Reasoning and its consequences

I'm working with the kids, this week, on reasoning. We postponed our weekly essay, last week, to work on building arguments with evidence, this week.

It's been a fascinating experience. It's been interesting to see how poorly many kids (and adults) reason. And it's been an interesting exercise in better appreciating why reason matters, even as we perpetually play games with it, rationalizing enterprises that are intellectually dishonest for self-centered or other purposes, or generally demeaning honest reasoning and its role in our lives.

Questions that provoke a lot of conflict, political questions, are the ones, in my experience, where we most often, or maybe just with more consequence, reason in ways that get easily distorted by what we want to believe, what we rationalize for our own purposes, what our predetermined opinions about matters are, or other reasons that offer us and others opportunity to bullshit their way through discussions that need reason to offer us honest resolutions of questions.

I watch this swirl of motivations in kids (and adults) as I teach and as I watch politics.

It is the most square challenge to reasonable solutions to many problems we face.

And power and aggression, in its many forms, complicates that discussion, further, by suppressing conversation that informs understanding and thoughtful engagement.

It's the same problem that we have had since the beginning of time, and certainly since the Enlightenment and the budding commitment to liberal values.

And we have most definitely come forward.

But the temptation to be dishonest for other purposes, to suppress honest conversation and disagreement, to rationalize the use and quest for power with self-centered or other purposes never seems to go away.

Until we more honestly face its consequences, I think.

Those consequences are more honestly faced with freedom, I believe, which is exactly why free cultures and nations are stronger. Because the discussions are more honest, as a consequence of the freedom to talk honestly and not to suppress honest engagement in the name of various reasons for suppression, namely that parties come with predetermined ideas of a conflict that they do not want challenged. The fact that people come to discussions in such a way is exactly why they should be challenged, because it is a sign that they fear that their reasoning or arguments are weak, too weak to be persuasive.

Sam Harris, author of End of Faith, makes an argument in this very vein about Islam and how it is discussed in liberal democracies, that gets, exactly, at the problem of rationalizing power to undermine free discussion.

And these last two days, I have had an opportunity to see just how poorly most people reason.

It is disappointing. It is also a fact of life that has, since the beginning of time, undermined more ideal functioning in liberal and illiberal societies.

Poor reasoning, itself, does not, necessarily, suffocate the conversation. What suffocates the conversation is efforts to suppress conversation that people disagree with or to overpower those we disagree with rather than soliciting and engaging honest argument and discussion that arises out of the poor reasoning that some questions are too hot to discuss and reason openly about.

That is Harris' point, actually. That the fact that such topics are so hot is what makes them ripe for open and honest discussion and reasoning.

That is the purpose behind my discussions in class. To tackle such questions head on. This morning students debated the existence of God, the purposes of religion, the purpose of promoting liberal democratic values, and reasoned through even simple discussions like the likelihood of a student moving to a new city.

But the bottom-line is that what has made this era regressive has been so many efforts by people to use power to shut down honest discussion, to limit legitimate freedoms, and to expand or maintain government power, in lieu of more free and open discussion and respect for freedoms that, themselves, promote more open, honest discussion.

Reasoning has consequences. And one of those consequences is to support the confidence that difficult and important questions can be debated openly rather than suppressed with threats, intimidation, and force.

Reason is the alternative to such a world, which has an ugly, foolish, and irrational legacy for us to study in amazement that people are capable of being so ugly, foolish, and irrational.

It is the reason I take it so seriously.

And I am overwhelmed, everyday, by how little others take reason seriously in the name of any number of unreasoning and unreasonable commitments in the world.

And that, of my many reasons, is one of the most important for why I teach.

It's true

If you're going to play guilt by association, this guy is far worse.



Crazy preachers and their hostility to reason.

Makes me appreciate all that book learnin'.

Disability, mental health, and scientific rigor

Anti-psychotic use soars in U.S. and U.K.

What is more interesting to me, and much more fundamental, is the very low level of scientific rigor that is involved, typically, with the diagnoses of conditions that are the bases for these prescriptions.

That will be the subject of my master's thesis. It is the practical legwork for Stephen Jay Gould's brilliant book on the subject, generally, The Mismeasure of Man.

People are constantly looking for biological, immutable, unchangeable bases for social phenomena. That is the subject of that book. And my work can more squarely explain the phenomena, I think, and why people turn to such diagnoses when they are frustrated with issues in the social world that they do not understand well enough or do not want to take responsibility for.

And we have much to understand and take responsibility for.

Prison policy follies

Fiscal Pressures Lead Some States to Free Inmates Early

How interesting and much more fruitful would it be to base sentencing on its empirical likelihood to contain dangerous individuals and either affect or not affect change in behavior?

We haven't explored it not because such a proposal would not be more intelligent and constructive. It would be both. We have not explored it because we are commited to sentencing as an opportunity for retribution or controlling behavior, like drug use (which it has clearly failed to do, by any measure), rather than more effectively correcting behavior.

Until we do, it is nice to watch us fumble forward while we get this figured out.

Opinions and assholes

The more I watch television pundits, even more thoughtful television pundits like Fareed Zakaria and George Will, the more I come to the conclusion:

Opinions and assholes.

Decent people. Good faith. Thoughtful analysis.

Opinions and assholes.

Everyone's got one.

Empirical analysis of policy necessitates independent thought, the longest range analysis, an accountability to evidence, consistent application of principle and a genuine concern for everyone involved in a way that transcends simple or crass self interest.

And even then, opinions and assholes. Myself included.

But it's becoming perfectly clear to me, at this point.

Noone in Washington - not a single one - noone in universities - not a single one - noone in politics, period - not a single one - has any sort of monopoly on truth, whatsoever.

And that is the strongest argument for liberty and democracy that I know, if one accounts honestly for the fallibility that power is then subject to.

That is the reason why all of those Enlightenment thinkers favored liberty as a central virtue of governance. But in our hubris, we have dismissed that wisdom in favor of power. And that is where power begins to corrupt and a more honest democracy begins to break down. And the contemporary American system demonstrates that better than many situations I am witness to, right now. The situation in Zimbabwe is actually much clearer, I think. And America's station in the international community demonstrates the principle fairly clearly, as well. North Korea and Iran should be crystal clear demonstrations of the principle, both in their internal politics and in their relationships with the world community, if we saw it more clearly.

But I am completely clear on this matter, at this point.

The problem of democracy, as with the problem of more benevolent hegemony and was likely the problem with more benevolent imperialism, is not people in bad faith, necessarily, thought there is far too much self-interest, dishonesty, and unnecessary tragedy to rationalize the way we engage in politics at this point in the early 21st century. The biggest problem with democracy in the early 21st century is a failure of more empirical analysis of policies and consequences. It's a problem of opinions and assholes and the ways that we compensate for our analysis of policy when the truth is that we really don't understand many problems or their solutions very well in much democratic policy.

And it is, fundamentally, a problem of not taking liberty or democracy seriously enough and engaging them thoughtfully enough in a liberal democracy.

But the easiest way to say it is: opinions and assholes.

I've spent the last 5 years wondering if any of this policy work would mean anything in my lifetime or in anyone's lives if participants were going to stubbornly attach themselves to policy analysis that matched their partisan outlooks.

Would this work mean anything, I've wondered time and again, if power and the quest for it was going to perpetually interfere with a more honest, empirical analysis of its application and success and failures, even amongst scholars?

Was this just a waste of my life?

I've spent a lot of time thinking about other career paths that I passed up. I was a strong actor in high school and college. I'm a pretty good singer. I think I'd be a pretty good writer (a path that I'm exploring with a few script/book ideas I've working on). I've got my head wrapped around investment enough, I think, at this point, to be a rich man, if I wanted to take that path.

So why in the world did I choose to be a teacher of the roughest kids I could work with, to write about obscure policy matters that very few people will actually read, and to challenge core principles in both fields in ways that leave me feeling very much like a kook and an outsider, I've wondered many times to myself?

But the more I follow policy discussions, the more I keep thinking: there has got to be more to honest, empirical, thoughtful policy discussions than just opinions and assholes.

In the end, we are all left with both. But some opinions are more honest and thoughtful than others.

And more importantly to me, some reflect that people know better what they're doing.

Writing this book, this summer, will give me a chance to see if and how many others agree with my assessment of what that better understanding would look like.

In the meantime, I bring a fresh skepticism to this work. It is not because people are in bad faith or stupid or because I have grown cynical. Quite to the contrary, many people in the process are very much in good faith, thoughtful, and I am far more hopeful, honest, and humble in my commitment in this process, today, than I was when I started.

I bring fresh skepticism because all of that is some of the more important qualities to bring to free and democratic discussions, but they are not enough.

It does matter to understand, better, what is going on underneath it all.

I'll share what I've got this summer.

In the meantime, I'm just another guy with plenty of opinions and an asshole, just like everyone else.

But maybe I can still make a contribution that makes this process more honest and offers more understanding. That just might be worth it.

7000 years of repression

It's been more than 7000 year ago that civilization first offered humanity the opportunity to settle in central locations, with the advent of agriculture, to build cities to meet the needs of those who opted to settle rather than maintain a nomadic life, and to make laws to govern the behavior of those who settled.

For more than 7000 years, we have used repression to create comformity to moral and legal codes of conduct in hopes of settling conflicts and preventing bad behavior.

And for more than 7000 years, repression has not only failed at this task, in the biggest picture, but we have, subsequently, made a slow, all too slow, path towards liberalization to account for and correct the problems, abuses, and tragedy that repression has left in its wake.

It is amazing to me, looking out at a world that has many of the same problems with human conduct that it had when civilization first arrived, save for those that greater knowledge, education, understanding, peace, compassion, and freedom - the fruits of enlightenment and liberalization, including the understanding that traditional religious experience and ideas have had to offer in more liberalized form - have made more available to us, and think that we might still believe that more repression will mean more solutions to our problems.

It is nonsensical to me, at this point, actually. It is conventional thinking flying in the face of reason, for me, at this point. Because reason only and always leads me back to the same conclusion. Repression does not work. It, ultimately, makes many problems far worse and leaves much sad and unnecessary tragedy in its wake. And it is our fears and insecurities about liberty and what it has to offer that keeps us stuck in this cycle of greater repression as the dominant and repeated solution offered to problems that it cannot solve.

If I am wrong about this, I have hardly heard a very convincing argument to the contrary. I have explored this question for most of my adult life, at this point, and I have yet to read, see, or hear a convincing argument for the idea that power does more than make people less likely to share bad behavior rather than correct for its presence.

Power and the capacity to use force are obviously needed for situations where physical force is being used against citizens or when genuine danger lurks. Aggression will always beget aggression. But minimizing the use of it will improve our ability to correct behavior, if we could only see that.

The most convincing evidence for this fact is comparing the most egregious and the most genuinely good behavior of more liberal and more illiberal societies of this generation or any previous generation.

It becomes perfectly clear, when considering that evidence honestly, that more liberal societies engage in less of the worst treatment of their fellow human beings, are responsible for much of the bridge building that brings members of humanity together, including conceiving of a concept of universal humanity worthy of equal dignity and respect, and treat their fellows in humanity with the most concern, compassion, decency, and proactive, responsible efforts to improve their lives and conditions of any of the societies that human beings have conceived. The ugliest, most murderous, most brutal, most indecent behavior by human beings against fellow human beings has happened at the hands of the most repressive, with very few exceptions.

And yet we still harbor this insecurity about liberal societies and liberty that it is responsible for our ills, even as it has perpetually been responsible for our most serious, sustainable, and reasoned progress. And even as we watch illiberal societies languish in the generally impoverishing, destructive, and inhumane consequences of their repression.

For some reason, reasonable people cannot quite make the connection that the difference between the success of Western democracies and the failure of illiberal states like North Korea, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, and the like is the degree to which those societies are democratic or undemocratic, free or unfree.

We talk of freedom in free societies like it is a dirty word that is responsible for all of our bad behavior. And this despite the ugliest and most depraved acts that humanity engages in being rationalized and practiced far more regularly and without the opportunity for open reflection that a free and democratic society allows in the most unfree places in the world, now and since the beginning of time.

All that I understand of this remarkably ridiculous fact of liberal democratic and illiberal undemocratic existence is that when people are afraid they turn to repression. It forever fails them. It forever causes needless tragedy. And yet they forever turn in this direction. They do it in liberal societies. They do it in illiberal societies. Our saving grace being that in liberal societies, they learn of the folly of this choice in contemporary and past societies thoroughly enough that they learn to question, criticize, and even correct this mistake more openly and more quickly than illiberal societies, past and present, are able to do for themselves.

7000 years of repression. It has failed us that entire time, with terribly tragic consequences. And yet we still turn in this direction out of fear that freedom means a world where people do terrible things to one another. Never quite coming to terms with the clear and present fact that 7000 years of repression is a history littered without end, seemingly, with people doing just that, and some hundred years experience with liberty better correcting that trend.

If someone has a stronger argument, a stronger understanding, a stronger way of seeing things, I am open to it. But I have yet to hear it.

And our propensity toward repression to solve problems it cannot solve and that it makes very difficult to solve more honestly rolls along as we are all left and remain cowards, in its wake, to face up to its failure.

Surely our history suggests a willingness to be better than our failures when those failures become clear to us.

That, it seems, is what we are waiting for. A clear understanding of our failure.

May it happen sooner rather than later. For the sake of all of those whose unnecessary tragedy are its legacy.

A real liberal

In light of tragic and wholely uneccessary death of Deborah Jeanne Palfrey, the D.C. Madam, I thought it a good moment to remind everyone what a more honest liberal had to say about the matter.

"You put a willing buyer [with] a willing seller, and it's up to them. You can argue with them that it's foolish, you can argue with them that it's a bad thing to do, but I don't see any justification for bringing the police into it."

Today was a day, amidst of period of rationalized repression, all around, that I wanted to be reminded what a more honest and consistent liberal - that term originally and will forever mean liberty, when it is used honestly - had to say about such matters.

Amidst a time when freedom is unpopular and power is all the rage, it's nice to consult with someone who really believes in that principle.

Liberal democracy in the age of the internet

This is what liberal democracy looks like.

Blogging Towards Democracy: From China to Iran, Web Diarists are Challening Censors

It is not who gets elected President. Political leaders generally follow where others lead.

Liberal democracy is when citizens expect government to give them the freedom to live the lives they need and want. To live lives of purpose or not. To criticize their governments freely or to abstain. To live lives that are worthy to them, whether goverment or anyone approves or not.

Politicians only lead such efforts when they take liberty seriously. Generally, though, they are following the lead of others.

We are those others they follow.

May our examples be ones worthy of following.

I don't care how you fuckin' cut this one...

...this is fuckin' hot.



FoxSexpert: The Ins and Outs of Shaving Your Pubes

It's a brave new world when I read about Fox giving advice on going Brazilian on the Huffington Post.

All I got to say is thank God for a diverse media.

Politics at its best

Zimbabwe opposition willing to share power with ruling party

Their one condition: Mugabe's got to go.

Smart. And one of the more important examples of how democracy makes a difference.

The opposite of love

This is the profile of a man who lives by a governing philosophy of force.

Joseph Fritzl: a shrewd liar and an obsessive tyrant

"Casual acquaintances knew Josef Fritzl as a jovial fellow who liked to drink beer and enjoyed a bawdy joke.

But former neighbors say the man accused of imprisoning his daughter and fathering her seven children ran his household like a dictator. Piece by piece, a picture is emerging of a shrewd liar and an obsessive tyrant.

'At home, he was clearly the lord of the manor. Even at his campground, he was very strict and his rules had to be followed,' said Anton Graf, who rented Fritzl land along Austria's Mondsee Lake.

'He was inflexible and had no sensitivity,' Graf, 57, told The Associated Press. 'You were sick, something happened, he didn't care ... There was a rule — and that was it.'

Although authorities have clamped down on records, examples of Fritzl's double life are coming to light.

The 73-year-old retired electrician was both a hard worker respected by his peers, and a fiercely private man whose life revolved around the home he ruled with an iron fist."

This is the opposite of love that everyone has been romanticizing as of late.

Lucky for us, love and freedom allow us to choose better.

Making love

What does the guy always railing on about freedom think about on a Friday night?



Making love.

Freedom is a beautiful thing.

But love is better.

Enjoy.

I've decided

I'm going to teach. I'm going to write. I'm going to invest. I'm going to be rich. I'm going do good.

And I'm not going to do a single goddamn bit of it worrying for two fuckin' seconds what anybody thinks about it.

I'm going to be a nice guy. I'm going to be a smart guy. I'm going to be a guy with a great big fuckin' heart that I wear right on my fuckin' sleeve.

And I'm going to marry a woman whose got all the same going for her.

And I'm going to love the shit out of her. And I'm going to raise great kids who can do whatever they want with their lives that they love and that makes them happy and be as fantastic at all of it as they decide to be.

And I'm going to teach them to think for themselves, to listen to their hearts, and to not give two shits what the rest of the world thinks outside of their own conscience and judgments, outside of how it might inform their independent judgment.

And I'm going to have a really nice, happy life.

Patience. Communication. Love. Thoughtfulness. Courage.

I'm going to have all of these things and more in my life.

And I'm going to share them with someone who has the same to offer.

And I won't settle for anything less.

What it means to be a real liberal

Josef Joffe, a co-founder of the American Interest, one of if not the finest conservative political scholarly journal in the country has a really fascinating article in today's Post is well worth the read.

Fear Is a Tax, and We're Eagerly Paying It

In toto:

"Some years ago, I received a terror threat. If I did not apologize publicly and profusely for a column that blasted the Iranian regime, I would be killed by Friday, Sept. 13 -- what an auspicious date! So I sent for the security experts, and this is what they told me: Your front and back doors are worthless; get armored ones. Order bulletproof windows. Build a safe room. Install panic buttons. Get rid of that silly chicken-wire fence and put in a steel and concrete one. Don't use the driveway; try to vary your access routes (which, I think, meant sneaking home through the neighbors' gardens). Pretty soon, we were talking six-figure costs and contemplating emigration to Iceland.

The appointed day of my demise came and went. (Real terrorists don't write letters; they just kill you.) But the moral of this story will remain etched in my mind: When security is at stake, there is no limit to fear or fortification.

Fear, in other words, is a tax, and al-Qaeda and its ilk have done better at extracting it from Americans than the Internal Revenue Service. Think about the extra half-hour millions of airline passengers waste standing in security lines; the annual cost in lost work-hours runs into the billions. Add to that the freight delays at borders, ports and airports, the cost of checking money transfers as well as goods in transit, the wages for beefed-up security forces around the world. And that doesn't even attempt to put a price tag on the compression of civil liberties or the loss of human dignity from being groped in full public view by Transportation Security Administration personnel at the airport or from having to walk barefoot through the metal detector, holding up your beltless pants. This global transaction tax represents the most significant victory of Terror International to date.

The new fear tax falls most heavily on the United States. Last November, the Commerce Department reported a 17 percent decline in overseas travel to the United States between 9/11 and 2006. (There are no firm figures for 2007 yet, but there seems to have been an uptick.) That slump has cost the country $94 billion in lost tourist spending, nearly 200,000 jobs and $16 billion in forgone tax revenue -- and all while the dollar has kept dropping.

Why? The journal Tourism Economics gives the predictable answer: 'The perception that U.S. visa and entry policies do not welcome international visitors is the largest factor in the decline of overseas travelers.' Two-thirds of survey respondents worried about being detained for hours because of a misstatement with immigration officials. And here is the ultimate irony: 'More respondents were worried about U.S. immigration officials (70 percent) than about crime or terrorism (54 percent) when considering a trip to the country.'

The falloff has not been as uniform when it comes to international scholars. Chinese, Koreans and Indians keep coming, reports the International Institute of Education (IIE); for the 2006-07 academic year, growth rates were between 3 and 6 percent. But the numbers of Western scholars coming to the United States is falling. Japan, Germany, Canada, Great Britain, Israel, Australia and Holland show declines of between 1 and 13 percent -- presumably because the richer a country, the less willing its scientists are to brave the indignities they face before entering the United States. Those hailing from poor countries, with limited opportunities -- such as the Chinese and the Indians -- remain undaunted.

The pattern for international students resembles that of the scholars. For 2006-07, the IIE reports the 'first significant increase in total international student enrollment since 2001/2002.' Again, the rise is led by the Indians, the Chinese and the Koreans. The numbers of students from Japan are down; ditto for Germany. Hence the IIE's veiled warning: 'America needs to continue its proactive steps to insure that our academic doors remain wide open, and that students around the world understand that they will be warmly welcomed.' To which all Americans should say amen, as these foreign students contribute about $14.5 billion annually to the U.S. economy, according to the IIE. Higher education, after all, is the fifth-largest service-sector export of the United States. And foreign talent that's willing to stick around is one of the country's critical natural resources.

Some U.S. officials know all this, of course. But while the State Department protests, the Department of Homeland Security makes the rules -- and will invent new verbotens by the day. Nor is there any end in sight. The demand for security, as my death threat taught me, is like an obsession, spreading relentlessly, for which there is no rational counterargument. DHS always asks, 'What if?' -- which always trumps 'Why more?' A more fruitful dialogue with the homeland security apparat would be trying to answer: 'What is the national interest?'

After all, which face does the United States want to show to the world? A mien distorted by fear and suspicion, or the face that America used to present: that of a boisterous, easy-going and welcoming society? America's face used to be George Bailey's genial grin in 'It's a Wonderful Life,' filled with the optimism and trust that can banish greed and evil; now, it's the grim visage of Jack Bauer in '24.'

This is not woolly-headed idealism but sober realism. Just imagine how the U.S. Army would have fared in liberating my home continent, Europe, if the blinkered commissars of DHS had been calling the shots in 1944. The way in which the last superpower chooses to bestride the world brings with it hard consequences. Does the United States open its arms or ball up its fists? Growling rarely elicits smiles, and distrust never reaps its opposite. To present a friendly face to the world is not a matter of saccharine niceness but of well-considered interests, especially for a fearsome giant like the United States. For trust breeds authority, and authority breeds influence.

What is happening to the American character? True, the country has gone through crises of confidence before, some of them cresting in sheer hysteria -- from the Alien and Sedition Acts to Sen. Joe McCarthy's search for a commie under every State Department desk. But the worst acts from 1798 were repealed or allowed to lapse within three years, and the senator from Wisconsin was censured a few years into his red-baiting career. Alas, the USA Patriot Act and DHS have already endured for longer than either earlier excess, and neither is fading.

Will the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks change the American character in ways John Adams's laws and McCarthy's mendacity could not? The answer is still 'no' if you go to the heartland, where trusting little old ladies let this perfect stranger shove his memory stick into a public library's computer; they seemed to think a virus scan referred to the common cold. The heartland is still Jefferson country. But when you travel through John F. Kennedy International Airport or Dulles International Airport, you notice nervousness bordering on angst, which is hardly a classic American trait. No, your neighbor will not let you leave your bag on the seat while you amble over to Starbucks.

Have the 'free and brave' lost it? If so, you are not alone. Look at France, where the controls at Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport are just as gruesome as those at Reagan National Airport. Like the United States, the European Union now wants to fingerprint all foreigners who enter or leave its boundaries. So there is a larger moral to this tale: Security is an obsession that defies natural limits. And we submit because we like it.

Al-Qaeda likes it, too. Never before have so few terrorized so many with so little."

That last paragraph gets it exactly. We have been behaving the way we have, not because we are brave, but because we have been cowards.

And it is real courage that takes liberty seriously in the face of illiberal threats.

That's what courage looks like. If we'd all stop being such fuckin' cowards.

And it takes a real liberal, like Josef Joffe, to remind us that liberty matters.

A question

Can someone answer me something?

How is it that so many national columnists, politicians, activists, even scholars get important questions wrong so often and yet be so sure of themselves all the time?

Because the only thing they are really sure of is that everyone else should take their opinions seriously, right or wrong.

You ask me, that's a pretty fuckin' stupid reason to trust such folks to know more than they do.

Maybe it's time that such people stop acting like they know more than they do.

And maybe it's time for the rest of us to stop investing so much trust in such peoples' random opinions.

Mean people suck

Makes me appreciate my public school and public university experience all the more.

Best and the Brightest, but Not the Nicest

"During four years at Princeton University and nearly a year at Yale Law School, I have been surrounded by students who dazzle. These are the students for whom application processes were made. They include published novelists, acclaimed musicians and Olympic medalists. They include entrepreneurs, founders of human rights groups and political activists. If they have hobbies such as stamp collecting and belly dancing, by golly, they are the best stamp collectors and belly dancers in America! These youths live a life of superlatives, a life in which being No. 1 is not just an aspiration but the status quo. They can be inspirational, and I am lucky to be able to learn from them. But they are not always nice people.

You know what I mean by 'nice.' I mean the kind of 'nice' that involves showing compassion not merely because membership in community service groups demands it. The kind of 'nice' that involves sharing notes with a student who is sick or lending a textbook to a friend who doesn't have one. The kind of selfless, genuine 'nice' that makes this world a better place -- but won't get you accepted to college.

Of course, top universities accept hundreds of individuals who have demonstrated the highest levels of citizenship. These teenagers have volunteered in more food banks, sponsored more fundraisers and lobbied more officials than any previous generation. They earn, rightfully, the gratitude of their communities and the plethora of honors that come with it. Colleges at the top of U.S. News and World Report's rankings would balk at the notion that these students are anything but the best and the brightest.

I'm not saying different. I'm saying that sometimes some of these students will denounce world hunger but be unfriendly to the homeless. They will debate environmental policy but never offer to take out the trash. They will believe vehemently in many causes but roll their eyes when reminded to be humble, to be generous and to 'do what is right.'

It is these people, though, who often climb America's ladder of success. They rise to the top, partly on their own merits yet also partly on the backs of equally deserving but 'nicer' people who let them steal the spotlight. Before they, or we, know it, they are the politicians and corporate executives subverting the very moral positions they espouse. They are the (frighteningly) many figureheads who purport to be leaders even as they embarrass our country and mar our history books.

Watching the race for the presidency, I cannot help but wonder whether our candidates, with their prestigious degrees and impressive credentials, are nice people. I wonder if, in their trek to the top, they have pushed aside the kind of quietly brilliant altruists who mean what they say and say what they mean."

The world often does reward selfish pricks, with other merits, sadly. Nice guys actually do tend to finish first, often. Warren Buffet is a hell of a nice guy, actually. But there are a lot of self-centered assholes who succeed, as well. And, as Amelia nicely argues in this column, they tend to walk on the backs, manipulate, fuck with, scapegoat and otherwise look out for their own selfish interests at the expense of a lot of these nice folks. All to rationalize why they're such selfish pricks.

Most of us are assholes, at times, in our lives. That's why the only way through is to just forgive ourselves and one another and to stop rationalizing what pricks we all are.

And as Amelia wisely observes, it is all of us assholes that make the world a shitty place, when it is. And the beauty of the scam of those who want to remain pricks is that not a one of them takes responsibility for it. As long they're a prick, that is. Because once they do, they join the ranks of all the nice folks that they take for granted and otherwise fuck with around them.

The trick, really, is for nice people to both call out pricks for their bullshit, to work with them on being nicer folk, to stop rewarding them and otherwise rationalizing their behavior for them, and for people, generally, to start being nicer to one another.

For me, it became an easy call once I became clear about what kind of person I want to spend my life with. I don't like being an asshole. And I despise bitchy women, is the truth, no matter how ambitious they are. In fact, bitchy, ambitious women are generally some of the biggest pricks that the world has to offer.

After Brandi and I split up, I decided, after talking with and dating many such women that I have no interest, anymore, in smart without nice. Smart without nice equals a world of misery and mindless arguments all meant to rationalize why someone remains a shithead rather than owning up.

I can't imagine being married to Hillary Clinton, frankly. Bitchy, smart women are just twice the problem of bitchy, dumb women.

And I'd make my life with a nice, moderately intelligent woman any day of the week over the pricks with female organs who make this world a living hell every bit as much as the pricks with male organs.

Nice people are just better people to hang with. Nice, intelligent people are some of the most quality people in the world to hang with, generally. And pricks of every sort are, generally, over the long haul, unbearable to deal with until they face up to their selfish bullshit.

Hitler was fuckin' brilliant. So was Stalin.

But I wouldn't want my kid to grow up to be them. And I don't want my kids to grow up to be a compromised version of any one of them, either.

Face up to your bullshit, assholes. And when you don't, deal with the consequences.

I've had to. That's how I know.

And if you can't, don't be surprised when people slowly start to figure out that you're just an asshole and that you're not worth making excuses for. Eventually people get tired of your shit.

If you ever get around to reading the Intelligent Investor, you'll get a much clearer idea of why nice guys finish first. And why Warren Buffet made all that money. Smart, arrogant pricks lose a lot of money, as it turns out. Because they're too arrogant to admit what they don't know. And it costs them a lot of money, generally.

Me. I'm looking for a nice girl long before I'm looking for a smart girl or an ambitious girl, anymore. Because nice girls and nice guys are cooler to hang out with, generally. And you can trust that what they have to say is not just about how they can look out for Number 1.

I, personally, couldn't really fall in love any other way. I know because I've tried. It just doesn't work. Because the truth is that I will never trust or respect an asshole or a bitch, no matter how smart, ambitious, or whatever they might be. Because, in my heart, I'll always be thinking, "How did I marry such an bitch?"

And what a miserable fuckin' existence that would be. No matter how many Ivy League credentials you put behind it.

It is so obvious...

...when you're not defending the bullshit.

Turkish Parliament softens law restricting free speech

"Turkey's Parliament approved a government-backed proposal early Wednesday to soften a law restricting free speech that has been used to prosecute many intellectuals, including Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk.

The legislators voted 250-65 in favor of the amendment to Article 301 of the penal code, which many critics say is one of the biggest restraints on freedom of speech.

The ruling party, which dominates the 550-seat Parliament with 340 lawmakers, was the only party that voted in favor of the amendment while opposition parties voted against it. The amendment has to be approved by the president before it can go into effect.

The older version of Aricle 301 bars insults to "Turkishness," a vague term used by many prosecutors to clamp down on some dissident voices.

The European Union has been pressing Turkey to abolish or overhaul the law as part of Turkey's campaign for EU membership...

...Fatma Kurtulan, a pro-Kurdish party lawmaker, said it was "illusory" to believe that the amendment would advance free speech, saying it was designed to please the EU without making substantial changes.

'What needs to be done is to abolish (Article) 301 altogether,' said Kurtulan.

The change cuts the maximum sentence for denigrating Turkish identity or institutions from three years in prison to two, possibly suspended for first-time offenders. The justice minister will have to approve investigations of possible violations of the law."

Fatma Kurtulan understands the problem.

Not only did EU pressure not create the free speech guarantess necessary in Turkey, but the Turkish government used their "soft power" to make sure that they look good while still repressing free expression and debate on this question of whether there was an Armenian genocide, which is one of the primary targets of this law.

Like most problems we face, today, this is not a problem, fundamentally, of securing enough pressure to force changes that we want to see forced. This is, fundamentally, an issue of free speech and a commitment by a government to not impose their sensibilities on that question.

It's really not that complicated when you are not defending force as a governing philosophy.

It is only complicated when you are rationalizing power. And that is what most people around the world, liberal and illiberal, are doing, right now, that is responsible for this repressive and regressive period in history.

It is the rationalization of power that is undermining reasonable, empirical, open, undistorted, honest, and free discussions about important public and private issues that matter to all of us.

It is all the power in this equation and in our lives that distorts our outlooks and understandings of the world and the free, open, and honest communication to create stronger understanding.

It is driven by our fear. And, ironically, it makes us far less safe. An honest and clear-eyed comparison of liberal and illiberal cultures and countries today and for the entire length of human history would make that eminently clear.

But we are driven by our own fears and our egos in a direction and in a logic that make very little sense, honestly and realistically, that the denial begins to look more and more like something more honest, even when it very clearly is not.

It's so obvious when you are not defending the bullshit that you have a really hard time understanding why everyone else is so lost in the bullshit.

Except, as George Orwell, Lord Acton, Mark Twain, H.L. Mencken, and a million other brilliant people deduced long before me, when power, when force, is the way we relate with one another, it is all bullshit. That is why power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Because it scares all of us into lying to ourselves and to one another so frequently and so thoroughly that we forget we are lying, after awhile.

And it is only when we get honest with ourselves and with one another that our problems and mistakes get addressed more openly and honestly.

It is so obvious when you are not defending the bullshit.

I realized last night and today that this is the sadness that sits on my heart. That as long as we refuse to give it up, we are all stuck with this ugly, foolish, stupid, dishonest mess, all of us, even those of us who want to be more honest about the mess, for as long as we refuse to face it honestly.

But maybe some honest discussion just might make a difference.

I can only hope.

Freedom and idealism

I don't know why.

I guess it's because I'm at a point in my life where I am becoming more self-disciplined, where I'm accepting my limits more readily, and where I realize that what makes me unhappy in my life, always, is the extent to which my freedom is limited. Not the freedom to murder, obviously, or freedom to do ugliness. Just the places where my choices and an honest and open expression of my thoughts, feelings, self, and choices are limited.

I realized, today, that the reason why that period of my life, of most peoples' lives, where I felt the most idealistic - my years in college and grad school, especially - was because it was the period of my life when I was experiencing the most freedom and expansion of my freedom and exploring a world that I had, up till that point, not had much contact with.

The most idealistic times in my life were when I first entered college and was living a life on my own, for the first time. And when I was in grad school and dating my best friend and exploring a world freely with someone else, for the first time, that I had not known very well, up until that point, and sharing it with someone who also appreciated learning about that world with me and that kind of freedom. It was an innocent exploration, for the most part. Neither of us were using drugs or wildly partying. We were just exploring the world - a world of sexuality, of politics, of people we were not familiar with and had not experienced, before, of talking frankly with someone else we cared about, and making tons of mistakes in both of our first really serious relationship - and learning about everything it had to offer with someone who could appreciate both the experience and the freedom to have it that most other people, up until that point in my life, could not have appreciated as well.

I guess it's because I'm growing up and I'm letting go of much of the folly and immaturity of my youth. But much of that immaturity and folly is also associated, in my mind, with that freedom that so made my life worth living and such a deeply refreshing and rewarding experience.

Maybe that's why I'm so sensitive to efforts to limit my freedom. Because it is, for me, the best opportunity for learning and growth and associated with the time in my life when I learned and grew the most and the most profoundly and experienced a world I was largely unfamiliar with, up until that point.

Freedom matters to me because it is what makes all of the most profound and deeply enriching times in my life possible.

And today, for some reason, maybe because I'm getting to a point in my life where I am accepting limitations in my life more readily or maybe it is because I get tired of all kinds of limitations and impositions that I don't think I should have to put up with, I've been feeling a little down about not having it in my life.

What I need is some vegi phad thai, some obscure, cheap beer, and, ideally, I would need someone I could spill my heart with. I'd love that to be a girl. But I don't really have one, in my life, right now, that I could just spill with, like that, and get to listen to all of the exciting things she is learning and ready to share with me. That's the one I'm waiting for.

I suppose phad thai and beer will have to do, in the meantime. But I'm sure its the side of freedom and idealism that I crave the most.

Why this period is regressive

Press freedom declines worldwide, North Korea listed as worst

"Worldwide, the environment for journalists grew more hostile last year, extending a six-year downturn, researchers reported Tuesday.

Setbacks for press freedom outnumbered advances 2-to-1 across the globe, although the Internet and blogs helped slow the decline, particularly in Iran, reported Freedom House, a nonprofit organization that released the report in advance of World Press Freedom Day on Saturday...

...'For every step forward in press freedom last year there were two steps back,' said Jennifer Windsor, executive director of Freedom House, in a statement accompanying the report. 'When press freedom is in retreat it is an ominous sign that restrictions on other freedoms may soon follow.'

And yet, journalists were credited with pushing the boundaries set by authorities. In Egypt, for instance, their increased willingness to cross 'red lines' was cited as boosting the country into the partly free category from the not-free group."

Liberal values are really not all that complicated, once you get out of the business of rationalizing power and limits on freedom.

Progress occurs with expansion of freedom, not greater limitations. We just get so full of the bullshit, sometimes, that we lose track.

When I think about it, my unhappiness is not with my job. My unhappiness is with a world where people cannot and refuse to engage important questions more honestly, substantively, and freely and are constantly using intimidation and repression as some kind of substitute.

This story reflects that reality all over the world, including in America.

Surely the free world, and the unfree world, can do better than this.

Changing our ways

I'm still supporting McCain. But I have to say that I agree, generally, with Andrew Sullivan's concerns about Obama and what his candidacy represents.

"We're seeing many of the worst aspects of America's culture war come back to target the one politician who had the chance to get us beyond it. It is no accident to me that Wright is of the Vietnam generation that bequeathed us these divides; and it is no accident that the Clintons will eagerly pivot off it; or that the far right will exploit it; or that Obama's tolerance for a man like this for so many years will hurt him. And yet I refuse to believe that we have to remain captive to this syndrome; I refuse to believe that racial discourse has to be framed by Pat Buchanan and Jeremiah Wright; I refuse to abandon the hope I felt only a few months ago.

This moment is far too important to surrender to the forces that want to return us to the divisions and obsessions of the past. The only way past this, perhaps, is through it. Obama needs to repudiate Wright's grandstanding and reiterate in clear terms the rationale of his candidacy: that the past is over, and we have to move forward in ending this war in Iraq, restoring America's standing in the world, repairing the massive and mounting debt, bringing America back to the forefront of human rights, and bringing the best aspects of America to the foreground again.

The world is watching. And we still can."

It is true that the Obama campaign is the most genuine commitment to leaving this kind of politics, and the political and cultural warfare of the Vietnam generation, behind us.

I've supported John McCain and Barack Obama in their respective campaigns because I thought they offered us the best opportunity for a more honest discussion and debate that seeks to leave such emnities behind us.

Leaders do not pander to our basest impulses. Leaders lead us past them. These two candidates were our best shot at that, in the political process, proper, I think.

And Sullivan is right that the campaign against Barack Obama is a campaign of smear and bitterness about those political battles that only is useful insofar as it raises relevant questions about the challenges we face, today.

Jeremiah Wright, John Hagee, William Ayers and all such similar figures are responsible for their own behavior and are only relevant insofar as they address how candidates would handle contemporary challenges.

But more, they say much about how we face those same challenges.

Are we wise enough to turn this discussion into something more constructive to address our common problems.

Or are we foolish enough to think that one group will win and others will lose in these ideological, cultural, and political wars.

If it is the latter, we are responsible for that problem, no matter how we spin it otherwise.

Taking responsibility for our role in these debates and discussions is our only way forward.

Everything else is foolhardy. And a challenge that our children will have to take up if we do not have the wisdom and the courage to do it ourselves.

Peace or tragedy

Talking to 'terrorists'

I have to say that though I certainly take exception to Jimmy Carter's equivocation of terrorism - if Hamas is not a terrorist group, what group would qualify? - the terms he hammered out with Hamas and details in this piece do look promising.

And though I'm not a fan of Carter's sympathy for Palestinian terrorists, he is right on the bigger issue. Only a peace deal gets Israel and Palestine out of this loop of ongoing tragedy. There is no military solution to this standoff.

Perhaps we should pause to consider what Hamas is offering.

Signs of hope

From the Economist:

"Yet jockeying for power at the other levels of government does continue, causing a few headaches for Mr Ahmadinejad. Earlier this week the minister of the economy, Davoud Danesh Jafari, was shuffled out of the cabinet. Unusually, he left with something of a bang, lambasting Mr Ahmadinejad for dreadful mishandling of Iran’s economy, failing to plan for the future or to listen to economic experts. The president was distracted by “peripheral” issues, and had allowed inflation to soar to 18%, he said. Although others have spoken out before, Mr Jafari’s words were unusually forceful and public as they came from a former ally.

The economy is Mr Ahmadinejad’s Achilles’ heel. The opposition has criticised him over it and the clerical establishment has joined in. In the past week prominent clerics have said that he has failed to take responsibility for Iran’s economic woes. Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavikani, a former prime minister and a prominent conservative cleric, was quoted in Aftab-e Yazd, a reformist newspaper, as saying: “We shift problems and faults onto others and in order to say we are innocent we blame others.” Several leaders of Friday prayers have complained that the government is doing too little to reduce inflation. Even Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, the president’s closest spiritual adviser, has said that officials have failed to employ expertise to tackle poverty."

Obviously, Mamoud Ahmadinejad is not taking responsibility for much of anything, these days, nevertheless Iran's dismal economy. And Mamoud Ahmadinejad presence in that office, at all, as well as the power of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, should be proof positive to any sane, liberal-thinking person that power and established authority is meaningless as a barometer of right and wrong in the universe.

But recognizing that power is, often, a refuge for those avoiding responsibility, not one where responsibility is learned or effectively modeled, as one of the more persistent facts of political and public life, is a sign of progress.

And having people in Iran willing to take on that power, to take on the overwhelming forces of repression in that country, to openly and honestly criticize that power structure is a sign of progress.

Real progress, generally, does not come from the powerful. Powerful people generally follow those who create genuine progress in a society, not lead them. In fact, it is so obvious that in liberal societies, that when political leaders finally do choose to follow pathes of progress that have been blazed by others, then they are recognized for their contributions to progress that, generally, happens long before those with power make their contribution.

As George Orwell, one such thinker who blazed progress long before and generally contrary to the governing forces of his time, might say, force is not freedom. Power is not progress. In fact, quite the opposite.

Progress is when people are able to live their lives freely, peacefully, democratically, and independently of their governments, including with independent consciences even when governments are abusing their power, as the Iranian government is clearly guilty of doing, today, on so many measures of free, fair, and honest governance, that it is frankly difficult for me to imagine that liberal peoples would ever invest themselves in the foolish idea that government is some kind of final or trustworthy arbiter of all or even most questions of conscience.

To the contrary, Ahmadinejad should be a clear reminder to us of the folly of that notion and the inspiration for liberal governance and liberal society.

I, for one, celebrate that freedom rather than shrinking from it out of the cowardice that, somehow, someday, we will magically harness government to control and prevent all the bad things in the world from happening. It is a clear and unmistakeable illusion to me, today. And I'm confident that future generations will see the same.

Because it is just is, completely independent of what it might wish it to be.

Life is not that difficult, once you understand it

As I read through Benjamin Graham's Intelligent Investor one second time, I'm struck by how money is not that difficult to come by, once you understand it and its relationship to real value it represents is being contributed to peoples' lives. And the ways that losing track of that relationship undermines both one's capacity to make money. And undermines one's life, in much bigger ways than money.

Teaching is like that, too. So is learning. So are relationships. And parenting. And virtue of all sorts. So is leadership. And envisioning something better in the world.

Life is not that difficult, actually, once you understand it.

It's the understanding it that is the trick.

If you have not seen There Will Be Blood, and you want a course on how and why we are generally the ones responsible for our own misery, in life, I highly recommend that movie. It was clarifying for me. For why all that virtue matters.

Liberty and reason. Freedom and understanding.

It's the understanding that is the trick. And it is the understanding that makes all the difference. And it is the understanding that will, for as long as people inhabit this earth, make all the difference in the future.

Life is not really all that difficult once you understand it.

And it is the freedom and the understanding, that people have long been resisting and undermining, since the dawn of humanity, that make it easier to navigate.

Perhaps its time to correct that problem.

Stupid and mean

It's funny.

We have a world where everyone is always pissed off and scared and hurt about how shitty everyone treats one another.

So the answer that every dumbass seems to have for this situation is to treat one another shittier. Without fail. It is the source of every worst impulse and treatment humanity has ever heaped on its own kind.

I can't tell if that so remarkably obvious and repeatedly foolish reaction is because we are so stupid or because we are so mean.

I think it's both.

Either way, you'd think we'd wisen up, at some point.

Maybe evolution skips a species, sometimes. At least it skips a groove until this particular species starts using all of that one serious advantage of intelligence that biology has conferred upon it.

Perhaps evolution of our intelligence only occurs once one realizes in crystal clear technicolor just what a fuck-up one is. And perhaps that goes for societies, even an entire species, as much as for each individual.

Then, again, maybe some people just have to wait until the next gene pool offers up something better. At least so they can get a good view while they're getting their asses kicked and wondering why they never faced up to their bullshit, in the first place.

However it pans out, we're kind of stupid and mean, is the truth. And no matter how you spin that, it's still stupid and mean. Not something better.

For all of our talk about intelligence, we're kind of a dumb breed, much of the time, don't you think? At least we offer each other company, I suppose.

Bullying

Does it not seem strange to anyone else that bullying is one of the most serious issues that most adults are concerned about among young people.

And yet so much of the current political period is one long rationalization of bullying?

If I were a kid, this world would make no fuckin' sense to me.

Very much like when I was a kid, actually.

Some things never change.

A hardened heart

I'm watching There Will Be Blood, tonight, and I think I'm seeing what is so wrong with the world.

I think, at this point in my life, I am beginning to more fully understand how hardened hearts make the world an ugly place for everyone to have to live with.

Watching politics, this election cycle, with more of an eye to its ignoble features, among all ideological participants, I'm realizing just how much this obsession with power and the hardened hearts that pursue it make the world a fairly ugly place to live. And then claim the need for all that power to purify all that ugliness. They are not alone responsible for all of the ugliness in the world, obviously. But politics and too many of its participants contribute more than their fair share to the ugliness in the world. All in the name of noble purpose.

It makes me thankful for the contributions of less hard-hearted, more decent folks to the world. It makes me thankful for all the people I spent time with as a kid - the teachers, the counselors, the neighbors and people in our community, the churchfolk, the folks who worked in museums and libraries and universities, and all of the decent folks in the world who have honest, kind-hearted, good things to contribute to the world - who made childhood a positive experience for me, and I imagine most kids, generally.

All that hard-heartedness that Michael Barone romanticizes. It's exactly what is so wrong with the world. Which is why his writing has bothered me so much, these last few years. And all such folks pretending that their hardness is really something more honest or decent than it is.

I've got it in me, too, at this point in my life, sadly. All of the rough treatment and disappointments and fear and heartache sit on our hearts like some dark reminder of just how hard and heartbreaking life can be.

We all live with it, is the truth. It is the motivation behind virtually all of the ugliness in the world.

The question for us, today, as always, is are we going to keep pretending that it is our better angels? Are we going to keep pretending that this is the best we or anyone has to offer the world? Are we going to keep pretending like this is the way the world is supposed to be?

To the extent that the answer to that question is yes, we can claim a lot of things. But progress isn't one of them. Nor doing better by our children and future generations. People will claim it, of course. Hitler and Stalin both claimed that their ugliness was for their children and future generations. But it was a lie. And it will be a lie when our hardened hearts do the same.

And to the extent that we face all of that hard-heartedness, that ugliness, and take responsibility for the heartache and unnecessary tragedy we cause others in the name of pretending that it is better than it is, then we will have made progress. Everything else will have been a lie.

That is the choice that lies before us, right now, independent of how the politics of the moment unfolds.

It is the choice that humanity has always faced. And it is the only honest standard of progress that we have ever operated under. Everything else is a lie. And always has been. No matter how sophisticated the propaganda, to the contrary, takes shape.

We will only make progress as our hearts soften and we become more decent. That is the only way forward.

And that kind of progress, the only real progress we have and will ever make, is on no electoral timeline.

It takes as much as it needs.

Some resolution about being a decent person

I've found some resolution, this morning.

I realized about 5 or 6 years ago that the essence of so much of the ugly, dark side of the contemporary political discussion was that none of us really have to be good and decent people. We can be shitheads, if we want. We can be bitter. And nasty. Mean-spirited. Vindictive. Vengeful. Dishonest. Whatever things we know are bad, we can be them, if we want to, and noone can stop us.

In fact, we can lie to ourselves and one another and pretend like those things are really for good purposes, for the common good, or to serve something larger than ourselves. It's not really an original line of thought, actually. It was and is what animated and animates Naziism, Communism, imperialism, theocracy, genocide of all sorts, and almost literally every act of evil of any significant proportions. Very rarely do people do really evil, ugly things and say, "I just did it for the fun of it" or "I just did it because I wanted to." Usually, there is some kind of rationalization. Usually there is some kind of excuse that it was "for the mother country" or "for the people" or "for my people" or "for my family" or "for my friends" or "for the people I love" or for whatever.

There's always an excuse for shitty behavior, generally. When there isn't, it's a moment of honesty, which, at least, is an opportunity to take responsibility and move forward.

Otherwise, it's just bullshit. Which it often is.

And I've made some peace, this morning, that though it is true that people can be as shitty as they want for as long as they choose to be so. And they can be rewarded or can get stuff they want in life, despite and sometimes because of shitty behavior. Independent of the fact that it is pretty clear that what matters of our contributions is generally a function of what of value we have to offer and that even those rewarded in more material ways are often those who have something of real value to offer the world and that greed is often something that holds people back, distorts their outlook on the world and on the market, undermines their material gains, more than it helps anyone. Independent of all of that, it is still more important to make contributions to the world that do operate independent of money or power or sex or anything self-centered.

Because life is a shitty place to live for people who live that way. And the commitment to being decent, to being a good person, to forgiving those various inequities and wrongs and indecencies in the world and acting only when it will really accomplish something, that valuing the most important, most meaningful, most beautiful, most insightful, wisest, most decent contributions in the world is what makes it possible for us to have any of those things. And it is those most decent contributions that make this world worth living for.

Everything else is one long constant reminder of what shitheads people often are and what the world would be like if noone really gave a shit.

And there is far too much of that in the world, is the truth. Far too much. The world does not need me to add to that mix.

I need a decent world to live in: for myself, for my parents and brothers and sisters, for my wife and children, for my friends, for my colleagues, and for all of the people I care about in the world.

We may all dip our toes in the base elements of the world, out of curiosity about our own and others' human nature. But I have no interest in living there. And I certainly hope most people do not either.

And I have faith that they don't.

Because the truth is that the base cannot sustain us. It does not fulfill us or anyone else, for that matter. It does not make us better. Or help us grow. Or tackle successfully or unsuccessfully our most serious problems. The base does not make life beautiful. Or sweet. Or touching. Or enlightening. Or inspiring. It does not teach us or have anything real for us to learn except that it is so empty.

The base elements of the world are made up of the sides of all of us that do not care. And the truth is that we do not care far too often, not far too much. But our baser, more cowardly natures just will not be more honest, we will not be more honest with ourselves or with others, that this is the case.

We care far too little, is the truth. And that is our problem, most of the time. And that is why we find ourselves in so many messes. Because our lenses are so self-centered that we see almost everything we encounter as a function of who we are and what we want and not as a function of what will serve or help or support others.

And if you spend enough of your time with people who really do not care much about others, as much as I do, it becomes crystal clear just exactly what we take for granted with one another when we do care.

I have no interest in taking people who care about me for granted, anymore. I have no interest in taking for granted those who look out for others and for me with little or no reward or concern for themselves. I have no interest in rationalizing why I don't care about anyone else other than myself or why I only have me to look out for. I have no interest in pretending like it doesn't matter or that it really is that darker, more aggressive, more indecent nature about myself or others that keeps me or others safe. I've had enough experience, I've studied enough about the world, I know enough about people and how they live to know that such thinking is bullshit and dishonest. That it is one long rationalization for why I and everyone else chooses to act like shitheads in lieu of being more decent.

I know better. Everyone who has lived in a decent society should.

And having the freedom to learn better may be the only way that any of us really learn.

That was the point of those who originally espoused democracy and liberal values, I think. All those thinkers and artists and writers and Founding Fathers. That freedom offered us the vantage point to be able to judge what was good and what was bad, what was decent and what was indecent, what was right and what was wrong, what was enlightened and what was unenlightened, what was beautiful and what was ugly, what was brilliant and what was foolish.

And they were right.

There is no law, no rule, no power, no ultimate authority that can finally decide any of these things. Only the consciences and judgments of individuals. The consciences and judgments of common people, and, especially, the consciences and judgments of all too uncommon people, for all the right reasons.

The merits of what is or is not in the world is not and could never be decided by law or by those who are responsible for the law. They can and forever will be decided by the consciences of each individual.

And, by now, humanity has enough experience to know that some consciences shine brighter than others and make the path to progress clearer by their light.

It was not law or rules or power that made way for humanity's Age of Enlightenment. It was great minds, great contributions, great efforts, great ideas that made it so. And will forever make it so, no matter what the law may say or not.

And so it will forever be. Power be damned.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

And never, ever will power make anything so, except what conscience allows. Ever. Except that which cowardice allows. And that is exactly why it is such a poor settlement for anything and resolves no important question except that which conscience decides first. Law is used for cowardice far too often to warrant it as a moral or final arbiter of anything except that which the law and its guardians decide. It is an imperfect effort to resolve difficult questions. And will forever be an imperfect effort to resolve such questions.

Only conscience can resolve them for real and with any finality. And even then, often conscience fails. Conscience is also an imperfect effort. But it is a more honest and genuine one. And that is why conscience trumps all else.

What I realized this morning is that without people committed to that resolution, without people committed to a life that is more decent, more honest, more loving, more free, more just, more productive, more open, more full of all of life's most profound contributions and insights, this would be a very dark and lonely world indeed.

And that is why humanity should still strive, even as so many of us fall so dreadfully short, to live up to our highest, most genuine ideals.

Because a world where we do not is just too bleak.

And no matter who you are, who wants to live in that world.

If there is one most overriding important advantage that doing this work - teaching, and teaching the roughest kids, in particular - has had for my life is to make clear without a shadow of a doubt how important it is to have decent people and decent contributions in life to have available for more honest and genuine consumption.

It is exactly because life is so shitty, because people are so often so self-centered and ugly to one another that we need people who are bigger than all of that and have bigger and more honest contributions to make, as a consequence.

Because what kind of world would this be if it were only the shitheads who made their mark?

A cold, dark, and ugly one. Nasty, brutish, and short, as one philosopher once observed. Even for the shitheads.

Eventually, everyone needs more light and genuine warmth in their lives.

Bitterness

I'm realizing, this morning, reading another weak Charles Krauthammer piece (I'm voting for John McCain, so I got no axe to grind for Obama; Charles is just subject to weak reasoning, often, and this piece is one of the weakest), that what most people, including Charles, were so offended by when Obama talked about bitter Americans was that he was being so honest.

The truth is that a lot of people, like Charles, are bitter. They are bitter. And they are married to the emotional fragility that holding onto so bitterness engenders.

That's the problem with bitterness and the ugliness it often gives cover to.

It is a wound. A weakness. And often, when people experience this kind of wound, this weakness, they are wont to wallow in it.

Holding onto bitterness is a form of self-pity that many people, rich and poor, are tempted to wallow in since letting it go means facing and experiencing pain that those who are wallowing would rather avoid and escape. It is not only religion and guns, but drugs and other forms of recreation and entertainment, self-righteous bluster of all sorts, especially political bluster, and so many distractions which allow those who do not feel strong enough to face such weakness to avoid doing so.

The question we need to ask ourselves, and hopefully we are and do, intuitively, ask ourselves, is do we really want people leading us who wallow in self-pity, like this?

The Germans in Nazi Germany answered yes to this question. And from there all of their problems flowed.

See, the irony is that people who are afraid of facing this and all such weaknesses must convince themselves and others that it is not weakness, at all, but strength, for fear of facing the cowardice that animates their self-pity.

So it is for Charles Krauthammer. So it is for anyone who wallows in such self-pity. Myself included, if and when I ever indulge.

It is self-deception that has, far too often, led to some of humanity's worst abuses.

The less scholarly term is bullshit. It's bullshit, is what it is. It is people, like Hitler and like Charles Krauthammer and like a million such assholes pretending to be stronger than they really are.

And the really crazy bullshit at the bottom of it all is that it is not strength, at all. In fact, at bottom, it is cowardice to face weakness and the emotional wounds that life inevitably brings.

Fundamentally, people have a choice. We can ignore all that pain and bitterness and pretend they do not color our outlook on the world, which they clearly do with any reflection on the subject (lingering pain tends to make people more fearful and aggressive). We can pretend that such pain is a sign of strength, a pride based on the notion that surviving a life of pain - the life that we all must live, no matter what kind of life we live - and do much harm to others and ourselves as we pretend to ourselves and others in such ways. Or we can let go of the pain and mistrust, to forgive it and the source of our wounds and take responsibility for the pain and hardship and mistrust we have caused others.

Most people choose the first or the second, out of cowardice, often. Myself included, too often in my life, sadly. But the third option is the only source of real strength, no matter how much we try to bullshit ourselves otherwise.

Many, many people try to bullshit themselves otherwise. Charles is one of many. It is not evil. It is all too common, really. It is not, however, noble. Nor should it be confused with something more noble. Nor it is confined to ideology. In fact, the spread of this weakness across ideology, class, race, gender, intellectual ability, nationality, ethnicity, religion, and every other identity that might otherwise divide humanity is the source for such divisions and it is the reason why wisdom cannot be found in any of its particular cleavages.

Strength is found in our capacity to relate to other human beings with a respect for their contributions, their free will and need to determine their own lives, their potential for decency and nobility of spirit, and their identities as like and potentially peacefully coexisting human beings that transcends narrower identifications. And to the extent that narrower definitions of our experience lingers in the minds and experiences of humanity, the narrower our outlook and the subsequent consequences for our lives will be. We can refuse to engage others in ways that make for more peaceful and mutually concerned coexistence.

And we live with the consequences of that kind of engagement until we do.

May we choose wisely.

The lasting power of force as a governing philosophy

I was watching this documentary, World at War, that features a long-haired Stephen Ambrose, at one point, which is fascinating.



And I think I came upon part of the reason why we've been going through this dumbass political period.

I am learning, with kids, that when people stop looking for better lessons to understand challenges they face in life, they, generally, are stuck playing out the stupid goddamn logic that they have been operating with up until that point.

And much of the logic of American foreign policy in the late 20th and early 21st century is a holdover from the beginning of World War II, the last war from which America feels a clear sense of moral leadership.

And the one lesson that dumbasses who don't think about anything else serious but the last fuckin' thing they discussed in some high school or undergraduate class 30 years ago is that Hitler had to be confronted with force. And that avoiding doing so cost many lives, tragically.

It's an important lesson from history. But it is not an absolute lesson, for anyone with half a brain to consider when and where force should be used, which is the obvious question to anyone who thinks before they act, at all, and is not just rationalizing their sloppy reasoning or their will to power.

Hitler at his height: 90% approval rating.

Obviously force nor popularity nor any other principle other than what does real good in the world is a good enough justification for power or how to use it.

But, like those Germans, Americans have been rationalizing power out of intellectual laziness and a lust for power and its spoils.

Hitler lost. And everyone who rationalizes power in such way will lose, eventually.

The question, as Ambrose argued in a What If? series essay he wrote about World War II, is not whether such power-mongers lose. The question is how long does it take before they lose and how many people are hurt in the meantime.

No matter what

I have to say that no matter what I end up doing with my life, that I honor the fuck out of the work that these teachers, all teachers, all professors (especially my professors), police officers, firefighters, military servicepeople, public-serving lawyers, judges, political leaders, and all of the public servants who work on behalf of the public.

But I do have to say that contrary to the nonsensical babblings of Michael Barone and his ilk, I honor the work that all teachers at all levels do. It's the most important work in the world. It's the reason I wanted to do this work.

And if Michael or anyone needs a reminder that all these soft-hearted teachers can be hard, I would be more than happy to lay him or anyone else the fuck out to give them a taste of just how hard a teacher can be if they want to be.

You doubt I'm tough? Ask my students. And if you need further reminders, I would be more than willing to step outside and give them to anyone convinced that soft-heartedness means weak. I'll show you weak, you piece of shit. And then I'll forgive your sorry ass for being such a fuckin' asshole.

All those teachers made it possible for you to have that cushy job to disrespect them, Michael. I'll forgive you. But if you need your ass kicked, I am more than willing to oblige on that front as well.

Love,
Ben

Progress?

Great. The first war on poverty went so well, I guess the Republican candidate would like us to embark on a second attempt.

McCain Vows War on Poverty, Says Nation in Recession

This is progress, I suppose. No offense, but if this is progress, I think I'm going to slit my fucking wrists.

I need a new fucking job. Because if this is it, we are going fucking nowhere.

And if we're going nowhere, I want first class seats and I have no interest in funding this shit.

Why we rationalize power and getting tough

U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations

"It used to be that Europeans came to the United States to study its prison systems. They came away impressed.

'In no country is criminal justice administered with more mildness than in the United States,' Alexis de Tocqueville, who toured American penitentiaries in 1831, wrote in 'Democracy in America.'

No more.

'Far from serving as a model for the world, contemporary America is viewed with horror," James Whitman, a specialist in comparative law at Yale, wrote last year in Social Research. 'Certainly there are no European governments sending delegations to learn from us about how to manage prisons.'

Prison sentences here have become 'vastly harsher than in any other country to which the United States would ordinarily be compared,' Michael Tonry, a leading authority on crime policy, wrote in 'The Handbook of Crime and Punishment.'

Indeed, said Vivien Stern, a research fellow at the prison studies center in London, the American incarceration rate has made the United States "a rogue state, a country that has made a decision not to follow what is a normal Western approach."

The spike in American incarceration rates is quite recent. From 1925 to 1975, the rate remained stable, around 110 people in prison per 100,000 people. It shot up with the movement to get tough on crime in the late 1970s. (These numbers exclude people held in jails, as comprehensive information on prisoners held in state and local jails was not collected until relatively recently.)

The nation's relatively high violent crime rate, partly driven by the much easier availability of guns here, helps explain the number of people in American prisons.

'The assault rate in New York and London is not that much different,' said Marc Mauer, the executive director of the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group. 'But if you look at the murder rate, particularly with firearms, it's much higher.'

Despite the recent decline in the murder rate in the United States, it is still about four times that of many nations in Western Europe.

But that is only a partial explanation. The United States, in fact, has relatively low rates of nonviolent crime. It has lower burglary and robbery rates than Australia, Canada and England.

People who commit nonviolent crimes in the rest of the world are less likely to receive prison time and certainly less likely to receive long sentences. The United States is, for instance, the only advanced country that incarcerates people for minor property crimes like passing bad checks, Whitman wrote.

Efforts to combat illegal drugs play a major role in explaining long prison sentences in the United States as well. In 1980, there were about 40,000 people in American jails and prisons for drug crimes. These days, there are almost 500,000.

Those figures have drawn contempt from European critics. 'The U.S. pursues the war on drugs with an ignorant fanaticism,' said Stern of King's College...

...Several specialists here and abroad pointed to a surprising explanation for the high incarceration rate in the United States: democracy.

Most state court judges and prosecutors in the United States are elected and are therefore sensitive to a public that is, according to opinion polls, generally in favor of tough crime policies. In the rest of the world, criminal justice professionals tend to be civil servants who are insulated from popular demands for tough sentencing.

Whitman, who has studied Tocqueville's work on American penitentiaries, was asked what accounted for America's booming prison population.

'Unfortunately, a lot of the answer is democracy — just what Tocqueville was talking about,' he said. 'We have a highly politicized criminal justice system.'"

The countercase is argued cogently with U.S. Justice Department statistics in this piece. It is a case that I will need to deal with in my book. As you can see, my thinking runs more along the lines of that of those who wrote this article and, specifically, with this line of reasoning.

"'Rises and falls in Canada's crime rate have closely paralleled America's for 40 years,' Tonry wrote last year. 'But its imprisonment rate has remained stable.'"

Meaning, in many cases - alcohol and drugs being ones that I am fairly convinced happen to fit - when behavior is prohibited or made illegal, it has the unintended consequence of increasing the behavior in question, as well as other more dangerous behaviors, like murder and violence around these illegal trades.

In other cases where incarceration is necessary, for purposes of containment, I think a strong case can be made in favor or incarceration, but reducing crime, long-term, is not one of those cases. Recidivist rates among violent (and non-violent) criminals should give us pause to believe that prison reduces crime (Paul Cassell makes the straight-forward and yet evidenced claim that tougher and longer prison sentences reduces crime - "[F]rom 1981 to 1996, according to Justice Department statistics, the risk of punishment rose in the United States and fell in England. The crime rates predictably moved in the opposite directions, falling in the United States and rising in England." - that needs to be considered, even as I have much reason to disagree with this conclusion). But I am fairly clear, at this point, that such sentences, at best, reduce the likelihood of recidivism only when criminals believe that they might be caught. And they are far from addressing the matters of conscience and thought which underly criminal and decent or law-abiding behavior.

The better case, I think, favors the idea that prison rates have negligible effects on criminal behavior, even when they are without doubt, to my mind, necessary, when people who are rationalizing clearly dangerous behavior need to be contained. Meaning, prison is necessary in cases where clearly dangerous behavior is being rationalized and is, thus, likely to be repeated. But, even then, it, likely, has a very negligible impact on criminal behavior, and only when people think they might be caught.

This is why Americans and people all over the world do and always have rationalized power and toughness. Because they are convinced that such behavior reduces their vulnerability to pain and hurt that result from aggressive and criminal behavior. It is true in cases of national security as well as cases of domestic law and order. It is a pernicious illusion, I believe. But it has been with us since the beginning of time.

And it is the reason why Americans are rationalizing power, right now, I believe. It is the reason that humanity has always rationalized power. And it is, without pause, it seems, the reason why humanity finds itself in all of its most serious messes and dealing with its most serious and ugly behaviors.

My job, in this book I'm working on, will be to honestly explore this question and offer up answers that move us forward.

Mugabe and Clinton

The parallels between the Mugabe government and the Clinton candidacy are spooky.

Officials release 1st result in Zimbabwe election recount

"The state-run Herald newspaper also suggested Wednesday that a government of national unity led by Mugabe could end Zimbabwe's deepening political and economic crisis — a departure from its regular stance of accusing the opposition of manipulating the vote."

It's the dream ticket, featuring Robert Mugabe. How dreamy.

"No presidential results have been released from the March 29 election, and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's party insists it won outright. The Movement for Democratic Change has called the government's refusal to release the results part of a ploy to steal the vote.

For the first time in Mugabe's 28-year rule, the opposition defeated his ruling ZANU-PF party in the first count of last month's parliamentary vote. But electoral officials began recounting ballots Saturday for the 23 legislative seats, most won by opposition candidates. The ZANU-PF party needs just nine seats to reclaim a majority.

The recount in Goromonzi concluded Tuesday with just a one-vote difference from the original count from the poll, giving the seat to Mugabe's ZANU-PF party, the Herald said. Officials found no errors in the vote for the upper house, or Senate.

The opposition had demanded the Goromonzi recount. No further results from the recount were released.

In the editorial prominently displayed on the Herald's opinion page, columnist Dr. Obediah Mazombwe called a unity government negotiated by regional leaders of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community as 'the most viable and safest way forward.'

He said regional leaders, along with 'the progressive international community,' could bring together key players: Mugabe's party, the opposition, former colonial ruler Britain and the United States.

'The situation in Zimbabwe is dire, but all is not lost. Whilst the ruling party must stop behaving like a wounded buffalo, the opposition must stop its hysterics and lapses into delusion,' he said.

'The West, particularly the Anglo-American establishment, should stop insisting that President Mugabe and ZANU-PF cannot be part of a future prosperous Zimbabwe,' Mazombwe said.

Under a transitional arrangement, the resumption of critical Western financial assistance could be negotiated, Mazombwe said.

Tsvangirai and other opposition leaders, now in 'virtual exile,' should be guaranteed their safety and 'come home and start playing a constructive national role.'

A unity government would then be expected to reform the nation's constitution and organize fresh elections under regional and international supervision, he said."

If the election results are not significantly different from the original count, then the numbers I saw say the opposition should have the slight edge. And but for bullshit parliamentary rules - which, tragically, may exist - then the opposition should win this election outright. The only need for a runoff should be if there is either a tie or if some parliamentary procedure not cited in this article makes that necessary. Either way, it looks like, from the numbers I've seen that the opposition should have a bare majority and Robert Mugabe should not be in power (the opposition inexplicably got a bare majority, because Mugabe has so clearly demolished that economy and undermined a free civil society, by any objective measure, that there is no good empirical reason by any liberal democratic standard that Robert Mugabe should still be in power).

Mugabe's whole election race has so creepily taken several pages from Hillary Clinton's power playbook - his arguments about being "a fighter" who was still in the race came within weeks of Clinton's same arguments and calling for a unity government with an opposition which, by these numbers as much as by the original numbers, that is in the lead are both bizarrely reminiscenct of the Clinton campaign - that it is hard for me to understand why Americans would have such a hard time seeing the rationalization of power in both cases.

Except that many Americans and Zimbabweans are also rationalizing power. Same as they did in Nazi Germany. Same as they did in the Soviet Union. Same as they have virtually everywhere since the beginning of humanity. Because people are dumb and they have this stubborn habit of belief that power solves more than it does, when the Zimbabwean case should be such a clear and undeniable refutation of that fact that entertaining it becomes an exercise in intellectual dishonesty and futility.

This was the wrong line of work for me. Public service. Politics. Public education. Anything having to do with power. Because people are too stubborn and stupid to finally throw off this bullshit rationalization. They can. They need to. But they perpetually engage in it.

That's why Hitler, Mussonlini and Stalin all knew they could get away with their ugliness. Because they knew that the dumbasses of the world would stand behind them. Because it's all they know. Because in the face of aggression, people almost invariably turn to aggression rather than thought. Because they are convinced that aggression solves more problems than it does rather than being the pretty clear source of many of our worst problems that it is.

It doesn't matter how obvious the problems become, as in Zimbabwe, which suffers with up to 165,000% inflation and 85% unemployment. If your problems are that bad, and you still can't see that strongmen do not solve them, when are people going to face the bullshit?

When hell freezes over, I suppose. Or until the next intellectual rationalization for this bullshit takes root.

Robert Mugabe and Hillary Clinton both need a serious breather from public life. Even if majorities and their followers are too dumb or too full of the rationalization of power to see it, they both need to take a break and/or be removed from office.

And I need a break from this life, too, if power does perpetually overwhelm honesty. Because there's no fuckin' use wasting my life because people are too fuckin' stupid, scared, and self-righteous to see the goddamn problem.

Most people are cowards, is the truth. And they perpetually want someone they think is stronger than they are, more powerful, wealthier, more whatever than they are to come and fix all of their problems for them.

I need a life where I'm not subject to such peoples' bullshit all of the time. Be as stupid, scared, and self-righteous as you want with your life, I say. Just leave me the fuck alone. And leave everyone else alone, too, while your at it.

I need a beer in a serious way, after reading this news.

Another term of Robert Mugabe depresses the shit out of me.

How Zimbabweans could be be so fuckin' stupid to reelect this asshole or even let him get close, I will never know.

All I know is that I am tired of people being so fuckin' stupid. And acting like no big deal.