Putting leadership into perspective

This has been a really cowardly period for leadership.

Political or otherwise, leadership in America, and in the world at-large, as well, these last 7 years or so has been pretty shitty.

It's not George Bush. It's all of us. Our most cowardly and fearful and insecure instincts have led us this period. And those who might lead otherwise have been too scared to take us in a better direction. We have had much cynical politics and very little genuine political leadership during this period. Hillary Clinton represents every worst instinct, in this regard, which is why I am so unenamoured with her. She's avoided the toughest calls, like the war in Iraq, then played victim - "George Bush misled me and the American public about WMD's"; any politician who believes a sitting President that blithely should not hold office - and still, today, panders to public reaction - a speedy withdrawal - with very little vision or leadership offered. She is not alone. And George Bush has been the poster child for this same pandering on the right (What was the last free trade or balanced budget cause that George Bush took up during either of his terms? I bet you could name the last anti-gay rights cause he took up).

In the face of all that cowardice and the cowardice of most people as they have faced very scary issues like terrorism, the greater visibility and occurrence of more shocking crimes like child sex crimes and the spike in violent and other crimes, generally, and a war in Iraq that has taken the lives of many of their family members and neighbors, more genuine and confident leadership has been difficult, but that is also when it is most needed.

And all of the indicators point in bad directions, right now, no matter how much we might try to bullshit otherwise.

The war in Iraq and our military efforts in Afghanistan are both going badly, even as I believe that we owe a commitment to security for Iraqis and Afghanis until they are able to take charge of that responsibility themselves and make clear to us that they are ready for us to leave (which we should do as soon as we have a clear indication that this is what their populations genuinely want and need, I believe). A recent Foreign Policy index of the view of a broad collection of American foreign policy experts reinforces my view that terrorism, generally, has likely been strengthened since 9/11, largely because of the missteps of Americans and more powerful, democratic countries have made in dealing with the Arab and Muslim world which nurtures so much international terrorism and, in my estimation, the more repressive directions that liberal and illiberal countries alike have taken in the last few years which have, generally, both prompted greater resolve amongst terrorist groups and given more public grievances for terrorists to draw upon to rationalize their bloody practices. And crime and violent crime have seen spikes in the last 2 years in the United States, despite tougher and more exacting law enforcement measures.

In the face of all of that, it is really difficult to be honest with people in a way that more honestly faces such failures and mistakes and leads us in a better direction.

People are easily scared, generally. And they have a hard time distinguishing between their fears and their more aggressive reactions to those fears and more realistic accounts of the world and reasonable responses.

That has always been the case. That is the long history of humanity and its foolishness in dealing with almost literally every important moral or political or social issue it has faced. People get afraid. They react aggressively and repressively. Their efforts fail and hurt many people, tragically. And only much later do they face that persistent failure.

And what has always blocked up our ability to discuss and think about and reassess those failures and mistakes that we make as societies is the fear and aggression and repression shutting down the conversation and more reasonable assessments of the threats we face.

It also makes cowards of us and of our political and community leaders. And sadly, in the case of Nazism and Fascism and Soviet or Chinese or Cuban Communism, it makes cowards of a population, so much so that tragedy becomes the norm and courage is all too easily rebutted with force.

Democracies are forever subject to this tendency, as well, sadly. But they allow more space, freedom, choice, and opportunity for criticism, engagement, learning, and correction. That is their saving grace. There is no perfect world. There is only this all-too-real world with its all-too-real failings.

That is why I identify with H.L. Mencken's bitterness with average people, even as I do not share it (or at least I share it for as little time as I possibly can as I work to let it go). And the fact that people eventually come around and the fact that it is a function of their ignorance and their need to learn the important lessons the hard way as much as by their intellect is why I identify more with Mark Twain.

Average people are cowards, is the truth. Even most extraordinary people are cowards, generally, in some respect, I think, given my observations of my own instincts as much as the instincts of those who I have generally admired in a more unqualified way before this political period.

But the truth is that amidst all that fear and aggression and our rallying to cheerlead our more repressive instincts, it is very difficult to offer greater leadership. It is always difficult to offer people leadership that they need but do not want. It is the most difficult fact of being a teacher or a parent. And it involves big stakes for politicians and public servants and civic-minded people alike. Because people are manipulative and coldhearted pricks, much of the time, is the truth. Another name for that tendency is political pressure.

It is always much easier to follow the crowd than it is to think independently. And sometimes it can be somewhat dangerous, or at least offer harsh and often unfair consequences, to do so out loud.

Genuine leadership is difficult to offer when aggression is romanticized and has captured the imagination of people, especially as it has done so for the greatest length of human history, much more than intelligence, by far, even as intelligence has always offered the substantial light out of humanity's troubles for the entirety of its history. More people identify as tough than intelligent, sadly. And thus our romance with our basest and most destructive and self-destructive impulse.

Somehow, we need more room for us to learn how to handle that instinct. It cannot be effectively repressed. And trying to do so only leads to more dishonesty - with ourselves as much as with one another - and more confusion and misunderstanding. We end up constantly exacting our aggression in other ways - like persistently trying to coerce or strong-arm one another, for instance - instead of facing, honestly, its consequences in our lives.

And the fact that we do so in every institution - in schools and universities, in churches, in legislatures, in courtrooms, in museums and libraries; everywhere where respectable people congregate - means that we both try and fail to repress those more honest and innocuous qualities about us that express our truer selves as much as our uglier but more honest qualities and that we alienate the very people that we need to touch with those institutions to effect the kinds of changes we would like to see those institutions effect, namely ourselves. All of us end up lying about who we really are, hiding our truer selves so that we can cover what is unattractive about us and look better than we really are.

And we make so difficult that ability and willingness by people to bring a more honest accounting of life to light because we are constantly reacting and threatening to react in ways that are ugly and mean-spirited.

And no matter how much it ruins things, noone ever takes responsibility for that persistent fact of life.

Ever.

Because the cowards who keep it in place are too cowardly to face its failure. And those who disagree with more repressive measures are too afraid to challenge it openly, for fear of having aggression meted out to them.

So it fails and fails and fails. And noone ever takes responsibility.

And the whole thing, remember, is premised on the idea of people needing to take more responsibility.

And it fails and it fails and it fails. And noone ever takes responsibility.

And then its proponents remind us that they are trying to promote responsibility.

And then it fails and it fails and it fails. And noone takes responsibility.

And I guess that this is the future of humanity, is what I'm told. This is where progress lies. In all that lying and failure and noone taking responsibility. That's the lie that captured the imagination of so much of the world during the 20th century and lead to the deaths and imprisonment and misery for much of the world's population for much of that century.

I don't know why George Orwell and I didn't go into banking. It's more lucrative. And most people don't listen to or read the warnings, anyway. And we certainly never seem to learn the lessons.

Because we're kind of dumb. And cowardly. And we would rather believe a lie that sounds convenient than a truth that is hard to face.

All of us. Great and small.

And, right now, in this particular moment, most of us are small.

Here's to greatness. It's within all of us. Even as most of us choose to be small.

Love,
Ben

I knew it

The music industry is in trouble. And the market has shifted to the internet and downloads.

The Music Man

No wonder commercial radio sucks so bad. Because of exactly what I have been saying for the last few years. Companies are too focussed on selling music than producing great music. And so the industry flounders.

I've been saying for a good 4 or 5 years, now, with friends, that the commercial music world has taken a nosedive. And this confirms that cynical marketing leads to less profit, over time.

Warren Buffet is right. The market rewards value over time.

It's about time this caught up with the music world. Now maybe some great artists can be recognized, supported, and the music industry can find its heart and some courage, again. Because the shit on the radio, these days, has not cut it for too long.

Love,
Ben

The logical conclusion of this repressive period

Swiss deportation policy draws criticism

"The campaign poster was blatant in its xenophobic symbolism: Three white sheep kicking out a black sheep over a caption that read "for more security." The message was not from a fringe force in Switzerland's political scene but from its largest party.

The nationalist Swiss People's Party is proposing a deportation policy that anti-racism campaigners say evokes Nazi-era practices. Under the plan, entire families would be expelled if their children are convicted of a violent crime, drug offenses or benefits fraud."

And it's so nice to see journalists beginning to draw these obvious parallels:

"Ronnie Bernheim of the Swiss Foundation against Racism and Anti-Semitism said the proposal was similar to the Nazi practice of "Sippenhaft" — or kin liability — whereby relatives of criminals were held responsible for his or her crimes and punished equally.

Similar practices occurred during Stalin's purges in the early days of the Soviet Union and the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution in China, when millions were persecuted for their alleged ideological failings.

'As soon as the first 10 families and their children have been expelled from the country, then things will get better at a stroke,' said Maurer, whose party controls the Justice Ministry and shares power in an unwieldy coalition that includes all major parties.

He explained that his party has long campaigned to make deportation compulsory for convicted immigrants rather than an optional and rarely applied punishment.'

This is the logical conclusion of the current zeitgeist.

And the irony?

During this same period of crackdowns and a criminal justice policy for James Q. Wilson to-die-for, crime is up all over the world.

Foreign Policy Magazine reports it as The Hidden Pandemic. Trends for violent crime in the U.S. are up for 2005 and 2006. As I have more time, I might continue searching for comparable Swiss crime figures (I've looked for half an hour and hit dead ends for recent trends for 2005 and 2006; Wikipedia shows a drop in criminal convictions for 2005, but also reports an overall increase without documentation of statistics for 2006).

But the general trends in crime policy and international security policy are unmistakable, by my lights. More repressive criminal justice and security policies and more failure, generally, in criminal justice and international security efforts.

Crime is up worldwide and in the U.S., after a 40 year low in the murder rate. Iran is pursuing the bomb more ambitiously than when that confrontation began. North Korean denuclearization only got on track with more diplomacy and kept sputtering off-track with more pressure. The war in Iraq serves as one long object lesson on the wisdom of forcing democratic virtues onto a population.

As a teacher and an authority figure - especially as a teacher for the most poorly behaving kids in schools; I teach high school social studies at an alternative school for kids who have been removed from mainstream public school situations - I do know how difficult it is as an authority figure to reconsider a strategy for creating order for behavior when I've invested in it. I have a 4th hour, right now, that I have been tightening up because of serious behavior problems from our first day, and I reflect every day on what is or might be working well and what is not or might not be working so well.

But I also hold myself to the highest standards of empirical observation of when we are making progress and when we are not.

And the results of the current crime and security strategies of liberal democratic countries, nevertheless illiberal and less democratic or undemocratic countries, do not bear out a case for substantial progress in improving important indices.

If I am wrong about that, I need to hear or read a stronger case for that claim than I have been reading or hearing up till now.

In the meantime, the Swiss policy is exactly the logic that most of the world's criminal and security policies have been premised upon in the last 7 years or so.

It is ugly. And it is the logical conclusion of this repressive period.

Stubbornness. Self-righteousness. Pride. It is the deadliest sin because it is the mistake that keeps in place every other mistake. It is the most serious mistake because it means denying every other mistake. And it is responsible for the most serious and tragic mistakes in human history because is the source of all of the lying and pretending so that everything looks like it is better than it is.

Pride is the source of current zeitgeist in public policy. Because no matter how much it fails, its apologists defend it. And the repression that fails us so miserably is what makes it so difficult to talk about all of our mistakes more openly and honestly.

Some people you would assume prefer failure, given their pride.

But pride is the source of all of our failures and shortcomings, is the truth.

And it is more common than any of us would like to admit. Not just to all of those living today, but to every generation.

Hubris, the Greeks whisper. Hubris.

Love,
Ben

Decent people and the current political period

I was just remarking to a colleague, today, that what I love about my colleagues and administration at Capital City, is that it's nice to be somewhere where being a decent person is appreciated, more, and not just persistently denigrated as too soft or too weak.

Decent people are being scapegoated, these days, for the failures of tougher approaches. Crime rates, and violent crime rates, in particular, have spiked for 2 years in a row - 2005 and 2006 - during a get-tough-on-crime period in the U.S. They've spiked all over the world, according to Foreign Policy magazine, during a period when the world has embraced tougher, more repressive policies, generally, and crime policies, specifically. Iran's nuclear program is nowhere nearer resolution except by the more realistic and diplomatic efforts of people like Mohamed El-Bardei and the International Atomic Energy Association. The stand-off over North Korea's nuclear program only took a positive turn with more light and less heat put on the situation, as one would expect. When America pressured North Korea, they walked away and South Korea brought them back to the table, in an initial phase, with diplomacy. When the West pressed with economic sanctions, the DPRK pulled out of negotiations until a diplomatic arrangement could be made.

No matter how much strong-arming fails, those who prefer strong-arming to reinforce their power - the rationalization of China's tough totalitarianism is really the most revolting face of this movement in the West - even when it fails, more decent folks have been perpetually scapegoated for those failures, even when they are generally more committed to efforts like those I am currently responsible for, sticking with those kids who make serious enough mistakes to get booted from every other school situation.

It's nice to be amongst people who take thoughtful analysis of situations with kids and compassion and decency to others more seriously. And have a little safe haven from a world gone made with obsession with it's power, no matter how much strong-arming fails to achieve its objectives. This must have been the feeling similar such people had during World War I, when the world went mad with power lust and everyone just had to wait until millions of deaths and a fruitless war of power and treasure culminated in Adolph Hitler taking imperialism and force as a governing philosophy to its logical conclusion. World War I caused 20 million deaths before the world would even begin face its hubris, and only in time to face down the height of such arrogance of power in the hands of Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Emperor Hirohito.

Decent people are being scapegoated for the failures of the pricks of the world, right now. Barring that, the stubborn and power-obsessed.

I guess that's the nature of being a prick. When your efforts fail, the last thing you want to do is take responsibility for that failure. Otherwise you miss the advantage of being a prick: being able to do what the hell you want and never having to take responsibility.

Maybe that's unfair. Maybe they're not pricks. Maybe they are concerned citizens who have just stubbornly pursued policies that have been counterproductive without acknowledging responsibility. Maybe their motives are more noble than that. Maybe.

What I do know is that no matter how much their efforts fail, noone ever takes responsibility.

George Bush knows something about that. So does Hillary Clinton. And so does most of the democratic and Western world, at this point.

The question is when they will take responsibility for that failure.

From 1914, it took two world wars and 92 million deaths before the world would acknowledge the failure of maximum political and military conquest as a route to peace or security before decent and democratic peoples of the world would face that failure.

92 million tragedies that could have been avoided if only world leaders had looked honestly and objectively at their failure.

But they refused. And 92 million people lost their lives in the name of that hubris.

We are democratic peoples. We will face this. The question is when. And how many peoples' lives will face unnecessary tragedy until we do so. Desmond Tutu and his work with truth and reconciliation points us in a better direction. My own work does as well, I think.

But we will have to wait, sadly, until this logic runs out and enough unecessary destructiveness in peoples' lives has been wrought.

And until we can face our failure.

In the meantime, I'd rather be amongst those who are scapegoated for that failure than those who refuse to face up to it.

May we all face up to this failure sooner rather than later.

Love,
Ben

Superman's Song

For some reason, this song has me particularly weepy, these days. I think I'm just exhausted by the job. And by the lonliness of independent thought.

And because I miss the time in my life when I didn't listen to this song with such jadedness on my heart. I have hardened. And I hate it. And I miss a time in my life when my heart was not so hard and life was much simpler and certainly less harsh.



Here's to Sup sticking with the hard job, even when an easier life is just around the corner.

Love,
Ben

Someone who won't fuck with my heart

I think I've finally realized what I'm looking for in people I trust and in a soulmate.

I want someone who won't fuck with my heart. Meaning, when you try to manipulate me, and I can tell that's what you're doing, I don't trust you. I don't give a shit who you are or what your credentials or how smart or ambitious or successful or whatever you think you are. You try to manipulate me, I think you're a shithead. And I don't trust you. And I won't trust you until you stop.

Hence my antipathy for Hillary Clinton.

And what I'm looking for - in bosses, in teachers, in thinkers and writers, and most definitely in a mate - is someone who is not trying to fuck with my heart.

It's the biggest reason that I'm glad that Brandi is not in my life, right now. I don't really even value her friendship, much, anymore, at this point, for this reason.

Because I am fuckin' tired of people in my life who fuck with my heart. Who play games with me. Who try to manipulate me. Who ignore the consequences of their actions on my heart and my life because it's inconvenient for them. And who treat me like I am something to be manipulated or played with rather than a person in my own right who needs to be treated with respect and dignity and an appreciation for what I have to think and say.

And if you aren't someone who can do that, you're a shithead. And I don't really give a shit what you're excuse for that might be.

I don't trust you.

I need people in my life who I can trust. It's all relative, sadly. There are very few people who have much unqualified trust for. And the more I get treated badly in this world, the less I trust people.

That's all I want. I can do without any of the extras in life - the wealth, the power, the fame, the whatever.

All I want is people in my life who will not play games with me and fuck with my heart.

But they are very rare, sadly.

If there is anything that matters most in the world to me, it is people I can trust in my life and my daily presence. I've met enough people that I can't trust that it is nice to meet people I can trust, more.

And my soulmate needs to be someone I can trust. Someone who won't fuck with my heart. Someone who won't fuck with the hearts of my children because it seems easier than having honest discussions and differences and stronger relationships. I need someone I can turn to when my heart is feeling pained and overwhelmed by a world gone mad with its need for power and capacity to strong-arm in lieu of reason. I need this pain off my heart that always lies below the surface. And I need someone I can share it with to let it go and to feel more genuinely safe in a world generally made less safe by our own obsessions and fears and foolish and failed efforts to make it more secure.

I need someone I can trust. I trust the people I work with, right now, more than I've ever trusted people I've worked with. I still don't trust anyone, completely, anymore, after all of the bullshit I've experienced in my life. But I trust these people more.

But I need someone I trust enough to be able to share and let go of all of this pain and hard shells that have developed on my heart as I have grown hard in a world that needs more softness and decency.

I need someone in my life who will not fuck with my heart and who will help me heal it in a time when matters of the heart are taken so lightly in the name of whichever excuse we have for why we are such shitheads and why the ways we handle things fail so miserably again and again and again.

Right now, I need a beer. And some sleep. And some kind of balm for my hardened and weary heart.

An attentive ear would help. But a beer might do, right now.

Love,
Ben

What I'm sure it will say on my epitaph

"He gave his whole heart to everything he did.
Too bad he was such a sucker."

I'm sure that's what my detractors will say, anyway.

In which case my epitaph will read:

"Good luck, morons"

Love,
Ben

Everybody's not Martin Luther King

I think I've finally made some peace with the question of people and their shortcomings.

Everyone has capacity for greatness. Everyone could be a Buddha or a Jesus or a Mohatma Gandhi or a Martin Luther King. But most people don't make that choice. Most people aren't Mohatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King.

George Bush and Hillary Clinton are just George Bush and Hillary Clinton. Which should make it easier, not harder, to call them on their bullshit, because they're no fuckin' saints. Me either. Jesus and Buddha and Gandhi and King don't even live up to their public images. How in the hell would we expect that political leaders, who aren't even playing in their leagues, should be trusted with so much goddamn power?

King and Gandhi and Jesus and Buddha were just people, too, just like you and me. Just people a little more aware of their capacity to do great things than most people. And they accomplished them.

The higher we hold that standard, the more we'll live up to it, I think. And perhaps surpass it, if we play our cards right.

But because most of us hold our expectations for ourselves and one another so low, we live down to that standard, instead, much of the time.

That's why I hold a higher standard. For myself and others.

Because the higher we hold that standard, without putting any pressure on it or ourselves, that is, the closer we are likely to get to it. And the more we are likely to inspire the same from those around us.

That's important to me as I look for someone to spend my life with and as I think about being a great dad to my kids.

I don't want to put too much pressure on me or them. But that's because I want us to step up to the biggest challenges and face them more thoughtfully and effectively together, not live down to a lower standard for ourselves.

Everybody's not Martin Luther King. And maybe if we gave them some space, they might be better. You never know. And we'll definitely never know if we're constantly trying to pressure them to live down to our minimal standard rather than live up to their best potential.

And that's the level at which I, for one, would rather be playing.

Love,
Ben

Our pride that we are better than we are

It's starting to occur to me that the way that most people make decisions is, more or less, a less sophisticated form of cost-benefit analysis. An academic or a CEO might attach more numbers and think in more long term ways about such an analysis than most people. But most people engage in this type of thinking, at some level.

How can I get the most that I want with the least cost to me? How can I get the most of what I want by taking the least responsibility and the least risks?

It's all so noble, itn'it?

Liberal democracies are more honest about this and create a freer, more honest culture for dealing with it by liberalizing and making for a more honest discussion and accounting for it. Illiberal cultures fail and often refuse to face up to it, hoping, instead that they're illiberal ways will make it go away. Come to think of it, it's not a clean break, in the least. To the extent that we are more genuinely liberal (meaning liberty-loving), we are more honest about it and create a freer, more honest culture for dealing with our baser negotiations in the world. To the extent that we are illiberal, we fail and often refuse to face up to it and pretend that our illiberal ways will make it go away. But our illiberal ways are a function of this same base way of negotiating our way through life. They are us being less honest with ourselves and hoping that if we look tough or act tough, that it will compensate for our failures to honestly face up to this fact of life and make it better by sharing, better, the risks and burdens of life.

Everyone wants the benefit without the risk or the burden. Everyone. Without exception. Me too. Me especially, when I'm particularly hard on myself.

But I'm learning to be better. And I'm more honest about this tendency with myself and with a lot of people, I think, even as I am less honest with myself and others about it, it seems always, than I want to be. But I have been much more honest about the need to choose what I and everyone knows is the better route more freely and honestly and genuinely rather than trying to substitute force for genuine commitment.

People are just kind of shitty, sometimes. They learn, I think. We learn. But we're also just kind of shitty to one another.

Better people take more responsibility and worry less about benefit.

But the real saving grace is not just our propensity to be better people, but our learning, too often, from experience the consequences of behaving worse or badly. And that includes all of us. Especially those who claim to act as moral arbiters for the rest of us. The pride in that position - the pride that they did not take the risks involved with giving all of us more freedom to learn these lessons on our own because they were more interested in following the rules or doing what was right, when really what they were and are most interested in is watching their own hind ends - is definitely one of the biggest lies of all.

Because that lie - the lie that strict enforcement of rules or repressive laws and enforcement is really about making life safer rather than looking after our own hind ends as we constantly look over our shoulders about what others think about us and might do to us, and that any of that could somehow substitute for more genuine conscience which only comes with more freedom - is the lie that has been responsible for the most murder and bloodshed and senseless tragedy in the history of humanity than any other lie we have told ourselves or one another.

We definitely need to be able to act aggressively when harm is clearly imminent. But, too often, we don't. And we need to give up our excuses for why we act more aggressively than is good or necessary. And we do so by internalizing limits on that overwrought propensity for aggression. And we do that by reflection and thought and engagement and developing our consciences.

That idea that this lie, this lie that aggression is what makes us good, could be twisted into some distorted notion of "progress" makes my stomach turn. It is the biggest lie, as Adolph Hitler would say. In fact, it was the exact strategy that Hitler used to reap all his destruction. He convinced the Germans that their pride that their aggressive and repressive ways were a function of what good people they were and that behaving so in ways that would acquire for them the most inescapable form of power was exactly how he was able to engage in so much destruction. And the Germans followed this seductive message. And millions of soldiers and civilians died. And 6 million Jews died.

And we still maintain that pride.

That pride that we are better than we really are. And that it is our aggression and not our consciences that make it so.

Hubris, the Greeks remind us. Hubris, is the sin of every generation. That they have finally found the final solution to their problems and that no more thought or engagement will be necessary to deal with those problems or any new problems they might face. Or at least that the thought and engagement is less important than their hubris.

Christian theologians called it pride. And it was and is the deadliest of all sins.
And the bane of humanity.

And the core of the current political period.

Love,
Ben

A governing philosophy of "the buck stops elsewhere"

If you watch contemporary politicians in America, it is clear that the overriding governing philosophy is not a governing philosophy of force. That is just the zeitgeist. It passes as the public mood passes. And it is passing as the public mood is changing.

The consequent and more dominant governing philosophy, sadly and too often, is "not my fault."

George Bush isn't responsible for this war and its turn. Hillary Clinton isn't responsible for her vote and for keeping any reservations to herself (if she had any; we don't know because she didn't give any voice) in the run-up to the war and will not - mark my words - take any responsibility if a pull-out from Iraq brings a spike in sectarian warfare and a deteriorated security situation.

Noone is responsible on the biggest issues during this period.

And, remember, this is the period of responsibility. That's why all that force is necessary, they say. To make people take responsibility, they say. Someone else, of course. Never ourselves. And that is why Jesus argued rightly 2000 years ago that people should look to remove the beams from their own eyes before they try to remove the splinters from the eyes of their neighbors. Obviously there are exceptions to that rule, where immediate physical harm or threat is involved and there are no other less forceful or violent options. But, as a rule, this is why Jesus was so concerned about our tendency to try to make our neighbors' responsible for their behavior: because it allowed us to distract ourselves from our own responsibility for ourselves.

And that is the consequence of a more punitive cultural and political mood that tells people that they will be treated poorly if they openly take responsibility and which focuses on the mistakes of others rather than on our own and grounded in our own need for self-governance as a fundamental need of liberal (and illiberal) societies.

Does more force make people more responsible in Iran? In North Korea? In Cuba? In the Soviet Union? In China? In Syria? In Iraq, pre- or post- Saddam Hussein? In Nazi Germany? In Fascist Italy? In Chile under Augusto Pinochet? In Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe?

And the bigger question for us, today, is does force make people more responsible in America, in Great Britain, in France, in Germany, in Japan, in a more democratic Russia, in any of the liberal democracies of the West or the liberal democracies of the world or the illiberal democracies of the world or the dictatorships and autocracies of the world?

Once you pose that question more broadly it becomes much clearer that the answer has always been no (there certainly is a substantial discussion to have about that question, but I am fairly clear that the most honest conclusion to that discussion must be one that is very skeptical of the use of force and power for the purposes of progress in liberal democratic or illiberal societies) and that the impetus for liberal democracies was to correct for this tendency in liberal democratic societies as much as illiberal cultures and by illiberal governments. But what has also been true is that we are perpetually seduced by this romance we have with force and with violence to resolve our problems. And it is responsible for the long march of mistakes and abuses of power that have been as much a part of our long history in liberal democratic societies and our less liberal and illiberal predecessors as much as the history or less liberal and illiberal societies that currently populate the world.

Without any presumptions or explicit limitations - the use of the terms least possible necessary aggression or force is an explicit effort to create presumptions against force or aggression as much as possible and clearer limitations on its use - a governing philosophy of force can only move in the direction of either Nazi and Soviet-style rationalized permanent presence or overreach and failure, the second of which I'm fairly confident is the direction that liberal democratic societies are and will take given more genuine and honest reflection on the fruits of this thinking and its use as a government philosophy.

But one of the more pernicious consequences that governments and governing periods that have centered themselves around force as a governing philosophy all have in common is that noone is responsible for their failures. Noone. Ever.

Other than John Edwards, you heard any Senator or Representative publicly take responsibility for their vote for this war without a debate or discussion that might have approached and perhaps found some solutions to so many of the concerns that have come up for the 4 years of its execution? Surely that Senator from New York, who is vying to be her country's Commander-in-Chief and who wants to clean up Washington and make the President be accountable for this war has taken responsibility for her vote, right? Surely the President, who with Ms. Clinton and other Senators has sought to regulate so many of the choices of his fellow citizens in the name of taking responsibility for America's problems has or will take responsibility for this war and its consequences?

And it's not just on the war. It's on any serious issue where political candidates do not want to be affiliated with the poor, even unintended, consequences of failures in policies that they have advocated.

Noone is taking responsibility. Everyone is too scared of the consequences to pony up. Which is quite natural and common. It just would probably be better if we owned up for that more honestly and stopped trying to ignore and romanticize our more repressive efforts like they have been more effective at facilitating that kind of responsibility than they really have.

And since government has been the center of our contemporary obsession with might making right in liberal democratic societies - where such a notion is rebuked in our cultural histories - it seems appropriate to note that the major political leaders seem not nearly adequately concerned with their own responsibility in the failures of either this governing philosophy and approach nor with any of the policies they advocate. Democracy offers us defense in such situations, giving us an opportunity to not let such bad governance get worse. But it also offers us proactive opportunities, as well, to think, express, criticize, and articulate more openly, freely, and responsibly better ideas of life and governance that might tackle our problems more effectively.

Barack Obama is being beseiged, unfairly, for doing just that, right now, in this Democratic race. I don't even agree with all of his thinking. But I like the fact that he is doing it openly and I find the cowardice of Hillary Clinton's propensity to keep cards conveniently close to her chest so that she never has to either be out of step with the electorate nor challenge people to think more or better with better ideas and more honest engagement to tackle problems like the war in Iraq and our military and political efforts to combat terrorism unworthy of Presidential leadership.

But what I find most distasteful about this period is that everyone wants someone else to take responsibility. But noone models how to do that themselves. And then we all say, "This is how the world is supposed to be."

And noone takes responsibility.

I'm getting better at it and I regularly take public responsibility insofar as I feel safe to do so. But the buck can't stop with us, for real, until we create a climate that makes it more likely for responsibility to be taken and less likely for people to perpetually shift out of it.

Perhaps we don't really care whether we're successful in this effort or not. Or, more likely, we are far too satisfied and complacent with our failures and own mistaken thinking about such issues that we give into our jaded notions that such cynicism is the nature of reality of human affairs rather than the consequence of our failures.

But the failures will persist until we take responsibility for them. And "the buck stops here" will always be a political fable we tell our children to make them proud to be an American but that we persistently fail to provide in our example as long as we ignore the reaping of the failure that more forceful and aggressive efforts sow.

For now, the buck stops elsewhere. And it will continue to do so as long as no-one takes responsibility for our failed logic and aggressive policies.

Love,
Ben

The consequences of polarization

Michael O'Hanlon illustrates the consequences of polarizing political tendencies trying to substitute themselves for more thoughtful, committed, empirical efforts in another excellent piece in the Washington Post.

The Work Behind Our Iraq Views

There are plenty of problems that need resolution in Iraq, a workable political resolution to sectarian fighting and to facilitate a credible monopoly of force by the Iraqi military and law enforcement being the highest priority.

And the value of Michael's piece and his and Ken Pollack's original and excellent New York Times piece is that it brings a reasonable and committed perspective to a discussion that has perpetually been spoiled and distorted by the polarized, leveraged and leveraging, and unreasonable perspectives of so many people who have abandoned more reasonable and engaged thought in favor of strong-arming for a cause with very little thought, really.

I will admit. My commitment to the security project in Iraq is not just because of signs of progress. George Will's recent Post editorial on the war demonstrates his ambivalence about the effort and the uncertainty and ambivalence that most Americans have about our Iraq efforts.

I admit, I don't share that ambivalence. I opposed this war, up front, when it was popular in the country and among media pundits and the political class. I did so openly and publicly, at a time when to do so was considered to be in league with Osama Bin Laden. I have no track record, at all, of either supporting the war in the beginning or supporting it when it was popular.

But I do think that Americans have some responsibility for the mess they helped create in Iraq. And I want to see them step up to that responsibility, even when it is tough.

My commitment is not dependent on the immediate success of our efforts, though I am certainly committed to a realistic assessment of the probability of success with our various efforts. My commitment is based on a responsibility that I feel and that I think most Americans should feel after invading a country without preparation and consultation with them in a way that might have prevented some of what we are witnessing today. I don't know if the current sectarian fighting was predictable for most informed observers (I certainly did not predict it) but I do think a Vietnam-like insurgency was predictable for those who were not engaged in finger-pointing recrimination from the Vietnam era and were committed to objective analysis of what went wrong and how to prevent it in the future. I also think that study of counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism analysis of the ways that insurgent and terrorist groups use modern media and propaganda tactics to wear down the will of those they are fighting and the political responses of domestic democratic populations to the casualties in conflicts where immediate personal or national self-defense is not involved, even as critical security measures might be involved for the benefit of others, is useful in understanding this war and developing a committed strategy.

The bottom line in my mind is, "Is there still more U.S. security detail that needs doing? And if so, how can the American people be led in a direction of more courage and commitment rather than pandering to their immediate, even popular, reactions and impulses?"

And Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack do a fine job of answering both of these questions well, I think, in their original piece - A War We Just Might Win - and in this rebuttal to Jonathan Finer's generally well-reasoned criticism of that piece - Green Zone Blinders.

The consequences of this polarizing and polarized political period is that reasonable discussion gets crowded out by a macho focus on leveraging and pressuring for predetermined positions that are not nearly engaged enough to ever amount to more reasonable positions. That is the problem with force, as a rule, to get your way. You can't possible know how others might view or contribute differently to a discussion if your focus is on willing out rather than on questioning, better, if the cause that you are trying to will out for is best served by your current line of thought. And the failure to do that is the failure of governance that has plagued governments and advocates of force as a governing philosophy for most of the 20th century and, sadly, here at the beginning of the 21st century.

Tragedy without purpose is the most tragic of all. And we are getting more than our share of that right now. It is tragedy that has turned to farce. But, sadly, it is Marx's strategy of leveraging past such situations rather than engaging them more honestly and democratically that is creating the farcical consequences that he lamented. And instead of leaving that sad, long-failed strategy behind, liberal democracies have decided to embrace it one last time in hopes of somehow reforming it.

But it cannot be reformed. It must be rethought.

Love,
Ben

Humanity's saving grace

I am learning, from personal experience and just watching the world, that people will do anything to rationalize and make excuses for the pain and bitterness and fear in their hearts. They will make up all kinds of excuses for why they are such pricks to one another. They are more plentiful than not, really.

But you know what humanity's saving grace is despite all of our bullshitting of ourselves and one another about what we are really thinking and really feeling?

Down deep, we know it's bullshit.

And so we have to give up the bullshit, eventually, to embrace more genuine virtues like love and compassion and forgiveness and decency.

Because we know, in our hearts, that everything else is bullshit. We're just too afraid to admit it. Until we have no other choice, that is.

You know what the catch-22 for young people is? As long as they are sweet and innocent, their older, more jaded brethren will always call them naive. And then when they taste the forbidden fruits of life and understand, better, what their more jaded brethren mean, the jaded among us will use that as further validation that people are inherently corrupt and untrustworthy and they won't change and there's nothing you can do about that anyway.

Even though it is often their suspicion and haranguing that tempts people out of their innocence in the first place.

We're so ugly. The truth is that we don't give a shit about the decency and innocence of young people. We are just perpetually lamenting our own romanticized image of our own innocence. And we mistake our jadedness, rather than making peace in our hearts, with reality. When, in reality, our jadedness is this long distorted notion of reality. It's like a lens or a mirror with a long gash in it that we mistake for a reality with a big break down the middle. When reality doesn't have the gash. The gash is our distorted perspective from the hurt we feel that we've never resolved. Reality just is. But our jadedness leaves us perpetually disappointed with that reality rather than making peace with it. And that is what leads to all of the denial that it is reality that is so ugly and pained and hard-edged, rather than our perspective distorted by all the pain in our hearts that we will not make peace with. It distorts our view of the world and leaves us repeating the same foolish cynical mistakes.

The irony is that our cynical maneuvering, ultimately, is generally meant to create some peace in our hearts. And yet, sadly, all too tragically, all of our jaded efforts, in contrast to our more genuine efforts, maintain the pain and the disappointment with a reality that only love and forgiveness and compassion and understanding and decency can offer.

Money, power, sex, drugs, prestige. All of our vices are part of a long, futile effort to substitute resolution of the unresolved pain in our hearts with less substantial alternatives. And yet they never really substitute. Because the pain can only be resolved by feeling it, not defending against it, and letting it go and moving on. And human beings will now and forever cause each other pain and heartache and frustration. And human beings will now and forever only learn to avoid causing pain to one another by trial and error, by hurting or disappointing others and by learning how to end the disappointment or hurt.

Progress is not now, has never been, and never will be people not hurting or disappointing one another. That's actually quite plain from any honest study of our history, frankly. Progress is making the mistakes, hurting and disappointing others, and learning how to stop hurting and disappointing others so much in the future.

Progress, as that really sweet kid in my freshman world history course said, is making mistakes and learning from them.

And humanity's saving grace is that while it can bullshit itself on this one, for awhile, it can't bullshit itself about it forever. Eventually we all, generally, with some exceptions, need and want to face and be responsible for our bullshit. Because our lives are too dishonest and painful without doing so.

And that is humanity's saving grace despite its' own worst instincts.

Love,
Ben

Gorgeous

As my friend, Dave, who alerted me to this very sweet video suggested, this is beautiful.



Love,
Ben

Appreciating really decent people

I have to say that the more I get to know how shitty so many people in the world can be, the more I appreciate really decent people and just what a rare pleasure they are.

Most of us are kind of snarky and shitty with one another. We treat each other like shit. People, I mean. All of us. Me included.

And so it's really nice when you get the rare pleasure of spending time with really decent people. Makes up for all the shittiness of humanity.

I've got major pain on my heart, right now. Letting go of Brandi as a friend is much harder than I ever expected. She's been such a shithead during this period. But even a shithead is hard to get off your heart.

And trying to let go of pain off your heart during a period when there is almost literally nothing to be inspired by in contemporary politics or culture, which is so full of the bankrupt values of a nasty, destructive, dysfunctional humanity gone astray and taking no responsibility for the destruction it causes is a little much for my heart, right now.

But it does remind me why I prefer to spend my time with really decent people and why I value lovingness above all. Because people who don't take lovingness and decency seriously are kind of shitty people to be around. And who wants to spend time with such people, no matter how much money you might be paid.

Me, apparently, given many of the kids I work with. But then just one or two really decent, kind-hearted and curious kids can make up for all of the shitheadedness.

Here's to decent people. And here's to everyone being more decent to one another and all of us cutting out the bullshit and the excuses for what shitheads we can all be. All of us. Me included.

Love,
Ben

Bad habits of thought that govern our world

I was talking with a teacher, today, about bad habits of thought that govern in education. But the truth is that most of the most resolvable and serious problems in the world are the results of bad habits of thought.

In education, the laziest and worst habit of thought that animates so much of what is wrong with American education and education the world over is the habit of exclusion. The notion that some people are smart and need to be included in the best and most thoughtful educational opportunities and that some people are stupid and need to be left out of those opportunities (or that people who do not think of themselves as smart need to leave themselves out of those opportunities) is the single most serious problem in American education, and likely education internationally, today. It's true that, as I remarked to my colleague, today, we want surgeons who will know more and be less likely to kill people. And it's true that a lot of people want to be auto mechanics and do not want to be bothered with serious academic learning.

It's also true that we are better off with smarter mechanics and surgeons, and that academic learning, when done well, facilitates that sort of deep and broadly applicable learning that can facilitate more knowledge, understanding, brainstorming, problem-solving, and collaboration that learning that does not take such notions seriously does not generally provide as well. To my mind, this means more people getting liberal arts educations (along with whatever other forms of study), but it also means more partnerships between liberal arts institutions and technical and other higher education opportunities. That is one of the advantages, to my mind, of a public university experience: the degree of partnership and inclusion of those who study all sorts of fields and from all sorts of backgrounds in adult education.

I don't come from a terribly educated background. I am, by far, the most educated person in my family and of most of my friends. I also happen to be smarter, independent of background or education level, generally, I think most people who know me would acknowledge.

But I don't feel comfortable in any institution that is exclusive. I don't come from exclusive roots. I am from middle class people. But I'm from middle class people who might very easily be excluded by any number of groups or people. And I just don't feel comfortable with people who might accept me but reject them. And I certainly don't feel comfortable with anyone who might reject me, obviously, and generally find such snottiness a sign of someone who is less sure of their intellect, their station, or themselves.

And yet, it is that exclusiveness that fucks up life, most, for people of every background. It is done in the name of assuring quality, I'm quite aware. But it also serves to promote misplaced notions of superiority and pity, both of which go hand in hand, and both of which serve everyone poorly.

The biggest problem I have in schools, I'm noticing, is that, as I have done my whole life, I am living between two different worlds.

On the one hand, I live in this world of scholarship and reflection and thought on the most serious cultural and policy issues that most people find kind of boring, in their foolish pursuits of entertainment at the expense of more genuine and intelligent self-respect and achievement. Most people don't think of themselves as smart, is the truth. And it is my mission to make the clear argument for why all people are smart, as an objective matter - my kids and I just had this conversation, this week, reflecting on the mistakes of objectively less intelligent human beings of the earliest periods of human existence who had made mistakes that future generations would have to learn from and how virtually every human being living today would be far more intelligent by any objective standard than these earlier human beings - even as it is also clearly true that not everyone is prepared for medical school. If more people recognized their intelligence and their capacity for being smart, the smarter all of our communities would be. Smart janitors and auto mechanics and farmers and builders and industrial workers are good for all of us, including and especially the people with those jobs. But most people don't believe that they are capable of more smarts than they really are capable of because of the more exclusive nature of most schools, American or otherwise, and the fact that too many schools take this pride, and not their commitment to the strongest educations for all people, more seriously than it deserves, rather than their commitment to the idea that the best teaching looks after the interests of each student to get as much and as high a quality of education as possible, even if some people choose to be janitors and others choose to be doctors.

A better commitment to education and to people, generally, does not look for excuses for students or teachers for why they do not pursue opportunities for themselves and one another in the form of biology or genetics or social class or background or whatnot. A better commitment to education and people looks to create opportunities for all people and all students, where the choice to pursue various careers or opportunities are more genuine choices, made freely and without shame or resignation, rather than any one of us (or any faculty, for that matter) attempting to decide for anyone else what they might or might not be capable of. It is a commitment that both students and teachers regularly fail in. It is also the only real solution to educational and consequential life inequities, as well as a genuine commitment to resolving those inequities freely, and none of this small potatoes welfare-state reform premised on the very notions of superiority and pity, dependency and a lack of dignity, which create this problem in the first place.

Real progress around educational equity, like real progress around every other matter of social equity in the 21st century, when so many barriers to greater equity have been removed, does not come from mandates for equity. These will forever and notoriously fail. Mark my words on that one. Real progress around educational equity, like real progress around every other matter of social equity in the 21st century, will come from genuine, voluntary, freely-chosen efforts by average and not-so-average people to share what they have and to create a sense of belonging for all people, just as the most liberal (small-l, liberty-based liberalism, here) progress has offered people since the enlightened progress was first chartered in the history books of liberal cultures.

That is a change in a habit of thought for many people used to thinking about new laws associated with new freedoms and justice. And there are still plenty of ways that law can be employed to expand that more genuine progress and more genuine freedom that comes with the spread of more genuinely liberal values.

But the bottom line is that either people work with a genuine commitment to the interests and welfare of one another, or that promise will never be fulfilled, no matter how much we appeal to it. And pretending that mandating such concern is the same as creating it is just lying to ourselves and others. Nothing new. But it would nice for future generations of our children if we both believed in looking out for the interests and welfare of one another, for real, and didn't have to lie to kids that we do it because we genuinely care about the welfare or interests of them or their family or their friends when we really have the ulterior motive of explaining or justifying their superiority or their pity for themselves or others. It would also be nice that, if, as a part of that commitment, we genuinely believed in their right to self-determine their lives, even as they make foolish and unwise choices. That has been the hardest part of my job, lately. Watching kids and adults make incredibly foolish choices with their lives and the lives of others, foreclosing futures out of a pride about what they do and do not need in the world and out of a lack of faith in an educational system that they don't feel is geared to their needs or interests.

I am learning to let go and let kids make those choices, just as I expect people to let me make my own choices in life, even as I make clear to them that I expect more out of them, whether they or others expect more out of them or not.

But I also expect more out of a world that does not give much of a shit for these kids or many kids or adults who do not fit their selective or exclusive molds in the world. I guess the reason why it's important for me to be an advocate for such kids and adults, I think, is because I could much more easily then they move on to a future that is unencumbered by such low expectations from myself or from others. And most people who have such low expectations for themselves have them because the world has really kicked them in the gut, at some point, when they failed on the way to their dreams and goals. And yet that world is perpetually full of people with boots pretending like it must be something else that has got people down.

I tell my kids and all adults, "Fuck 'em. Let 'em kick you in the gut. Offer them your chin, too. And go fuckin' be what you want to be and don't get discouraged because the road is tough to doing anything important."

In the meantime, it would make a lot of sense to make that road less tough for all of us. And it would be easier for all of us to admit that if we weren't so afraid of admitting how much it hurts. And how much our callousness hurts us much more than it hurts others.

Of the many bad habits that animate our world, the idea that some people can or should be thrown away, cast aside, or left behind is perhaps the most pernicious. And the most common, sadly. Noone wants to be left behind. But everyone generally has someone that they want left outside the promised land. It makes for an unnecessarily rough and tumble existence. It makes for a lot of needless hurt and tragedy.

But it is not bad habit that is limited to any one group or one individual or one official or one person with power or influence. This bad habit of thought - that someone has got to be put down or excluded or pitied for the rest of us to be happy - animates the lives of most people. That's what makes that attitude so common. And common, in this sense, does not qualify as greatness. It's just common. Greatness thinks bigger than this.

The idea that people need to be forced to be good is the most pernicious idea that has ever afflicted humanity. It is responsible for the death, imprisonment, terrorizing, repression or oppression, and the most general and serious ugliness that humanity has encountered in its history, and especially the history of the 20th century, where millions died on this cross and and still it has a hold on the imagination. Imperialism still had a hold on the imaginations of many in the early 20th century, I have to remember. And it took a long time for it to lose its grip.

But eventually all bad ideas lose their grip. Because better ideas come along. And the problems of earlier and lesser ideas become clearer despite apologies on their behalf.

That's what the kids and I have been studying this week. How intellect shapes human history and human cultural evolution, as much as biological evolution, as worse ideas are replaced by better ideas, and notions that were once complicated become commonplace and better notions for an infinitely complex reality help us understand that reality more clearly.

I just hope that the kids and the world that does not welcome them with open arms are willing to give a decent chance to the idea that such serious and complicated thinking is important for everyone.

Because these kids are likely to be cruel to a world that is cruel to them. And the world is likely to be cruel to these kids, absent better understanding. And so life has gone since the beginning of time. And so is our opportunity to end that cycle.

Love,
Ben

Why people don't take the risks

I got some insight, recently, into why people often don't take the risks that would be involved with achieving goals and dreams that they might have for themselves, including going back to school or taking school seriously, again, as a route to success.

A lot of people feel discouraged, I think, by past failures and lack confidence in their ability to get back into the game. I see it in myself, all the time, in areas of my life where I am not as strong as I need to be to accomplish goals I care about. A lot of people stop caring for whatever reasons. Or they lack ambition altogether. But a lot of people just get scared, not knowing if they can follow through what needs to get accomplished to achieve their goals.

One of the things that I love about the original theater group I belong to, here in Lawrence, EMU Theater, is that it is so inclusive, meaning that it is an opportunity for people who may not be as strong in various theater roles to try on various hats in the theater world without feeling like they are going to be pilloried if they are not the greatest actor or writer or director or technical designer. Like school, it gives people a chance to try on different hats. I would like to see us put out David Mamet or mainstream theater or film quality original theater efforts, which we are not doing, at this point. But, in the meantime, it is nice to have a venue where everyone gets a chance to shine, whether they are the strongest participant in that role or not.

Competitive anything is often great because it allows those who are truly great at various activities to shine and for everyone to enjoy the highest quality performance of whatever possible. But it is also nice to have and create opportunities where everyone can try their hand at excelling at things that they may not otherwise excel at. I have so many areas in my life where I have to work hard at things that come easier with more practice and more ability on their part to others. And it is important, when that is the case, for us to have the ability to screw up and learn from our screw ups in environments that are not always looking to have us pack our bags when we suck.

That is the failure of the often highly competitive environments of 21st century liberal democracies. It is not that people need pity or coercion. What people need is the freedom to learn and to screw up that is not always sending them packing when they don't do it better than everyone else the first time or even the 100th time, as long as they are trying (and even, as in my school, often, when they are not always trying so hard).

And when people don't have the room or the freedom to take the risks, they don't have the opportunities for learning that might otherwise allow them to excel, better, at whatever they are doing.

And when people don't have that space, people stop taking the risks. And when they stop taking the risks, they stop learning and growing in more serious and consequential ways.

That is the greatest tragedy of more repressive policies and more repressive socieities: they hold back the potential of their citizens and societies by scaring them away from the risk-taking and learning and growing that is only possible with more freedom and support.

It's one of the more sadly counterproductive features of adult life more than kid life in America and liberal democracies, where the high stakes and everyone's strong reactions to those stakes often undermines the risk-taking and learning that a more supportive culture would have to offer.

I have work I have to get to, right now. Until later.

Love,
Ben

A more reasoned and constructive vision for Iraq

Ayad Allawi, former interim prime minister for Iraq from 2004 to 2005, demonstrates the power of democracy and democratic elections, in this editorial announcing his six-point-plan for the Iraqi political and security future as an alternative to the leadership of current Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki, and has one of the most constructive visions for Iraq's political and security quagmire that I've read from an Iraqi leader.

A Plan for Iraq

How refreshing to read an Iraqi leader with ideas rather than sectarian allegiance and conflict as his central focus. And how refreshing to read an Iraqi leader place primary responsibility for the situation in Iraq with Iraqis, while making plans for a reasonable U.S. withdrawal that accounts for real security needs on the ground.

He's right, too, as I think about it. The most important step forward in this godforesaken mess is for Iraqis to take responsibility for this situation, even if they might need U.S. help with security until they are able to reasonably be responsible for that situation themselves. If the venom against an American presence is going to end so that presence can be more constructive for security needs on the ground, Iraqis will need to recognize that it is Iraqis who are responsible for the security mess that plagues their country, right now, and Iraqis who will have to be primarily responsible for cleaning it up. The U.S. has much responsibility to take for how they have contributed to this mess. But the security situation is that Iraqis are killing Iraqis, right now. And if that is to change, Iraqis will have to take responsibility for that problem before it can be constructively resolved by a stronger and more effective Iraqi government, with the help of the American government and American military.

Perhaps the hope for Iraq won't come from American decisions, primarily, after all. Perhaps it will come, primarily, from the choices of Iraqi leaders and the electoral choices of the Iraqi people.

And that, my friend, and not the imposition from above, is the way real democracy works.

Love,
Ben

Progress is learning from our mistakes

I had a student, today, remind me what the essence of progress in history, in a culture, in government, and for individuals and anyone is.

Progress is learning. It is trial and error. It is learning from our mistakes. And if you are like the students that I teach at the alternative special education school in Topeka where I work, progress is learning from sometimes serious and compounded mistakes.

He reminds me why I don't romanticize liberalism, leftism, radicalism, socialism, communism or any of the causes of the left.

So I don't write foolish and dangerous headlines like this one.

Chavez foes rally against reform

The "reform" that leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's opponents are rallying against is a constitutional amendment that would extend and entrench his power in some seriously undemocratic directions, as well as legislation that would consolidate power in the central government over local governments, establish much greater control over Venezuela's Central Bank, and undermine a fundamental value of a liberal democracy, property freedoms.

Progress is not found in an ideology, a party, or on our left or our right.

Progress is learning. And learning is found in greater freedom. And the responsibility that comes with it.

As one of my ninth graders said, today, progress is made when we make mistakes and learn from them.

And the most important mistake we are making that we need to learn from, today, is romanticizing leftist repressive instincts as progress rather than regress. Progress is when we get honest with ourselves about our intentions, our actions, and their consequences and face honestly when our efforts are failing even when we intend otherwise.

Progress is when we make mistakes - like trying to force and pressure our way, generally unsuccessfully, through every problem we face and call it progress, a contradiction in terms, really - and learning to face those mistakes honestly so that we can learn how to make better choices in the future. Holding your ground on an important principle or idea can create progress. Imposing yourself on others when what is needed is for them to internalize a commitment to that idea or principle is not progress and never will or could be.

Progress in our souls is when our consciences catch up with out mistakes. It is not an inevitable march, push, or battle forward. It is when we take responsibility for screwing up, including for marching on the backs of others when we don't get our way.

The Nazis pushed and pressured and forced their way forward and called it progress. The Soviets did the same. And so has almost every despotic regime and terrorist group or destructive gang or gangleader with any serious instinct for power.

But propaganda for progress is not the same thing as the substance of progress.

And the substance of progress was captured by my ninth grade student, today.

Progress is making mistakes and learning from them. Whether that be an individual, a culture, a government, or all of the above.

Progress is learning. It is having the freedom to try new things and to screw up. And it is learning from our mistakes. But progress is only found when we face the mistake honestly so that we can learn the lessons that needs to be learned.

Sometimes ninth graders are just smarter than national leaders. Especially national leaders who are more in love with their power than they are committed to real progress.

Love,
Ben

Torture and power

May God have mercy on the souls of the Administration and the officers and enlisted men and women involved if this allegation of torture is true.

US terror investigation went too far, experts say

The consequence of emotional callousness where power is concerned is that anything can be rationalized in the name of a cause. And that is how power corrupts. This kind of psychological torture, if true, is almost more serious than physical torture that doesn't result in death.

That idea that anyone would rationalize the abuses of power or force by any government or group in the name of any cause is repugnant to me. Because it bears the emotional callousness that treats people like pawns and so predictably devolves into tragedies that cannot be taken back.

I don't even believe in God. But may he have mercy on our souls if this is true and we excuse it.

Love,
Ben

The essence of progress

Most people love and respect the examples of men like Moses, Job, Jesus, Buddha, Ghandi, and King. Most people feel sorry for the students at Tiananmen Square or dissidents in Cuba or Iran.

Noone wants to be them and suffer their fates. Very few people would take the risks that these people took.

And that is the essence of the cowardice that animates most peoples' lives.

How do I admire greatness without taking the risks involved with it's example to my life?

Even great politicians, innovators, musicians, artists, and writers will rationalize cowardice in this way.

Genuine greatness is very rare. And very few people are willing to take such risks. And that is why our progress is perpetually marked by tragedy as much as hope fulfilled. Because our cowardice constantly gets the better of us.

Lucky for us, our consciences catch up.

And that, and not some inevitable and forever forward-moving march, is the essence of progress.

The essence of progress is our consciences catching up with our tragedies. And our need and the need of our forerunners to be forgiven for their and our cowardice.

Most people identify with Jesus. But, when push comes to shove, they behave like the mob that killed him, who feel remorse only after he has been crucified.

And that remorse, in our personal lives and in the culture at large, is the essence of progress.

Love,
Ben

Appreciating honesty

If there is one thing that I appreciate about H.L. Mencken's writings most, it is his honesty when others would pretend otherwise.

And the one honest observation about politics and life that I appreciate most from Mencken is that politics and life is one long lie - to ourselves, to one another, to the world - as long as people insist on undermining one another's freedoms. This is why Mencken thought government inherently and unreformably corrupt. Because it was in the business of curbing freedoms, which was the very thing that led to so much of the dishonesty in the world.

I don't think people or government are inherently and unreformably corrupt. But I do think that we will live with a big lie in our lives, in our culture, and in our government as long as we pretend that it is our force and not our freedom that makes for more honest people, cultures, and governments.

Two studies - one on cigarette taxes and one on border security - have come out affirming the ability to force our way through serious issues. And the one interesting commonality among these paternalistic studies is that neither seem to give much concern, at all, to the people whose lives they govern.

Remember, Nazism and Communism, both, also had scientific arguments and studies to buttress their ugly and wrong-headed ideas. Paternalistic and repressive governing efforts of all stripes have learned that trick in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Genuine efforts need genuine freedom for the independent people responsible for those efforts to internalize the lessons and do what needs to be done - whether it be cutting down and ending their smoking habit and non-smokers learning to respect the rights of smokers to make choices with their lives or a culture developing a more understanding immigration policy and immigrants learning to respect the security priorities of a new country that accounts for all of the concerns that people face in both arenas, not just the narrow concerns of those who wish to end either - freely and without resistance. There is no faking this fact. It does not matter how many studies find short-term consequences that researchers prefer from efforts to force their way through issues. The truth is both studies reflect the self-centered priorities of the reformers they seek to buttress. Instead of a genuine concern for smokers, the smoking study focuses on how money can be raised for children's health insurance programs to both cut down on short-term sales of cigarettes and to rationalize their paternalism. And instead of focusing on the enormous difficulties that Mexicans face in their own country making a living and building an economy - where a much more paternalistic governments more seriously limits free trade and free and more equitable economic development and where educational opportunities are limited - researchers focus on how to scare Mexicans who they weren't too terribly concerned with, anyway, from crossing the border.

When most people say that force works - as has been true since the beginning of humanity - what they mean is that it works for them, even if it means sacrificing the needs and interests of others. By this logic, Kim Jong Il's use of force over his country works, because it gets him a big mansion and a luxurious lifestyle, even if it means that his people starve. As long as all he has to do is limit who his use of force is working for to rationalize its use, then he can clearly demonstrate it works. And by that logic, the Chinese government is effective at dealing with citizen dissent when it imprisoned and killed all those people at Tiananmen Square, because they haven't had as many problems with student dissent since (though their one-child policy is sparking more violent reactions these days). Every despot in the world - including Hitler and Stalin - could make such arguments successfully if the only criteria was that force work for someone at the expense of the interests of others.

But those arguments aren't worthy of liberal democracies whose ideals posit that their principles and values work for all people, not just those they favor.

That is always how force has been used. And, apparently, if we do not make a more fundamental change in the way we use force, that is how it will always be used, abused, and then fall apart, as it always must since we can only get away from sacrificing the interests of others for so long before both our consciences and our self-centeredness catches up with us.

The proponents of force are failing to appreciate the fundamental political shift that is occurring in the world away from the most serious wielders of force - the U.S. and even state institutions, generally - as citizens look elsewhere for someone, some body, somewhere they can trust. They will turn to these states and institutions to force themselves upon areas they want forced upon. And then their cynicism and mistrust in those institutions will be reinforced as they find themselves forced upon. That is the long and sad history of liberal democratic peoples' and cultures. And it always finds a way to unravel itself from such nonsensical logic. We are in the middle of one such unraveling. It will take time.

In the meantime, it is nice to read people who were at least honest in the face of that kind of bullshit in their own time, rather than playing politics - which translates: lying for the convenience of maintaining one's power or influence - because being more honest about world was inconvenient to their smaller and more narrow aspirations.

A more regulated life is a more dishonest life, inherently. There is no way around that fact of life, really. And either we will face up to that fact. Or we will be doomed to a more and more repressive direction for our democracies until we do.

One thing is for sure: do no expect the proponents of force to take responsibilities for their failures. They are not likely to. It is not in the nature of those who want power over others to take responsibility for their mistakes, in my experience. It threatens their interests too much. Generally, someone else - a future leader, a future generation, someone other than the person who has wielded or abused the power - will have to take responsibility for the mistake, if it happens at all.

Repressive govenments and cultures are resistant to letting go of their repressive ways, generally, from my observations, for the same reason that citizens are resistant to their repression, even the most well-intentioned, paternalistic repression - because everyone resists efforts to hurt or punish them. There are very few exceptions to this rule of human nature, and certainly not dependable enough to replicate them reliably.

In the meantime, I don't give a shit, anymore. I will have to learn my own lessons and live my own life taking my lumps - helpful or not; and those who give them to me when I made clear that they were not helpful get no credit from me and as much desparagement of your condescending efforts as I can possible muster - and just working to be so much better than everyone else in my fields that it becomes impossible for them to pretend otherwise except as also-rans trying desperately to prove that their failures are someone else's responsibility other than their own. That is a discouraging reality to come to terms with and which undermines my enthusiasm and confidence in tackling the problems I need to tackle in my fields. But it is the reality that I live with, right now, and can only hope that I can improve for future generations. I can only hope I deal with that reality with enough confidence and enthusiasm that my children and future generations won't judge me harshly for falling short of their more ideal expecations of what life in a free world should look like and my part in that creating or obstructing that freedom.

I am tired of the world being one long lie so that none of us have to face up to our bullshit, especially what should be irreversibly abandoned bullshit after the enormous tragedies of the 20th century, that more forceful and repressive measures are responsible for all the good in our lives rather than the well-intentioned but largely failed and often ugly efforts to limit our freedom to improve our lives, forever imperfectly but better with more freedom rather than less.

I am tired of that lie getting the traction that it does, and rationalizing all of the worst uses and abuses of power in the history of humanity, including and especially those that occur today.

Giving up the repression doesn't magically make this an honest world. But it will make us more honest, with ourselves and with one another. And that is a world I wouldn't mind seeing before I die.

Love,
Ben

On life

I've decided two things in the last few days.

One, my favorite quality in people is not intelligence. Intelligent people can be real pricks, often, is the truth. And there is nothing more sad and pathetic than an intelligent person using their smarts to rationalize some cynical notion of the world that either works in their favor or which they are chasing at the expense of others. Smart people can be real shitheads, is the truth. And there is nothing admirable about being smart and being a shithead.

The quality I value most in others is lovingness. I have many, many friends who do not pride themselves as being the smartest cookies, but who are some of the most decent and loving that I know. And I love people with good and decent hearts more than anyone in the world. I have a guy I work with who I think may feel kind of insecure about his smarts who I think is one of the best guys I've ever known in my life. And that's just how I look at the world. I think good people with decent hearts are more rare treasures than anything that intelligence, alone, could ever offer. I'd rather have a decent heart and be surrounded by people with decent hearts than I would be surrounded by people with big brains any day of the week. And I don't give two shits what snotty, shit-headed intellectuals who don't understand that could ever think about that. Because shitheads never know why a good heart matters, because their hearts are so fuckin' teeny-tiny.

Two, I'm a good person for me. It has nothing to do, necessarily, with how to please others or to how I might be viewed. Being a good person feels better. My life feels better. And I'd rather have that peace in my heart than anything that power or money or any of those empty aphrodisiacs might offer. You can have money and power and be a decent heart. But they both frequently corrupt that heart, as well, from my observations. Probably more frequently than not, sadly. I don't choose the life I choose because it will get me something from being good, though I get plenty from being good, as well. I do it for its own sake. Because it's the right thing to do. And because that's how people should live their lives, even if they often choose otherwise.

I miss Brandi like I miss Meg Ryan. I don't miss Meg Ryan when she stars in shitty films that try to highlight her edgier look or mediocre scripts that her agent hopes will hit at the box office. I miss Meg Ryan being vulnerable and adorable and bringing those qualities to the screen with brilliance in movies like When Harry Met Sally and Joe vs. the Volcano. I miss who Meg Ryan was, not who Meg Ryan is. And I'm sad that such a sweet light has let herself get swallowed up in the darkness and glitz of show business.

That's how I miss Brandi. Brandi, today, is not what I really miss. Brandi as she was 6 or 7 or 8 years ago, say, is who I miss. I missed her a lot, in fact, while I studied in Lawrence and she was busy making the world a better place in D.C. I remember when I first watched her take the slide, after she and I broke up. It was sad and disorienting. But I'm sure, by now, it's become second hat to her. I just can't do that in my life. I'd never feel right about myself or my life again, if I did that. And I won't. But watching Brandi do it made me sad. And, today, it seems like the biggest waste of potential of a person that I've encountered perhaps in my life. Brandi was someone really special 6 or 7 or 8 years ago (12 years ago, she was too adorable for words).

And then older cynics take that sweetness that kids like Brandi and I have and they spoil it in the name of their pride that their jadedness is something better or more or more an accurate reflection of reality than it is. Brandi and I are responsible for our own mistakes in this world. But trying to have a decent heart is often an uphill climb in this world. And most older folks just seem all-too-eager to snuff out that sweetness in the name of knowing the real world and protecting innocence, ironically, even as they work so hard to convince young adults to give it up.

Do you know why so many people are so obsessed with innocence, these days, outside of some genuine concern for children, today. They are obsessed with innocence because they haven't known it for a long time and have been too afraid to re-explore it in their lives and invite it back into their lives. Which is sad. Because it's a really sweet experience. And their fear serves as a guard and one long defense against all of the vulnerability that innocence engages the world with.

What most adults and many young people protect themselves against with that guardedness is not their vulnerability. They protect themselves against a fear that such vulnerability is responsible for all of the hurt that they've experienced in the world or that others have experienced. When, in reality, hurt is just hurt. There is no real protection from it. And opening oneself up to it is what makes us stronger and more able to handle the hurt when it comes. That's why liberal democracies offer us so much more hope. Because they make us, in real and material ways - the more reliable security that we so often take for granted, for instance - better able to build the strength and engage the learning that such vulnerability allows us more substantially.

Our defenses are not a reflection of reality. Our jadedness, which is the articulation of those defenses being up and a guardedness that, ironically, is perpetually leaving us more vulnerable to our fears because it doesn't offer us the learning that is involved with being more open and vulnerable, is not a reflection of the reality. It is a reflection of our disappointment with that reality. But disappointment without some kind of constructive response is self-defeating. And that is how so many adults live their lives, sadly.

Well, Brandi may join those leagues. But I will not. Sometimes people really are naive (and sometimes that's such a bad thing). But, often, what looks like naivete to the jaded among us is really just an openness to learning that jadedness does not and cannot offer. The vision of cynics is distorted by their emotional defenses and their anxieties in a world they fear is too dangerous for their hearts and minds to come out open. And that is why young people start running circles around their elders, at some point. Because you can't learn anything while you're perpetually protecting your heart from hurt.

You have to risk the hurt to live fully. You have to risk it for more real love. You have to risk it for stronger relationships with your children and your family members. And you have to risk it to better learn and navigate this world. You just have to risk it. And the alternative is not a live without risk. The alternative is a life without knowing the alternatives at all. And that, really, is the saddest life of all.

Perhaps a little hurt is worth risking to avoid that fate.

Love,
Ben

I'm a big fuckin' liar

I watched this clip, tonight, from When Harry Met Sally. Just to test myself.



I'm a big fuckin' liar. All I can think about in that final scene is Brandi and me.

Give me a little time. I'm working on it.

In the meantime, it's a beautiful love story, you gotta admit. Someday, if you ask, I'll tell you about mine. But, for now, I need a new girlfriend:).

Love,
Ben

Forgiving

Today, I did some difficult heart work. And I feel better, tonight, for it.

I've been working on letting go of Brandi for good this last week. As a girlfriend, as a friend, whatever.

As much as anything, it's a function of Brandi's pretty coldhearted decision to have no communication (the significance, here, really, is that Brandi wasn't just a girlfriend, in my life; she was my best friend for a pretty big hunk of my life - about 5 and 1/2 years - and that's kind of heartless way to handle a close friendships like that, I think).

I finally decided, I didn't care. I was tired of holding out for her to be a decent human being. It's not in her anymore, I decided. I know, I know. I've heard every fuckin' excuse. Married girlfriends don't talk with their unmarried ex-boyfriends. Brandi's gotta protect her marriage. Yada, yada, fucking yada. I don't give a shit for all that weak ass shit. The only ex-lovers that should ever be a problem with are those you still have feelings for. And those feelings you need to deal with and stop being such a self-centered prick, is how I've settled on that issue after dealing with far more than my share of pain from an ex who decided she didn't have the balls to deal with any on her own. I've had to deal with plenty of pain over this whole thing. The least Brandi can do is deal with her feelings for me so we can be friends, I figure. And I have no patience at all of any jealousy by her husband.

In the end, though, Brandi chose the weak way out. And I just don't have any respect for that bullshit. I don't give a shit what excuses I hear on that one. I've dealt with plenty of pain on this one. So I don't want to hear about how it's just too painful or too threatening or too what-fucking-ever. It's weak. And it's Brandi's weakness, more than anything else, that makes her so unattractive to me and just a friend that I wouldn't have minded keeping around.

And now I don't care at all. She can do whatever the fuck she wants to. I'll note her obituary, if I don't die first. But I don't need her friendship, either. She clearly was not much of a friend, really, anyway.

I wouldn't say all that if this whole stupid soap opera wouldn't have been so fuckin' painful for me. As is, Brandi can fuckin' deal. You take the weak route, you get the weak life.

And, so, today, I can listen to the Plain White T's or Sinead O'Connor's beautiful version of You Do Something To Me or even Annie Lennox's Every Time We Say Goodbye or Dar Williams' February, and I'm not taken, immediately, to feelings for longing for a relationship long past or a friendship with someone I never talk to anymore.

I don't even really want that friendship, anymore, is the truth. I've never really experienced a more false friendship in my life, really. Largely because Brandi prided herself on being such a good friend. And then it was all, clearly, an enormous lie. And I just don't have patience for that lie in my life, anymore.

OK. Maybe I'm still a little bitter. I think I'm entitled. Brandi took a bad situation and made it the absolute worst she could make it, other than killing my family and my children. And I just don't have patience for that kind of bullshit. It's weak and lame. And it's just who Brandi is, anymore. And I just don't give two shits, anymore.

I've worked really hard to give it up on my heart, tonight. I'm sure I'll be working on it still for a couple years, at least, given the history, at this point. I wish it could be different. But I just don't give a shit, anymore, and I just want it off my heart so this enormously self-centered woman can finally be a ghost and good-riddance in my life. My life is too short to take this past and fatally fucked-up friendship/relationship more seriously than it deserved, anymore.

Brandi has succeeded in becoming her mother-in-law, an incredibly self-centered-and-monied-for-no-good-goddamned-purpose woman I met while Brandi and I were still dating. I can't imagine a fate more pathetic than growing up to be that woman. But Brandi's kind of dropped her sights for herself in about every way, these days (used to be that I'd find her name all over the place doing something really purposeful and decent; these days, it's much fewer and farther between). I would say that the world is missing out on that older, more purposeful Brandi. But the truth is that she's not been that girl for a very long time.

And no matter how much they may fantasize otherwise, I don't have time, right now, to miss too much the heart of someone who has joined the land of the living dead that characterizes most jaded adults. I figure, you make your bed, you fuckin' lay in it until your filth becomes unbearable.

Yeah, I guess I'm a little bitter, right now. I'll get over it, though. Because I have no interest in living like such people. I feel sorry for people who live their lives like this because they don't have the balls to work through it and let it go. People like Brandi.

I have a lot more forgiveness to go, obviously. But I want a life free of this shit, as much as possible. So Brandi and the rest of the jaded adult world can wallow in their own heartshit without me. I want no part of it.

Love,
Ben

Productive

It's crazy. This is the most productive I've ever been in my life. It's largely getting my head wrapped around how to get much more productive. And the biggest boost is that I don't fulfill commitments or take on responsibilities because I have to, anymore. I do them because I want to. And because I've learned lessons by screwing them up and have a much more substantial faith, today, about doing the right thing and taking on responsibilities as a matter of choice and not as a matter of obligation.

There's so much I've learned and am getting accomplished in the last two weeks. But I'm in a middle of Freedom Writers - which is the cheesiest fuckin' teacher movie ever fuckin' made; but it's a true story and she was a pretty extraordinary teacher - and I'll have to write about it later.

Sleep tight.

Love,
Ben