I can see all three axes in recent commentary.
1. From The Washington Post:
With their baseball hats and sauntering gaits, they appeared to friends and neighbors like ordinary American boys. But the Boston bombing suspects were refugees from another world — the blood, rubble and dirty wars of the Russian Caucasus.
This allows us to view the bombings in terms of the oppressor-oppressed axis, with the suspects as victims of an upbringing in an oppressive environment.
2. From The Washington Times:
The Bill of Rights was already on life support before this tragedy.
…Not only did the militarized domestic law enforcement complex put the City of Boston under martial law, but nobody seems to have found it out of the ordinary, much less outrageous. Yes, a few journalists like libertarian Anthony Gregory raised a finger. But, for the most part, nobody seemed to mind that the entire city was under military siege, complete with paramilitary units in full battle gear, battlefield ordinance and tanks. Tanks!
This allows us to frame the bombing in libertarian terms, along the freedom-coercion axis.
3. From The Weekly Standard:
The bombs on Patriots’ Day in Boston brought a fresh reminder, if any were needed, that there are still those who would send us into a new dark age. And the trial of the murderer-abortionist Dr. Kermit Gosnell in Philadelphia reminds us that other barbarous things are being done in our midst. So there are still, in the enlightened and progressive 21st century, barbarians at the gates—and, sadly, within the gates.
The lead editorial is entitled “Civilization and Barbarism.” What more needs to be said?
The writers in the first piece may be perfectly correct. However, I do not think anyone other than a progressive would react with sympathy to these guys because they were refugees from blood, rubble and dirty wars. Heck, my grandparents were refugees from blood, rubble, and dirty wars consisting of raids by Cossacks during the Russian Revolution, and when they came here they felt nothing but gratitude. Even today, I think that most refugees feel the same thing.
By the same token, the writer of the second piece may be perfectly correct. But he is not going to win over any converts. Who other than a libertarian would begrudge the authorities for how they reacted in the aftermath of the bombings?
My guess is that most people will find it easier to relate to rhetoric along the civilization-barbarism axis. I would predict that the Administration will tend toward such rhetoric in talking about the bombings going forward.
I’ve heard some fellow libertarians raise the same objections as the Washington Times guy. My reaction is to say that that’s a fair point that the authorities did probably over-react a bit. But the fact that nobody’s up in arms about it doesn’t seem hard to explain: the whole “shelter in place, shut down the roads and public transit” program only lasted a day and, specifically, a weekday, at that. The mayor and the city police send out a message Friday morning telling adults they shouldn’t go in to work and kids should stay home from school…what kind of reaction do you usually get in these situations? Who complains about getting an unexpected day off from work/school? Oh, that’s right…nobody.
Jeff, getting an ‘unexpected day off’ is one thing. Having tanks roll down your street and being forced (not asked, as was initially reported) from your home at gunpoint so that armed ‘police’ (dressed more like soldiers) can enter, is more than ‘a bit’ different. You may not buy the freedom/coercion axis model – as Arnold predicted most wouldn’t – but that only means you view the event along a different axis. Any reaction to the other two excerpts?
I cannot say exactly which axis I view these events through. Does everybody have to see the world through one of three lenses? Does every incident that generates public discussion need be viewed as a matter of x/y/z politics? Surely not.
I’m inclined to say the first excerpt is absurd, given that neither of these guys spent much time in Chechnya; they were largely raised in the US. It strikes me as moral preening more than anything. “Look at how compassionate I am, everybody, in sympathizing with the plight of those poor, misunderstood Chechens.” Robin Hanson, call your office.
The third excerpt has some merit to it, I’d say, but then Kristol, as is his wont, quickly veers off course into using the bombing as a pretext for criticizing the Obama Administration and specifically its press secretary for some comments about Afghanistan. Throw in the remarks about Winston Churchill and the Nazis, a brief defense of the Bush Administration, and you have yet another formulaic neocon argument for…well, I don’t know what exactly, but it smells awfully stale at this point. Plus ca change.
Again, with regard to the second, tanks may or may not have been overkill, depending on how much anybody in law enforcement knew about this guy’s whereabouts and capabilities (were there more bombs on the way?), and nobody likes being forced from their home and having it searched, but given the earlier shootout/bomb-chucking encounter with police, I’m inclined to cut them a bit of slack. If you were tasked with hunting this guy down, what tactics and resources would you employ?
The point of Arnold’s model isn’t rigid categorization, but explanation of *general* POV.
You might find the first scenario ‘absurd’ but a ‘progressive’ (one who views events through the ‘oppressor-oppressed’ axis) might not.
You might find the third excerpt ‘stale’, but a ‘conservative’ (with a POV through the ‘civilization-barbarism’ axis) might not.
The to the ‘libertarian’s’ ‘freedom-coercion’ axis, tanks aren’t the point. At issue is the forced entry into homes at gunpoint, under color of authority… something the Constitution forbids (ostensibly anyway), and would seem to violate the freedom of the homeowners to deny entry without probable cause.
And since you ask… if I’m the guy with a gun, my actions are either constrained by obligation to the rule of law (aka, the aforementioned Constitution)… or they’re not.
Arnold, this is a great post!
I remember thinking the same thing when I heard about the edict that people stay off the streets, how they could force people to stay in, guess it shows what axis I peer through! 🙂 I didn’t even know about the tanks, since I didn’t follow the coverage that much. It’s one thing to advise people to stay off the streets for their own safety, but to demand it? Seems like the Boston cops went way overboard on this one. Reminds me of the end of The Fugitive, beautiful movie, when the crazed cops will do anything to avenge the murder of a fallen cop, including clipping the wrong guy.
I really like your mapping. Cant wait to read the book!
Just to keep it an honest discussion here, I have to take issue with the claim of tanks in the streets of Boston. All I find from a quick search on Google Images for “boston marathon tanks in street” are photos of a few police tactical vehicles. One or more of these (depending typically on the size of the department) are owned and used nowadays by virtually every urban police department in the country.
Given the use of improvised explosive devices, home-made grenades, and who-knows-what-else by the two terrorists, deployment of tactical vehicles seems a prudential decision.
To see an image, go here & scroll 1/2 to 2/3 down the page, on the right-hand side.
Yes, maybe a civilian would call it a tank, but it’s not a tank.
I live in Malden, and was glued to the crisis the whole way through on my day off (Boston University was closed). There were no tanks.
I consider myself a soft libertarian but the idea that we somehow lost freedoms (on net) is absurd. Anyone who was there will tell you that the police and the Feds reacted rationally. They had a bombing suspect with numerous explosive devices. His brother’s body had just been found with explosives attached to it. They knew he was within a specific radius in a specific town. They set up a perimeter, searched for the guy, and found him. That literally could have saved lives. And it couldn’t have happened (or at least would have been made more risky) if they just let people walk the streets. So people got a day off from work and spent roughly 9am – 5pm at home. Then, when they finally found the guy, everybody in Boston cheered on the police and the feds in the streets. Bostonians were ebullient (I was there). The scene was chaotically joyous and happy. One of best bad days ever.
You are exactly correct, nobody but a libertarian would have the strange reaction of piece #2. Yet even some libertarians wouldn’t have that view. That is a fringe view, expressed by people who weren’t there, weren’t paying close attention, and/or have an ideology to push.
You realize that all this means is you simply don’t view this event from the ‘freedom-coercion’ axis, right?
As rational as the cops might have been… as possible as it is that ‘lives were saved’… is it still also possible that people lost freedom during the event?
What would have happened if anyone had stood on their rights and told them ‘no, you can’t come in’? Think it would have been a nice little stand-off until a warrant was produced?
Do you think the delay in reading the suspect’s Miranda rights was justified?
Just because you don’t agree with the point of view, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily wrong. Even if you were ‘there’.
I wasn’t there and didn’t pay much attention other than reading a few news articles. But I question your entire notion that it was more important to catch this guy than let an entire city go about its day. Think about the millions of dollars in lost salaries- the most destructive act of this episode was the police shutting entire areas of the city down- and people not being able to do what they needed. Do you think they shut down these cities hundreds of years ago when bombs would go off, say in the 1920 bombing of Wall Street that killed 38 people? No, they would go about their day and investigate it. Nobody is saying they couldn’t advise the citizens to stay home since a killer is on the loose, but to demand it and criminalize anyone who left their home is to overreact.