What the contemporary politics says about us

A.A. Gill has a fascinating, if snarky, column on Tony Blair in the New York Times, today, that has some insightful observations on the current, perpetually, and unappeasingly angry political mood in liberal democracies.

Great Britain and America look to me as part of a larger trend that I've observed, including the rejection of the European Constitution in France and the Netherlands, of an often anti-statist, anti-government mood among liberal democratic citizens (as well as pro-statist, pro-government moods, as it tickles their various fancies), as well as the angry pressure group mentality that has taken over so many of our political questions, this period and for much of humanity's history, really.

Tony Blair, Three-Time Loser

"Hatred of authority figures and rule-makers might all be an amusing part of the national character, the collective DNA — a Falstaffian, trenchant, robust skepticism to be admired, if it hadn’t grown so destructive and so intimidating.

This national knee-jerk abhorrence debilitates. Hate numbs the judgment, paralyzes the vitals of democracy. Revulsion leads to cynicism, which salts the field of open government. Nothing grows out of cynicism. This isn’t the same as the apathy that afflicts all rich, fat world democracies. Apathy can be turned; cynicism is implacable."

We clamor for our politicians to do our bidding. And then we hate them for doing so. We reject more reasonable, deliberative, intelligent engagement for a pressure-based politics that seeks our ends by any means necessary. And then we hate the politicians who accomodate our demands for curbing our freedom or failing to curb our violent or criminal ways or not delivering public services how we want them when we want them because we said so.

He's right. We've kind gone over the bend a little bit, this period. We're grown increasingly aggressive, angry, and cynical, feeding an attack-dog style of politics and journalism that substitutes take-down for engaged and thoughtful debate and discussion. We've given into our basest impulses around power. And then we've pretended that those impulses are more noble than they really are.

We are perpetually and literally fucking public servants and other folks, this period, using them up and then throwing them to the curb when we're done with them.

It's a fairly awful display, is what it is.

And the sad, crazy part is that it hasn't made things better. It's cynicism, which is another word for saying, "We have no vision for the future."

And then we've pretended, to ourselves, that it's all much more noble or more meaningful or more concerned for others than it really is.

It's one long load of bullshit, is what it is.

And we are responsible for it. All of us. Not Tony Blair. Or President Bush. Or any number of representatives in parliament or Congress. We are responsible for it. Whether we want to acknowledge that or not.

The world is a mess, right now. And it is our responsibility.

And the only way out is to genuinely take responsibility for that mess and cleaning it up, not to keep pretending like it's better than it really is.

But the hopeful note is that, in many places I encounter people, today, they are often taking more responsibility for life on their own. There are many places where people are still playing children, persistently whining for Papa Government to fix their problems for them and then railing against the very government that they've invited to be their paternal guardian. Or railing for more aggressive measures in the press or in the government, and then lamenting how dysfunctional the whole ordeal is.

People are kind of stupid and juvenile, much of the time, is the truth.

But they'll grow up. If we give them the space to do so. And maybe if we act as better reality checks for each others' foolishness rather than persistently pandering to peoples' basest and most aggressive, punitive, destructive impulses.

Those impulses are clearly not our most thoughtful or most noble.

But offer people freedom, and I think a fair comparison of liberal societies and illiberal societies will bear out, that, on balance, people will generally be better and more responsible for their choices, and their messes and their lives, I think.

It's not quite as bad as Mr. Gill thinks it is, here, I don't think. People aren't always the most noble creatures. But they'll get more noble the more free and responsible for their choices that they are. I'm fairly confident of that. Abraham Maslow convinced me of that in The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. And I think he's right. And, as it turns out, there may not be really any other choice in the matter, in the end. People generally and often take freedom that they are not given. Repression generally produces rebellion, of one kind or another.

But, for most people, rebellion generally gives way to a more mature responsibility. It's not generally so hateful as it is lacking trust and confidence in authority. And those are much more reasonable issues to take with government and authority, these days and all days, we must admit. Though taking government officials down has almost exactly zero to make that situation better.

Tony Blair and George Bush are dealing with the consequences of choices made that engender mistrust. They are not choices which are dramatically different than similar choices made by past political leaders, revered and reviled. And there is a lot of serious overreaction to those choices in the electorate and in the media, I think. But they're big boys. And all of us citizens are big kids. They and we will be ok. We'll pick ourselves up and fumble forward finding a better path to trust and build confidence in ourselves and one another again.

For all of our alternating role-playing as bullies and victims, we're really quite a resilient little culture, liberal democracies. And it is our liberal values, our love for liberty, that makes us most resilient in the face our ugly political displays like the one we've created this period.

We're children, often. Whining, complaining, temper-tantrum-throwing children.

But, like most children - and all children, at some level - we grow up.

And like most children, we grow up the more our freedom and our consciences are respected. Most sociopaths are raised in less loving, more aggressive households, likely. And most decent people are raised in more loving, more decent homes, generally.

And it is creating a loving home of our life here in liberal democratic cultures and societies and communities that we need to be focussed on if we want things in our lives to get better.

More aggression and manipulation is clearly not the direction of a better life for any of us. More decency, compassion, and liberal values clearly are.

We'll be alright. Because there really is only one direction that leads us to work better, relate better, and live more productively and decently with one another. And that is the direction of more decent, liberal values, which have made us as strong as we are today.

The whole world romaticizes illiberal values, because we want to believe that we are better than we are and that we can make all that bad stuff in the world go away with the simple force of our command.

But life doesn't work that way. Because liberal values are what make us more sociable and decent with one another so that we can accomplish goals together more readily and sustainably.

Decent, liberal values don't happen out of thin air or overnight. They are learned, over long periods of time, in schools and with teachers and with the more decent practioners of those values throughout the culture for much of our youth, our young adulthood, and then, hopefully, for the rest of our lives. And the more such values are learned consistent with our most liberal and open-minded thoughtfulness, the more likely they will be internalized by individuals within a culture.

We can't accomplish everything by being nice. But we accomplish more, together, by being more thoughtful and decent with one another while we tackle our common problems.

And repeated failure with more aggressive, illiberal impulses will probably be the only way that we will learn the big lessons on this the hard way. And that's ok. Sometimes the hard way is the better way. Though finding ways to make our hard lessons learned easier are probably better for everyone involved.

So, I think the better way of looking at the contemporary political mood is not necessarily the angry and unappeasable mob that would substitute cynicism and anti-social behavior for decency and thoughtfulness.

I think the better way of looking at the current period is a period of people fucking up for a good long time until they finally get a better path worked out. God knows I've done my share of fucking up. I imagine we all have, if we're honest with ourselves (which is what makes me nervous about Ms. Clinton, I must say; that she has such a hard time acknowledging, to herself, even, her fucking up).

The better path is in the direction of liberally educated and liberal democratic values. Which has almost zero to do with being a Democrat or a Republican and has everything to do with being a decent, thoughtful, compassionate, wiser, and independent-minded human being. Those people come in all shapes and sizes and ideological backgrounds. And the real work we have to do is encouraging everyone to want to be that kind of person. And for all of us to find more real safety, peace, prosperity, and life-affirming qualities of life as a result of a culture that takes such commitments more seriously.

Love,
Ben

Press, freedom, and power

In places in the world where press freedom is threatened, like Zimbabwe, this is what it looks like.

Zimbabwe Special Report: On a Rampage

The government or other groups intimidate journalists with jailings, charges, violence or other means. This is the essence of an illiberal society using force to undermine the freedom of one of the most important insitutions in a society, a free press.

In America and the West, bizarrely, the free press uses its freedom to pressure and intimidate - public servants, businesses, and other public and private institutions - through public pressure and aggressive investigation meant to take down public figures, whether such efforts serve constructive ends or not.

It's not as illiberal as, say, Zimbabwe. But neither is it the strongest liberal democratic commitments.

It'd be nice to live in a liberal democratic country or world where liberal commitments around engagement, thought, and free, open, and honest expression were taken seriously by its liberal democratic institutions, including the press.

But as long as those more substantial liberal values and commitments are not taken seriously, dictatorial regimes like Robert Mugabe's in Zimbabwe or wherever will be able to perpetually look at the more illiberal instincts and tactics of those of us in the West and say, "I do what you do, but with more force and more conviction to get the job done." That is the very same argument offered by radicals of every stripe in Western countries to their less radical brethren for why force is necessary and why they are the true believers in their various causes.

Is Robert Mugabe illiberal or a true believer? He is clearly illiberal. And so are all of our tactics for using force instead of persuasion to bully our way through difficult issues that need more thought and engagement and free, open, and honest expression.

It's not just that Robert Mugabe is worse. It's all bad. And always will be, no matter how we spin our more aggressive, illiberal ways.

Love,
Ben

A dark turn

I don't know why. But the world has taken a dark turn in the last few years.

Actually I do know why.

Because people are busy rationalizing their fears, their insecurities, their cowardliness, and their unwillingness to be bigger and more thoughtful.

We have convinced ourselves that shedding our compassion is a virtue. That it's a sign of progress.

And we are reaping the consequences from that effort.

And no matter how bad it gets, we just keep telling ourselves, "This is better." No matter how bad it gets.

When did compassion become a vice? When did mean-spiritedness and aggression in the form of "accountability" become a virtue?

Not in my lifetime. I don't care how many times you try to sell me that bottle of snake oil, I'm not buying.

People can bullshit themselves and one another all they want to on this one. I'm not buying it. You treat people like shit, you're not the harbinger of progress. You're an asshole.

Progress is treating people better, no matter which way you cut it.

And pretending differently just makes us assholes until we face up.

When President Franklin Roosevelt forcibly removed 120,000 Japanese-Americans from their homes during World War II, Americans did not see, at the time, what a dark turn the country had taken in the name of its fears. But they had taken a dark turn, clearly, with the light of historical hindsight. And no matter how much Americans clung to the banner of progress, a regressive, repressive, and mean-spirited policy removed hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens from their homes in the name of that dark turn.

Let's hope we face up to this dark turn sooner rather than later.

Love,
Ben

The logical (if racist) conclusion to force as a governing philosophy

I just read the craziest shit that I have read in a long time, today. And a perfect illustration of the logical conclusion of this godforesaken political period.

Australia to Ban Alcohol for Aborigines

It seems our fear of child sexual abuse will rationalize anything these days.

For those who think that force and repression will end such problems, this is the logical conclusion of that position and should be a clear indication of the insanity of this period.

The most interesting sections:

"Australia's prime minister announced plans Thursday to ban pornography and alcohol for Aborigines in northern areas and tighten control over their welfare benefits to fight child sex abuse among them.

Some Aboriginal leaders rejected the plan as paternalistic and said the measures were discriminatory and would violate the civil rights of the country's original inhabitants. But others applauded the initiative and recommended extending the welfare restrictions to Aborigines in other parts of the country."

"I'm absolutely disgusted by this patronizing government control," said Mitch, a member of a government board helping Aborigines who were taken from their parents under past assimilation laws who uses one name. "And tying drinking with welfare payments is just disgusting."

"If they're going to do that, they're going to have to do that with every single person in Australia, not just black people," she said."

"The child abuse report was commissioned by the Northern Territory government and is widely regarded as credible although it attracted some critics. It was unable to quantify the extent of the sexual abuse problem, since anecdotal evidence suggested much of it went unreported.

Conducted by an indigenous health worker and a government lawyer, it found children had been sexually abused in all 45 remote communities visited. The abusers were both Aborigines and non-Aborigines operating in or near their communities.

The report made 97 recommendations, including boosting procedures for reporting and monitoring offenders, and addressing widespread poverty and alcoholism.

Australia's original inhabitants suffer far higher rates of poverty and substance abuse than the rest of the country's 21 million people, and their life expectancy is 17 years shorter.

For years, white men were banned from marrying Aboriginal woman, and mixed-race children were taken from their Aboriginal mothers to be assimilated into mainstream society.

Though many found employment in the cattle and sheep industries, they were paid less than whites, sometimes working just for rations. Unable to achieve economic independence, many have become welfare dependent."

There is no easier call on racism that I have seen in a long time on any piece of legislation I've recently seen. And the paternalism does make so much clearly just how insane this governing logic is.

I know, I know. It's just gone too far. We need to find a better "balance." So what principle should guide us? Keep bouncing between these extremes and calling it all moderation?

Would it kill us to think through what kinds of force and what presumptions we might have for the use of force that we might use?

I don't think it will. I just think we've been been taking a shortcut and avoiding the hard thinking and engagement and honesty with ourselves and one another that an issue as important as child sexual abuse and issues like poverty, alcohol and drug abuse, and pornography deserve.

And this foolish, foolish, counterproductive policy is the logical conclusion of this sad line of reasoning we have been taking this tragic and counterproductive political period.

Perhaps a more honest and constructive discussion is in order.

Love,
Ben

Getting to the promise land

I'm reading this really fascinating discussion, today, in this most recent and brilliant edition of New Perspectives Quarterly and I'm thinking about the world.

It's a complicated world we live in, isn't it?

It's fully of all kinds of beauty and nobility and courage. And it's also full of all kinds of depravity and immaturity and rebellion and far too often it has more than its share of real evil.

What makes it complicated is, how, in the face of all of us, are we to look at some direction and call it "progress"? How do we know that when we move, we're moving forward. Especially in a world where we so often avoid, repress, supress and otherwise discourage the discussions of those things and values that really matter to us in life. In a world where everyone is too afraid of everything, including and especially discussions about those things that really matters to us, for fear that getting upset and getting each other upset is a worse sin than avoiding the conversation altogether.

See, when I read academic discussions about common values and common ideas and looking squarely at questions of right and wrong and respecting peoples' freedom and understanding relative rights and relative wrongs and respecting different judgments and perspectives and I can nod at all of those discussions and say, "Yeah, I can see that."

But a lot of times, I think we make those conversations too complicated. We make them more complicated than they need to be to account for a life that, admittedly, is not black and white. And I don't just mean liberal professors make it complicated. I mean conservative intellectuals make it too complicated as well. And, yet, they try to account for it more honestly and fully than do so many average folks - media folks, political folks, moms and pops, all included here - who are persistently trying to fit oversimplified solutions on so many of life's problems. It's often all they know. And what various intellectuals know is all they know. And, yet, if we're going to find some resolution on the issues we care about, we're going to have to gather some courage and have those conversations in ways that don't try to artificially resolve them with legalisms or "rules" discussions that consistently miss the real people substance of the issues that matter to us most.

Yet, despite all of this anxiety and confusion and the various artificial certainties - artificial because they are, generally, an incomplete accounting for the reality that people want to be more simple and certain than it is - all of these ideas and unresolved problems and the problematic reasoning that doesn't get to the heart of so many problems that people carry around with them, there is, generally, a much more straightforward conversation that people can have about various cultural, moral, religious, political, and other conversations than they have now.

In fact, it's often not the substantial differences that stand in the way. It is usually the strong feelings and the aggressive, passionate postures that we take when discussing the most important issues we face that undermines more substantive resolution of our most important issues. We get passionate and aggressive, and then we often give up on the possibility of having the conversation or getting resolution so we just give up on an open, engaged conversation, altogether. And then we're stuck with the consequences of that giving up and the fatalism that it gives way to. Forceful consequences - distinct from natural consequences and more effectively and less aggressively set limits - undermine that conversation, as well, making it difficult for people to be honest about themselves and what matters to them.

Are there universal rights and wrongs? Sure. Does everyone agree on them or will they forever agree on them, independent of the times? Not necessarily. Sure, there's common, timeless, universal values that every culture holds dear and that can and should be common to all cultures. But those values are also constantly being reevalutated and considered and challenged and updated, as they should be in societies that take thought and reflection and liberal education and debate and discussion seriously (which I will be so bold to say should be all communities and cultures, liberal or illiberal; choose to be illiberal, I say, but you can deal with the repressive and clearly dysfunctional consequences of that choice for your communities and cultures, if that's the case).

Do we now and forever know the consequences of those debates and discussions and thought and reevaluations? No. Nor should we. That's the hubris of every generation, liberal or illiberal. That all the important questions are decided. Which, if it were true, would effectively nullify the very liberal culture that made such a conclusion and the discussion that made it possible. It's a foolish notion meant to affirm our self-righteous certainties in the face of an uncertain world that we're afraid of, to be honest, and that we want resolved, artifical or otherwise, just so we don't have to face that fear that comes with a world that is perpetually uncertain, no matter how we try to make it more certain than it is.

But having said all of that - which looks really complicated, as I look at it - I think we often lose the forest for the trees.

I think we think that somehow because our ideas of how to deal with the various cultural challenges we face are confusing or uncertain - which are often a variation of how much established authority is going to be taken seriously and how much freedom are we going to allow or take in the face of that authority - we make them too complicated in our initial fumbling efforts to find some workable resolution of our conflicts.

Should gays be allowed to marry? I think so, because I take seriously the notion that people should self-determine their own lives and only be interfered with insofar as it interferes with the lives of others. And, even then, we should discuss those interferences before and in lieu of bullying our way through them. Should straight people and religious people be forced to accept marriages that they don't accept as moral? No. Everyone's conscience should be taken seriously, as far as I am concerned. Both as a matter of respect, but also as a matter of reality. No matter how much we try to force matters of conscience on one another, we will now and forever fail to decide questions for one another, this way.

Racism doesn't go away because you fire Imus. The irony of that situation is that the one thing that does have us come square with it - our consciences coming to terms with our mistakes and sins and flaws - got the shit beat out of it, telling everyone else in the world who needed to face up to some racist impulse, "You better keep that shit under wraps, or else you're gonna get smacked down too." It's foolish and shortsighted. And it doesn't give a shit about anyone except those people we identify with. So it's self-centered. And it certainly isn't noble. It's vengeful and counterproductive and it treats people like they are characters in a morality play rather than people worthy of our love and concern and forgiveness in their own right. You don't want to love and forgive, I say, so be it. But don't expect the high ground while you do it. You accept the low ground that you're taking. And the high ground goes to people who say, "Why don't we listen to what Imus has to say and what's in his heart."

But what fucks up these and so many situations is that instead of having those conversations, we just go around scaring the shit out of people to have any conversations at all. And then we say, "See, there's no other way."

It's cynical and it's bullshit. And if the current political environment is any sign, it's utterly and hopelessly dysfunctional.

So how about this?

How about we gather some courage and start having those conversations with one another and stop worrying, so much, about whose going to lose their jobs or who we're going to fire or who won't show up to family holiday dinners next year or which friend just couldn't handle knowing what we really think because we or they voice an unpopular view or a view that offends someone or gets someone upset.

How about we start opening up some honest space for people to start having some honest conversations with one another about the issues that concern us that don't talk around issues the way that too many academic conversations do and yet don't give into simplistic and all-too-certain and self-righteous conversations that too many average folks have as well?

How about we have honest conversations with honest differences with opportunity for honest resolution because we more honestly understand one another and how we come at our differences and our focus is on the understanding rather than futile and fruitless efforts to prove how people are just hopeless or clueless or just don't get it.

And the most important effort we could make in this direction is to face up to some serious humility that, perhaps, on even the most important issues - like the war in Iraq or abortion or liberal democratic values or economic well-being or law and order - that there isn't a single person that does, has ever, or ever will have some foolishly conceived monopoly on wisdom or insight or knowledge or righteousness or any of it.

People are constantly losing the forest for the trees on the most important issues that we face together. They are perpetually taking more seriously their self-righteous notions of the world than the honest and decent relationships with people they care about that are the reason why they care about all of those issues.

I had a relationship with a best friend and then a serious girlfriend that taught me this lesson the hardest way someone can learn that lesson: when you lose the relationship because the fight takes precedence over the people.

The people in our lives are more important to us than being right about any particular issue, when we're really honest with ourselves. And if they're not, they should be. And when they're not, the truth is that such perspectives should be listened to, but then squared back with the people that we do or should care about.

People are what really matters in those discussions and in our thoughts about complicated moral and political issues that we face together. And understanding them, better, and their many various and independent and strong and not-so-strong and interesting and not-so-interesting perpectives on those issues is the surest way to more genuine resolution of so many of the issues we face.

When you know that someone who opposes abortion does not want fetus' or babies to be killed or made to experience pain, and really, generally, just want people to consider and take seriously alternatives like giving birth and adoption or surrogant parenthood or any of the other alternatives available, then it makes it harder to demonize such folks and their ideas about the world. And when you know that abortion rights advocates just want to make sure that women and girls have as much freedom as they might possibly need to make those decisions about their bodies and the fetus' they carry in a way that also has integrity to their own situations and dilemnas, and especially when you know a particular woman or girl facing that choice - like the 12 year old who got pregnant at our school, last year - then it makes it harder, or should, to demonize people who face that choice and are wrestling with their consciences about difficult issues.

Our dysfunctional alternations between a repressed politics that does not express our differences nearly enough with one another, person to person, and ugly periods like the current one, where we try to substitute for more honest engagement with efforts to impose our will on all of those who disagree, are both illiberal and they cannot sustain a more honest, decent liberal democratic discussion that gets us more honest with ourselves and one another, including about our failures to resolve difficult questions by fiat rather than by open-minded, open-hearted, and open-ended discussion that is not always trying to protect self-righteous notions about the world.

We can keep doing that. But the world is a mess for it. And it's not our most honest, most decent, wisest values at play.

And you know what the kicker is?

We, generally, when we take such discussions seriously, find, as an empirical fact of our liberal democratic history, that we have more in common on the most important questions that face us than different.

What we need to do, now, is to start having the hardest conversations out in the open, without accusation or grilling or efforts to play gotcha or get one another. We need to let go of this far too aggressive, ugly mess that we have created with this more mean-spirited conversation that disrespects these questions of conscience that has been led by an overzealous media and overzealous activists and politicians in the last few years.

We need to start having conversations that we know in our hearts are more honest and decent and constructive. They will take trust. And that will have to be built and earned.

But trust built and earned is a far more genuine path to resolution of our most important issues than any imposition, democratic or otherwise, could ever be. It also happens to be a better life. A happier life. And more decent life. A life that respects liberal values better and more honestly. A better life.

A better life. That's the one we want, right?

We'll learn this lesson the hard way. We'll fuck it up and we'll get all heated and fuck up some peoples' lives, sadly. And then we'll be this crazy, foolish, dysfunctional little mess that we are, right now.

And then we'll pick ourselves from that mess. And we'll fumble our way toward something more honest and decent. Eventually. Or we'll be stuck in this mess until we do.

But we can't stay stuck here forever.

We'll get there. A little bumped and bruised and worser for wear. But we'll get there.

That's a promise.

Love,
Ben

We do what we value

That's my profound lesson for the day.

As someone who spends far too much time talking and perhaps too much time thinking (though I really can't think of any better use of anyone's time than thinking), today this was my conclusion.

If you are concerned that you are not getting things done in your life that you care about, as I am, then this little bit of wisdom and common sense is for you.

We do what we value. Meaning, if you care about it, you're doing something about it. If you care about it more than the other things you're doing, that is. Meaning, if you want to see what you really care about in the world and not just what you say you care about, then you might take a look at what you're doing. Because that, apparently, is what you really care about because that's what you've been busy spending your time on.

We do what we value. If there's something in my life I want or need done and its not getting done, well then perhaps that's a sign that I either I really don't care about it, or, more likely, that I need to assess or rearrange my priorities and figure out what it is that I really want or need to do with my time and then do that thing.

It's so simple isn't it? But it's actually an important bit of common sense for a book-smart fellow like me.

Lately, I've cared about choosing and being responsible for my life as a matter of my own free will and free choice. So I've been prioritizing my freedom (and my responsibilities) this summer. But I want to use that freedom for something purposeful. And that doesn't come because someone made you do it. That's what someone says when they really don't care about something, but they're gonna do it anyway. It's also what people say when they really don't care if others care about something, they just want to make people do it whether they care about it or not (a foolish and shortsighted path to change, if you ask me; changing hearts and minds is where it's at if you don't want something to succeed beyond your lifetime and involvement, but I don't even have a Ph.D., so what do I know).

Right now, what I value is draining my organic macaronni and cheese which is undoubtedly sticking to the pan on my stove. And then I'm going about the business of prioritizing my life, for real. Figuring out what I really value.

Love,
Ben

Progress

I've thought a lot about progress in the last 16 years or so.

When I was a young first year college student, I had two goals: wisdom and to be a good dad. I think I found a lot of the former, often completely at odds with my plans, and I hope to be the latter, with enough grace and forgiveness from my children for the fumblings of a well-intentioned if clumsy and foolhardy father.

In the end, I can only offer them the only best guarantee that any father can offer his children. I will do my best.

But the last 5 years, in particular, are a time when my expectations have been most frequently and with constant surprise met with realities I could not forsee. It's been a humbling experience, to say the least.

And it's had me thinking lots about progress.

I no longer naively believe in progress which is authorized by my liberal professors or liberal activists or journalists. That was an innocent, somewhat pretensious, and ultimately wrong-headed view of my youth.

Neither, though, do I hold to romantic notions of the past or tradition or a past or present that is better, more moral, more decent, more thoughtful, or headed in a stronger direction than the current time.

I believe in progress. I believe people generally move in the direction of progress, in the direction of more decent and broadly liberal and more empirically and consequentially better fruits of better ideas over time. But I do not hold to the foolish notion that all change is progress or that progress is inevitable or the monopoly of certain groups or ideologies or even certain englightened people. I am well aware of many of the pitfalls and dangers of that term and the propensity for us to claim it as a mantle in the name of any number of causes, whether they actually produce progress or not.

And, after a lot of reflection and serious, engaged thought, I think I've decided that much progress is created by more enlightened and deeply reflective and considered views of the world taking hold because of the better ideas of life that they offer. And still much more progress is simply the result of much failure and disappointment and unexpected bad tidings that are turned to some better, more decent, more thoughtful, more constructive efforts because everything else has fallen through.

Progress is something that we guide because we have better ideas of how the world should be. And, equally if not more so, progress is something that guides us, as we flail and flounder dealing with the challenges in the world that we face.

We get there. But, often, the promised land looks very different than we anticipated. Oftener yet, it looks nothing like we imagined.

Keeps life interesting, I suppose.

But still, somehow we muddle forward, as often as we create visions and make them realities.

I couldn't have anticipated this path of progress, which always looks like a straight line that just keeps getter better if you romanticize it and chart it on a ever improving line-graph (after you've removed or downplayed every setback and failure or regressive blip).

But I like it better. Because it leaves me more humble. And more curious about what is on the other side of tomorrow.

If I can only get through today.

Love,
Ben

Another reason to like David Petraeus

David Petraeus, the U.S. army commander of the Multi-National Force - Iraq, has always impressed me. He wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on post-Vietnam military conflict. He's struck me as a remarkably humble yet brilliant military leader. And now I have one more great reason to appreciate this very smart military leader.

Beyond the Cloister

Petraeus writes this really well-argued and open-minded case for the need for military personell and officers to pursue a civilian graduate school education outside of military-specific institutions.

It is an excellent argument and an excellent idea to be promoted by the highest ranking army officer in this war. It is with profound appreciation that I can read such a respected and high-ranking officer encouraging future officers to engage in such a serious, important, and valuable experience in their lives.

But then there is this little tid-bit that made it stick that this is the kind of guy that I might trust, more, if he had my back:

"In my own experience, I found the most valuable situations to be those in which exceedingly bright senior professors held views substantially different from my own. I developed a particular friendship with one such professor at Princeton, one of the country’s leading international legal scholars at the time—even though we truly saw the world through different lenses. In the end, we decided that we never disagreed on anything but substance.

I happened to be taking a course with him when the United States invaded the island of Grenada in 1983. Now, some of you will remember that the legal underpinnings for that action were not the most robust to have ever justified an American military operation. Indeed, it later turned out that U.S. officials had actually written the request for American intervention that the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States submitted back to the United States to get us to intervene against one of their own member states. Nor was the action anchored in the most rock solid of ground when it came to traditional norms associated with the just war concept. Nonetheless, I wrote a paper for that professor entitled, “The Invasion of Grenada: Illegal, Immoral, and the Right Thing to Do.” It was great fun to write, and decent enough to earn an “A” despite a conclusion I know the professor did not share."

Now that is a military commander that I could trust, more. That's the kind of guy I want having my back in a tight situation. And it is gratifying to me that a man of such a powerful, legally-bound, and serious insitution could be thoughtful enough to know the distinction between taking democratic rule seriously without taking legal matters more seriously than doing the right thing.

And people who know that doing the right thing is more important than doing the legal thing are the kind of people who I can trust.

Love,
Ben

Taking up for Scooter

An excellent exorcism of liberal hypocritical and vengeful demons in this beautifully written piece by Richard Cohen, today. One reason to keep up with the Washington Post, depite the liberal sanctimony that is gives far too much truck to, these days.

Saving Scooter

Best lines:

"For some odd reason, the same people who were so appalled about government snooping, the USA Patriot Act and other such threats to civil liberties cheered as the special prosecutor weed-whacked the press, jailed a reporter and now will send a previously obscure government official to prison for 30 months.

This is precisely the sort of investigation that Jackson was warning about. It would not have been conducted if, say, the Iraq war had ended with 300 deaths and the mission had really been accomplished. An unpopular war produced the popular cry for scalps and, in Libby's case, the additional demand that he express contrition -- a vestigial Stalinist-era yearning for abasement. No one has yet explained, though, how Libby can express contrition and still appeal his conviction. No matter. Antiwar sanctimony excuses the inexplicable.

I don't expect George Bush to appreciate this. He is the privileged son of a privileged son, and he fears nothing except, probably, doubt. But the rest of us ought to consider what Fitzgerald has wrought and whether we are better off for his efforts."

Amen and pass the refreshing bit of honesty, brother.

Love,
Ben

Appreciating the good faith of average Americans (and facing my pride)

There has been a seriously H.L. Mencken side to me during this political period. It's Mencken's libertarian impulses, his misanthropy and his contempt for the pretension of common wisdom and virtue, and both his mocking and revulsion at the hypocrisy and bullshitting of average people that I have found so refreshing.

But something that I have never really seriously shared with Mencken (and why I have much more in common with Mark Twain) is his complete disenchantment with average folks.

I have skated those edges in these last 5 years. It has been the hardest time in my life. I've been treated harshly for good reason and I've been treated harshly for bad reason. I've learned that, either way, it really doesn't matter except to acknowledge that when you've been treated harshly for good reason, that good people can be appreciated even when you think it's kind of bullshit and you don't like all the ways they make their decisions, especially as it concerns you.

I got a call, today, from one of my best friends in the world, Stephanie Martell. Stephanie is one of the sweetest souls you will ever meet in your life. She has a disability - Prater Willy's Syndrome - and she is one of the most decent people I have ever known in my life. I've often thought of Stephanie as my Clarence; this sweet-natured angel in my life who always reminds me that being good and decent has nothing to do with intelligence or wisdom or world-savvy or any of those things. It has to do with having a decent heart. And Stephanie has one of the most decent hearts I've ever encountered.

And Stephanie reminded me, today, that while I don't always like the thinking and the choices and I certainly take issue with the jadedness and cynicism of most people over the age of 7, that I love and respect and appreciate the good faith of average people even when I'm not enamoured with their wisdom or their self interested interpretations of the world.

I think average people in liberal democracies make a lot of mistakes. Their most important mistake is my most important mistake. It is the biggest mistake that people make. It is numero uno among the seven deadly sins. It is pride. Otherwise known as self-righteousness. It is my number one sin, which has led to far too many sins in my life that I am ashamed to admit are my own.

Our pride. And I mean our pride. It's not the pride of some people, or the pride of bad people, or the pride of stupid people, and certainly not the pride of other people.

Our pride is that we perpetually think that we have arrived at more wisdom and more understanding than we really have. All of us. Me included. And we are perpetually making decisions that reflect our having convinced ourselves that we have more wisdom than we really do.

The best thing that happened to me leaving school is that I had the most substantial opportunity in my life to face my pride, to have my sense of my own wisdom and self-righteous understanding of the world humbled by a world that defied and changed so many certitudes that I maintained, and fill in plenty of the spaces in my brain that ignorance has largely taken up.

I've not always liked the way I've been treated. I think a lot of the harsher experiences I've had in my life in the last 5 years have been counterproductive and seriously undermined my trust and faith and confidence in professors and teachers and employers and cops and judges and politicians and all sorts of folks.

It's been the most jaded and cynical and disillusioned that I've ever been in my life.

And though I've been I think reasonably disillusioned with the counterproductive harshness and efforts to impose themselves on me and every person or problem they encounter, I got a reminder, today, that I love and respect and appreciate all good folks in this world (and a lot of the onerier ones, as well, and even evil folks though I don't cry when despots face poor ends).

That's why Mark Twain is my true hero and H.L. Mencken is an intellect with liberty commitments that I admire.

Good people have done so many bad things, as individuals, but worse, as societies, that is is hard to keep count of them all.

But we all know, down deep, that most people are good people (even when they fuck up). And that good people are good people, even when they're screwing up or lost in their self-righteousness. Self-righteousness, I'm learning, pride, is the most serious, most pervasive, most common and the one sin that none of us avoid.

It is the sin of the average man. It is the sin of power. It is the sin of authority. But it is also the sin of all of us average folks, with or without authority or power. Every parent, every teacher, every employer, every cop, every lawyer, every judge, every politician, every military official. But also, every kid, every student, every employee, every drug addict, every criminal, every grunt, every person who has ever faced authority has also been guilty of pride at some point in their relationship with those folks and with others and with authority in their lives.

All of us are subject to the sin of pride. It is our most serious, most damning, most tragic legacy, when you account for every terrorist, every despot, every ideologue, every most serious ugly act that has been committed in the name of every cause that someone has deemed worthy and in the name of that pride. But it is also our most common, most often committed, and, ultimately, most forgiveable sin, as well.

And if I can forgive my own pride (which I don't really have much choice about, really) then I surely I can forgive the pride of average folks and not-so-average folks who are just wrong, even as they're decent and good folks in good faith and trying to do good by their neighbors and their family, and, all too often, by themselves.

I do want the pride that gives traction to terrorists and radicals and despots and perpetrators of murder and genocide and mayhem and repression in the name of whatever cause to lose its power, permanently. And I'm pretty clear that the way to do that is to do what is also best for our own lives as well: to embrace and teach and nurture the liberal values and liberal education and the virtues of a liberal democracy that have supported and created all of the genuine progress in the world, up to this point in our history and, in all likelihood, for the rest of our time around these parts. And, most importantly, it means embracing the liberty and freedom and decency and humanity and compassion and thoughtfulness that make all of that possible.

But I was reminded, today, that average folks - who give far too much license and support and intellectual cover to all of that ugliness in the name of their pride that thought really doesn't matter and that action and authority and power accomplishes more than it can and that force that helps more than it hurts around so many issues in our lives - that average folks who engage in all this serious bullshit - the lying, the covering up, the denial, the taking credit where its not due, the paternalism, the fucking with one another's lives, and the support for strategies of political leverage which rationalize every power-hungry, despotic, authoritarian, terroristic, genocidal impulse that the world has borne witness to - they are also decent and good people.

Even when they're fucking shit up. Including when they are fucking with my life.

I'm reminded, today, that even when the common man, when average folk, when "good people," as we would refer to such folks back home, even when good, decent, average people are fucking shit up in the world - as they do often, pride or no pride - that they are still good and decent folks, despite all their faults.

We do reap what we sow. I've sowed a lot of good seeds. And I've sowed plenty of bad seeds. And I've reaped plenty accordingly. And all people do and will do the same.

And I'm ok with that, today. As I face my pride. And rebuild my faith in average people, despite their persistent fucking up and too much pride to face it.

That is the heart of liberal democracy. We are liberal and democratic not because of our inherent virtue. We are liberal and democratic because it is through the fucking up and the learning and the facing our pride - even in hindsight - that we stumble forward and finally make progress, often and generally despite ourselves.

God knows that that's the only way I've done it.

Maybe it's time that I cut most folks slack the same way that I want people to cut me slack for all of the multitudinous fucking up that I've done in my poor, pathetic little lifetime.

Maybe it's time that we all faced a little bit of our pride.

Then, again, maybe it'd be easier to just pop in a movie and fuck it all. We're gonna deal with the consequences that we deal with no matter what we do. But maybe a little less pride might be a good thing, after all. If only on the long shot that maybe our lives might mean something in this short little time we have here on this planet.

I'll take that bet. Even if it means facing a bit of my own sinning and a lot of my own pride to do it.

Love,
Ben

The destructive temptation of radicalism

Fred Siegal has an exellent review of Paul Starr's new book, Freedom's Power: The True Force of Liberalism, outlining the destructive and irrational temptations that radicalism persistently promises liberals, no matter the empirical evidence of its failures.

Blinded by the Left

Do you notice the depth of the propaganda and failure to face its contradictions and hypocrisies that are found in a title like Freedom's Power? Does someone who is concerned with force and power as the primary route to freedom really care about freedom at all? Not likely. It's a clever coopting by the same kinds of radical folks who have forever tried to coopt a more genuine liberal democratic heritage and the values that they perpetually take for granted in their peristent efforts to extinguish them, or at least command and dictate them to their own requisite purposes.

Force is freedom. Power is source of all that is liberal and good. George Orwell must be rolling over in his grave.

And like the majority of the commenters on this article (note my poorly edited comment at the end of this piece) smarter folks who take that more genuine liberal heritage seriously should not be fooled. I'm not. What I am is put off and disillusioned by liberal activists, journalists, politicians and others who espouse a radical agenda in the name of and simultaneous as an affront to the more genuine liberal, freedom-embracing values that make liberal democratic values and the liberal educations which make them possible mean something.

The idea that liberal democracies and liberal education and liberal values would be characterized, primarily, by power and force is not only laughable, it is dangerous. It is the very kind of abuse of power that more genuine liberals like Lord Acton - "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" - John Stuart Mill, George Orwell, Alexis DeToqueville and others made sure to warn liberal democratic citizens and thinkers about.

Force is freedom. Power is liberalism. The purpose of a liberal democracy, liberal education, and liberal values is force and power. Power solves all. Force solves all.

Any of that sound familiar?

Now you understand why Communism and Naziism survived as long as they did.

Because power doesn't stop to honestly reconcile itself with its own illogic. And because liberal democratic peoples are perpetually doomed to repeat the ill-fated history that they do not study nearly seriously enough.

Love,
Ben

New ideas

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

Mark Twain

Sahar al-Haideri (1962 - 2007)

Sahar al-Haideri was an Iraqi journalist from her hometown of Mosul who died in the cause of saving her country from sectarian division and civil war.

Requiem for a Brave Woman

As Americans and the world give thought to the question of whether they will stick with the current situation in Iraq, one that Americans, for better and for worse, largely initiated, we should remember Iraqis like Sahar al-Haideri.

al-Haideri undoubtedly knew of the complicated nature and purposes of her country's invasion by American forces to remove a despot who had reigned over the Iraqi nation without democratic or any other recourse for more than two decades. She undoubtedly knew of both the good intentions of the American military and political leaders who had initiated the invasion and the tragic and often counterproductive consequences of that decision.

But Sahar al-Haideri also knew that a stable, democratic government and culture must sprout in its aftermath if there is to be any decent alternative to the sectarian warfare and insurgent attacks on the Iraqi government that currently plague her home country.

As Americans consider what course of action to take next in this terrible and often tragic situation, it is wise and necessary for us to remember the risks and sacrafices of Iraqis like Sahar al-Haideri for her country's democratic future.

Democracy is not just a governing arrangement for any country, including Iraq. For al-Haideri and many journalists, teachers, political representatives, law enforcement, military, businesspeople, non-profit and humanitarian workers, and many, many other Iraqi citizens and those from outside her borders offering help, democracy is a future for Iraq that might transcend the sectarian, theocratic, authoritarian, gender-discriminating, illiberal and other impulses which too often animate the bulk of the political violence and deaths of people like al-Haideri in Iraq today.

Americans and the world should take pause before rushing or abandoning the substantial security work on the ground that is needed to create the political space and sow the political imagination needed for such a future to be realized.

My wishes of peace in the hearts of the family of Ms. al-Haideri and for Sahar, may she rest in peace.

Love,
Ben

When liberal values are thought to be a threat

Afghan's press: Thriving yet threatened

"No less worrying to local journalists and Western governments is debate over a new media law. Freedom of speech is enshrined in the constitution and the existing media law is the most liberal in the region. But the lower house of parliament has just finished discussing a law that includes ill-defined bans on “discussion that would ridicule, offend or defame an individual” and, more vaguely still, on anything that has an impact on “the manners and psychology of people, especially children”. Even so, it is less the wording of the law than the spirit in which it will be interpreted that worries Afghan journalists. Saad Mohseni, Tolo TV's founder, is one who argues that the press can expect little protection from harassment by government officials and other bigwigs.

The new law still has to win approval in the upper house of parliament. But there it is not likely to become more liberal. A bill put forward by the upper house's National Reconciliation Commission suggests censoring “trite movies and those TV programmes that are contrary to Afghan beliefs...and harm the feelings of our people”. It proposes an increase in religious programming instead."

What's scary to me is that this sounds an awful lot like my own country and its aversion to liberal values, today, by the media as much as against the media.

All over the world, we benefit from liberal values in so many substantial ways that it is hard to count. And yet, all of us, liberal and illiberal, mature democracies and recently established democracies, we run from liberal values as if they are the bain of our existence. We have always done this. And we will continue to do this as long as our fears of our freedoms overwhelm our faith and confidence in our abilities to enjoy our freedoms and, from them, learn a more honest sense of responsibility to one another and to the world.

Love,
Ben

Pitying the poor

It's starting to occur to me that for me many journalists, activists, political folk, that their concerns around poverty are not really genuine. That for a lot of such folks, it is pity in part based around guilt for how shitty they have treated people in their lives.

As someone who grew up poor and who has experienced serious enough adult poverty, all I can say about that is that no poor person wants anyone's pity. In fact, it is probably the single most important concern that most poor people I know have: not being pitied.

What bothers me about that state of affairs is that what most poor people want more than anything else is to just be treated better, and then to be left alone to make their own choices with their own lives.

But, instead, what they get is pity from more educated advocates on their behalf that they generally haven't asked for and a political period that rationalizes poor treatment of everyone, poor or not.

It is all of our worst impulses treated as if they are more noble than they are. Plenty of good intentions. But not nearly as honest an engagement of whether good intentions result in good consequences.

Most of the poor people I grew up with would want people to put away their pity and focus more on treating people better (though, honestly, many poor people do not treat people very well either; poor people come in all shapes and sizes, too).

How nice it would be for advocacy like this to be genuine; to have people treat other people, poor or not, as individuals and on their merits. And without pity.

If you have never been poor, you may not know the singular indignity that is associated with people pitying you, even when you have much to offer. Poor people generally know that such pity is unworthy of their dignity. And so is all of the bad treatment rationalized as tough love, these days.

Martin Anderson, a 14-year-old boy in Panama City, Florida, died in a state-run boot camp in the name of our rationalizations of "tough love." Love that resulted in his death. I, still, to this day, have not seen anyone take responsibility for his death. All in the name of responsibility. And tough. And love.

We owe it to Martin to face up to this legacy.

But to do so means to face ourselves in a way that I'm not convinced most people have the courage to do. I suppose the irony is that none of us feel love for ourselves or others, enough, to show that kind of courage. But I'm not interested in Martin dying so all of us can pretend that we had nothing to do with his death. Every single person who encouraged the kind and culture of toughness and bullying that resulted in Martin's death are responsible. And I don't really give a shit, anymore, whether people have the courage to take responsibility for that or not.

I don't think kids like Martin need pity. Or tough love. Kid like Martin need people around them who genuinely care about them. There's no way that Martin could have died the way he did with people who genuinely cared about him. But we've become convinced in our hubris and our self-righteous clamoring for tough more than love or thoughtfulness or decency or any of our better impulses and higher values that all of our bullying and pressure and force are better or do better than they really do.

Sounds a lot like other regimes I know. Regimes that sacrafice people - their lives, their freedom, their dignity - all in the name of helping them all or making their own kind strong. Regimes that became corrupted by power, and corrupted more absolutely the more power they had.

The greatest tragedy of the early 21st century is that we spent almost a hundred years trying to remove that ugliness from the world. Only to repeat it ourselves.

And Martin Anderson hangs there like a once living testament to our hubris. He waits for us to take responsibility. But, sadly, noone is likely to do so. Because this period isn't about taking responsibility at all. It is about rationalizing our most vengeful, ugly, illiberal impulses all in the name of patting ourselves on the back for our liberal values.

That is the great tragedy of the early 21st century.

If we can't forgive ourselves for this ugliness, I only hope that Martin Anderson can.

Love,
Ben

A man after my own heart

"All the extravagance and incompetence of our present Government is due, in the main, to lawyers, and, in part at least, to good ones. They are responsible for nine-tenths of the useless and vicious laws that now clutter the statute-books, and for all the evils that go with the vain attempt to enforce them. Every Federal judge is a lawyer. So are most Congressmen. Every invasion of the plain rights of the citizens has a lawyer behind it. If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones sold to a mah jong factory, we'd be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half."

–H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), "Breathing Space", The Baltimore Evening Sun, 1924 Aug 4. Reprinted in A Carnival of Buncombe.

Cynicism

Do you know how discouraging it is to find so many, most, adults looking at the world through more narrow, cynical, small-minded lenses?

It's overwhelmingly discouraging.

Cynicism is disappointment with a reality that doesn't live up to our higher expectations.

But sadder than that original disappointment is our complicity and more helpless and hopeless hanging onto that cynicism as a function of a world that doesn't always live up to our expectations, and, even more sadly, is generally created by our own cynicism.

Psychologists call it self-fulfilling prophecy.

I just call it damned foolishness.

Either way, the world is a shitty mess for it all.

Thank goodness for country music:).

Love,
Ben

On being right

Gates in Baghdad defends war assessments

I am becoming convinced reading Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's comments in this A.P. article that if 5 million Iraqis had to die so that liberals in the West could be right that there is no hope in Iraq, then they would be just fine with that. I know liberals want to save Iraqi and American lives just like everyone else. But I have to say that the persistent cynicism parading as "being in touch with reality" is getting wearisome when it means perpetually betting against an effort that is a noble one - helping Iraqis and their goverment to secure a democratic path forward -if we wouldn't constantly be trying to prove just how dumb George Bush is and just how smart all the rest of us are.

Personally, I don't care about being right about something like this that much. I'd rather be wrong and have this thing work out.

But I guess it's just Pollyanna to hope for anything to be successful, these days, isn't it? Unless it happens under a Democratic President and Congress, I suppose.

You got to hand it to Democrats, don't you. All they think about is the Iraqis.

Why is it so easy for us to constantly argue and defend for why we're right about everything and so hard for us to pull together to root for a decent cause even if we have disagreements about how it got started?

Are the days of an America that can come together around common goals behind us? Are the days of America even having common goals, so lost are we in our persistent snarking about which one of us or which group or which ideology has all the answers, something that we can't imagine happening without something as horrible as Adolph Hitler or Japanese Imperialism threatening our homeland?

And if that's the case, who would want to be right about that? Who would want to be right that no decent cause can ever be achieved unless people of your own ideological umbrella make the call? Who would want to be so blind as to put ideology or any group affiliation above doing the decent thing?

I wouldn't want to be right that badly.

How sad for us that so many of us do.

Love,
Ben

This is what force as a governing philosophy looks like

For every liberal and conservative, these days, who is romanticizing force as a governing philosophy, they now have a situation in the Gaza Strip that embodies that dark, ugly fantasy.

Abbas dissolves Palestinian government

"It was a day of major victories for Hamas and its backers in Iran and Syria — and of devastating setbacks for the Western-backed Fatah. In one particularly humiliating scene, masked Hamas fighters marched agents of the once-feared Preventive Security Service out of their headquarters, arms raised in the air, stripped to the waist and ducking at the sound of a gunshot.

The violence has killed at least 90 people in the past five days, including 33 on Thursday alone. Witnesses, Fatah officials and a doctor reported executions by Hamas militants of defeated Fatah fighters Thursday; Fatah said seven of its men were shot in the head gangland-style. Hamas denied any such killings."

Those infatuated with force have a dystopian fantasy scenario in Hamas' efforts to take over the Gaza Strip, since there really is few other groups in the world who would more concur with that governing philosophy.

I know, I know. Hamas is too forceful. Liberals and conservatives who argue for a governing philosophy of force are just "the right balance."

Isn't it convenient how anyone who wants to justify their power is always "just the right balance." "Fair and balanced," as Fox News would say. Everyone is fair and balanced, have you noticed that. They want to use force for their own priorities, for the "the right balance." It's convenient, isn't it? The only people who are too forceful or who are too liberal or too conservative are someone else. It's never the people who claim justification for power.

Lord Acton and George Orwell would be having a high old time trying to sort through this godforesaken and propaganda-soaked period.

In the meantime, like the Nazis and Soviets before them, Hamas takes seriously the idea of force as a governing philosophy. And 90 people in the last 5 days have been murdered in the name of that governing philosophy.

Force is freedom. Freedom is pressure. We care more for people, thus we repress them. We don't want too much freedom or too much repression. We want "the right balance." Somewhere between Ghandi and Hitler. Somewhere between King and Stalin. Somewhere between Jesus and the Roman Empire. Somewhere between Buddha and Castro.

Yeah. Yeah. I know. Somewhere between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Guliani.

Because everyone knows that Ghandi can't lead a country or a culture like Hillary Clinton can.

If the Washington Post or National Public Radio or Frontpage Magazine or the National Review or any of the various liberal or conservative publications romanticizing force as a philosophy of governance think they have nothing to do with this Hamas takeover, they are tragically mistaken.

I'm not suggesting that any of these publications want a Hamas takeover. None of these publications want that. But they do encourage the activities of Hamas and similar groups when they preach that a tougher philosophy of governance by force, primarly, rather than policy and political philosophy that promotes liberal self-governance, primarily, is the ideal that liberal democracies should aspire to and which leaves liberal cultures, like America, and illiberal cultures, like Palestine, alike, less vulnerable to the manipulations of terrorists, despots, dictators, autocrats, tyrranical and illiberal religious, political, and secular leaders, political, business and leadership practices and philosophies and lobbying reltionships with government which flaunt and romanticize how they can force, buy, and otherwise manipulate government and people for their own purposes.

When you use political pressure as a regular means of getting your way in democratic politics, you not only engage in an abuse of power in democratic societies and cultures, you provide the rationalizations that groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Queda, hardliners in Iran, Syria, and throughout the Middle East, the Cuban Communist party, the Chinese Communist party, the North Korean Communist party, and every such group to engage in every abuse of power that they engage in.

Illiberal practices in liberal societies rationalize illiberal practices in illiberal societies. And they look at us and our illiberal practices and say, "Look at those fuckin' pussies. They don't know how to fuckin' pressure for power. We know how to fuckin' pressure for power."

And then situations like the one we are seeing in Gaza take place. Or the sectarian warfare in Iraq.

Or 9/11.

We are not responsible for these awful, ugly facts of pressure and power.

But we are responsible for the rationalizations that gives them mileage and appeal, when we persistently fail to face our own illberal hypocrisies.

We are definitely the better guys, the good guys, so to speak. But we need to people who live consistent in our commitment to liberal values and make freedom as available to all people, as much as possible. And to only limit freedom when it is for purposes of dealing with genuine, immediate, and dangerous threats to our safety that cannot be handled in any other way except with force. And when we use force, we need to put our presumption on the least possible necessary force, the least possible necessary aggression, if we are to take those liberal values, and their far better and stronger consequences for our societies and cultures, seriously.

What is happening in Gaza is the logical conclusion of a political period that has rationalized and romanticized force, pressure, and aggression for all too often our far too self-centered purposes.

Hamas and Al Queda and the hard-line leadership of countries like Iran and Syria and the Communist governments of China, Cuba, North Korea and illiberal forces all over the world are the embodiment of force as a governing philosophy and, tragically, our rationalizations of illiberal ideas, philosophies, governance, policies, social, religious, educational, business, and other practices which support the rationalization of such practices among illiberal groups and governments and which are used to rationalize illiberal practices in liberal democratic countries and cultures.

It is a tragic and ugly self-fulfilling prophecy which can only be resolved with a more serious commitment to liberal values in liberal democracies and cultures.

A lot of people in my life, I think, wonder why I spend so much time and risk so much to make this argument that, to many of them seems like a crazy obsession with politics and everything political.

But the reason that I take this line of argument and this work so seriously is because I want peoples of the liberal democratic world, and the world of less liberal democratic and even illiberal cultures and peoples, to give up this sad and ugly rationalization that persistently feeds these cycles of aggression and force overwhelming liberal values and virtues. Namely, I want us to give up the propensity for such pressure, force, and aggression to overwhelm our capacity, willingness, and opportunities to reflect on, discuss, debate, and decide the most important questions in liberal societies on genuine liberal democratic grounds which respect the consciences, thoughts, and expression of all people and decides questions more honestly and openly based on their merits and the principle that more open and honest expressions of our thoughts and consciences and which are make for more honest, decent, open-ended lives which respect liberal values and their role in better supporting our lives rather than perpetually taking such values for granted and fruitlessly and cyclically arguing that it is those values that better support us that are responsible for the downfall of our culture and our lives.

I am tired of people in liberal societies being perpetually hornswaggled into the notion that it is our liberal values that are the greatest threat to us and our culture and our more illiberal notions which romanticize tough over throughtful that are our savior. Our saving grace is found in our thoughtfulness, decency, openness, compassion, freedom, consciences, and good natures. We do not need to bully people for them to be good. We do not need to be bullied to be good. And I am tired of the rationalizations that bullies in liberal democratic socieities, nevertheless illiberal societies have for bullying me or other good, decent, thoughtful people to get what they want.

I don't want it from Al Queda or Black September. I don't want it from Robert Mugabe or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But neither do I want it from Hillary Clinton or Rudy Guliani, Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, or anyone in the liberal or illiberal world.

I am tired of being bullied by anyone is the truth. I am tired of it. And I am tired of my thoughtfulness being disregarded by those who would rather get their way than to engage me more thoughtfully. I am tired of teachers, administrators, bosses, officers, judges, friends, family and authority figures of all kinds and anyone who wants to bully their way through my life disregarding more thoughtful efforts on my part, especially when it concerns my own life.

I am tired of bullies getting their way and using getting their way as the rationalization for why the world is just a place where the world isn't fair, nice guys finish last, and bullies get their way.

I am tired of it in Gaza. I'm tired of it in America. I'm tired of it in Europe. I am tired of it in Africa. I'm tired of it in Asia. And I am tired of it in South America and North America. I'd be tired of it in Antarctica and the North Pole if it turns out that people were getting treated like shit there too.

I don't care where it happens. I'm tired of it. And I'm tired of liberal peoples, especially, giving it the gas and the mileage that it needs to dominate the liberal and illiberal world in the 21st century and any generation. If we want to end terrorism and despotism, then we must give up the illiberal notions and governing philosophies that animate our own more liberal cultures.

Gaza is what force as a governing philosophy looks like. And we need to face up to that and take seriously the need to give up our illiberal rationalizations for that kind of ugliness. And the ugliness we rationalize in our own lives.

Love,
Ben

Heroes risk their lives and careers. Cowards cover their asses.

Richard Holbrooke has an excellent review of Mordecai Paldiel's new book, Diplomat Heroes of the Holocaust. His is an excellent reminder that moral courage is a rare quality, not a common one. And that most people fail it.

Defying Orders, Saving Lives: Heroic Diplomats of the Holocaust

Cowards follow orders, even when it means the lives or fortunes or heartache of others. People of courage operate out of conscience.

It is a lesson that Freda Ogburn, Marsha Cowan, and many, many people would do well to learn.

But most people fail this test of their character as Paldiel reminds us. Most people follow orders. Because the threat of enough aggression can make cowards of any of us, really, no matter how courageous, is the truth. For awhile, that is.

But as Hitler learned the hard way, that soon turns around. Because people of genuine courage and decency beat assholes with aggressive and indecent intent any fuckin' day of the fuckin' week, in the big picture and in the long term that counts.

And every fuckin' political bully that is bathing in their newfound glory and power can take that sentiment to the fuckin' bank.

Or, like Hitler, they will learn that more genuine liberal democratic values trump force and the abuse of power soon enough.

Speaking of heroes, this is what one looks like.

Officials: Barak wins Israeli party race

Ehud Barak put everything on the line for those Camp David Accords. Yasser Arafat left him hanging and the Likud and the Israeli people decided to go back to their old ways and give them a try. The last 6 years has been one long and bloody lesson in the ways of warfare trying to replace the more genuine path of peace in Israel and Palestine. Someone of courage puts it all on the line and loses, if necessary, so that the right priorities get accomplished. Someone of cowardice covers their asses at the expense of doing the right thing. We all have plenty of courage and cowardice in us. But the good guys shore up their courage and win out in the end. That was the most important lesson I took from Stephen Ambrose's military history. And he's right.

And the cowards who are animating the current political period will learn that lesson, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Love,
Ben

Tony Blair gets it right and media folks hate it

I have to say that the news media are the archetypal bullies. They love pushing people around. But they whine like little babies when they get called on the carpet for it.

Blair Likens News Media to 'Ferral Beast'

Tony Blair is exactly right. The major problem in the last 6 years or so is a news media that has figured out that it has power and has been abusing it for as long as they can get away with it.

It's the dark side of DeToqueville's truism about the media. 200 years ago, Alexis DeToqueville observed that the beauty of democracy in the new world of the United States was how people came together in voluntary organizations, like the news media, to engage important questions of life and governance. And journalists, among all of such citizens, were the most influential on the public morality of the day. It was a terribly accurate observation, and we are seeing the ugly side of how an aggressive media abuses that trust and power in the last few years.

From Walter Reed to Alberto Gonzalez to Don Imus to the war in Iraq, the media, forever convinced of their unassailable wisdom about anything and everything have done exactly what Tony Blair has argued in his speech: they use their ability to scandalize and rip people to shreds to get their way on any particular news item of the day. It's political bullying, pure and simple, and it is the ugliest display of a failure of journalistic integrity in any era that I have seriously followed the media.

The folks at the Guardian and others who have commented on Blair's comments of course hate them. Because the media love to criticize, attack, take down, and otherwise tear apart anyone in public life, except for themselves. And Tony Blair does not offer an attack, a take down or a tearing apart in these comments. He offers honest, legitimate, and accurate criticism.

And the folks who responded hate it because like every bully that has ever hit the block, they are as thin-skinned as they are determined to get their way. It's an ugly display. And unworthy of an international liberal democratic culture.

And good for Tony Blair for calling this feral beast on its bullshit. E.J. Dionne, Bill O'Reilly, and so many people in between who love to bathe in their power to tear others apart and who carry the thinnest skin possible when criticized for even legitimate mistakes on their part.

Jesus' approbation was better aphorism. We tend to pluck the splinters from the eyes of others and to ignore our own beams because it is much more difficult to look at yourself than it is to judge someone else.

It's an ugly, ugly display.

And it has completely drained my trust in the media, in politicians, and in everyone who is engaged in this ugly, aggressive, forceful, meanspirited charade, right now.

I have no heroes in the media. Because how could I, really. Noone seems to be able to rise above this ugliness masquerading as righteousness. It's fundamentalism of another stripe. Bowing before the shrine of Woodward and Bernstein, and seeing how many of the bums you can take down before you can call yourself a journalistic prophet.

And it is exactly what folks in liberal democracies should expect when they treat politics like professional wrestling rather than engaged thought and discussion. You decide you want to use politics to vent every ugly impulse you have. Then you get this cynical, ugly, meanspirited mess that you create with that mentality. The media is pandering to it, right now, because it satisfies their most cynical and power-craving urges. And because, as Tony suggests, they suspect that it was their less critical public demands. And they will continue to engage this bullshit until people like Tony, me and whomever else cares to lend a voice to this discussion expects better of them.

The truth is that such nastiness is worthy of noone's ear. I have lost interest and trust in the people who do it. And I, for one, expect better of them.

Love,
Ben

New feelings, old feelings

I've met a girl in my practicum that has me facing some pretty difficult feelings. She's nice and smart. Just the combination I'm looking for.

Today, when I was hanging out with her, I found myself asking myself, "Does this mean that Brandi is gone forever?"

It's had me hurting ever since I thought that.

I miss Brandi something awful is the truth. I miss how much she opened up my heart and my life. I miss our experiences together, in Wichita, in D.C., in Lawrence, and in Kansas City. I miss being able to reminisce with someone about the most mind-opening, open-hearted time in my life. I miss having a real connection to that time in my life. I hate all of the cynicism I encounter in adults. And I miss having a companion who shared and nurtured my idealism, before she got swallowed up by all of the cynicism that is so plentiful in the world, I'm afraid.

Most adults are pretty cynical, is the truth. As Joe says in Joe Vs. Volcano, when they were young they were full of piss and vinegar. They wanted to know. Everything. And then they had some experiences.

Most adults get hurt. And their hearts start to close up. And the cynicism begins to creep in and take over so much of their hearts and minds and outlooks on life. It's kind of sad, really. And Brandi is no different, I'm convinced, though I haven't seen her in 5 years or so, so it's hard to confirm that.

And right now is a moment when cynicism is getting far too much play in our lives, because we've decided to give into it and to empower it, even when, down deep in our hearts, we know better.

I miss not having all this pain and cynicism clogging up my heart. I miss being able to listen to a young love song and not feel pity or cynicism because I think my pain means more than it really does. I miss not having all this shit on my heart to try to filter all my experiences in the world, through. And I especialy miss a time when the all the responsible people I knew in the world weren't trying to convince me, all the time, that the cynical realities of the world were the ones I should settle for because their hearts were too lost in their pain and disappointment with the world. Fuck their pain, I say. They don't want to deal with it and get over it, then shut the fuck up and stop trying to pull young people down into your pain and cynicism.

I miss experiencing that kind of unqualified, uncynical, unbaggaged kind of love. The kind that you don't think about, because you're too busy just loving it.

That pain hangs on my heart like a bad cold that just won't go away.

I love the idea of meeting someone new. But I hate the idea of giving up my memories of my beautiful little romance with Brandi. And my heart is aching for it, tonight.

Love,
Ben

Good conversation

My practicum experience is going really well, right now. I say that cautiously, anymore, after absorbing so much school politics in my last situation. But I really like my cooperating teacher. Bill has been great. He's helpful, patient, gentle, nice, smart. He's easily the best cooperating teacher I've worked with. It's refreshing after many bad cooperating teacher situations, with the exception of my gifted and special education practicums.

Bill and I can sit and talk for hours about matters of substance. He was also a special education Ph.D. student at KU, so we have that to talk about, too. And he's the first teacher to really help me with classroom organizational habits, and I really appreciate that. It's been so long since I've had a really rigorous conversation, and it's really nice to have them reguarly again.

It's kind of renewing my faith in education, again, where I've kind of had my faith shaken, lately. The whole faculty seems very nice and supportive. And it is nice to not have to deal with the school politics of contending with teachers who are more aggressive and more used to scapegoating more supportive, decent, patient teachers as being the source of all of their problems that they haven't spent enough time thinking about. That and administrators being convinced that they could create sustainable change with aggression was the most stressful part of working at Eisenhower that I am happy to be away from, frankly.

There is another teacher, Patrick, in the building who also does a very nice job with kids and who I observed, today. It was very nice to see him both have a fairly calm classroom and to have high academic standards for kids. Patrick had stations set up so he could work one-on-one with kids in turns, he hold high expectations with kids when he works with them and uses our wage system to reward kids for good work, and he seems to be making an organized effort to make sure that kids have basic skills like multiplication down, an important priority for me, last year. I learned a lot in the one hour I spent with him, especially a very nice affirmation that patience and assertiveness are both important qualities for working with kids with academic and behavior issues. He seems like a really nice guy. We'll have to hang out sometime soon.

Women have been totally coming out of the woodwork in this practicum. There is one girl, in particular, Tiffany, who is really nice and seems really smart who I'd kind of like to get to know better. I had this brief moment, today, when I thought, "Uh. I like this girl so much I'm thinking about Brandi being gone from my life forever. And it makes me really sad." I can't really tell if that's a good sign or not, because the idea of Brandi only being a memory from here on out really leaves me feeling empty in a very special place in my heart and my memory. The fact that I could never adequately share that place with someone else and that only Brandi would ever really have an inkling of why that time was so special to me is what is saddest and lonliest. It will take a very special woman to fill that void for me.

I hope Brandi emails me/calls me one of these days. I don't want that time to just be a memory.

And the woman who has to fill her shoes will have to be a pretty special woman. So it makes dating a much more complicated, difficult experience. I don't want to be thinking about how in love I was with some woman from the past. I want to think about how in love I am with the woman I am in love with. But it will take an awfully special woman to make that happen.

It keeps me grounded. Because I know that there is nothing in the world like being love, for real with no qualifications. And I'll never be really happy again until I find that, I'm completely convinced.

I have work to get done. I just also have pain on my heart that is so hard to let go of completely. I need someone in my life who I can share it all with. So maybe I can have a shot at letting in go.

Love,
Ben

Losing faith

The one place I always invested my faith when it was shaky in the world elsewhere was education.

I always believed that education is where people got a fair shot.

And for the first time in my life, I'm not really sure of that, anymore.

That's true as long as you agree. And comply, to their satisfaction.

But not if you question or offer a different explanation or think for yourself, it turns out. Not on the important questions, at least.

For the first time in my life, I'm convinced that intelligence and thought matters. But my faith in education - its politics, its genuine commitment to others and students, the degree to which cynicism or ideas animate it - has been seriously shaken.

I don't trust teachers, anymore, necessarily. And I trust administrators much, much less (administrators, as a rule, in my experience, thusfar, could give two shits about what you think and are much more interested in whether you agree with them or do what they say).

I used to have faith that more honesty was rewarded and paid off. I have much less faith in that notion after Eisenhower. I used to trust teachers and administrators to be fair. I no longer have that faith.

I don't know where that leaves me, exactly. Because my experience, at this point, is that they really don't care as long as you don't agree with them. Any of them. At least when you don't agree on things most important to them, like whether the most important priority in education is to learn or be controlled and compliant. Clearly, most teachers and administrators and just people in the world, these days, have become convinced that the most important value in life is to be compliant.

I wish I did, too, these days. I really do. Because my life would not have been as hard as it has been had I believed this. I wish I could submit myself as quietly as most people can - or at least look like they do when they have to - these days. Because it would have meant much less misery in my life.

I'm sure what they wanted to teach me is that I better do what they fuckin' say or I will pay the fuckin' price.

But really all it did was just lead me to trust them less, and to lose faith, at least for awhile, in an institution and people that I have trusted more than any other, up to this point.

I don't think they care about that, particularly. My experience is that they only care is you agree with them. Otherwise, you're expendable.

Kind of ironic for an institution that says its committed to everyone isn't it?

I wish I'd done something easier. Like theater. Or physics.

But I decided to do political work. And specifically political work in a field that has every interest in proving it's right that the kids they work on behalf of have no real future.

Two and a half more years of this shit and my scholarship is paid off. And then I can go do work that does more real good.

But one guarantee is for sure: there is no real, substantial good that can be done in any field as long rules and compliance are used to shut off and out debate and discussion about whether what we're trying to accomplish is actually being accomplished. It's all lying and bullshit until that conversation is possible.

And one thing I know is that I can't live my life in environments where that kind of discussion is shut out because people just can't be bothered with realities that don't match their self-righteous notions of the world. And I don't care how much that might keep me in a job. I didn't get into this work to keep a job.

I got into this work to make the world a better place. And I have all intentions on doing just that.

Love,
Ben

One place where liberals seem to never learn

The Washington Post features a dismal report on the state of Washington D.C. public schools, this morning.

Can D.C. Schools Be Fixed?

This is my favorite line of analysis in this poorly reasoned article:

"In his nearly three years in the District, Janey has drawn praise for imposing rigorous systemwide standards on what should be taught at each grade, a curriculum to accomplish that and a testing program to measure its success. That reversed a trend of letting each school set its own path, which was widely criticized in education circles."

The results from those efforts?

"Tests show that in reading and math, the District's public school students score at the bottom among 11 major city school systems, even when poor children are compared only with other poor children. Thirty-three percent of poor fourth-graders across the nation lacked basic skills in math, but in the District, the figure was 62 percent. It was 74 percent for D.C. eighth-graders, compared with 49 percent nationally."

The District spends $12,979 per pupil each year, ranking it third-highest among the 100 largest districts in the nation. But most of that money does not get to the classroom. D.C. schools rank first in the share of the budget spent on administration, last in spending on teachers and instruction."

Wow. I can see why Superintendent Janey got all that praise.

At some point, don't you look at this situation and say, "Maybe we've failed. Maybe we need to try something new."

Not if you are the D.C. public schools or their staunch supporters.

That's the problem with politics. Bad ideas and bad situations don't just get too much play. They get imposed on everyone.

Love,
Ben

Burning the village to save it

What makes us look at a situation like this and think we have done any good for anyone?

Party Host Mom Set for Virginia Jail Term

This is tragedy, all around. This mom was trying - in a way that I would not, but trying, nonetheless - to make sure that her teenage boys were not drinking and driving and otherwise getting in trouble or worse.

And now she's going to spend 2 years in prison.

What's wrong with us that we have lost any sense of perspective or decency to understand this mother's concern for her children? Or to believe that we always know best for others how to handle such situations?

This is not an America that I am proud to be a part of. This is an America of self-righteous scolds who don't deserve the power they have legislated for themselves.

Burning the village to save it is lunacy. Destroying families to save them is self-righteous insanity.

We will need forgiveness after this is all done, for all of the destructiveness we offered up instead of genuine concern.

And I have to say that the more I see the Post cheerlead this kind of bullshit, the more I need to look for a new daily newspaper to keep up with.

Love,
Ben

A liberty-minded international policy

Michael Young, the opinion editor for the Lebanon Daily Star, writes brilliantly about the need for a more liberty-minded international policy.

Left, Right, and Wrong

I hope my work will better fit that bill and contribute to the on-going discussion of how state power should be used to promote liberty and should not be used in the name of power for its own sake, especially in places like Lebanon, Egypt, Iran and other emerging Middle Eastern democracies where the need for individual freedom is so much clearer when liberal values are respected so much less.

Love,
Ben

The alcohol nannies

Jonah Goldberg writes a brilliant piece on the crackdown on drinking occuring in Great Britain and the backlash it is generating.

Winey Warriors

I have to say that if this more libertarian direction - freeing Lewis Libby and all -is the direction the National Review will be taking in the coming years (their talk about border fences is a little scary to me, frankly), then I might find some renewed hope in the National Review.

Jonah's brilliant deduction for why Great Britain, uniquely, is attracting the beer and liquor scolds and nannies: the National Health Service.

And he's right. As he argues:

"Britain still subscribes to a system where health care is for the most part socialized. When the bureaucrat-priesthood of the National Health Service decides that a certain behavior is unacceptable, the consequences potentially involve more than scolding. For example, in 2005, Britain’s health service started refusing certain surgeries for fat people. An official behind the decision conceded that one of the considerations was cost. Fat people would benefit from the surgery less, and so they deserved it less. As Tony Harrison, a British health-care expert, explained to the Toronto Sun at the time, 'Rationing is a reality when funding is limited.'

But it’s impossible to distinguish such cost-cutting judgments from moral ones. The reasoning is obvious: Fat people, smokers and — soon — drinkers deserve less health care because they bring their problems on themselves. In short, they deserve it. This is a perfectly logical perspective, and if I were in charge of everybody’s health care, I would probably resort to similar logic.

But I’m not in charge of everybody’s health care. Nor should anyone else be. In a free-market system, bad behavior will still have high costs personally and financially, but those costs are more likely to borne by you and you alone. The more you socialize the costs of personal liberty, the more license you give others to regulate it."

It's true. And it is an important reason to be very skeptical of national health insurance. Canada and other countries with socialized medicine have similar problems with costs and available technology for even serious and life-threatening health conditions.

I've rediscovered Reason magazine, lately, which leads, today, with the cover article and perspective that I've been wanting to read for the last year:

Bashing Barry Bonds: The Campaign Against One of Baseball's Greats

That's the direction the country needs to take. And it's gratifying to see the National Review following the lead of Reason and Andrew Sullivan and other more openly libertarian thinkers and publications.

Now if only the country would give up its government-as-daddy complex and learn to grow up, be responsible for themselves, and let each of us be responsible for ourselves, we'd all be better off.

And finally figure out that Prohibition era mentalities that regulate alcohol, smoking, drugs and the like are the direction of regress, not progress.

Love, rape, whatever

A brilliant blog post by Reason contributor David Wiegel, yesterday.

I have to say that libertarians are looking more and more sensible the more I listen to liberals and conservatives trying to prove just whose tougher, these days.

Love, rape, whatever

Think it doesn't matter if love and sex are consensual or not consensual? Then you are likely one of those who doesn't think it matters if anything is voluntary or consensual or free or not.

And people like that scare me in a way that gay men who have conensual sex in prison never could.

Love,
Ben

Margaret Spellings gets something right

I've been more than a little disappointed with the leadership of Margaret Spellings as President Bush's Secretary of Education. She has, up until now, been an almost unqualified cheerleader for the No Child Left Behind Act, which, no matter how much journalists like those at the Washington Post celebrate the consolidation of education policy in Washington, D.C., has, by the accounts of most teachers you will talk with who are required to implement this well-intentioned but counterproductive effort, been a miserable experience which has correlated, though not been caused by, higher assessment scores, but which has been simultaneously undermining the most critical functions of education, namely to develop independent, critical thinking for a liberal democratic society.

But, finally, Margaret Spellings got it right.

A National Test We Don't Need

Margaret's rebuttal to the poorly reasoned Washington Post lead editorial that assumes correlation of NCLB with higher assessment scores means the success of NCLB -post hoc ergo propter hoc or the fallacy of false cause is probably the most common fallacy that partisans engage in; they want to believe that their favored efforts work, so they look for evidence to make their case rather than engaging in a more rigorous questioning of whether or not their ideas are correct, the higher standard that social sciences aspire to meet - moves in the right direction.

Spelling argues, correctly, that one-size-fits-all and stiffer national standards create a scary universe of Washington-run education (George Orwell would piss his pants if he heard of partisans arguing that Big Brother should be in charge of a nation's education system) and that such authority should be devolved from federal control.

This is where conservatives can be much more genuine classical liberals than political liberals. Where liberals are constantly emboldened by their romance with FDR and his consolidation of everything good and correct in the Federal government, conservatives tend to be more skeptical, for good reason. It is exactly this kind of consolidation of power that more genuine liberals like Lord Acton warned the world against. Journalists like too many at the Washington Post - David Broder, especially - and too many politicians in Washington arrogantly disregard the persistent and wide-spread concerns by teachers about the tendency of NCLB to drive all curriculum, to encourage teaching to narrow tests rather than for a broader liberal education, to press teachers in directions that are counterproductive to the broader purposes of an education that both cares for students' individual goals and needs and which teaches independent, critical thinking.

And my most serious concern is the hubris by the less intellectually-inclined, like the editorial writers at the Washington Post and too many politicians in Washington (though, to the credit of many political representatives, the tide is turning against NCLB and has been for quite awhile), deciding for the rest of the country what should be required curriculum and instruction through assessment. It's an arrogant grab of power by a group of folks who, generally, have not demonstrated a propensity to engage in the most rigorous intellectual thought, at least not by the standards of academic scholarship.

I, personally, would be skeptical of even philosopher-kings in the academy deciding for the country what should and should not be studied. But I would listen to their ideas much more readily than I would to the editorial board of the Washington Post (no offense to the smart, but too clever by half members of that editorial board).

Margaret Spellings has not gotten much right in her tenure as Secretary of Education. She has persistently cheerleaded No Child Left Behind over the objections of teachers, administrators, superintendents, and critics all over the country. But she has figured out what the Washington Post has not figured out in its recent period of flexing its journalistic muscle: to listen to the people your laws impact.

Those who ignore people whom are impacted by their favored legislation engage one of the most persistent forms of abuse of power that democracies experience: the desire to will out over others rather than to listen to and engage them.

It is a tendency that a truer liberal, Bobby Kennedy, warned us about months before his death in 1968. The wielders of force seek to control their neighbors rather than live and work in common effort. And their hubris should be rebuffed and treated with the skepticism that Margaret Spellings offers it in this column.

The power of the press, as Alexis de Toqueville observed over 200 years ago, is one of the most serious powers in molding the morality of a nation of any in a democracy.

But it is a mistake for independent-minded people to cede the authority to decide such important matters to anyone but their own independent consciences and judgments.

It is time for liberals like the writers at the Post to take more seriously the independent, critical judgment that education is supposed to nurture.

Love,
Ben