The Boston Globe wonders what happens when liberal academics stumble upon inconvenient truths.

Robert Putnam, author of the bestseller Bowling Alone, has found diversity has a downside. Reporting on Putnam’s findings, The Globe writes, “The greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.”

Pat Buchanan also comments on the study, writing that the fate of the American polity is being sealed by mass immigration.

None of this is news to readers of this blog, who were treated to commentary on Putnam’s research last October. You can read it here.

While in college, one of the most useful books I read was by Thomas Sowell, called “Knowledge and Decisions.” Sowell’s book led me in turn to some of Hayek’s work on the importance and value of knowledge. Sowell shows how the fragmented and disconnected knowledge of millions of people can be coordinated into social processes in political, economic, and legal spheres. It is an intellectual stem-winder directed at all forms of socialistic planning.

One of the great disappointments of the Iraq war is seeing those I have so admired, such as Sowell, defending untenable positions. In his latest essay at Antiwar.com, the indispensable Justin Raimondo applies analysis much like Sowell’s to foreign policy.

Raimondo writes:

The case against interventionism can be made in a purely practical, empirical framework: i.e. it can be shown that it just doesn’t work. Not because the wrong people are in charge, not due to incompetence, the wearing of ideological blinders, or some other disability or shortcoming on the part of policymakers – but because it is simply not possible, no matter who is in charge.What rules out any really effective foreign intervention, either military or economic (i.e. taxpayer-funded “aid” programs of one sort or another), is the sheer complexity of the terrain we find ourselves on. There are just too many factors to fit comfortably into convenient equations, too many layers of historical debris to uncover and clear away, too many ancient disputes that can only be dimly understood by outsiders. The common complaint, by war critics and the neocons, is that there wasn’t enough “planning” done by the administration, that insufficient resources made available to the Iraq war effort, etc., etc. Yet no amount of resources deployed under the constraints of even the most meticulous, well-thought-out plan can achieve what we set out to do in Iraq, i.e. create a stable democratic ally, or even a stable replacement for the despotism we upended.

The natural impulse of the state is to simplify complex matters. In this case, they lay the blame for each and every attack in Iraq at the feet of al Qaeda. But the “planners” that dragged us into the Iraq war were largely ignorant of the religious and social terrain there. Two weeks before the war, George Bush didn’t know that multiple sects of Muslims existed. I guess that was an important piece of information.

Raimondo continues:

As a libertarian, I am opposed to central planning on principle: it couldn’t work in Iraq for precisely the same reasons it didn’t work in the Soviet Union, and doesn’t work anywhere. However, at least the domestic advocates of economic planning in the US are reasonably close to, and knowledgeable about, the people whose fates they would hold in their hands. In the case of our “conservative” planners, who would map out the future of a foreign country on their drawing boards, they are treading on largely unknown terrain, without any first-hand knowledge or experience to guide them even provisionally. This is worse than hubris: it is sheer stupidity.

In short the “conservatives,” obsessed with “National Greatness” and driven by the imperious virus, have forsaken all of their principled opposition to statist planning. Ultimately, it cannot and will not work because it is at odds with human nature, but the planners can do a terrible amount of damage in the meantime.

I haven’t commented on the spate of “good news” coming out of Iraq lately, so let’s review some recent developments.

Writing in the NY Times, two liberal academics pining for jobs in the next Clinton administration say this is a war we just might win: “Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms.”

The Associated Press chimes in with a similar analysis: “The new U.S. military strategy in Iraq, unveiled six months ago to little acclaim, is working.”

The claims of military success have stanched, for now, the political bleeding, and there has been a minor uptick in support of the war as a result.

I won’t waste time with O’Hanlon and Pollack, who both supported the war and were instrumental in providing intellectual cover on the left for Democratic politicians. Read some of Glenn Greenwald if you’re interested in seeing these fellas dispatched.

But is security improving in Iraq? As recently as June, Reuters reported that daily attacks by guerrillas averaged 178 per day–a new high. With 80 confirmed deaths, the month of July was the least deadly for American soldiers since last November, or so the story goes. In fact, when the real tally was announced, there were 88 confirmed casualties, six more than March when the surge began.

Moreover, Iraqi civilian casualties skyrocketed: “Iraqi government figures released on Wednesday showed a sharp rise in the number of Iraqi civilians killed in July to 1,653 from 1,227 in June.” Even this figure is likely low, given the penchant of the Iraqi government to undercount civilian deaths.

But all of this military “success” is meaningless if the political train rolls off the tracks. The administration has been making the case that Sunis are slowly turning against al-Qaida in the Anbar province. Even if true, that in no way implies reconciliation with the Shiite government. In fact, Sunnis are walking out of the Maliki government.

As importantly, Maliki is losing support from other Shiite and secular parties. Juan Cole writes: “The Maliki government has lost the confidence of three other political parties, the Islamic Virtue Party (15 seats in parliament), the Sadr Movement of Muqtada al-Sadr (30 seats), and just on Monday, the Iraqi National List led by former appointed Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. All have pulled their ministers from his government. The government of the major province of Basra, source of Iraq’s petroleum exports and its major port, has collapsed. The governor, from the Islamic Virtue Party, failed a vote of no confidence by the provincial council, spearheaded by a rival Shiite faction, but he refuses to resign even though Maliki backed his removal. And if Basra collapses socially and with regard to security, it is unlikely that the Baghdad government can survive.”

Even Secretary of Defense Gates calls results on the political front “disappointing.”

In short, be leery of buying into a blizzard of propaganda. That’s how we got into this mess in the first place.

In an interview on Anti-war radio, attorney Bruce Fein says that the current administration has more in common with Caligula than the Founding Fathers. You can find an MP3 of the interview here.

Fein served as a senior poohbah in the Reagan justice department and drew up the first article of impeachment during the Clinton imbroglio. Now he is teaming up with Bob Barr, Richard Viguerie, David Keene, and a handful of others to restore sanity to the much diminished “conservative movement.”

Fein has been busily attacking the pretensions of the emperor and critiquing the Unitary Executive theory and the increasing tendency of conservatives to support a “living Constitution,” as long as it provides for the accruing of executive power.

Democrats, too, have bailed out and given the administration broadly enhanced powers to eavesdrop on the phone calls and emails of Americans.

Christians have naturally been silent given that the president is “God’s man.” As Chris Ortiz writes, “Torture, spying, and preemptive military action, and the “servants of Christ” offer not a peep of protest. In fact, they do just the opposite: they wave their flags of freedom while the state is tapping their phones.”

As if any were needed, more evidence of the bipartisan nature of the War Party:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama found himself embroiled in a new foreign policy flap with rival Hillary Clinton on Thursday, this time over the use of nuclear weapons.

Obama ruled out the use of nuclear weapons to go after al Qaeda or Taliban targets in Afghanistan or Pakistan, prompting Clinton to say presidents never take the nuclear option off the table, and extending their feud over whether Obama has enough experience to be elected president in November 2008.

So, we see that Mrs. Clinton has her imperial bona fides in order: it would clearly be naive and irresponsible to assure anyone that the tasty morsels of flaming hell we’re offering to chuck into Pakistan will be limited to temperatures less than, say, 5000 Kelvins or so. Now let’s check in with her chief rival, the post-racial darling of progressives everywhere:

That position came a day after Obama vowed he would be willing to strike al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan with or without the approval of the government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

Obama struck the tough tone after Clinton accused him of being naive and irresponsible for saying in a debate last week he would be willing to meet without preconditions the leaders of hostile nations Iran, Cuba, Syria, North Korea and Venezuela in his first year in office.

[ ... ]

“If we had actionable intelligence about the existence of high-level al Qaeda targets like Osama bin Laden, Senator Obama would act and is confident that conventional means would be sufficient to take the target down,” [Obama spokeswoman Jen] Psaki said. “Frankly we’re surprised that others would disagree.”

Even in the late summer of 2007, Sen. Obama is declaring in public, with great big grownups watching and listening, that he’s at least as much a cowboy as Dubya ever pretended to be. Of course, it’s a safe bet that he, like Dubya, will “lead” from the rear — from that cozy little firebase on the Potomac.

Keep in mind that the Conventional Wisdom assures us that one of these appalling clowns will be the forty-fourth president of this used-to-be republic. At this point, it appears likely that either Sen. Clinton or Sen. Obama will oppose the swaggering crossdresser Rudy Giuliani for that office a year from now. And the Conventional Wisdom also tells us that the mushmouthed and cowardly weasel G.W. Bush has probably seen to it that no one who bears the GOP affiliation is likely to be elected to anything more significant than a rural county commission anytime soon. And, even if we grant Gotham’s Transvestite Tyrant a realistic chance, then the next Decider will be one of three wannabe warmongers whose “positions” (they have, I am sure, no actual beliefs or convictions) on America’s conduct in the world are mutually indistinguishable.

Don’t forget: voting changes things. You can’t complain if you don’t vote. And Santa Claus is comin’ to town, too.