Semi-Daily Journal

Kaus made a mistake. He's not stupid enough to say what it sounds like. There are two plausible possibilities:
(1) Poor writing: He thinks all of these assassinations are bad. When he says "in this case" he is referring to all five assassinations. He should have written "in these cases."

(2) Mixed up word: He thinks van der Graaf's assination is a good thing, and meant to write "better" instead of worse (though his post doesn't suggest this).

I think it's (1).

Obviously Pim Fortuyn (the guy who van der Graaf assassinated) isn't fit to share the same paragraph as King, the Kennedys, or Rabin.

In terms of catastrphic effects I would rank these assassinations from worst to least worst as:

(1) King
(2)Rabin
(3)JFK
(4)RFK
(5)Fortuyn (Dead last, and there are probably a few hundred thousand assassinations I'd put before this one in an overall ranking.)

Why is DeLong linking to himself in his Kausfiles link. When you click it, it leads to Brad DeLong's blog.

Gotta go with Bobby's (1) there. The addition of the [van der Graaf] makes for pretty striking reading of the passage but Kaus is probably just getting toungue tied or (I guess more appropriately) word-tied here. Or maybe he did drink too much leaded water and the effects are beginning to show.

I'd say JFK was a good one, not a bad one. I wasn't alive at the time, but my impression has been that he was more influential after his death than he was in his life.

Classic martyrdom case, IMHO.

Ok, I screwed that one up, should be MLK not JFK.

Having a bit of trouble thinking straight today.

Well you clearly don't need to clarify that you are not thinking straight if you think we were better off as a country because MLK was killed.

Oh, come on people: Archduke Ferdinand makes those others fade into irrelevance. We just finished the latest (but surely not the last) battle in Ferdinand's war...

Ferdinand himself is not really significant though in starting World War I. It's not like it would have been different if someone else was assassinated by someone else from an opposing alliance. I think it's hard to say the same about King, JFK, RFK, or Rabin.

I think he was suggesting that they "work" from the perspective of the assassin, not in some sort of moral good or bad way. The larger point was that there was an assassin in Europe who did not get a long enough prison term, and this isn't a sufficient detterent for other potential assassins. He was doing the opposite of condoning any particular assassination.

I think that Kaus' point is rather self-evident: An assassin's bullet hastens political change (for the good or bad) in a more rapid fashion than if a political process were allowed to work itself out through normal political evolution, or election cycles. Witness the rapid decline of the Congress Party in India after the serial assassinations of Gandhi mere et fils, allowing the emergence of the nationalistic, pro-Hindi BJP. Or the assassinations of Patrice Lumumba and Tom Mboya, helping to abort Africa's post-colonial transformation. And Rabin's killing in Israel, bringing to power a far-more right-wing, pro-settler Likud Party, seemingly now anointed as the "party of government" for the indefinite future. By most objective measures, the consequences of a well-chosen assassination can either reverse or greatly accelerate political trends within nations or even regions, and for this reason alone, it remains a "strategic option" for those wishing to make use of it.

I think that Kaus' point is rather self-evident: An assassin's bullet hastens political change (for the good or bad) in a more rapid fashion than if a political process were allowed to work itself out through normal political evolution, or election cycles. Witness the rapid decline of the Congress Party in India after the serial assassinations of Gandhi mere et fils, allowing the emergence of the nationalistic, pro-Hindi BJP. Or the assassinations of Patrice Lumumba and Tom Mboya, helping to abort Africa's post-colonial transformation. And Rabin's killing in Israel, bringing to power a far-more right-wing, pro-settler Likud Party, seemingly now anointed as the "party of government" for the indefinite future. By most objective measures, the consequences of a well-chosen assassination can either reverse or greatly accelerate political trends within nations or even regions, and for this reason alone, it remains a "strategic option" for those wishing to make use of it.

I think that Kaus' point is rather self-evident: An assassin's bullet hastens political change (for the good or bad) in a more rapid fashion than if a political process were allowed to work itself out through normal political evolution, or election cycles. Witness the rapid decline of the Congress Party in India after the serial assassinations of Gandhi mere et fils, allowing the emergence of the nationalistic, pro-Hindi BJP. Or the assassinations of Patrice Lumumba and Tom Mboya, helping to abort Africa's post-colonial transformation. And Rabin's killing in Israel, bringing to power a far-more right-wing, pro-settler Likud Party, seemingly now anointed as the "party of government" for the indefinite future. By most objective measures, the consequences of a well-chosen assassination can either reverse or greatly accelerate political trends within nations or even regions, and for this reason alone, it remains a "strategic option" for those wishing to make use of it.

I think that Kaus' point is rather self-evident: An assassin's bullet hastens political change (for the good or bad) in a more rapid fashion than if a political process were allowed to work itself out through normal political evolution, or election cycles. Witness the rapid decline of the Congress Party in India after the serial assassinations of Gandhi mere et fils, allowing the emergence of the nationalistic, pro-Hindi BJP. Or the assassinations of Patrice Lumumba and Tom Mboya, helping to abort Africa's post-colonial transformation. And Rabin's killing in Israel, bringing to power a far-more right-wing, pro-settler Likud Party, seemingly now anointed as the "party of government" for the indefinite future. By most objective measures, the consequences of a well-chosen assassination can either reverse or greatly accelerate political trends within nations or even regions, and for this reason alone, it remains a "strategic option" for those wishing to make use of it.

So sorry for the multiple posts...can't understand why that happened, though, it did take ages to load after I hit the button.

Well, Mickey managed to get another link on your blog. He'll explain the statement away, in the mean time getting a little more traffic, a little more of the attention he so desperately craves. Advantage: Kausfiles!

Do assassinations work? I guess it depends on what you mean by assassinations. Are we talking strictly political figures or about politically motivated murders, such as Kent State or Roberto Calvi? One person or many such as My Lai? It's an interesting topic and I'd love to see an extended discussion of it.

Prof. DeLong has misread what Kaus wrote. The parenthetical comment; "for better...or worse", refers to; "name five other men....". Not to the assassins.

Yeah, he means name five people who have done better, or five who have done worse (like these assassins). It's badly written - Matt Yglesias misread it too - and in trying to call this Dutch guy one of the five most influential men (and why not "people"?) in history, I think his mouth has got the better of his brain, not for the first time. But I think he does raise an interesting point amid the muddle.

Ah. Patrick Sullivan has convinced me that the antecedent of "this case" is all five assassinations, not to van der Graaf's alone, and that Kaus suffers from a case agreement problem...

Brad DeLong

Excuse me, Brad. Sorry to be a stickler, but doesn't the first post on this thread (written by yours truly) say just that?

Yes, you are right...