Wishing

I wish I could have learned so many of the lessons I have learned without screwing them up. I really do.

I've experienced some pretty serious and, at times, harsh consequences for learning I've done and mistakes as a part of that learning.

Losing Brandi was the most serious consequence I probably experienced. Though my life has been pretty harsh, at times, up to this point, as well. Financial, job, school and other consequences have sucked in a major way. And sadly, so many of the artificially imposed consequences have done no good, at all, and have often been counterproductive, making things worse for everyone.

I wish I could have avoided all of those consequences. Especially losing Brandi, which really was the most heartbreaking consequence I've experienced for mistakes in my life - largely, fighting so much with someone who was my best friend and who it made no sense to fight with, at all, really.

And yet all of the learning that went with all of those consequences was not, generally, available to me without experiencing all of those consequences (except for the artificially imposed ones, which were, as I said, largely useless and/or counterproductive and made things worse).

The consequences sucked.

But the learning was more important.

And I'm glad I risked the consequences for the learning that went with them.

I hate listening to Every Time We Say Goodbye - Annie Lennox, Sarah Vaughn, or whomever - and thinking, "How in the fuck did I push away someone I loved so much?" It fuckin' sucks.
I hate listening to Darryl Worley's I Miss My Friend, Diamond Rio's Beautiful Mess, or Rascal Flatts' These Days and thinking, "I remember when I learned to love country music. When I lost Brandi."

I hate seeing people give me the eye when they know what a fuck up I was at KU or what an organizational oaf I was at Eisenhower or whenever they know I've been rejected or fired or expelled or convicted or proclaimed an official fuck-up by someone somewhere and thinking, "What a fuckin' loser," or "There is no fuckin' way I want to end up like you."

But as much as I hate all of those things...

I love and I'm proud of the fact that I've been and remain willing to risk the fucking up to learn the lessons for real and not in some abstraction or rule or proclaimed wisdom or someone else's idea of how I should live my life.

I'm proud of the fact that I put the learning ahead of the wishing.

I have a feeling that's going to pay off in my life. But even if it didn't, I'd be proud that I put the learning first.

I'd rather live with my heart and my mind open and experience all of the love and the disappointment and more genuine commitment that comes with that than I would live my heart full of fear and disappointment and absent more genuine commitment and without chasing the life that I know, deep down in my heart, that I want.

I'll take that, in a heartbeat, over a life without failure or mistakes or disappointment.

And, most important, that's a life that's my own. I own it. Good and bad. And the lessons I learn from it go toward making my life and the lives of people around me and those I love and hopefully as many people as possible better as a consequence of all of that learning.

And I'll take that consequence over any wishing anyday.

Love,
Ben

The future of the abortion question?

George Will makes a bad argument for Hillary Clinton's popularity, right now (which happens to be falling and to be matched by high unfavorables, as well). George knows better to conflate popularity with a strong leadership choice or choice of any kind, but he gives into the temptation of that reasoning, nonetheless. The same temptation E.J. Dionne's been giving into, lately, equating the unpopularity of the war in Iraq with the wisdom of pulling out before making sure that Iraqi security forces are up to the task of taking over security for themselves.

But George makes an excellent argument for what may, in fact, be the future of the abortion question.

What Voters Want: Competence

George argues:

"By 1972, 16 states with 41 percent of the nation's population had liberalized their abortion laws, and the Republican platform did not mention the subject. The next year the Supreme Court ripped the subject away from state legislatures. In 1976 the Republican platform protested the court's decision, recommended "continuance of the public dialogue on abortion" and endorsed a constitutional amendment "to restore protection of the right to life for unborn children."

The 1980 platform was similar, but four years later and afterward, the party, while continuing to favor a constitutional amendment, advocated "legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections" -- no "person" shall be deprived of life without due process of law -- "apply to unborn children." So, the party has repeatedly endorsed a constitutional amendment it thinks is a redundancy.

The party asserts that one of America's most common surgical procedures is murder. So, last year perhaps a million women and their doctors committed murder. However much a person deplores abortion and embraces that legal logic, nobody believes that either the legislation or the constitutional amendment that Republican platforms have praised will be passed. Hence the sterility of today's abortion debate. And hence the inclination of some social conservatives to focus on limiting abortion by changing the culture, and their willingness to evaluate candidates by criteria unrelated to abortion.

Writing in the New Republic, Thomas B. Edsall notes that in the late 1980s voters by a margin of 51 to 42 percent believed that "school boards ought to have the right to fire teachers who are known homosexuals." Today voters disagree, 66 to 28. In 1987 voters were evenly divided on the question of whether "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behavior." Today voters disagree, 72 to 23.

Recent Pew polling shows that a combined 48 percent of Republican voters say that Iraq (31 percent) or terrorism (17 percent) is their principal concern. Abortion? Seven percent. Gay marriage? One percent.

Edsall wonders whether Giuliani, who is appealing to "the Republican longing for managerial competence" with his "idiosyncratic brand of conservatism," might be a transformational Republican figure. But perhaps his conservatism is not idiosyncratic. Perhaps it is, in a way, traditional. Perhaps some conservatives are really serious about turning back the clock. To 1972."

Essentially what George seems to be arguing is that Rudy Guliani's position on abortion is the most genuinely conservative position. The simplified version of that argument would be:

Conservatives don't like abortion. But they both respect and endorse the right of states to make these decisions, which is their major beef with Roe v. Wade, overriding state legislative resolution of this issue. George's argument for conservativism increasingly emphasizes its more limited government, classically liberal, libertarian roots, with a commitment to traditional values like the immorality for abortion. But perhaps, George seems to suggest, if Rudy is elected, and a conservative Supreme Court were to endorse his view that it would be just fine to send the question of abortion back to the states, just perhaps, they will endorse a more classically liberal, limited government view of this question and continue to liberalize as George points out they were well on their way to doing as early as 1972.

Meaning: perhaps the path of liberal democratic integrity might be to endorse principles of federalism and democratic decision-making and allow states to decide the abortion question, which will actually lead to the more liberalizing result that conservatives and liberals both seem to be moving toward, at this point, anyway, and which Rudy Guliani seems to be embody: they believe it should be avoided, as much as possible, as a personal decision, but they endorse that it, generally, is a woman's choice (with input from fathers and families, we would all hope) that she should employ rarely if at all, when other alternatives are available and reasonable.

It's a good argument, actually. And it might finally resolve this godforesaken issue in the political arena and allow us to focus on more important issues while the culture rather than political representatives sort this matter out. It sure would be nice to have a consensus that is sustainable because it's based on liberal democratic principals with some integrity. As Rudy seemed to suggest in the debates, I'm fine with Roe v. Wade deciding the question, as well. But perhaps this is the only solution that will finally move this question in the right direction.

Something to chew on.

Fareed Zakaria and a better direction for liberalism and America

Fareed Zakaria writes brilliantly in Newsweek, this week, for their cover story.

After Bush: How to Restore America's Place in the World

Killer quotes:

"I have no magic formula to stop Iran from going nuclear, nor to change Iran's regime. But the strategy we have adopted against so many troublesome countries over the last few decades—sanction, isolate, ignore, chastise—has simply not worked. Cuba is perhaps the best example of this paradox. Having put in place a policy to force regime change in that country, we confront the reality that Fidel Castro will die in office the longest-serving head of government in the world. On the other hand, countries where we have had the confidence to engage—from China to Vietnam to Libya—have shifted course substantially over time. Capitalism and commerce and contact have proved far more reliable agents of change than lectures about evil. The next president should have the courage to start talking to rogue regimes, not as a sign of approval but as a way of influencing them and shaping their environment."

"Some of foreign policy is what we do, but some of it is also who we are. America as a place has often been the great antidote to U.S. foreign policy. When American actions across the world have seemed harsh, misguided or unfair, America itself has always been open, welcoming and tolerant. I remember visiting the United States as a kid in the 1970s, at a time when, as a country, India was officially anti-American. The reality of the America that I experienced was a powerful refutation of the propaganda and caricatures of its enemies. But today, through inattention, fear and bureaucratic cowardice, the caricature threatens to become reality.

At the end of the day, openness is America's greatest strength. Many people on both sides of the political aisle have ideas that they believe will keep America strong in this new world—fences, tariffs, subsidies, investments. But America has succeeded not because of the ingenuity of its government programs. It has thrived because it has kept itself open to the world—to goods and services, ideas and inventions, people and cultures. This openness has allowed us to respond fast and flexibly in new economic times, to manage change and diversity with remarkable ease, and to push forward the boundaries of freedom and autonomy.

It is easy to look at America's place in the world right now and believe that we are in a downward spiral of decline. But this is a snapshot of a tough moment. If the country can keep its cool, admit to its mistakes, cherish and strengthen its successes, it will not only recover but return with renewed strength. There could not have been a worse time for America than the end of the Vietnam War, with helicopters lifting people off the roof of the Saigon embassy, the fallout of Watergate and, in the Soviet Union, a global adversary that took advantage of its weakness. And yet, just 15 years later, the United States was resurgent, the U.S.S.R. was in its death throes and the world was moving in a direction that was distinctly American in flavor. The United States has new challenges, new adversaries and new problems. But unlike so much of the world, it also has solutions—if only it has the courage and wisdom to implement them."

This is the future of liberalism and America that we need to be embracing, right now. He is right. The last 7 years have been a long spiral of fear, aggression, and insecurity guiding almost all of our policies and our culture. It is the worst I have lived through as an adult when I am more attuned to it and its consequences. I was alive during a similar period in the late 70's, early 80's, to which Fareed refers in this article. A period of similar national malaise after a controversial and bloody war, economic slowdown, inflation and worries about oil and economic security with challenges of immigration and trade, and confrontation with Iran and a Middle East increasingly hostile to America and her liberal democratic values.

Fareed is right. What is parallel in these two periods is that fear and insecurity guides our policies - here and abroad - when what is needed is openness and confidence. We will be hurt for that openness and confidence. But we are resilient. We are strong. And we can face and withstand the slings and arrows of an insecure world without having to resort to aggression to solve all of our problems.

The most hopeful line in Fareed's article was the honest admission of the problem: "[t]he strategy we have adopted against so many troublesome countries over the last few decades—sanction, isolate, ignore, chastise—has simply not worked."

Because acknowledging the reality honestly is the first step to finding new solutions. And Fareed's proposal of engagement as a better alternative to sanctioning, isolating, ignoring, chastising or other means of pressure and manipulation is both a better suggestion, in general, and one which Fareed argues well has clearly had better empirical results of a more confident constructive engagement if we will only look to the examples of the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, the peace process in Northern Ireland and the roadmap for peace in the Middle East, which, while not finalizing an agreement is clearly a stronger road than the one taken in its absence.

If people will only remember just 6 years ago, there was an America that was far more successfully engaging the world. But that America was overtaken by a scared, insecure, power-hungry, aggressive, and mean-spirited America. This other darker, less noble America was not a monopoly of either the left or right wings. It was the sum of all of their aggression and their seductive but wrongheaded message that more aggression would finally resolve all of their respective problems. It is an illiberal direction for America that has been very sad, indeed, to watch my friends and neighbors be seduced by, and the pride that does not allow them to acknowledge the folly and sad consequences of this path.

It is nice to see that there is a quiet, patient, but clear path being paved by a few important and thoughtful liberals and conservatives out of this malaise and the aggressive, illiberal America that it has currently left us with. Illiberalism is no path forward, no matter what the protestations to the contrary. There will never be an illiberal path forward. Because illiberal paths are what define more narrow, backwards thinking and movement for a liberal society. Less freedom means steps backwards, no matter what we might protest to the contrary. As Fareed argues well, it is not a government program that will take America forward. It is American society at large and its rich, confident, open, free cultural landscape, which values liberty above all values, which will lead America and the world forward, just as those values have been responsible for doing the same for the entirety of the history of liberal democratic values and peoples.

This is the direction that I have been waiting for from liberals for the last 6 years. It is nice to see some people getting there rather than perpetually rationalizing the failures and insecure, aggressive posture of liberalism for the last half decade.

I can only hope that the rest of America catches up sooner rather than later.

Love,
Ben

Tiananmen Square and what it says about China and all of us

I've gotten a little tired, in the last 5-10 years or so, listening to people romanticize the economic and political power of China, especially many liberals who perpetually rationalize left-wing dictatorships in Cuba, China and anywhere where they think they can find comfort in their self-righteous notion that liberal economic policies might just be worth a little bloodshed.

Well this is what that kind of thinking looks like in reality when we're not just playing politics as a hobby or a high-stakes game of chicken.

Tiananmen Square survivors seek reform

Today is the 18th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4, 1989 when millions of students bravely arrived at the Square to protest the political repression of this totalitarian regime only to face it and, for many of them, to face their deaths. This is not the sacrafice of a few people to the greater good or to a cause worth more than any individual. This is what it looks like to sacrafice people and individual liberty - especially the freedom to criticize a government - to the political ambitions of those who will use the rhetoric of collective welfare to enslave and violently and forcefully repress a people.

Many liberals, especially, in the West, romanticize this regime because they feel that it's aims are worthy even if they think their ends are extreme. Many Americans, like Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh felt the same about the Nazis. All of them are wrong. I don't care what foolish notions that people have of power and its proper use, individual liberty - especially the freedom to criticize one's government - is the most fundamental value of a decent society. And Tiananmen Square is a valuable reminder of what such romanticism of totalitarianism keeps in place.

At a time when the Chinese economy has rightly captured the imaginations of those in the West - since free exchange - economically, culturally, diplomatically, educationally, personally, etc. - is the most important key to sustainable democratization of the culture and attitudes of the Chinese people and, from that, the culture and government, it is good to remember why such fascination with this booming Chinese economy should not ever lead us to romanticize it's ugly political legacy.

Most liberals in the West who do this do so to romanticize their own quest for power and to parallel those self-righteous pursuits to the self-righteous and repressive pursuits of the left-wing dictatorship in the Peoples' Republic. Liberals who do so are not as dangerous in the West, largely because we enjoy a democracy that both checks such aspirations, politically, and encourages an open and critically-thinking, independent-minded culture which constructively challenges such folks to face the honest consequences and legacy of regimes that they romanticize, and the honest consequences and legacies of their own rule in Western democracies.

As much as party and ideological die-hards would like to believe that they and their governments have always been right, it is exactly this tendency which necessitates the democratic system of government that democratic parties celebrate rhetorically but secretly and openly despise as a reality that keeps their parties and ideologies from monopolizing power which they are always sure is rightly their's if only the world understood how they have monopolized wisdom that legitimizes their rule. Monopolized wisdom or enlightened autocracy are the mainstays of all leaders and groups who wish to romanticize their own thought and abilities and power to know what unenlightened masses and unenlightened critics do not recognize as wisdom that cannot afford to be challenged or uprooted. Conservatives in liberal democracies generally and too often think this. Liberals in liberal democracies generally and too often think this. All sorts of political, religious, scholarly, media, educational, business, military, social services, law enforcement, and so many other groups, in liberal democratic and totalitarian regimes think this. Really, almost all people at almost every point in humanity's history have likely thought this, at some level. And we and they have perpetually romanticized power in the name of that supposedly monopolized wisdom.

The brilliance of democracy is not that it has removed this tendency. It has and perpetually does moderate it, substantially, since parties and groups are subject to democratic discussion and debate which both challenges their monopoly on wisdom and creates the political space for challenges to their power.

The brilliance of democracy is that it has created all of this space for liberal values and the multitude of different experiences, perspectives, thoughts, wisdom, political orientations, religious orientations, groups, individuals, newspapers and media sources, movies, television programming, radio, internet, music, theater, universities and university departments, disciplines and scholarly orientations, businesses and commercial, professional and personal choices, and a whole host of freedoms and choices and opportunities which enrich, or at least offer the opportunity to enrich, the lives of average and not-so-average citizens of liberal democratic nation-states and members of the broader liberal democratic culture locally, nationally, internationally and at every other level and kind of organization of liberal democratic people and, increasingly, and sometimes to their chagrin, people of illiberal cultures, societies, and citizens of illiberal nation-states.

China and Vietnam were two famous totalitarian nation-states which have significantly liberalized and opened their economies following much substantial economic failure of their communist - offically both are socialist republics, which speaks ill of socialism rather than improving the image of these repressive, inefficient, and corrupt regimes - and later were explicitly constructively engaged, as internationally policy thinkers often call it, by the American Administration of Bill Clinton, to open up their societies to trade and political, cultural, and economic exchange with the United States, specifically, given the historical enmities between such Communist regimes and America, the West, and the democratic world.

But their trade and internal economic liberalization should not be confused with political legitimacy or the legitimatization of a repressive economic or political ideology or its wing of ideologies simply because liberalization has yielded benefits despite an illiberal regime (certainly not because of it, no matter what credit the Chinese government and too many liberal veterans of the Cold War or their radical progency might claim).

And Tiananmen is a healthy and important reminder of what more genuine courage looks like in the form of young liberal democratically-committed students challening our rationalizations and the rationalizations of the Chinese Communist Party in its will to power.

Force and the will to power are not a legitimate governing philosophy. Force can be used legitimately. But that is a part of an ongoing, thoughtful, engaged, and deeply considered discussion and debate about the best use of power and force or coercion as a part of that exercise of power that every student of power, worth her/his salt, should know should be presumed against in favor of reason and thoughtful and constructive engagement. Too many of those students in liberal democracies, today, as much as in more repressive regimes and cultures, today, are rationalizing force as a governing philosophy in its own right, today, in an effort to bolster an argument for the morality, credibility, and decency of the rule of law even, as was the case of Tiananmen Square when the Chinese government murdered and repressed Chinese students and citizens in the name of the rule of law, when the rule of law is inherently neither moral nor credible or decent. The rule of law is not at all an adequate or moral or credible or decent governing philosophy. The rule of law has been the basis for all of the most repressive, illiberal, and authoritarian regimes that the world does or has ever known.

All of these philosophies and ideas of governance and liberal democratic culture and life are subject to the one most important and worthy and legitimate basis for a governing philosophy: thoughtful and engaged liberal democratic debate and discussion. It is liberal values which are the moral, credible, decent, thoughtful, and legitimate basis for liberal democratic governance and culture, not the rule of law. The rule of law is subject to every form of manipulation by more repressive, illiberal and authoritarian impulses, groups, and ideologies. And the only genuine and legitimate correction for such manipulations - propaganda and political pressure are two of the terms both used and too often romanticized by even liberal democratic leaders and political participants - is engaged and thoughtful liberal democratic debate and discussion. Liberalism, conservativism, libertarianism, anarchism, socialism, communism, Naziism, facism, and a million other ideological schisms are all philosophies that lay claim on any or total monopoly of wisdom in liberal democratic debate and discussion circles. In fact, no such monopoly does or ever has existed, despite persisent efforts by ideologues and party loyalists to monopolize or carve out substantial monopolies or oligopolies of power.

No monopoly or oligopoly on power, anywhere, is a final and unchallengeable legitimate form of power, except as a means of establishing a power arrangement to best violent competitors which threaten democratic processes, discussion, engagement, education, culture, economies, and life. From there on out, independent thought and, out of that, independent and interdependent participatory and thoughtful engagement are the most legitimate, intelligent, open, sustainable, liberal democratic and effective and wise form of governance. Because they are the basis for the most important, fundamental, and sustainable form of governance by each person and within each culture and within the jurisdiction of each state: liberal democratic self-governance.

China is a long way from such values and such a society, as are America and the West, though closer to that liberal democratic ideal than their Communist and repressive, authoritarian brethren, because of their more liberalized cultural values, not because of their more repressive government policies.

Today is an important day to remember the cost of such romanticism: the lives of between 200 and 3000 Chinese citizens (depending on whether you trust more the Chinese government or Chinese student associations). And that doesn't even count the millions dead and imprisoned leading.

For those romanticizing force, today, perhaps this is a wise moment to reflect on the legacy of force and its capacity to purge the world of liberalized and liberalizing cultural values and the ideas that are the basis for them and which they inspire. As Wikipedia reports:

"In Beijing, the resulting military crackdown on the protesters by the PRC government left many civilians dead or injured. The toll ranges from 200–300 (PRC government figures), to 400–800 by The New York Times, and to 2,000–3,000 (Chinese student associations and Chinese Red Cross), although the PRC government asserts and most independent observers agree that the majority of these deaths were not in the square itself but rather in the streets leading to the square.[citation needed]...

...Following the violence, the government conducted widespread arrests to suppress protestors and their supporters, cracked down on other protests around China, banned the foreign press from the country and strictly controlled coverage of the events in the PRC press. Members of the Party who had publicly sympathized with the protesters were purged, with several high-ranking members placed under house arrest, such as General Secretary Zhao Ziyang. The violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protest caused widespread international condemnation of the PRC government.[1]

During and after the demonstration, authorities attempted to arrest and prosecute the student leaders of the Chinese democracy movement, notably Wang Dan, Chai Ling, Zhao Changqing and Wuer Kaixi. Wang Dan was arrested, convicted, and sent to prison, then allowed to emigrate to the United States on the grounds of medical parole. As a lesser figure in the demonstrations, Zhao was released after six months in prison. However, he was once again incarcerated for continuing to petition for political reform in China. Wuer Kaixi escaped to the R.O.C. in Taiwan. He is now married and he holds a job as a political commentator on national Taiwan television.[citation needed] Chai Ling escaped to France, and then to the United States.

Smaller protest actions continued in other cities for a few days. Some university staff and students who had witnessed the killings in Beijing organised or spurred commemorative events on their return. However, these were quickly put down, and those responsible were purged.

Chinese authorities summarily tried and executed many of the workers they arrested in Beijing. In contrast, the students - many of whom came from relatively affluent backgrounds and were well-connected - received much lighter sentences. Even Wang Dan, the student leader who topped the most wanted list, spent only seven years in prison. Nevertheless, many of the students and university staff implicated were permanently politically stigmatised, some never to be employed again."

That's what a government and governing philosophy predicated on force really looks like. That's a regime that knows how to use and enforce strictly the rule of law. That's what it looks like to pressure a population into a progressive (and submissive) political posture. That's what aggressive political power and aggressive enforcement of political and cultural laws and norms looks like.

That's what it looks like to use power to rule, for all the fuckin' pussies out there who don't know how to bring down the hammer of political and legal power on a recalcitrant population.

For everyone romanticizing force and power and the rule of law, today: Tiananmen Square is what it looks like to make all of those fantasies of final and complete political victory, rule, and ability to force a rebellious and recalcitrant nation into progress (and submission).

Tiananmen Square is the path of progress. Regress equals progress. Repression equals progress. Force equals progress.

George Orwell would be proud.

But the thousands of people who lost their lives, freedom, jobs, positions of influence, and other imposed consequences of a repressive government predicated upon force as a governing philosophy deserve better.

We all do.

Love,
Ben

Little Children

Holy shit. If you have not seen Tom Fields' Little Children, yet, you need to. The most impressive movie I have seen this year.

Remarkable.

Love,
Ben

A new album for Arrested Development

By the way, did you know that Arrested Development just came out with a new album for 2006/07? I think it's their first album in over a decade, if I'm reading the history on their website correctly.

Check it out and welcome back Speech and the gang, the best rap band in the world as far as I know.

Love,
Ben

Politics, Markets, and America's Schools

If you want the broadest understanding of the problems in public education and the best directions forward, this is the one most important book to read (to my forever limited knowledge).

Politics, Markets, and America's Schools - John Chubb and Terry Moe

After one and a half years of working in an inner city public schools, I am convinced that Chubb and Moe have nailed the most serious problem in public education as it is currently structured.

If you care about public education and the future of education, schools, and kids, this is the single most important book I think you could have to understand the problems with our current arrangements and better suggestions for a path forward.

Milton Friedman also writes some of the best work on education reform that I have ever read. I would start at his foundation - The Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation - and check out his excellent comments on the nature of the higher education market and the K-12 education market for the strongest argument for school choice that I have ever read.

And if you have a more general distrust of conservatives like Milton and Rose (though Milton, to be fair, is on record as saying to the effect that he is more of a classical liberal than a conservative) and John Chubb and Terry Moe, I would recommend the best empirical research being conducted in education circles in America, right now, I believe, by Paul Peterson at his Program on Educational Policy and Governance at Harvard University.

That is all:).

Love,
Ben

The silver lining in this very dark cloud

The one silver lining in this very dark cloud of hositility and aggression in the political and market and cultural environment, right now, is that it could not be any more obvious, at this point, I don't think, just how useless all this aggression is and has been. It could not be any clearer, I don't think, just how blind this alley is and that there is no genuine progress in this direction.

At the end of all of this, we must ask ourselves, "Why?"

I'm sure we'll have answers. Lots of self-righteous, self-glorifying answers that make us look like we had more real answers than we really did. And all of this hostility and ugly treatment of people, in the meantime. And, sadly, all for naught.

People, like governments, do all the wrong things before they get to the right ones. Freedom, including the freedom to be hostile and aggressive and intimidate the freedoms of others from any useful enjoyment, and experience gives us an opportunity to learn. And, in this case, it means learning just how big of dicks we can really be. The answer is that our potential as dicks truly is endless. Hitler, Stalin, Mao. That is why that rationalization is so ugly. Because we can always point to someone, somewhere who has been more ugly, more extreme than we are being to justify our own ugliness. I wonder how far we will have to go down this road of hostility and aggression before we face ourselves.

But the one really serious silver lining is that we can't keep doing it forever. Eventually we will have to face up. Because the consequences just get more and more obvious from here on out.

Love,
Ben

Learning and education are what you make of them, always

I take it back. When I was still feeling really hurt about being fired from Eisenhower I said that it is was school of last resort and that I wouldn't send my own kids there. I take that back. I was just feeling hurt. I love Eisenhower and everyone there. I love all of my friends, no matter how much they've hurt me. When they've ignored me when I've been clear that they were hurting me, that has been the most serious rupture in our relationship. Trust, as it turns out, is a two way street. It's about being trustworthy with people we care about. But it's also about having plenty of room to screw up and to learn about how to be more of what each of us needs. And that goes for everyone, including those who hurt and intimidate others intentionally as a strategy for compelling some behavior that we want.

What I thought as a kid is still true, I'm convinced. You can get a great education anywhere, depending on where you set your sights. Learning and education are what you make of them. The greatest in every field have come from a wide variety of backgrounds, even as they fruitlessly fight over which background does it better. That's what a lot of debates about education are about. There is substance in those debates, as well, as we raise our expecations of what we think all students might be capable of, and as we hope to let go the legacies of both pity and privilege that too often pollute education and American society.

I'm really concerned about how the country is talking, right now, about all of the issues we face. Education, war, wealth, inequity, terrorism, health care, all of it.

We keep escalating the rhetoric and the political fight and it keeps crowding out the more substantial debates and discussions. And we pretending both that it doesn't matter. And that none of it is connected with so many of the poor consequences that we are facing, right now - a 2-year rising violent crime rate, two quarters of slow economic growth, and a spike in the number of deaths of Iraqis and American soldiers in Iraq, right now. I have no doubt in my mind that these outcomes are connected to the escalating aggression and romanticism and fetish with aggression in America and the world, right now. It is perfectly clear to me, at this point. My only question is when will we figure it out and learn the lesson.

We learn from all kinds of sources. From teachers. From parents. From friends and family. From bosses and jobs. From books. From watching the examples and mistakes of others. From colleagues and co-workers. From lovers. From a million different experiences.

We learn and get our broader educations in this world from all over. And it is that broader education that really fills out who we are.

We learn in cities and suburbs and small towns. We learn in schools and in workplaces and in churches and in homes. We learn because it is our grappling with how to understand a world that perpetually seems beyond our reach.

A liberal education prepares us to learn in the deepest, wisest, most profound ways around the most important themes, as much as more narrow technical educations in our specified fields.

We learn everywhere.

I'm about to be head out for a theater group, EMU Theater here in Lawrence, I belong to where I learn quite a bit, really. And it reminds me that all of us have the opportunity to learn all of the most important and profound themes that we need given an openness and active reflection on a life that often is and seems beyond our grasp.

Education never ends that grasp. It just perpetually extends it.

Love,
Ben

The absurdity of the Iraq war debate

Michael Kinsley writes an very good column in today's Washington Post about the absurdity of the political manuevering in the debate over the war in Iraq overwhelming a substantive debate and discussion about the war.

The Troop Funding Trap

Michael essentially argues that conservative arguments about funding and defunding the war for liberals to vote their consciences is disingenuous since they are also arguing, rightly, that any attempt to do so would undercut support for the troops.

I sympathize with that argument because the substantial debate and discussion over the war has so taken a back seat to the political maneuvering that it crowds out much room for those who might oppose the war except to do something that they, too, fear might cost lives of American soldiers.

It also makes it much clearer to me that everyone involved in this debate are in good faith, whether I agree with them or not.

Our problem, right now, is that we have so escalated the aggression, intimidation, propaganda, political maneuvering, ideological polarization and other forms of manipulation and isolation to find a decent end to this war that we have lost touch with the more substantial discussion and debate about what should be done and why.

I, personally, share the concern by conservatives that insurgent and terrorist groups have learned the means of manipulating media reporting on war activities to undermine confidence in a war effort. I also share their belief that though this war was very poorly engaged up front - especially in the debate and discussion that preceded and, too often, did not precede it; I do not share the pretension that more muscle rather than more thought was needed to be more successful up front - that we are responsible for this situation, now, given an American public that overwhelmingly supported an invasion that Iraqis did not vote for. I also agree with the arguments that Frederick Kagan has made that what is needed is adequate security for Iraqis to arrive at a political solution until it is clear that the Iraqi government responsible for that security - and not just a politically manipulated vote by Moqtada Al Sadr's political and militia forces - want Americans to leave because they believe they are adequately prepared to resolve the security nightmare that exists there now.

Michael is right that many conservatives have put liberals into a double bind on this argument. And liberals who are concerned that it is the American presence and not the absence of that presence that most provokes violence in Iraq have a good faith and stronger argument for withdrawal that needs to be engaged.

But conservatives are not engaging it, right now. Because they have gotten tired of being bullied by liberal activists and journalists. And liberals are not engaging the argument for supporting the Iraqi security forces until they are ready for us to leave because they are tired of being bullied by conservative activists and journalists and because they were drug into a war that they didn't want in the first place.

And that conflict between American conservatives and liberals is escalating, right now, at just the time when it needs to be deescalating and a more thoughtful, engaged discussion needs to take place.

No matter what escalated levels of polarization are dividing the country, right now, we must face the very serious reality that we are all in the same boat in this war. We all care. We all know people or care about people whose lives are on the line in this war. We all care about Iraqis who, along with American servicepeople, are losing their lives in the highest numbers, this month, since the surge.

Our problem, right now, is that we have so escalated the political conflict over the war - in government, in the media, in nongovernmental institutions, in activist circles, everywhere - that we have muted and undermined a more serious and needed substantial discussion about the future course of this war on its merits and not based on bullying and intimidation and manipulation.

The irony for someone like me is that this is exactly why political science and the social sciences, generally, were developed as a field. Because of this tendency to manipulate discussion, information, perception, engagement, and judgment to accomplish predetermined political or other ends. And that is why, for all of the cynicism that so many people carry about the capacity of universities and more thoughtful folks to think through such difficult issues, those folks do the very important work that they do. Because the alternative is a world where debates and discussions are perpetually manipulated for predetermined ends. And intellectually honest debate and discussion does not take place.

The answer to Michael's conumdrum is that we cannot resolve the debate over this war with political maneuvering or intimidation. We can only resolve the debate over this war with substantial, engaged discussion, debate, reflection, and understanding.

It has taken this most recent turn by conservatives in a more offensive, intimidating direction for me to see that this persistent escalation of the pressure and heat to will out on difficult issues where intimidation is romanticized over honest, engaged discussion is exactly why so many cultures have gone down ugly, aggressive pathes. Why religions have warred on one another. Why ethnic groups have "cleansed" one another. Why ideological groups have killed, imprisoned, oppressed and long since destroyed millions of lives in the 20th century and for the entirety of human history.

Because the aggression escalates and escalates and escalates until, finally, our consciences face the reality of our behavior and its consequences.

Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Mohatma Ghandi each gave their lives over the course of the 20th century to see this legacy end.

As Bobby Kennedy spoke so eloquently:

"To often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force. Too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of other human beings. But this much is clear. Violence breeds violence. Repression breeds retaliation. And only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our souls. But when you teach a man to hate and to fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color, or his beliefs, or the policies that he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your home or your family, then you also learn to confront others, not as fellow citizens, but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation, but with conquest, to be subjugated and to be mastered. We learn at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens. Alien men with whom we share a city, but not a community. Men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in a common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force.

Our lives on this planet are too short, the work to be done is too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in this land of ours. Of course we cannot banish it with a program, nor with a resolution. But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life, that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness winning what satisfaction and fulfillment that they can. Surely this bond of common faith, surely this bond of common goals can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at the least, to look around at those of us of our fellow men. And surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again."

And as he said at Martin Luther King's death:

Even in our sleep,
pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.

Here is to the wisdom that the country so desperately needs, right now, to move in the direction of more genuine progress and the intellectually honest engagement and thought that animate it.

Love,
Ben

Pretending our way to progress

When you read headlines like these:

Violent Crime Up for Second Year

Weakest U.S. Growth in 4 years

Or with figures like these:

Civilian death toll in Iraq spikes in May

"The number of civilians killed in Iraq jumped to nearly 2,000 in May, the highest monthly toll since the start of a U.S.-backed security crackdown in February, according to figures released on Saturday."

Doubts cast on U.S. Iraq surge strategy

"May has been one of the deadliest months on record in Iraq - 10 American soldiers were killed on Memorial Day alone bringing US deaths to a total of 120, the highest since November 2004."

It is hard to imagine that so many people look at the current political and cultural climate and call it: progress.

Psychologists call it denial. I think it's largely ignorance and pride. And I am beginning to understand, better, just how the ugliest periods in humanity's history occur.

People are, by nature, aggressive animals. We are predators. And when we feel threatened, we very often turn to aggression to solve our problems. Sometimes aggression is needed to deal with a dangerous and immediate threat. But very often our aggressive instincts betray us, because the undermine the fundamental quality of homo sapiens that has made them such a successful species - thought and communication.

And when aggression and threats of aggression becoming escalated and heated, and when aggression becomes a popular strategy for resolving a social concern or conflict, many people get afraid to deescalate aggression and to engage thoughtfully and with common cause for fear of appearing weak, and inviting the aggression of those who are threatening.

And, sadly, this is how the worst abuses of power and worst forms of aggression take hold of a culture. Genocide occurs because a group becomes convinced by its ability to threaten and intimidate others with its power, numbers, and might that it can, often finally, resolve its problems and disputes with increasingly escalated levels of aggression. The failures of the current period are almost assuredly because of increasingly escalated levels of aggression. And the sad fact of this trend is that since aggression does not solve these problems, it just continues to escalate and be rationalized (rationalized often after deescalation as well, sadly) until it is engaged more honestly and only confronted with the least necessary possible aggression when aggression is more clearly necessary because thoughtful engagement is not an option, and until the consciences of the population finally face the consequences of such aggression.

And the saddest fact of human history is that more aggressive, less thoughtful peoples perpetually turn to intimidation to resolve their conflicts and solve their problems. And yet it so consistently fails them. And they fail to face that failure, out of pride and defensiveness about their choice of aggression and intimidation to resolve their conflicts and problems and all of the tragic consequences it creates.

We persistently try to pretend and pose and intimdate our way to progress, rather than thoughtfully consider the needs of progress and our needs as people with common goals and values. And the most fundamental need that we have for progress and addressing all of our other needs is freedom.

The trick is that we cannot pretend to make realities go away that have resulted from the unintended consequences of even our best intentioned efforts. Intimidation is not the same thing as thought. In fact, brute force is the most clearly distinguished behavior from thoughtful reflection and engagement that we likely have. It is an illusion. A parlour trick. But the realities remain long after the illusion is over whether we engage those realities with reason or not.

Pretending that things are going better than they are when we are perpetually bullying and intimidating our way through difficult issues does not make those realities go away. It just pretends while the realities get worse.

There is no way to pretend your way to progress. The Nazis discovered that. The Soviets discovered that. We will all discover that in the 21st century. Or be doomed to repeat these and so many tragic consequences from a world rationalized around force as our governing philosophy.

It's so sad that so many so many people will rationalize so many awful ways that we treat one another all in the name of pride and an unwillingness to face our mistakes.

It is also very much human nature. And our nature that makes it possible for us to move forward is forgiveness.

The most important check that we have in democratic countries on our more aggressive, brute, intimidating tendencies is not our democratic institutions with their checks and balances, their separated powers, their federalist and decentralizing structure, their political parties with different coalitions and philosophies, or protections for freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and the press.

The most important check we have in democratic countries on our more aggressive, intimidating tendencies is our own consciences, thought, engagement, and liberal values.

Our most important and, ultimately, only realistic check on our aggressive and bad behavior, is not the aggression of others in authoritative situations. That is and should be a last resort.

Our most important and only realistic check on our aggressive and bad behavior is ourselves, our consciences, and the thought and liberal democratic values which animate those consciences.

Love,
Ben

An encouraging sign for the direction of the coming democratic discussion

George Will, for all of his disappointing digging on Barry Bonds, lately, comes through in a big way with his most recent column.

The Case for Conservativism

This is both a strong case for conservativism and for the general direction for the country. Now, I say that as someone who thinks that liberalism also has a strong case to make and who thinks that George is playing to liberalism's current weaknesses that too many liberals are arrogantly parading as their means to electoral victory. The shift that I see occuring among conservatives toward more libertarian themes is a very good sign for the democratic discussion, the country, and the future of liberal democratic values taken more seriously. The future of liberal democratic values needs to embrace greater freedoms, which is where authentic liberal progress lies when it is not being compromised by the fears and cowardice of those who must use force to persuade when their ideas are not strong enough.

But, in this regard, liberals have a very powerful case to make, as well.

The strongest themes in liberalism are in how compassionate, decent people look after the welfare of others and themselves and greater equity on their behalf, in a world where winners are perpetually looking out for themselves at the expense of losers, too often. Liberals are also concerned with a more limited scope for government, in areas of morality and prohibitions on sexual activity (namely, sodomy laws that have effectively been overturned by the Supreme Court after years of liberal and libertarian efforts in this regard), homosexuality, abortion, drug prohibition, alcohol age restrictions (how many people who lived through the 21-year-old alcohol age limit, liberals or conservatives, actually support that limit?) regulations of speech and expression, internet, movies, music, performance and gaming (older liberals, like Tipper Gore and Hillary Clinton, may want to regulate music and gaming, but younger liberals are more than fed up with such prudish efforts), relaxing of laws and penalties against illegal immigration (especially of the sort of immigration that is meant to support families and find economic opportunity and political freedom and leave countries that promise neither), prostitution (liberals are more typically in favor of sensible efforts to legalize prostitution, in my experience, than are conservatives), and many of my liberal friends, myself included, oppose smoking bans even as too many support them (for reasons that are understandable but which also limit the reasonable freedom of people to smoke in public places together, of their own accord, without smoking bans limiting all such congregation).

It is true that there are far too many liberal efforts that limit freedom. The efforts to curb free speech and free thought in places like Canada and Europe are the limitations on freedom that are most serious to me. Laws against criticism of religion, laws against Holocaust denial, laws limiting the freedom of the press and making libel and slander much easier to find civil damages for, and other laws that undermine what I think are the most important freedoms in liberal democracies - the freedoms of conscience, thought, speech, expression, religion, and other similar freedoms - are the most serious legal limitations on important freedoms that I can think of. Liberal efforts to curb economic freedom, freedom of employers and employees to make grown-up and even not-s0-grown-up decisions without the intervention of a court, freedom of citizens from overburdening government and taxation for many purposes that would much better be addressed voluntarily in civil society and with much more economic abundance, I am quite convinced from empirical evidence from well-supported non-profits and universities; freedom of people of different genders, racial, ethnic, and religious groups, immigrants, classes of disabilities, and other individuals from various groups to resolve problems between themselves as grown-ups - freely, through mutual engagement and persuasion and understanding.

There are a million flaws in political liberalism that I do not want to spend all of my time harping on, because it is the strengths of liberalism which led me to be a liberal for most of my life.

When I was growing up, liberals were the people - the adults, especially - who let people and kids (since I was a kid) be themselves, more, with more acceptance. Liberals were people like theater teachers and debate coaches and English teachers and the art teachers and the special education teachers who cared about people for themselves, who listened and engaged ideas, and who let people - and kids, especially, since I was a kid - to think and talk freely without having to worry that they would be judged for their thoughts or ideas or random utterances or taste in music or movies.

Now, as I grow up, I realize that this was a romantic notion of liberalism and liberals. Plenty of conservatives and libertarians were among those less judgmental, more open-minded folks. And plenty of liberals were and are far less open-minded than many of those conservatives and libertarian folk. Many of the liberals I thought were perfectly open-minded have disappointed me in my dealings with them as lacking faith in their own ideals, especially their sense of compassion and understanding and forgiveness and support for all people. Especially when it comes to conservatives.

As I have taken off my rose-colored glasses, it has become clear to me that liberals have often upheld all of these ideals, except when it came to conservatives, who they have viewed as stupid, narrow-minded, bigoted, greedy, mean-spirited, and all sorts of stereotypes that liberalism feeds on too often. Many of these qualities are accurate descriptions of many conservatives. They are also accurate descriptions of many liberals. And the irony to me, always, is that too many of these qualities are as if not more true of many liberals as they are of many conservatives. And worst of all, the liberals who hold such stereotypes closest to their bitter little hearts are the same folks who are, generally, far dumber, more narrow-minded, more bigoted, greedy, mean-spirited, and all of those stereotypes more than many, many, if not most conservatives.

Plenty of conservatives are far smarter, open-minded, unprejudiced, generous, compassionate and all sorts of virtuous qualities than many, many liberals. E.O. Wilson, for instance, is far more of all of these qualities, in my experience, than most people I know, nevertheless most liberals. David Gergen and Andrew Sullivan, as well. I don't know Frederick Kagan, Francis Fukuyama, and John Keegan well, but I would imagine, given their work and my experience with most conservatives, they are more generous than most folks. George Will is not the most generous person I've ever kept tabs on, but he's more of all of these things than most people, nevertheless most liberals. It's really pretty insulting how such stereotypes get thrown around by so many liberals for so many conservatives who are generally some of the better people I am familiar with.

The better people I know are typically the most thoughtful, in my experience. They are far from perfect. First of all because there is no such thing as perfection, which is an illusion that has now and forever haunted humanity with its never kept promise of people who do not make mistakes or who are without serious sin. The best people I know take up pursuits that bore or seem too goody-goody to most people. They are liberals and conservatives, people of faith and atheists and agnostics, people who engage in public service and people who engage in less classical public service efforts like business and law (ok, so law can be a noble pursuit, but so often it is a pain in the ass and far too often undermines more genuine public service efforts, is the truth). The better people I know do things that help others and not just themselves and who maintain a faith that doing so is good for everyone, including themselves. They advocate for unpopular causes for reasons of principle rather than covering their own asses. They care about the bigger picture, and not just their small little role in it.

The better people I know are those who take seriously the knowledge and understanding of bigger and better ideas and who take a world where such a ideas are given room to grow and develop more seriously.

And that world and those ideas are given the most room by a world that takes liberal values - the values of freedom and equity, without trade-off or substitute - seriously and doesn't try to artificially end debate on important questions, as George mistakenly does in this article, I think, when he argues that the debate about the desirability of a welfare state should be over and the welfare state accepted as a needed element of a decent society, something that I disagree with, for all of my very serious liberal callings.

Liberal societies, first and foremost and above all, leave all serious and important questions and debates and discussions up for argument and thought and engagement and more argument, and thought and engagement and more argument for the hopefully and likely long course of humanity.

And the best people in liberal societies take those ideas and thoughts and arguments and debates and discussions and engagement seriously. They do not artifically try to resolve such questions by force, though all of those people, myself included, are very likely and without much doubt in my mind, guilty of artificially closing off such debates in ways that I hope they regret. If they don't regret doing so, they shouldn't be too concerned because no amount of effort to close off such debate will, now or ever, in fact, close off such debates. That's the beauty of liberal societies. I nor anyone else has to ask anyone's permission to engage any debate or discussion that they damn well please.

Liberalism, at its heart, is about a society of hope and openness and freedom to change and learn and grow. Liberalism takes no back seat to conservativism for its embrace of freedom. Largely because freedom is the heart of the best ideas and inclinations of both liberalism and conservativism, when each of them are not giving into the pride and temptation of their weaker variations and their weakers ideas and arguments. Liberals and conservatives of a stronger and more honest faith know that it is liberal values - meaning values that embrace freedom and learning and faith and love and compassion and forgiveness and a commitment to the interests of all people and not ourselves alone - which open up the surest path to responsibility for all of these values and all others which matter and which are the true bedrock and strength of more virtuous societies.

Liberal democratic societies hold no monopoly on virtue. Nor do they guarantee it. Nor should they see themselves or should individuals committed to such values see themselves as holding any monopoly on virtue or wisdom. But such societies and values create more space for such virtue and wisdom to be nurtured and to develop an ever growing Matthew's effect of virtue and wisdom and the wealth of positive consequences that come with both. It is our liberal values and our appreciation for the freedoms it offers and the concern for others as much as for ourselves that provides that legacy as much as our conservative appreciation for virtue and wisdom that have served us for the length of humanity's history. There is no idea or ideology and certainly no person who has a monopoly on virtue or wisdom. I certainly don't, that's for sure. Perhaps people like Adolph Hitler and Karl Marx or Fred Phelps and Noam Chomsky are the true believers and true knowers of virtue and wisdom among us. I'm sure they think so. I have my doubts:).

There is no such thing as anyone or any group or any government or any authority with any monopoly on virtue or wisdom. It never has existed and never will exist. It's an illusion that just ain't so.

I've made plenty of dumb and bad choices for a person whose supposed to be smart and decent. I wish that weren't so. And that is the line that good people cross. They make mistakes. And they feel remorse. And that remorse and the desire to make good, and not any illusion of perfection, is what makes us good. One of the perpetually exploited weaknesses of good people is their fear that they can't forgive themselves and that they'll never be forgiven. It is a foolish way that we treat ourselves and one another since it often keeps bad behavior in place.

Good people are not people who have never sinned or screwed up, because no matter how many protestations about Jesus Christ to the contrary, there is no such thing as a person who has never sinned or screwed up except, perhaps, for those who have died before they could get in any serious trouble. Jesus' most serious mistake, I believe, is that he was arrogant enough to think he was the son of God and to say so or at least imply so publicly, when what he really was a very decent and wise and good man who had terribly important wisdom and virtue to offer to a barbaric society that prided itself, as we do today, as the final arbiter on all matters of importance and virtue.

Jesus was not the son of god or the messiah, one of the many reasons that Jews, rightly, take such issue with his claims of divinity. But he was one of the wisest, most decent, best men of his time who made an indelible impact on ancient as well as modern liberal and, whether they like it or not, illiberal societies, despite his mistakes, not because he didn't make any. The irony of arguing that he made no mistakes is that he never could have learned to be such a good and decent and wise man had he not. Wisdom and virtue and decency don't come in a bottle or in divinity. That's the notion of the proud or the naive. Wisdom and virtue come from thought and practice. And plenty of screwing up.

People, for all their pride, don't get good or better or even approach the most powerful wisdom or virtue because they've gotten it right all the time. They get there with plenty of screwing up. And plenty of love and patience and teaching and correction from the people around them who love them.

Making mistakes is the most common and the most universal way that we all learn. Some of us learn with more mistakes than others. Sadly, many of us never learn before we leave this life. But we all learn, and we all make mistakes. Mistakes, more than the learning, is what all people have most in common. And our mistakes are useful, even as far too many of our mistakes are destructive of others and ourselves, insofar as they contribute to our learning and our lives.

Conservatives and liberals have much to share in this regard, since all of the living, breathing ones have many, many mistakes, sins, what-have-you to learn from and to allow others to learn from as well.

And it is getting honest about this fact and finding the courage to let people share them more openly without fear of hurt or punishment and not forever suppressing it and keeping it under cover which is what keeps so much of it and so much repetition of sins and mistakes in place. Getting more open and honest about this fact and about our mistakes is the most important bit of virtue and wisdom that we could all practice today (me included, though I must admit I'm a little shy as long as I have reason to fear that I will be treated badly by others). It would go a very long way toward removing the persistent denial and bullshit and cynicism that is perpetually fucking up life for all of us.

George's column is a hopeful sign for the democratic discussion. Let's hope that others follow suit in their faith in our ever liberalizing values and conservation of our great heritage.

Love,
Ben

The problem with Rudy (and with all of the Presidential candidates)

Andrew Sullivan references this piece by David Boaz of the Cato Institute as a warning to more libertarian minded voters to beware the temptation of Rudy Guliani.

Libertarians, beware the rigid reign of Rudy

I have to admit that Guliani has seemed a tempting candidate to me for the very libertarian tendencies that Boaz cites in this piece. I am growing more and more wary of his more authoritarian impulses and, as importantly, the more authoritarian direction that his lead has generated in the Republican debates. The aggressive and authoritarian impulses in both Democratic and Republican politics the last 6 years has been kind of scary, really. There are no perfect choices. Ron Paul is the best choice among Republicans for domestic politics, but I'm not convinced that he has really thought through international security issues.

Barak Obama has been my favored Democratic candidate for his promise to transcend a lot of partisan narrowness in favor of more genuine commitment to a more thoughtful political dialogue. But Presidential politics, and Democratic primary politics, in particular, seems to be overwhelming that promise. I just listened to an NPR report yesterday morning that featured Barak telling a Union crowd that he won't shop at Walmart because of labor practices. It's not the worst position to take - Walmart, like a million employers, does have a reputation for treating employees as usable and disposable rather than as human beings; though treating Walmart with the same regard and just the general trend of treating people with that same regard (do you really think that anti-Walmart folks generally favored treating Lewis Libby more decently?) makes the backers of the anti-Walmart sentiments hypocrits at best and no better than Walmart, at worst - but I'm tired of power politics persistently overwhelming more substantial and engaged discussion and thought, which is what make Barak Obama such an attractive candidate.

Bill Richardson is a candidate that has a lot more mileage, today, with me than before those Democratic debates. I like both his libertarian liberal bent and his serious international policy and security knowledge and experience without the arrogance of Joe Biden who I fear would scare the shit out of the world as an American President, right now, unless he got some serious humility. I am impressed, in retrospect, with Richardson's honest admission about his somewhat petty racist reaction to the Alberto Gonzalez "scandal" (Has there ever been more a scandal that really wasn't a scandal? Except for Paul Wolfowitz's crucifixion, that is). I'm proud of any Presidential candidate who admits his faults out loud. It's refreshing. And I'd like to see much more of it. I'll be looking seriously at Bill Richardson in the coming months.

I like Ron Paul because he opens up the discussion about government power. I am not enamoured of his views of international security and have my doubts that he feels comfortable using government power for security efforts, domestically and internationally, when they are necessary. Right now, though this can and hopefully will change. But, right now, he doesn't pass my, "Would you trust this guy to fight terrorists when he needs to?" test. And though his advertising his vote for impeaching Bill Clinton may have played well to his Republican audience, it was bad news for me as someone who still very strongly believes that those impeachment proceedings were petty partisanship at it's worst. I'm not enamoured by Rudy Guliani's far too comfortable relationship with government power, either. I like his more libertarian commitments. But I've never been in love with his James Q. Wilson strictly-enforce-every-lesser-crime approach to crime and government authority, the very reasoning that so many conservatives and liberals seem enamoured of, these days.

Rudy is exactly what the American population is crying out for, right now, which would explain his high poll ratings. Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are similar candidates among Democrats. There are too many to count among Republicans.

I want a candidate who I can count on to be thoughtful about government and power, who wants as big a sphere for personal and every other serious freedom as possible, and who feels comfortable with the use of power, especially for security needs, domestically and internationally, when it is needed.

I don't know who that candidate is, at this point. But I do know that more than anything what needs to change is citizen attitudes about power. This festish and doomed romanticism that they have with power, right now, needs to end sooner rather than later. It will wear away whether they like it or not because the credibility necessary to make authority work cannot sustain itself when citizens are and feel run roughshot over. But it will wear away the more they are being run roughshot over and it will more quickly the more citizens think about what power really can and cannot do.

Ron Paul has engaged in serious thought about the limits of government authority. He would do well to think about how government authority should be used when it must. Rudy and Barak and the largest swath of both Democratic and Republican candidates would do well to think more about better limitations on authority.

More importantly, all of us, citizens and leaders, alike, would do well to think about the limits of power.

Love,
Ben

The problem with the world

The now and since the beginning of time problem with the world is not whether we're good or bad. We've always been good and bad, no matter how much we try to pretend different.

The now and since the beginning of humanity problem with the world is the bad overwhelming the good. It's all the shit doesn't matter in the world overwhelming all the shit that does.

It's all of our baser instincts constantly overwhelming our nobler, more thoughtful, more decent liberal democratic values. They often do so in the name of liberal democratic values or morality or a million other nobler causes. Because noone likes to admit what dicks we are in public. We're all too afraid of looking like dicks and feeling others' wrath and their self-righteous efforts to make us be better.

That problem will persist till the end of humanity until we figure out that it is our more liberal impulses that allow and have always allowed us to be and become better more quickly, readily, sustainably, and thoughtfully. And when I say liberal, here, I don't mean politically left. I mean liberal, meaning liberty loving. I mean the impulses that we know down deep in our hearts are our truest selves: to be free.

And it is all the shit in the world that has us trapped in so many ways in foolish, stupid pursuits and not taking nearly seriously enough our most valuable and liberty loving efforts. And, sadly, that situation is often created by the more educated and supposedly liberal amongst us trying to hold down and keep out our more foolish, stupid pursuits, rather than just embracing them and us for having them and embracing all of us, each one us, and all of each one of us while we all look for higher ground.

That is the most serious problem in the world more than any other.

The good thing is that we have all kinds of opportunity to live our ideals. It just means letting go of our cowardice, embracing our capacity for thought and honest engagement, and having the courage to let people be themselves while we all work to be better.

Love,
Ben

Making me feel bad for who I am

I don't think in my entire life that I have ever so frequently been made to feel bad for who I am.

It may be that people think I'm too liberal, which would be ironic since I'm not really a conventional liberal at all (I support the surge, after all).

But I think it's because people think I'm too nice. Which has been one of my stronger qualities since I was a kid. I'm not always nice. Noone is. But I think a lot of people, right now, just think of me as too laid back, too easy going, too nice, too soft, too weak.

That's also kind of ironic given how much shit I've eaten, lately, and how much strength I've had to have to make it through all of it without bitterness and jadedness swallowing up my life.

But I've never had so many encounters with people where they seem to imply with their body language, "What's wrong with you?"

I suppose somewhere between Ahmadenijad and me is the right balance. Somewhere between Hitler and Ghandi. Somewhere between Stalin and King.

The inanity of it makes me want to give up much of the time, these days. What's the use of being thoughtful when muscle will always trump?

Because that's bullshit, that's why. Everyone knows that muscle can only do so much. We're all just too big of pricks to acknowledge that muscle just fucks so much up. We're too proud, and too stupid, and too foolish, to face what is plainly the reality if we didn't spend so much of our lives trying to defend our foolish choices. And I, for one, am tired of that bullshit fucking up life for everyone. And I mean everyone. The whole foolish human race.

And our foolishness and pride will be on display for our progeny and their progeny whether we want to face that or not. And I don't care, anymore, how much people try to resist facing up. I just know that all of our lives are over and our kids and grandkids are studying us and our choices, the question they will ask (or should ask) will be, "Did they do the wise thing? Did they do what was best for everyone, and not just for themselves?" And they won't give a shit about our pride. They never do. I don't give two shits about the pride of my parents' generation, who are so full of themselves I can barely stand it. So are their children, unfortunately. And so will be their children and their children if we can't find a way to reduce and end this propensity for us to hide how bad we are instead of becoming good and always better for real. Imposing ourselves on one another has never worked to this end, for the entirety of human history. Ghandi knew that. As did King. We just are too goddamn proud and foolish and cowardly to acknowledge it ourselves.

And I, for one, am tired of being made to feel bad so good people won't have to face their pride. And become great.

Love,
Ben

Too much aggression

I really don't care how I get branded, at this point. There is too much aggression in the country and in the world, right now. Everyone trying to act tough and stare down the tough guy across the way. This cartoon from Kevin Kallaugher in the March 29, 2007 edition of The Economist captures the spirit of the times better than any I've seen and perhaps better than anything I've read. It crowds out discussion and debate and brainstorming and independent thought and genuine concern for people and resolving problems they face, all of the values that matter most in liberal democracies. And I don't care, anymore, if that makes me look soft or weak for saying so. It's just a fact. It is undermining important national and international policy discussions and many of the goals that we say we want to achieve. It is the pride of less thoughtful, more action-oriented folks taking action and failing to thoughtfully reflect on the consquences of those actions. But life tends to have consequences, whether we reflect on them and our mistakes or not. I am becoming clearer that so many of the most serious problems in the world are the consequence of us being less thoughtful and perpetually making the mistakes, first, no matter how tragic, rather than reflecting on our actions and how to be more thoughtful and, thus, effective. The claim on the need for more and more aggression is the perpetual rationalization for all of the ugliest events of human history. We are naturally aggressive animals, human beings. We are born predators. But our aggression and predation betrays us and blinds us to the intelligent thought, engagement, and discussion that is needed to resolve our most serious problems. And I don't care, anymore, how that makes me look. I just want us to face it, sooner rather than later, and to move forward in a more sensible and thoughtful direction.

Love,
Ben

Someone who agrees that force is the necessary and best means of governing

Completely randomly, today, I happened by Paul Hill's webpage on the Army of God website (if you have not seen the documentary on the militant wing of the pro-life movement, Soldiers in the Army of God, I highly recommend it).

Why Shoot an Abortionist?

If you are interested in others who share your view that force is the necessary and best means of commanding obedience from a recalcitrant nation, you will find a friend in Paul.

Enjoy.

Love,
Ben

Rediscovering my innocence

Something's happened for me, here, recently. I'm recapturing my innocence, I think. I've been facing up to a lot of my less noble qualities, lately. My jadedness about some things, especially love and teaching and policy and politics and just more noble efforts, generally. My self-centered attitude toward too many things in my life. Sex in particular.

The world of porn is full of recreational fantasy. But, lately, I've started to face just how far its taken me from more innocent and equitable attitudes toward sex and love in my past. There's nothing wrong with porn, necessarily. And it can be a fun outlet for both single people and couples looking for recreational sexual release without all of the dangers of casual sex or the uniformity or repression of one's own passions and turn-ons or experiences of a less risque sex life.

But the truth is that more loving and equitable sex is the norm I want in my life. I know from my longest committed relationship that lots of kinky sex is, perhaps, a warning sign that something is not right. That people in a relationship are, perhaps, not feeling as loving toward one another and the sex is just a manifestation of that fact. I know from the beginning of that same relationship and my first really serious relationship and sexual relationship that loving sex as a norm is a sign of just how well things are going in the relationship. That is the feeling I want for life with a partner. And all of the cynicism to the contrary on that just leave me a little skeptical that cynical advice should be trusted. Cynicism is almost always based in a reality. But it is, generally, a reality that cynics have resigned themselves to and lost track of the consequences for that resignation and the fatalism that animates it in their lives.

Lately, I've really started to face this loss of innocence in my life and started to reembrace a lot of personal ideals, as much as political ideals, that animated my younger days of learning and exploring the world. Sex is one place where I've explored this. Money and education are two others. I want some level of independent wealth, so I'm not dependent on any job or pension for income or retirement. And I do want the option of a life of independent writing and teaching if I am not happy in a school or university job. But I'm not as jaded about the need to be so competitive in this arena, though I'm fairly confident that I can make quite a bit of money in my lifetime, assuming that I live to a ripe age. And I want an educational experience that is good for both my learning and which helps young people from a broad range of backgrounds. My experience at Eisenhower seriously jaded me about doing work with kids and folks from less advantaged backgrounds since it meant getting shit on regularly by people whom have been jaded for a long time much more seriously than anything I've been experiencing. That is something on my heart I will have to deal with to reclaim some of my younger idealism: the jadedness that I have absorbed out of my experiences at Eisenhower.

But I am realizing, today, that there is nothing quite as nice as living a life out of a more genuine and decent heart and mind. Everything else in life is just one long rationalization for what shitheads we've become. And I just have no interest in rationalizing that because life seems kind of wasted when any of us are always rationalizing what shitheads we've become instead of just facing up to what shitheads we've become.

The nice thing about having jaded folks reject you is that you don't have to live a life trying to pander to or figure out or otherwise rationalize the jadedness. You are free to find a life where jadedness isn't so prevalent, and leave more cynical folks to their own devices. I do see, now, how far the cynical among us will go to rationalize their cynicism. But I'm letting go of my own cynicism about the idea that virtue doesn't pay or that jadedness is more honest or decent or genuine than it really is.

There really is no replacement for a life where you know you can trust your own outlook on life because it is not centered or seriously informed by jadedness. And there really is nothing worse in the world than not being able to trust yourself and others not being able to trust you, for real, because you've allowed your jadedness to substantially inform your worldview.

I don't want to live of life where I am constantly trying to justify my jadedness to my children, as so many adults that I met and knew growing up. It's an unhappy way to live. And I don't want it for my life, like so many of the adults I encountered in my life. I want something better.

And being honest about it with yourself and the pain and disappointment it represents and how it sits on your heart and the role it plays in distorting your worldview and informing bad choices on your part is the most important thing that a person can do to face up to its tragic consequences in their life.

The assistant principal I've written about who didn't seem to care about kids more genuinely suffered with this kind of jadedness and pain on her heart, I'm pretty clear. As did my principal and most of the teachers and administrators I've worked with. It's sad to see teachers with this on their hearts because it is a field where you would most expect idealism to animate their efforts and where it is most needed. But a jaded teaching population very much holds the same pain of disappointment and hurt and the fear that comes with it from lives that have been treated just as shabbily as anyone else and advocates many of the same jaded policies and holds onto more cynical ideas about life and people that keeps all that cynicism and jadedness in place.

That's as much the reality check for me that I want to rediscover my own innocence as any insight into my own psyche: I don't want to end up as unhappy as so many adults seem to end up or to lose track of just how unhappy I've become because I've just been unhappy for so long.

And I want a woman in my life who feels the same or is moving in that direction so that we can have a family that is more genuinely committed to our children's welfare and not just our fear and pain and disappointment with the world in the name of our children's welfare. I saw too much of that rationalization at Eisenhower. It made me very sad to watch adults live their lives like this and for kids to try to grow up amidst it.

I don't want that for myself or for my own children. I don't really want it for any children or any adult. But I must say that many adults, more than children, seem to rally for the very policies which will most entrench that unhappiness in their lives. They may not realize that is what they are doing, much of the time. They may believe it is for noble purposes. But, generally, the people who are responsible for this jaded, cynical, too often ignoble, cowardly, and stupid world we live in is: us.

And I, for one, do not want that in my life no matter how much others may try to justify or rationalize it.

I want something better.

Love,
Ben

Religion, conscience, freedom, and political regression

I very rarely read the Christian Science Monitor, anymore, because we used them in extemporaneous speaking when I competed on our college speech team and I was never much impressed with their news or analysis. Though I should clearly rethink that view and revisit the Monitor when I find excellent reporting on counterinsurgency strategy on its site like this interview by Dante Chinni with Bill Roggio.

But this article at the Monitor, I thought, captured so much that was wrong with our current political moment romaticizing force.

Higher Education's Missing Soul

I actually agree with the story's major thrust - that there is not enough discussion and engagement on campus on matters of religion and spirituality, matters of the soul - but I do take umbrage with efforts to impose such engagement.

In fact, it is the issue among any others where imposing a value is both a serious violation of conscience, counterproductive, and which illustrates the other futility of force to resolve an issue, especially a serious issue.

My major objection to the idea that religion courses should be mandated, which this article implies without openly backing, is not just that most people I know who are not interested in such discussions or who are not interested in mandated discussions of this kind or who are agnostic, atheist, non-religious, or anti-religious and don't always feel comfortable having such discussions or always want to have those conversations on a college mandated timeline, or that doing so is futile and counterproductive when people do not agree with the fundamental purposes of having that conversation or when they are not actively pursuing such conversations, or even that the substantive matters of faith - meaning teaching about timeless values of faith and virtue - are undermined by a conversation that, at the outset, is forced upon a person's conscience. All of these are very good reasons to disapprove of forcing religion on the consciences of students. But none of them are my major objection.

My major objection is that the most important and fundamental value of liberal principles and liberal democratic thought is that conscience, and religious conscience, especially, given our history, needs to be respected and as sovereign and independent as possible to make all of our other liberal values work. This is actually the fundamental point of my larger work - that conscience should both be as respected, independent, and sovereign as possible, that liberal values and the learning that occurs in a free world from ideas and their consequences work, better, with more freedom and independence for conscience, and that, as an empirical matter, choices and judgments are made as matters of conscience and independent thought whether we try to coerce that thought or those choices or not and that better choices are made and more honest thought and communication occurs the more freedom is available for such thought and conscience.

But the history of liberal and secular thought and liberal democracies is fundamentally oriented around such matters of conscience that people like Jesus of Nazareth, Martin Luther, Galileo Galilei, Mohatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King and millions of others have been killed, tortured, imprisoned, harrassed and otherwise imposed upon for their consciences for the long history and prehistory of humanity.

What is disturbing about calls for mandated religious curriculum is that it touches on the very isues that have been responsible for the worst abuses of power and many of the worst crimes against humanity that have been committed in our history. Hitler killed 6 million Jews as a matter of culture and heritage but, fundamentally, as a matter of conscience, because they held religious views different from his own. Stalin killed and imprisoned millions in Soviet Russia fundamentally because they disagreed with the Soviet regime. The Catholic Church in Europe ruled with theocratic corruption and power because they believed that their rule was more important than matters of conscience. Thomas Hobbes wrote the Leviathan as a rebuke of the religious violence and impositions that were derived from religious antagonisms and violence between Catholics and Protestants in 17th century Great Britain which were, fundamentally, matters of conscience.

This issue - matters of conscience and especially religious conscience - is the most fundamental issue to liberal values and liberal democracies. Out of conscience and thought flows everything else.

I am a soft atheist, meaning I don't believe in God, but I do take matters of faith and spirituality very seriously and believe that people of every matter of faith generally have more in common than not and that the substantive matters of faith, namely universal and timeless virtues (and vices), are of more importance than what I regard as an often futile effort to discuss or debate with believers the question of God's existence, which generally lies on a belief and assertion that they have maintained since finding or being introduced to their faith and which they are often not very open to questioning no matter what an empirical exploration of that question might reveal or open up for their lives.

But I love religious discussions. I seek them out. I sought out and was open to solicitation of discussions with many, many religious and not-so-religious people on campus and off-campus around religious and spiritual issues of a very broad range of religions and kinds and ideological orientations of religion when I was on a college campus more regularly. I was a brief member of groups from a Zen temple to a conservative Christian youth ministry. I sang in a Gospel choir, I engaged almost literally every single person who wanted to save my soul on campus and off campus, and I think I even changed a few minds and learned a lot, myself, along the way.

I was a youth leader in my teens at a little liberal Christian church in Wichita, Unity Church. I have a lot of good memories of that Church, a lot of reflections on what a nice experience it was growing up in that church, and take very seriously matters of spirituality and religion, including the life and example and ideas of Jesus. I have much more I can share about all my religious and spiritual views when I have time and inclination.

I would take a mandated religious course without hesitation or bitching or moaning or resistance and with a lot of enthusiasm for the course.

Many people would not. Many young people, in particular, would resist, moan, groan, and otherwise feel imposed upon and be unmoved by such an experience. That is exactly the problem with this current period and with the romanticism of force to resolve matters of conscience: it ignores what people really think. And that is the essence of why such efforts inevitably and have perpetually failed.

I very rarely hear an engaged or sensible argument for force to be used so freely and regularly as it is being argued and used today. It is a popular political moment. It is a sad one that has had and is having some more tragic consequences for those whom force is being used in more tragic and consequential ways - Haleh Esfandiari, in Iran, just to name one - all so that we can learn the lesson on the limits of power and force and of its evils and unfairness.

We will learn the lesson as we do every time we face such matters of conscience. Because, for all of our underdeveloped thought and consciences, we do, generally, care about getting to better thoughts and answers. But many people will and are being hurt in the meantime. All in the name of our hubris.

Mandating religious curriculum is not the tragedy of charging and imprisoning an intellectual with treason for disagreeing with your regime. But it is a violation of conscience that we should begin to take seriously if only to face the ugly consequences that this period of force has had for our consciences.

And our souls.

Love,
Ben