Policy analysis -- paranoid style

[barb162]

Policy analysis -- paranoid style
March 29, 2006

IN HIS CLASSIC 1964 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," the late Richard Hofstadter noted: "One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is the contrast between its fantasied conclusions and the almost touching concern with factuality that it invariably shows. It produces heroic strivings for evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed." As examples, he cited a 96-page pamphlet by Joseph McCarthy that contained "no less than 313 footnote references" and a book by John Birch Society founder Robert Welch that employed "one hundred pages of bibliography and notes" to show that President Eisenhower was a communist.

For a more recent instance of the paranoid style, a modern-day Hofstadter could consult "The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy," a "working paper" by John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. With 83 pages of text and 211 footnotes, the Mearsheimer-Walt essay (part of which appeared in the London Review of Books) is as scholarly as those of Welch and McCarthy — and just as nutty.

Mearsheimer and Walt are out to prove that the "Israel Lobby" has seized control of U.S. foreign policy and thereby "jeopardized not only U.S. security but that of much of the rest of the world."

But their very first footnote demonstrates a terminal lack of seriousness: "Indeed, the mere existence of the Lobby suggests that unconditional support for Israel is not in the American national interest. If it was, one would not need an organized special interest group to bring it about." By that standard, Social Security, the 2nd Amendment and Roe vs. Wade must not be "in the American national interest" either, because they are all defended by even more powerful lobbies.
snip

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-boot29mar29,0,7274839.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

[Englander]

1. Wtf? Is this meant to be satire? n/t

[Andromeda]

2. No.

[Englander]

3. Y'sure?

About the author;


'Max Boot

Council on Foreign Relations: Scholar
The Weekly Standard: Contributing editor
Project for the New American Century: Signatory

Max Boot, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations and former editor for The Wall Street Journal, occupies the extremist end of the neoconservative ideological spectrum. While figures like William Kristol and Robert Kagan call for a “benevolent hegemony,” Boot flat out states that the United States should “unambiguously . . . embrace its imperial role.”

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1042

[Violet_Crumble]

4. Popcorn time!

I'm getting a sense of deja vu here. I'm going to sit back and munch away coz someone's bound to arrive claiming that yr link is wrong and that Max Boot is really impartial politically...

:popcorn:

Violet...

[Englander]

5. Yeah, it's deja vu all over again. n/t

[Name removed]

7. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Englander]

6. Kick for barb. n/t

[Englander]

15. ~~

[bemildred]

8. Boot is a propagandist.

A brief critique:

1.) He conflates AIPAC and it's minions with support for Social Security, and claims there is a Social Security "lobby" that is bigger than AIPAC. This is intentionally disingenuous; there is an important distinction to be made between programs and policies that have wide support from the public based on direct self-interest, and those that are supported by professional advocacy and lobbying organizations, which are questionable in their value to the wider public interest of the nation (which is the issue at hand here.)

2.) He then says: "It's true that the U.S. has paid a price for supporting Israel, but it has paid an even bigger price for supporting other embattled allies", which admits the basic point of the Harvard study.

3.) He everywhere conflates the study authors with David Duke, McCarthy, and the like, an offensive smear, that is most unbecoming in someone who has just been belaboring the authors for their academic method and reasoning.

[Coastie for Truth]

9. The real lobby sucking away at America like a cancer

is the - spreading it's like "" and an in and what a - but they leave out the frivolous patent law suits against entrepreneurial developers and their habit of buying up little companies, laying off their scientists, and sitting on their patents.

Compare the the with PNAC's - the congruence is amazing -- of course why shouldn't it be with Carlyle Group and George Herbert Bush and George Walker "Harkin Oil" Bush and Dick "Halliburton" Cheney and Jim "Baker and Botts" Baker?

HAD ENOUGH?

COMPETENCE COUNTS!

REMEMBER IN NOVEMBER (2006 AND 2008)

[bemildred]

10. It's not really about AIPAC, it's about Boot and the OP.

I am well aware of the "Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt", or "FUD", approach to Public Relations issues, it is very popular with both politicians and corporate flacks, but the API did not invent it. In any case it's as popular with AIPAC as with anyone.

[Coastie for Truth]

11. Tell that to our soon to be jobless

135,000 UAW brothers and sisters - GM. Detroit and Houston peddled the API crap -- and lobbied hard. And the Dem's fear of the "Macomb County (MI) Reagan Democrats." All oil lobbying.

[bemildred]

12. Surely you admit that I know what I was speaking about? nt

[Coastie for Truth]

13. Half right - No cigar

And you have to admit -- as an alternative energy guy with 7 years in MoTown and 50 years in the Dem Party - I know what I am talking about.

[bemildred]

14. I can assure you I was talking about Boot and the OP, not AIPAC.

It's true that Boot brings up AIPAC, but I was talking about him and his argument.
It's nice you admit I must know something about what I meant.