A Good Response to my Last Post

Thanks, Steve Mohr.

Photo by Lawrence Hookham on Unsplash

An old friend and former student commented on my last post and I feel it is worth a look by more of you than happened to read it in the comments section. Here it is:

I am interested how you come to the conclusion “that MSNBC has the more credentialed and intelligent guest experts.”

If you are referring to the “opinion programs”, (Maddow, Hannity, O’Donnell, Watters) then I can’t debate with you as I refuse to watch those shows on any networks as their opinions and take on issues is so easy to predict and repetitive.

In the news programs I have seen the following on Fox recently:

Jonathan Turley - Constitutional law professor.

Alan Dershowitz - Constitutional law professor.

Andy McCarthy - former Federal prosecutor

Jack Keane - former general and vice chief of staff to the Army

Tulsi Gabbard - former Democratic Presidential candidate.

Some pretty strong credentials and intelligent sounding individuals in that group which in the humble of this former political science major, would certainly match the credentials or intelligence of anyone appearing on MSNBC.

…….

Steve deserves a response from me.

I may have misspoken. Clearly, I did not consult any serious study of the differences, if any exist. And I have doubts about the ability to do a study that would be convincing. My intuition, for whatever value that has, is that MSNBC has the more credible experts, or a more varied array, in some of their shows. Perhaps, Lawrence McDonald, Ari Belber, Chris Hayes, Lawrence O'Donnell, Ali Velshi and some of the guests and regulars on Morning Joe. I think Scarbough himself is a bit arrogant and sometimes annoying.

But it is probably any one person’s judgement is simply too subjective to be worth a lot. So my point shouldn’t be about their relative merits, but about the fact that neither, nor both together, helps us reach an understanding that transcends immediate partisan politics.

[By the way, I’m not writing off partisan debate. There are more than a few grains of insight on both sides. And even if the “extreme” sides of both for the present may be “off the charts,” I do think that, with a little panning in the stream, the left “extreme” often finds more flakes of gold. The Republican far right, well, just seems really “far.” ]

Instead, we are all forced back to serious reading. Major national newspapers offer good opinion pieces, and there are good monthly magazines and their weekly on-line editions that help us get behind the “stock” characters and issues. Also, serious people and reputable scholars are still writing important books. Read when you get a chance about ocean currents in the Atlantic and new projective models of ongoing environmental change. Think about laws that might effectively block the hiring of undocumented and raise wages in some industries and businesses (and prices). Consider the role of fiat currency in analyses of sovereign debt. Tough reading for us non-lawyers, but insightful, “the Code of Capital,” by Katharina Pistor. I haven’t lost faith in the belief that “the answers are out there.” Not “the permanent truth.” Just a few useful miles further along the path.

What I meant to emphasize in the blog is that I see us spending a lot of time fighting with windmills. Trump and the border question are manifestations of underlying issues and should be seen and thought about seriously. But, to me, they are best understood as doors, as openings to the deeper problems which we and the next generation will have to face (when they are harder to manage).