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Jonah’s in a professorial mood on today’s nerdtastic Ruminant, which features disquisitions on censorship, pragmatism, ...

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Jonah’s in a professorial mood on today’s nerdtastic Ruminant, which features disquisitions on censorship, pragmatism, and vestigial partisanship (be sure you tune in to find out what the latter actually means). Also included in this weekend’s potpourri is a lengthy discussion of Stephen Breyer’s retirement and Joe Biden’s pledge to appoint an African American woman to the Supreme Court. Plus, for those still confused by Jonah and Charlie Cooke’s argument about Congress during the Anglo-Floridian’s appearance on the program this week, there’s a detailed explanation of how the two disagree. 

Show Notes: 

– The Wednesday G-File

– Adam J. White on the Commentary podcast

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  1. Avatar photo
    Probably Wrong

    I agree with Jonah that Charlie has been more forgiving of the Right’s problems than he ought to have been during the Trump years. Nevertheless, Cooke has the better half of this argument, and here is why:

    Jonah is correct to identify that gridlock and the absence of release valves for partisan absolutism has led to our discourse getting dumber and more fractious and has given rise to Josh Hawley. However, removing the cause for something doesn’t remove the thing. Now that we are where we are, the protections afforded from majoritarianism by the federal system are needed most direly, because we have two utterly moronic political parties running that system. We can release this pressure by devolving power to the states, but leaving power centralized in Congress and then taking the brakes off to let the inmates run the asylum will not make Josh Hawley any less Josh Hawley. It will only empower Josh Hawley while the centralization of federal authority spins the outrage machine ever faster.

    “Look at what Josh Hawley did now that there is no filibuster. We Democrats must oppose the GOP in ever more dumb, extreme, and absolute ways. It’s the only way to survive!!”

    Tl;dr Jonah: you’re right about how we got here, but not every problem is reversed by simply doing the opposite of one thing that contributed to it all at once. We have been deep in political pressure and stupidity for a long time, but if we surface all at once we will die of The Bends. Do not empower Marjorie Taylor Greene in the naive hope that the responsibility will transmute her into someone sane.

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    Michelle O

    I loved the mini rant on the insanity of librarians. A couple clarifications: it's the American Library Association, not the National Library Association and the librarian at the small town library has a Master's in library science too. That is all throat-clearing to say that yes, the profession is "nuts" (to use a technical term) and that, like all things, there is no monocausal explanation for why.

    I'm an academic librarian and I have a theory I like to call the "librarian inferiority complex:" in a nutshell, they feel inferior to teaching and research faculty because a) they often are and b) as a society we don't really value generalists anymore and librarians are generalists in a specialized world. Add to that it's one of the lower-paid professions that requires a Master's, and you have a recipe for radicalism. They are radicalizing themselves into obscurity.

    I could go on for much longer but I'll spare everyone!

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    Antebellum Whig

    I very much enjoyed this one and would be sure to listen to (and share) any thumb-suckery you do in the future on philosophical pragmatism.

    one quibble: Nietzsche wasn't said to "philosophize" with a hammer; he said it himself in Twilight of the Idols.

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    Jim McC

    I really enjoyed the debate with Charlie, but I suspect some of the confusion stems from the fact that the impetus for the argument about our political/cultural negative feedback loop was Jonah's trial balloon for compulsory voting, and I was waiting for the conversation to wander back there. I think I agree with Jonah on the underlying problem (and I believe Charlie does for the most part as well, though he is more sanguine about Trump's lasting impact). However, i didn't really see the linkage between the problem and the proposed solution, and i think that would have clarified the disagreement, which was sharper on that point.

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    Chris Jenkins

    I was just thinking last week that it had been a while since Lyman Stone had been on the pod and that it would be nice to hear from him again. Good timing with having him on next week.

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    Theirn Scott

    Anytime you want to talk about philosophy, I'm in, especially if you're going to help me understand Nietzsche.

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    George.Skinner

    My understanding of the disagreement of Charlie Cook's and Jonah's disagreement was basically that Cook was pointing to how Congress responded to the various challenges of the Trump years to say "hey look, don't worry - it's working." Jonah was trying to point out that changes in how Congress operates suggests we can't assume it'll continue to work. On the whole, I think Jonah's got the better point. If political history is a curve, you've got to look at the first and second derivatives to extrapolate where it's going.

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    Joel Stewart

    I'm 100% in on the The Adventures of Man-Chin

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    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    The most shameful treatment of a recent SCOTUS nominee by the GOP was that accorded Harriet Miers.

    EDIT: After following the link to the Commentary Podcast with JPod, Adam White, et al., I was gratified to hear Mr. White make this very same point (at 39:30)!

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    1. Avatar photo
      Antebellum Whig

      Miers is doubtless an accomplished lawyer and a creditable human being, but the negative reaction was well warranted for at least these reasons: 1) more than any nomination in my lifetime, she looked like someone being put on the court to be a reliable vote for the president's policies regardless of their legal merit. that ought to be a troubling prospect no matter the president. 2) conservative jurists wanted and expected someone with real gravitas - someone who couldn't be dismissed as a mere political lackey. that's what made Scalia in particular so important. 3) it might not be entirely fair to say she was "Unqualified" but calling her "relatively lightly qualified" I think fails to do justice to the deep gap between her credentials and many, many others.

      the GOP was right to put its foot down on this one. as I say, she seems a very fine person, but she was a terrible choice.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

        I disagreed with your view then, and I disagree with it now. It's obviously now a moot subject, but if you're curious why I think, for example, that it's spectacularly unfair and factually incorrect to dismiss her as a political lackey, I refer you to what I wrote in October 2005, starting with this post (the first of about three dozen I wrote while her nomination was pending), from which you can scroll forward chronologically: https://www.beldar.org/beldarblog/2005/10/the_miers_nomin.html

        Probably the best summary of my own arguments was in my Fisking of a particularly unfair editorial published by NRO, which is here: https://www.beldar.org/beldarblog/2005/10/i_present_witho.html

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          Antebellum Whig

          thanks for the link. I think I see your point but fundamentally disagree.

          Personal loyalty to W and his reciprocal trust are not credentials I or most jurisprudential conservatives prize highly. W is a decent man and was probably a better president than many (me included) thought at the time, but he had his limitations.

          just to reiterate: I'm not passing any judgment on Ms Mirrs who as you note is very accomplished.

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            Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

            You literally just did pass judgment. But whatever.

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    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    My jaw dropped less than two minutes into this podcast.

    Contra Mr. Goldberg, I consider Justice Breyer to have been a consequential SCOTUS Justice IF ONLY for the fact that he and David Souter, from what was then the SCOTUS' reliably progressive wing, joined in the portion of the SCOTUS' decision in Bush v. Gore which found that the Florida Supreme Court was violating Dubya's federal constitutional rights — making that a 7/2 ruling. Souter & Breyer disagreed regarding the per curiam majority opinion's REMEDY. But I'm very hard pressed to think of a more consequential decision during Justice Breyer's tenure on the SCOTUS than Bush v. Gore, and I think his joinder in Bush v. Gore's main holding from his position as a progressive Justice nominated by Bill Clinton was very consequential, even though it wasn't strictly necessary to the majority's ultimate disposition of the case. IT MADE LIARS OUT OF EVERYONE ON THE LEFT WHO INSISTED THAT BUSH V. GORE WAS A PURELY PARTISAN DECISION. (Sorry to shout.)

    From the per curiam opinion (531 U.S. at 111):

    ===begin quote===
    Seven Justices of the Court agree that there are constitutional problems with the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court that demand a remedy. See post, at 134 (Souter, J., dissenting); post, at 145-146 (Breyer, J., dissenting). The only disagreement is as to the remedy.
    ===end quote===
    Link: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=2298973060085224552

    I know Mr. Goldberg knows this; I'm not sure if we just have different standards for what it means to be a consequential Justice, or if he'd just forgotten Breyer's votes in Bush v. Gore.

    [EDIT:] Having now listened to the linked podcast from Commentary, in which Mr. Goldberg's very astute AEI colleague Adam J. White said (my paraphrase) that Justice Breyer didn't author any great landmark opinions or lead any major shifts in doctrine during his tenure on the SCOTUS, I'm now guessing that that may have influenced, or simply be congruent with, Mr. Goldberg's opinion that Justice Breyer wasn't "consequential."

    I don't disagree with Mr. White, nor with Mr. Goldberg (if he agrees with Mr. White). But by the (entirely defensible) standards Mr. White was using to grade Justice Breyer's tenure, neither would Ruth Bader Ginsburg be "consequential." Writing a great landmark opinion or leading a major shift in doctrine is a pretty high bar. Nevertheless, if you ask me what the most undeniably consequential SCOTUS opinion in my lifetime (born 1957) has been, it's Bush v. Gore by a wide margin. And so I adhere to my opinion: Justice Breyer was a consequential Justice EVEN IF ONLY for his votes in that case.

    Of course, neither Mr. Goldberg nor Mr. White mentioned Breyer's role in that case in these respective podcasts, although I am very, very sure both of them know it. I don't know if they would dispute, or simply leave unchallenged, my concept of consequentiality here, but I'm probably just quibbling. Which wouldn't be the first time, nor will it be the last.

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    1. Sean

      My guess is Jonah just forgot about that, because Breyer did not write that decision. But yeah, I've always thought it is disingenuous to say Bush v. Gore was a 5-4 decision when it was really 7-2.

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