youth opinions of immigration policy

keeping a democracy from overreacting to terrorism

(Chicago) In her book What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat, Louise Richardson warns against generalizing but still ventures a cautious generalization about terrorists. What they want, she writes, are “the three r’s” of revenge, renown, and reaction. They are strikingly vague about what kind of reaction they expect or what it will lead to (pp. 80-84). Bin Laden may have thought, for example, that the US would withdraw from the Middle East if he attacked us at home, or that we would invade the Arab world–but most likely he did not weigh that alternative or care which of the two outcomes occurred. What he wanted was a reaction of a large magnitude, something that would make him a significant player.

And that is precisely what he got in the form of the Afghanistan and Iraqi invasions. That does not (by itself) prove that those two interventions were bad for the world or for the US. They could have been good even if bin Laden had wanted them–for example, if our Afghan intervention had produced a stable, human-rights-protecting regime there. But it now looks as if both wars were bad, the costs too high for us and for the populations of both countries, the gains in human rights too evanescent. So then it appears that we gave bin Laden just what he wanted and did net harm as a result.

Richardson writes, “It was not quite true, therefore, that, in the words of President Bush, ‘September 11 changed our world.’ Rather, it was our reaction to September 11 that changed our world” (p. 167). That was true in big ways (two wars) and in subtler ways as well. For instance, enough Americans decided–wrongly–that it was unsafe to fly after September 11 that an additional 1,200 road fatalities occurred (p. 168).

The essential question is how a democratic government can avoid such an overreaction. In part, that’s easy. Very few US administrations would have invaded Iraq after 9/11–overturning a secularist Ba’ath regime in reaction to an attack by a fundamentalist movement based in an entirely different country. That was so stupid or venal that the probability of repetition is relatively low. But most administrations would have invaded Afghanistan, most Congresses would have passed the Patriot Act, and most free peoples would have curtailed flying and altered their behavior in many other irrational ways. I, for one, was not very happy flying in 2001-2002.

In a dictatorship, rulers can decide to shrug off a terrorist attack if that serves their interests. In a competitive democracy with a free press, the public typically demands a strong reaction. Imagine, for instance, that Al Gore had been president in 2000 and had chosen not to invade Afghanistan. We would be better off today, but no one would know that. Instead, Gore would be remembered as the weak president who was defeated in 2004 by the candidate who finally took us into Afghanistan.

Terrorism is a criminal offense that can be dealt with as such; it is not an existential threat to a country of our size and wealth. Terrorists are weak, and the biggest gift we can give them is to treat them as more powerful than they are. I don’t really expect these conclusions to prevail, especially in the face of another terrorist attack. But in the meantime, the best we can do is remind ourselves and others of these facts.

how the new media ecosystem favors government

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(Chicago) Media outlets have proliferated. Once, only press barons could publish news and opinions, but today, anyone can blog or post a video. A high proportion of the new content is critical and editorially independent–in the sense that no one tells the writers what they may say. Yet the paradoxical result is that government controls the news agenda much more than it ever did.

This pattern is clearest at the local level, where new media have killed the traditional newspaper’s business model, causing newspapers to lay off their “enterprise reporters”–those who dig up original information. In Baltimore, for example, a Pew study finds that 53 major outlets now cover local news and information. But they can collectively afford almost no enterprise reporting. As a result, they all repeat the same content (albeit with diverse opinions tacked on), and the content comes disproportionately from the mayor’s office. “We found official press releases often appear word for word in first accounts of events, though often not noted as such.” The news environment feels free because bloggers get to say nasty things about the mayor. But City Hall decides what they are talking about in the first place.

The same trend is now happening at the national level, although to a lesser extent because some enterprise reporters still work in DC. In Politico, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write:

[The] White House … has taken old tricks for shaping coverage (staged leaks, friendly interviews) and put them on steroids using new ones (social media, content creation, precision targeting). And it’s an equal opportunity strategy: Media across the ideological spectrum are left scrambling for access.

The results are transformational. With more technology, and fewer resources at many media companies, the balance of power between the White House and press has tipped unmistakably toward the government. This is an arguably dangerous development, and one that the Obama White House — fluent in digital media and no fan of the mainstream press — has exploited cleverly and ruthlessly. And future presidents from both parties will undoubtedly copy and expand on this approach.

Again, the story is complicated at the national level, because reporters are still paid to dig for information in Washington. Lots of important information is available, regardless of the White House’s attitude to press conferences. Also, the two rival national parties have incentives to uncover some kinds of damaging information about each other. But VandeHei and Allen make a fair point. Far too few reporters are available to cover far too wide a range of stories.

In the longer term, a new model may develop for funding an actual watchdog press. But that won’t happen automatically, because enterprise reporting in the public interest is a classic public good–valuable to everyone in general, but not to anyone in particular. In theory, the government could subsidize the news as a public good on the model of European national broadcasters or American public broadcasting (which receives a pittance from the federal government). But publicly funded media becomes corrupt unless it is challenged by some kind of independent news: see the travails of the BBC. Thus the challenge of funding enterprise reporting remains even if the government helps. Our traditional model involved some lucky cross-subsidization: classified ads paid for journalists who covered city council meetings. That model was killed by Craigslist. I don’t believe crowd-sourcing or unpaid citizen journalism can fill the need–Baltimore illustrates what that leads to. And I don’t believe in technological fixes, because they can only cut the costs of publishing and dissemination, which are already extraordinarily low. New organizational forms are going to have to develop. I think universities have a role to play, because we have 2,000 institutions, nearly 3 percent of GDP, skills for analysis and communication, and a self-interested need to be able to share our ideas with the public.

in California

the hollowing-out of youth

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(Santa Monica, CA)

Raised to study to the test, to volunteer with one eye on college applications and to play the sport with the most scholarship opportunities, Millennials carry that competitive mind-set into the workforce, said Peter Levine, director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University in Boston.

“‘They feel like they need to take advantage of every opportunity they have for advancement,” Levine said. “You’re not going to get tied down to someone you just sort of happen to know at this point in your life. It feels like a risk, and there’s a cost for that.”

— Megan Finnerty, “Experts: Young people prioritizing careers over romance,”USA Today (and theArizona Republic), Feb. 14.

I don’t deserve to be cited as an “expert” on the general topic of this Valentine’s Day article (careers taking precedence over romance). In fact, Finnerty had called me to investigate whether young adults are more socially disconnected than their predecessors used to be. Her good reporting on that question was cut at the editorial stage.

But I do think her article covers an important issue. It’s not so much about being too busy or rushed, but rather about delaying activities of intrinsic value until real life begins, which is only after one’s education is complete. Everything one does during adolescence and young adulthood then feels like “preparation.” Thus Lew Friedland and Shauna Morimoto find that many high school students volunteer for career purposes. The entire thrust of education reform is ensuring that everyone reaches some kind of finish-line, as measured by test scores, college admission, or a job. No one talks seriously about whether people are having intrinsically valuable experiences for their first third of their lives. And the “hookup culture,” to the extent that it exists, may also be a matter of delaying the encumbrances of a romantic relationship until one is fully prepared for life. I trace all those trends not to changes in people’s characters or priorities but to the new economic reality of individual risk/individual reward, in which one is alone to make one’s way in the market.

After a visit to Duke some years ago one which everyone wanted my views of the hookup culture, I thought:

Oh, come with me and be my love,
For Saturday night–that’s enough.
Next week, I’ve got a paper due,
A service gig, an interview too.
“Come with me”: remember, from our course?
(Also a pun, which I’d better not force.)
Yes, I deleted “live”–but you can stay
‘Til ten. Then I’ll work on my résumé.
Slippers and buckles of the finest gold:
One day you’ll have those, and someone to hold.
But I’m by myself now; the market’s tight;
For now, I’ve got to focus, network, fight.
Wait ’til we’re forty, and then maybe
You can be my love and live with me.

[For ease of reference, here’s the Marlowe original and previous replies by Walter Ralegh, C. Day Lewis, William Carlos Williams, and Odgen Nash.]