Blue Cord

About three weeks ago, as I was driving back from Tennessee, I happened to hear an interview with Stephen Biddle from the Council on Foreign Relations. He was talking about the fact that the current conflict in Iraq has more to do with different groups within Iraq attacking each other than it does with Iraqi groups attacking US troops. While there are certainly some who attacking Americans, this is not the main source of unrest. Notice how often we hear of bombings in market places and attacks against members of the Iraqi government.

This got me thinking of more seriously of an idea I have had about a way forward in the mess in Mesopotamia.

The current borders of Iraq and indeed all of the Middle East were drawn up by the British and French in the wake of World War I. Prior to 1932, Iraq did not exist. Despite this, the US policy in Iraq right now seems to be assuming that the current borders make sense when in fact they don’t. If you look at a map, the borders don’t follow any natural divides, nor do they reflect the ethnic makeup of the region. For example, the drawing of the map after WWI took no notice of the fact that a third of the population of Baghdad was Jewish. Instead, they just set up an Arab state.

Why, then, are we attempting to keep Iraq whole? It is not like it has any historical precedent. Would it not make more sense to divide it up along ethnic lines? If the primary source of the hostility is Sunnis fighting Shiites, Shiites fighting Sunnis, and Shiites and Sunnis fighting Kurds, why not send everyone to their own room. This is how my mother handled things when my brother and I were fighting.

This approach worked well in the Balkans in the wake of the collapse of Yugoslavia. It put an end to ethnic violence. Everyone got a share in the power, but it was a share that they themselves controlled. If we followed this approach in Iraq, it would alleviate worries about Shiite reprisals against the Sunni minority. It would protect the Kurds from ethnic violence. And it would give democracy a chance of actually succeeding in the region.

As you can see from my hastily drawn map above, the different groups already are somewhat settled according to their ethnic and religious identity. This map, of course, is oversimplified and does not show the pockets of groups that live outside of their majority area. And we would also have the problem of what to do with the region around Baghdad, which is a mix of Shia and Sunni. Surely, however, such problems are no more difficult to solve than the current difficulties. Some people would have to move, but many are already moving because of the violence. Wouldn’t they prefer to be moving because they had a chance at peace?

I think another benefit would be that the international community would be more likely to support this idea. The UN was the one that orchestrated this in the former Yugoslavia, and troops from different UN countries could be the ones that helped defend and build each of the independent countries. I think an international presence instead of a US presence would also decrease animosity towards the governments in each country.

I know this idea has been floated around a bit, but it has not been discussed as much as I think it should. What do you all think? Is it feasible? Is it workable? Is it better or worse than our approach now? If we truly believe in democracy, shouldn’t we at least put this idea before the Iraqi people and let them decide if they want to pursue it?

Having been listening to a lot of talk radio since I got back to the States, I am appalled at the lack of critical thinking exhibited by the hosts on these shows. This goes for shows at both the right and left ends of the spectrum (although conservative / libertarian shows outnumber the liberal shows by a large margin). Since critical thinking is one of the things we are supposed to be teaching in our colleges, I thought I would check on the education of talk show hosts.

To my surprise, I found that quite a number of talk show hosts do, in fact, have undergraduate degrees, and many of them also have done graduate work (most often in law). But the top rated shows are hosted by people with little education. Here is a run down:

• Rush Limbaugh dropped out of Southeast Missouri State University after two semesters. He had failed almost every class and earned a D in speech class.
• Sean Hannity dropped out of college, although which college is unclear. Both New York University and University of California Berkeley are listed in different bios.
• Alan Colmes does not appear to have gone to college at all. It is not listed in any of his bios.

Here is a list of those who do have degrees:

• Al Franken graduated from Harvard University, but he is getting out of talk radio later this week.
• Hugh Hewitt graduated from Harvard and has a law degree from the University of Michigan.
• Neal Boortz earned a law degree from John Marshall Law School in Atlanta.
• Larry Elder also holds a law degree.
• Bill O’Reilly graduated with honors from Marist College.
• Michael Medved graduated with honors from Yale. He later dropped out of the Yale Law School.
• Dennis Prager did an undergraduate degree but dropped out of his masters work.
• G. Gordan Liddy has a law degree, but of course his role in Watergate would suggest he forgot most of what he learned.
• And in the biggest surprise, Michael Savage holds a Ph.D. in epidemiology and nutritional science. If he learned critical thinking during his education, he seems to have decided not to use it on his radio program.

It is not the case, of course, that only those people who have gone to college are critical thinkers. Some people can be self-educated and learn to think critically without a college degree.

But given that so many talk show host do have a college education, the question now becomes “Why do so few talk show hosts use critical thinking in their shows?” Here are some of my guesses at an answer:

• Critical thinking would lead to calmer, more rational debates. This is boring and would lead to lower ratings.
• Critical thinking leads people to see both sides of a debate. Since one of the purposes of talk radio is to polarize people, this would be counter productive.
• Critical thinking leads people to be more moderate. But moderate is boring. The exciting people, for better or worse, are at the extremes of the political spectrum.
• Critical thinking disallows personal attacks (the ad hominim fallacy), while personal attacks are one of the more exciting parts of talk radio for some people.

Unfortunately, radio programs are driven by ratings. Higher ratings lead to more advertisers. More advertisers means more money. Think of how different radio would be if instead of seeking profits, the owners of radio programs sought to encourage a free, critical, and open exchange of ideas to promote the common good. I’m not holding my breath.

After 14.5 hours in the car covering 860 miles through 9 states, I have arrived at my mother’s home in Tennessee. I left Massachusetts this morning around 9:00 am and drove straight through. I am going to be visiting here until Friday, when I will head to Washington, DC, for the weekend.

On my way down, I listened to talk radio, which is my preferred entertainment in the car. Since I was on the move the whole time, I got to listen to a number of different stations and different shows. What I heard revealed a lot about public discourse in America right now.

The talk radio that I heard was heavily slanted towards the conservative end of the spectrum. There was no point in the trip when I was unable to listen to a conservative talk show. I was usually able to pick up one or two stations during the day, or at least two different stations carrying the same show (usually Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity). At night, when AM radio propagation got better, I was able to pick up more than that, including one point when I could pick up five different conservative talk show hosts.

As a side note, propagation was quite good after sunset. While I was on I-81 in Virginia, I was able to pick up radio stations from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Cleveland, Chicago, Charlotte, and Atlanta, all within a one hour period.

By contrast, the only liberal talk show I heard was when I was in range of New York City. I was able to listen to about an hour of the Al Franken show. I may have also heard a liberal talk show host at one point in Virginia, but I only picked up the station for about ten minutes and couldn’t quite determine the host’s political leanings.

My biggest problem with this was not so much that the vast majority were conservative, although it would be nice to have a balance of opinion being presented. What I would love most of all is a nice moderate talk show, but except for NPR that won’t be happening.

Instead, the biggest problem was the low quality of the conservative talk shows. While the shows pretended to be focused on analysis, in reality they were simply providing a particular political spin on the news. Absolutely everything was geared towards shaping the opinion of their listeners. Instead of giving the audience analysis that would allow them to make up their own minds, the shows were meant to tell their listeners what to think. And they did so in a way that implied that anyone who disagreed was not a critical thinker.

In addition, there was nothing approaching journalistic standards. Any rumor could be reported as fact. Any lie could be told about those who disagreed with you. Any opposing voice who got through on the line had to be shouted down and insulted. Sean Hannity called one guy a “Clinton sycophant” just because he corrected one lie that Hannity had told about Hillary Clinton. Rush Limbaugh accused a caller of trying to confuse the issue when he pointed out that a statistic Limbaugh had quoted was wrong. After berating the guy, Limbaugh said that his point was still correct even if his statistics were wrong. In other words, Limbaugh quoted statistic to prove his point, but said his point was still correct when someone else showed that his statistic were wrong.

Listening to these talk shows is an exercise in pointing out fallacies that most of us learned to identify in freshmen logic classes. Personal attacks, hasty generalizations, post hoc ergo propter hoc, equivocation, and a host of other informal fallacies were rampant, not to mention the more egregious formal fallacies. Liberals were called liars and cowards; they were accused of wanting the government to take over everything; and they were presented as hating anyone who disagreed with them. Many of these hosts accused Democrats of hating Bush, which is ironic considering the vitriol with which these same talk show hosts offered up slurs against Clinton. What was so funny disturbing was how often the picture these talk show hosts painted of liberals was actually an accurate picture of the talk show hosts. It seems that their willingness to villainize those who disagree with them and do anything to win a political point has led them to think everyone else is willing to do that too.

Perhaps most ironic was the fact that several of the talk show hosts lamented the fact that there was no conservative voice in America. I heard this repeated by conservatives for 14.5 hours in nine different states in the supposedly liberal parts of the east coast, whereas I could only find one liberal talk show hosts. These guys have perfected the art of portraying themselves as a victimized minority, while accusing liberals of fostering a victim mentality.

I am sure this is not the best that conservatives have to offer. Conservativism is a strong, viable political philosophy. But calm debate will not get ratings, nor is it as effective in motivating crowds. If I were a conservative, it would bother me deeply that these people were the public face of my philosophy.

Is this finally what public debate has come to in America? Have people lost the ability to think critically to such an extent that these shows can be as popular as they are? Can the American public really be taking these people to be serious political voices in the public square? Even George Orwell would have had difficulty conceiving of a propaganda machine as effective as the one that currently exists on talk radio.

I don’t think it is accidental that these talk show hosts criticize colleges and universities. A good education teaches one to think critically, and critical thought is the biggest enemy to their popularity and to their ability to influence public thinking.