"I haven't been a black conservative since 1995..."

Glenn Loury talks about people he's known for 40 years who won't say hello, who won't look him in the eye because he USED TO BE a black conservative. USED TO BE! John McWhorter talks about those who think "it would be wrong to even print my name. They think of me as Satan. And that's just how it's been."



Much later in the diavlog, Loury and McWhorter weigh in on the affirmative action case that's pending in the Supreme Court. "Would you think it was a good thing if the Supreme Court outlawed racial preferences as we knew them?" McWhorter takes the "not nuanced" position that racial preferences should be proclaimed "obsolete." (Loury disagrees.)

Happy New Year!

Are you up early, like me, or are you sleeping off last night's festivities? Personally, I don't get too revved up about the shift from one year-number to the next one. I think we live in days, and when life is good, normal days are the best, and the truth is, we live in days:



But if our lives are to have meaning, don't we need to knit those days together?



If we should take account on an annual basis — to put the Ann in annual — why should it be on this outwardly imposed occasion, this flip of the calendar from December to January?



"Yeah, I can get with that!"

A conversation for the end of the year.

"Wearing Brave Face, Obama Braces for Health Care Ruling."

NYT headline. Article by Jodi Kantor:

Former advisers are emphasizing the many aspects of the bill that are not connected to the mandate, like the subsidies to buy insurance. Some aides even argue privately that losing the mandate could be a political boon, because it would rob Republicans of their core complaint against the law.

Yeah, that's what I've been saying. Plus, Obama would get a new issue: The Supreme Court has too many conservative activists and needs re-balancing; a Democrat should make the next appointment(s). And if the decision goes the other way, Romney will have the corresponding arguments: 1. We need a President who will sign the repeal of Obamacare, and 2. The Supreme Court has too many liberals who don't respect the Constitution and we need a conservative President to re-balance it.

Back to Kantor:

Before he became president, critics said that Mr. Obama’s greatest achievement was his own rise, that he played it safe — sometimes voting “present” in the Illinois State Senate — rather than taking risks for what he really believed....

In the White House, many of his top advisers, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, counseled Mr. Obama against a sweeping health care overhaul. By summer 2009, with the country still stunned by economic crisis and Republicans falsely raising the specter of death panels, some aides practically begged the president to scale back, take interim steps and move on to other issues.

Mr. Obama did not relent...

As the brutal fight continued, the president sacrificed more and more in its name: an overhaul of energy and environmental laws, greater focus on economic issues, some of his own popularity and that of House Democrats, who eventually lost their hard-won majority....

Well, if he loses the Supreme Court case, he's got to pick himself up and look like he's ready to keep fighting. Both candidates will say they're the one to redo health care reform, and Obama is going to need to say he's the one we ought to trust. He can't be a sadsack about how hard he worked and now it's all lost. He can't be all: I could have listened to Rahm and Joe... I could have coasted a voted 'present'...

As he awaits the decision, Mr. Obama has no more knowledge of or influence on it than any of the other lawyers handicapping the odds in Washington bars and boardrooms.
The former law professor turned president is scathing about the argument that the mandate violates the Constitution, saying it has no merit whatsoever. 

Yeah, yeah, that is meaningless to me. (And I'm a law professor.) It's not that he unshakably knows the real constitutional law answer because he's a scholar. He's a partisan who's taken a position and he's saying things about the law in the advocate mode. Scathing... no merit whatsoever... That's just banal lawyer talk. It's a difficult question, and it can be answered, with eloquence and internal coherence, either way.

Have you ever noticed that I — a law professor, not a policy partisan — have never opined on the constitutionality of Obamacare. Glenn Loury pushed me to give an answer on Bloggingheads, and here's how I responded:



The commenters over there are so hostile to to me that one actually wishes that I would "go HIV positive or Full Metal Influenza." Challenged, he offers a longer list of diseases. A more normal person writes: "I can't believe what I'm hearing. Glenn asked Ann whether she thinks the Affordable Health Care Act is constitutional and she basically offers no opinion. She hasn't even blogged on the issue! Isn't she suppose to be a constitutional law professor?" The answer is yes, and that's precisely the point. I study the Court. I don't take the lawyer role and perform the theater of acting like there's a true answer and I know it. The Court will say what the law is. I'm about having a discussion of the topic.

ADDED: If I had to be a judge, I could do it. I can say without bullshitting what judicial nominees always say at the confirmation hearings: I can't tell you what I'd decide until I'm in the real situation of having responsibility for deciding a case. They might be bullshitting, but it's honestly the way I feel. I have too much respect for the process to register a vote for one side or the other in a difficult case. That said, some cases are easy. This one is not.

"Ann suggests that the Supreme Court striking down the law might help Obama's political fortunes."

"Glenn [Loury] disputes this, while observing that conservatives have certainly benefited over the years from the Court's pro-abortion rulings. They discuss the uproar over Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren's Native American ancestry, and, invoking the career of Justice Clarence Thomas, debate the politics of affirmative action. Responding to the failed attempt to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Ann thinks her formerly blue state is turning redder by the day. Glenn defends and Ann criticizes efforts to promote public employment during this recession."

Here's the whole 40-minute discussion:



IN THE COMMENTS: Chip S. said:

I was surprised that Loury defended Warren so much.

His career exemplifies what's best about affirmative action: Making an extra effort to find people with potential who would otherwise be overlooked.

Hers exemplifies the worst aspects of affirmative action: A cynical numbers game that doesn't benefit anyone whose light is actually hidden under a bushel.

As Glenn tells his own story — growing up poor on the south side of Chicago — he would be someone a law school admissions committee would pick out for multiple factors and not a simple race-balancing, box-checking approach to affirmative action. And unlike Elizabeth Warren and other individuals with a claim to some Native American ancestry, Glenn does not have the power to check and uncheck the box depending on whether or not an advantage is available. He can't be creative about his conception of himself when it comes to race.

"[M]ost voters' knowledge of economics is so shallow that not only is Mitt Romney attacked for being successful in business..."

"... but Romney doesn't even seem able to defend himself."

Can Mitt educate us?

This seems related to my earlier post today, about whether people learn better taught by robots.

Let me snip a clip of the clip at the link:



More importantly, here's Glenn Loury — whose academic field is economics — critiquing our economic illiteracy (and he's "not a Romney guy"):

"Economist Glenn Loury has a gay son, and so does blogger and law professor Ann Althouse."

"So I wasn't expecting their conversation about gay marriage to take this turn," writes Bob Wright at the Atlantic, with a video clip of my conversation with Glenn. Bob goes on....

If you're wishing Glenn had been matched with someone who disagrees with him, I have good news. Here he presents the other side of the argument, which leads to some interesting thoughts from Ann about the role of religion in progressive moral change....

... with a second clip.

Lots of comments over there.

"On The Glenn Show, Glenn [Loury] and Ann discuss the politics of President Obama's recent endorsement of gay marriage."

"The two professors, both of whom have gay sons, defend the religious opponents of gay marriage against the charge of 'bigotry.' They argue that religion can be a force for positive social change, such as during the civil rights movement. Ann laments that politicians so often feel they must demonize their opponents, and Glenn defends Mitt Romney's background in private equity. Ann and Glenn compare the Occupy movement with the Tea Party and find the former lacking. Finally, they celebrate 'the leisure of the theory class' and compare their different approaches to vacationing." (Hyperlinks to the specific items here.)

I'm in the NYT, suggesting that Rick Perry is... maybe... dumb.

Here.

IN THE COMMENTS: Meade says:

...and when my campaign and what's left of my manhood gets to Wisconsin, there'll be one smart-mouthed little lady law perfessor who'd better be GONE!

Uh... uh... Ann something.

"Getting kicked out of Zuccotti Park... was the best possible endgame" for Occupy Wall Street.

Says Matt Yglesias. This fits with what I was saying the other day about the problem with the "Occupy" protest format: There's no exit strategy.



But police breaking it up imposes an end. That solves the no-exit-strategy problem.

How much evidence do you need? Analyzing the Herman Cain accusations.

Next, Glenn introduces the subject of race: What's with conservatives loving a black man? And what's with liberals' eagerness to destroy him? (The splice in the middle of this segment isn't censorship. Our phone connection failed, and we had to restart.)

Connecting Occupy Wall Street to the Penn State scandal.

Here's a new Bloggingheads video I did with Glenn Loury, who's an economics professor at Brown. We talk about Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Occupy Wall Street, and Penn State. A big topic is shame — they call this the "Special Shame Edition" — and I want to highlight something Glenn says about Occupy Wall Street and a way that I connect his insight to the Penn State story.

In the first clip, Glenn is saying that the OWS protesters have made him feel uneasy as a member of the economics profession — the "alchemists" who whipped up all these complex financial devices.



The economists benefit amongst themselves, lauding each other for their great works, and the protesters hold up a different mirror, in which the economist can see shame.

Later in the diavlog, we're talking about the Penn State scandal, and I'm puzzling over how so many men — honorable men — could operate together to suppress their own awareness of the evil they harbored within, and I perceive a similarity in they way they closed ranks and functioned as a self-regarding, self-promoting group:

***

Here's the movie Glenn mentions in the first clip: "Inside Job."

"A conversation with an imagined young black flash mobber."

Glenn Loury is struck by what Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter had to say.

Why did Cornel West call Obama "a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats"?

What set him off? Glenn Loury and Joshua Cohen try to figure it out:

Birtherism and racism.

John McWhorter and Glenn Loury talk it out. The diavlog begins with McWhorter asserting that birtherism is not about race:

Glenn Loury identifies the "perversion" of public sector unions.

A professor is forced to resign after making a racist remark: Is he more likely right-wing or left-wing?

"A political science professor at Murray State University has resigned after telling an African American student that she didn't show up early to class because slaves were always late."

I see that the first commenter there says: "Another asshole, undoubtedly a Republican/TeaPartier."

My guess is exactly the opposite. What would possess a professor to say something like that? From my long experience with  professors, I think it is the left-wing professors who: 1. Feel confident in their own goodness on racial issues, 2. Analyze events in terms of race, 3. Think up "critical theory"-type explanations that explore ideas about racial difference, 4. Imagine that it's clever to express these ideas out loud, and 5. Are capable of making the mistake of thinking that the students will know that they are good people who do racial critique that is supposed to be understood as an attack on white people.

A "Republican/TeaPartier" is much more likely to be strongly committed to color-blindness. Ironically, that's something that, in academic circles, can quite easily get you called a racist. (Try asking a lefty lawprof about Chief Justice Roberts's statement that "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.")

Anyway, the professor in this incident is named Mark Wattier. The school is Murray State University. I haven't checked into what his actual political propensities are or what he really had in mind when he said whatever he said that is being reported the way you see it in the linked article. My motivation to write this post was the commenter's reflexive assumption that Wattier displayed right-wing ideology. That is absurd.

***

I noticed that story because John McWhorter and Glenn Loury are talking about it on Bloggingheads. Their discussion centers on whether the student is "lowering" herself by requesting an apology.

The NYT picks up part of my diavlog with Glenn Loury...

... the gun control part.

I talk with Glenn Loury about the Arizona massacre.

This goes for about 48 minutes. I think it's pretty good. I'll listen to it myself now and pick out some high spots.




ADDED: I reject the distraction that is Jared Lougher:



We talk about Jeremiah Wright as an exemplar of edgy speech on the left:



Glenn is rubbed the wrong way by news commentators, after the memorial, dwelling on the topic of "Obama's got his mojo back":



The use of Native American religion in the memorial — I call it patronizing:



Glenn pushes for gun control, I push back (a bit) and do a quick lecture on federalism and the Second Amendment at one point:

"He's ethnic but nonthreateningly ethnic — and so this is the Obama thing again."

John McWhorter, musing about the presidential potential of Marco Rubio.

(Via Insta.)