Mike Edwards's Blog, page 4

How A Little Knowledge Can Go The Wrong Way

We’ve been criticized in the past for arguing against a straw-man; after all, surely no one really wants to get rid of democracy! And yet, there is a post on The Stone blog on the New York Times website, which is exactly the kind of argument that Danny and I had been seeing more and more of, and which helped to inspire the book. In it, Prof. Gary Gutting, a philosopher at Notre Dame, argues that it is increasingly clear that “the people” upon whose wisdom democracy supposedly rests are comple...

The Mystery of Mali

If you were to make a list of the great empires of the world in the year 1300, it would have to start with the Mongol Empires, ruled by thedescendantsof the great Genghis Khan himself:

The Yuan Dynasty (which ruled most of the modern nations of China, Korea, and Mongolia)
The Chagatai Khanate (which ruled over a huge chunk of central Asia that is now divided between China and a number of former Soviet states)
The Golden Horde (which ruled almost half of modern-day Russia)
Il-Khanate (which ruled...

That Was No Gaffe

Okay, I’m going to tread on some dangerous territory today, although I believe I can avoid any missteps. As you might have heard, recently Mitt Romney got into a bit of hot water over some comments he made in Israel–essentially he credited the difference between the per capita GDP of Israel and Palestine to their respective business and political cultures. I won’t go into the debate about whether or not Romney was correct–you can read plenty about that other places.

What I found interesting, h...

Fleshing Out The Straw-Man

In my last post, I discussed one criticism that we’ve gotten, that our definition of democracy was somewhat ill-defined. In this one, I will address what is easily the most common criticism that we get: that we are arguing against a straw-man. Once again, I think the most articulate version of this criticism comes from that same Amazon review that I noted in my last post:

Would any reader seriously doubt that the broad-as-all-outdoors “democracy” they invoke is inferior to the alternative — an...

Defining Democracy

First off, I wanted to say that I very much appreciate everyone who has posted a review of our book, positive or negative, on Amazon or Goodreads (or both!). That being said, we had our longest, and easily mostthoughtfulnegative review on Amazon yesterday, which echoes questions and complaints I’ve gotten about the book other places. So I thought I would respond to a couple of his points over the next couple of days.

His review begins by noting that our definition of democracy is pretty underw...

When Adverstising Goes Awry

There’s a big publicity poster at the El Pollo Loco down the street that proudly proclaims that they use ‘farm raised chickens’. I was perplexed. How else would one raise a chicken? In an apartment?

I looked it up when I got home. It turns out that the alternative is free-range chicken. To the extent that there’s a difference in the taste, healthiness, or quality of life of the chicken (and there’s good reason to suspect there isn’t , free range would generally be the more appealing option. S...

A Few Notes On Syria

1) No Pro-Israel regime will emerge from this conflict

The conflicts between Israel and Syria run deep at this point; both countries have significant and ongoing disagreements over their respective influence in Lebanon and the West Bank, Syria strongly objects to Israel’s continued occupation of the Golan Heights region. Those conflicts are not a result of the policy of Assad’s regime. It is true that not every potential Syrian regime would necessarily give financial and military aid to Hamas...

Important Debate

I wanted to draw people’s attention to an excellent debate over at NYTimes.com on the New York Police Department’s Stop and Frisk policy. In particular, the response by Paul Butler cites the same research by Tom Tyler that we cite in the book.

As background, the police may stop someone on the street and conduct a “pat down” of the outside of their clothing with only “reasonable suspicion” that the person might be engaged in or be intending to engage in illegal activity. Such a search is called...

Tragic Assumptions and Terrible Consequences in Happy Valley

This post is going to be kind of long, and for that I apologize. But I’ve been following the Jerry Sandusky casefor a long time, and I feel the need to comment about the findings of the Freeh Report issued today–an independent investigation conducted by a consulting firm headed by a former head of the FBI hired by the Penn St. Board of Trustees to figure out the extent to which Penn St’s culture might have contributed to the scandal. In particular, reading the report and watching the press co...

What Makes America A Democracy

The recent health care debate has illuminated a common misconception about the nature of American democracy. Take, for instance, a recent comment by Bill O’Reilly on Justice Roberts’ ruling:

“According to his reasoning, the feds can now use the IRS to hurt any American who does not do what the feds think they should do. How is that different from a totalitarian government using agencies to control behavior? China does that, Cuba does that.”

The logic here is that what separates free and democra...