The right way to begin this discussion

Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton both open the health care discussion on refreshingly open-ended notes:

"Obama's call was an echo of a speech he made last April when he said Democrats 'need to cling to the core values that make us Democrats, the belief in universal health care, the belief in universal education, and then we should be agnostic in terms of how to achieve those values.'"

And Hillary Clinton remarks:

"'One of the goals that I will be presenting ... is health insurance for every child and universal health care for every American," she said at a community health clinic in New York Sunday, the day after entering the 2008 Democratic field. 'That's a very major part of my campaign and I want to hear people's ideas about how we can achieve that goal.'"

This is exactly how that discussion should be opened. A firm commitment to universal health insurance with an open-ended discussion of ideas about how to get there.

Including the very decent idea, with all its flaws, introduced by President Bush.

I'm not enamoured with the President's efforts to penalize generous health insurance. If people want to pay for better health insurance or if they get it as a deal with their employer, so be it, I say.

But the general idea of encouraging univeral health insurance and access while maintaining consumer freedom within an exceptionally high quality health system is exactly the right direction for this discussion, I think.

And what I like about Obama's and Clinton's opening up the discussion is that it allows us to explore all of the our best ideas to provide for universal health insurance, ideally, in my view, without overburdening all of us with a massive government bureaucracy.

There are plenty of really great alternatives to a national health service and all of the pitfalls that come with that system that we can explore in a more open-ended conversation.

I was just talking with my friend and roommate, Devang, about how public education in the United States did not begin, at all, as a Federal program. Federal legislation was not passed around public education, thankfully, until the beginning of the 20th century. The common education movement of the mid-19th century was a movement of Protestant social reformers led by the likes of Horace Mann to bring schooling to all children below the college grade. It was not as glamourous as a national public education system initiated by the Federal government. But it built upon a very important value in American democracy - citizen participation and voluntary association and commitment to values like universal education, or universal health care.

It is the fact of American democracy that Alexis DeToqueville features in his observations of the new American democracy in Democracy in America. And it is a much taken for granted feature of American democracy that is quite possibly the most important check on perpetual acquistions of power by the Federal and state government. Sadly, it is also one of the things that facilitates that acquisition of power, sadly, as groups lobby for state and Federal governments to take on more resoponsibilities and, consequently, more power and control over how important issues like education and health care operate in our lives, for better and often for worse.

The major problem with Federal and state power and responsibility over so many various responsibilities for Americans and communities - as long-standing and perpetually unresolved debates over how to fix problems in social security and medicare illustrate - is that Federal and State programs are often quick fixes that often avoid long-term problems that come with investing so many responsibilities and so much power in so few people. They are programs that are perpetually short for money because taxes and government revenue is not as sustainable a means of funding important values and priorities as for-profit or non-profit fundraising models, which are freer, more flexible, run by people closer to the day-to-day responsibilities and professionals who can specialize in a field, can diversify to offer a whole host of different kinds of services, products, options, etc., more dynamic in terms of people being able to identify and avoid programs that lack real credibility in dealing with serious problems and supporting and developing newer and more credible organizations and programs to deal with new or old problems.

Government is just a really terrible place to try to innovate and engage in efforts that add real value to a commitment like education or health care. Long-standing dissatisfaction with public schools reflects much of this problem and the difficulty in seriously correcting the situation. And the failures of the No Child Left Behind Act (and I would add the Individuals with Disabilities Education act, as much as I'm sure this would not be popular in a special education field that loves to tout their association with and development of this legislation) illustrate the problem with Federal fixes. They are one-size-fits-all, run by bureaucrats and politicians thousands of miles away from the problems faced day-to-day, and it, consequently, lacks any of the opportunity to flexibly and innovatively deal with new and even old problems.

There is much effort that has been dedicated by non-profit folks committed to univeral health insurance in the United States and internationally, and it is these efforts that need our support and expansion, I think, rather than introducing public bureaucracy and rigid legally-bound solutions to problems that need flexibility and diverse service options to sustainably deal with new and old problems.

So opening up the discussion of health care with a commitment to universal access but with an open-ended discussion is a good way to open this discussion since it allows these kinds of problems to be discussed.

Americans should be cautioned as much as encouraged by the efforts of Canadians and Europeans to nationalize health insurance. National health insurance has not made the problems of health care in these countries go away. To the contrary, it has many many resolutions much more difficult without substantial private for-profit and non-profit sector capacity built and invested in to deal with issues like medical technology, perscription drugs, medical rationing, and wrangling betwen various levels of government over how public health commitments get funded (like in American, the Federal government in Canada is fond of taking the cheap way out and passing mandates for provincial government to fulfill and to find funding for without providing adequate funding, very much like special education in the United States).

Government commitments are a quick fix that are favored by far too many liberals, I believe, that ignore the very serious problems that come with government and bypassing the very important opportunities in the for-profit and non-profit health sector.

And legislation like Massachusetts' most recent entry into the health care foray and Governor Schwarenegger's similar effort in California create a whole new level of impostion on people with limited income, similar to car insurance - as someone who was briefly jailed because I drove without car insurance for a job that I was in no position to turn down, I am particularly sensitive to the problems with mandated car insurance for low income folks - and which seems to ignore people's right to not carry health insurance if they choose not to.

And Barak Obama's and Hillary Clinton's opening to this discussion is a refreshing one. It is one that should include the proposals of the President and everyone who is interested in the idea of universal health insurance with an open-ended discussion of the problems and opportunities and the implications for peoples' health and freedom that come with various proposals.

Universal health insurance is not lacking the political will to pass legislation that will, rightly, prompt a backlash without broad support.

Universal health insurance is in need of a sustainable commitment and model for providing it that accounts for the various concerns about health care and with as much respect for peoples' health care freedom as possible.

If Obama and Clinton intend the former, this will be one more chapter in a long history of failures to comprehensively address the very complicated issues associated with universal health care.

If Obama and Clinton, intend the latter, perhaps we will embarking on a path that might finally deliver access to high-quality universal health care that we, our children, our grandchildren, and our and their great-granchildren can all be happy with for the long run.

Rarely does such patience, engagement, and vision feature in this debate. Without it, we will be having this debate until the issues that require that kind of patience, engagement, and vision get resolved.

Love,
Ben

Learning the lessons of war policy

Stephen Sestanovich of the Council on Foreign Relations and international diplomacy professor at Columbia University writes an excellent piece on lessons to be learned from the Korean and Vietnam conflicts for the current war.

The Right Strategy Isn't Enough

Sestanovich is right that abandoning the South Vietnamese, if a winnable strategy to beat back the Communists who slaughtered and politically imprisoned their own people following American withdrawal, seems shocking to anyone genuinely concerned with the aspirations for some alternative to Communist imposition of those who were left deserted in that withdrawal.

But Sestanovich is right that if abandoning the role of providing nominal security to Iraqis is to be avoided, then the President will have to make the case in terms of the larger policy discussion and engaged Democrats rather than stubbornly following his own path.

As Sestanovich writes:

"Henry Kissinger has long insisted that Watergate kept the United States from helping South Vietnam, but President Bush should know the more dispiriting truth. Americans simply wanted nothing further to do with the place. The struggle between the president and Congress had become so bitter, so corrosive -- such a grudge match -- that the two sides ceased to agree on even the most basic goals. Today it seems shocking that people preferred to let South Vietnam go down rather than help it. But Congress was not solely responsible for this result. The president had done much to undermine his own policy.

Bush may be right that Americans will not long support policies that don't involve trying to succeed. But if he wants to do better than Truman, he'll have to do better than Nixon, too. His debate with Congress on Iraq will unfold much as the Vietnam debate did, and that means it's not enough to have a military plan that could work. Richard Nixon's plan "worked," too, but in four years of implementing it, he lost the political support he needed to keep South Vietnam afloat once our troops were gone.

If this is how Bush succeeds, if he focuses entirely on what's needed to improve things in Iraq in the short term without making his policy more sustainable in America in the long term, we'll have to call it a failure. There's no point learning from the one war unless you learn from the other as well."

The more sustainable path that Sestanovich is speaking of would involve engaging the debate and discussion about how to proceed in Iraq with more intellectual honesty and openness, listening to Democratic concerns and accounting for them, better, in a a policy discussion that works to do right by the Iraqi people while giving assurances to Americans that soldiers' lives will not be sacraficed in vain.

That is a discussion that is not taking place, right now, as Democrats and the Administration and its supporters speak past one another, each vying for political control of the situation rather than engaging with more genuine intellectual honestly and openness about the difficult choices to be made in Iraq.

That is the problem with substituting power for engagement, debate, discussion, and thought. It avoids substantive problems with assertions of authority that miss the point, which is that better policy needs more discussion and thought, not more assertions of authority. Assertions of authority don't account for people's concerns. In fact, they shut down the conversation, as has clearly happened between the President and Congress at this point.

At some point, you would think that one of these smart people would learn this lesson already.

One thing is for sure, though. If this thing goes down as a pissing war rather than as an engaged policy discussion, everyone loses. Everyone fails. It's not just the President's failure, at this point. Democrats control Congress. Failure or success are on their watches, at this point. Things go sour in Iraq, the fingers of blame do not just get pointed at the President. Plenty of fingers to go around the Democratic table as well.

And the most tragic thing is that for 3 years the blame-shifting, finger-pointing, pressure-tactics and other efforts to force this issue have failed, on both sides, so clearly, while many, many Iraqi and American lives have been lost in the effort.

Power is not a substitute for thought. And thought is not advanced by control of any branch of government. Thought is advanced by engaged discussion and debate about how to do right by Iraqis and American soldiers and to clean up the mess that we are now all responsible for, whether we like it or not.

Perhaps Sestanovich's warning will be headed and a more sustainable policy based on genuine and bipartisan efforts to listen and engage one another will be taken seriously. Perhaps some good can be snatched from already so much tragedy in Iraq.

Either the political environment will take a cue from Gerald Ford and take on a more forgiving, open-minded and open-hearted tone and a better policy will be developed out of that discussion and the disagreements that make up that discussion or we will all go down with this ship and forgiveness and open-mindedness and open-heartedness will be necessary to get us through the bitterness and division that will undoubtedly follow that mess.

Why is it so hard to listen to one another and learn from one another independent of political stripes, I wonder?

Because of the need to develop the one thing that political leaders struggle with most, generally:

Humility. The propensity to assume that you might be wrong rather than always assume that you know or that your ideological colors are some kind of substitute for better policy.

Humility is not in strong supply in Washington, D.C. as a general rule, it's true.

But it's what's needed, right now. And perhaps Americans, including our elected officials can dig deep to find some of it. For the sake of Iraqis, Americans, and everyone who has Iraq on their hearts, right now.

This political moment is too sober a season to be lost in the lightning storm of ungrounded polarized politics. There are too many peoples' lives at stake to act like anyone has figured anything out completely. Only a more engaged, humble, open-minded and open-hearted discussion will point us in a better direction.

So many people with liberal educations. You'd think that one of them would have figured out, by now, that all that discussion and debate and reflection they engaged in college was not some form of mental masturbation. That is means something. That this is the reason why intelligent people engage debates and discussions and dialogue. Because they always have much more to learn.

Washington needs a lot more people genuinely talking with each other, right now, and a lot fewer people talking and strong-arming at one another right now.

This is why I have a "Would I want to drink a beer with this political leader?" test. Because better policy is formed when people with some humility and with some sense of their own and others' humanity, good and bad, sit down with one another and hash things out like grown-ups. Rather than forcing themselves upon one another like less evolved primates.

Force is the way of the jungle. Might makes right, and all that.

Civilized people talk with one another. And the most civilized people do it over beers or hot chocolate and in the context of people who have families and loved ones they care about that they are trying to look out for.

That's what Washington needs right now. Stephen Sestanovich is totally right. It needs more sustainable policy, which is found out of engaging one another like friends and human beings and fellow travelers in the great discussions of life, including "What the hell are we going to do about that mess in Iraq?"

That is the humble conversation that most Americans are engaged in, I hope.

And that is the conversation that Congress and the President need to join.

Love,
Ben

Who would have guessed that disillusionment would come in the form of a Democratic majority?

I've been growing old.

I've been settling down quite a bit, lately. Not that my life was really ever all that exciting. But I've been getting more grounded, lately. Many ways nice.

One way not so nice.

I'm learning to live by the rules. All of them.

And I am growing old, quickly.

This is not a favorable way to grow old. It's just something over which you have very little control as a mature adult. You learn to compromise with all the petty ways that others seek to control you, whether they have an business controlling you or not.

This is why people talk so badly about growing old. It may be the reason why so many peoples' music sounds so uninspired in their old age or why they often get meaner and more defeated as they get older.

Because there is nothing inspired or inspiring about this kind of growing old.

The sad thing for me is that now I get to join the millions of other old people who harken back to their freer days of youth and wait for young people to inject inspiration in their lives because they've had all the winds taken out of their sails, ironically, by the very rules and controls that they so passionately advocate and self-righteously believe to signify their still passionate commitment to...something.

Most adults are kind of petty and small-minded, is the truth. But knowing that about others and less about themselves, they advocate all kinds of stupid shit in their lives that creates cynicism for all of them.

I say them because I barely feel like an adult, in this sense. I've definitely made peace with the idea that mature adulthood involves learning to compromise with the power-hunger of my fellow and far wiser grown-ups.

But I have no interest in wanting to control others in the way that my wiser brethren advocate. I think it's because I'm naive about people. I just don't recognize just how much wiser my fellow countrymen are than me and how much better position they are to know what is good for me and everyone, really, than I am myself. I'm trying to learn to do the bidding of others better. I'm just not a very grateful servant, I suppose.

And the irony is, really, that the time when my disillusionment and cynicism would be most pronounced in my life is when I became a servant for the party that presumably wants to lift everyone from servant status.

The Democratic Party.

(Except when you stop to consider that it was the Democratic party that defended slavery and segregation in the Old South. They were much wiser than those servants too. Some things never change, I suppose).

It's terribly ironic, really, except when you consider that Democrats have always wanted to liberate every servant but their own. Something tells me that Teddy Kennedy does not do his own laundry. But thank goodness I have him and President Bush to look after me and other ordinary Janes and Joes like myself who just wouldn't know what to do in this big bad world without them. That's why those guys deserve the big bucks and the big power. Because house slaves like me just wouldn't be able to survive outside of the plantation without their generosity.

And just like when I was a kid and the only thing I could do to maintain any kind of sanity with adults who were barely literate and who barely hid their hypocrisy always telling me what to do and what was good and right in the world, the only way I can maintain my sanity as an grown man is to comment on the bizarre and yet curiously similar state of affairs of adults who are barely literate and who barely hide their hypocrisy always telling me what to do and what is good and right in the world.

Who knew that disillusionment would come in the form of a Democratic majority, the party that I have identified with for, by far, the largest proportion of my life (I voted Republican in my first election, out of identification with my conservative friends and coach, at the time. Otherwise, my life has been as liberal as a John Lennon's male hairdresser smoking crack; except for this next election, so it looks.)

Hope springs eternal in a democracy, I suppose. That's what makes it the best worst form of government. Even as you sit through Robert Byrd's Democratic bloviations or Jesse Helms' Republican bullheadedness, there is always hope that blowhards and bullies don't run the show.

Until being a blowhard and a bully becomes the central governing philosophy for the majority party, that is.

Here's to one of the most important qualities of a democracy: the capacity to throw the bums out.

Democrats. I'm already sick of them.

Love,
Ben

Back to school

I am getting enrolled at Washburn for the fall semester to finish up my Master's in Special Education and to make a new start at my university education.

I made a lot of mistakes in my last graduate experience. A lot of mistakes. I made some mistakes in my last semester at Washburn (summer of 2006), still taking incompletes in two classes because of my 11 year propensity during my entire university career to always try to extend deadlines to get papers "just right," never completely understanding that the real limitations of time exist, and are facilitated in the form of deadlines, whether I was aware of those limitations or not. This was an enormous source of many of the mistakes I made at KU, also, withdrawing from too many classes as well.

My first full year of teaching at Eisenhower and my experience with summer school at Washburn have taught me much needed lessons about limitations - time limits, personal limits, professional limits, real-time people limits, etc. This last year has been one long lesson on limits. And it has been a welcome lesson.

And I have to say that I am so excited to be enrolled in school again, even as I bump down the academic prestige ladder, because I am so much more mature going into a university experience, this time. I'm more aware of my own limits, the limitations of the world, the limitations of university politics, and the limitations of people, generally, no matter who they are, and the limitations of my professors and university staff and administrators, no matter how brilliant they may be. This lesson would apply whether I was studying with Joe Nye at Harvard or Francis Fukuyama at Johns Hopkins or finishing my Master's in Special Education with Gloria Dye and Michael Rettig at Washburn University.

I am learning, a lot, these days, as a teacher as much as a student, how important individual students and teachers and people are in an school and in an education. As a teacher, I see it every single day, because individual students and teachers make an enormous difference. And as a student, I am much more aware of the power that I have as a student to make an educational experience a really outstanding one or a really sour one. I regret the ways that I made my educational experience a sour one in too many ways when I was in grad school last. I have no intentions of repeating those mistakes. And I feel more confident that I have learned the lessons I need to learn, in life and in school, to make this educational experience a really quality one.

It's both humbling and really exciting to go back to where I started, in a third-tier school with teachers I love and respect, and an education that is all mine to make or to break. I hope I can make a substantial enough showing in this Master's program and publish my work in formal journals and magazines to be a strong candidate for a Ph.D. program of my choice. Studying with Joe Nye or Francis Fukuyama would be a really awesome opportunity, should it be available, although prestige, wealth, connections, etc. are not, at all, my pursuit. If I had to take them or leave them, I would almost prefer to leave them if studying with minds like these weren't such an honor. I would just fine with a Ph.D. from a home state institution or a university like Illinois State where I coached this summer. But it would be nice to be mature and responsible enough to take on a more challenging education, should that be something that might be available and that I might be interested in.

The bottom-line right now, though, is that I'm just really excited to get back to school. I am so excited to be studying again, to be in a university library again, and to be taking advantage of an education that I took for granted at the end of my last tenure that I have no intentions of repeating. Proof is in the pudding. But I trust myself more around this - and the maturity and responsibility that make it possible - than I have ever trusted myself before. Perhaps my personal best will not/does not translate into excellence in a more competitive sense. I will do my best. And if I was ever going to be competitive, this is the best time of my life to do it.

But most of all, I'm just excited to be in a place that takes learning seriously, with 4 years under my belt working and living in a world that does not take learning and studying nearly serious enough. It's my most serious frustration as a teacher, though I think my students are getting used to the rigor and some of them even might appreciate it, when the notion occurs to them and their not busy fighting me to take school seriously. And they're not busy sleeping or passing notes or arguing in class.

In a university I can really appreciate how hard teaching in a middle school, and teaching special education in an urban middle school, especially, really is. It makes me proud of the work. Because the one thing you can always take more for granted in a university or a suburban school or a private school or even a charter school with students from similar backgrounds as the students I teach is that students, generally, want, more, to be there. That is not always true in my classroom, though I do think that is becoming more true the more I work with kids. I can only hope. My strongest student in the 7th grade wants out of my class, right now. She needs to be in a collaborative class (general education class with support from a special education teacher or paraprofessional) with stronger students in a general education class. But I hope she doesn't want out of my class for good reasons that I am just not accounting for well enough, yet, in my teaching. I have so many weaknesses as a teacher I am so clear about now much more than my first year. I hope she gets the strongest education she can get and I can deliver in both my class and her new collaborative class. I want her to be prepared for the college education that she set her sights on the first year we met.

I better head home and get some dinner. I need to get officially enrolled on-line so I can start checking out books from the Washburn library. The library is the one of my favorite places on campus and one of the best reasons for me to be back in school.

Have a great week, everyone.

Love,
Ben

Understanding ourselves to understand the world

99% of our experience of the world is based on how we relate with the world, I'm convinced at this point in my life. It's Heisenberg's principle with Martin Luther King's message.

The world is as we make it. And we too often make it lousy because we relate with it poorly.

The bottom line for humanity is that we fight too much. And we are far more convinced that we know what we're doing than we ever deserve.

Aggression is our natural reaction to fear. It is a reaction that too often betrays us. Thought and free will and compassion and the least possible necessary aggression in life are what offer us our best chance to end the self-fulfilling prophecy of a world made too violent, too combative, too hateful, and far too tragic and absurd by our propensity to turn to fear, aggression, power, and control to relate to our problems and to one another around them rather than through more throughtfulness, compassion, and respect for free will.

The world is not any particular way except for the way that we make it. And even in the most dangerous and violent affairs that humanity faces, thoughtfulness and understanding are more important than force, which is used most wisely when it is used with greater understanding of all people, especially of the people to whom it is directed.

Understanding people, especially ourselves, as King and Ghandi and Tutu and others have taught, is the single most important thing that humanity can do to improve its lot.

If we want to know how the world is, how it has been, and how it can be, the most important thing we can do is to understand ourselves, in a context of good faith, forgiveness, a serious sense of humor, and a respect for our own free will, good and bad.

As we better relate to ourselves, we better relate to the world around us. And that is where the world changes most intimately and profoundly for the better.

And if you don't buy all that, check out Natalie Portman lampooning the violent alternatives. And check out Dick In a Box when you get a chance.

Love,
Ben

No need to consider you might not know when everyone else is dead wrong

Ariana Huffington has a pretty funny post on her blogpage today I thought worth sharing.

The Mainstream Media's Take on Iraq: Right, Left...And Dead Wrong

Huffington's concern is with mainstream, objective, thoughtful analysis, as she makes clear in her post:

Divorced from the reality of what's going on in Iraq. Wedded to a deluded perception of the war. Unwilling to acknowledge widespread and irrefutable evidence to the contrary. Sound like anyone you know? No, I'm not talking about President Bush -- though it's certainly true of him as well. I'm talking about the mainstream media, and their relentless depiction of the Iraq war as a left/right issue, even as the facts give lie to this hoary framing.

According to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, 60 percent of Americans oppose Bush's escalation of the war, and 65 percent want to "withdraw right away" or "withdraw within a year." Other polls reach the same conclusion: Iraq is simply not a right vs. left issue.
But you'd never know it from watching the pundits on television.

Here's Howard Fineman on Countdown with Keith Olbermann: "...that's the tension that people like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden are caught in as they try to move to the left on the war without taking themselves out of the mainstream of the country."

Of course, what Fineman means by "left on the war" is being in favor of ending the war, and against Bush's handling of it. No Democrats need worry that taking those positions will take them out of the mainstream.

But don't tell that to Candy Crowley. Here was her cobweb-covered analysis of Ted Kennedy's anti-escalation measure: "What Senator Kennedy is going to do is lay down the liberal view of things, which is to say, he will say, look, no additional troops and no additional money for additional troops, unless Congress approves."

The "liberal view of things"? More like the view of things of almost two-thirds of the nation."

The same 2/3 of the nation that supported the invasion going into Iraq - as well as the same 2/3 plus of Democrats in office who supported that invasion - and have backed away from the decision now that things have gone terribly wrong, Ariana argues, are being ignored now that their collective conventional wisdom has finally got the right answer on this whole war in Iraq thing.

As Ariana argues:

"When the macro framing of the war is so warped, it makes productive discussion of how to deal with Iraq even harder. The encouraging thing is that while so many in the mainstream media continue to believe that being in favor of ending the war means you're a "left-winger" and "out of the mainstream," a growing number of politicians don't.

How long will it take for the media to recognize reality and drop their outdated, obsolete, and thunderingly inaccurate framing of the war debate?

Iraq is not about right and left. It's about right and wrong -- and the vast majority of the public clearly knows this. It's time for the media to catch up."

The problem with the war in Iraq is not that we don't know exactly what to do or that a fuller and more good-faith policy discussion might both create more humility about the situation and more ideas about how to facilitate better political and security solutions for the situation there.

The problem is that the media is not listening to the wisdom of the American people. And that they, like the corrupt conservatives and Republicans that they toadie for, have seen the choice between right and wrong and they have chosen to do wrong.

Ariana goes on to outline all of the reasons for why she thinks a withdrawal will most effectively facilitate a more democratic and peaceful Iraq:

...in another post, I'm pretty sure.

I mean, Ariana's a smart gal. She's not going to claim that she understands the basic rights and wrongs of Iraq and the world without making her case. Ariana's only concern is with the strongest, most thoughtful, most decent and humane policy - the right decision - in how to handle the mess in Iraq, right now.

The truth is that I like Ariana Huffington. I think her and Nancy Pelosi and Democrats are being really self-righteous, right now, about what they are sure are the right answers to handle the situation in Iraq, but I like Ariana and Nancy Pelosi both. The truth is that, like everyone else, they really don't have much a clue exactly what will make the situation better. Everyone knows what they would like to see (although, for many, many people, Democrats and Republicans, this means a situation that is better for America, first and foremost, and better for Iraq as an afterthought).

But getting to a more democratic, more peaceful, more free, and less bloody Iraq is a more difficult question that everyone wants to play Emperor with and yet noone is really wearing much clothing, these days.

Here's my thinking about Iraq.

I don't know exactly what will make the situation in Iraq better. The current moment has made it so much clearer to me how little anyone does, including a lot of the more thoughtful policy people I've read and respected. The people who have really earned my respect in the last few months have been people like George Will and David Patreus, the new commander of operations in Iraq, who have said as much about the situation, and yet maintained some commitment and hope that a workable and more democratic solution can be found.

I tend to agree with military historian Frederick Kagan and Weekly Standard editor William Kristol - All We Are Saying Is Give Petraeus A Chance - that the best hope in Iraq is to better secure Iraq with necessary additional troops to create sufficient security to facilitate constructive dialogue to find a political solution and the necessary compromises on the outlook for a democratic Iraqi government between competing parties. Following through on even the threat to withdraw troops - which would be necessary to make that threat credible - would leave parties in a civil war engaging in ethnic bloodshed with no credible third party, in an underprepared Iraqi national army, to put an end to that bloodshed and facilitate a political solution.

The truth is that I don't know what exactly will resolve the security and political problems of Iraq, right now. I'm just convinced that the only hope for a political resolution is found in the context of an improved security situation, which I (and the Iraqi government) am not confident at all, at this point, would be facilitated by the withdrawal of American troops. If the Iraqi government or the Iraqi people were asking for an American withdrawal, I would feel different about what we should do, not because I would all of a sudden have more confidence in the Iraqi army and law enforcement to handle the situation, but because I would respect the self-determination of the Iraqi people, right or wrong. As is, I have very little confidence in the Iraqi government and people to handle the explosive and very complicated security situation in their own country and respect their government's request for assistance until they are ready to be responsible for the situation without the presence or with limited presence of American troops.

I could be wrong about that. The presence of American troops could be the cause of much of the insurgency and sectarian bloodshed may calm down if Americans are out of the picture, or the threat or actual withdrawal of American troops might be what is needed to motivate the Maliki government to find a political compromise, to effectively challenge and undermine the sectarian commitments of Al Sadr's Shia militias as well as the sectarian efforts by Sunnis and Kurds, or as Charles Krauthammer has posited, this might be a situation that only Iraqis can resolve and that an escalated American presence is unlikely to improve.

I'm not sure exactly what will undermine and halt the violence and create the space for a political solution that only Iraqis can arrive at. I just happen to think that the arguments and plans laid out by people like Frederick Kagan are the best I've seen thusfar.

It makes sense to me that an precipitous American pull-out would only create a power vacuum in the competition for a monopoly on the use of force that Shias and Sunni militias would only feel emboldened by and too afraid not to engage for fear of being killed, mass murdered, and oppressed should their competitors will out in such a conflict, and that such open conflict without credible third-party security, aligned with the sovereign Iraqi government, will make political solutions and political compromise both less likely and for such political compromise to become a pawn in a military conflict meant to up the ante on the use of force to leverage for political power in the emerging Iraqi governing compromise solution.

I have to say that it is really, really refreshing when I read people saying that they're not quite sure about what to do in Iraq. It's more honest, first of all. And it shows more genuine humility in the face of this most serious issue that America and the world faces, nevertheless in the myriad of other issues that America and the democratic and non-democratic world face.

It is always interesting to me that the people least likely to say that they don't know how to find sustainable resolution on various issues are, generally, the same people who are completely sure of their need, right, and wisdom in bullying me or others in doing what they hold such absolute wisdom over.

The less likely people are to question their own wisdom, the more they think they should be able to impose that wisdom on others is the one rule of life that you can count on more than any other, in my experience.

And there is no other issue in America where that truism plays itself out with more tragic absurdity than the war in Iraq, right now, sadly.

I've never followed an issue where such absurdity was so clear to me and tragic as a consequence in my all too brief lifetime. So many people so goddamned sure of their respective solutions, so sure that they feel the compulsion to impose it on the Iraqi government, the President, the American people, and anyone else who gets in their way, and yet so few people in agreement that any particular solution is likely to yield success.

The whole exercise bears out the reason to be skeptical that people in government or who aspire to steer the ship of state, as journalists, activists, scholars, minor and major politicians, and even everyday citizens, are somehow wiser or better in their understanding of the world. We must participate in a democratic society and government to contribute and be responsible for efforts as serious as war and peace, especially, and yet we all engage that discuss so self-righteously, with so little thought and genuine efforts to listen and consider and respect different perspectives, ideas, and arguments, and with so much too-certain certainty about what will resolve our shared and especially our independent problems.

Even around an issue like the war in Iraq which burden is clearly shared by the American people and which clearly needs a government response, the certain answers for how to resolve our most serious problems are still so elusive (except to those who most certainly do not deserve our trust that they really have arrived at certain answers).

And the war in Iraq is our best case scenario for a political question that most certainly needs a collective, government (and therefore imposed) response.

Hubris, the Greeks whisper to us. Hubris.

Love,
Ben

King's greatest legacy

My friend, Carson, at ContentDoneBetter inspired my Martin Luther King post, today, with his post. I would check out his post on the subject when you get a chance. This was my comment.

"We spent Friday at school talking about King. It was really nice. Ms. Smith, the teacher I collaborate with and this really wonderful black woman I work with and respect, had a really nice discussion in her class with the kids about King.

This is my second MLK holiday celebration as a teacher, and it always surprises me how little seriously most kids take King's legacy, sadly. I work in a majority black school in a poor neighborhood - the exact kinds of kids and people that King spent his life dedicated to helping - and very few of the kids take his legacy seriously, out loud, at least. I've got to hope that it sinks in with some years. But the most vocal thing I ever heard from a kid about King was from one of my really obnoxious black students: "Fuck Martin Luther King."

It's very sad to me that so few kids people openly take King's legacy seriously or appreciate what he and others dedicated to civil rights went through to help create a more color-blind, multiracial, loving, compassionate world. I have all kinds of disagreements with Martin Luther King as I have with most people. But his courage made civil rights finally possible in a country that had denied them for over a hundred years after abolishing slavery of African Americans.

I never told you this, Carson, but when I left grad school, I was a member of a poverty lobbying group called RESULTS. I had been inspired by the calls by Muhammad Yunus for an international poverty movement at our annual RESULT International conferences that I attended in Washington D.C. and had been talking about the possibilities of an international poverty movement for a year or two, at that point. When I left grad school, I wrote emails to many people about my intentions of starting an international poverty movement. Most people thought I was kind of crazy. A couple friends were encouraging.

But the more I got to know the real world, the less convinced I became that a social movement could eliminate poverty. The more I got to see poverty up close, the more I became convinced that poverty was too complicated to be solved by protests. It wasn't the same thing as a legal battle over voting rights. It needed genuine and sustained commitment and generosity rather than a single or even a series of political victories which I became convinced created resentment and resistance from those not quite on board and those with legitimate concerns, especially small businesses, who were often in a different position in terms of money available and profit margin, to do all the things that I still think need to happen around wealth equity issues consistent with a market economy which makes so much of the abundance that we all take for granted possible.

I worked for almost a year on the Kaw Valley Living Wage Campaign. It became clear to me that the business community and the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce would work with us if they didn't feel bullied into it. And they resisted us when they did feel bullied, for reasons I find completely understandable at this point.That wasn't enough for my Living Wage companions, who were convinced that either they had to bully the business community or nothing would come of their efforts.

As it turned out, the best thing that came of their efforts, I think, was the raising of the issue and the commitment by many businesses to the relatively reliable living wages that Lawrence had to offer when I was looking for work, by businesses who were not compelled by the living wage in Lawrence which only applies to businesses that locate in Lawrence and receive tax abatements.

In the meantime, my liberal friends bullied the shit out of me, too, as I looked for a compromise with business leaders and city council representatives who would approve of a "wage floor" or other comparable voluntary measures but who weren't interested in a legally imposed living wage.

I pointed out to them that their proposal would only touch a small fraction of businesses and employees in Lawrence, since tax abatements didn't impact the vast majority of folks with businesses and employed in Lawrence. And that securing genuine voluntary commitment to living wages would impact the vast majority of people in Lawrence that the law they were fighting for wouldn't touch.

It was classic MLK versus Malcolm X. Change hearts and minds or bully and pressure the unconvinced.

I think Lawrence has made some small progress on this issue because of a town of people who think about these issues more and maybe even facilitated by a campaign that raised the issue. Though, as the Lawrence Journal World pointed out in an article from that time, wealth inequities are still serious in Lawrence as they are any place else, even in the Lawrence school systems and the University of Kansas, the most liberal of institutions in Lawrence and the most presumably committed to alleviating wealth inequities.

Hypocrisy abounds on this issue, amongst liberals and conservatives, rich, middle class, and poor. Just as with race 40 years ago.

Racism gave way, largely, for the reasons MLK argued. Hearts and minds have changed in 40 years. I can only hope that hearts and minds will change on wealth equity issues in 40 more years.

One can totally understand MLK's urgency in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, and his impatience with Bobby Kennedy, Jack Kennedy, and black and white religious leaders in Birmingham who told him he was pushing for too much, too fast.

But the reality was and is that important changes in the culture take an enormous amount of time.

I share King's impatience. On race, on poverty, and around the issues, like expanding liberal democratic values, that I care about. But I also bring to the table a realism about the issue, and it's complexity and the lack of easy answers, that we needed and need on race as much as we needed and need on poverty.

Martin Luther King's and Mohatma Ghandi's legacies are two of the finest in the 20th century, I think, as much as anything because they demonstrate the power of ideas of those who do not have formal power but who move hearts and minds. By the ends of both of their lives, they moved more people and were more powerful, in real terms and in terms of a legacy, than any of the politicians of their day. And in the end, it was their courage and ideas and words that captured our hearts.

Today is more complicated because very few of the challenges we face today are by necessity legal in nature as was voting rights.

And the blunt use of force to achieve whatever it is that we say that we want is hardly as inspiring as MLK's "I Have a Dream" or Jack Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country". It's much more reminiscent of radical demands of the 60's, backed by terrorist action and violent factions, and Soviet demands of their people, backed by a totalitarian regime.

There are no Martin Luther King's in today's world, save for perhaps Mohammed Yunus or Desmond Tutu, because everyone in the current political period has latched onto the most base of messages from King's legacy: the need to pressure and bully for reform. And just as black radicals used the least of Martin's legacy to rationalize their own ugliness, so too do contemporary liberals and conservatives use the least of Martin's legacy and the legacy of the civil rights movement, in the case of contemporary wealth equity activists, or the abolitionist movement, in the case of pro-life activists, to rationalize their own bullying and worst behavior.

And there's just not much to inspire people in that message. Because it's not inspiring.

Yunus' (and John Hatch of FINCA and other similar groups) strongest legacy is in his creating a workable model for sustainable wealth and anti-poverty business development for the poorest of the poor. And Desmond Tutu's strongest legacy is his commitment to truth and reconciliation in South Africa and a commitment to truth and reconcilitation as an alternative to more recriminatory approaches to resolve longstanding injustices and unfairness between peoples, like the International Criminal Court, which seems to undermine efforts to end genocidal conflicts as an excellent editorial argued is occuring in Sudan in the Washington Post recently.

And what King would be whispering in our ear, today, I would hope, would be, "Why are so few liberals or conservatives genuinely committed to wealth equity? Why do we persistently make excuses for our greed? Why do so many Democrats and Republicans grandstand on the issue in Congress while failing to practice serious wealth equity in their lives? Why are so few liberals and conservatives committed to ending serious wealth inequities in the world, satisfying themselves with a largely symbolic minimum wage increase and avoiding a larger discussion about wealth inequity and greed and their consequences on our democratic life?"

If King had the same kind of cynicism about the capacity for Americans to get over their racism as so many people have about their capacity to get over their greed and our lack of commitment to genuinely overcoming wealth inequities, as a matter of heart and mind much more than as a matter of law or politics, it would have been much more difficult for people to overcome the racism that so substantially characterized northern and southern America in his day.

But liberals and conservatives too often, in my experience, chase the money and take very little real responsibility for the consequences of wealth inequities in America and the world, largely because the issue is so much more complicated than just learning to judge someone for the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.

Bill Gates gives away half his wealth. Warren Buffet gives away a substantial amount of the same and leaves no money to his children to tackle the issue of inherited wealth. Americans are the most generous people in the world in terms of voluntary giving, and generate wealth unprecedented in history because of their vast free and dynamic economies.

But noone, from any country, wants to give up the power that comes with greater wealth, and the wealth that comes with greater power.

Because that power, we arrogantly believe, is what makes things in the world go right. Without it, the world would go to pot, we tell ourselves. With it, we make the world as inspiring a place as it is, ignoring all the ways that it undermines higher ideals.

It's bullshit, of course. But we'll rationalize it, liberals and conservatives, as long as we believe that we can get what we want with all that wealth and power.

I have a dream. I have a dream that one day people will stop playing that bullshit game with one another, as much as possible. And start treating each other like they really give a shit about one another. I have a dream that people will stop making excuses for what dicks they are to one another, all the time, and treat each other like they might like to be treated, the golden rule and all that. I have a dream that people of all backgrounds, all classes, and all ideological stripes will stop engaging in self-righteous grandstanding on every issue that strikes them and to take seriously intelligent and rigorous and respectful and self-reflective engagement and debate and discussion and respect for their neighbors when they disagree without demonizing them because they belong to a different political church, religious, ethnic, gender, racial, class or other group. I have a dream that we will care for one another as fellow human beings because it's the right thing to do, regardless of whether it makes profit or serves our bottom-lines or wins the next election for us.

We could have that dream. But, right now, most people settle for the bullshit that passes for decency and humanity, these days.

King's legacy was, fundamentally, about the golden rule. About treating one another like we would want to be treated.I'm not sure who his heirs are, today. Yunus and Tutu, to be sure. All of us, in some respect since we are people who are, by and large, more favorable to King today than people were to King in the 50's and 60's. And very much like the 50's and 60's, all of us fall short of King's legacy or our best selves beyond King or any of our heroes.

King will forgive us that, I'm sure, just as he forgave Malcolm X and Stockley Carmichael for making his job harder and all of us for the racism that permeated his society up till his death.

And hopefully, as King I'm sure would have wished were true rather than the riots that followed his death, we will jaw-jaw much more than we will war-war over this issue and every serious issue that we face. Because as radicals and terrorists of King's time and our time demonstrate, forcing ourselves upon others rather than changing hearts and minds is an ugly and unsustainable means of changing the world for the better, no matter how self-righteously terrorists or any of us might believe otherwise.

The real King legacy is not in any one of the anti-discrimination or affirmative action laws adopted after his death.The real King legacy is found in young and old black people and white people who treat each other like fellow human beings rather than asserting superiority over one another or the self-righteous claim to bully one another or harboring hate or bias or ugly or destructive feelings toward one another.

That is the most sustainable way to change, and King was its most brilliant proponent. That the real standard for progress is the hearts and minds of a people, not what is imposed upon them.

That's the legacy we should be celebrating today. Because that's the legacy that made the most real difference in the world.

I hope my kids realize how much they take that legacy for granted, someday. Because it's the one that is so easily taken for granted, today. Because the kids (and most adults, thankfully) live within that spirit so much better than they did in King's day."

Thank you, Martin.

Love,
Ben

I think I might quit teaching

What we need in the world, today, especially as teachers, is people who kick ass and take names.

I'm not that person. I don't like to hurt people or force their hands to get my way.

I want to do something where I can just do my thing and avoid people altogether, as much as possible, I think.

Teaching and education just don't mean anything to me as long as they end up with someone forcing someone else's hands when reason fails.

I need to find a profession where I can live a quiet life and avoid all this ugliness that passes for reason, these days.

Happy Martin Luther King Day.

Love,
Ben

Pressure

Melissa and I saw the most horrific thing last night. It was a beheading of an American by Iraqi insurgents.

Warning: Extremely graphic and disturbing
Beheading of Eugene Armstrong

Terrorists and those from autocratic countries reason that liberal democratic countries just really don't have the balls to use pressure and blunt force like they do.

People from liberal democratic countries who aren't quite convinced of their liberal democratic values get scared that the terrorists are right.

And the truth is that far too many citizens from liberal democratic countries act as if the terrorists are right, so enamoured are they with the use of force or pressure - bullying is the common term for that strategy - to accomplish their ends.

I don't understand why free people can never quite embrace their freedom, and the learning that comes with it, from good choices and from bad choices.

And bad choices by average people in liberal and autocratic countries always rationalize bad choices by a government and by other average people to force themselves on one another.

That beheading video is what real pressure looks like. I wonder if liberal democratic citizens will either have the balls to apply real pressure like that beheading, or give up the practice, altogether, as much as possible, since it undermines development and exercise of conscience.

All I know is that while I may be forced to live with the awful choice that liberal democratic citizens have chosen for this political period, I will never recognize it as the right choice or the best choice. Because it clearly isn't, no matter how much pressure people apply.

Love,
Ben

It's the other way around

An excellent Orwellian-like quotation from a new movie about the folly and tragedy of both tyranny and revolution, "Land of the Blind," with Ralph Feinnes and Donald Sutherland, that Melissa and I just saw the trailer for:

"Under the old government, man exploited man. But since the revolution, it's the other way around"



What a great summary of the current political period.

Love,
Ben

Lazy Sunday

(NBC made youtube take Lazy Sunday off of their video selection, so you can access the video and a million other hilarious SNL digital shorts and skits at Lazy Sunday at SNL on NBC)

Listening to: What a Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong

After one of the most cynical weeks and nights of my life, last week and last night, I had a really outstanding day today.

I'm just so content with my life, at this point, no matter what happens. I could lose my job, I could be diagnosed with cancer, I could encounter any number of terrible tragedies.

And I will always come out of it more and more content with life, I realize, today.

After a week and a night of more real cynicism than I've felt in my young life, I realized, today, that my ideals in life, both as a matter of my own life and as a matter of the world independent of me, are more real, today, than they have ever been in my lifetime, including my undergraduate and graduate years and my years with Brandi, which I've always regarded as my most idealistic period.

So many things I realized, today. How much ego is behind so much cynicism and false pride and false tragedy that is responsible for so much of the more ignoble pursuits in the world, for power, for influence, for money, for sex, for fame, for notoriety. How much very worthy pursuits are passed up by good people because of their fears of all of these things that they will miss out on, when, in reality, none of what we know of the more ignoble pursuits in the world are really where happiness lie. A truth that we know deep down, even as we ignore that bit of wisdom. And a truth I learned most squarely when the friendship I cared about most in my life I lost, in part out of an insanely stressful pursuit of influence and status and less noble pursuits, as well as a high-purpose, world class education, while I was in grad school.

My life has seriously settled down, for all the right reasons. And it's not dependent on money or status or any of the really less important priorities in life.

It's because the priority that really matters most - living a life you're proud of - is just so solid for me, right now, completely independent of what I do and do not achieve in my life, at this point, though I anticipate achieving and creating quite a bit.

It's a good feeling. It's far better than achieving without as much genuine confidence in myself, independent of my achievements, a life that I have had and never felt as secure with because I lacked exactly the things that I have found and created in my life, today.

Today, I listened to February and thought about Brandi's and my friendship and relationship and realized that our falling apart, as lovers and then as friends, really is just unnecessary tragedy that I seem to be making peace with, these days. I made peace with so much today, out of my grappling with cynicism as a serious alternative for the first time in my life, this last week, and finding that I couldn't sustain it if I wanted to. I am forgiving and generally happy and realistic and accepting of the shortcomings of life, by nature and by habit, now, I think. And just as a matter of being honest with myself.

You see, Ben, you really have a wonderful life. Don't you see what a mistake it would be to throw it all away:).

In honor of lazy Sundays that I miss with my friend, Brandi (as well as with her family) and one of my best friends', Carson's, awesome taste in SNL digital shorts, and in honor of all those people - Melissa, Devang, Angela, Bond, Jenny, Scotty-Joe, Andy, Gwethalyn, Honey, Shawn, Dean, Todd, Kevin, Rachel and Jeff, and all the folks at EMU, Rachel, Jaz, Dolly, Blick, Dave, and the gang, Tommy Patrick, Brian White, Mike Keith, Kevin Keplar, Kate, Mike Coupland, Jenny Thunda, Raimi, Francis, Carlos, and all of the friends who I have loved most spending lazy Sundays like this one with - I have to repost from Carson's Content Done Better Blog what I think is one of the best of the youtube videos I have come across, thusfar (If you haven't caught Andy Samberg's and Justin Timberlake's Dick in a Box and Kelli's Shoes, I highly recommend them), "Lazy Sunday" from Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell.

Enjoy:).

Love,
Ben

Power as the source of most political and social problems

The source of most of our most unresolved political and social problems is that the problems, themselves, get interpreted as power battles rather than as collaborative efforts which more genuinely look out for the real, deepest, and most sincere interests of all parties involved.

It's the tragedy of power.

The major tragedies include terrorism, genocide, authoritarianism, torture, political repression, etc. One of the minor but still important tragedies is the inordinate amount of time and energy spent policing, controlling, punishing people and the consequence time and energy wasted by all people - including those policing, controlling, and punishing people - trying to stay out of trouble, whether the policing, controlling, punishing, or escaping punishment actually accomplish anything at all.

Sounds like a good book title.

The Limits of Power - an empirical discussion of the limits of power; free will, intellect, and morality; and least possible necessary aggression

A History of Liberal Democracy - a liberal progressive history of liberal democracy, meaning a history that makes the argument for progress based on liberalization and liberal democratic cultures, norms, and institutions (not liberal progressive in the contemporary sense of liberal or progressive politics; my assumptions are that contemporary liberals and conservatives and members of other ideologies and parties can and do make important contributions to the progress of liberal democratic cultures)

The Tragedy of Power - an empirical discussion of the tragic consequences of interpreting problems as power battles rather than as collaborative efforts that genuinely look out for the real, deepest, and most sincere interests of all parties involved

Perhaps I should do all three of these, to some degree, in one book, assuming, as I do, that only one, really will be read by most people in the long run.

Interesting questions.

Love,
Ben

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio

If you have not seen Julianne Moore's beautiful portrayal of Evelyn Ryan in The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, I highly recommend it.

Julianne's portrayal of Evelyn Ryan very much affirms for me why I take love and compassion so seriously as the truest source of strength in life, in a family, in a culture.

For so many in politics, in teaching, in families, and in life who lose track of that truest source of strength, I highly recommend this movie to remind you of what you've been forgetting and missing.

Love,
Ben

Terrorism, power and liberal democracy

In the last week, Melissa and I have watched both World Trade Center and United 93.

They are both sad and beautiful films that I recommend to everyone.

And both of them, with all of the various individual tragedies that they chronicle from that very tragic day have me reflecting on one very sad fact.

No matter what reasons we might imagine for why al Queda operatives were motivated to kill all those people on that day, or why terrorists are motivated to kill at any point (some variation of Peter Bergen and Michael Lind's thesis that pride motivates terrorism is the most persuasive motivation that I have read), what is clear about terrorism is that it is centrally motivated by a desire for power.

Al Queda and all terrorists believe that if they can use military force and political propaganda in ingenious and effective enough ways, they can force the hands of the subjects of their terrorism: the United States, Israel, Britain, Spain, Jordan, India, the West, Arab countries, whichever citizens of whichever countries that they direct their cult of death towards.

Terrorism, fundamentally, is brutal politics.

Terrorism is literally using all means necessary to acquire the power to force the hands of subject countries to do as terrorists see fit.

Generally, terrorists, like democratic peoples, believe that they can use power to solve the problems of the people they identify with. Islamic law is a cynical and romantic solution, many terrorists believe, for the myriad of problems that face their peoples. Military force, they believe, no matter how relatively weak compared to their opponents, can expel foreigners from lands they claim and exact retribution for perceived injustices.

It is this illiberal commitment to impose what terrorists argue is God's will, but is in fact their own, and liberal democratic commitments to freedom, democracy, equity, humanity, and other similar values that distinguish terrorists and their thinking from the citizens of liberal democratic countries they target.

This is all true except that liberal societies have one very important similarity to the illiberal commitments of terrorists that makes it harder for us to distinguish ourselves: our similar commitment to the idea that enough power will similarly solve the problems of liberal or illiberal societies.

It is all the fashion, these days. This foolish illiberal notion. It is more than fad in countries like North Korea, Syria, Cuba, and Palistan. Sadly it is, in reality, less a fad in liberal democratic nations than is ideal.

But there is much more commitment, history, experience, thinking, cultural values, and institutions to support liberal democratic values in countries like the United States, France, Great Britain, Australia, Germany, Japan, Spain, Portugal, and other liberal democratic countries (although the majority of that list have developed those institutions fairly recently, within the last hundred years; and liberal democracy, while dating back many hundreds of years as an idea, a set of values and nascent commitments, is a little more than two hundred years old as a sustained commitment of governance and cultural development).

And, most hopeful, liberal democratic cultures are ones which are forever elaborating upon and expanding their liberal democratic ideals, with cultures - scholars, writers, directors and filmmakers, actors, musicians, and other entertainers, businesspeople, and other citizens - that perpetually lead their governments towards greater liberalization.

Liberalization is the movement away from power as the central organizing principle of human development. Power is still needed, to be sure. But power serves purposes more and more limited in the scope of its use in liberal societies and governments, ideally. Power is used less often, less readily, and with less force and aggression, over time, primarily because liberal democratic citizens hold themselves and one another to a higher standard of humanity and maturity in their dealings with the world. But power is also used less readily because it has consequences that lead those who hold it to, eventually, seek other more liberalized and liberalizing options.

All societies are fragile. But liberal societies are strongest because the freedom they create nurtures greater responsiveness, flexibility, humanity and collaboration, inclusion, resilience, and honest engagement and reflection in the face of even the most difficult challenges, terrorism included.

Terrorism is not the most difficult challenge that liberal democracies have faced. It is only the most recent among illiberal philosophies to openly challenge liberal cultures. And like every illiberal challenge before it, it will fail, ultimately, because liberal societies will learn resilience, strength, and confidence in the liberal values that make those societies and governments strong and will use those values, and especially the more honest engagement and reflection, to defeat terrorists and terrorism, politically and militarily.

Power, when it is not exercised consistent with the highest ideals of liberal values, persistently undermines and compromises those values and the strength that they nurture.

But the power of liberal societies is the capacity of their cultures to strengthen their commitments to liberal values - to freedom and equity and humanity, for real, not just as political rhetoric that does not match substantive policies - even as governments and citizen advocates resist the strengthening of those commitments and values within the institutions that animate liberal democracy.

Illiberality, ranging from conditions like genocide, terrorism, and authoritarianism to less severe restrictions like freedoms in liberal democratic countries, rules by fear and spreads fear throughout a community. And that fear undermines the freedom that is necessary for more genuine responsibility and virtue to take root. Without access to the free will that is the source of all virtue, all peoples, liberal or illiberal, are cut off from their capacity to teach and learn it most honestly, meaning freely.

Liberal democracy strengthens its commitments to liberalizing values, in the long run, despite short terms setbacks and regressive historical periods, like the current one, because it is liberalization and freedom that are the heart of the the strength of those cultures and their governing institutions, rather than the weakness that the fears and insecurities their citizens so often mistake those liberal values for. Fear rationalizes illiberality which rationalizes fear with rationalizes illiberality. It is a vicious cycle that terrorism is designed to create and accelerate. The virtuous circle of liberality is facilitated by free peoples deepening their commitments to liberal values, creating the space and freedom for more genuine safety, virtue, decency and hope to take place. All of which are only available to the extent that a culture is free. And all of which are hindered to the extent that freedom is limited, except when immediate violence or harm is taking place or imminent.

Even amidst terror there is hope. And true hope is found inside of the elaboration and expansion our liberal values.

Love,
Ben

What enlarges and sustains our values?

The craziest thing for me to observe as I watch this period of rationalizing control in the name of freedom is asking and answering the question, "What sustains our values?"

And when I say values, I don't just mean our value for freedom or democracy. I mean all of them. I mean our commitment to gender equity, to racial equity, to equity based on income and needs met, I mean our opposition to slavery and our commitment to universal suffrage and one vote for every person. I mean our commitment to intelligence and education. I mean our commitment to a healthy world, a safe world, and world with as clean an environment as possible. I mean our commitment to economic abundance and shared abundance. I mean our commitment to ethnic and religious equity that we can take less for granted as we watched ethnic and religious sectarianism tear apart Iraq. I mean our commitment to openness and transparency, to decency and humanity, to honesty and hope.

Do most people really believe that such values are sustained primarily, if at all, by laws? By rules? By force? By coercion?

Because the plain reality is that if these values were sustained primarily if at all by laws and rules and force and coercion is that none of them could be sustained at all, for long. They couldn't maintain themselves in the face of opposition from a culture that had not internalized those values, by conscience, mind, heart and soul.

Without a commitment to conscience, mind, heart and soul to ground and give real expression to abstract values and their far more blunt and abstract expression in laws and rules, by force and coercion, these values would never find real life. They would always be tucked away in dusty and little consulted codes of conduct, only to be considered when a violation is alleged, which would be often and regular in a society that had not internalized the values they aspire to pass on.

There can be no doubt, really, that it is conscience and not rules that embody our values, since conscience is what distinguishes between good laws and bad so that they can be amended. There would be no need for democracy were values found in laws, because there would be no need for revision since no other authority could trump legal or political authority.

It is not just the inspiration for a free society, it is the function of a free society and our greatest check against tyranny that conscience trumps laws and rules and other political and legal controls.

Would all of those rationalizing force as a central governing philosophy really collude with Nazi-era laws that mandated the reporting of Jews to the German government? Would they really collude with fugitive slave laws of 19th century America? Would they really collude with laws that imprisoned adulterers, homosexuals, sodomizers, imbibers of alcohol, and heretics to the Church?

And the sad answer to that question is that during another era, many of they would and did. Sadly. And the law was excuse and rationalization for all of it. Sadly. So much human tragedy for so little purpose. And all in the name of human or divine law. Sadly.

We have escaped all of that tendency, thankfully, finally finding the present and forever future balance between freedom and control. We should be thankful for our own unflinching wisdom. It would be difficult to find this balance without such foresight.

But the truth is that, in so many ways, we are just like those past generations, thinking that we have found the right path or balance, convinced of our decency and humanity because of how much more brutal and controlling and indecent past generations were, and convinced of our own unchallengeable wisdom that will sustain itself over the generations that we have summoned because we have finally arrived upon the means of promoting good behavior that has eluded past generations, even as it mimics those eras.

Hubris is how the ancient Greeks referred to this mistake of humanity. Arrogance is a good enough common term.

Do we really believe that force could sustain and enlarge all of those values?

Somehow I doubt it. Especially given its clearly poor historical record on the matter.

But we rationalize it anyway because we are afraid to live without it. I do the same, I think. I'm trying to let it go. To learn where more force or aggression is more appropriate. But to avoid it as much as possible.

I'm probably off the mark like everyone else. But presuming against the use of force and aggression, as much as possible and only using them when they are necessary as much as my forever fallible judgment can render, is a good start, I hope.

It is frustrating to me that we would give such cover to our pretense of infallibility, during this period. And it is more frustrating for me to watch people who least deserve that cover taking the most advantage of it.

Hubris, the Greeks wrote. Cynicism, I would add. They generally go hand in hand, is my experience.

I can only hope that we can slowly grow our way out of them.

Love,
Ben

The Age of Infallibility

The American Interest features a really interesting opening reflection in a current book review.

The Age of Infallibility by John Patrick Diggins

From that review:

"Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (Viking, 2006), 480 pp., $26.95.

Damon Linker, The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege (Doubleday, 2006), 288 pp., $26.

The history of our era seems to move in tragic circles, strangely analogous to those presented symbolically in Greek tragedy. The democratic nations of the world are involving themselves more inexorably in world catastrophe by their very efforts to avert or to avoid it. . . . Why are democratic nations so tragically committed to this dance of death?
—Reinhold Niebuhr
Christianity and Power Politics (1940)

The war in Iraq, tragic though it may be, provides an occasion for some sorely needed philosophical reflection. Such reflection would soon lead us to the realization that in situations leading up to war, action often precedes thought. Sometimes decisions have already been made before debate begins, and in such circumstances the mind does not so much determine events as respond to them; as history unfolds, philosophy invariably arrives too late to be of any use. “The Owl of Minerva takes flight after dusk”, Hegel warned, leaving us in the dark when confronting the rush of events."

Also, Francis Fukuyama's and the American Interest's editorial blog posts an excellent critique by Patricia Murphy of Democratic and Republican efforts to curb ethics violations in Congress while both parties sacrafice democratic engagement to do so.

Is Pelosi Walking a Tightrope Over Sugarcandy Mountain?

And for a cause that may fail to face the realistic likelihood that ethics violations will always be with us (and I would add that ethics violations are often more likely the more taboo and cynicism fuel temptation).

You know the one biggest reason to enjoy working with kids is that the cynicism hasn't quite taken over most people when it comes to kids. We carry it, as we carry it with others. But we haven't quite given into it with young people. We need that attitude to become more generous for all people, not just kids.

But my observation is that the more freedom people get, the more cynical we become about them and their use of that freedom.

And the irony is that it is our freedom, as evidenced by cultures and governments that embrace repression and suppress freedom throughout the world, that is completely responsible for our good will and good deeds.

The same freedom that offers us the opportunity to do bad offers us all the opportunities that we take advantage of, regularly, to do good.

But we take more advantage of that freedom to do good the more freedom we have to do it with.

I find myself growing more cynical, these days, the more my freedom is limited. Which just maintains the cycle of repression and regressive politics and policy.

Is there a way out of this cycle, I hope?

I can certainly understand a more bleak worldview if there is not. But I can't bring myself to resign myself to it.

Love,
Ben

The why of cynicism

You know why I think that adults, including me, (very sadly, since I'm among the more idealistic of my age, I think, and have always thought of myself as a truer idealist than most people of any generation) grow cynical, I think.

Because we all find out that no matter how much we contribute, how much we give everything that we have, no matter how much we try to be the best people and best professionals and give the best that we absolutely have.

That we are all all expendable. That it is never enough. And that the culprits for this situation is all of us, even and especially the good folks who give their all around us.

To our credit, we are better to children than we are to one another. But then we go on to rationalize and make excuses for why our uglier impulses tell us we should be shittier in our treatment of young people (especially young people in trouble, with the law or otherwise) rather than why our treatment of one another should be better.

None of us seem to matter, really, to one another, except when it is too late. We miss each other when we are gone. And treat each other like shit while we're around (and people like Christopher Hitchens and Robert Novak treat people like shit whether they're here or gone, apparently, so sour were their obituaries for a decent man like Gerald Ford; Hitchens lowballs persistently, so we shouldn't expect too much from someone who holds everyone in such low regard and himself in such high regard).

I don't really know how to help humanity out of this rut, anymore, is the truth. We treat each other so awful. And if you're someone who wants people to be more decent to one another, you just open yourself up to people who feel a need to prove to you just how naive you are about how shitty people can be and treating you shitty, just to prove their point).

We make each other and ourselves unhappy. And then we look at the mess we've created and we say, "You see how shitty people are? That's why I'm such an asshole."

I do my best to change that, but I'm limited by people choosing to always make excuses for what dicks they are, all the time.

Jesus was this very decent guy. The world was full of dicks who captured, tortured and crucified him. And that's about how the world treats decent people.

Billy Budd is Herman Melville's update of the Christ story. Billy is a sweet, idealistic young man. Claggart is a dick with a grudge against the world and something to prove to Billy about how naive his sweetness really is. Claggart sends Billy over the edge and Billy kills Claggart with a blow, by accident. The ship hangs Billy, with the dickish impulses of the captain overruling the decent impulses of the ships' officers. And that's about how the world treats decent people.

We are all, generally, decent people. Even when we're being shitheads. Most of us, at least. And the world shits on us. It flunks us. It fires us. It evicts us. It throws us out. It puts us in our place. It tries to prove why the selfish or destructive impulses of some are more clever than the more decent impulses of others. And it tries to prove why the self-righteous impulses of many of us are smarter than the more understanding impulses of others.

And that's about how the world treats decent people.

And so we grow cynical in a world that treats us like shit. Or threatens to. So much that we forget what it was like to be appreciated when we volunteered to do good efforts out of our generosity or on our honor or our sense of doing good in the world.

And that's the why of cynicism, I think.

I've never wanted to give into it. The cynicism. But I do have to say that it sure has a way of making it's point.

I've got to believe there's something better out there. Even as a possibility for how we might be.

But the reality is too goddamn depressing to just accept as the only or best option.

I've got an office to clean up. Have a good weekend.

Love,
Ben

Why I've lost faith in the world

I used to think highly of people and the world. And especially public service.

When I was in high school and college, the world seemed like a bright, decent place to live. I looked for peoples' better natures, and generally saw good in peoples' efforts. And public service seemed like one of the more important ways that you could contribute to others and the public good.

I've not convinced anymore that it matters.

The reason is because I'm fairly convinced, at this point, that people are, as a rule more than as an exception, fairly shitty toward one another. It's perhaps the most important rule of human affairs. And public service is just as full of people who are shitty and is surrounded by people who are as shitty (Christopher Hitchens and David Horowitz come to mind, here) as anywhere else in the world. It involves very little money unless you get a lot of celebrity exposure or powerful connections that you can exploit elsewhere. People are always complaining about it, no matter how well it is done. No leader or civil servant is ever doing enough. Ever. Except by people constantly patting themselves and others in their group or ideology on the back and desparaging the efforts and contributions of other groups and ideologies.

It's full of low-minded, petty people with low-minded, petty priorities as much as any other field, no matter how important the big priorities in respective fields might be.

Noone is ever wrong, ever. In public service or anywhere else in life, really. Which is amazing because there's so much that goes wrong. And yet noone can ever be big enough to acknowledge that it might be their ideas or their way of handling things that are wrong. Wrong is how you describe other people and other groups. People in your group always have it right. Or I do, at least.

And it's everywhere. It's in academia and journalism and writing and teaching and more thinking-oriented careers as much if not more than other fields. Noone can ever admit that they might be wrong, for fear of losing face or looking weak or stupid (which is ironic, because the people in life who have the hardest time with admitting they are wrong are, in fact, people who are the dumbest, the least intelligent; by definition, really, since that's what makes them so dumb).

But the one thing you can count on in public service is that they never think they're wrong, they always want the power to make sure that others don't think they're wrong, either, or at least they do what the fuck their told whether they think they're wrong or not, and that public servants are not, typically, to be bothered with seriously and rigorously questioning their own thinking. Even many academics, sadly, where rigor is most expected and generally maintained. And that definitely includes many of the Ph.D.'s who take up more formal public service like politics, as much as Ph.D's in less formal public service like teaching, writing, and researching.

I don't really trust anyone to make any choices for me, anymore, is the truth, no matter how noble their intentions. And public service is a lot of people making choices for a lot of other people. I appreciate people who make important decisions that have to be made. And I appreciate people making decisions working with me on various projects. And I appreciate that someone has to make the decisions that come with power and public service. But I just don't trust others to make decisions for me, anymore, is the truth. Not just because they do such a bad job of bumbling it, as this war seriously demonstrates. But because noone can ever just take responsibility for their mistakes, including the mistake of treating people so shitty, and acknowledge it because we treat them like such complete and total shit when they do so that most people are afraid to take responsibility, is the truth.

We are a shitty, nasty, mean-spirited, self-centered lot, much of the time, is the truth. Humanity has so much potential that just falls flat, perpetually, because we just can't find it in ourselves to stretch beyond our petty, nasty worldviews and cynicism. And so we perpetually make the world shitty for others, not satisfied in feeling shitty, ourselves. And then, after we get done making it so goddamned shitty, we look at the mess we've created and we say, "See what a fuckin' mess the world is?"

And the whole world just has to shake it's head, "Yes," because it's obvious what a mess we've made of it, even though almost none of us take serious responsibility for the really big messes that we've created.

And we don't take responsibility because we're afraid of being treated like shit for it and we treat people like shit because they don't take responsibility and we don't take responsibility because we don't want to be treated like shit for it and we treat people like shit because they won't take responsibility and on and on and on and on it goes into perpetuity because we can't even imagine that maybe the reason that people don't take more responsibility is because we treat them like such shit.

I hate it. But I don't know what to do about it other than what I do now, which is write and talk and teach about it. And I'm not convinced after having done both for several years, now, that people really want to change all this. Because the solutions just seem so ready-made as long as you avoid this central problem of how shitty we treat one another. A central problem that I have no solution for except the obvious: we need to come to terms with our shittiness towards one another and take responsibility and cut it out and treat people as least shitty as possible when we face difficult problems with one another.

I used to think highly of public service. Politics, teaching, journalism, writing, scholarship, the whole lot.

But lately, all these fields have been giving cover to a notion that people learning to stop thinking for themselves, so much, and just learn to do what the fuck they're told, a notion that I just can't get behind, no matter how much I try. I understand why people want this. I work with kids every day, who never want to listen to a goddamn thing you say, no matter how important, valid, or dead on. I just don't understand why people think it will work or that it somehow promotes more intelligent engagement or solutions or why people seem to think that all the controversy around various solutions will somehow get resolved if you can somehow get your way and just prove to the world what a better place it can be if people would just do what the fuck they were told.

I've lost a lot of faith in the world in the last 5 years, is the truth. And the world, truth be told, has earned every bit of the lost faith.

Love,
Ben

The inescapable fact of free will

Today, I had a really good experience.

I have a degree/certification requirement with my employment that I have to complete to keep my job. I have to finish my Master's Degree in Special Education. It's a long story, but I've had a crazy time with my current program. But if I'm not able to get enrolled this semester, then I may lose my job next year. I think my school and my district would be losing a really terrific teacher. But they would also be losing money the district receives for teachers (it's a fairly arbitrary requirement, but so many of the Federal regulations we face are fairly arbitrary). I'm doing everything I can to get it done. But I've run into a million snags in the process.

And the experience has totally helped me come to terms with choices. Choices amidst uncertainty. My choices, the choices of other people, the uncertainty of where the best choices lie, the uncertainty of even the most intelligent reflection on life.

I've totally come to terms, today, with the fact that no matter how much good and even smart, decent people try to make the best decisions -- individual decisions, decisions that impact an organization like a school, even decisions that impact a country or an international community -- that there is always uncertainty about what the best choices really are.

And coming to terms with that fact helps validate Abraham Maslow's argument that the more freedom people experience, the better choices they make. Not because they make good choices all the time. They can't. That is not possible, because it would involve no experience or understanding of the alternatives.

I've just come to terms with the fact that no matter how much you try to control or limit peoples' freedom or determine their choices, each person's life and all of our lives is ultimately a function of our independent and interdependent choices. There is no escape from that fact of life because it is not artificial human convention. It is a fact of life that is inescapable. And equally inescapable is the fact that noone, ever, no matter how smart, now matter how experienced, no matter how mature, or decent or good or whatever, nooone knows, with certainty, what the best choices look like.

We all believe that we know, at some level. But the truth is that noone knows with certainty, and the smartest people, I think, understand that better and carry more humility, as a consequence, than those who are less familiar with those choices and reflect less on their choices.

It doesn't matter what we know or what experiences we face in life or how good we are. None of that matters. We all make the best choices we know how, period, given our
understanding, knowledge, experiences, reflection, influences, support, etc.

And knowing that makes me much more sympathetic to a uncertain and often confused humanity trying to make choices and not really always knowing what to do.

Good choices and bad choices are an inherent function of our life and learning, as human beings. Our unique capacity is our ability to make them, reflect on them, learn about making them better, and improving our choices based on our capacity for intelligent reflection. Beyond that, we just keep learning until we are not learning anymore.

When I am frustrated with our failures, as individuals and as a community of people, I can reflect on the fact that no matter how foolish or stubborn our choices seem, especially our inability or unwillingness to reflect in the deepest ways on our shared problems, that people are making the best chioces they know how, given, as well, the million rationalizations and excuses that we give and the million pressures, controls, and limitations we experience in making better choices.

I may think that the whole world is embracing a bad idea. The democratic marketplace of ideas is not some magic elixir from which good choices and good ideas always come forward. They are found after so many bad choices being made that finally better choices are stumbled upon. This is what that Israeli diplomat meant when he said that governments make all the wrong decisions until they get to right ones. Because people, not just governments, are not genies or clairvoyants. They are human. Forever subject to the limitations of their understanding, good and bad. And our limitations, our humanity, is a limitation of being human, not a limitation of the concept of freedom and free will. Free will, and all of its pitfalls, including so many mistakes and bad choices and failures, is an inherent and inescapable feature of our humanity and our experience as humans.

I've got bathroom duty to get to. Have a good day, everyone:).

Love,
Ben