Population: One

I’m not sure why Blix’s latest comments haven’t gotten more play. I think that when Blix says “We feel that Iraq must do more than they have done so far in order to make this a credible avenue,” that it behooves us to take note. He is in fact agreeing at least in part with the US claims that Iraq has not demonstrated that they have disarmed.

This is, in my book, exceedingly good news — we want the various parties interested in the sanctions to agree on the current state of affairs. If it’s generally accepted that Iraq is ignoring UN sanctions, the matter becomes much clearer, and you have common ground on which to base any further discussion. It’s hard to have a rational argument about what happens next when you can’t even agree if the milk is spilt.

Mind you, there is still discussion to be had subsequent. C.f. John Le Carre’s op-ed, in which he explicitly says he wants Saddam gone even though he disagrees with Bush’s methods. The dissension on method but not on goals is perhaps overly complicated; certainly Lileks missed it. (Hint: when the man says he would love to see Saddam’s downfall, that’s probably an indication that he doesn’t like Saddam’s policies, including the ecological diaster’s Saddam’s caused.)

This does sort of make people who predicted Blix would never find fault with Iraq look silly. That’s the risk of partisan punditry, though.

People occasionally accuse me of being a sensible liberal, or likely to lose my liberal blogger badge. This is pretty warming, since I don’t really think of myself as a liberal; I think of myself as an anarchocapitalist hampered in his desire for untrammeled freedom by the practicalities of realpolitik. I.e., if I could push a button and remove all government from the world, I wouldn’t do it. I think that, unpaired with some serious education about enlightened self-interest, the results would be very bad. In the interim, I tend to lean towards the left, because I think the left is somewhat more likely to preserve the freedoms I care the most about without imposing the restrictions I find most distasteful.

However, now and again I feel obliged to say something really contrarian, so here goes. I am utterly, 100% serious about this:

James Lileks is the conservative Michael Moore.

This post does an excellent job of summarizing and linking to various reactions to Lessig; I recommend keeping an eye on it over the next few days.

Lessig has posted the opinions in Eldred vs. Ashcroft. Here’s the majority decision, here’s Stevens’ dissent, and here’s Breyer’s dissent.

Lessig reports that the Supreme Court has rejected the Eldred challenge to the Sonny Bono law, 7-2. John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer dissented. More details as this develops.

Another interesting DoD briefing yesterday, this one on the all-volunteer armed forces. Obviously, this was prompted by Rangel’s draft proposal. Worth reading, for some interesting statistics.

The most interesting point is that black Americans join the military in a proportion roughly equivalent to the proportion of blacks in society as a whole; the 30% number we’ve heard a lot about is due to the fact that blacks tend to remain in the military at a higher rate than do other ethnicities. Seems to me that the question to ask, therefore, is not “why are there so many black people in the military” but “why is the military such a superior alternative to the rest of society in so many cases?” Maybe it’s something the military is doing; maybe the rest of society just sucks harder. Probably a combination of both. I’d like to see more investigation of this, in any case; I bet there’s something to be learned there.

Also of interest: “Now, college graduate or higher, 22 percent of our enlisted recruits — this goes directly to some of the issues Mr. Rangel is raising, have a father who has a college degree or more, versus 30 percent of the recruit age population. And I’m quite confident once we add the officers in, you’ll see those numbers — that gap between those numbers close. Bottom line, look at this classic measure of socioeconomic status, and enlisted recruits alone, before we even add the officers in, don’t look all that different from the recruit-age population at large.” Actually, a 25% difference does look pretty different to me.

“Now, in terms of median income, for whites — now again, this is enlisted versus – and this is against the entire civilian population, so it’s not quite the right comparison. But for whites, the median total gross household income in 1999 for our enlisted population was about $33,500, versus $44,400 for the civilian population.” Again, pretty substantial difference. This is without the officers included in the figures, though, which as he mentions is important for this comparison. Hopefully they’ll get those figures out soon.