Pussy-footing our way to progress

I still have to write about brown paper wrapper for internet porn, Carson's blog tag from last week. It offers a very nice challenge for how we might handle difficult situations like kids' access to pornography in a world where we take freedom seriously, which I think we should.

But, for now, I want to assume that I'm wrong. And talk about why we are such pussies that we can't take real progress seriously if we want really believe in the idea of forcing the world to do good.

I think it's because we're soft. We just don't the balls that Stalin or the Jihadists have to impose our will on people. Liberal democracy has softened us and folks like Hitler could see that which is why he could so easily stomp about Europe with so little opposition. Because the truth is that freedom is for pussies.

So, I'm thinking: Let's get serious about progress, for God's sakes.

Here's what I'm thinking.

First, freedom of thought is for pussies. We all know what is right and what as wrong. The Good Book, for some, and Marx, for others, is self-evident. So why in the fuck we would take independent judgment and conscience seriously other than to arrive at what we already know is right is just fuckin' beyond me. Right is right. Or, if you're a Democrat, left is right. And there's not much need to debate that or discuss it or to subject it to critical examination. What we need is someone to fuckin' let the world know that we mean fuckin' business. And if you want to critically examine our fuckin' ideas, then you can fuckin' eat shit and do what you're fuckin' told until we tell you it is your fuckin' turn to speak up you insubordinate little heretic. Freedom of thought is for people who don't know what the fuck we're doing. You saying we don't know what the fuck we're doing? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Second, we all know that peckers are the root of most known evil, and we'd cut the little fuckers off if we didn't need those sorry little things to reproduce the species. So what we need is some fuckin' control over peoples' propensity to do damage with their sex organs. Sexual freedom is for hippies and God knows those little Rastafarians stink up a room, with their astrology as much as with their propensity to skip showers. So it seems to me that with the clear consensus that force is the wave of the future, that we start to really initiate progress and fuckin' shut that shit down. I don't know why we think tolerating adultery, homosexuality, pornography, casual sex, sodomy (anal and oral, if you've consulted your Good Book, lately), and definitely abortion - which is murder of a baby, you fuckin' sociopath - is somehow a sign of civilization or a progressive society. The wave of the future is force, if you haven't fuckin' picked up a paper or listened to NPR, lately. So why you would have some antiquated notion that sexual or reproductive freedom is a sign of a progressive civilization is clearly the product of propaganda by pedophiles and pornographers, you fuckin' letch. Get with the program. And if you don't, don't worry. We'll make you.

Free trade and a free economy are the work of greed-riddled industrialists and neoconservatives, the same bunch that brought you the Iraq War. Think they were in denial about that little police action? Just wait till they start talking about a robust economy and globablization and the benefits to consumers from a self-correcting market. You think people can make their own choices and judgments without government oversight? Have you looked at how the market makes decisions? Can you really say that people in the market make better decisions than President Bush or Vice President Cheney or Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi? Get real. Those market fuckers can talk themselves around a hoola-hoop, can't they? What the fuck has free trade done for us, other than ship our jobs off to some fuckin' chink or Indian or A-rab? Unregulated free trade is the bad husband that your mother told you would ruin your life, but did you listen to her?

No-oooooooh.

You know the place where we just haven't gotten tough enough? On people. All of them. They're a fuckin' mess. And what they need is some fuckin' medicine that they aren't going to fuckin' like, but they're gonna fuckin' get it anyway. It's called a good old-fashioned fuckin' whoop-ass. So here's what I'm thinking. If you do something wrong, anything. Whatever it is. I mean, we've pretty much narrowed it down, haven't we? The way to get people to do what they're supposed to do is to fuckin' make 'em, asshole. Stop making it so goddamn complicated. So what I'm thinking is, you fuckin' eat the meat, you fuckin' forget to recycle, you fuckin' smoke the reefer, you fuckin' forget get your taxes in late, you fuckin' don't fill out your OSHA paperwork.

First offense, you get a warning.

Second offense, you lose a knee-cap.

Third offense, public beheading.

Now, I know. A lot of bleeding heart conservatives out there are going to whine and moan, "Oh, what about the children? What about freedom? Now the terrorists win."

But I say, stop you're fuckin' whining you fuckin' right-wing pussies and learn to fuckin' take your licks like a fuckin' man. This is progress, baby. Get on the fuckin' truck or prepare to be run over, you fuckin' moron. Because noone asked if you wanted progress. You're going to fuckin' get it whether you fuckin' like it or not.

Oh, yeah. And drugs. There's a fuckin' war on, you fuckin' nimrod, if you haven't noticed. The war on drugs and the war on poverty are how we finally fuckin' rid ourselves of these and million other plagues on society. And if you can't fuckin' join up, you're either fuckin' with us or against. And in the meantime, we didn't fuckin' ask you. You're in the way. And if you didn't notice, we never said that progress was touchy-feely.

Next, politics. Someone's gotta clean that fuckin' mess up. And every damn person we send down there keeps getting covered with the mud. We gotta finally get serious about that godforesaken city. So what I'm thinking is that we once and for all finally require that politicians do what we tell them to do. I'm thinking a law with some real teeth. Oh, and no illegal namby pansy, either. I'm getting fuckin' tired of all the people we send to do the work of the law always ending up on the other side of it. So I'm proposing that we make any illegal activity illegal. Show them we're really serious. I'm thinking maybe a dungeon or some real time - life imprisonment clearly doesn't deter people from committing murder because they're still doing it, if you haven't noticed, so maybe something a little less Bob Ross-ish - or maybe dissappearing some people for awhile until they get the fuckin' message. Cause if you haven't seen the Pinochet regime, you haven't seen real force in the advance of progress.

I know, I know. All the wittle soft-headed conservatives and soft-hearted liberals are going to go their mommies and the ACLU and the Milton Friedman Foundation and say, "What are about ow fweedom? What about our wiberties?" And all I have to say is that noone fuckin' asked you, Mr. Rogers. What are you, some fuckin' rapist? You want the fuckin' pedophiles to win? Or the fundamentalists? Or Ken Lay and his buddies? Freedom is all fine and good as long as you don't have any fuckin' problems. But here on fuckin' earth we have our health and our safety and our children and our jobs at fuckin' stake, James Dean. Freedom's for chumps who don't know when to say stop. So our job is to say stop for them. What do you want? A world where everyone is going around breaking the rules and pretending like their following them? What a fuckin' mess that would be. How in the hell would we manage in a world where everyone went around pretending that they were following the rules and all the while clamoring for more of them? What a godawful mess that would be.

The problem with the world is that we don't want progress badly enough to impose it on people. What we fuckin' need is a fuckin' law once and for all that requires people to finally follow the law and put the fear of God in them. You want to smoke marijuana? Great. Pick a fuckin' jail cell, you fuckin' reactionary. You want to have an abortion? Goody for you. But you better be ready for a little brute force in your life. You want to fuckin' come into our country without our permission, say hola to el familio when you get to Mexico, Pablo.

Some people just don't know how to put the fear in people, because they don't understand just what a mess this world would be if it weren't for the wise men who make our laws and what a terrible, crazy dysfunctional little piece of insanity it would be for us to have a world where people are always breaking the rules and advocating for more?

You know what 21st century America and Nazi Germany have in common? It takes laws to keep order in this world. You want a bunch of Jews infecting our young people with their brand of anti-Christ? You want slaves going whereever they want to go, no matter how much people paid good money to have them till their soil? You want all those darkies in America or India and their "civil rights movements" and their "independence movements" just deciding which laws they were going to follow and which ones they were going to not follow? Laws are what keep that insanity from transpiring in our world. Laws kept out the Eastern Europeans and other undesireables, they are what kept us safe from the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, they are what kept that science teacher in Tennessee from teaching those poor children about monkeys being some kind of ancestor, they kept debtors from leaving prison and not paying what they owe, and they are what keep us safe, and healthy, and responsible.

Why have we not elected Patrick Fitzgeral President? Thank God Elliot Spitzer is well on his way. We need some prosecutorial zeal to make progress for this generation stick. Otherwise, how are people going to believe that when we say we're forcing progress, we mean business.

Without law, there is no morality. Law is how we define the bounds of good in our society. It's what keeps out the undesireables and keeps everyone else in their place. That's why we have to keep it safe.

From the consciences of its citizens.

Love,
Ben

Liberals got revenge for Cheney's revenge, and all I got was this lousy political era

The Scooter Libby trial has me completely fed up with Washington.

Why anyone would think that a city and a political era so completely wallowing in its own bitterness and cynicism and vengefulness and meanspiritedness should be an example to anyone, nevertheless the world, is completely beyond me.

And its not just the blowhards in office. It's the press. It's the activists. It's everyone in Washington so fuckin' cocksure of themselves and their self-righteous grandstanding. It's all kinds of people whose real feelings about the world and others don't at all warrant that their examples be followed but who demand and coerce it anyway, deserving or not.

I am completely fed up. I have no heroes in Washington or among any of the important political players, right now. It's one long swaggering, tough-minded groupthink wandering between ideological causes. This is not King or Ghandi. This is politics masqerading as something better.

This is the crowd of folks who propped up slavery, insistent that fugitive slave laws were the law of the land, and the underground railroad was full of cowardly scofflaws ignoring the highest court's Dred Scott ruling.

This the crowd of folks who made the Nazis' extermination of the Jews possible by complying with the laws, because it was the law, after all, to turn in Jews to be sent to the ghettos and murdered.

And this is a political era of cowardice and vengefulness and bitterness and cynicism masquerading as something better than they are.

There are many things I can't stomach in the world. But pretending like you and your motives are better than they really are because you're too cowardly to face yourself for real is not courage, and it certainly isn't an example to emulate.

The Scooter Libby trial is about revenge for revenge. And it leaves me with the feeling that either progress entails an uglier, more bitter, more mean-spirited future.

Or, more likely. That this isn't progress at all. This is something uglier. This is politics.

"What have you accomplished?" Americans should be asking Washington, right now.

The answer: a solemn "Nothing."

Love,
Ben

A rare moment of wholehearted agreement with the National Review

Pardon Libby

The bloodlust in Washington has gone on long enough. It's time to end it.

And if we can't, we deserve the government we get.

This is a Washington I want nothing to do with. It completely spoils my image of Washington as a place of idealism and inspiration of my younger days spent there.

At the end of the day, doesn't Washington have to look at itself, at some point, and asked, "What have we accomplished?"

As with the beginning of the Iraq war, denial is worst when it involves groupthink. When everyone pretends that everything is going well or ok. But what is going well or ok in Washington, these days? A Democratic majority? Is that what consistutes a healthy political system?

What has all this bloodlust accomplished?

Nothing. Tragically.

Love,
Ben

On being a self-righteous bastard

I've got one little post and then I've got a behavior plan, a paper, and an 11th day plan to do (and I still have to take up Carson's blog-tag at Content Done Better).

I just want to take a moment, after thinking about my last 33 years or so, to issue a general apology to the world.

My name is Ben Sutherland. And I am a self-righteous bastard.

When I think, today, about all of the problems that I've had with people who are goddamned sure that they have figured out the correct direction for the world and their clear need to pressure me to observe their wisdom, they all remind me of somebody: me.

When I was young and I would rail on my sisters that they weren't smart enough, on my father that he was an alcoholic (though the truth was that he hadn't drank more than he should in quite a long while since that rant), and on my mom for just trying to get me to vacuum the living room, I was a self-righteous and sometimes scary little bastard.

When I was in junior high school and I would argue with my uncles about their racism and get in their faces about what insensitive, racist assholes they were, I was a self-righteous bastard.

When I was in high school and I would rail about the backward thinking of conservatives and pride myself on being the most liberal member of our Kansas Boys' State delegation, I was a self-righteous bastard.

When I was in college and I would get all worked up about how I couldn't work with my really pretty smart Southern Baptist coach (who had a really excellent Ph.D. idea around narrative paradigm and his idea of a narrative consequence that I totally respect today and who was a pretty good guy when he wasn't getting all worked up, himself) because he was a fundamentalist who thought homosexuality was a sin and who ranted about pornography, I was a self-righteous bastard. When I told on my sister for bringing pot to a visit to see my mom that involved a 10 hour plus carride to Milwaukee because she had been such a bitch to me the entire ride up, I was an especially weasley and shitty self-righteous bastard.

And especially when I was in grad school and ready to save the world and arguing and fighting every day with my equally self-righteous, brainy, and big-hearted girlfriend and my equally self-righteous advisor and radical theorist extraordinaire, I was one self-righteous mother-fuckin' bastard.

For most of my life, I have been a seriously committed, smart, idealistic, level-headed self-righteous bastard who is ashamed of what a high-maintenance little shithead I could be (and probably still am, truth be told).

I'm sorry for that. Because it's meant that I've been full of passion and full of shit all at the same time. And because it has driven family, friends, and everyone up a fucking wall for 33 years and I 'm sorry to be the cause of all of that asspain.

My name is Ben Sutherland. And I am a self-righteous bastard. And as I point one finger at the world, I've four and more where that came from pointing back at me. I hate having folks only focus on my weaknesses, and yet I write for ages about the weaknesses of humanity. I hate people getting lost in only what's wrong with the world and not just appreciating both the world and the people who are committed to righting the wrongs, and I spend a lot of time depreciating both. I hate the idea of people getting heads full of steam of making my life miserable, but the truth is that this is sweet retribution from a world that's been absorbing my self-righteous ranting and rallying for 33 years now.

We had a really great day in Ms. Smith's reading class, today. And when behavior started spinning control in my class, today, I realized that while things were fairly relaxed and laid back in Ms. Smith's class, and while one of my kids and I talked rock and roll and the music world and all the great things to debate and discuss around it, I was something of a self-righteous bastard, today, in class, getting revved up about integers like they were the beginning and ending of my world and the kids' world, which was clear to me was not true about 5 minutes after I had sent out my third student for disrupting class.

This is why most people would rather read Mark Twain or watch Idiocracy than read some scholarly tome. Not just because they find it boring, which is their problem, since there's so much good in those tomes no matter how much energy goes into understanding them. It's because scholars can be some self-righteous bastards, is the truth, for all their liberal thinking. And the same goes for me.

Sometimes for being so smart, I can be kind of stupid, as Frito observes about Max in one of the last scenes of Mike Judge's brilliant little conservative dystopia. Or at least something of a self-righteous sumbitch.

And I don't like being boring. Or self-righteous. And I certainly don't like being a pain in the ass. And I've been all of these much of my life.

And I'm sorry for all of the poor souls who have had to put up with me. I can only hope that I wasn't all bastard or sumbitch.

But then, hope springs eternal.

Love,
Ben

Why smart kids know (or should know) that the world is not quite a meritocracy

I've been listening to Dar Williams all morning and for the last 3 or 4 days. I've been feeling really at peace, lately, with myself and my choices. I've matured and settled down quite a bit in the last year or so. And it occurred me, today, after watching Idiocracy for the third time (which you must see if you haven't) why smart kids know (or should know) that the world is not quite the meritocracy that we might wish it was.

Because Dar Williams and Mike Judge, the creator Idiocracy, are far smarter, far more idealistic, far more decent than Britney Spears and Eminen. And yet, Britney and Eminen cash in big at a younger time in their lives (who knows what the future will hold for both of them), while Dar and Mike make successful careers that are not quite so lucrative, at least up front.

Now Dar and Mike and I and most smart people are used to this, at this point in our lives. Because we're smart kids. We know what it's like not to be the most popular kids in school. And life is one long extension of school, in so many ways. Popularity rules far too often, no matter how foolish it is or foolish are the decisions that people will make to have it. And so often it confuses our judgment. We start to rationalize keeping up with it in the name of money or power or fame, all of which are acquired in liberal democracies by catering to mass appeal, even if average people may need to be challenged rather than catered to.

That is the difference between education, ideally, and politics or money or pop culture. Education challenges people. It needs to. Because people need to be challenged to learn. They also need to be appreciated and supported and are in need of far more patience than teachers and professors generally have to offer, which is one of the more important reasons why so many of them get frustrated with education and begin to give up on it, too often, in their hearts. Luckily for all of us, the rates of people getting higher levels of education is growing, largely out of the benefits, financial and otherwise, that people are beginning to recognize come with an investment in higher education and because of more flexible policies allowing and supporting more people to get more education. But more people are getting more education, which is good for them as individuals and their lives, no matter how much or how little money they make, and the culture benefits immensely from that. It becomes more liberal and democratic, long term (the current period being an exception to that trend, in many ways, as we seek to repress more liberal attitudes and openness and more authentic democratic engagement, and a confirmation of it, in other ways, as levels of engagements and disagreement and the diverse arrays of ideological and philosophical orientations engage the political and economic and cultural arenas, and as we become a more open culture, often and perhaps generally, despite political pressures to the contrary), and it becomes more sustainably so, where people internalize liberal democratic attitudes more reliably rather than having political groups attempt to impose that on the culture.

Pop and mass culture needs to be freely expressed and needs a much freedom as possible, I think. But the culture and all of us are in better shape the more that nobler values - which are not always or even often popular or appealing to the desire for immediate gratification that generally has more mass appeal, as Mike Judge's brilliant movie illustrates and critiques -lead us, individually and as a culture.

Smart kids learn this principle, intuitively, at a much earlier age. Because being smart and taking school seriously is generally not popular in school. Certainly not before college, where it is often seriously unpopular. So we are not as surprised with Britney Spears or Eminen get rewarded more than we do in a baser way, with money or fame. Or even why people with a dearth of serious intellectual credentials get rewarded in politics. Because power often works the same way, although democratic politics is an arena where people also often vote for their higher aspirations as much as their baser impulses. "I may not be smart, but I may vote for someone who is smarter," is more common in politics than in pop music.

But smarter folks are used to this at a much earlier age, is the truth. Because it's their lives, often. As they grow older, they either accept it or resign themselves to it and cater to it to make their fortunes. Or they try to make it better. Through education, through writing and talking, through non-profit work and, often, through politics (though apart from the on-going political discussions this is a much less effective way to lift peoples' horizons than routes that more directly support and challenge people to think better, do better, and be better).

And Dar Williams and Mike Judge and a million other folks embody this tendency for smarter folks and smarter ideas to be overlooked by popular trends.

We still have a long way to go to making America and the world a meritocracy. We will get better as we make more honest and better choices about the matter, I think. And as we create more room for engagement with one another to promote more honest and better choices.

But, in the meantime, smarter folks should know better that what is popular is not at all what is best. Mike Judge's Idiocracy is a brilliant illustration of this little bit of wisdom and many other great perspectives on the culture. I highly recommend it when you get a chance.

I've got grading and lesson plans and a paper and a behavior plan to work on. Have a great weekend, everyone.

Love,
Ben

Being in love with Dar Williams in the background

Dar Williams is one of my favorite artists. She's writes and sings beautifully. And I think I understand better, now, why she doesn't get radio play (I've heard her once on an NPR affiliate).

Dar Williams is lovemaking music. And most people don't feel or share love with one another enough to make love the way Dar sings. It's kind of tragic, really.

Because if you ever made love to Dar Williams, you would never want to do anything else for the rest of your life.

It's sad to me that most people don't feel love or share love in their lives like Dar Williams. But I'd rather be someone who feels that sort of love than any of the billions of people in the world who don't really ever feel the kind of love where they would find themselves making love with Dar in the background.

Tonight is my night to remember being in love with Dar Williams in the background.

Love,
Ben

My dream vacation

She'd kill me if she read this. But I was just sitting here, tonight, making excuses not to go to bed when I thought about what my dream vacation would be before I die.

I've always loved the idea of traveling to Europe and visiting all the original sites of emerging Western civilization. I'd love to travel to Mexico again, maybe see the friends I made when I taught English in Cancun. I'd love to visit each of the continents, and I've always had a dream of retracing Mark Twain's voyage aboard the Quaker City through Europe and the Middle East, which was the basis for his hilarious observations of his American counterparts in Innocents Abroad.

But the truth is that my dream vacation would be to take the 20 hour road trip that Brandi and I took from Wichita to Washington D.C. when we were 22 and 23, and spend a good long time walking and talking our way around the sites of Washington D.C. Especially the Holocaust Museum and that grungy little building that housed Theo Brown's beautiful little National Days of Dialogue and maybe visit that little apartment we stayed in that summer with Wendy and Iftaekar.

I know. It's a dream I'm not supposed to have. Brandi's married, today. I'm not supposed to think like that.

But that's my dream vacation. Just because I would love to be able to revisit that time and place with someone who knows why its so special to me.

I was sitting here listening to Dar Williams, and remembering this awesome little outdoor concert we went to in Washington, D.C. to see Dar, and seeing Wendy raise her hands and sway in the wind to Iowa in a moment of peace for all of us.

And I thought, "I'd love to go back there. And talk about that time with Brandi, sometime."

Love,
Ben

Getting old

I've come to view a lot of the differences I have with the current political period as a generation gap, as much as anything else. I identify with young people. I not only do not relish getting old, I plan on doing everything I can to stay young, even as I like growing up and being more mature. For my sake, and for the sake of noone else, really, except those, kids especially, who I would like to serve better and raise better and be a better example to.

But I don't want to ever get old. I watch all these older teachers I work with and how worked up they get that their children are so much worse these days, so much less respectful, so much less, well, old, as their elders, and I can't help but think, "Haven't you ever been young in your life?"

The answer for most of them, sadly, is yes, but too long ago to really remember or appreciate the experience.

There are many exceptions to that rule, and many older teachers are really wonderful mentors to me. I have a teacher I work with, right now, Ms. Smith, who has been a really wonderful mentor and I've really loved working with her, even as we have some of these generation gap differences, as well. She works at it and I work at it and between the two of us, we learn a lot about the kids and one another.

And that's how life and relationships between older people and younger people should be. People working to get to know one another and understand one another and appreciate one another, not people trying to control one another or pressure one another or bully one another. People sharing with one another, in the all too brief time that we all have with one another.

I like maturing. A lot. I like mellowing out and having an easier and wiser life.

But I have no interest in getting old, when that means that I complain about kids these days and how much they resist when I want to put them in their place because I really know best, after all, if they could ever come to appreciate my experience and wisdom.

If you have wisdom, offer it, has always been my motto. If you have to impose it, it's probably not so wise, is my experience. And it's almost always out of an arrogance that there is no need to consult those I impose upon, anyways. And that truly is the hallmark of getting old.

I don't want to ever get old like that. Curmudgeonly and always bitter that noone will do things my way or the way I want. It is the arrogance that comes with age, I think, that I would rather leave alone.

I started journaling on-line about my life and thoughts when I was in my 30's. I envy and really appreciate all those kids who can do it for a lifetime and look back at who they were and what they were thinking and appreciate how far they and the world has come.

But no matter how far I come, I don't want to ever get old.

I want to be learning something new when I finally check out. I want to learn something profound and important just as I'm calling it quits. Either that or making love. Or maybe laying in bed with my wife. Or holding my children. Or grandchildren. Or great-grandchildren.

Maybe I could be in a college class and just kick it right there in middle of an important discussion. Or be reading or writing a book and then find my maker.

Abraham Maslow apparently had a whole slew of ideas and papers he was working on when he finally died that were collected and published in the form of one of the most brilliant books I've ever read, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature.

That's not a bad way to go. Though making love would be a pretty good way to go, too. Being in love beats writing or teaching or learning any day, anyway. And if you don't know that, it's because you haven't really been in love before.

I wonder if most older people remember what it was like to have never fallen in love before and be discovering the world in your own time, in your own way, out of your own reflections and experiences, and discovering the world for the first time?

If they don't, they should try. Because having your heart and mind open like that are the only ways to go through life and really get the most out of the experience.

Love,
Ben

Clarifying moment today

I'm right. And I have no apologies for that anymore.

Love,
Ben

Now I know what Richard Clarke feels like

I think my roommate is right. I think I'm being scapegoated by my administrators, right now.

I think they've figured out that if the school does not make AYP this year, then they've figured out who to blame. And it's me. It really couldn't get more obvious, could it?

You know what the sleazy part is? If they make AYP or do well on those tests, guess who'll be taking credit? You guessed it.

I think I'm losing respect for my administrators by the minute. Richard Clarke stood up in the middle of a ideologically-blinded and stubbornly determined Administration and said, "The reality is not going as well as you were hoping it would." And the Administration demoted him and then fired him.

I'm standing up in the middle of a public school struggling to make AYP and to cope with the impossible expectations of IDEA and saying, "The reality is not going as well as you were hoping it would."

And my administrators are setting me up to take the fall, I think.

Amazing thing about Richard Clarke, though, wasn't it, that the problems didn't go away when Richard went away. And then George Bush looked like the worlds' biggest ass, and Richard Clarke looked like a goddamn prophet.

It makes more sense to face the realities than it does to scapegoat people because reality is not going as well as you were hoping it would.

And it certainly is more honest, at the very least.

Love,
Ben

What do you do when you don't respect a boss?

I have a boss, right now, an assistant principal, that I don't respect. I think she reasons selectively to reinforce her own biases. She's panned a couple of evaluations for me, both of which I thought were bullshit and unfair. Ironically, she is a former special education teacher, which is crazy for me to fathom because all of her interactions with me are completely in violation of the spirit of one of the more important principles of special education: a strengths perspective.

This assistant, I don't think, has had one thing good to say about me. One thing. Kind of amazing, really, since the strengths perspective I learned in grad school involved finding as many strengths in people as possible as a fundamental element of mental health. And what's even more amazing is that most people think I'm pretty smart and nice and decent and a good guy. This vice principal doesn't acknowledge any of these things or anything else that might challenge her self-righteous notion that I might do a good job with kids and that the way she looks at dealing with kids may have problems with it. She thinks schools are about rules and legalisms, and I think schools are about people and learning. And I have no respect for people who orient themselves around other people in this way, is the truth. Because it's not what people are about, down deep.

And that is the problem with power.

I have grown up my entire life listening to teachers complain about working with vice principals just like this one. Administrators who are so full of their own arrogant notions of the world that they can't even engage a difference, honestly, for fear of losing control of people. By definition, in my book, as I grew up, this is what a poor teacher looked like. A poor teacher is someone who thinks that by virtue of knowing something that they know everything they need to know. And no engagement with others is necessary to correct any notion they might have, because they carry all the correct notions they might need in their little private rulebooks of life.

I have grown to despise then pity petty authority figures like this one, who look, primarily, after their own hind ends and who have lost all perspective on the value of education, altogether, except as a means of employment. I listened to this administrator condescendingly tell a student that she had chosen a "realistic" goal when she chose to be a massage therapist. It never occurred to her that she may just want to be a massage therapist, and that it may have nothing to do it all with being "realistic" (with the implication being that she couldn't do anything else).

I have butted heads my entire life with people who have authority over me but who are not as smart as me. And this is no exception.

It's very possible that my principals want me to quit. And there's not much to stop me from doing that, at this point.

All I can say is that I thank goodness that I did not listen to people like this assistant when I was in school. That's exactly what I would tell my child. But it would be tough to watch them go through the hurt that I'm going through even when you know the person giving the feedback is completely full of shit.

I don't know what I will do, at this point. But giving two shits about what this assistant principal says or thinks, at this point, is not on my agenda.

Love,
Ben

Plato was wrong

There's actually a million different reasons that Plato's Republic - the idea that philosopher-kings should rule the world - was a wrong-headed way to think about govering. That's for another day. Here's a big one that just dawned on me.

When you get smart, and you get convinced that all your ideas are ones that everyone should share, and you get in a position to try to make everyone take up your smart ideas - or worse, imagine hundreds of smart people all doing the same thing, in a democracy - you develop this arrogant tendency to pass every smart idea you think ought to be a fact of life for everyone down the track.

Whether it all can be done or not.

That's what too much education policy looks like. But, in reality, that's what most policy looks like. And Winston Churchill wasn't bullshitting when he said that a hundred regulations breeds disrespect for the law entire. That was a fact, not an opinion. Because if people can't do the millionth thing that you've mandated for them to do, because you were convinced that it was all your imposition of ideas, good or bad, that makes the world go round, well then they can't respect something that shows no respect for the limits of their capacities or not. So they just stop trying. Whether hardheaded liberals want to face that fact of life and governance or not.

I don't give a shit how smart you are. You think you're so smart that you can make everyone in the world adopt your bright ideas, you will soon have another think coming. Because it's not possible for people to function like that. Not just because they have their own judgments and consciences and all those really great reasons.

But, most importantly, for the very basic, simple reason that they can't possibly do all that stuff. Because you stopped caring about whether what you were proposing was realistic or not and developed tunnel-vision about the fact that you just wanted it, regardless.

Plato was a smart guy. For a Greek living 2000 years ago. But he was wrong and so are all the other folks who are convinced that they are so smart that everyone should be mandated to follow their bright ideas. All 5 billion of them.

Not too terribly bright, as it turns out.

More importantly: not possible.

Love,
Ben

What's wrong with public schools

There is a lot wrong with public schools. Just like there is a lot wrong with the whole world. Public schools are public, so they are in the public eye. So when the public eye is harsh and nasty and micromanaging, well then that's the public eye public schools have to deal with, fair or not.

And today, I realized, that for all of the fair reasons that folks are frustrated with public schools, for which there is plenty and for which there is a very important policy discussion about what might redress a lot of those concerns, there is one really important thing that is wrong with public schools:

Everyone is scared. And tired. And often feel kind of beaten down.

I had a talk with administrators today that convinced me that one of the more important problems in public schools is that they are constantly making decisions because someone threatened some lawsuit, someone threatened some action from downtown, someone threatened some dire consequence, fair or not, that a teacher or an administrator or someone would have to deal with if someone didn't get what they wanted.

Special education is actually a huge focal point for this kind of insanity. All kinds of people threatening all kinds of mayhem if their sense of how unjustly they were treated somewhere didn't get resolved the way they liked.

And it has fucked so much shit up in public schools. It has teachers and administrators and everyone compromising all over the place the ways that they relate with kids, care about them, are honest with them, treat them like kids they care about and hope the world for. People demand into oblivion all of that great and important stuff that needs to happen in schools and probably did happen at some point in many teachers' earlier careers all so some parent or some kid can get some petty little demand taken care of right now.

And it has everyone scared. No matter how much they try to pretend otherwise. And I mean everyone. The best and the worst teachers. The best and the worst administrators.

And it is a damn shame is what it is. And terrible for kids.

A lot of public school teachers and administrators and folks just feel demoralized and scared and threatened into submission around every foolish want or desire that someone - some parent, some lawyer, some kid, someone - has at some moment when they feel like threatening lawsuits or higher administrative action or whatever threat comes to mind when they aren't getting what they want, in the moment (and they wonder why they're kids are often struggling in school).

I have three pretty great administrators, truth be told. One of my assistants is the best assistant I've ever worked with. And my principal is likely the best principal I have ever worked with. They disappoint me plenty, as do all people I know and work with. But they're good people, generally. They have plenty of faults, as do we all - me, especially - when we're not so focussed on the faults of others and getting what we want. But they, generally, care about kids quite a bit. I genuinely like and appreciate the efforts and abilities and commitment of all of my teaching colleagues, even as they disappoint me plenty, as well, like all people I know and work with.

But one thing they all have in common is that they're scared. And a little demoralized by all of the battles they've been through over the course of their teaching careers. And its the saddest fact of life in public schools. That people who care enough to make not so hot salaries compared to their private sector options and who clearly give a shit more about kids than many, many people do since they chose the job and who often care about communities more than many community members do, even though many teachers don't live, many times, in the communities they teach in, that these folks who care so much get cowered by so many people looking to bully their way through difficult problems, even though it, likely, often undermines their children, since it clearly undermines their teachers.

Most people who bully their way through problems don't like to take responsibility for the consequences of their bullying (which bully does like facing their actions).

But the saddest consequence of bullying through difficult issues in public schools is how much it undermines teachers and administrators in making judgments on many difficult situations on the merits of the situation rather than based on their fears of who might win a legal or political arm-wrestling match.

That'd be a novel way to run things in the world, wouldn't it? On their merits. Rather than based on who has the most muscle.

Because whether they want to face it or not, those who advocate muscle as their means of doing business in the world, primarily, rather than as a last resort and only when people are in real, clear, physical danger, are not resolving anything on its merits, no matter how much they may protest that they are operating under a better idea. Like it or not, they are only demonstrating their muscle, not their merits. And then they wonder why the fight never ends. But it was never genuinely resolved in the first place.

What's wrong with public schools is what's wrong with the world. That issues all too frequently don't get resolved based on their merits. Because muscle is substituted instead. And it leaves everyone afraid, rather than inspired to do what is in their best judgment in the interests of the children that they care about.

Wouldn't that be a novel way to run schools? Everyone doing what was in their best judgment in the interests of the children that they care about. That would be a nice way to run things, wouldn't it?

Love,
Ben

Working to feel good about the world again

I was just thinking, today, as I watch people, administrators especially, work very hard to handle so many situations with softer gloves, as much as possible, which is a very good development, I think, that I don't really know, anymore, when I will feel good again about the world. In a deeper sense, I mean.

When I was out of college, in my first years of grad school, and completely in love, it was a high point in my life. I was totally committed to alleviating poverty (I was inspired to attempt a wealth equity movement, at one point, by the commitments and words of Muhammad Yunus after a RESULTS International conference I attended that he spoke at) and inner city school reform and giving everything I had to making the world a better place to live.

I had no idea just what pricks we were, then. I knew there were pricks in the world. But I didn't know that it was all of us. And I didn't know to what lengths we would go to have our causes will out.

It makes all my enthusiasm for those causes, many of which I share in the big picture, kind of lukewarm. When progress is made, at what cost and to what extent will people take credit even if they don't deserve it. And when progress isn't made or when we take steps backward, it can always be blamed on someone else. No responsibility for failures ever need to be taken because they can always be shifted elsewhere. It's such a weasely way to advocate and lead. And there's just no way that I could ever feel good about a world that does that and pretends that it is the best that we have to offer.

After Brandi and I broke up and she made a marriage decision that I never really ever have understood and which, if not cynical, she's given me very little reason to believe otherwise, I never have ever quite felt as excited about life as I did then. It broke my heart and introduced me to a harsh world in a way that I will never, ever feel good about, I don't think. My experiences with grad school were similarly rocky and then harsh. And I just don't think I will ever feel good about a world that always pretends that its harshness and pursuit of vices like greed and power-hunger are better than they really are.

I just can't respect people who act like this ugly little worldview they've imposed is better than it really is. It isn't better. It's small and petty and harsh and it certainly is far from our highest humanity. So be it. But at least have the balls to admit what dicks we are, I say. Don't expect me to celebrate that petty little worldview. Because it doesn't deserve to be celebrated. It doesn't deserve to be villified, necessarily. But it doesn't deserve to be celebrated either. It's a simple mistake. And pretending like things are going better than they are admidst that mistake is a mistake compounded by a less than honest attempt to defend ones' worldview. Everyone does it, I'm learning. And that really is the saddest part of all.

I was wondering, today, if I will ever feel excited about the world again. It is hard to be excited when you know just how harsh it is, and just how stubborn people are about keeping it that way.
My greatest hope lies in a younger generation that is much less self-righteous about life and one another, generally. They have their faults too. But perhaps they'll be more open to facing this mistake than will their stubborn and self-righteous parents and elders.

In the meantime, I would be happy to enjoy this life with a woman who would hope for something better with me rather than defending this ugly, dysfuctional mess that we have created today. And raising children who might do the same, even and especially if they might end up developing their own better ideas of how the world might be.

Mean-spiritedness is responsible for almost all of humanity's greatest sins. Pretending that it is better than it is is one of the most persistent features of humanity's more sordid legacies. Naziism, Communism, genocide, imperialism, slavery, racism, sexism, theocracy and religious fundamentalism, barbarism of one kind or another. What these all have in common is that they were all defended as hallmarks of a truly moral order and found defenses in the moral predilictions of the day. Because noone wants to face up to their bullshit. Ever. Which exactly why such issues need a softer touch. Because it is the best means of letting the bullshit go and opening up our hearts and minds to their experiences and difficulties and feelings of others than ourselves.

And I'd rather hold out for something better than pretend like this path is doing us better than it really is.

I will hold out for a world where nice guys finish first. Where good guys are those who want everyone to be a good guy, as much as possible, rather than trying to prove how much better they are than everyone else. Which isn't being good at all, as far as I'm concerned. I certainly want no part of that nonsense.

I will not settle for a world where assholes are so greedy for ego gratification that they want to both be assholes and get credit for being better than everyone else. There's noone to look up to in that world. Because it is a world that is so narrow in its view of what good people have to offer.

And, like Mark Twain, in that world, I'd rather go to hell with the sinners than go to heaven with the pious.

I want my heart to be open to the world again. I just don't know when exactly that will happen. I'll keep working at it.

If any side of the current political wars can claim victory in any of their battles, they are hollow, pyrrhic victories. Because who could possibly feel good about a world whose inspiration is not heartfelt commitment to doing good in the world, but the cold, hard fist of power and force. Force is not something to be trifled with or used so indiscriminately or with so little care. Force is something to be used as little and as discriminately and as relunctantly as possible. Aggression is something to be engaged openly and without shame, but not indiscriminately or without remorse or responsibility when it is more destructive than we might have intended. Everything else is a farce. And it certainly isn't our highest values.

And until the world embraces that value - that force should be used as little as possible rather than as a rule and certainly not as a governing philosophy - our current political moment feels like our greater potential held down by our more petty fears and envies and concerns. A life controlled is not a life of safety. It is a life of resignation, only made bearable by the hope for something better. And everyone seems to be able to see that in their opponents' machinations, as Jesus observed over 2000 years ago, but not in their own.

All the good we might do during this period is overshadowed by the fact that we are being such petty, unrepentant assholes. Which is ironic since our pettiness is because we are consumed with bringing down others whose sins and weaknesses, for us, feature larger than their strengths and efforts and accomplishments.

Perhaps our good outweighs our bad. But we will never really have reason to celebrate our accomplishments as long as our pettiness overshadows our generosity and compassion and humanity.

I work always to be more forgiving and generous about the current period. But the longer we pretend like we are handling things better than we are and that the consequences of our choices turn out better than they do, the harder it is to keep up the generosity.

Progress comes with more thought and compassion animating our worldviews, and with less meanness and pettiness, including thought and compassion and acceptance of our own meanness and pettiness. And the thoughtfulness about others, appropriately, prepares us to better facilitate the learning and development of the kind of people who we want to be and who we want to inhabit our world with us.

I probably just have a lot of growth to do in this regard. I assume it anymore. I just wish we'd all stop being such pricks, is the truth. I just want the love that I knew as a kid - toward me and from me toward others - to animate how people regard one another. A wholly unself-conscious love for others, without being naive of their or my likelihood for being a shithead, but also without some meanspirited need to rub their noses in it rather than forgiving them and letting them learn from their mistakes.

We are all like children, growing slowly and always into greater maturity, forever into perpetuity, with no real ending to that ever unfolding history.

Perhaps my own growth will come with forgiving humanity this bleak period, as we learn to be better, more grown-up, less defensive of our failures, and more thoughtful about how we treat others and our next steps forward. I'm sure that's true. I just feel exhausted by our stubborn clinging to pride in the face of our failure to build a better world than the one we've managed thusfar.

I'll keep working on opening my heart.

Love,
Ben

The logic of regression

I've thought a lot of the last 6 years or so as a regressive historical period, largely because of the romanticism of force. But the logic of that regression is becoming clear to me, today, as I thought about it.

The last 6 years or so have been about getting tough on problems to solve them. Most of the people doing so have not really thought about whether that would work or not. They just kind of carry that logic around with them, whether it accomplishes their goals or not, because it's an implicit idea of how to deal with people and tough problems, right or wrong.

And the last 6 years has been political groups and even a lot of individuals getting tough on problems and on one another to solve them. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, so to speak. Those who can't handle the pressure shouldn't be dealing with it, so this foolish little logic goes. So we're going to create more pressure than any normal human being would be able to handle until we get our way.

It's a nice little philosophy of progress, isn't it? And it's almost indistinguishable from the Nazis or the Communists, except based upon how far one will go to get ones' way, right or wrong. The Nazis and the Communists were willing to engage in mass murder, political imprisonment, imperialism and a whole load of messy means of imposing themselves on the world. Today's democratic activists and parties wouldn't quite so far. We should thank them for that, I suppose.

It's a brilliant logic to defend bullying one's way through whatever problem one encounters. You pressure until you get your way, and if anyone complains that what you're engaged in is bullying and not genuine democratic debate and engagement, you dismiss it as not being able to handle the pressure. It's brilliant, really, because it puts everyone on the defensive for why they're not with you in the heroic struggle, and putting everyone on the defensive means that you never have to deal with challenges to your cause, your logic, or your thinking about the matter.

For whatever reason, what autocracies and democracies both have in common is a love for the tough guy. The strongman. The leader with the iron fist. It implies protection from danger, they think. Even though the empirical reality is clearly made more dangerous and scary by tougher tactics, when they are used as a rule rather than as little as possible.

It's this instinctual attraction we have to tough over thoughtful that is constantly suckering our stupid little species, much of the time.

We get better at it. That is the real advantage of liberal democratic government over other forms of government. Even when liberal democratic governments and cultures are screwing up, there is a process of self-criticism and education which helps us learn from our mistakes, even if it is often far too late to take back the harm caused. And even if we are constantly making excuses for persistently turning to tough when we need to be more thoughtful, generally, especially when we must use force.

And that is how a regressive period happens, I think. People get scared. They demand tough action. And tough action is taken, whether it solves problems or not. And the society has to live, once again and in a tragic little cycle, through the consequences of their demands for touch action.

It's so sad. And it's been sadder living through this particular regressive period than it has to read about it in history books. Because past periods are over and done with. And this one has been present and so completely unnecessary, productive of very little (at least the tough responses have been productive of very little) and destructive of far too much. Tough advocates will claim now and forever that they are responsible for all the good that has happened during this period and during periods past, because they claim credit for virtually everything good that happens while they were forcing their way through a problem, whether they deserve credit or not.

And as long as people trade their liberty for the protection of their toughmen and toughwomen - liberal, conservative or otherwise - they always will. As people become less afraid and less willing to give up their liberty so easily, and as toughguy approaches to so many of even and especially our most difficult problems of war and peace and security and danger fail, we will, hopefully, look elsewhere for solutions.

But for now, we just look for diffferent tough guys. Because it's never occured to us that, perhaps, looking to tough rather than thoughtful with the use of force is the reason and nature of many of our problems in the first place.

Love,
Ben

Feeling better

I'm feeling better this morning. I've been really upset all week about being muscled by administrators around working with my kids.

The long term trends are clearly working in my direction. But I have decided one thing. People who muscle me get exactly the credit they deserve in my work, and muscling me gets no credit whatsoever.

The upshot of doing this work, I decided this morning, is that it is my one serious shot to have a life where people do the one thing I've wanted them to do since I was in college and probably high school: to leave me the fuck alone. The one most important thing I've wanted from a coach, teacher, advisor since I was in college was to leave me alone, unless you had something to teach nicely, and to let me learn the lessons I've needed to learn on my own and without you being such a pain in my ass.

And doing something big gives me that opportunity. I'm thinking twice about going back for my Ph.D., now, for that exact reason. We'll see what opportunities there are to do the big learning without people always muscling me and being a pain in my ass.

But, for now, folks are starting to figure out that, muscle me or not, you can't control me. Or anyone for that matter. And that's exactly as it should be. Because, for better or for worse, we all must determine and be responsible for our own lives and our own efforts.

Love,
Ben

I wish I'd known enough to be mediocre

I'm a fuckin' idiot, I'm convinced these days.

I'm miserable in this job where I get continuous shit because I'm not performing miracles, making the most serious underachievers and kids who could give a shit into National Merit Scholars. I did what I believe to be advanced scholarly work at 29 that has not gotten me anywhere in life and doesn't seem poised to anytime soon as long as I am persistently out of touch with the popular political trends of the moment. I had the gall to think that intelligence and decency mattered in a world that clearly cares more about being a dick for the right cause.

I am serious sucker who believed that doing the right thing was more important than doing the self-centered or expedient thing.

And now all that idealism is coming back to bite me in my ass, as people shit all over me, constantly, in the name of rationalizing what complete and utter dicks they are.

Why couldn't I have been just your average dickhead?

I wish I'd know enough to be mediocre like everyone else.

And you know what the crazy thing is? Noone really gives a shit about these kids. Not really. And I somehow think my presence makes some kind of difference. Because I'm a sucker and because all the dickheads in the world are just smarter than me, I suppose. Either that or their just dicks. Probably the latter.

When everyone is being a dick and pretending like its all for the right reasons, it's hard not to just want to join 'em if you can't beat them.

We are such a stupid, fucked up little species sometimes. What fuckin' unredeemably arrogant morons we all are.

Why is being a mean-spirited fuckhead treated like its a noble endeavor these days?

Because of all that peer pressure. What arrogant pieces of shit we all are.

Love,
Ben

Two steps backward, one step forward, and things never seem to get better

It was just occurring to me that with all of the talk about slackening on the strict rules discussion going on that we are now back to square one where we were at before this godforesaken political period began. Rules, exceptions, slack, yada, yada, yada.

Two steps backwards, one step forward, and we wonder why things never seem to get better.

Perhaps, just perhaps, its because we've been headed in the wrong direction with all this force and pressure these last 6 years all along.

Love,
Ben

Responsibility

Does it occur to anyone just how rarely people take responsibility during this era of tough love and responsibility, including and especially the people responsible for enforcing it?

It occurs to me almost every day.

Report Finds Iran in Breach of U.N. Order

I guess that's the way the world is supposed to work, huh? All because noone has the balls to REALLY enforce responsibility. I guess we're just kind of fucked, given that we're forced to make all of the poor choices we're making on the matter, currently. Oh, well. How nice it might have been to choose better.

Responsibility. A better motto than reality. Because, sadly, we're all forced to live with our shitty governing philosophies of the moment.

Love,
Ben

Might apparently does make right

The new liberal governing philosophy:

Might apparently does make right.

Who would have known?

What makes me so confident that I'm on the right track

Today I was reading my near daily Washington Post fix of articles and columns when it occurred to me why I am so confident that I am onto something in my policy work.

When I was in high school, I knew very little about the bigger world. I read a lot out of my competition in debate and forensics and I absorbed ideas like a sponge from about my sophomore year of high school, in this way, through college. I read and read. Articles, books, plays, scholarly work, debate evidence, textbooks. I watched smart people on TV, read their articles, read their books, read their blogs, even (Andrew Sullivan was one of the earliest journalists/intellectuals to blog). I learned on this incredibly high curve because I knew so little about the world around me. I read in class. I read out of class. I experienced the world. And I learned a lot at a fairly clip rate because there was so much beyond my understanding and experience.

There's plenty I have to learn today. And there will forever be important stuff beyond my understanding.

But one of the things that makes me more confident that I'm onto something in my work is that there are very rarely, anymore, new arguments under the sun, on most issues, for me, anymore. I'm familiar with most of the better and worse arguments on the most and least important issues of the day. And reading, these days, is often about reading variations on the same arguments rather than familiarity with new arguments.

I crave new ideas and arguments. I yearn for them. I stay up late at night dreaming of new ideas and arguments.

Because the truth is, if you take this work or any work seriously, they are fairly rare. I assume that is why anyone in their field who has big new ideas or arguments for the field gets some level of name recognition. Because new ideas are so rare. A big reason why I need to submit my work for publication. Because just offering an idea can open up a field, even if it turns out to be a bad one.

Walter Fisher's Narrative Paradigm in communication studies is a thought-provoking, but, I think, ultimately less persuasive idea of communication than rational argumentation, as Robert Roland argues very well in reviews of Walter Fisher's work. But, right or not, Fisher's work opened up the field. It explored a new idea and a new direction. Right or wrong, it was thought-provoking and generated creative space to rethink older ideas of communication and reasoning. There is a lot of good in his work. His idea that people tell stories to understand the world has a lot of validity, I think. And his idea that they are tested against their own internal standards and the external validity of those around those telling stories and trying to understand the world is true, too, I think. Roland's criticism of Fisher's work, that rational argument is still the ultimate standard of communication and reasoning is right, I think, because Fisher's work seems to ignore the contributions that empirical reasoning and scientific and rational thinking have offered our ability to tell truer and better stories with more rigorous standards of thinking and storytelling. But Fisher's idea is thought provoking in a way that really does engage people who think about commuincation and reasoning so that they can explore it in new and interesting ways.

I do believe and hope that my ideas are more solid than that. And one of the things that makes me more confident that they are is that when I read those same books and articles and blogs and ideas in the world, I much less often find a lot new under the sun. Not because there's not more to uncover and develop. But because I read a lot of stuff that seems to me to make similar mistakes in reasoning and avoid similar problems in ideas and arguments over and over again, these days. Much like when I grade my kids' work, I see the same mistakes made over and over again in much of the stuff I read these days. And I very rarely read new arguments or ideas that make sense of all of that chatter.

And no matter how much the worldview of various folks I read seems confused or contradictory or inconsistent or poorly developed or stubborn or too simple or many various flavors of mistakes in reasoning, I always can come back to my ideas and find an explanation for the world that makes more sense than what I read elsewhere. That has not always been true. And nor do I want it to be largely true, since it means fewer opportunities for real learning for me.

But it is more true than not, these days, that I don't feel as confused or missing some critical explanation of things that I might have felt when I was in high school and college. That doesn't mean that I always like the explanation or that I can even always do something about what I think I might understand. It just means that I prefer a lot of my own explanations to alternative explanations I read. That's true of all of us, really. Otherwise, we adjust our reasoning to adopt the stronger reasoning of others. I do all the time. And it is those people who have ideas to offer, like this, that I respect the most. Because they influence my thinking so substantially. Joe Nye or Francis Fukuyama or Benjamin Barber or Terry Moe or John Chubb or Paul Peterson or Milton Friedman or Amartya Sen or Abraham Maslow or Richard Posner or Adam Smith or John Stuart Mill or John Locke or Thomas Hobbes or Jean Jacques Rousseau or Mary Wolstencraft or Betty Friedan or Shelby Steele or John McWhorter or Thomas Sowell or Ronald Dworkin or the list goes on forever, really.

And, these days, my own original ideas and thinking have an important place on that list that makes me more confident that I'm on the right track than when I was still learning more from the ideas of others, predominantly.

I have made some peace with the fact that, though the strongest ideas would, generally, most certainly improve the way that we relate to the world and the world we create, that most people do not take the strongest ideas seriously, no matter how much they may deserve to be taken seriously. Most people don't think that seriously about the world, at all, is the truth. And many people lack the understanding to adequately consider them, at this point in their life, anyway.

But reason and the strongest reasoning is the only way that I know to relate to life and the world because it, inevitably, when it is strong, offers us a way out of many of our unresolved problems and issues in life, if only we will take that substantial way through them.

It is perpetually sad to me that we so often opt for popular thinking or fetishes or absolutes or momentary preferences or self-centered rationalizations or other kinds of poorer reasoning to sort through the world and arrange it as we do. But it is so, whether I like it or not.

It can only be different if we choose to take more rigorous thinking more seriously, and the educational building blocks to make that kind of reasoning possible in our lives. And, until we do, we will live with the madness of poorer reasoning dominating our lives and the lives of those we decide to dominate.

One day, it might be nice if the best ideas and the best arguments and those known for making them most consistently were taken more seriously by the entire culture and not just by a small minority, and if the best ideas were to, thus, perhaps have the greatest influence over the issues of our day. That may or may not happen in my lifetime. But it behooves us, in the meantime, to not pretend that the world is thus when it it clearly is not. And to not wonder why, as a consequence, so many issues are left so poorly resolved or unresolved altogether.

I yearn for newer and better ideas. Not because the world will all of a sudden adopt them to resolve the worlds' dilemnas, necessarily. But because they offer doors of opportunity where our poorer reasoning offers deadends, no matter how often we may circle around them.

Love,
Ben

This is why Communism lasted for 70 years

Because noone ever wants to admit that they might be wrong or that they might not know or that they may not understand. Especially on the biggest issues. And especially the people with the most authority and visibility and with the most to lose.

The world is in love with force and pressure to get what they want. It's an everblooming romance. A terribly dysfunctional relationship between on-again, off-again lovers who can't quite figure out that bullying and a sustainable, functional relationship are mutually exclusive.

What we need to learn, at this point, is how to leave behind our inner bullies. And as long as we don't, we should learn to expect that things will be fairly fucked up.

The Soviets dealt with a bloody civil war, mass murder, political imprisonment, a nuclear arms race and a Cold War, wars and policies of communist imperialism, the Berlin Wall, relative poverty, a closed and suspicious and unproductive political system, and so many violations of their major and minor liberties for 70 years before they finally faced up to the legacy of force as a governing philosophy.

How long will it take us?

Why I'm preparing to leave public service altogether

I'm having some serious conversations, right now, about leaving teaching indefinitely. And not just teaching. Public service, altogether.

I'm tired of working with self-righteous folks who can see nothing but wrong with anything I do as long as I do not agree with them, is the truth. My administrators have nothing good to say to me, these days, almost completely because I disagree with them about the desireability of forcing change, is the truth, I think. And this self-righteous bend that liberals have taken, lately, has me coming to terms with the fact that there is not likely to be any serious intellectual honesty in any of the work that I've engaged in, up to this point, in the near future. I haven't had teachers be so completely dismissive of any of my efforts ever in my life, is the truth. And my love for education, higher education and teaching younger people, is quickly being drained by all this bullshit.

The irony, of course, is that I have been a liberal for the largest proportion of my life. And it is my liberal commitment to compassion and decency and forgiveness and a loving worldview that led me to this work. And it is liberals, now, who might just drive me out of the field.

And as I watch the banality of the current conversation about the Iraq war, namely this piece today, by E.J. Dionne, I'm quickly losing my inspiration to want to be a part of any of it, at all. The self-righteous assertions of certainty, the bullying, the persistent blaming and casting aspersions on those who don't agree, the mean-spiritedness, the dishonesty, the nastiness and pettiness, and the perpetual pretending like this is just how life and public service is supposed to be and that somehow this is what highminded politics and public life should look like.

It's ugly and bullshit. There are no heroes in the current discussions. There certainly is noone involved who has somehow divined all or even largely right answers.

E.J. is wrong. It is not just President Bush who has polarized the country, right now. It is liberals as well. It is so many people that it is very difficult to count. It is everyone who has tried to bully their way through this very difficult discussion and debate and so many important decisions in the last 6 years. It is every single person who has decided that their self-righteous certainty that they are right is more important than an intellectually honest discussion and debate of important policy issues, especially one as grave as the war in Iraq.

Why in the world would we look to Iraqis, right now, and say, "This is what democracy is supposed to look like. Don't you want to have an honest political system and discussion like our own?" is beyond me.

If what we are engaged in today is the highest principals that humanity has to offer or the best, most honest, most intelligent discussion that we can possibly muster, I don't want any part of them. Because it's so completely clear that such an assertion is bullshit, that there is no use taking any of it seriously.

E.J. Dionne epitomizes for me, right now, what is so wrong with politics. And the way that he and so many are engaged in politics, right now, should answer for itself the question from his major book, "Why Americans Hate Politics."

They hate politics because it is full of cynical self-righteous pricks is why, who are convinced that their cynicism and self-righteousness combined with any ounce of intellectual prowess that qualifies them to make or influence the most important decisions.

Hurray for them, I say. But I don't any part of this bullshit anymore or any of the self-fulling cynicism and ugliness that are at the heart of the corruption of spirit more than any other corruption that so characterizes politics and public life, these days.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, says one of the most important liberals of the 20th century. But it doesn't just corrupt those who have it. It corrupts all of us, as we use it and its failures to make excuses for what inexcusable pricks we all are.

We all better hope that there is forgiveness in the world. Because a lot of us need it, right now.

Namely from our children whose hope that we might somehow be better or leave them something better is perpetually corroded each generation from our commitment to the idea that if we weren't such pricks then this world would be a right bloody mess, as Monty Python might say.

If there really is no hope that this will get better, which liberals and many conservatives are doing their damndest to demonstrate that there isn't, right now, then there is no use at all for me to continue doing work that will never be appreciated for fear of acknowledging that perhaps noone controls anything as much as they might like, no matter how much they force the issue.

Love,
Ben

Coming to terms with self-righteous pursuits

As I watch this godforesaken and poorly argued Iraq war debate in Congress, between Congress and the President, in the media, and in international circles, I am coming to terms with the fact that some people will only see the world the way they are already for damned sure that it is.

This post isn't about the substance of that debate. I've written about that ad nauseum. Especially about what should be some humility on this debate, but, inevitably, is overwrought and self-righteous claims of certainty.

I'm even less concerned about the lack of depth in this discussion and the simpler and more polarized divisions that characterize the discussion than I am with the fact that so many people seem so convinced that they are right on every question that's ever occurred to them at this very moment, no matter how much they might have felt differently at another time or might feel differently in the future.

I'm more concerned, right now, with what self-righteous asses we all can be. How certain we are the difficult matters of conscience for so many people most assuredly can be resolved by our superior wisdom. So much so that we would be better to compel their submission to that wisdom than share it, since persuasion is just so fraught with uncertainty and force so guarantess our success.

I think about all of the folks who have taken a series of fairly predictable self-righteous stands during one political period - the 1960's is a popular period for this phenomena for baby boomers - only to be convinced that they were wrong and now are right about another set of fairly predictable self-righteous stands during another period - for those same people, typically today. And it's not just these more obvious folks like David Horowitz or Michael Medved or Christopher Hitchens or David Brock. It's all of us.

"I may have been wrong, at times, in the past," we reason, "But now I've got it figured out. And may God have mercy on the soul that doubts my wisdom or my will."

It's sad. We spend years studying the similar failures of past generations to finally compel righteous behavior from their fellow citizens and all of the tragedy that is wrought from our impositions and self-righteous witch hunts. But we never fail to think that we have somehow all escaped that tendency in the present.

Our forebearers were often fools when it came to regulating the lives of their fellow citizens, we reason. But thank goodness we have learned from their mistakes and finally figured out how to get it right.

Puritan values may have led to scarlet letters and burning of alleged witches, but we've figured out how to protect the moral order today. Alcohol prohibition may have been a miserable failure that led to historical murder records in the U.S. in an underground vice industry that was enforced by a violent underworld, but our current war on drugs is a more noble pursuit that only deals with more serious threats to our civil order. Money and politics may be a marriage that dates back to the invention of government, but we have finally found the rules and finance regulation that will weed out the peddlars of political smut. We may have been more harsh, more brutal, more violent, and more destructive in eras past, but this generation we must get tougher to mirror the strength of our more ruthless legacies.

It's a sad and not terribly well-reasoned spectacle. And it is a perpetual sense of self-doubt in our liberal democratic commitments. We want to be humane, but not too humane. We want to be open and forgiving about our faults, but not too open and forgiving. We want people to be free, but not too free.

And the saddest thing to me is that our self-righteous tendencies never have to face up to themselves. Instead of just acknowledging that we are making uncertain calls in an uncertain world, we constantly argue that we know more than we really do or that our efforts are more successful than they necessarily are. It's a sad, somewhat comic self-fulfilling prophecy. It's Marx and first time tragedy, second time farce without all the revolution. If I never question if I am right, then I am never wrong. And there certainly is no reason for me to take seriously the arguments or concerns of those who disagree with me if I am right all the time.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this uniquely human tendency. No other animal has to justify its actions, because no other animal has the intelligence to think otherwise than what their simple experiences with the world allow them.

Humans, uniquely, have the capacity for intelligent thought. And thus uniquely feel any responsibility to justify their thoughts and judgments to others and have the capacity to make up any justification that suits them, especially when their careers or their reputations or their liberties feel threatened.

How refreshing it would be to have those same discussions with a sense of humility and without feeling threatened and just making our best calls with a sense of openmindedness and openheartedness and no need to justify bad calls just because we made them. How refreshing it would be to acknowledge the much more thorough reality that we tend to make more mistakes than we are want to admit for fear of looking foolish to one another, when the larger foolishness is that we are both so want to admit those mistakes and that it is all the threats that we make against peoples' careers and reputations and families and well-being and lives and freedoms that make us all such cowards and fools. Unless you're Mark McGwire, that is.

To anyone who isn't part of this debate or who aren't making the calls that we are making today, namely our progeny, we have got to seem like a bunch of dimwits and simpletons, heads full of steam and little else. And that goes for almost every political issue that we opine about these days.

We know that's true about our forebearers because we study it for years in schools that we are compelled to attend (and that too many are all to eager to escape as soon as it is possible). And yet, somehow, we all convince ourselves that we have finally escaped that legacy, despite the fact that all of the even most recent history that we have available contradicts that notion.

The way out of that mess is not to make no calls, at all, obviously. But it is to walk more lightly with the calls we make and with the notions we grow attached to. And to presume that perhaps our neighbor may know more than we give him credit for, not necessarily because he actually does, but because perhaps we or anyone know better substantially less than we are more want to acknowledge.

That's the most important lesson that this war has taught me. How little I can trust that most people know for sure anything. Especially the things that matter most. And including the people who know most.

Sadly, the people who are most eager to compel their neighbors are the least likely to bring with them that kind of humility about the matter. And in our own particular brand of democratic irony, we generally call those folks political leaders.

And the sad thing is that so many of those calls really do matter. It just matters more that we have that more humble discussion to get to more right answers than it does to constantly threaten and protect our egos, as we currently tend to do with all of the threats to things we care about, namely our self-images, hanging perpetually over our heads.

Perhaps we are doomed to be self-righteous fools to the ends of our days. But perhaps the hope of liberal democracies is that we might figure this kind of thing out. Because the beauty of that big brain of ours that so many other animals might envy if they had the sense to think about the matter is that we have been given an unprecedented opportunity to reflect on our foolishness and correct our course.

If someone thinks I'm wrong about that observation or that hope, I will, of course, listen. Because it is that capacity to argue and to consider the alternatives that uniquely makes us human. Even when it means that we argue ourselves in circles. And often at our neighbor's expense.

Love,
Ben

A clarifying moment around forgiveness

I'm feeling much better today.

I've been upset with my administration because they've been pushing me too hard. I think they still think they can pressure their way to better results. And I've resented the shit out of it. It's clearly not working and has been seriously counterproductive both in dealing with me, without a doubt, since I just can't be emotionally up to being as productive as long as I am feeling like shit, and I think when dealing with the kids, as well.

A lot of folks who are responsible for others feel like they need to pressure others as long as they are going to be providing for them in some way: paying them a check, providing them an education, raising them to be grown-ups, etc. And especially when people have no alternative, they will often take that. But I'm way past taking it, whether I have an alternative or not. And I'm quite confident that I have other alternatives. I have lots more to learn. But I learn best when I have plenty of room to learn and to make mistakes and make better judgments and I have a much harder time, as do most people, when people are riding me or pressuring me.

And amidst all of this craziness, amidst the general mood for force and against more forgiveness, openess, communication, discussion and debate and space to resolve issues, and as I reflected today with a friend about situations I've had with other friends at different points in my life, something occurred to me.

There is this paradox that we all face that is at the heart of some of the ambivalence we are feeling about a more forgiving and openhearted, openminded spirt, right now.

The paradox goes like this:

We all screw up. Sometimes we screw up big. I've done it. I hope to stop doing it now with some reflection and responsibility on the matter. When we do, we violate peoples' trust. Either in big ways or in small ways. And we are responsible for the screwups. People do not have to forgive us. And, sadly, too often, they do not. But we definitely need to forgive ourselves and take responsibility for the consequences of our actions. Many of us do not. Many very powerful and wealthy people do not. It's far too common, really. But it's a sad fact of life. But it's only in the screwup and in the forgiveness that we learn a lot of lessons in life, including this one.

The paradox is that though noone owes us forgiveness and we do not owe others forgiveness, necessarily, we cannot function as individuals, as communities, as societies, and as a species without it. We function terribly without it, actually. All kinds of violence and hatred and oppression and terrorism and genocide and all the worst forms of oppression find their source in our failures to forgive some past wrong or legacy.

We need the forgiveness, big and small, to do the learning, big and small. Without the forgiveness, there is no learning. And without the learning, we are stuck with the same old poorer ways of doing business.

Both facts of this paradox are important truthes about the world.

Noone owes us forgiveness. And we can't function without it.

So something's gotta give.

At the very least, we need to learn to forgive ourselves. And we can always control the fact that we can forgive others, even if those jackasses won't return the favor or do the same for someone else.

But if we're going to function better as friends, family, lovers, and neighbors, we're going to have to learn how to forgive more readily. There is just no way around this one.

We shouldn't go around assuming that people owe us forgiveness as an excuse for taking advantage of their generosity. But we need to give each other that kind of generosity if we are going to be able to do the learning that is the foundation for our forward movement.

So our trust in one another is built on a necessary paradox. We must be able to trust one another to not take advantage of our decency and kindness. But we need that decency and kindness and forgiveness to make our lives bearable, functional, and with any capacity for thriving in this otherwise cold world (although to be fair to the world, it offer plenty of hot spots and mild weather, as well). Without forgiveness, we can't learn from our mistakes. And without that learning, we can't move forward. As individuals and as nations.

And my experience on this one has been that the larger the stakes - meaning both the importance of the screw up and the harsher the consequences we threaten to impose - the harder it is to cough up the apology or to face the shortcoming. And the harsher we treat one another, the worse we make that predicament, no matter how much we may pretend otherwise or sometime get a lucky strike and call it genius for the forces of repression.

Repression drives the shortcoming from our own good sense and judgment, nevertheless from the view of others. It and the threats and harsh treatment that enforce it make it harder for us to acknowledge our follies and serious and not-so-serious errors to ourselves, not just to others. Which makes it all the more difficult for us to take responsibility and to cut the bullshit out.

There has never been a time when our more threatening or mean-spirited efforts have made those same mistakes go away. Ever. We just pretended more, kept things to ourselves more, kept one another in the dark more, and otherwise kept our secrets closer to our chests.

The only way to end that cycle is to do what wise men like Jesus of Nazareth and the Buddha and Mohatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King and Desmond Tutu and others have implored and encouraged us to do which is to take forgiveness and letting go of the pain seriously as a personal and societal commitment. As Jesus argued, it is the only way to see better our own faults rather than forever being obsessed with the faults of others. And as Desmond Tutu has argued, it is the only way to work through the most serious sins, like genocide and crimes against humanity, nevertheless the ordinary sins in our ordinary lives.

That part I knew before today. What I wasn't as clear about that I am more clear about today is that it is actually important that people know and be clear about the fact that we are not owed forgiveness. Not because we don't need it, when we've done wrong and when others have wronged us, because we surely do. But that forgiveness is not an entitlement. To be given genuinely, it must be given freely. And to be given freely, it cannot come out of any sort of pressure to be better than we are ready to be when we finally get around to doing the right thing.

A clarifying moment. I'm getting used to them these days. Makes life so much easier to understand and navigate when I can get peek at a little more wisdom than I was planning for.

Love,
Ben

Resignation

I think I've finally succumbed.

I am now resigned teacher. Resignation is a softer version of jadedness.

I just don't care anymore.

Who would have guessed that it would be liberals who would beat the idealism out of me?

Defeated

Today I don't feel anything, really.

I just feel defeated. I'm preoccupied. I'm less energetic and proactive.

All in the name of being under someone's thumb.

But I feel no impetus to do more or better work.

I just feel defeated.

And I don't care anymore about anything, including whether my bosses recognize that their efforts have been counterproductive.

Forced choice

I had a clarifying moment, today, when my principal created as social scientists might call a forced choice.

Either go with the pressure and force as the governing philosophy of interactions between people or don't.

And like the vast majority of my kids and the teachers I work with I'm choosing not.

Love,
Ben

The wisdom of Lord Acton

It's beginning to occur to me just how thoroughly arrogant the push toward force as a governing philosophy is. Lord Acton was both right - that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely - and, if people won't choose differently, inescapably so. There will be no end to this if people can't find the courage to choose something better.

I can't imagine just how scary it must have seemed to Germans and Jews or to Russians when the Nazis and Bolsheviks raced to power. To watch a group of people trying to create a sense of inevitability to their dominance. And to never be satiated with creating that sense until their enemies had been thoroughly decimated or put down.

The kids and I studied Benjamin Banneker, today. Banneker was a free African American in 18th century America who was one of America's first black mathematicians and scientists. Benjamin Banneker built some of the earliest clocks in the nation's history. He was an astute student of mathematics and astronomy who developed almanacs that predicted solar and lunar eclipses more accurately than many of his white brethren. We talked about how seriously Banneker took education, despite so many obstacles and hardships. Banneker was legally prohibited from getting an education. He lived amidst serious prejudice that his race was intellectually inferior. He was outraged at the hypocrisy of one of the most important living proclaimers of the equality of man, Thomas Jefferson, keeping slaves in captivity. Banneker opposed capital punishment and supported a Department of Peace alongside a Department of War long before such thinking became common, as it is more common today. He spent an entire lifetime independent at a time when most men of his ancestory spent their lives in chains. And he took education more seriously than most people do with much more freedom and opportunity.

It's beginning to occur to me just how arrogant this push toward force as a governing philosophy is. How arrogant all of its practicioners are. Liberal, conservative, or otherwise.

It cannot possibly hold because it is so enanthema to our basic human nature.

And that basic human nature is not good or bad.

Our basic human nature is freedom.

Abraham Maslow knew that. And he was right.

And this is the period that must bear that out.

Because it will not end until we have freedom.

Love,
Ben

My new rule

I have a new rule that I'm going to force pressure-oriented folks to deal with.

You pressure me, I won't do your fuckin' work. Except really lackluster and at a speed that suits me.

Fuck you, you fuckin' pricks.

Those are the new rules.

I give up

I'm tired of all the pressure at my job. Shit gets done when it gets done. I need another job.

By the way, to all the assholes still bucking for pressure to get things done: Fuck you you fuckin' pricks. You get zero credit from me for jack shit.

May you be bounced from every position of responsibility that you currently and undeservedly enjoy.

My thinking on this is becoming much more staunch at this point as I see people deciding not to back off.

You pressure me, I respect you not in the least. I think of you as an unappeasable asswipe whom I will relunctantly cooperate with, at best, and resist, at worst. You will never get my wholehearted cooperation.

I was working long hours at work, lately. That will not be happening anymore.

I keep thinking it's going to let up. And then I realize, I just need to give up and go do something else.

I say let them find someone else to eat their shit. I need a new job.

Ben

The current apex of progressive wisdom

The Economist writes the only article, likely, that I could take too seriously about the most recent U.N. report on children.

Suffer the children?

The Economist actually gives this report more credibility that I likely would. Not because I'm not concerned with children, obviously. But because the U.N. clearly has an angle.

UNICEF is a notoriously liberal organization. And the conclusions that the Economist reports - though, clearly, I will want to read this from the horses' mouth and from liberal reports as well; but I've spent enough time with the Economist to trust its reporting, especially around matters involving liberal bias - are clearly designed to trumpet more socialist policies in Europe and speak ill of the more market friendly countries of Anglo-America.

I agree with the Economist that it is important to take the conclusions seriously, even if it very much seems like hand-wringing on the part of the liberals looking to convince the world that they were right and conservatives were wrong all along that a socialist-style social security net really is the only thing that will make childrens' and everyones' lives better.

There is a much longer discussion on that theme that I need to get into when I'm not finishing some work.

But the long and short of my take on this report is that it seems that many liberals, right now, are very convinced that they are finally hitting their period, where they can prove - and enforce - once and for all, that they were right and conservatives were wrong.

It's almost as if all those pesky intellectual debates aren't really all that necessary after all. They distract, really, from the clearly more intelligent liberal arguments on these matters.

And this report, UNICEF believes, is the unblemished evidence of their intellectual superior take on this issue.

If only the rest of the world could just comply with their wisdom.

David Frum has this excellent commentary on the controversy over the American Enterprise Institute and the global warming debate on Marketplace on NPR tonight.

An honest attempt to heat up the debate

And David is right. The best thing for any policy debate is to consider the arguments and the evidence and engage the debate and discussion.

I've got a U.N. report on children to read this week.

Love,
Ben

Why forcing our views upon one another creates so much havoc in public and private life

E. J. Dionne hits exactly on why forcing our views on one another creates so much havoc in public and private life.

Litmust Test for Hypocrisy

What we call discipline is typically our misplaced efforts to enforce our views which only drives peoples' real views and thinking underground, which undercuts our ability to talk openly and out loud and with the humility of people speaking with one another and not anyone with all of the right answers, and to brainstorm and consider ideas out loud and engaging one another more honestly to resolve problems between us, rather than the silence and lying that features most prominently in our relationships, today, whether we want to acknowledge that or not.

That goes for politics. But it also goes for all of us in all of our personal and professional relationships.

And then when all that force and repression has thoroughly fucked up our relationships, we engage in the biggest lie of all.

We pretend its all going well.

Love,
Ben

What Hillary Clinton says about us

I couldn't have said it better myself.

The Explanation Hillary Clinton Owes

The truth is that Hillary Clinton is like most people. She's a coward. She looks around at everyone else and says, "What do they think I should think?"

And the Presidency is no place for a coward.

But that's exactly what we want. Someone whose hand we can force. Whether we know what we're doing or not. And, generally, we do not.

I opposed this war, up front. I thought and said that I thought it was a mistake, up front, for all of the concerns about Vietnam that so many people also shared. For whatever fucked up reasons, no matter how noble it often seems to liberate an oppressed people, they often clamor for repressive leaders, and find them preferable, at least, to foreign invaders, as seemed to have been the case in Vietnam. I attended protests. I argued against going when it was very unpopular to do so at a time when there was very little room to dissent. I was wrong about a lot. I didn't realize that the invasion would get the support that it got. I didn't anticipate the level of diverse, engaged and I must say, as I think about it, thoughtful debate on the matter that we got during this period, in contrast to the Vietnam War. I thought it was probably true that Saddam Hussein would have to be removed by force, but I thought that it should have come from an Iraqi led effort with, perhaps, overwhelming U.S. or international military support, which was the major impediment to it happening without U.S. involvement. I thought the U.S. should have engaged opposition parties and their alligned militias in an effort to covertly (or perhaps opnely?) plan an Iraqi led democratic revolution, which would have undercut political support for the insurgency, I believe, which is the oxygen off of which it feeds. But I opposed the war, even though it didn't tack with the current political mood.

And I am supporting this surge at a time when it is comparably unpopular. I'm not 100% sure that it will resolve this situation better. But I've not heard a better case than Frederick Kagan's case for the surge - that securing Iraq is a necessary prerequisite for a political resolution, that American forces are better prepared to support Iraqis in doing that, and that Iraqis need and their government is clearly requesting our assistance in securing Baghdad for that purpose - from those who oppose it as of yet. I just have a much stronger sense of responsibility for this war and for my thoughts on policy matters than Ms. Clinton does.

I'm not concerned with the fact that so many people, like Hillary Clinton, did not. Many people did what they thought was best. Many people did what they thought everyone else thought was best. And God knows I've had my moments of cowardice. Sometimes some pretty serious moments of cowardice. But I don't respect this kind of self-righteous cowardice that holds tight both to its own notions and to the political winds in the pursuit of power, either. And I know it is a dangerous instinct for a politician, nevertheless a President, to have. It is a dangerous dance between an ego driven public looking to absolve itself of responsibility for its popular notions, for the zeitgeist, as Richard Cohen says, and the tragedies they produce, and an ego driven leader willing and ready to appease those egos.

I am learning that the most important form of courage in the world that most people lack is the courage to admit when you are wrong. It is not President Bush alone who struggles with this kind of courage. It is all of us. On every side of every important issue that we face. And exactly the reason why we should not be trusted with the power or the assertion of the right to constantly force our neighbors' hands. And exactly the reason why liberal democracies, liberal democratic cultures, and people with the most genuine liberal democratic commitments are the most authentically strong amongst us.

Hillary Clinton is the alter ego to President Bush. She is someone whose self-righteous unwillingness and lack of practice and developed capacity for self-reflection makes her dangerously ego-driven, constantly rationalizing any decision in the name of being popular and pursuing her political ambitions.

We like Hillary Clinton because she is us. She's a coward who is attuned to our self-righteous selective memory and our willingness and desire to force peoples' hands to get what we want when we want it. She embodies our cyncism. And she forestalls our need to self-reflect and challenge our own assumptions about the world and ourselves.

Hillary Clinton is our egos working so desperately not to face our consciences that perhaps it is not President Bush, after all, who is alone responsible for this messy war.

It is us.

Love,
Ben