Jesus was a young man when he changed the world

When I think about it, for all the talk about youth and experience in this election, there is one huge rebutal to the notion that age and experience should trump youthful idealism in a country as Christian dominant as America is.

Jesus of Nazareth was in his thirties when he changed the world. The world changed more than a 100 years after his death, when Rome had largely converted to Christianity. But the work that Jesus did to change the world and challenge the repressive political and religious forces of his day was done when he was quite a bit younger than Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Rudy Guliani, John McCain, Ron Paul, or any of the contenders for the American presidency (if I'm Barack Obama, I'm summoning the youthful image of John F. Kennedy to my cause; I think Lloyd Benson would appreciate and everyone can agree that Hillary Clinton is no Jack Kennedy). Jesus also did a hell of a lot of more good than any of these folks are likely to do and with a lot less formal power.

I've often said that Jesus' teaching that we should pluck the beam from our own eye before we pluck the splinter from the eye of our neighbor is better aphorism than approbation. What I mean by that is that it's just a fact of life that Jesus had figured out at the ripe old age of 30 that people tend to assign blame and recriminate about the sins of others more than reflect on their own sins, mistakes, and ways they've hurt others or hurt their interests. And more than 2000 years later, it is still more of a reality than wisdom that any of us follow very well.

Me too.

As I reflected on the self-centered nature of U.S. policy in this war and toward the Iraqi government - how it has blinded us to our failures in the course of that war - I started to reflect on my own failures and selfish impulses. I've had too many of them to count (and I don't trust just putting them all out there for the whole world to see, frankly; though I am very sorry when my selfishness has hurt or scared others or hurt their interests or when I'm otherwise been an asshole).

Generally, good people do not go around advertising their flaws and sins and mistakes. It is this tendency that more repressive forces and folks can use to exploit their shame about their sins and mistakes and shortcomings to rationalize more repressive efforts to deal with them. It is also this tendency which keeps them under wraps and us unable to be more honest with ourselves and one another about our sinning and self-centeredness. And the repression makes it so. Less repression means more openness about sinning and making mistakes. More openness means more honesty about those mistakes. And more openness and honesty means that mistakes get made less over time.

This is why liberal democratic societies are empirically stronger cultures, societies, and have stronger governments than less liberal societies. It is not our propensity to get rid of such folks. Such a foolish and shortsighted theory of democratic government is almost laughable given the universality of such a repressive propensity. That is the history of the illiberal world and too much of the illiberal history of the liberal world, sadly, in a nutshell. Throwing the bums from our midst is the history of illiberality of the world. The only distinction in that illiberality is how illiberal was it. How harshly or brutally did we treat people. How severe were our punishments. How many people died or went to prison or were treated harshly in the name of our hubris and hypocrisy and self-righteous mean-spiritedness.

That was the essence of Jesus' teachings that transformed civilization and his own more illiberal time: that we should love our neighbor as ourselves and treat people accordingly.

Two thousand years later we are just as likely to screw up this most important teaching as we are to screw up our propensity to pluck the splinter from the eyes of others before we pluck the beam from our own eye.

Me too.

And as I reflect on my own selfishness (maybe if I get to know you and trust that you're a friend and not looking to get me in any way, I'll share my shortcomings with you; some people have already earned that trust and those who have know who they are) I don't just regret it and regret, especially, the way my defensiveness blinded me to my selfish behavior. I realize that despite our more vindictive, repressive turn here, as of late, that there is a responsibility to value people in and of themselves. There is a responsibility to do good by them and not do bad by them or hurt them unnecessarily, to be decent to our neighbors and love them as we would love ourselves, that transcends even the enlightened self-interest that might lead some people to take this path.

We should look after others because it is the right thing to do, completely independent of whether it helps us or not, whether it serves our interests or not, whether it incurs or staves off God's or the Democratic or Republicans parties' or Federal, state, or local regulators' or law-makers' or any of the various law-enforcers' wrath or not, or whether it does anything for us, at all.

And this comes from a soft atheist (meaning that while I don't believe in the literal existence of God, I take matters of morality and conscience and decency seriously and understand and appreciate the very important role that religion and morality and universal values both play in individuals' lives, but also the real, empirical value they have in every person's life and in the cultural, educational, political and other life of every person in the world, even non-believers like me).

In fact, my experience has been that those who want to be good because it's the right thing to do and not because it keeps at bay the wrath of their chosen God are often better people or at least as good as those who do so out of fear or worship that doesn't allow their reason to question their religion or their upbringing or things like the existence of God. Many Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, etc. are some of the most decent people in the world. And many Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, etc. are some of the most despicable people in the world, as evidenced by the strong religious beliefs of many terrorists and despots.

And one thing I am fully confident of, today, after much thought and life experience that I was not as well aware of when I was more narrowly Christian: people who choose to be good completely free of whether they are forced to do so or afraid to do otherwise are, I believe, better people, generally, than people who do so out fear or a less developed conscience (I still claim the liberal-minded Christian heritage I grew up with; I was a youth leader and a regular Church-goer for much of my youth, after all, and I have attended a very broad and numberous array of religious groups as a young person and as an adult, and I take the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as some of the most serious and important teachings that the world has known in its long history, even as I claim nor believe claims on his divinity or that he was a messiah).

Freedom of conscience is the most honest and clearest route to being and doing good. And no other route is as honest. And all of our more repressive instincts, in the last few years, have blocked that more honest route out of the pride and the hypocrisy inherent in more repressive instincts which have their holders rationalizing that they have finally found the route to stronger conscience: through their use of power and control over others. It is the most serious lie that humanity has ever told itself. It is the most serious lie that has ever been told. And it is responsible for more hubris, death, destruction, and serious and minor incursions on liberty that have all too tragically been a sad norm of too much of human history.

That doesn't let free people off the hook. As free as I am and feel, today, I have screwed up plenty. And I am responsible for that. For all my selfishness.

But the real hope for humanity is not found in the lie that our ability to address sin and mistakes and selfishness is found in our capacity to repress and hurt and control others. The real hope for humanity is found in the truth that our consciences can and will (often) correct for themselves when repression is not present and does so, today, empirically, where repression is not present.

We often doubt that, for periods at a time, when repressive forces are on the move and we get suckered into that lie (far too often over the course of human history). And our consciences are often taken up by our more selfish concerns, in the meantime. It took America a long time to debate and discuss and understand and face up to its responsibilities to our ourselves, our allies, and all of those people overrun by Adolph Hitler and his legion, and many people died and lost their freedoms and dignity and other consequences while we failed to do so. And doing so was human. It was a human instinct that we are all subject to, when we are not making excuses for our behavior and failing to understand the gravity of its consequences. And it is taking America far too long, today, to acknowledge its full responsibilities in its dealings in Iraq. I only hope that we do not repeat our mistakes in Vietnam and abandon people to their unnecessary deaths because of our self-centeredness and hubris at home.

But I know that kind of hubris and self-centeredness. I have been guilty of it many times in my life, sadly.

Many people are harsher about such matters. But that harshness is a big fat lie meant to cover up their own failures and hypocrisies and not face up to their original hurtfulness and their subsequent efforts to cover them up with lies about who they really are.

It also happens to blind them to their self-centeredness and how it impacts their ability to answer important questions ranging from "What should we do in Iraq?" to "How should people be treated when they have harmed others?"

I've said many times that I don't really care, frankly, why people find it so difficult to find the decency and compassion and love in their hearts to forgive people and treat them decently. It's a big lie that we tell to ourselves and to one another to pretend that any other kind of behavior is better behavior. It's a lie that we tell ourselves over and over and over again. And it is this lie that creates the mistrust with one another, with those who lie about their behavior to cover their hind ends, within the world at large that rationalizes all of the cynicism that rationalizes the repression that keeps all the lying and the mistrust and the cynicism and the repression in place. It's one long self-fulfilling prophecy. And the only way out of it is to face up to the lie and the bullshit that we all tell ourselves and one another about how being shitty to others makes all of it all the more likely.

But, in the meantime, none of that excuses our selfishness or bullheadedness or foolishness. It just makes it all so damned hard to see and understand and take responsibility for it.

That goes for me too. Jesus or no.

I guess I should say that my conviction that more genuine, decent, humane, compassionate, and freedom-respecting liberal democratic commitments does not just come out of my belief in the redemptive qualities and propensities of the human heart, mind, and soul. My conviction comes from a recognition and acceptance of the baser and less noble qualities of more decent and good people and a recognition of their limitations to offer up more repressive, brutal, and mean-spirited, aggressive responses to the problems they face.

All of us. Jesus. Me. The whole world. We all need to be better. And being better means stronger liberal democratic commitments, not weaker commitments. It means stronger commitments to liberal values of freedom, decency, humanity, compassion, democratic values more than government, and a culture where our hearts open up in the face of the ugliest that life has to offer rather than close up out of fear and bitterness.

That goes for me, too. As I forgive a world that has been acting like damned fools.

Me too.

Love,
Ben

A failure of vision - how self-centeredness undermines international policy

Reading the current issue of Foreign Affairs - with a fascinating discussion by Barak Obama and Mitt Romney of their international policy outlooks and policy proposal and an interesting roundtable discussion of important international policy experts about what to do with the war in Iraq, I am struck by one underlying truth of American foreign policy:

We are blinded by our self-centeredness. Almost every proposal in this group focuses on how to make Iraq do our bidding, rather than supporting a more genuine democratic solution in Iraq by its own people and representatives with military support for the security to provide the security and political space for such a solution to be found.

Almost every political proposal I have read or heard about what to do in Iraq focusses on what American must do to make the political resolution of Iraq's problems rather than on how American can assist in security efforts, where it is needed, so that Iraqis can come to their own more authentic democratic resolution.

Such self-centeredness reinforces every stereotype that Iraqis and the world have of Americans only looking after their own interests and leveraging for those interests at the expense of the interests of others. And it reinforces that stereotype because there is too much truth to it to ignore.

The Greeks' warning of hubris is as relevant today as it was in Ancient Greece because every civilization since then has persistently assumed as the Greeks did: that their own supposed virtue warranted whatever exercises of power they deemed necessary. And the devolution and loss of confidence in power that has characterized liberal democratic development and progress from that time has occurred as people become clearer about the how the self-interest and self-centeredness of various political parties does not match their own.

This is why enlightened self-interest rather than more narrow self-interest is the hallmark of liberal democratic values. Because it is the first step toward a more genuine concern for the interests of others, intrisincally and in-and-of-themselves, rather than as means to pursue one's own ends.

What is so disturbingly missing from almost every proposal around the war in Iraq is a concern for Iraqis and Iraqi democracy and it's own self-determined, self-governed development, rather than a primary focus on how it impacts American interests (and Americans wonder why Iraqis and the world are so suspicious of Americans and the American government). It is this concern by Iraqis and the Maliki government which has animated their open frustration with Washington for pressuring for political solutions that are hard and complex enough to reach, on their own, without Washington undermining the process with efforts which reinforce the image and reality of Washington and America as a self-serving player in political negotiations interfering in domestic Iraqi or other foreign politics for its own advantage. Most players in Washington do not see the problem because it is a game they have all too happily taken part in as long as it served their interests. And Americans wonder why Iraqis do not view or trust them as fair arbiters of their own internal squabbles.

As long as American international policy is animated by this myopia of self-interest, it should expect Iraqis and people around the world, including American citizens, too often, to view it, rightly, with suspicion and mistrust.

Noone should trust anyone who views them as a means of satisfing their own ends. No individuals should trust another individual who reasons this way. And no people should trust another people or another government who reasons this way.

And America should expect failure in Iraq as long it looks at Iraq as a means to its own ends.

When the liberal world leads in a repressive direction, the illiberal world follows

Repression is all the rage in the liberal and illiberal world, these days. The trend towards strict dress codes in Iran is just one of a number of incursions on liberty that are so popular all over the world, these days.

Iran launches new crackdown on unIslamic fashion

It is our fears leading us rather than our thoughtfulness, and our callousness rather than our compassion, that makes all of this possible, in the liberal democratic world as much as in the more illiberal, less democratic world.

As long as aggression is glamorized as the means to save the world rather than a tool with limited utility in our dealings with the world, this trend will go on. The Chinese, the Iranians, the Russians, the Palestinians, the Iraqis, the Americans, the British, the French. All of us. We'll all keep reinforcing this ugly direction the world has taken until we face up to its legacy.

Why is it so hard for people to take seriously the notion that loving your neighbor and feeling something genuine for them, even when they act poorly, is the only decent way to live? How long does that message have to be with us before we learn to take it seriously? Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, King. All of the of the most important teachers in the world have taught this lesson. And we perpetually ignore it out of our hubris that we have outthunk them.

This story isn't about Iran, alone. This story is about a bigger trend all over the world to scare people and for people to scare one another into more repressive, defensive stances in the world, rather than to engage it with more decency, thought, and confidence in our liberal values.

If the liberal democratic world wants the rest of the world to know that liberal values are stronger values, then they need to embrace them and the freedom and learning that comes with them and stop fearing them and leading the world like those values only matter insofar as they get us what we want. Liberal democracy is not about power or repression to get what we want. Liberal democracy is about freedom for people to live lives that they think worthy. And those are the values we need to lead with if illiberal governments and cultures of the world are to see in starker contrast just how ugly and repressive their behavior is.

Love,
Ben

Where real democracy and governance takes place: on the inside

The New York Times has an excellent article, today, on the movement that is most likely to secure a more democratic, secular, and liberal (meaning liberty-loving) direction for Turkey: by its own people.

Election in Turkey May Be a Watershed

And, interestingly enough, it does not come from liberal and independent Turks rallying around their secular military. It comes from liberal and independent Turks rallying around the rights of conservative and religious Turks who secular elites and military officials have attempted to stigmatize with a campaign of fear.

A very nice analysis by Sabrina Tavernise about how liberties of thought and conscience and expression - the right of women to wear head scarves without being stigmatized, as they often are in Turkey and France, for instance - are far more fundamental than who wins or loses power and elections. And how those liberal values are being taken more seriously by many Turks than who wins power.

What a refreshing approach to liberal democracy, huh? Americans and Europeans have a lot to learn from that example. And it is certainly a better example than European efforts to manipulate Turkey with sticks and carrots, rather than genuinely nurturing liberal democratic values and institutions internal to Turkey.

Even in liberal democracies, we just get so focussed on getting our way, that we forget that perhaps there are more fundamental values involved.

Love,
Ben

Sharing stupid shit with friends

A huge problem with the modern world is the persnickety, politically correct tendency to take stupid shit that friends enjoy between one another in light-hearted, dumbass fun and turn it into a capital fucking case.

Sex, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, dead babies, the Holocaust - nothing is off-limits as a source for humor or fun between me and my friends, with the implicit agreement that, in reality, outside of our stupid fun, we care or learn to care about people from every background and their experiences and want to see them have a good and decent life.

There is a lot of misunderstanding around humor and light-hearted fun at the expense of and with other people, I think. There is this notion that to make fun of people is some kind of meanness that has to be flushed and cleansed out of our systems by whatever various politically correct notion of appropriate punishment might do the trick. It's stupid and foolish, and it does almost zero to remove actual mean-spirited prejudices and is harsh with those who harbor them in a way that makes it harder for people to let them go. And, worse, it makes people afraid to share more innocent and inclusive "shit-giving" for fear of offending people which is exactly what brings people together: our capacity to make fun of ourselves and others and not take ourselves too seriously.

There is one really fundamental fact about people that is being perpetually fucked up, these days. And that is, if people are going to give up in themselves that which they are not proud of, they must do it with love and compassion and good humor with themselves, or else they will never be able to embrace their less noble qualities enough to get over their defensiveness and let those qualities go. And, in the meantime, it makes a lot of decent people feel ashamed of themselves when they shouldn't and when their humor reflects a healthy self-regard and love for everything they are and have been in their lives, noble and not-so-noble.

My ex-girlfriend and one of my best friends in college, Brandi Fisher, taught me this lesson better than anyone else. Brandi knew more of my picadillos than anyone else, because I trusted her enough to tell them to her. Like everyone in the world, I have had, in my life, all kinds of qualities about myself that I'm not proud of. Everyone has them. They just bullshit about them, to themselves and to one another, so much that they forget that they have them, because they don't want to face the poorly tuned music that the enforcers-of-everything-that-is-right-and-good have to offer them in this world. I've done that plenty, too, because I've been served quite enough by the maintainers-of-virtue-and-good-taste in my lifetime and I, too, do not like to be fucked over by their self-righteous grandstanding.

Noone does.

It's not honest. It makes us all terribly dishonest with ourselves and with one another. And it completely fucks up more honest conversations about important issues in everyday conversations, in formal public policy sessions, and in the world at large. It fucks everything up, really. Because like the promise of heaven at the end of a perfect life, which does not exist and cannot exist and leaves people in perpetual war with themselves in utter futility - it is very reminiscent of the World War I; lots of carnage and not much good to come of it - it is an illusion that could never be a reality even if we prayed for it every single day and night of our all-too-short lives.

And, worst of all, it leaves its perveyors permanently stupid and out of touch with reality - listening to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi accuse President Bush of being out of touch with reality is a real hoot, because this dynamic duo is as about as connected to reality as Babe Ruth was connected with sobriety - as long as they insist on trying to make the feelings and experiences and thoughts go away when, for us to have any decent and loving sense of ourselves, they are and will forever be with us, in one way or another. Smart and decent people know that. There are plenty of smart people who are forever out of touch with what jackasses they are. And there are plenty of stupid people who are in the same boat. But most smart and decent folks know this. And most decent folks understand it anyhow.

It creates and is created by so much snottiness and feelings of superiority. There are many women who were disappointed to discover I would not date them largely because this kind of snottiness is just so incredibly distasteful to me. It's weakness parading as superiority. And I just can't abide this kind of weakness and self-bullshitting unaccounted for.

It is hard to have conversations with people who are determined in their self-righteousness, I have found. Their defenses are some of the more difficult to bring down, because they are just so goddamned sure that they are right about everything. It completely fucks up political conversations and makes it very difficult to get to even simple ideas of better policies or policy discussions as long as these often loud and all-too-self-certain voices often crowd out more reasonable and thoughtful conversation and the voices and opinions of even less reasonable and thoughtful folks who are intimidated by self-righteous bullying.

I admit to feeling intimidated, at times. But not enough to shut up. And I am fully confident that self-righteous folks always end up shooting themselves in the foot and overreaching and that more honest, more compassionate, more decent, and more-appreciative-of-all-that-is-crude-and-low-brow (as much as values of higher purpose) wins out in the end. Every fuckin' time. It's really kind of an undaunted record of history, save for regressive periods like the current one where those who capitalize on what pains us, aggravates us, scares us, riles us up, shames us, ostracizes us, or otherwise try to put decent people and their decent foibles in their place temporarily scare the shit out of us.

Until we come to our senses, that is. And come to our senses we are beginning to do after a too-long-period of letting the social and political bullies have their way.

I fuckin' hate bullies, is the truth. No matter what shape or color they come in. And I fuckin' hate politically-correct bullies more than most, I must admit. Because they enforce so much dishonesty on everyone that is a fuckin' joke if people would take two seconds to think about it beyond their immediate fears. And which reinforces every more repressive instinct that the planet has and makes sure that plenty of people die, go to prison, are hurt, have their families hurt, and are otherwise treated terribly by those among us who have learned to use our fear of others learning about all or any of our flaws against us.

I happen to like myself enough to know that it's bullshit. And that much of what keeps us and the world so fucked up is having us be quiet about it and hiding it and pretending like it's not there in our lives.

And the insane thing about it that so much of it is really just enjoying and sharing stupid shit with friends. Sharing an off-color joke. Sharing a sexual fantasy. Sharing a tongue-in-cheek and somewhat mean observation about others or ourselves. It's usually not serious or meant to be hurtful. But various social bullies have us keeping it under wraps when it doesn't need to be under wraps, if we weren't such fuckin' ninnies all the time. And the saddest thing about it is that it keeps us apart and feeling alone and unconnected with one another. It's completely counterproductive. And it gives all kinds of ammunition to the more genuinely repressive and meanspirited folks in the world - those who commit holocausts, not those who joke about them - to do all of those awful things in the world.

Most liberal peoples get this figured out over time, I'm convinced. But it's a long road to hoe, in the meantime, with a lot of people getting hurt in the meantime. The discussion amongst comedians and professional athletes and others, right now, I think are some of the more constructive ones to open up some honest space for addressing our real faults and leaving alone those things about us that really are just sharing stupid shit with friends. Pulp Fiction is this kind of guilty pleasure, where nothing is taboo. So is rock and roll. And pornography. A lot of it is light-hearted fun shared between people who have no interest in being locked into ideas of themselves or others that are dishonest just because they look cleaner.

That is why I identify with my more relaxed and politically-incorrect relatives, for all the trouble they've gotten into in their lives. Because they accept me more for who I am. And, out of the decency that they taught me, I accept myself, them, and everyone I come across for who they are. Though, having said that, laughing with our stupid and mean instincts is a way of embracing them so that we can let our serious stupidity and prejudices and self-righteousness go, not so that we can defend it. Laughing at my friends' racism is a way to get them over the racism, not to maintain it. And, similarly, laughing at the self-righteousness is a way of getting over it, not defending it.

Much of low-brow culture that I completely embrace - Larry the Cable Guy and Sarah Silverman are two of the funniest people in America, for this reason, as far as I'm concerned, and exactly like so many of my friends and family back home - is really just people sharing stupid shit with friends. And the rest of it is people learning to be better even as they aren't now.

I couldn't give two shits, anymore, about what any moral or politically correct police might think about me or what I think or what I joke about or what I say. And the more they bear down, the less I care.

And the same goes for America and the world, if they would pay attention.

You really think most Chinese people really think highly of their government? I'm sure plenty of Chinese government officials still believe that foolishness. But I'm sure most Chinese people would tell you in private that they think their government leaders are fools, even as they may have absolutely no clue about what they want to replace them.

The same goes for the thought and speech police of the world. People may watch their tongues around you. But they despise you inside. And for good reason. Because you're an asshole. And boo-fuckin'-hoo if that makes you feel bad, you fuckin' bully.

We need to be able to share more stupid shit with friends. And less policing of who we are, so that we can let it all hang out and become more genuinely good people, rather than pretending and trying to get mileage off of it.

One thing is for sure. The only route to being genuinely good people is being able to acknowledge more honestly what shitheads we can all be and most of us still are. Trying to kick the shitheadeness out of us clearly doesn't work, for anyone who cares to know and who gives two shits about people. And the only really good people I know are folks who can embrace and love people for who they really are, shitheadedness and all. If you can't do that, then you may be a close second. But you're definitely not someone I could, would, will, or could allow myself to look up to or follow. Because you haven't earned it. And if there is anything I hate more in life it is people who haven't earned it trying to get credit or rewards or, worst of all, power that they aren't due.

I had an assistant principal at my first job who thought she could impose respect where she couldn't earn it. And really she just demonstrated for me what a naive and foolish ass she was in the meantime. And that's how I think of anyone who tries to play that foolish and shortlived game with me and with themselves. Maybe you can go share some of that stupid thinking with friends and laugh about what a dumbass you were for thinking you could just assert what you haven't earned. Because God knows that's how everyone else will be thinking about you. And, sadly, that is definitely how the people in this world who really count will be thinking about you. Until you face the music and learn to laugh at yourself and all that stupid shit with friends like us, that is.

Love,
Ben

A clusterfuck of freedom bound

It has occurred to me, today, that the world is kind of fucked up place of our own making.

We take our own opinions way too seriously, is the truth. Especially our opinions about what other people should do for us. And we have made a mess of the world, in the process.

We have created a world where we are always on the brink of happiness and greater genuine virtue, rather than all the fake stuff that struts around with its ass in the air all the time. But we'll never have it, completely, as long as we insist on trying to determine the lives of one another rather than fulfilling our liberal democratic promise, and guaranteeing the right of every person to self-determine their own lives.

We are constantly preaching responsibility. But we have a world where everyone is perpetually avoiding it on the hardest issues, largely because we are just such dicks to one another. More repressive and punitive cultures have the worst problem with this, of course, because it is the repression and the punitiveness that creates the defensiveness that makes it so.

I work in a field, "adaptive special education", much of which is made up of people trying to explain away this desire for freedom, with all its virtues and vices, rather than coming to terms with it.

Everyone wants their own freedom. In fact, it's absence and getting more of it is the obsession of most people in their youth and many people well into adulthood. Most people want to limit the freedom of others. And this creates something of a clusterfuck, where we are persistently taking freedom, whether anyone gives it to us or not, because we could not possibly function without it, but not wanting to take responsibility. All of us. From the top down. In fact, the higher the stakes, the less anyone wants to take responsibility. This fact of life creates most of the cynical realities that we face in 21st century democracies, especially as it concerns our children who are perpetually looking at the adults in their lives as hypocrits and fools. And it will continue to do so until we take responsibility for creating this fact of life and the need to end it in all of the multitudinous places where it interferes with our lives and our potential to be genuinely decent human beings.

The one hope we have is that no matter how cynical and bad the reality gets, hope springs eternal. People want something different. They just don't know exactly what it is, much of the time. And they just aren't willing to do what it takes to change the things that make them unhappy and make us more likely to take freedom and not take responsibility.

You can tell who's given up. You can see it in their eyes. Or hear it in what they say.

The fundamental choice in the world really does seem to be between those who choose a life of freedom and responsibility and those who choose cynicism, in my experience. Meaning, the most likely candidates for cynicism are those who have not really chosen the lives they have or want.

If there is any solace in the more unfortunate experiences in my own life, this is it. That out of all of it, I have a life where I can choose whatever direction I may take with it and make my peace with it, even if it is perpetually less than ideal, especially to the extent that others want to control me. There will never be a time when I will either be happy or be gratified or appreciative that others want to control me. But I can make my peace with avoiding it as much as possible and living a life that is my own despite it, as much as possible.

I don't know what I want to do with my life, at this point, is the truth. I will teach. I will complete my scholarship obligation to teach special education for 4 years in Kansas. I will likely study and write.

But that door is completely wide open for me, at this point. Because there isn't really anywhere that I can go and say, "These are people who are really looking out for me," or "These are the people who are really looking to do good and are not so concerned with their own self-centered outlooks". It's not that these things aren't possible. It's just that more often than not, people are kind of self-centered and not concerned nearly enough with others except as it affirms their own outlooks on the world. Both of those reasons - because teachers seemed to look out for me more than most folks and because teachers seemed less concerned with their own selfish outlooks - are why I took up teaching and where I would otherwise go. I know that's not true, anymore, except insofar as the people I'm dealing with can respect my freedom to choose my life and make decisions, with consultation and respect for others and the consequences in their lives, of course, and know that their opinions about whatever matter are less important than my conscience and judgment.

I don't know what I want to do with my life, at this point. I know that I want the happiest life possible. And I am quite clear that such happiness comes with more freedom in my life and from no other source. And I'm also quite clear that the absence of it is the greatest source of unhappiness for most people in liberal democracies and likely in the illiberal world, as well.

There is only one way out for this, for the whole of society. The question is only whether we will start moving in that direction or not or whether we will rationalize every last repressive instinct that we can muster, no matter how dysfunctional it is for our humanity and tragic it is for so many people who are subject to the most illiberal and often brutal treatment in the world.

In the meantime, I will take the limited freedom I have to take up whatever life will afford me the most purpose and happiness and decency that I can find.

Let's hope that my children and grandchildren don't have to face such limited choices with their futures.

Love,
Ben

Least possible necessary aggression as an important correction to soft power

It's just occurred to me, this afternoon why my work with least possible necessary aggression is an important correction to soft power, and makes me very grateful to have waited before I published anything on it in more formal scholarly journals.

Joe's idea of soft power often assumes and seems intended to assume, given many of Joe's comments on soft power, to be a means of manipulative power. Meaning, Joe argues that using softer forms of power like culture, media, education, etc., that we can make others do what we want them to do. We can coopt them or win them to our way of thinking about things. And Joe argues that such soft power is important for liberal democracies like America to exercise power in the world.

What Joe is saying is true. It is also manipulative. And it is this manipulation that less liberal, traditional, and especially, today, Muslim, cultures often object to in liberal democracies. It is also this more manipulative tendency of more illiberal values, institutions, cultures, and governments which these same people use to rationalize all of the worst abuses of power like theocracy, despotism, genocide, slavery, authoritarianism and totalitarianism, terrorism, political pressure and manipulation in lieu of more genuine liberal democratic engagement, discussion, debate, and thought and other abuses of power (I just want to be clear that it is pretty clear to me that the underlying cause of terrorism is not poverty or humiliation or any of the other pet theories of terrorism; the underlying cause of terrorism is a desire for power to influence and pressure for political outcomes desired by terrorists and the people who support them and that they are willing to rationalize murder of innocent civilians in order to do so).

Many more repressive, repressed, illiberal, traditional, and theocratic or authoritarian cultures of one kind or another see a decadent, libertine side of American and liberal cultures that they - and many American and liberal folks, as well - confound with a freedom respecting and loving liberal culture based on liberal education and liberal democratic values. I don't think most serious liberal democrats - small "l" and small "d", meaning anyone who cares about freedom and democracy - would argue that liberal means "anything goes". What liberals like me, at least, argue, and I think most liberal peoples, is that liberal values and liberal institutions provide and should provide the maximum freedom possible to realize a more self-actualized form of virtue, morality, and a whole host of political, economic, cultural, and other valuable ends that less liberal cultures persistently romanticize and glamourize but are much farther away from achieving.

Liberal values allow us to achieve our highest values with the most integrity most reliably, with much allowance for the propensity of people, in liberal or illiberal cultures, to fall short of those values and to learn from their mistakes. Liberal values, institutions, and cultures allow people to learn from their mistakes more readily, and less liberal values, institutions, and cultures do not allow people to learn from their mistakes as readily, thus entrenching, rationalizing, repressing and repeating them, as people feel social, political, and legal pressure to be defensive of serious mistakes of humanity and of the human heart and rationalize them in the wake of that defensiveness rather than face them more openly and honestly, as liberal values, institutions, and cultures allow. All people, individuals, cultures, institutions, governments, etc. make mistakes. What makes liberal values, people, individuals, institutions, cultures, governments, etc. stronger and better at dealing with the problems and opportunities they face is that the greater freedom they experience allows them more space to face and correct mistakes and problems as they occur. And, perhaps more important than all of that, liberal values allow us to better distinguish between what actually is a mistake and what might be a valuable pluralism, change, experimentation, learning experience or other variation on more homogenous, especially illiberally imposed thinking.

Joe's concept of soft power is often manipulative. There are times when such manipulation may be a better option than harder power and more aggressive options when more aggressive action directed at people is imminent and threatening (though not when such action is not imminent or threatening and when there is legitimate issues of self-defense at stake; the Iranian and North Korean situation and all matters of nuclear proliferation are complicated situations, for that reason, which Western powers have rationalized away in the name of their power to control nuclear proliferation, which is a legitimate concern, but which also needs to respect the legitimate concern and right of sovereign nations to prepare for matters of self-defense).

My assumptions with least possible necessary aggression only assumes a legitimate purpose for the more manipulative use of power when physical danger is truly imminent and when genuine alternatives are more aggressive.

I do not want these principles being rationalized to imply, as has been implied with the "good cop/bad cop" implications of this political period, that soft power or least possible necessary aggression can essentially be used to soften and provide the means of manipulation for any matter of life that anyone may want to regulate. That is a variation on manipulative repressive governing philosophy that is responsible for so much of the irrationality and failures of governing and culture in more liberal and democratic cultures, as well as more illiberal and undemocratic cultures, for as long as they have been around. Aggressive regulation of behavior is only necessary and should only be present when there is imminent physical danger to people. Otherwise, there should be a broad zone of freedom for people, with more collaborative and least aggressive possible efforts, and, ideally, no aggression, to engage difficult matters of life and conflicts and public policy, with an ideal world being one where grown-ups resolve problems between grown-ups in ways that do not involve threatening and aggressive behavior and where disagreement and conscience has as much room as is necessary to sort out even important and difficult matters of conscience, war policy being a particularly important area where respect for disagreements on matters of conscience are needed and where as much room as possible for substative discussion, debate, and disagreement and respect for the consciences of people involved - without rationalizing forcing, pressuring, or otherwise aggressively circumventing conscience - is necessary for more thoughtful policies to be pursued.

The bottom line is that my work - and, ideally, Joe's work on soft power - should not be used to rationalize manipulation that undermines and disrespects matters of conscience. Least possible necessary aggression is an explicit presumption on the use of power to avoid just that manipulation and all its corresponding failures and injustices. It should be used to deal with situations where real danger and threat is imminent and where less aggressive options are and have been used. This current period does not justify well enough, to my mind, more aggressive options since more aggressive options are so readily rationalized and used and less aggressive options are so infrequently used and still abused as a matter of manipulation that circumvents conscience and legitimate self-governance and self-determination, which is exactly what has rationalized the threats of military action to resolve the situation in Iran, for instance.

The idea that a nation or a people could use the threat of military action and supremacy and the most aggressive action to get their way on any important matter of policy or conscience should be recognized as foolish and repugnant to people with more genuine liberal democratic commitments and more genuinely internalized liberal values. What is the use of liberal values if they are going to be perpetually used to rationalize, excuse, and provide cover for more repressive, manipulative, and dominating action by any actor? How exactly are they distinguished from illiberal action or illiberal governance, then?

The short answer that liberal democratic peoples have settled for, at this point, is "Whatever we say it means." Which is not good enough. And it is certainly not good enough for those people who are subject to the power and its abuses of even people with more general liberal democratic commitments, values, institutions, and cultures.

"Liberal democracy" is not an excuse for "whatever I damn well please." And the irony is that those who act in the name of liberal democratic values but who are, in fact, more repressive in their policies, governance, advocacy, thinking, and outlooks are generally the most libertine in this respect. They more often than not want to limit and restrain the behavior of others, but will rationalize any of the worst of abuses of power and ignore or fight limits on their own use of power (and the pride that sustains that abuse) for themselves in the name of any favored causes.

Joe Lieberman will walk to his synagogue on Friday, but he will rationalize a military strike on Iran, even when the Iranians have not engaged in open warfare with Americans? They most likely have provided weapons and munitions to an enemy with which Americans are engaged in open conflict, but if that were justification for open warfare, then Americans have an awful lot of people and governments who have grievances - current and in the recent past - for engaging us in open warfare for our provision of weapons, munitions and other forms of support to their enemies.

If America does not want a free-for-all when it comes to such wartime or peace-time behavior, then they need more than international institutions, treaties, democratic discussion, and laws with empirical, objective justifications and presumptions around the use of force, aggression, and defense - hard power in the form of military, political, and economic aggression and soft power in the form of cultural, educational, media, entertainment, and other forms of power - than just "We attack when we think we are threatened" or "We use hard power and soft power when it suits our pleasure with no presumption on its use, misuse, abuse, or when we should avoid using it". Joe's idea of soft power is clearly too flexible and libertine to create a more empirical, objective justification and presumption for its use to provide any kind of distinction between just uses of force and unjust uses of force.

That accounting for the reality of arguments and use of force don't sound restrained do they? Because they are not. Because their open-endedness gives unlimited justification for the use of power and force whenever it so suits its users.

That is the reason for a need for a presumption and an internalized, reason-based limit on the use of power and force. That is the reason for the need of the presumption of least possible necessary aggression, particularly when the assumption that force and power should only be used when physical danger is clearly imminent and when no other means can protect from physical danger.

The rhetoric of "rules," "accountability," "strict enforcement," have dominated this period. But the truth is that they have done so with virtually unlimited aggression. Meaning, they have done so in a way that is both repressive of others and libertine with its own vices and limits, even as it is justified on the grounds of self-righteous interpretations of matters of public policy. The only way to prevent that more repressive and libertine interpretation of aggression and enforcement is to have a more thoughtful conception of the use of aggression and force that does not justify force and aggression at every turn or in any way that people see fit. Such a conception may be roughly democratic in various political and historical eras, but it far from more ideally liberal democratic values, aspirations, institutions, cultures which presume against the use of aggression and force and external regulation of people and in favor of education, self-governance, self-determination and a broad zone of freedom meant to allow people the space and learning experiences to internalize and self-actualize our best values and to solve new problems and even older problems in novel, innovative, and ground-breaking ways.

Least possible necessary aggression, then, should be read as an important correction to soft power. It should not, nor should soft power, be read as one more manipulative means in the toolkit of propangandists, demagogues, power-mongers, despots, and terrorists. Least possible necessary aggression should be read as a important correction to the notion that power is properly conceived in liberal democracies as the means to get what we want. Power in liberal democracies carries a liberal and moral component to respect the freedoms and self-governance of citizens. Private and public partnerships, for instance, should act as just that: partnerships. Not governance lording over private life. And aggression should be reserved for the clearly and physically threatening and dangerous features of liberal democratic life. All other engagements should be as least threatening and aggressive and cynical and most genuinely collaborative, partnering, respectful of differences, and respecting a broad zone for freedoms as possible. Everything else is a profound distortion of liberal democratic values and life, no matter what laws do or do not get written.

Slavery may be legal in a liberal democracy. But it is hardly liberal or democratic. And liberal democracy should not be read as an institution that must or does entrench illiberal or undemocratic instititutions just because they walk about in liberal democratic clothing. Naziism may use the language and institution of a Wieber liberal democracy, but it hardly either and should not be treated as either just because it can manipulate its way into liberal democratic politics. And, in neither case, are people obligated to obey laws - fugitive slave laws, Nuremberg laws, etc. - that are clearly wrong by any objective liberal democratic standard. Liberal democracy is, at its heart, an idea that all people are created equal and endowed with the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. It is not a rationalization for whatever repressive instincts happen to be exercised or institutionalized in a democratic political process. Socialist institutions may be conceived and developed to address important problems in liberal democracies. But socialism, itself, is hardly the most liberal of democratic institutions, which accounts for many of the problems it experiences in even it most liberal democratic forms, even as it may use democratic institutions to achieve its aims. And with its assumptions come many serious problems for people who, by their natures, need liberal and democratic values and institutions to live genuinely self-governing and self-actualized lives and all the important tangible and intangible benefits that come with those values.

The idea that power is the means to get what you want is exactly what Lord Acton was concerned with when he said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is true that more illiberal conceptions of power do not achieve their long terms ends as well as more liberal conceptions of power. But the idea that power can or should be rationalized to get what people want is exactly why power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I'm not convinced that this is exactly what Joe is arguing, though he is clearly creating the flexibility for interpreting power in this way and seriously flirting with this conception of power in some of his most recent work. That is a turn in his thinking that concerns me and should concern all of us, though my assumption is that more liberal and less power-hungry conceptions of power will out over the long haul, independent of what any particular leader or politician or powerful individual may want, largely because less liberal conceptions of power are unsustainable.

China will not remain a Communist nation, forever, obviously. It will play around the edges as long as it can until its people expect something different, when a more democratic future becomes more readily and generally expected and when a more democratic transition becomes more clearly recognized as inevitable by Chinese leaders, and when, hopefully as peaceful and least chaotic and disruptive democratic transition as possible is made. But the idea that a totalitarian state is a sustainable path to progress, economic or political, is laughable, repugnant, and wrong (incorrect, as much as immoral). And, similarly, the idea that a more repressive path in liberal democracies is a sustainable path to progress, economic or political, is foolish and wrong and will soon give way to less repressive, regressive and a more liberalized path because its folly becomes inescapable, at a certain point, as it fails to achieve its ideals or its commitments.

And, similarly, illiberal governments and cultures cannot and will not remain illiberal, repressive, and regressive forever, since, by definition, if they are to become more progressive and reap the rewards and benefits, tangible and intangible, that more progressive, liberal democratic cultures reap, then will need to become more liberal and progressive. And neither liberal nor illiberal cultures will or can remain blissfully ignorant or avoid noticing and wanting the tangible and intangible benefits of political, economic, cultural, religious, professional, personal and individual freedom, forever. Eventually, all people will expect these freedoms and more liberal values and directions because they so clearly deliver better ideas, values and outcomes, with the stronger values and ideas delivering the better outcomes.

Greed and power-hunger do often deliver money or power. But they are both often either or both short-lived and miserable experiences. And those committed to generating wealth and using power with more integrity do clearly accumulate more by likely any objective standard. And neither accumulation of power or money nor their abuse are celebrated in the long view of history. Because neither offer sustainable ideas and values and outcomes that create better lives and quality of life for people, for individuals and majorities, both of which are taken seriously by liberal democratic values and institutions for good reason and which produce better lives for individuals and institutions, generally.

This notion that liberal democratic cultures can use their ideas and values and the cultures they build to accumulate power to do whatever they damn well please is a pernicious and dangerous rationalization of power that must be corrected by better ideas of liberal values, democratic institutions, and ideas of power. Least possible necessary aggression is one idea to contribute to that end.

Love,
Ben

Getting to the heart of our more repressive legacies

Ruth Marcus, my least favorite and definitely the most self-righteous of the liberal or conservative commentators at the Washington Post writes this unhealthy harangue of David Vitter and Deborah Jean Palfrey, this morning that captures everything that is so wrong in the current more repressive direction for the country, these days.

Private Sin, Public Matter

Ruth basically argues that prostitution is a particularly heinous sin and crime and should be criminalized and that Vitter and Palfrey should hang for their sins.

I responded thus.

"You're right, Ruth. Someone needs to make the consistent case.

Prostitution should be legal. Palfrey should not be prosecuted. Vitter and men like him should not be prosecuted nor unelected. And the only thing standing between that much more realistic and decent policy and us is the vindictive prudishness of people like you who try to guilt men out of prostitution rather than build marriages which are built on mutual love and respect and not on the cynicism that animates too many marriages and too many bitter women's and men's attitudes towards love, sex, and life.

If people want to be bitter about love and sex, so be it, I say. But don't legislate it. And, in the meantime, people should stop taking the lazy way out of the marriage, relationship, and sexually-oriented problems that folks face and trying to enforce backwards legislation so that they don't have the face the bitterness in their own hearts that undermines their own marriages and relationships and sense of sexual intimacy and the marriages of all who get corrupted by their cynicism.

There is plenty of cynicism about sex and love, sadly. But the least of our problems occur between prostitutes and johns. Our most serious problems happen within marriages and relationships where self-righteous defensiveness about our own roles in problems and failures in marriage undermine a commitment to stronger marriages and facing those problems most honestly.

It is marriage and love and raising kids, ironically. where the clearest argument for a less regulated life and a life of free will and forgiveness taken seriously is made most easily.

If lovers and mates and parents think that they are going to reinforce their love with those whom they share their lives by forcing their loved ones to deal with their wrath or their moral authority, then they will live the consequences of that tragic little idea in their lives and relationships. If their bitterness and manipulation is practiced in their marriage, then that marriage might see adultery and prostitution and all kinds of issues creep up. If they want those issues to go away, they will need to start focusing on their own hearts and the hearts of their mates and how to open them up to one another and enjoy more genuine love between one another, instead of on the legislation. If they can't do that, then they will live with the bitterness and cynicism about love and marriage that pervades so much of America and the world, these days.

Luckily, Ruth, most young women my age seem to be figuring this one out and having much more functional and loving relationships, as a consequence. Young people tend to be much more laid back about prostitution, pornography, stripping, and sex and love, generally, which is sign of progress and a more loving, realistic embrace of all that is base in us as well as is great and noble in us. There are plenty of older people who resist this trend. And they will suffer with the relationships that such resistance offers. But the world seems to be working in a much more honest, decent, loving direction on this issue, which is exactly the direction they should be working in.

So opt out of the efforts to challenge the moral hypocrisy and be decent to this guy and this madam all you want, Ruth. It's a lonely party you've decided to attend. And it's lonely in those marriages where sexuality is treated with so much fragility and lack of appreciation for the needs and desires of men and women in relationships that they love. If you want to hang onto that legacy of loneliness and heartbreak, you feel free to.

I and most young people will be leaving that legacy behind us."

Love,
Ben

The most despicable case I have heard of in a long time

This girl was 17 when this incident happened, and it's not clear, at all, that this death was not an accident.

Sri Lankan housemaid on death row highlights a surge in Saudi beheadings

Meanwhile, back in the States...

Execution of Georgia Man Near Despite Recantations

Forgive us our trespasses. There seems no end to how callous and careless with the lives of others that we can be.

Love,
Ben

The fact that everyone is cheering it on

It's not the more repressive direction that the world has taken in the last 6 or 7 years that has me most down. It's not the fact that liberal democratic societies have taken a more repressive direction and that the world is following that has me most upset. It's not the fact that the most repressive cultures and governments have become far more repressive in this period and that too many of more repressive folks in the U.S. seem to be excusing it. It's not the fact that we keep moving in this direction no matter how much it so very clearly does not solve our problems and makes many, most of them far worse.

It's the fact that everyone keeps cheering it on that discourages me.

Terrorism in Palestine is ugly. But watching Palestinians take to the street to cheer it on is far uglier. Repression of democratic student protests in China is ugly. But seeing Chinese people and politicians rationalizing that repression is uglier. The killing and imprisonment and torture of Iranian students who wish to exercise the democratic freedom to protest in a presumed democracy is ugly. But reading about Iranians egging it on is uglier. And watching the American government of my own country, and liberal democracies take this repressive turn, recently, is ugly. But seeing and hearing and reading people in America and the liberal democratic world cheer this direction is uglier.

And everyone, including the terrorists, do it to pressure, punish, and force their way through difficult problems, most of which need more compassion, decency, thoughtfulness, and engagement.

Bobby Kennedy warned us of this propensity in 1968, shortly before his death. And we've all just ignored him. And we are living with the consequences.



The arrogance of it, the hubris of it, is overwhelming for me, right now, as I watch a world rife with conflict and aggression with far too little understanding of aggression and its uses and misuses.

So much of it is premised on the idea that Bobby's and Martin's and Ghandi's and Jesus' love and compassion and decency towards others was naive and that only more cynical outlooks on humanity and human nature offer greater wisdom than these great and wise and courageous men offered. It is true that Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King and Mohatma Ghandi and Jesus Christ did not know or understand everything that is needed to be known or understood about the world. No person has or ever will have that kind of knowledge or understanding. But the heart of their messages were quite wise and true and courageous and decent.

And we mock their decency out of hubris that we know better because the world is a forever uglier place than we can believe that their poor, naive, sweet little souls could ever have imagined.

And we engage our ugliness against one another. And we watch as so many of our problems get worse. And we call it good.

All so our hearts don't ever have to face their own ugly contents and the consequences of that fact on our thinking and acting in the world.

We are a nasty and ugly lot, so often. Humanity. We will all need much forgiveness and mercy when this is all said and done.

Love,
Ben

Freedom and poor choices

My life has been a strange, ever surprising journey where I have challenged and taken for granted every value and idea that has mattered to me only to develop a far deeper and more genuine appreciation for universal and deeply significant values and ideas that up until this point in my life I have largely taken on faith.

The strangest part about my life has been that it has only been by learning and screwing up so many important decisions that I have internalized lessons with the empirical reality of life experience that faith and abstraction never could have offered me.

Like everyone, I hate the consequences of poor choices. But, strangely, those consequences taught me lessons that no abstraction ever could have come close to offering.

Maslow's right. Freedom is the path to self-actualization, because even the bad choices offer learning that good choices and good lessons, alone, could never offer.

And now my life experience replaces that faith as the basis for my confidence in that conclusion, that fact and that central value of a better life.

Love,
Ben

Responsible options in Iraq

Stephen Biddle, of the Council on Foreign Relations, says the obvious in today's Washington Post: that splitting the difference between sticking with the Iraqis and pulling out only satisfies more self-centered political domestic concerns and not the military mission in Iraq.

Iraq: Go Deep or Get Out

Biddle presents us with the harder choice: either abandon the mission altogether and stop risking the lives of American soldiers, or commit to this thing until the Iraqis are ready for us to leave.

As Biddle points out, the training element of this mission is intimately bound up in the fighting element of the mission, since trainers working with Iraqi forces and the forces, themselves, need cover and the offensive security efforts of American military personell. Thinking that we can somehow leave behind trainers and pull everyone else back leaves both the trainers and the Iraqi security forces vulnerable to a sectarian security situation that they have made clear that they are not ready to take on by themselves, at this point.

From the perspective of Iraqis responsible for security in their country, there is only one responsible option for Americans: to support Iraqi security efforts until they are ready for Americans to leave.

But Americans, ultimately, have to choose whether they will support this effort or not. I agree with Iraqis that we need to support this effort until Iraqis are ready to take over security efforts on their own. Iraqis responsible for security in their country, right now, did not create this security nightmare; Americans did, as well as the insurgency we provoked and the sectarian civil war that we carelessly helped initiate without better discussion, planning, and coordinating an invasion with Iraqis - particularly opposition groups and their alligned militias - before initiating it.

But Americans, and American soldiers, in particular, need to decide if they are going to be willing to guarantee such security until Iraqis can take over themselves and Iraqi legislators can reach an workable democratic resolution.

I do think, given the fact that Americans overwhelmingly supported this invasion, going in, that we have a responsibility to see this thing through, since we helped create the security situation that exists today.

But I have not signed up to risk my life for this effort, yet. I've given it serious thought several times and several times been dissuaded by friends and family who have been concerned, probably rightly, that I would get in much trouble since I have an active brain and a big mouth and would likely get the shit kicked out of me at various times for speaking unpopular views.

Ultimately, I think American soldiers need to decide this one. Are they willing to risk and sacrafice their lives to finish this job? If enough of them are, I think we need to support them and fix what we have broken here. If not, there is no use of trying to compel them to complete this mission if they do not have confidence in it. If there is one of many lessons we should learn from Vietnam, this is one of them.

But if they are willing to complete this mission, I think America can do right by the Iraqis and restore it's reputation as a country that is more concerned with the lives and welfare of the Iraqi people than they are with their own selfish interests or domestic political squabbles.

That's what this whole thing was supposed to be about. We have an opportunity to live up to that commitment.

I only hope that Americans will do right by the Iraqis and not just bail because the going got tough. It's easy to say that from the sidelines, I realize, when I haven't signed up for that duty. I'm giving that option serious thought, again. But I do think we need to do right by the Iraqis, no matter what we end up doing, here.

Here's to responsible options in Iraq and doing right by Iraqis who deserve the security and democratic transition that we have said that we are committed to delivering.

Love,
Ben

Liberal democracy is for grown-ups

I don't think Turkey should get it's panties in a twist about being snuffed by the EU, personally. But Joe Nye's analysis that supporting and nurturing democracy in Islamic, near East societies like Turkey rather than invading countries like Iraq without the consent, consultation, and leadership of Iraqis is a wise one.

Instability has Damaged Turkey's International Standing

France and the Netherlands rejected the European Constitution to avoid another layer of government and bureaucracy in their lives. Surely Turkey can focus on democratizing and building more and stronger liberal institutions for their own sake without trying to win favor or incentives from European masters.

Who wants to build democracy because it appeases foreign governments. Is that real democracy at all? Would America really be democratic if they built a democracy to satisfy the British Crown?

Of course not. And that is the attitude that Turkey should take, that Iraqis should and are taking - if Americans would just listen when they say that the calls on the ground are Iraqis' and what we need to do is help out when we're needed - and that every people in the world should take to democracy.

Real democracy isn't imposed or even incentivized by others. Real democracy, like doing real good in the world, is done for its own sake, and not for incentives or to avoid punishments. That's the kind of democracy and good that people in the world should aspire for in their lives.

The students in Iran know that, now and in 1999. The students in China knew that in 1989 and no doubt know that today.

We just take all of that for granted in a country where sacrafices are made by that poor sucker over there rather than out of a genuine commitment to our highest principles and purposes.

People who do good and love democracy for its own sake know better. And that is who Turkey's people and leaders need to aspire to be. Not also-rans who appease their European benefactors.

We are not and never will be grown-ups as long as we do things for the rewards or to avoid punishment and instead of it being the right thing to do.

That goes for governments and peoples as much as it goes for men and women and all independent folks in the world.

Grown-ups do things because they are right. Children do things because they win goodies or avoid sanction from their parents.

Turkey wants to be a grown-up. We and they should expect them and us to do exactly that. We all need to grow up - America, Turkey, and the whole world - and take liberal democracy, liberal institutions, liberal education, and liberal values seriously.

Love,
Ben

What democracy is about

Andrew Sullivan asks an excellent question:

Why isn't this on the front pages?

As it turns out, it isn't even on the front pages of two major newspapers in Iran, the Iran Daily, a government run periodical, and the Tehran Times, the leading English-language Iranian daily newspaper. The failure to publicize it in the government paper is obvious. Non-governmental papers may be self-censoring due to the government crackdown on independent media in Iran, as of late.

Luckily, there are a few Iranian papers, of those I consulted, the Iran Press Service and Payvand News of Iran that are giving this crackdown on students the front page coverage it deserves.

But Andrew is right. Anyone willing to commerate those June 9, 1999 student protests against the Iranian government and its clampdowns on free expression and harsh treatment of its citizens deserves front page coverage.

From the Iran Press Service:

"On 9 July 1999, the government of the reformist president Mohammad Khatami, on strict orders from Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i, attacked with unprecedented violence thousands of Iranian students who, backed by the people, were protesting for five consecutive days the brutality of security forces during a night raid on students dormitories against some 200 to 300 students denouncing the closure of 'Salam', a popular newspaper for being the only independent voice among the media.

At the night, the plainclothes men had smashed students rooms, beaten them, burned some of them with cigarettes, and threw one of them from the window of the third floor.

Police, backed by the basij militias, anti-riot units and plainclothes men from the Intelligence and Interior ministries battled with students for several hours, made hundreds of arrests and ended the protest movement in blood.

The event became also the final divorce between Mr. Khatami and the students who, in 1997 presidential elections, were, along with women and the youngsters had played a major role in the surprise victory of Mr. Khatami, then an obscure, middle rank clergyman promising some freedom and democracy.

The Monday 9 July 2007 attack on the students at both Amir Kabir University and the Office of the student’s Alumni is part of a bigger crackdown undertaken by the 'military-security government' of Mr. Amadi Nezhad against all his opponents, including scholars, economists, intellectuals and the press.

The government dismisses such charges, saying it allows free speech. Nevertheless, officials have spoken of a so-called 'soft revolution,' a perceived U.S. effort to use intellectuals and others to undermine the Islamic Republic's system of government.

Last week, the General Prosecutor of Tehran and the Islamic Revolution tribunals ordered the closure of Ham Mihan (compatriot), a pro-reform newspaper that had reappeared in May after an absence of seven years under the ownership of Mr. Qolamhoseyn Karbaschi, a former Mayor of Tehran.

'When we say a creeping coup in the press, it means a person is moving within a framework of an action to overthrow (the system)", Mr. Saffar-Harandi, a former deputy Editor at the hard line daily 'Keyhan' had said, adding: 'When we say coup, it does not mean that some people in a garrison prepare an attack. It means people who are trying to destabilize the regime, the Government'.

In a new wave of crackdown, the independent media was accused of waging a 'creeping coup' against the Government.

Earlier, the same Minister, a close friend of Mr. Hoseyn Shari’atmadari, the Editor of Keyhan and an advisor to both the Leader and the President had accused the independent and pro-reform press like Ham Mihan, Sharq or E’temad Melli (National Confidence), of playing he 'cards of the enemy by waging a soft attack. (against the Government). The flag bearer of this attack is the media'.

Mr. Saffar Harrandi was echoing other accusations by the President’s advisors for the press.

'Creeping coup' was used by Mr. Mehdi Kalhor, one of the several such advisors, adding that 'some newspapers inside the country are propagating ideas of the enemies. They are the front runners, the platoons of the enemies' cultural assault on our Islamic values and sacred system. They are in a creeping coup against the Government'."

That is what democracy is about. It's not about supporting reformist governments or conservative governments or any ideology. It is about supporting freedom from repression. And that doesn't have anything to do with ideology and everything to do with challenging it, no matter who does it.

This is what democracy is about. More people need to be paying attention.

Love,
Ben

Just when I thought that things couldn't get any worse

The granny, the cop, and the lawn scuffle

Are we just about finished with all this "progress"?

Because this direction looks like a backwards mess to me.

Love,
Ben

Power corrupts

Is there any end to news of the march of repression, today?

Pope: Other Christians not true churches

These are the days when I appreciate that I am a free thinker. And when I remember that so much of religion, like politics, is about power and the illusion that it is the same thing as doing good. And that is why power corrupts. Because those who have it begin to confuse their having it with being some kind, any kind, of final arbiter of what is good and holy in the world. And that is when all of the ugliness sets in.

Love,
Ben

Redemption for our sins

A good reason to let immigrants in more easily (and for people to sneak in, if they have no other option).

Persecuted Gays Seek Refuge in the U.S., Foreigner's Abuse Increasingly Seen as Grounds for Asylum

One of the reasons why freedom should be taken seriously, as the most important "rule", I think, is because we really, generally, have no clue what is going on in peoples' lives and what they have been through. If I had a friend in this situation - s/he's been abused or persecuted in another country and he needs to get somewhere to escape that abuse or persecution - I would encourage him to seek asylum. But I would have no issue, at all, with him living in the U.S. and would take him in until he could complete asylum petitions. And I'd let them stay if there was any realistic reason that they might be rejected.

I hope people can understand, then, given the risks that come with applying for asylum in such cases or a million such cases, why people would rather live under the radar rather than making themselves visible and therefore more likely to be sent back to so many miserable conditions that they might be subject to if sent home.

We are a mean-spirited lot, often, aren't we? People, I mean.

We get better. Slowly. We hear more stories like this. We develop more empathy and compassion and, maybe, if our tiny little hearts can bear it, love. We become more decent. We identify with peoples' humanity and not just our sad, small little slice of it. Why would anyone identify with "Americans" but not with "humanity"? What purpose could such a narrow idea of common identity have for any of us?

Our best humanity is not found in liberals or conservatives or Democrats or Republicans or socialists or religious folks or radicals or terrorists. And our worst humanity is not found in liberals or conservatives or Democrats or Republicans or romantic communists or racists or Clintonistas or the Bush Administration.

Our best and worst humanity is found in all of us. Without exception, really. It's the one rule of humanity I can count on. All that is best and worst in humanity is in all of us. Which makes it all the more important for us to embrace what is best and worst in us, not try to repress it.

And it makes it all the more incumbent for us to embrace the compassion that makes us stronger and more decent and more loving and more functional and better people for it. None of us are or should try to be superior to others. But all of us aspire or should aspire to be better than we were the day before and to be the best human being we can be and the best possible in our lifetimes.

And no matter how we might try to make excuses otherwise, that means having a heart. And being decent to people because it's the right thing to do, regardless of what the law or the rules say.

I have no truck with people who use laws like fugitive slave laws and the Nuremberg laws and laws against adultery, sodomy, homosexuality, race mixing, and so many laws that have represented everything that is ugly about humanity to justify their ugliness.

Justify your ugliness all you want, I say. You'll find no justification with me.

Follow the law as best you can, is the only advice I can give. But take that conscience of your's more seriously than any law could ever offer any of us.

Because when the Nazis come to my hometown, I'm hiding Jews. And when the South rises again, I'm helping slaves escape. And when Islamic Fundamentalists or Communists are successful in outlawing every decent impulse that people might have in the name of ridding the world of its various ills, I'm resisting, legal or not.

The law is not the final arbiter of morality or decency or goodness. The law is an all-too-neutral arbiter of whatever prejudices or impulses or ugliness guide us this week or this year or this historical period.

I wish law reflected reason. I would like for that to be so. I will work for that to be so.

But you only have to watch the political process for a few evenings a week to see what a godforesaken, foolish, dysfunctional, repressive mess the whole exercise is, as a rule.

And it's not a mess because politicians in Washington are uniquely a mess and us noble savages in the citizenry are really where decency and goodness is found.

It's a mess because we're a mess. Humanity. One long, foolish, repressive mess.

We get better. Slowly. Very slowly.

And then we have periods like this one where we kind of go off the rails.

Maybe showing some decency to gay people escaping persecution is the least we can do to make up for our shittiness.

Love,
Ben

The price of "progress"

Reading this headline was shocking and disturbing enough.

China executes ex-food and drug chief

Then the journalist who wrote this report spends one paragraph talking about the injustice and excessiveness of killing this man.

"His death sentence was unusually heavy even for China, believed to carry out more court-ordered executions than all other nations combined, and indicates the leadership's determination to confront the country's dire product safety record."

Which is just peachy, of course, because then the Chinese leadership doesn't have to take responsibility for the fact that it is their cynical, repressive leadership that makes such corruption so likely and that this execution just entrenches and reinforces that same ugly cycle.

One paragraph about how the state killing this man was "heavy" and the rest of the article seeming to justify his execution in the name of safety concerns?

Eye for an eye, I suppose. How ugly.

I don't think I can handle anymore of this progress. The world has seriously gone off the deep end here in the last few years. It's not just the execution that bothers me. It's the fact that this journalist spent one paragraph talking about the human rights abuse that occurred here and that I can see so many people nodding in agreement, "He got what he deserved."

Then this from the Carl Minzer at the Council on Foreign Relations in a May 29th, 2007 International Herald Tribune editorial.

Corruption in China: The anger boils over

"For the past two months, local officials in the southwestern Chinese province of Guangxi have pursued a harsh campaign aimed at enforcing China's population planning laws.

In order to meet targets for allowable births, they forced pregnant women to have abortions. They threatened to demolish homes to make residents cough up fines demanded for excess children.

This month citizen anger boiled over. Thousands of angry rural residents took to the streets, smashing cars and sacking government offices."

The Chinese government claims that it didn't want to use harsh measures to force women to have abortions. They wanted to give incentives to enforce the law that women have abortions to enforce compliance with their population control measures. What nice guys, huh?

Repression breeds retaliation and rebellion. Rebellion often breeds greater repression. Repression breeds retaliation and rebellion. And so the cycle goes, on and on and on and on until we decide to break it.

The price of progress is getting pretty high, these days.

Bit by bit, we chip away at our souls. Soon enough, we won't have souls to sell off, at all.

We got to get this turned around.

Love,
Ben

H.L. Mencken, 1880-1956

"Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood."

"The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."

"All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it."

"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place."

"For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe... Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end."

"A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it."

"Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

"Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them."

"The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught."

"It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office."

"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right."

"Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages."

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

"The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind."

"The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth--that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one."

"There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong."

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."

-H.L. Mencken
U.S. editor, 1880-1956

Maybe I care about politics and this war too much

I was little down this 4th of July.

OK, I was a lot down. I didn't go out with friends that I made plans with. And I didn't even watch fireworks, this year, by the river here in Lawrence, an annual tradition.

The kind of down I was feeling is supposed to happen around Christmas or Thanksgiving for most people, usually due to some unresolved but painful relationship in their families or their lives.

I was down for a different reason. I was down, largely, because I've just been so disappointed with the democratic conversation over the course of this war.

I'm not disappointed because so many people are involved, which I think is a good thing and a promising sign of progress that the internet, especially, has offered so many people a more engaging opportunity to take part in serious, deeply considered thought and discussion and debate on all of the issues of the day, especially the war.

What I've been disappointed with is just how narrow and partisan and fruitlessly vitriolic the discussion has been. How it has focussed on personalities rather than policies. How it has gotten lost in pressure politics rather than more thoughtful discussion. How so many of the even the most responsible people - the activists, the journalists, the politicians, and even too many of the scholars - have gotten lost in partisan or far too homogenous outlooks on the war rather than engaging in more serious thought and discussion about how, if we are going to facilitate a successful transition to democracy for Iraqis, that might be done.

Frederick Kagan, to my mind, has had the most consistently knowledgeable, wise, and thoroughly analyzed political and military perspective that I have encountered, thusfar.

But too much of this all-too-important discussion - which holds in the balance many Iraqi and American lives - has gotten lost in a less thoughtful discussion of how much patience Americans will have for this war rather than the more important discussion of how much patience Americans should have for the sake of the security and democratic future of an Iraqi people who did not ask for an invasion that has seriously disrupted their country.

I hope, I can only hope - and talk, and write, and do everything I can to persuade folks - that we will make our decisions in Iraq based on a genuine commitment to the Iraqis and American soldiers, with a commitment to thoroughly and rigorously and deeply engaged policy thought and discussion, and with a commitment to making good on what we initiated, here (all of us; I didn't even favor this godforesaken war going in, but I know better than to think that just pulling out with solve all the problems we need and want resolved) rather than based on expedience and weariness with the war and with the debate and with the politics and with all of the very strong feelings that everyone legitimately brings to the table on this war.

I've felt that more thoughtful, engaged discussion get overwhelmed, in the last few months, by a war weariness and a pressure politics that seems to blind too many of us to all of the options that we need to explore to handle this situation we've created in Iraq with integrity and not just yet one more political reaction substituted for more serious political thought.

And this 4th of July, I was just feeling kind of discouraged, I suppose, that a more engaged discussion of what might and what needs to happen in Iraq is getting overwhelmed by a much more crass political discussion of what people will support, independent of what the Iraqi people need.

The America I love is bigger than that. And I want it to be bigger than that. But I've been feeling kind of discouraged, lately, that it will be bigger than that, even with so many Iraqis and American soldiers risking and sacraficing their lives for the chance of a democratic, free, and secure Iraq.

I love my country. But it's been disappointing me, here, lately, I've got to admit. People feel overwhelmed, I know, by all of the information and ideas and perspectives and pressure and so much that makes it very difficult to engage this Iraq war discussion without wanting to bow out quickly from the discussion nevertheless the war.

But the stakes are just too high to take our convenience more seriously than our responsibilities and, most importantly, our responsibility to engage in a broad, open-minded, open-hearted, serious discussion of policy alternatives that focus on empirical arguments about what can be done and do not get lost partisan vitriol that has been crippling this discussion, lately.

All of this is evidence that I probably care too much about politics, I suppose. I probably should have been out watching the fireworks and loving America with my friends, this 4th. But I just didn't have the energy, feeling kind of down and disappointed with the state of the democratic discussion about this war and so many issues, this period.

I probably need a better hobby. And to learn to go hang out with friends, even if I'm not in tip-top shape. I didn't even make it down to talk with my uncles who I am sure would be pleased as punch to know that their nephew, who for the bulk of their lives has the been the young liberal kid haranguing them about racism and the environment and every issue that a young liberal kid cares about, is passionately committed to sticking it through in Iraq and getting out the case by the best minds about how and why we must create enough security in Iraq for a political settlement to be reached and for the Iraqi military and law enforcement to feel prepared and confident and comfortable with their role securing the country with minimal American military support.

I promise to have a better 4th of July, next year. But this year, I just needed the time to think and reflect and process it all, I suppose.

Let's hope the next 4th of July brings a lot more news of positive developments in Iraq and an America looking more ready to live up to its ideals and engaging with more honest and genuine concern and appreciation for the efforts of everyone involved - politicians included - rather than live down to its reactions of the moment.

Happy 4th of July, everyone.

Love,
Ben

Bryan Caplan (remember that name)

George Mason economist Bryan Caplan has a really fascinating book out that I have got to check out.

The Myth of the Rational Voter

It has been my central frustration with democratic politics this period, as so many issues get decided based on peoples' fears and frustrations rather than based on what I, at least, in all of my not-so-infinite wisdom think should at least guide a more reasonable democratic discussion and debate, nevertheless policies that I favor.

But this guy also seems to share my political and economic instincts, the economic instincts, at least, that embody the current and emerging mainstreams of economists but are often less appreciated if known at all by people less familiar with serious economics.

Bryan Caplan. Look out for that name. Looks like it will be a good read. And a seriously favorable Economist review can't hurt either.

The difference between men and women

Larry the Cable Guy brings us this gem from Morning Constitutions:

"Women say funny stuff together when shop. They always got fun conversations.

I overheard this conversation once.

This girl goes, 'My boobs is too big. I've got to get 'em reduced."

And I was like, 'Come again.'

'Your boobs is too big?'

'I'll help you tote them around the mall for a few hours. You need a spotter, you give me a holler.'

You never hear dudes dude stuff like that.

'What's wrong, Jim?'

'My wiener's huge. I don't know what I'm going to do about it.

'Uh, I swear, it's like an albatross down there. I don't know what I'm going to do. I can't sleep. My back hurts. I got strap marks right here. Uh, it is like a piece of timber just hanging down from there. I think I'm going to get it reduced. That's what I'm going to do. I have had it with this ungodly large penis that I carry with me every day of my life.'"