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You are here: Home / So punch drunk they don’t understand at all

So punch drunk they don’t understand at all

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Some of you are annoyed by the fact that I’m fueled creatively by my massive hatred of self-styled centrists. And some of you get sick of hearing about “hippie-punching”. If you’re one of these people, stop reading this post now.

The Grist has a run-down of comments by Nate Silver’s new hire, Roger Pielke, the one who intimated he would sue some of his critics unless they started acting like “gentlemen”. Spoiler: Pielke comes across as anything but “gentlemanly” himself.

Pielke describes himself as a “blue-dog Democrat”, and looking over his non-climate tweets and blog posts, that seems about right (he loves Bill Clinton and seems happy that NCAA players may be able to unionize). And yet:

What is most troubling about Pielke Jr.’s account is its lack of balance. As we will see, the politicization of science by a handful of climate change deniers and their patrons is extremely well documented, and continues to be a major obstacle to the United States adopting effective climate policy. Yet in a 26-page chapter on the politicization of science, Pielke Jr. devotes only one paragraph to the behavior of those “opposed to action on climate change.”

What to make of people like Roger Pielke, Ann Althouse, Walter Russell Mead, Charles Lane, and Gregg Easterbrook, who often claim to vote Democrat (or at least to be independent) and even more often hold themselves up as the last bastions of decency and fairness, yet spend all of their time attacking Democrats and often in terms that would make David Broder blush?

Is it all about punching hippies?

Reader Interactions

108Comments

  4. 4.

    Baud

    What to make of people like Roger Pielke, Ann Althouse, Walter Russell Mead, Charles Lane, and Gregg Easterbrook, who often claim to vote Democrat (or at least to be independent) and even more often hold themselves up as the bastions of decency and fairness, yet spend all of their time attacking Democrats and often in terms that would make David Broder blush?

    Take their votes and ignore the rest.

  6. 6.

    beltane

    I’ve always been led to believe that Ann Althouse is just crazy and incoherent. Have I missed something?

  7. 7.

    april

    They buy into the Rthug sales pitch of Rthugs as stronger and better and more responsible and so on. They are llike the kids who hang with the bullies because they are afraid that if they clearly stand against the bullies they will become targets themselves. That’s my theory.

  9. 9.

    BruceFromOhio

    Some of you are annoyed by the fact that I’m fueled creatively by my massive hatred of self-styled centrists.

    And some of us are not.

    It’s all about the benjamins. If I can score a gig where I get invited to cocktails and get to play on the tire swing, or sit across from Chelsea Clinton at the state dinner, *and* pull down a paycheck, maybe with bennies, all while spouting an ignorant-yet-docile line of bullshit? I’d be out of my current gig before the ID badge cooled.

    *THAT* is what brings me to an absolute frothing fucking rage about oh-so-helpful fucking centrists. While the two-bit rat fuck soulless criminals masquerading as Republican leadership drive my beloved country into ruins, these helpful journalists churn out page after page of worthless dreck that serves no purpose but to keep him or her in the black, living indoors.

    Democracy? We don’t need no stinking democracy.

    ETA: Yes, I’m poking fun at myself. I’d rather drive a cab or change tires than sell my soul.

  13. 13.

    Citizen_X

    I’m fueled creatively by my massive hatred of self-styled centrists.

    Yeah, well, everybody needs a hobby.

    @RuhRow_Gyro:

    the ice isn’t melting

    Wrong.

    We’re talking about ice mass. Volume counts, not area.

  14. 14.

    Belafon

    I see lots of people who claim to vote for Democrats attack Obama. What would you call that?

  15. 15.

    the Conster

    They claim to vote Democrat? ORLY? They’re less David Broder and more like the AA farm team for the next David Brooks.

  16. 16.

    Comrade Jake

    Silver’s site just posted the rebuttal to Pielke’s initial climate piece. So 538 is actively arguing with itself. Centrism!

  17. 17.

    MoeLarryAndJesus

    @beltane:

    I’ve always been led to believe that Ann Althouse is just crazy and incoherent. Have I missed something?

    She’s also a sloppy drunk and if she ever votes Democrat I’d be amazed.

  18. 18.

    exurbanmom

    You better watch your step. There’s an Elvis Costello lyric for every occasion, I tell ya.

  19. 19.

    Punchy

    Punching hippies? No. They just like to claim to support Dems in the good times, then go all Sgt. Schultz when 2010 and the Obummercare website debacle occur. They’ll only fish in the pond when it’s fully stocked; otherwise they’ll shit in it, walk away, and then finger Maddow as the culprit.

  20. 20.

    jl

    Some of it might be arrogance. IIRC this person has a math BA and I guess some statistics in poly sci grad school. So now he thinks he knows enough to lecture people on how to analyse the statistical distribution of records, tail distributions and the statistics of extremes.

    I am not so sure that he does know enough. at least from the links I followed at RealCimate.

    Some problem is seen in some ecnophysicists, though it is easier to take from them, because they do know some cool things, and can do good analysis, even if a person might disagree with exactly what it means in terms of exactly how awful neoclassical economics is.

  22. 22.

    beltane

    Do you want to hear something depressing? My 18 year old son has taken to listening to NPR during his daily drive to community college. Yesterday he told me that while he really dislikes the Republican party…”both sides are to blame.” I hate this. We have Fox News and talk radio to build up the right, while simultaneous having to deal with NPR and the News Hour to insidiously demoralize the Left.

  23. 23.

    hildebrand

    I cannot imagine any one of those people actually voting for Democrats, of any stripe (not even Clinton – you just know in your heart that Pielke voted for Dole).

    It is not about punching hippies, it is about lying to the marks.

  24. 24.

    jl

    @beltane:

    ‘ Yesterday he told me that while he really dislikes the Republican party…”both sides are to blame.” ‘

    To blame for anything specific, or just in general because everything is not perfect?

  25. 25.

    beltane

    @MoeLarryAndJesus: Same with Charles Lane, Walter Russell Mead, and Gregg Easterbrook. They might not be drunks like Althouse but I seriously doubt if any of them have ever voted for a Democratic candidate for anything.

  26. 26.

    RuhRow_Gyro

    If the ice were melting, all three of its dimensions (length, width, and depth) would be becoming smaller. If you doubt me take an ice cube out of the freezer, and place the ice cube in a glass of lukewarm water. And observe.

    Volume is the product of length, width, and depth.

    Area is the product of length and width.

  27. 27.

    beltane

    @jl: The worst thing is that he was talking about the abortion “debate”. His younger brother, who only gets his news from Comedy Central and Reddit, is far better informed and far less squishy on the issues.

  29. 29.

    Baud

    @beltane:

    Well, both sides are to blame for the abortion debate, in that neither side is willing to concede to the other. I happily admit that.

  32. 32.

    Cassidy

    @beltane: Eh, he’s young and wants to sound informed. I give them a pass. It’s when my generation says it that I treat people as dumb.

  33. 33.

    Comrade Jake

    @RuhRow_Gyro: any thermal gradients in your glass are fairly negligible compared to the size of the ice cube. It’s entirely possible for things to melt non-uniformly.

    I’m not saying that’s what’s happening at the polar caps, just pointing out that your analogy doesn’t really hold water.

  34. 34.

    ruemara

    @beltane: As a parent, I see there is still room for molding the young man to understand when and how he is being lied to so he can hold that viewpoint.

  35. 35.

    Baud

    Is it all about punching hippies?

    BTW, no. It’s also about access to the money people.

  38. 38.

    El Cid

    Someone speculate for me — what attraction does someone like Pielke have for someone like Silver?

    You give me the opportunity to start a ‘data-driven’ journalism project and I’m sure as hell not going to be on the lookout for bullshit artists like Pielke.

    So what is it?

    Is it just the inline to the anti-AGW money lobby?

    If so, is that what Silver’s about? Why go to all the ‘data-driven’ trouble, then?

  39. 39.

    RuhRow_Gyro

    The reason that ice only exists to a certain depth below the surface of the ocean is because of the thermocline. The thermocline is a consequence of the insulating properties of water. The cold temperatures of the surface of the earth slowly warm with depth, and ice can only exist below the temperature at which the state at which water turns from liquid to solid.

    The temperature at the bottom of the ocean never really changes with the seasons, that much. Shallow bodies of water can freeze solid, however.

  41. 41.

    Keith G

    @beltane:

    Yesterday he told me that while he really dislikes the Republican party…”both sides are to blame.”

    Unfortunately, sometimes, both sides carry blame. The Democratic Chairman of the Senate Judicial Committee Patrick Leahy will not step up to the plate and end obstruction of Obama’s judicial choices.

    If when confronted by evil, one cooperates with it, don’t be surprised if one is considered to be a part of that evil.

  42. 42.

    ? Martin

    Some scant evidence that Congress might actually do what was intended.

    A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques.

    The report, built around detailed chronologies of dozens of CIA detainees, documents a long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims as agency officials sought permission to use — and later tried to defend — excruciating interrogation methods that yielded little, if any, significant intelligence, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed the document.

    Should be fun watching the Republican Senate candidates defend this going into the election.

  45. 45.

    Comrade Jake

    @El Cid: uhmm, people seem to forget that Silver has been in this kick for awhile. He had a whole chapter of his signal and noise book dedicated to it. Michael Mann and the real climate guys got on his case for it a little bit.

    My impression is that Silver thinks the climate guys don’t really understand statistics, which is pretty fucking arrogant.

  46. 46.

    Culture of Truth

    “As a five-term President of the Charles Lane Fan Club, it pains me to write this….”

  47. 47.

    Cassidy

    @raven: That noise that passes for “rock n roll” of your youth has affected your hearing. Cannons in a symphony will do that, though. ;)

  50. 50.

    El Cid

    @Comrade Jake:

    My impression is that Silver thinks the climate guys don’t really understand statistics, which is pretty fucking arrogant.

    Fucking grand. It’s not just arrogant. It’s bullshit. They understand the relevant statistics better than he does. I’ll bet any amount I can offer.

  51. 51.

    muddy

    @Citizen_X: I saw some didn’t get this concept when I saw the map of how red America was. Because counties vote for prez, not voters.

  52. 52.

    ? Martin

    @RuhRow_Gyro: Good point. The ice sheet isn’t getting smaller, it’s just getting taller. Someone should put a beacon on top before a plane crashes into it.

  55. 55.

    Chris T.

    @beltane: Did you note to him that this is true, in the same way that both a squirtgun and an ocean can get you wet?

    (Bonus question: which one is more likely to cause drowning?)

  56. 56.

    RuhRow_Gyro

    On your graph Schlemizel, the vertical axis is ‘anomaly’, and the horizontal axis is time in years. So if your graph was True, it could mean that the ice volume and/or area is either growing, or shrinking. But the ice is by most accounts growing, Logically with the decrease in measured temperatures.

    My conclusion is that the advocacy of global warming theory has more to do with the desire to create an issue that would warrant the creation of a global government, than it has to do with science, or reality.

  58. 58.

    weaselone

    @RuhRow_Gyro:

    You caught us, much like the advocacy that smoking cigarettes was linked to cancer was a secret plot to warrant banning cigarette smoking from workplaces and restaurants and to expand the nanny state.

  62. 62.

    low-tech cyclist

    What to make of people like Roger Pielke, Ann Althouse, Walter Russell Mead, Charles Lane, and Gregg Easterbrook, who often claim to vote Democrat (or at least to be independent) and even more often hold themselves up as the last bastions of decency and fairness, yet spend all of their time attacking Democrats and often in terms that would make David Broder blush?
    Is it all about punching hippies?

    I don’t know, but if you claim to be a centrist or any sort of Dem, yet all your guns are aimed at those to your left, then you’re full of shit.

  64. 64.

    Comrade Luke

    Do conservatives complain that the ones listed above punch conservatives? I have no idea, just wondering.

  65. 65.

    El Cid

    @Citizen_X: The problem is clearly that them ivory-tower climate scientists are unaware of the concept of volume, in the same way that they are unaware that the Sun is hot therefore there’s no manmade global warming.

  66. 66.

    cokane

    @DougJ I read some of Pielke’s tweets and his blog after this blowup over his 538 story. My conclusion is just that Pielke’s a troll. He’s incredibly focused on increasing his own profile. He wallows in negative attention. He feels the need to snipe at and threaten as many of his critics as possible. He’s basically a classic internet troll. The whole thesis of his article was trollish — as was well pointed out in 538’s response story — the way he framed his argument was monumentally facile and disingenuous.

  67. 67.

    jl

    @Comrade Jake:

    ” My impression is that Silver thinks the climate guys don’t really understand statistics, which is pretty fucking arrogant. ”

    I don’t think a person can understand how statistics should be used in a particular field unless they understand something about the fundamental theories of that particular field. Silver’s Signal and Noise book had a number of laugh out loud blunders on finance, macroeconomic and especially climate science.

    I mean, if a relatively unsophisticated non-physicist like me is gasping at Silver’s nonsense physics, you know it has to be bad.

    Silver has proven himself to be excellent at intuitive statistical analysis of sports statistics and political polling data. He doesn’t actually know much about statistics, and especially not how applied statistics works in different fields. He certainly places too much faith in ad hoc model building where a person can recursively build short term forecasting models, forecast, check the forecast error, adjust the model, and so on. He seems to think that his approach is some Silver Bullet.

    That methods works fine for the two fields that made him famous and successful. Looks like that success has gone to his head. Maybe he will wise up and if he wants to make his new site a universal know-it-all blog on topics of the day, he’ll crack some books on finance, economics, physics and public health, etc. Otherwise, it’s going to be a mess and another obstacle to good analysis of public policy.

  68. 68.

    RuhRow_Gyro

    I am sorry and am not seeking attention but do need to note for the record that Citizen_X’s ‘just fucking stop’ link includes temperatures from plus 24 degrees Centigrade to around 2 degrees Centigrade. Water freezes at zero degrees Centigrade. Zero degrees Centigrade does in fact happen in an Arctic environment. The thermocline measures temperature differentials from the surface to the area where the insulating properties of the earth take over, and all the way down to the bottom.

    The temperature differential during winter is cold on the surface, to medium-temperature with some depth. But yes, if you do go deeper, it gets colder.

    But there is no ice at the bottom of the ocean.

  70. 70.

    liberal

    @beltane: heh. In some recent conflict between the White House and the rethugs in Congress, some asshat commentater on WGBH was going on about it being partly Obama’s fault for not reaching across the aisle enough. (Maybe “Marjorie Eegan”) WTF…

  71. 71.

    liberal

    @jl: yeah, it was pretty clear that he didn’t understand that Teh Crash was more than just the product of some bad modeling.

  72. 72.

    Kazanir

    Yes, it is all about punching hippies. More broadly, all of American politics is driven by the Baby Boomer generation’s reaction to the 60s, which itself was mostly driven by centuries-old American attitudes about race.

    Or in other words, Sherman’s only crime was that he didn’t go far enough.

  73. 73.

    ? Martin

    @RuhRow_Gyro:

    from plus 24 degrees Centigrade to around 2 degrees Centigrade.

    Finish this sequence of numbers:

    24
    20
    16
    12
    8
    4
    __

    If you guessed ‘2’, you guessed wrong. Please repeat the 3rd grade and try to refrain from discussing statistics or physics. If you insist on participating, here are some bonus questions for you:

    Water freezes at zero degrees Centigrade. Zero degrees Centigrade does in fact happen in an Arctic environment.

    It does, and yet sea ice does not form until -2C. Do you know why?

    But there is no ice at the bottom of the ocean.

    1) Do you know why?
    2) Do you know why the thermocline is asymptotic to 4C?
    3) Do you know why, in spite of the answer to #2 above, it continues to drop?

  77. 77.

    RuhRow_Gyro

    Hope the publically-funded mental health benefit University package is still helping you and yours Martin. When teaching at college, it’s not the base pay.

  78. 78.

    The Tragically Flip

    @RuhRow_Gyro:

    My conclusion is that the advocacy of global warming theory has more to do with the desire to create an issue that would warrant the creation of a global government, than it has to do with science, or reality.

    This actually is why climate deniers deny. They don’t like the consequences of climate science. Just as evolution must be denied by fundies because it proves the bible cannot be literally true, climate science must be denied because solving it requires effective government to interfere in markets, tax and spend and all that liberal jazz.

    It’s motivated reasoning pure as can be.

  79. 79.

    The Tragically Flip

    I also love how right wingers never explain what would be so automatically and obviously terrible about one world government. It’s just assumed.

  80. 80.

    nellcote

    @raven:

    The University of Georgia awarded Greenwald an award for journalistic courage.

    The country or state of Georgia?

  82. 82.

    ? Martin

    @jl: I’ll give them up early:

    It does, and yet sea ice does not form until -2C. Do you know why?

    Salt lowers the freezing point, so the ocean water usually freezes at about -2C, but it varies because ocean salinity varies. That’s also why the ocean gets that cool slushiness when weather rolls in – falling rain/snow is freshwater and freezes earlier and can actually sit on top of the water that is below 0C but above -1.9C. It gets disturbed with the motion of the water and mixes with the salt water, but you can get some neat effects.

    1) Do you know why?

    You don’t get ice at the bottom because the traditional form of ice is 11% less dense than liquid water at its densest. So, it floats. Ice in all other forms is actually denser than liquid water and would sink, but forms under quite different conditions.

    2) Do you know why the thermocline is asymptotic to 4C?

    Water is densest at 4C. As it gets colder it begins to form hydrogen bonds and as a result expands and starts to rise. The bottoms of deep lakes are almost all uniformly 4C. So you get a point of temperature stability at 4C, because both warmer and colder water will rise upward, mix with the water above, and everything equalizes.

    3) Do you know why, in spite of the answer to #2 above, it continues to drop?

    Water is not perfectly incompressible. It’s just really fucking hard to compress – so much so that under most circumstances you can safely assume that it doesn’t compress at all. So under greater pressure you can continue to lower the temperature and maintain density, so you can slowly slip below that 4C mark with enough pressure and not have the colder water float up. Having a solid mile of 4C maximum density water sitting on top of you is effective at keeping any mixing to a minimum, and we’re talking about thousands of PSI before you see any measurable effect.

  83. 83.

    El Cid

    @The Tragically Flip: They do, sort of. It’s present in all the horror stories of ‘One World Government’. By the time they get to that point, it’s not a generic concept of any government which consolidates all world governments into one; it’s a narrative of a soshullist hellscape, a particular historical initiative by shadowy global ay-leets to unleash a particular totalitarian blah blah blah-ish superstate that none can stop.

    Apocalyptic millennialism provides a basic narrative within the US political right, claiming that the idealized society is thwarted by subversive conspiracies.13

    During the 1980s and 1990s, the main demonized scapegoat of the US hard right shifted seamlessly from the communist Red Menace to international terrorists, sinful abortion providers, anti-family feminists, homosexual “special rights” activists, “pagan” environmentalists, liberal secular humanists and their “big government” allies, and globalists who plot on behalf of the New World Order. The relatively painless nature of the shift was due in part to the basic underlying apocalyptic paradigm, which fed the Cold War and the witch-hunts of the McCarthy period.14 To understand this dynamic requires stepping back a few paces to the roots of fundamentalist belief.

    One of the core ideas of the fundamentalist Christian Right during this century has been that modern liberalism is a handmaiden for collectivist, Godless communism. Many conservative Christian anticommunists believe that collectivism is Godless, while capitalism is Godly. They often link liberalism to Godless collectivism; then to the notion of a liberal secular humanist conspiracy; and finally conclude that globalism is the ultimate collectivist plot.

    Prior to the collapse of communism, many leaders of the new Christian Right had already embraced a variation on their long-standing fear of secret elites in league with Satan: the secular humanist conspiracist theory.15 According to George Marsden, the shift in focus to the secular humanist demon:

    “…revitalized fundamentalist conspiracy theory. Fundamentalists always had been alarmed at moral decline within America but often had been vague as to whom, other than the Devil, to blame. The “secular humanist” thesis gave this central concern a clearer focus that was more plausible and of wider appeal than the old mono-causal communist-conspiracy accounts. Communism and socialism could, of course, be fit right into the humanist picture; but so could all the moral and legal changes at home without implausible scenarios of Russian agents infiltrating American schools, government, reform movements, and mainline churches.”

  84. 84.

    cthulhu

    @RuhRow_Gyro:

    My conclusion is that the advocacy of global warming theory has more to do with the desire to create an issue that would warrant the creation of a global government, than it has to do with science, or reality.

    Well, okaay…

    Frankly, though I accept the data presented by real climate scientists, I am also fine with economic disruption of the energy markets for a different reason that doesn’t get nearly enough press: the public health consequences of fossil fuel use. And don’t really care that much that we may end up with a different set of winners and losers in the energy biz. There will still be people making millions/billions of renewables. And a difference set of job opportunities down the scale. Capitalism!

    Really that’s really the main thing that pisses conservatives off about regulation: it’s not that it stifles opportunity because regulation creates new opportunities just like any other change but that it threatens those monied interests that have the market currently. It doesn’t matter whether it might be inconsequential or even better for the rest of us.

  86. 86.

    Chris T.

    @El Cid: Funny, I seem to remember someone said something about it being impossible to serve both God and Mammon. That implies it’s the capitalists who are the godless ones.

    (Then again, it was just some Hispanic joker named Hay-zoos, so what would he know.)

  88. 88.

    El Cid

    @Chris T.: Those types tell themselves some bullshit about how the good Christians don’t serve Mammon, Mammon serves them.

  90. 90.

    James E. Powell

    @? Martin:

    Should be fun watching the Republican Senate candidates defend this going into the election.

    I don’t see how it will cause them any problem at all. They and their voters brag about torturin’ the terrists. Anybody got a problem with it is objectively pro-terrist.

  91. 91.

    Groucho48

    @RuhRow_Gyro:

    An ice cube is, well, a cube. It’s W, L, H are all the same. Claiming that all three dimensions of an ice cube melt at about the same rate and then saying that shows that arctic ice must do so, too, is the kind of tripe Deniers always spew.

  92. 92.

    Paul in KY

    Doug, if you approach it from the angle of ‘they are lying about their political preferences/allegiences’, I think you will find their writing makes more sense (from that perspective).

  95. 95.

    Barry

    @Baud: “Take their votes and ignore the rest. ”

    Do you think that *any* of those people actually vote Democratic?

    They’re filling the ‘Even the Liberal [Insert name here] supports [insert right-wing idea here]’ niche.

  96. 96.

    Barry

    @RuhRow_Gyro: “If the ice were melting, all three of its dimensions (length, width, and depth) would be becoming smaller. If you doubt me take an ice cube out of the freezer, and place the ice cube in a glass of lukewarm water. And observe.”

    No. For obvious reasons.

  97. 97.

    Barry

    @El Cid:
    El Cid says:

    “Someone speculate for me — what attraction does someone like Pielke have for someone like Silver?”

    Somebody pointed out that Silver’s book ‘The Signal and the Noise’ was able to discuss financial modeling without mentioning the vast amount of fraud we know to have happened. Silver can look at people making beacoup bucks from lying, and to conclude that they were just mistaken.

  98. 98.

    Robert Waldmann

    You envious DFH pundit wannabee. Your list demonstrates how you are utterly consumed with envy of commentators (slightly) more prominent than yourself. That is the only possible reason why your list doesn’t include Mickey Kaus.

    Even standing on Charles Lane’s shoulders Pielke couldn’t come close to matching Kaus’s pettiness.

  100. 100.

    Matt McIrvin

    @beltane: I used to listen to the local NPR station while commuting. The thing that finally made me stop was one day when I listened to a particular combination of “All Things Considered” and “Marketplace” (the latter is technically not an NPR product, I think, but it usually plays on the same stations).

    ATC was doing, I think, an N-years-later retrospective on Hurricane Katrina, and most of the segment was devoted to an interview with some non-Katrina-refugee living in a Gulf Coast state who just went on and on about how the people in the FEMA trailers were layabouts who stayed destitute because they had no initiative.

    Then the Marketplace episode had this editorial segment with somebody just gloating about how businesses were leaving high-tax states and flocking to low-tax ones that didn’t spend any money on social services.

    I ended up just screaming at the radio while I was driving. It’s not a healthy thing to be doing. Switched over to mostly listening to the rock shows on WERS not long after that.

  101. 101.

    DougJ

    @Robert Waldmann:

    Yeah, but Kaus is proudly an asshole, the others pretend to be arbiters of decency.

    I do understand Kaus, he just likes trolling and being an asshole.

  102. 102.

    Dennis Higbee

    Yes, it’s totally and always about punching hippies. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum in this country, everyone to the left of you is evil.

  103. 103.

    Donald

    I didn’t read the whole thread, so someone might have mentioned this, but Walter Russell Mead really was a liberal once. He wrote a book “Mortal Splendor” back in the late 80’s that basically called for a global New Deal to fight poverty around the world. He criticized the imperialism of US foreign policy in terms only slightly less harsh than Noam Chomsky. Then, after 9/11, I started seeing him on the PBS Newshour and he was pro-war. It was shocking. I don’t know what happened, unless it was just careerism.

  105. 105.

    JustRuss

    What to make of people like Roger Pielke, Ann Althouse, Walter Russell Mead, Charles Lane, and Gregg Easterbrook,

    Well, the first thing that comes to mind is: sausage

    These are people who just aren’t religious enough, stupid enough, or evil enough to call themselves republicans, but want to be treated as Very Serious People, as opposed to say, the Usually Right but Shrill and therefore Not Serious Paul Krugman. So yeah, hippy punching. They may not really hate hippies, but they’re more than happy to slap them around in order to build their cred.

  107. 107.

    David Koch

    @Donald: sounds like right turn Christopher Hitchens made after 9/11. The former arch critic of US imperialism and Trotskyite became a blood soaked warmonger.

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