Guns, Germs, Steel and Mitt Romney

Today there's a brouhaha over the anthropological bestseller called Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond. Diamond's theory is that geography is destiny insofar that latitude, land fertility, access to the ocean, and quality of food have always made some civilizations possible, and some cultures more prosperous.
For an Overview: See PBS

This is about Mitt Romney relying too much on the advice of his Neocon handlers. It's about wrong-headed thinking that could lead to World War Three. It's about a candidate thinking he's really really smart when he keeps displaying stark evidence that he isn't. And it's about an author who wants to distance himself as fast as possible from Mitt Romney.

Romney mentioned Diamond's book in his Jerusalem speech this week. In an essay on Daily Kos, Meteor Blades points out that the "ultrahawkish senior foreign policy adviser Dan Senor" is probably the member of Romney's camp who gave him the literary name to drop.

From the speech:

I noted that part of my interest when I used to be in the world of business is I would travel to different countries was to understand why there were such enormous disparities in the economic success of various countries. I read a number of books on the topic. One, that is widely acclaimed, is by someone named Jared Diamond called Guns, Germs and Steel, which basically says the physical characteristics of the land account for the differences in the success of the people that live there. There is iron ore on the land and so forth.

Then later in the speech, Romney seemed to tie Guns, Germs and Steel to another book called The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor by David Landes, and these statements put Romney in hot water with the Palestinians when he said this in Jerusalem:

He says if you can learn anything from the economic history of the world, it's this: culture makes all the difference. Culture makes all the difference. And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things.
As you come here and you see the GDP per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000 dollars, and compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality

Notice that Romney mentioned "several books" and implied that one book was somehow lending creedence to the other and to his hypothesis about why Palestinians are not able to make as much money as the Israelis.


Because of those remarks, Palestinian negotiator Sa'eb Erekat responded called Romney a racist.
via CNN:

This man, before he came here, he should have got some education about Israelis, Palestinians, and the region. . . . The Romney statements on Jerusalem and the racist statements about the Israeli culture being superior to the Palestinian culture reflect someone who needs to be educated, who needs knowledge. His statements are serving those extremists in the region now . . .

Romney seems to miss the rich irony that the Jews were a people without a country after World War II, and that's why they went to fight in Palestine. In Biblical times, the Jews were enslaved to the Babylonians, then the Egyptians, then Greeks and Romans, before being denounced for centuries by the Catholic Church,. By Romney's hypothesis, they were in the same position as the Palestinians throughout history, therefore all their "cultural values" were somehow inferior, which is ridiculous, since those same values are praised today as successful and part of the "Judeo-Christian" heritage of the West. I honestly don't want to know what Romney thinks of the Holocaust - good grief.

While Guns, Germs, and Steel is not my favorite book, and seems to overstate the obvious point -  that a successful culture needs location, location, location - for Romney to mention the book in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was misguided and just plain weird.

If Romney's handlers had bothered to read the introduction to the book, they would have noticed that the author was careful not making judgments about one people over another, one culture over another. He points out that all great civilizations have influences from other cultures. Hunters/Gatherers are no less "successful" than civilized peoples in Western Europe.

From page 8 of the Prologue:
"My motive for investigating these geographic differences in human societies is not to celebrate one type of society over another but simply to understand what happened in history."
~ author Jared Diamond

Now the author has written a OP-Ed in the New York Times in which he sounds like the Anti-Romney and makes it clear he did not approve of Romney's Israel speech, or of Romney as a candidate:

Romney Hasn’t Done His Homework
. . . It is not true that my book “Guns, Germs and Steel,” as Mr. Romney described it in a speech in Jerusalem, “basically says the physical characteristics of the land account for the differences in the success of the people that live there. There is iron ore on the land and so forth.”

That is so different from what my book actually says that I have to doubt whether Mr. Romney read it. My focus was mostly on biological features, like plant and animal species, and among physical characteristics, the ones I mentioned were continents’ sizes and shapes and relative isolation. I said nothing about iron ore which is so widespread that its distribution has had little effect on the different successes of different peoples. (As I learned this week, Mr. Romney also mischaracterized my book in his memoir, “No Apology: Believe in America.”)

. . . Can we assume that the United States, blessed with temperate location and seacoasts and navigable rivers, will remain rich forever, while tropical or landlocked countries are doomed to eternal poverty?

Of course not.

. . . Our geography won’t keep us rich and powerful if we can’t get a good education, can’t afford health care and can’t count on our hard work’s being rewarded by good jobs and rising incomes.

Here's the excerpt from Mitt Romney's book No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, in which he misrepresents Diamond's thesis, via AtlanticWire. There's something rather odd the way Romney goes from "Iron Curtain" to "Weapons" of Iron Ore to describe why some cultures are thriving while some are not. It's a word association worthy of Sarah Palin for sure. (I realize the type is small to fit the page, so zoom in with CTRL+ or click the pictures to see a larger view).

SC Gov. Nikki Haley's Embarrassing Press Tour

Governor Nikki Haley from South Carolina is on an almost shameless press tour for her her book Can't Is Not An Option about growing up as an Indian American in a small southern town. And along the way, she is still trying to campaign a bit for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Is she helping him? Not too much.

She told ABC News on April 2nd that she would not serve as Vice President if Romney asked her to run, and that's probably a good thing. I'm not sure why he would ask her anyway, since her endorsement early on in the Primary season failed to deliver her state, which was taken by Newt Gingrich by 13 percentage points. And there's not much evidence that she would help deliver any other Southern states, either, although she might have diversity appeal as an Indian-American governor in the same generation as Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. The problem with both Haley and Jindal is that they do not represent their ethnic community all that well, and what should be seen as a great plus for diversity in the Republican Party is just an embarrassment.

For instance, remember when Jindal said we don't need scientific stuff like volcano monitors, but then volcanoes shut down airports in Alaska, not to mention all of Europe? And he turned down $90 million in stimulus money on conservative principal, then begged Obama for help when the Gulf oil spill happened? Why would Nikki Haley want to be compared to him for any reason, even ethnicity?

Unfortunately, Nikki Haley is about the same type of Governor, with the same propensity to flip-flop, or the "do as I say, not as I do." She may enjoy turning down Medicaid for poor people, but just wait till a hurricane threatens Charleston and the resort areas along the SC Coast, and she will have her hand out for federal disaster relief, you can bet on that.

One subject she won't be discussing on the road is her family's scandal with the IRS. Her parents are being accused of raising funds for her gubernatorial campaign through their non-profit Sikh Temple. That's a political no-no. The Palmetto Public Record reports:

According to documents obtained by Palmetto Public Record, the Internal Revenue Service has been investigating since March 2011 whether the Sikh Religious Society of South Carolina illegally supported a political candidate during Haley’s campaign for governor, violating the organization’s tax-exempt status.
As a registered nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, the Sikh temple is “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for elective public office.” According to the IRS, even written statements of position in favor of a candidate “clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity” and may result in revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.
But documents which appear to be the temple’s own newsletters clearly advocate for Haley’s election, asking (and later thanking) members for their political and financial support. The organization also seems to have held a September 2010 fundraiser for Haley’s gubernatorial campaign, with four of the five organizers listed on the temple’s board of trustees.

And that's only part the family's problems. There is the mystery revolving around a large bank loan the Randhawa family took out to help finance a new Sikh Temple. Contractors were never paid, and the temple was never completed, but at the same time Nikki Haley was elected Governor and her family built a huge new lake house. The The Palmetto Public Record reports:

In 2009, the Sikh Society of South Carolina took out a $750,000 loan from BB&T Bank with the help of bank president Mike Brenan. The purpose of the loan was to build a new temple on the Sikh Society’s land in Chapin, but for some reason the contractors never got paid. At least five lawsuits have been filed against the Sikh Society since 2010, alleging that the group bilked contractors out of nearly $130,000.Meanwhile, the new temple sits half-complete off Broad River Road as weeds take over the abandoned construction site.
In order to recoup their money, the contractors have asked a judge to foreclose on the temple and sell the land, leaving the Sikh Society without a place to worship.
So what happened to the money? Did it “disappear” into the Randhawa family’s million-dollar waterfront home on Lake Murray, or (as our sources have speculated) did some of it go into the governor’s campaign account? Whatever happened to the money, we do know what happened to Brenan: Gov. Nikki Haley appointed him to the state Board of Education.

Yesterday, Haley appeared on ABC's The View, which was...interesting...



Video Via The Frisky  

Sympathetic conservative Elizabeth Hasselbeck tried to prompt some kind of logic out of Gov. Haley, but Haley flip-flopped aimlessly, first making the bizarre statement that "Women don't care about contraception," then telling an incredulous Joy Behar, "We don't have to have a government mandate telling us when we have to have it and when we don't." Duh, that makes perfect sense, and yet that's exactly what Romney and Santorum and a host of gargoyles like Rick Perry want to do by getting rid of funding for Planned Parenthood. Gov. Haley Meets the Etch-A-Sketch by defending the indefensible. It's sort of easy to see why she and Romney are sympatico.

Amanda Marcotte writing for Slate points out that such a comment may display another trait in common with Romney - a sense of entitlement and disconnect from ordinary people.

Haley may just be looking at this issue with blinkers, and when she says "women," she means "women like me," i.e., conservative. It is true that conservative women are less supportive than women as a whole of attempts to make contraception access easier. That's because the war on women is just as much about class as it is about gender....For women for whom $50 or $100 a month isn't very much money, this sort of thing probably doesn't matter. In fact, for many conservatives, it's clear that they believe protected sex is a luxury that should only be available, like fine champagne or HBO subscriptions, to those who can afford it.

Haley also appeared on Stephen Colbert's Comedy Central show where she made an even stranger comment, via Huffington Post:

Governor Nikki Haley (R) said she wears heels as "ammunition" in the tough political climate of South Carolina.
"It's a blood sport," Haley said Tuesday on The Colbert Report. "I wear heels and it's not for a fashion statement, it's ammunition."
"You keep them sharpened?" host Stephen Colbert asked.
"I do. It's for kicking," Haley replied.

She better keep them sharpened, for sure.