Michael Lind, secular humanism and straw men

Up until about three months ago, Salon columnist Michael Lind was pretty much can't-miss in my book on his choice of column topics and the angle he took. Then, he minimized, or worse, Peak Oil issues while also flirting with global warming denialism, and when challenged by a fellow Salon columnist, refused to pull in his horns.

Since then, I have read him more skeptically, and with good reason.

The latest? He takes Paul Kurtz as "The" representative of modern secular humanism, twists to some degree Kurtz's thoughts, and produces a straw man. The subhead for the column says it all:

As fundamentalism gets stronger, post-religious liberalism offers a naive and sentimental creed.

Actually, Lind undercuts himself starting right there. How can a movement that is so reason-heavy and emotion-light as Lind claims be "sentinmental"?

Second, claiming that Kurtz violates David Hume's hoary "is doesn't mean ought" probably stretches things.

Third, the idea that Kurtz, when you have a variety of Gnu Atheists (who would fit Lind's stereotype better), old atheists, agnostics, undefined humanist, etc. out there, is, as someone who is 80-plus and removed from his original base at the Center for Inquiry, "the" representative of secular humanism today is ridiculous and ill-informed.

But, that's not all. Lind then clearly shows his biases by descending into sneering like this:

If the secular humanist creed lasts a millennium, it may well generate more manifestos than the pope has encyclicals.

Lind later admits Kurtz isn't "the" representative, and that Kurtz's utilitarianism isn't "the" moral stance of modern humanism, but that's three-quarters the way down a 1,500-word column.

After that, then, Lind, in saying evolutionary biology offers little hope to secular humanism, commits the EXACT is-ought fallacy he condemns in Kurtz.

He does that in defense of a good question. What about humanists who, unlike Kurtz or P.Z. Myers, are political conservatives, libertarians or even Randians? However, there are much better ways of getting to his issue, and to saying that secular humanism, if it has a broad tent, can make only limited political claims, than the way he actually takes.

Even beyond his Peak Oil/global warming errors, this is easily Lind's worst column I've ever read.

#MichaelLind, liar on #PeakOil and #globalwarming

First, Salon columnist Michael Lind came off sounding like Daniel Yergin, or Julian Simon, Michael Shermer and other cornucopians, claiming there is no such thing as Peak Oil.

In part of the column, he also pooh-poohed the seriousness of global warming.

His colleague at Salon, Andrew Leonard, called him out for these and other issues.

And now Lind has written a non-rebuttal "rebuttal."

It's a non-rebuttal because it starts out by claiming that Leonard has called him a "global warming denialist." And, Michael you put that phrase in quotes, in the header, implying (or so I infer) that you think Leonard called you that.

He nowhere said that Lind was a "global warming denialist." The word "denialist" isn't even in Leonard's column.

So STOP LYING. Andrew Leonard never called you a global warming denialist, despite your claim in your second column.

I never thought I'd see Lind stoop this low.

MichaelLind off base on #globalwarning, #PeakOil too

Sometimes Michael Lind is great; sometimes he's thought provoking. Occasionally he's irritating. This time, he's all three and worse He may be right on the abundance of natural gas, but he's "out there" on an age of future oil abundance. Plus, although not a global warming denier, or even a skeptic of its reality, he appears to be a "minimalist" on its effects.

In sounding like Daniel Yergin, and in making claims for both crude oil and natural gas that even Exxon won't, he's sounding like a utopian, or Kurzweil, or Michael Shermer, with a dash of Bjorn Lomborg thrown in on the global warming side.

It's clear that he's overstating the case for future oil reserves. He should know that King Hubbert made allowances for new technology when he first proposed his ideas on Peak Oil.

He also, while perhaps quite right on natural gas reserves, overlooks the difficulty of converting an entire infrastructure, and not just an occasional filling station, to natural gas pumping. Finally, he ignores the costs of that, and how much more quickly running cars on natural gas would draw down those reserves.

That said, he is right that hyper-abundant natural gas will put the use of renewables for electricity in doubt. But, gas is no panacea on global warming issues. More on that below.

As for coal? Its use for electricity is simply not allowable if we're going to have any reasonable chance of controlling (no, not stopping) global warming. Using coal to produce diesel? It's environmentally dirty and requires massive amounts of water, among other problems.

Finally, he ignores global warming almost entirely in this whole long piece. When not ignoring it, he poo-poos it with a comment like this:

The scenarios with the most catastrophic outcomes of global warming are low probability outcomes -- a fact that explains why the world’s governments in practice treat reducing CO2 emissions as a low priority, despite paying lip service to it.

Big fail. Big fail. Big fail.

I don't know whether or not Lind has read the news from across the pond that there's good research indicating we have a 50-50 chance of a 4C, not a 2C, rise in temperatures by 2100. I suspect, thought, in light of this column, that he'd pooh-pooh that, too, though, even though it means we have a 50-50 chance of a 3F/1.5C rise by 2050, when Lind is likely to be alive.

As for his claim on why politicians are treating CO2 emissions as a low priority? It's not because they think scientifically-backed worst-case scenarios are alarmist; it's because they're craven.

Lind has written enough about politics to know how craven politicians can be, which makes his refusal to take that into account all the worse.

Lind was someone I enjoyed reading. I'll be looking at him with much more skeptical eyes now, assuming he's a semi-neoliberal cornucopian.

Andrew Leonard, his Salon colleague, has the right reaction today; WTF? That said, until/unless Lind admits he bloew it, he's on skeptical probation.


Lind now weakly claims he's "not a global warming denialist." No, just a pooh-pooher of how bad it's going to get.

Right here:

If there were really a clear and present danger of catastrophic overheating ...

Now, "present" isn't in the next 5 years, perhaps. But, a 3F rise by 2050, in the lifetimes of many of us here right now? I'd call that "present" enough. And, catastrophic enough.

Michael Lind, put down the shovel.

Oh, and STOP LYING. Andrew Leonard never called you a global warming denialist, despite your claim in your second column.

Michael Lind, off base on peak oil

Sometimes Michael Lind is great; sometimes he's thought provoking. Occasionally he's irritating. This time, he's all three. He may be right on the abundance of natural gas, but he's "out there" on oil.

In sounding like Daniel Yergin, and in making claims for both crude oil and natural gas that even Exxon won't, he's sounding like a utopian, or Kurzweil, or Michael Shermer.

It's clear that he's overstating the case for future oil reserves. He also, while perhaps quite right on natural gas reserves, overlooks the difficulty of converting an entire infrastructure, and not just an occasional filling station, to natural gas pumping. Finally, he ignores the costs of that, and how much more quickly running cars on natural gas would draw down those reserves.

That said, he is right that hyper-abundant natural gas will put the use of renewables for electricity in doubt. But, if so, especially post-Fukushima, why is he touting nuclear power in the story? He comes off perilously close to being an anti-environmentalist.

Finally, he ignores global warming entirely in this whole long piece. Big fail.

Andrew Leonard, his Salon colleague, has the right reaction today; WTF?

Lind now weakly claims he's "not a global warming denialist." No, just a pooh-pooher of how bad it's going to get.

Right here:

If there were really a clear and present danger of catastrophic overheating ...

Now, "present" isn't in the next 5 years, perhaps. But, a 3F rise by 2050, in the lifetimes of many of us here right now? I'd call that "present" enough. And, catastrophic enough.

Michael Lind, put down the shovel.

Oh, and STOP LYING. Andrew Leonard never called you a global warming denialist, despite your claim in your second column.

Blame Congress for Sachs, and other things

Nothing to argue with in this NYT column; for years, I've excoriated President Clinton and Congressional Dems for their part in killing Glass-Steagall. (It was nice to see the Slickster's belated apology for that earlier this month.)

The other things? Michael Lind notes that bipartisanship led to other deregulatory clusterfucks over the past 30-35 years, most notably airline deregulation.

That said, I'm not as death on airline dereg as him, or I wasn't when I lived in Dallas. It did make travel cheaper for many. Of course, where I am now, in a large town/small city area, it's a bit different.

I'm OK with a VAT if

The "I'm not a neoliberal, but a pale American imitation of a social democrat" Michael Lind is pushing his "radical centrism" idea again.

And, one of the ideas he touts is a value-added tax.

My thoughts?

A VAT is OK if:

You eliminate food, for one thing, and other basic necessities. On the flip side, like some states that have a goods and services tax instead of a sales tax, it MUST tax things like consultation of lawyers and MUST be assessed on corporations, not just individuals.

Lind gives no indication of just how "radical" his VAT ideas are, but, knowing him, I'm guessing the idea is quite possibly limited to individuals and does not include corporations.

That said, his larger conceit?

"Social democracy," even here in the US, is NOT the same as his radical centrism. Though his version of "radical centrism" is better than the corporatacracy's version. Also, while I agree on wanting to move the country to a "post-racial" stance, it isn't actually there yet. And, Lind is a Texas native and should know better. Plus, he gives no indication on how much more aggressive he would be on addressing class-based issues if race is removed from the picture.

A new thought on blacks and Prop. 8

Yes, we can also blame the Mormons, or the Christian Right, but in regards to last November’s vote on Proposition 8 in California, Michael Lind reminds us that, nationally, only 31 percent of black Democrats are OK with gay marriage, combined with 61 percent of white Democrats. Quoting the AP, via Lind:

California's black and Latino voters, who turned out in droves for Barack Obama, also provided key support in favor of the state's same-sex marriage ban. Seven in 10 black voters backed a successful ballot measure to overturn the California Supreme Court's May decision allowing same-sex marriage, according to exit polls for the Associated Press. More than half of Latino voters supported Proposition 8, while whites were split.

It’s part of a Lind story about warning against demonizing Southerners, and a good warnig.

Blacks and Latinos, it appears, are allowed to hold conventionally conservative social views about gay rights, abortion and (in the case of blacks) immigration without being mocked and denounced by elite white liberals in the pages of the Washington Post and Mother Jones, as long as they vote for the Democratic Party on the basis of other issues.

All worth remembering.
-END-

Healthcare blowback after Obama town hall

First, Sam Stein notes that President Barack Obama just doesn’t get Sarah Palin and other wingers.

Here’s the problem, Barry. Not everybody’s hymnal has “Kumbaya” in it. Second, to mash up Nazi Germany and cognitive science, to tell the Big Lie convincingly, you have to tell it to yourself enough, and convincingly enough, that you first believe it for yourself.

That said, ABC’s Kate Snow notes that, on the end-of-life consultations that Palin et al say would be “government-forced euthanasia, hospitals do them right now. Hospice does in a sense. And, if that hospital or hospice is paying that patient’s bill with Medicare, well, then we right now have the government involved with end-of-life issues and no euthanasia.

Finally, Michael Lind says that progressives/liberals need to stop bashing stereotypical Southerners as a class, whether over national heathcare, or over other issues.

Taking direct aim at Kevin Drum, Texas native Lind says his state produced LBJ (set Vietnam aside, please), Barbara Jordan, Anne Richards and Maury Maverick, among others, while Drum’s California was the home of Nixon, Reagan the John Birch Society, Prop. 13 and as late as last year, Prop. 8:

According to Drum: "There are, needless to say, plenty of individual Southern whites who are wholly admirable. But taken as a whole, Southern white culture is [redacted]. Jim Webb can pretty it up all he wants, but it's a [redacted]." …

Drum's creepy bigotry becomes clear when other groups are substituted: "There are, needless to say, plenty of individual blacks who are wholly admirable. But taken as a whole, black culture is [redacted]. Barack Obama can pretty it up all he wants, but it's a [redacted]." Or maybe this: "There are, needless to say, plenty of individual Jews who are wholly admirable. But taken as a whole, Jewish culture is [redacted]. The late Irving Howe can pretty it up all he wants, but it's a [redacted]."

From there, he goes off on Prop. 8, and how stereotypes aren’t always put into place:

Blacks and Latinos, it appears, are allowed to hold conventionally conservative social views about gay rights, abortion and (in the case of blacks) immigration without being mocked and denounced by elite white liberals in the pages of the Washington Post and Mother Jones, as long as they vote for the Democratic Party on the basis of other issues.

Beyond that, there’s always the “why” behind non-stereotypical anger, which is the bottom line of what Obama doesn’t get. After all, besides “Kumbaya,” hymnbooks also contain “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

Healthcare reform – raw deal or New Deal?

At Salon, Michael Lind’s take is that it’s more raw deal. Hard to argue against that, between a 10-year phase-in, blocking Canadian drug imports and extending patent protections as not-so-cheap sops to Big Pharma and so forth.

Lind looks in more detail.

Back in 2001, (Ted) Halstead and I used the ideal of a portable, universal, citizen-based healthcare system as a criterion by which to evaluate different healthcare options. Five major alternatives to the present patchwork system had been discussed during the healthcare debates of the 1990s: single-payer; individual mandate; pay-or-play; a universal employer mandate; and health savings accounts. In practice there are only four options, because health savings accounts are a crackpot libertarian idea that would not work in practice.

He then says Congressional Democratic and Obama Administration plans are a hybrid of three of the four options, with some of the worst choices of each

Unfortunately, the Obama administration and Congress appear intent on giving us a version of pay-or-play, which, though it might solve some problems, from the point of view of advocates of a citizen-based social contract is the worst strategic option for healthcare.

without getting a lot closer to real healthcare portability, which stymies job flexibility.

Make legislative sausage bit by bit

Citing myth vs. reality in omnibus bills of the past, like the Compromise of 1850, Michael Lind makes an argument against omnibus legislation on things like climate change or national healthcare.

Bismarck said that people should not want to know what goes into the making of laws or sausages. Better a plate of Vienna sausages than one monstrous wiener.

Good point.

No more ‘wars of choice’

Michael Lind is exactly right that this needs to be part of a new Democratic “contract with America.” Unfortunately, he’s also right about this:

Unfortunately, the Democratic Party's foreign policy mandarins are ill-prepared for peace. Many centrist Democrats have spent so much time in the last few decades trying to prove that Democrats can be as hawkish as Republicans that they have become hard to distinguish from bellicose neoconservatives.

Beyond that, Lind says both Clinton and Bush II treated Russia and China as though those two countries still had one foot stuck in the Cold War deep freeze (while alternatively pandering to them and trying to outflank them on energy issues at the same time).

In short, a new American internationalism can be practiced without being a zero-sum game of one-upmanship, Lind says.

Lind – stimulus or ‘biggest appropriations bill’?

Michael Lind wants Obama and Congress to keep focus and goals as they discuss an economic stimulus program:

The purpose of the stimulus – getting money into the economy, fast – is lost, if it turns into the world's biggest ordinary appropriations bill, with something to placate every lobby and sect inside the Beltway.

Good thought. Read the full essay, written with Phil Angelides.

Stimulus package highlights.

‘A third Reconstruction’

Michael Lind is right that this is what it will take to get the South to stop its anti-labor, anti-infrastructure, anti-government investments, job-poaching approach to governance.

His suggestions toward that end include:
• Restoring federal revenue sharing;
• Getting a real living wage;
• Replacing the power of state and local economic development corporations (started in the South/Texas) to poach Northern jobs) with a real federal-state partnership.

Read the full story; it’s good.

Michael Lind – first winner in the Obama hagiography watch

Michael Lind has made an early and bold bid to grasp the brass ring, to climb to the rarified air, to officially become an Obama hagiographer.

What the hell kind of purple prose is this? (His, not my lead-in to the link to him.):

The election of Barack Obama to the presidency may signal more than the end of an era of Republican presidential dominance and conservative ideology. It may mark the beginning of a Fourth Republic of the United States.

What next? Obama walking on the Potomac? Obama feeding the masses at the Lincoln Memorial with loaves and fishes?

Obama hagiography, like Punxsutawney Phil, raised its head briefly during the end of the Democratic primary campaign, saw its shadow under the bright sun of the summer doldrums, and went back underground for about four or five months.

Well, it’s apparently safe for it to come out again in post-election fall.

Now, to be halfway fair, I should note that Lind defines his three previous American Republics:

The First Republic of the United States, assembled following the American Revolution, lasted from 1788 to 1860. The Second Republic, assembled following the Civil War and Reconstruction (that is, the Second American Revolution) lasted from 1860 to 1932. And the Third American Republic, assembled during the New Deal and the civil rights eras (the Third American Revolution), lasted from 1932 until 2004.

Fair in citing his definition for the purpose of demolishing it.

The second and third 72-year divisions are arbitrary, though the first one certainly isn’t. The second one is the most arbitrary. There is no overriding philosophy running through it, unlike the “America of the Founders” for the first one, and, just perhaps, the “New Deal and its aftermath” for the third.

Plus the third segment is artificial in that Lind arbitrarily makes it 72 years instead of 76.

He does that to prop up a weird and weak claim that each “republic” can be subdivided into 36-year halves. He protests he’s not about astrology, which I’m not claiming.

He does seem to be about numerology, though.

And, on the second page, Lind further undercuts himself by saying the 2004 election was a fluke.

What if Kerry had been a marginally better candidate? And won?

Don’t tell me, Michael Lind, you’d be honoring John Kerry for starting the Fourth Republic.

Michael, there's not enough bat guano in all the South Pacific for you to fertilize the idea that you'd have written this same story about Kerry.

This is about Obama hagiography first, history second. (Or pseudohistory in the service of Obama hagiography.)

Michael Lind attempts a neolib rehabilitation of Jesse Helms

And fails, even with shoddy straw men. Here’s the biggest one of those:

So much for media. Money? Progressives denounced big money in politics as plutocracy, until they discovered they could raise more than conservatives. All the talk of "small donors" aside, most liberal money comes from affluent people. MoveOn.org and other soft-money organizations, whether they like it or not, are the children of Jesse Helms' Congressional Club.

Uhh, Michael, to the best of my memory, Helms never was a “player” on the issue of government regulation of campaign finance, either for it or against it.

Lind then blames Helms, via Limbaugh, for the coarsening of liberal talking heads media:

A case can be made that Helms the radio showman and other conservative media demagogues pioneered the ascendant style of liberal discourse. In the last decade, Democratic donors and activists, pondering the success of the Southernized right, decided that what the liberal left needs is not a new message but better messengers — which meant an often conscious attempt to replicate the successful institutions of the right. And so we get someone like Keith Olbermann, who may admire Edward R. Murrow but whose hectoring owes more than we’d like to admit to Limbaugh, and therefore Helms.

Obstructionist? Indeed, Helms was. Hectoring? I wouldn’t use that word of him.

Influencing anybody’s media style, let alone Limbaugh’s? Not at all.

Did Helms influence, along with others, Limbaugh’s content? Hell, yes. But that’s entirely different than style.

I have no idea what corner of his brain Lind used to bake up these ideas.

That’s Salon, though. Some great stuff, a lot of good stuff, and some WTF? stuff.

Michael Lind gets too optimistic about liberalism

Telling people to “relax, the battle’s been won against conservativism” is crazy.

First, the current SCOTUS is not as deferential to precedent as he would have us believe.

Second, as a result, while it might not directly overturn Roe, it might chip away more than it has. Look at what it did to anti-discrimination progress with the Goodyear case.

Third, it ignores that the current government, even though this was not part of original conservativism, HAS chipped away at civil liberties.

Fourth, many losers keep fighting long after it’s clear they’ve lost.