t). But as with Coulter’s France presentation, I appreciated that he was at least presenting a thorough case. And, what can I say, I do think there’s real reason to question the legitimacy of that election. But, hey, that’s ancient history at this point.

I admit that I listened to more of Moore than of Coulter… it is really difficult to listen to someone insult and belittle you for your beliefs and those of people who you associate with. I’d be much more inclined to hear people like Coulter out if I didn’t have to feel like I was being whipped at the same time. But, she’s not writing to me, she’s writing to people who already hate liberals. Perhaps this is why it doesn’t feel like real political discourse.

And, of course, that exact same criticism is true of Moore. I don’t know how many conservatives actually sat through *Farenheit 9/11*, but if they did, they knew that this movie was not made to get them to defect from the GOP… it is an opinion piece, created for people who are already inclined to agree with the author. *Stupid White Men* is the same way. So is *How to talk to a Liberal*.

My favorite part of what I head in *Stupid White Men* was Moore’s talk about black Americans. It was definitely not the standard Democratic party line, or any other standard line. It was quite a bit different than any treatment of the issue I’ve ever heard. Thought-provoking.

Well, anyway, the end of the story is that as I entered Chicago it was time to turn on the radio to hear the results of Patrick Fitzgerald’s news conference, which turned out to be the indictment of Libby, who subsequently resigned. I actually got to hear a good deal of the actual news conference, which totally triggered my “CSPAN Syndrome” (the feeling I get when I’m seeing original political sources live). I loved it. Compared with what I’d just been hearing, it sounded so… calm, so rational, so predictable in its reason. I didn’t feel like I was trying to be convinced to believe something, I felt like I was hearing a report on something. Patrick Fitzgerald did a great job dealing with the press, I thought, giving very consistent answers and refusals to answer all of their questions. I also thought the press did a great job of probing him, trying to get a sense of the things he didn’t want to tell them about.

So, what can I say? I prefer to learn about politics in less venomous ways. I don’t think many people are stupid. I don’t like being called stupid, nor do I like people calling people I disagree with stupid. I do like the American political process. I like it when the press *presses* politicians for information, and I like watching politicians handle these encounters with grace. I like hearing political opinion, too, but I definitely prefer it when it’s presented civily rather than with lots of belittlement of others in the public debate. But, I guess, in the abstract, I’m glad that it all exists. I just know what I prefer.

I just added to this blog [an email that I sent about New Orleans](http://davidernst.net/blog/2005/08/31/too-many-words-about-new-orleans/) that I sent a couple of days after Katrina hit. In it I reference this [Scientific American article from 2001](http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00060286-CB58-1315-8B5883414B7F0000&ref=sciam&chanID=sa006)
that talks about the uniquely bad situation that New Orleans is in, and how something like what just happened was pretty much inevitable. As I say in that post, ever since reading the article, I’ve felt that New Orleans was a catastrophe waiting to happen.

Of all the things that President Bush has said that sound stupid to me, there is presently a clear leader in my mind: “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did appreciate a serious storm but these levees got breached and as a result much of New Orleans is flooded and now we’re having to deal with it and will”. I’ve never even been there, and I anticipated it. I anticipated it because I read practically irrefutable evidence that it was bound to happen, by people who REALLY anticipated it. People devoted their lives to the anticiptation of this disaster. I’ve heard that FEMA considered a major hurricane hitting New Orleans to be one of the three most likely disasters it would have to deal with (here’s a [nice piece about
FEMA’s awareness of the issue](http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2005/09/did_fema_really.html)) . I can only hope that Mr. Bush feels foolish for having said this. Obviously, *he* had not aniticipated the levees being breached. And that is embarrassing.

Anyway, in the previous piece that I wrote, I said that I didn’t know what I thought about rebuilding New Orleans. But now I have a decided opinion: We should build New Orleans again, with full recognition of it’s unique and precarious situation, and make a city that therefore looks completely different than any other American city.

I had pretty much already arrived to this decision when I heard [this interview with Bruce Babbitt](http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=05-P13-00038&segmentID=3), the Secretary of the Interior in the Clinton administration. His rallying cry is that we should build New Orleans as an “American Venice”. While I don’t know if it’s the cry I would choose, I can definitely sign up for that rally.

What we *can’t* do is just build it the same as it was. I mean… duh, right? I fear that the word about this maybe hasn’t gotten out enough. I fear that most Americans are thinking “wow, what a huge storm, I’m glad those don’t happen very often”. Katrina was a huge storm, but it wasn’t the size of the storm that cause the size of the disaster in New Orleans. I hope that people are aware of why there’s all this talk about whether or not the pumps are working in New Orleans. In all likelihood, whatever city you live in does not have pumps. Most of New Orleans would have been part of the lake long ago if it weren’t for the fact that they pump the water out of it. Indeed, you might just call New Orleans a lake that is continuously be drained. From that point of view, Katrina just put water into it faster than they could pump it out.

The situation is bad. Hurricanes are not new. Whether or not they are worse now than they used to be, they have been happening for ages, and they will continue to happen. Another storm of comparable size will hit New Orleans again. It *will* happen. Furthermore, the land area of the delta *is* shrinking. The geography of this place is totally different than where most of us live. The city should be engineered with respect for these indisputable facts.

Really, I’d rather just give up on the city than rebuild it the way that it was. But what I’m proclaiming in this post is that I realize that I’d rather that we do rebuild it, but smartly.

They are talking a federal bill of $200 billion to rebuild after Katrina. I don’t know what portion of that is about New Orleans per se. Let’s just be conservative and say $100 billion. With the US population at about 300 million, that would mean that on average, every man, woman, and child is spending about $333 on this place where almost all of them don’t live. Even as one who’s never been to the place, I still agree with the President and others who talk of the importance of New Orleans to our national character. I wouldn’t go as far as Bush did when he said “there is no way to imagine America without New Orleans”, but while I can imagine the nation without that city, I don’t want to. I’m willing to have a few hundred dollars of my tax dollars spent on this city. No problem. *As long as it’s done right*.

So, I’m trying to build support for the idea. Talk it up with your friends. Let’s build the public conception. I want New Orleans to be built with the idea that it *will* flood again, and that that won’t cause the kind of devastation it did this time. The rebuilt New Orleans should represent human knowledge not just in the brilliance of its engineering, but also human knowledge of the geology and natural forces of the area. I personally know practically nothing about *how* to build it as it should be. I can’t say exactly how to do it right. But there are many people who, as I’ve said, have devoted most of their professional lives to thinking about this problem. Don’t just go in there and build the same old city. New Orleans is not just another city. The land there is nothing like the bedrock that my house rests on. I challenge the federal government, the City of New Orleans, and the people of New Orleans, to impress me and the rest of the world with the rebuilding of the city. Make it in such a way that the city fully respects the natural dangers of its location, so that *when* the next huge hurricane hits, it is not a major disaster. I believe we can take New Orleans off of the short list of most probable disasters.

Let’s do it.

If you don’t live around here (or if you live here but never leave
your bomb shelter) then you might not know that the [Lotus World Music
& Arts Festival](http://lotusfest.org/) is this big deal music
festival in Bloomington. Definitely the biggest event anything like
it in town, they close off streets and get about six venues to all
open their doors to whatever music gets scheduled by the Lotus
organizers. The town starts buzzing. Everyone in my circle of
friends gets really really excited.

Well, almost everyone…

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