.

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Let’s forget all the business about academic freedom (which is important), and look at this from a market-driven point of view.   Let’s assume a small liberal arts institution (given that most colleges are of this type). A liberal arts institution needs teachers who have specializations in all sorts of highly specific areas like 19^th century Victorian literature. These skills are not marketable in the outside-of-academia job market.

Now assume that you’ve acquired this academia-only skill, and you are now at a job that expects you to mostly teach and perform in-house service and ignore research or do it minimally on the side. None of these (teaching, service) make you more marketable to other colleges. In fact, the more years you are there, the less appealing you look to other schools. The reality of the situation is this: your everyday job demands push you to ignore the development of the one thing (your research) that would make you marketable at another college (or even just to maintain your marketability). The upshot: once you get that job, that’s likely going to be it for you. If you have a high teaching load (over 6 courses a year) you are effectively trapped. If you lose this job, chances are not high you will find another one. Not because you are bad at what you do, but because you no longer have a strong research record.

Now put it all together. You pursue a costly Ph.d for years in order to gain a very specific skill that is useless outside of academia, you then get paid a small salary to do it, you probably live in a place you don’t want to live – and that job has you ignore the development of the one thing (research) that would make you marketable to other colleges.

What other job works that way? Now remove tenure. Who in their right mind would pursue these highly specific and useless out of academia subjects (which colleges need — remember) in that kind of employment situation? No one would. Which is why colleges and professors benefit from tenure.

Markets are supposed to be about incentives. Remove tenure, and unless you are going to replace it with a powerful counter-incentive to enter into academia, you will see a plummeting of qualified people becoming teachers.

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There’s an America where it doesn’t matter what language you speak, what god you worship, or how deep your New World roots run. An America where allegiance to the Constitution trumps ethnic differences, language barriers and religious divides. An America where the newest arrival to our shores is no less American than the ever-so-great granddaughter of the Pilgrims

But there’s another America as well, one that understands itself as a distinctive culture, rather than just a set of political propositions. This America speaks English, not Spanish or Chinese or Arabic. It looks back to a particular religious heritage: Protestantism originally, and then a Judeo-Christian consensus that accommodated Jews and Catholics as well. It draws its social norms from the mores of the Anglo-Saxon diaspora — and it expects new arrivals to assimilate themselves to these norms, and quickly.

I agree with Douthat so far – as a matter of fact, I argued this same point in one of the mosque-oriented threads here over the last week or two. One America is procedural/governmental, the other is cultural. In my view, the first is an essential part of America, the latter is not. The latter part could very well change in the future without America suffering any harm.

So far so good,  but Douthat has more to say.

He continues:

These two understandings of America, one constitutional and one cultural, have been in tension throughout our history. And they’re in tension again this summer, in the controversy over the Islamic mosque and cultural center scheduled to go up two blocks from ground zero.

…

This is typical of how these debates usually play out. The first America tends to make the finer-sounding speeches, and the second America often strikes cruder, more xenophobic notes. The first America welcomed the poor, the tired, the huddled masses; the second America demanded that they change their names and drop their native languages, and often threw up hurdles to stop them coming altogether. The first America celebrated religious liberty; the second America persecuted Mormons and discriminated against Catholics.

But both understandings of this country have real wisdom to offer, and both have been necessary to the American experiment’s success. During the great waves of 19th-century immigration, the insistence that new arrivals adapt to Anglo-Saxon culture — and the threat of discrimination if they didn’t — was crucial to their swift assimilation. The post-1920s immigration restrictions were draconian in many ways, but they created time for persistent ethnic divisions to melt into a general unhyphenated Americanism.

…

Too often, American Muslim institutions have turned out to be entangled with ideas and groups that most Americans rightly consider beyond the pale. Too often, American Muslim leaders strike ambiguous notes when asked to disassociate themselves completely from illiberal causes.

By global standards, Rauf may be the model of a “moderate Muslim.” But global standards and American standards are different. For Muslim Americans to integrate fully into our national life, they’ll need leaders who don’t describe America as “an accessory to the crime” of 9/11 (as Rauf did shortly after the 2001 attacks), or duck questions about whether groups like Hamas count as terrorist organizations (as Rauf did in a radio interview in June). And they’ll need leaders whose antennas are sensitive enough to recognize that the quest for inter-religious dialogue is ill served by throwing up a high-profile mosque two blocks from the site of a mass murder committed in the name of Islam.

They’ll need leaders, in other words, who understand that while the ideals of the first America protect the e pluribus, it’s the demands the second America makes of new arrivals that help create the unum.

Of course, it’s the last three paragraphs that bug me. When I read online are the hordes of people and politicians who arguing that Islam must be stopped because “there is no moderate Islam” and then you have Ross Douthat here saying, in the New York Times, that if a Muslim is to hope to be considered moderate in America they had better line up their political (not religious) allegiances so that they map onto the viewpoint of conservatives — is ridiculous.

To say that America’s own foreign policies contributed to 9/11 should not be a factor in deciding whether Muslims are moderates. Rauf himself, when he said this, was quite clear that he (a) did not say America deserved to be attacked, and he was not saying that (b) America was morally responsible in any way for the attacks. What he did say was that many American policies irritate and agitate certain groups of Muslims, and as a result it’s not surprising that those people see America as the enemy. Many Muslims considered the presence of American bases in Saudi Arabia to be offensive. We knew that, and built them anyway. Many Muslims think we are one sided in the Israeli conflict.  We likely are — Israel is our closest ally in the region.

These are hardly “shocking” things to say, and it is insane to suggest that only when Imams stop saying them they will be no longer considered “radical”. This  doesn’t mean that everyone agrees with these comments, but it should mean that they are not so out of the realm of the discussable that they deserve the “radical” label in this context.

But what about Hamas? Why not denounce them as terrorists? If this particular Imam does world-traveling work trying to bring people together from various factions, I wonder — does demonizing one  side add or detract from that mission? The man has clearly denounced terrorism on many occasions. To ask him to denounce the democratically elected government of Gaza is an obvious political act that does nothing but hurt the guy’s overall mission. I’m not sure saying “I won’t denounce them” means “I endorse what they do.” (I find it amusing that one of the main anti-mosque politicians, Rep. King, was long known for his refusal years ago to denounce the IRA or call their methods “terrorist”).

But let’s forget all this hashing out of Douthat’s ridiculous demand that for Muslims to be considered “moderate” they’ll have to start acting and talking like American conservatives. Let’s just let this guy Rauf speak for himself. In full. After reading it, see if you think that until he falls in line with Douthat’s conservativism, he can’t be considered an obvious Muslim moderate (bolds not Rauf’s, obviously):

After our proposal to build a community and cultural center two blocks from the World Trade Center site, I was pleased and gratified by the outpouring of support from city officials and a wide range of people who understand our mission.

My colleagues and I are the anti-terrorists. We are the people who want to embolden the vast majority of Muslims who hate terrorism to stand up to the radical rhetoric. Our purpose is to interweave America’s Muslim population into the mainstream society.

People who are stakeholders in society, who believe they are welcomed as equal partners, do not want to destroy it. They want to build it. And there’s no better demonstration of our desire to build than the construction of this center. It will help revive lower Manhattan.

The project has been mischaracterized, so I want to explain clearly what it would be. Our planned 13-story community center is intended for Park Place between Church St. and West Broadway. It is not a mosque, although it will include a space for Muslim prayer services. It will have a swimming pool, basketball court, meeting rooms, a 500-seat auditorium, banquet facilities and many other things a community needs to be healthy. The center will offer theatrical programming, art exhibitions and cooking classes. These are amenities missing now from this part of the city.

And, yes, the center will have a public memorial to the victims of 9/11 as well as a meditation room where all will be welcome for quiet reflection. The center will support soul and body.

The center will be open to all regardless of religion. Like a YMCA, the 92nd St. Y or the Jewish Community Center uptown, it will admit everyone. It will be a center for all New Yorkers.

What grieves me most is the false reporting that leads some families of 9/11 victims to think this project somehow is designed by Muslims to gloat over the attack.

That could not be further from the truth.

My heart goes out to all of the victims of 9/11. They are all heroes. But I urge you to include in your sympathy the family of Mohammad Salman Hamdani. Born in Pakistan, his parents brought him to New York as a small child. He wanted nothing more than to be an American, and he was.

A high school football player in Bayside, Queens, he graduated from Queens College. When he could not get into an American medical school, he became a part-time ambulance driver. He disappeared on 9/11; his body was found months later in the wreckage of the north tower. This 23-year-old Muslim died trying to save his fellow New Yorkers.

Religion did not separate the victims on that terrible day. Whether Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists or any other faith, all of these people made up the fabric of New York. They all died together.

Freedom of religion is something we hold dear. It is the core of what America is all about, and it is what people worldwide respect about our country. The Koran itself says compulsion in religion is wrong.

American Muslims want to be both good Americans and good Muslims. They can be the best assets the United States has in combating radicalism.

They know that many American values – freedom of religion, human dignity and opportunity for prosperity – are also Muslim values.

We believe that people of good faith can use the common core of their religions to find solutions to problems that will let them live together.

I have been the imam at a mosque in Tribeca for 27 years. I am as much a part of this community as anyone else. Our mosque is as much a part of the neighborhood as any church, synagogue or surrounding business. My work is to make sure mosques are not recruiting grounds for radicals.

To do that, Muslims must feel they are welcome in New York. Alienated people are open to cynicism and radicalism. Any group that believes it is under attack will breed rebellion. The proposed center is an attempt to prevent the next 9/11.

What could be a better use for the citizens in lower Manhattan? What could be a better monument to the victims of that tragic day?

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Since I happen to read a lot of work on Confucius, I often think of this question in terms of the ancient Chinese texts. For those who read the texts, it is common knowledge that the term de, which is used for virtue, also can be used for “power” or “to get.” So some say that this implies that virtue is a power, that it is a power to get appropriate responses from others (or even that virtue is itself a substantiated case of getting – an appropriation of dao in a particular place or context so that in the first case virtue is the subject of the getting, in the latter it is the object of the getting). There are lots of examples that hint at virtue as a power in Confucius, where truly virtuous people seem to have the capacity to transform their human surroundings.

That said, I’m not sure how to read Confucius (or the Confucians) on this issue definitively (or even confidently). To say that virtue is a power to acquire responses from others is a strong claim, one that would seem to rule out the virtue of people like Shun, who was considered a virtuous exemplar for his unfailing filial piety even in the face of repeated failure to elicit virtuous responses from his father. It seems that Shun is still considered virtuous — if not the most virtuous! — leading us to believe that virtue here is seen as a disposition, not a power (granted, this is in Mencius, not Confucius, so perhaps they diverge on this).

I’m not going to settle the issue here. Instead I wanted to simply mention some thoughts that came to mind while reading Nivison’s take on the issue (I was reading his Ways of Confucianism today). As far as I can tell, Nivison thinks that virtue is a strong power to illicit response from another; when the latter is absent, so is the former. He writes (in his “Paradox of Virtue”):

The de of the king automatically produces a complementary response within his field of moral force. To the extent that his character, his de such as it is, has the quality of good order, this de will affect those around him, in such a way that their behavior will be smoothly and functionally related to his, effortlessly and naturally on both sides.

It’s hard to read this as nothing short of an endorsement of virtue as a power. Of course, I’m not sure what Nivison means by “the quality of good order,” and that phrase is doing some work here for him. He doesn’t explain it. Continuing, a little later on, Nivison makes an analogy, suggesting that –

…another example of de as inherent character together with field of resonant causal force [is] the sexual attractiveness of a young woman.

In talking about a “resonant causal force” in the latter quote, Nivison seems to be arguing that making a true attribution of sexual attractiveness in the case of a woman is a matter not just of certain features being present in a woman, but also of their eliciting certain reactions from other people. This makes some sense; if a woman elicits no reactions from others that demonstrate sexual arousal, it would be difficult to grasp why one would call such a woman sexually attractive. As a result, ‘sexual attractiveness’ is a quality that refers not only to what is present in the object, but is also to a power to cause certain effects in others under certain conditions.

Using this analogy, Nivison seems to suggest that virtue is also a “resonant causal” power. If Joe is truly being generous to Sally, then Joe’s de should elicit a certain kind of virtuous response from Sally. Otherwise, carrying the analogy through, Joe wasn’t really generous. Nivison doesn’t go into detail here on how this all works, and of course it’s not hard to see where this gets complicated quickly. For one: you might discount it if Sally had the right sexual features but elicited no arousal from Joe if Joe was blind, or homosexual, or if he was drunk or on drugs, or if it was dark in the room at the time, or if Joe was distracted by something else. Clearly a lack of response is not in itself a proof that Sally is not sexually attractive. You need “the right conditions” before you can make such an inference.

So let’s say that Joe acts in some virtuous way towards Sally, and she does not return the correct response to Joe. Clearly there will have to be certain conditions under which we’d be willing to say that the conditions were “not right” in the same way that the conditions were not right for us to use Joe’s lack of sexual response towards Sally as a reason to say Sally is not sexually attractive.

What would those conditions be? If we can locate them, we’ll know that in a particular situation making true claims about Joe’s virtue will not be entirely dependent on a response from Sally – if the right conditions aren’t present. After all, clearly Shun’s father did not respond correctly to Shun — but yet Shun was said to be virtuous. So what was missing from the situation?

Of course, it is tempting to say that the recipient needs to possess some degree of virtue. However, the Confucian text (the Analects anyway) does not seem to uniformly support this. After all, we know that Confucius thinks that the presence of a junzi (virtuous gentleman) amongst uncouth and likely vicious barbarians would civilize them. We also know that the power of the sage is so great that everything around him/her begins to emulate correctly, and clearly everything is not virtuous.

So what is it?

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Here’s the WSJ piece, in entirety, followed by my comments below it.

“If there is a silver lining in the fight over Manhattan’s “Ground Zero Mosque,” it is to see that the events of September 11, 2001 remain strong in the public mind.
Thus it is affirming, in an ironic way, to see partisans on the left and right joining to defend the legal and Constitutional right of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf to build an Islamic center and mosque at 45 Park Place, two blocks from the perimeter of the former World Trade Center towers.

It will be an irony of a different sort if the $100 million Islamic center rises 13 stories while the new the World Trade Center site, nine years after, remains a pit of dust-covered construction struggling to rejoin the life of New York City. For the most extreme elements of Islam, this must seem a crude, enduring victory.
Recall the ringing cries that rebuilding the annihilated 108 stories would be the “best answer” to the terrorists. Absent that, the next-best answer New York City gave recently was to reassert its belief in freedom of religion and legal title. In an August 3 speech on the Islamic center’s building approvals, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg summarized those freedoms as “tolerance.”

One must agree. This is tolerance.

Along the way, Mr. Bloomberg noted that denying someone the right to build a house of worship “may happen in other countries” but shouldn’t here. There is a school of thought in this controversy that bringing up the denial of religious practice in “other countries” is irrelevant to discussing the appropriateness of the Ground Zero mosque. I disagree.

Indeed in the wake of much praise for Mayor Bloomberg’s defense of civil and religious liberty, let me modestly suggest that he next go to Rome in October and deliver a sequel at Pope Benedict XVI’s synod on what the pope recently called the “urgent” plight of Christian minorities in the Middle East. Here, Mr. Bloomberg was preaching to the choir. Try it over there, where it really matters.

We didn’t discover tolerance. Islam coexisted for centuries with Christianity and Judaism. No more. Minorities such as Coptic Christians in Egypt or the Chaldeans and Yazidi in Iraq are being punished or driven out. Churches are destroyed, not built. In April, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, described the disappearance of Christians from the Middle East as “a possibility that appalls me.” Iran this week sentenced seven Bahái leaders, merely for being Baháis.
These are national policies, not merely “extremist” Islam. This is directly linked to why the West, including lower Manhattan, is being attacked.

It’s always stirring to see the American Constitution prevail on behalf of unpopular groups, whether neo-Nazis marching in Skokie or Imam Rauf’s Cordoba House in New York. But here’s what’s galling about the Cordoba House affair. There is a sense in which these unpopular causes and people always free-ride on the rest of us who defend freedom. It would be good to see them in return doing their part to keep these principles alive, and that includes Imam Rauf’s unambiguous public support for the embattled Christian minorities in the Middle East.

Islam isn’t just another religion in America. It is bound up in the biggest political struggle of our time. Notwithstanding Imam Rauf’s commitments to “dialogue,” what has he or the rest done to promote and protect the traditions of Western civil society, for which many here and in Europe have fought and died? Maybe the Constitution doesn’t explicitly require it, but where is the good faith on their part?

No institution has spent more time trying to bring Islam toward the modern world’s tradition of civil liberties—that is, the world as we’ve known it for about 250 years—than the Vatican. On behalf of tolerance in the Middle Eastern countries, the Vatican has set up active directorates, sent envoys and held endless symposia on behalf of “understanding” and “dialogue.”

In 1995, the Saudis and others, with the Vatican’s support, opened a large, beautiful mosque in Rome. The expectation was that the Saudis would loosen their restrictions on Christian practice. Despite some one million immigrant Christian workers there, the Saudis have done nothing.

Frustrated by the repeated failure of Islamic leaders to match promises with practice, Pope Benedict added to the Vatican’s strategy of accommodation a one-word policy, which the tolerance advocates here should adopt: “reciprocity.”

The idea: There will be support for fewer new mosques in the West until the home countries stop hammering non-Islamic religions. Until they reciprocate good will with good will.

Imam Rauf and his partners are getting more than they’ve earned. That’s nice. But even in tolerant America, political life isn’t a one-way street. Islam is in political tension with the world over Islamic terror. The next time one of them tries to blow up New York, let’s hope the TV cameras’ first stop for a denunciation won’t be the mayor, but the front steps of Cordoba House.”

———————-

(my reply)

Devil –

Thanks for reprinting. Yeah, same basic message as Newt’s, minus the silly red-meat throwing that future presidential candidate Gingrich seems to be practicing.

On one level, I don’t disagree with some of the basic points the author is making. I too would love to see every American mosque denounce terrorism in all of its forms. That would be great. That said, I’m not entirely sure that I think a refusal to do that is an endorsement of terrorism, and I think that’s an argumentative move that most people make.

One counter issue comes to mind: I’d love it if every priest running every Catholic church denounced the child molestation issues in the church from the pulpits. As someone raised Catholic, that would make me feel better about the church itself. However, I don’t take a priest’s refusal to do that (heck, even the Pope seems to have some troubles in this area) to be an endorsement of child molestation.

In the case of this specific Iman, there appears to actually be quite a bit of evidence that the guy actually _has_ embraced good faith efforts over the years to bring the two sides together. Instead, we get a lot of focus on whether he condemns Hamas in particular (he actually has condemned terrorism as an act on several occasions). I take this guy at his word in this case that his refusal to demonize Hamas is not an endorsement of Hamas, but rather a political reality — he has dedicated himself to bringing the sides together. Probably not the best move to demonize either side if you want to be successful at being a mediator of any sort.

But let’s ignore all that. Let’s say that he is the worst Iman he could be and has done none of these good faith things, and frankly doesn’t care. Still, the issue here is not one of reciprocity, but one of freedom of religion. If some radical Muslims think that a mosque going up is proof of their victory, then that’s fine. Instead, I would see it as their failure — our system is far stronger than their efforts are. I would see a refusal to build as a victory for them in the extreme. Moreover, I’m not interested in redefining the notion of American victory in the framework used by radical Muslims. Talk about defeat.

Basically, in the end and in sum, I don’t disagree with the basic message: Islamic countries need to be more tolerant. Presently they are not, no doubt about that. I would like to see them be more tolerant. However, being intolerant of their own religion will not make them more tolerant, so if that’s the aim it is terribly misguided. So in the end, we have to be determined to be who we are – a tolerant pluralist nation – regardless of what those outside of us do or hold to as principles.

Now, of course, if any particular mosque is breeding terrorists, then I say let the FBI bring on the whoop ass. That’s also a part of our system – we are tolerant up until we discern that you are actively plotting against us.

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The first time I taught it, I employed a hard-core virtue ethics perspective. We read Slote’s Morals from Motives, Hursthouse’s Virtue Ethics, a few articles, and then read the Analects very closely with an eye to figuring out whether it fit in the virtue tradition. The second time I taught it, we read the Analects alongside Hall and Ames’ Thinking through Confucius. This third time, it is different yet again. See below.

Here’s the schedule. As you can see, this time there’s less emphasis on Confucius and more on Confucianism, at least insofar as it is represented in the pre-Qin period. I’ve also heavily doused the course in secondary literature. For an undergraduate course, it’s likely a bit ambitious, but I can think of worse things.

Any comments or suggestions are welcomed!

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The reader writes:

I have been following the manufactured mosque controversy but not until last night was the depth of its penetration so apparent to me.

My wife and I went out to dinner with ten of our neighbors. Eight of our group identify strongly with the current mold of the Republican party. I cannot call them conservatives although that is assuredly how they would describe themselves. But their supple willingness to swallow the dyspeptic paranoia fed them by Palin, Gingrich, Cheney and their fellow travelers and then disgorge it as their own view no longer entitles them to the mantle of conservative, at least in my view.

At dinner, the Cordoba Mosque came up with the six of us at my end of the table. These five friends oppose the mosque to a person. They have no coherent argument as to why beyond what they have been fed, that this is an affront to the victims of 9/11.

But they do have an answer to first amendment issues. They contend, as have others, that somehow Islam is not covered under the Constitutional protections. While they did not exactly call Islam a cult rather than a religion, there was no doubt they do not feel it deserves the same consideration of Christianity and Judaism in the United States. All of them would contend that they are strict Constitutional constructionists but somehow believe that a faith followed by 1.5 billion worldwide is not a true religion.

They kept coming back to the “sacred ground” concept, that somehow this spot is sanctified, but only for non-Muslims. Never mind the followers of Islam that died in the towers. In their view no Muslim should be permitted to worship in this area.

Which led me to my final point and question. Muslims pray five times a day and at least two of those prayers (noon and afternoon) would take place during the workday. Since this ground is too holy to have an Islamic facility several blocks away, must they not then insist on a prohibition of the employment of Muslims in the new tower? After all, those prayers by those workers would be offered on the actual site of the tragedy, in multiple places in the 105 stories of the building.

There was some hemming and hawing but it was clear I had made no headway. It has gone far beyond the mosque, which is just a handy symbol those spouting these conspiracy theories upon which they can hang their foul arguments, petty fears and thinly veiled racist beliefs.

These people are my friends and shall remain so. But I wonder today: Have they been led in this direction or have they always held these views and were waiting for affirmation of them from those they see as national leaders.

I fear the answer to that question.

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There’s a whole worldview that’s shared by many programmers – although not all of them, of course – and by many young intellectuals that I characterize as “epistemic egalitarianism.” They’re greatly offended by the idea that anyone might be regarded as more reliable on a given topic than everyone else. They feel that for everything to be as fair as possible and equal as possible, the only thing that ought to matter is the content [of a claim] itself, not its source.

Right after that, he (Sullivan) comments: “This is a flaw? Give me epistemic egalitarianism over a propensity for authoritah.”

Is Sullivan serious? I mean sure, _if_ the claim here is that “if I had to choose one over the other exclusively, which would I want?” You’d want the claim out there for people to judge for themselves (which most times will require taking the claim and checking with sources independently), as opposed to some source simply telling you “I know what’s right.”

But we’re not being presented with an either/or. Instead, we have the claim that anyone is just as qualified as anyone else to assess the truth value of a claim as anyone else. That’s nuts. What you want is a level – at some point — of quality control that consists of actual experts. You can have it such that no one expert’s judgment is conclusive. As a corporate body they can make changes to additions made by non-experts, disagree, and so on.

But to leave the content and the content quality control completely up to people who have no expertise – because there really isn’t such a thing as expertise – is crazy. That’s not knowledge, it’s the collective opinions of the masses. We should be looking for a middle ground between the non-expert and the expert. That’s what should make Wikipedia different. It shouldn’t be different because it embraces in practice epistemic nihilism.

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Calzones are good. I’m not sure how present calzones are in pizzerias around the US, but they are pretty common in the New York ones. When I made this batch I was leery that they wouldn’t come out well, but really it’s a matter of making the dough right (I’ve already got this down, see my various bread posts) and then adding the right ingredients. It’s not too hard, but there are some tricky points here and there in the process.

One of the questions that comes up when you talk calzones with another person (well, if that person knows what one is) concerns ingredients. The big question is “what goes inside one of those bastards”? Although I could easily stomp my feet, state my New York Italian credentials and then bluster and pontificate about how this-or-that goes into a ‘true’ calzone, the truth is that I honestly have no clue.  When I was a kid I remember calzones being made one way, when I got older, they changed. Moreover, I’ve read one too many (good) Italian cookbooks with calzone recipes that make me scrunch up my brow and say “ugh…really?”

The 1970s and early 1980s in NYC

When I was a kid, calzones were simple. They came in two versions: plain cheese and meat. That was it. The plain cheese ones had two main ingredients – ricotta and mozzarella. Typically the ricotta was flavored with bits of parsley or basil, but that was all you got. It you got a meat calzone, it was the same as the plain one but they added ground meatball.

That was my calzone world. I didn’t complain, it was good.

The mid-1980s to now

Somewhere in the mid 1980s they started to stick things in calzones. Mushrooms, pepperoni, sausage, sauce — you name it. In fact, I remember I once asked the old guy who ran the pizzeria down the street from my mom’s house to ram pepperoni and mushroom and sauce into mine. He stared at me like I was talking Greek. He even seemed a bit offended. He did it, though. I remember he had no idea what to charge me because it was such a bizarre request. Funny enough, he actually named the thing after me.

I’m not taking credit for stuffed calzones. They popped up everywhere, like teenagers around NYC were all simultaneously getting the idea. So I take no credit. Still, it happened, and nowadays it’s hard to find a plain calzone anywhere. They are all stuffed.

Nowadays, I take no sides. I can enjoy a plain calzone just as much as a stuffed one.

The Great Debate: Riotta, or no Ricotta?

Apparently, many Italian cookbooks and pizzerias outside the NYC area don’t use ricotta. Just mozzarella. I’m not sure about you, but that strikes me as pointless and bland. A calzone with just a big gooey glob of mozzarella is like eating a big huge mozzarella stick — it’s just wrapped in dough and not bread crumbs.

Ricotta adds sophisticated flavor. You add lots of it. My wife, being the non-NYC southern raised-on-cornbread type, gags at the mere mention of ricotta in a calzone. Just pack it with gooey mozzarella and she’s happy. As a result, she doesn’t eat my calzones.

Hey, more for me.

—-

I’d be curious to know what anyone thinks here.  Ricotta or just mozzarella? Stuffed or plain?

As always, if anyone wants to recipe, just ask and I’ll post it.

It also turns out that they are not that difficult to make well. That said, they are a bit tricky at points and you have to plan ahead pretty well.

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The question for economists now is whether the administration’s assumptions, and the model based on them, were correct. After all, if we could be sure their model was right, we would know what to conclude when their stimulus plan was followed by 10% unemployment: The patient was sicker than they thought, and unemployment would surely have been higher still if not for the stimulus. (Indeed, since Obama’s advisors do believe their model was right, this is the conclusion they have reached.) The trouble is, we have no way of knowing for sure if the model was in fact correct. To react to a model’s failure to predict events accurately by insisting that the model was nonetheless right — as Obama’s economic advisors have done — is hardly the most obvious course. Careful economists should instead respond with humility. When their predictions fail — as they often do — they should not dig in their heels, but should instead be willing to go back to their starting assumptions and question their validity.

Mankiw seems to be confusing two groups of people and then drawing an illicit conclusion. I mean sure, if it’s true that “we have no way of knowing for sure if the model was in fact correct” then _economists qua economists_ should be “humble” and wonder if their basic assumptions were right, or if they simply misread the initial conditions of the practical application of their theory. But Mankiw’s not talking about “economists qua economists”. He’s talking about the President’s economic advisers, and they are part of a political team. In a political climate where even the slightest “humility” about basic assumptions would be met with a constant barrage of unrelenting attack segments on programs on FOX news and talk radio, you are left naturally scoffing at Mankiw’s ivory tower advice. Essentially, there’s a further “economic” variable at play here: the cost/benefit analysis of humility in a massively angry, divisive and partisan context. It’s easy to say what that calculation yielded: zero gain, total cost. Would I prefer a political climate where both sides have more economic humility? Sure, but where humility is read as weakness, don’t hold your breath.

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