Deep connection

You know what is the most difficult and persistent issue for me at this point in my life?

That I am a person who is more open-hearted than most, more likely to like people, love them, connect with them, than most.

And that I do not have that deepest connection that any of us find with a significant other, at this point in my life.

It feels empty to have my heart as open as mine is to that experience in my life and to not have that kind of connection materialize in my life.

There is nothing more important to me, at this point in my life.

I've had it. So I miss it.

It is the most clearest missing element in my life. And my heart feels it every day.

Hope springs eternal.

Love,
Ben

The source of our problems

You know what fucks us up? People, I mean.

We are constantly, and have been since the beginning of our god-awful history as social creatures, trying to prove how much more superior we are to one another.

Being better than you were yesterday and today is noble. Trying to be the best at something, as long as your motive is to embody what is best rather than trying to act superior to your neighbor, is noble.

But trying to be or act superior, to believe that you are more worthy as a human being of love or decency or respect or all the rewards that life has to offer, is both ignoble and damned foolish, not to mention wrong.

We try to prove our religion is superior, our education is superior, our politics is superior, our character is superior (a particularly ironic and galling one, by my lights).

But what we are really doing is trying to prove that we are superior. Or rather I am over you.

And that is the source of about 99% of the problems that people face. That and too many people living up to their feelings of inferiority as much as superiority. And all of our efforts to sort out who is superior and who is inferior in life.

It all drives me crazy. Because it's all done in the name of being good or doing good. And yet it is responsible for so much disillusionment and destruction and self-destruction in peoples' lives.

And the great irony, of course, is that it's bullshit. There is no superior religion. In fact the effort to prove otherwise is responsible for much of the most serious brutality in the world. There is no superior politics. And the arrogance that a superior political world-view exists is the single most important impediment to a more thoughtful, engaged, honest politics and policy and cultural and life discussion. Education is a great thing, but I know people of mediocre abilities with great pedigrees (the current President would fit this category) and extraordinary people with less than glamorous pedigrees (Mark Twain left school at 12 to earn money for his family and never looked back). I do believe that character is destiny. But anyone of any real character hardly wants to monopolize that destiny. People of real character want to share it. The contrary notion is the easiest tip-off that someone is faking it to themselves as much as to others.

And that is the most important thing that fucks up humanity. Our propensity to try to prove to ourselves and one another how superior we are to one another. And our propensity to reap destruction in the lives of one another to make our case.

And the irony of the current political moment - with its background obsession with proving how superior we all are - is that we are seriously failing this test by any objective measure. Who would look at Americans or the West or liberal democracies or any culture, right now, and say, "Now they clearly are the superior culture." We do better the more liberal our democracies, I think, meaning how much freedom we afford one another. But we're far from living up to our highest values and purposes, especially our liberal democratic values that put primacy on conscience and thoughtful reflection and engagement over power or the use of force to coerce conscience or thought.

And that is the source of our problems. We spend so much time trying to prove how superior our outlook is, that we persistently fail to engage and question our own thinking and the thinking of others with better faith and a more open mind and more open heart. And it is from here that our best thinking and ideas and values flow.

But we have tried to substitute our assertions of superior religion or politics or ethnicity or education or whatever for better thinking and ideas and values, and we reap all this destruction on the lives of others and, sadly, make more shallow our own lives.

We're kind of dicks, really, much of the time. Self-righteous, mean-spirited dicks. Forgivable. But still dicks.

And forgivable. I mean, what's the point if we're not forgivable? Kind of makes for a pretty bleak life if there's no hope of facing up to our flaws and forgiving ourselves and being forgiven. I know some people have come up with all kinds of complicated formulas for calculating such forgiveness. But it's all really just another excuse for what dicks we are and why we resist forgiving as much as any other virtue.

But when it comes home is when we face the challenge that folks like Jesus of Nazareth offered us. When we start plucking the beams from our own eyes, rather than plucking the splinters from our neighbors' eyes. When we need forgiveness is when our need to forgive hits closer to home.

You gotta hope we get better at this, right? And we do get better, by any objective measure. It's just that there's plenty of failure in the meantime.

We shall overcome. But only after a lot of hobbling and tripping up that we will try to play off as what we meant to do all along.

This is what I've been afraid of all this time. This was the most pronounced insecurity that I had when Brandi and I were together. That I was inferior. Because I didn't come from pedigreed or monied or superior roots. That all my learning and making mistakes was a sign of just how inferior I was rather than just how human I am.

And that is the source of all of our problems. Our constant and fruitless efforts to prove just how superior we are. Or how inferior we're not.

It's all for naught. And it reaps so much destruction and self-destruction in the meantime.

That's why more liberal values - meaning how much freedom we offer ourselves and one another - serve us better. Because they recognize that the values that serve us best are also the values that most realistically guide our behavior. Conscience, reflection, engagement, and choosing freely. These are not just positive values, these are the the way we choose our thoughts and ideas and values and choices, as an empirical matter, whether we embrace that fact of life as a positive value or not.

And the diversity of those thoughts and ideas and values and choices means for a culture that is better served by a greater appreciation for the various routes that people take to better thoughts and ideas and values and choices than a culture obsessed with enforcing what one person or group deems to be superior thoughts and ideas and values and choices on others.

The alternative is nonsensical, really, once you grasp the empirical fact that people always do and always will make choices in their lives amongst ideas and values and actions and based upon forever limited experiences with each of these that reinforce better choices and ideas and values, over time.

And screwing up that fact is life - meaning getting impatient with our capacity and willingness to learn those lessons about better choices and ideas and values, over time, and feeling superior out of our insecurities about our flaws and shortcomings, in the meantime - is the single biggest source of problems that people face with one another. Me too. Hence my alter-ego in Mencken. In fact, facing up to the emotional defense that is my sense of intellectual superiority and my alter-ego in Mencken has been one of the most liberating experiences of my young adulthood. It's allowed me to just be me - with my friends, with my family, with my colleagues - and not be this caricature of me of that emotional defense that is embodied in any sense of superiority that we might harbor. As a friend at a party recently said, I think everyone harbors this quiet sense of superiority, at some level, as an emotional defense against the assertions of superiority of others.

And each of us letting it go might begin to get at the heart of what divides and polarizes people of all backgrounds from one another.

Love,
Ben

A little honesty

A conversation with a friend of mine, this last weekend, helped convince me of something.

The world often works out the way it is supposed to. Most of my problems are of my own making.

I and everyone around me has just needed a word that I and they could count on.

I think I finally understand what that means - my word. It means that when I say something, it happens.

I've been holding out for a seemless, sustainable, unforced version of that commitment. Because it is the only one that would have any chance of me being able to maintain it in my life. I think I may be there, I hope. But I still have a track record to establish. And I'm responsible for all of the mistrust in my word in the meantime.

I wish I could have made it a reality in my life quicker. But I've had a lot of learning to do to make that possible. And I regret every serious relationship I hurt or lost or fell through on or flaked out on in the meantime. But the learning had to take place for me to internalize the lessons. I don't care, anymore, how harsh the world is about that. It doesn't do any goddamn good. And the more harshly the world treats me, the less I trust it, is the truth. That's true of everyone, if we were honest about it. Hence all the cynicism. Which only wills out as long as we can imagine no other alternative. Hence the choices I've made and the learning I've done with my life.

I've got to get to bed. I've got a long day tomorrow and long days for the rest of the year. I've got kids to be a better example for.

Love,
Ben

Double-speak, 21st-century-style

What the fuck?

Gordon Brown has "imposed a voluntary ban on exports of livestock and livestock products" in reaction to a foot-and-mouth scare in Britain and a ban by importing countries of British animal products

Brown: Quick action on foot-and-mouth

A "voluntary ban"?

George Orwell would have a fuckin' field day with this political era. H.L. Mencken would laugh. Lord Acton would cry.

And, meanwhile, I gotta sit and pretend like this shit makes sense or is logically consistent?

Oh, that's right. I have to. It's the law.

The more this bullshit persists, the more it makes a mockery of the law. A consistent governing philosophy would avoid that. I've got one. Does Gordon Brown? Does anyone else, these days?

If you care about the law and governance, you don't abuse it like this. Unless your short-term will to power is more important to you than your commitment to more a more honest culture and more honest governance, as a consequence.

"Why didn't I go into insurance or banking?" George Orwell has got to asking himself, these days.

It's a good question, George. Noone gives a shit about recrimination or bullshit overwhelming a more deeply honest discussion of life and governance, anyway. It gets in the way of their political ambitions or their wallets or their bitterness. Might as well sell coverage for when the world goes to shit from all this fuckin' double-think.

How long we gonna pretend that forcing and pressuring our way through issues is working, we have to ask ourselves? I have no confidence that Hamas or Hezbollah or Al-Queda will ask themselves that question. Liberal democratic peoples and cultures and governments I should be able to expect better from.

It's the only direction for any substantial hope, besides. And it is most certainly the only honest way forward. And despite all of our bumbling, liberal democratic peoples generally fumble forward. And that is why I know that this ugliness that has substituted itself for engaged democratic thought and discussion must end, at some point, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Because the hallmark of liberal democracies is not that we make the right choices, all the time. It's that we face our mistakes more honestly, generally after the fact, and correct our course.

Mark Twain would probably laugh, and want to cry, and think, "As can be expected." And, as he did when our more vicious, partisan impulses got the best of us during our Civil War, he would ease us into a more decent direction.

We are goddamn fools. The human race. Absent finding separate bedrooms, maybe we can learn to love one another, again, and say we're sorry, as all good relationships have to do if they want they want to last. Makes me miss all that making up with Brandi.

And, maybe, in the future, we can learn to stop fighting so goddamn much. And to listen more than we talk and think deeply and carefully more than we react and take up arms against one another.

All good relationships get killed more by the fighting than by what we fight about. Losing the forest for the trees and forgetting that we fight because we love one another, not because we're irreconcilable.

At what point in a person's heart does love get replaced by a passion more akin to hate?

At the point at which we forget that we have a choice. To love people often despite themselves rather than constantly fighting for our own perspectives and ways and self-centered desires to will out.

I had to lose the best friend I've ever had to learn that lesson. Perhaps we'll all have to lose a lot more before finally learn it. I hope not. Because if you've never lost a best friend like I had, I wouldn't wish it on you.

Maybe we can do little better than that.

Love,
Ben

Signs of new hope

Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, both scholars from the liberal Brookings Institution and both serious critics of the Bush Administration's handling of the Iraq war, think we may just might win this thing.

A War We Just Might Win

This is a good sign that the tide seems to be slowly turning in favor of sticking with this thing with some integrity rather than calling for a withdrawal that ignores needs on the ground.

This is the hope that America needs to do right in this war. If this keeps up, I might have reason to be proud of my country and it commitment to put doing good above pointing fingers and other petty concerns once again.

Love,
Ben

What people with more experience and realism say about diplomacy in the Middle East

Jon B. Alterman of the Center for Strategic and Internationl Studies, back from a trip visiting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has advice for the Bush Administration in dealing with the Asad regime that might interest Barak Obama and his critics, as well.

How to Manage Asad

Jon's recommendation: engage Syria diplomatically to work along shared interests.

Jon's assessment of the current policy of isolating the Assad regime demonstrates pretty underwhelming results from this strategy. The Syrian leadership appears to be hunkering down, ignoring U.S. pressure, and looking to wait out the President until a new American head of state takes up residence in 2009.

What is interesting to me in Jon's recommendation vis a vis Barak Obama's wise equivalent recommendation of diplomatic engagement with various rogue regimes is that Jonathan, of all the people who I've seen engaged in that discussion - Hillary Clinton, Charles Krauthammer, George Will (who originally raised it), and, most recently, the Economist, all of whom have condescendingly and wrongheadedly, I belive, referred to Barack's suggestion as a sign of his inexperience and naivete - Jon Alterman clearly has the most serious and direct experience and realistic outlook on the Syrian situation, at least, of all of those players.

And his suggestion: engage diplomatically.

Perhaps Hillary, Charles, George, and the Economist editors just don't understand, well enough, the underlying issues around diplomacy and force in dealing with such regimes. God knows that each of them would be loathe to admit such a thing. But Hillary Clinton, in particular, has little more experience than Mr. Obama and, for all the reasons that Alterman articulates here, it seems to me that Barak, experience or not, just seems to understand better our diplomatic challenges and opportunities than does Ms. Clinton. That and she was playing politics. Which is unfortunate when the better policy will need to be adopted whomever is elected in November of 2008, if it gets shelved for a less engaged policy for the sake of validating Ms. Clinton's politics. And if Hillary, Charles, George, and the Economist has better policy in mind, they might articulate it because other than orchestrating summits and sending ahead envoys - something of a laughably obvious suggestion, frankly, and not something that requires sage wisdom, really - I haven't seen anything that beats Alterman's description here of the need for bilateral diplomacy.

The truth is that Obama is right. And a President Obama looks like a sensible alternative to the failures of pressure politics in the status quo. It's not the first time that Barack has run into the authors' of failed policies not wanting to admit their failures. And if he can give a commitment that he will not pull American troops out of Iraq until the Iraqi government gives the ok, then hopefully President Obama (given no significant changes in the leadership of the current contenders in the race) will have plenty of time to demonstrate what diplomacy can accomplish.

Fuck 'em, Barack. You're thinking is right. Largely because you are not burdened with defending the failed policies that these folks helped articulate. Let them be responsible for their failures. You be responsible for adjusting course for American international policy in a more humble and effectively engaged direction.

If Barack can't find it in himself to say we stay until the Iraqis give us the ok, I'm voting for Rudy Guliani or Fred Thompson or John McCain or even Mitt Romney or any of the Republicans who commit to staying. But if Barack says he'll stay, he'll be the best choice, as much as the most formidable candidate, amongst the current crop.

The Inquisitional Age

Jim Hoagland offers the best commentary on the sins and scandals of sports and democratic life that I have read to date.

The Summer of Skepticism

No decent person is proud of bad behavior, including those who engage in it with time and reflection.

But this "Inquisitional Age" is hardly progress, as Jim argues convincingly.

It is destructive and cynical. And it does not build anything better.

Talking about Barry Bonds' or Mark McGwire's steroid use is fair game. They cheated the game and they are responsible for that. In the larger world of drug use and abuse, McGwire's loyalty to friends and teammates is also something that I respect. I have many friends who use drugs or have used drugs and I have smoked pot and made serious mistakes in my own lifetime. And there is no way in hell you would get me to rat on my friends, no matter what indictment or punishment you put in front of me. And I admire the hell out of Mark McGwire for doing the same when he was in front of Congress.

Having said that, steroids are clearly bad for the game and doping and the NBC referee gambling scandal and all sorts of sins are bad for professional sports and not something that we want to see for another generation of professional athletics.

What is not ok is hounding these guys into perpetuity or playing holier-than-thou. Neither of these instincts are noble. And the idea that an aggressive move in that direction is progress would be ridiculous, really, if it weren't so sad, all at once.

The greatest tragedy of the early 21st century is that we have acted as if behaving in socially, legally, or politically repressive, pressuring, and mean-spirited, self-righteous ways is some kind of progress. What kind of progress I have no clue. I don't feel a part of that progress. And I imagine many Americans would feel left out of that idea of progress, since it's whole point is to out those who commit public sins (and private sins, when it suits our pleasure).

All I know is that this is never an America that I could ever be inspired by or impressed with its virtue or values. Because as Jesus of Nazareth argued convincingly and with much risk to his freedom and life 2000 years ago, ripping away at the vices of others is no virtue and leaves the transgression of pride and other sins, likely, untouched in the hearts of the inquisitor.

This period may be many things. But noble is not one of them. It is sanctimony wrapped in more high minded clothing. That was the kind of sanctimony that more genuinely religious men like Jesus of Nazareth or the Buddha taught us to avoid and that has characterized almost literally every more illiberal, repressive period in our history.

The Puritans thought they were doing God's will or establishing order or whatever excuse we give for this pious instinct. So did the Prohibitionists. So did Joseph McCarthy.

They weren't. But they thought they were. And they left a lot of peoples' lives in the wake of that belief.

And, as Jim points out, this zeitgeist that has taken hold leads nowhere, builds nothing, accomplishes less than it destroys.

Perhaps we are fine with that. But it doesn't leave much room for getting better. And it offers plenty of room for all of the worst and most illiberal instincts in the world to be given alibi that they don't deserve and which constitutes the ugliest and most destructive instincts that humanity has to offer.

And the whole of progress cannot do otherwise than to work in a more compassionate, constructive direction. Because to argue otherwise is to try to reverse more than 2000 years of lifting repression as the most important idea, value, and outcome of progress.

I'm proud of that history. And we have better choices to make if we are going to work consistently in its spirit.

Love,
Ben

Why, in the final analysis, I'm more Mark Twain than H.L. Mencken

In case you haven't noticed, I'm a big fan of two American authors, in particular, Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken. Perhaps better than any other American authors, Twain and Mencken capture the quintessential essence of what it means to be average folk in America and the world, for their time and for all time.

Twain and Mencken are two very similar characters and thinkers from overlapping but different eras. Twain believes in people, despite their flaws. He is more liberal, in the theological sense that I associate with being liberal. Meaning, he believes that, despite all their pettiness and cowardice and ignorance, that people are essentially decent, or at least sympathetic. Mencken is a bit more pessimistic. He is more conservative, in the theological sense that I associate with being conservative. Meaning, he believes that average people, though comic and compelling, are generally shitty. Some people may rise above the shittiness. But most people are kind of foolish and conspiring against their betters. Both seem to appreciate humanity, well enough, though Mencken appreciates them like one might appreciate a dog that keeps sparring with and getting sprayed by neighborhood skunks. Amusing, if stupid.

What I love about both Twain and Mencken is that despite both of their appreciation for the underside of human nature, both have a confidence in peoples' capacity to get things right much better on their own than when lorded over by their neighbor, and, in the case of Mencken, at least the most intelligent and talented will have a shot at it even if the great majority of folks fumble kind of stupidly through life.

Mencken is amused by the pride and foolishness of average people. Twain loves them despite their bumbling and makes a place for them in his heart.

And that is probably why Twain is better known than Mencken, and why people love him better. Because Twain loved them first.

I will not and cannot associate myself with any political party or ideology, primarily, anymore. I appreciate Twain and Mencken largely because they share the quality that I am most proud of in myself: their independence. Twain and Mencken were free-thinkers and equal opportunity lampooners of a world perpetually mad with its baser instincts being called something better than they are. And both embraced such instincts as a part of a more noble calling of loving ourselves despite our worst tendencies rather than pretending that they don't inform our relationship with the world around us.

I have been perpetually angry and frustrated with our stupid and foolish instincts creating all sorts of unnecessary tragedy in the world (the source of Mencken's frustration and disgust, as well). But I realize, today, why I am much more like my original hero, Mark Twain, than my more recent hero, H.L. Mencken.

What has driven this ugly, foolish, and all-too-tragic repressive turn for humanity here at the beginning of the 21st century - the dawn of a new century that follows an old century that was most characterized by an effort to rid the world of governments and forces hostile to liberal democratic values and trying, still, at this late date in civilization's history, to impose ideologies and govern out of a philosophy centered around force and power as ends in themselves - is fear.

It is what has always driven repression. It is what will always drive repression, as it perpetually rears its ugly head and as we perpetually cheer it on. That is not a nihilistic, cynical, or defeatist interpretation of the world. We do make progress, in this regard. This is the central measure for our progress, in fact, in terms of our values and ideas as much as the outcomes they produce. But we also experience regress. Repressive directions in our policies and cultural attitudes are the central feature of regression, a fact that is quite obvious when we read about repressive activities in our history, where the actors and the actions are long past, but which we perpetually lose track amidst the zeitgeist.

And the most serious drive for our repression and our cheering it on is always our fear.

Mencken would describe it as our basest, most hateful, most feebleminded tendencies and citizens forever impinging on the freedoms of their betters. And there is much truth to that, sadly. And I must say that this is how I have felt for much of this period, as I have been trampled on too many times in the name of various pressures, fears, and aggression for the sake of whichever cause tickles a fancy and that has gone untamed during this period.

I can now see why Bobby Kennedy, a politician like any other, would go so deep when responding to the repressive and violent trends and directions in his own time when government repression sparked citizen retaliation and massive and inexplicable violence. Violence that would take the lives of his brother, Jack Kennedy and Mississippi civil rights leader, Medgar Evers in the same year; a lesser political figure, but no less a tragedy, Malcolm X; Dr. Martin Luther King, whose death Bobby Kennedy was responding to in his famous impromptu eulogy and his Mindless Menace of Violence speech the day following, two of the most beautiful, sincere, and thoughtful speeches I have ever heard a politician give in all of the time that I have studied politics; and then Bobby, himself, to complete the incomprehensible nature of the tragedy of the violence in that period.

And yet, once the tragedies have past, and reflection and thought replace the pain and the fear that is its source - as Bobby paraphrases Aeschylus, "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own great despair, against our will, comes wisdom, by the awful grace of God." - it becomes clearer to me that the aggression and tragedy and fear, and the aggression and tragedy and fear, and the aggression and tragedy and fear that it provokes are not just the ugliness of human nature in the face of aggression, tragedy, and fear coming forth.

In the final analysis, people are also just afraid. They can be bad. But they are not so, as a general rule They can be quite foolish. But they can and will respond to leadership and a human touch that appreciates them despite their foibles even as it, humbly and with much humor, expects better of them.

And that is what Mark Twain offered the country in his own time. It was a time of war. It was a time of much violence and harsh treatment, particularly of slaves and African Americans, whom Twain identified with solidly, even as he identified, as well, with the more foolish and base racism that characterized his youth and far too many of the white Americans that Twain gently, compassionately, and with a profound wit eased Americans past.

Mencken was at times contemptuous, but more amused, and, most valuable to those who were wise enough to listen, honest, about the foolish and ugly directions that human nature can turn. He was a man bitterly saddened by the tragedies of man's perpetual and ill-conceived brutalities against his fellow man. And someone who had to laugh at such futile stupidity to maintain a bit of sanity.

Mark Twain saw the same tragedies. But more than Mencken, he loved humanity despite itself. He was more comfortable with those who lacked his wit and intelligence and insightfulness about humanity than Mencken, because he genuinely liked them, despite all their foibles and the unnecessary hardships they suffer upon one another.

It is clearer to me that though so much brutality, violence, repression, ugliness and fear have characterized this tragic opening to the 21st century, that all of it, in the final analysis, is also just people being afraid. Fear produces inexplicable tragedy, too often. But it is also, in the end, a forgivable fact of life for human beings with limitations that cannot simply be wished away to satisfy our sense of anger and tragedy.

I have said, often, during this period, that I understand better, now, how the Nazis were able to manipulate the German people. But also why the Germans were responsible for the deaths of Jews much more than I learned as a younger student, given the courage and sacrafice of their countrymen and others who took enormous risks to save Jews and not merely cave to the popular cowardice that had both animated and made difficult to escape the Nazi rise to power.

But, I understand better, today, why the Allies and historians chose forgiveness in the face of that fact of the war, the Holocaust, and human nature, rather than collective recrimination. It is not only the political reality of the impossibility of holding millions of Germans responsible for the deaths of Jews or Nazi aggression or atrocities, though average Germans clearly played important roles in all of these tragedies.

What makes such cowardice and ugliness worthy of our forgiveness is that it is also all too human.

Most people, given limited capacities at any particular personal and historical moment, often behave irrationally and aggressively in the face of fear and and aggression and pain and tragedy. Me too. I just try to get better at it, over time. Like anyone else.

Those who pursue power and the tools of repression to perpetually rationalize and give artificial weight to their fears impose one of the biggest lies on humanity that it has ever witnessed: that they protect humanity from the same reactions to their repressive efforts that their repression, generally, creates or accelerates. I watch it as a regular feature of this period, in awe of its unfailing certainty in its own capacity to stamp out problems that neither it nor its predecessors have ever been able to stamp out by force - ever, in the history of humanity - and a failure to recognize the limits of what can be achieved with force in the face of even the most serious and tragic problems, like terrorism and despotism and genocide and all of the worst crimes against humanity that we have ever faced, even as force is sometimes needed in as limited a capacity as possible, especially when people face violent or oppressive ends.

What I love about Twain, that I only get a glimpse of in Mencken, is that he loves humanity, genuinely, despite its stupidity and the calamities we impose on one another in the name of whichever self-righteous or panic-inspired cause that it has taken up.

Twain sees the pettiness, narrowness, ignorance, and foolish fears of his fellow man and decides that he can't do any worse, he supposes, though he's sure that, perhaps, they could do a fair bit better for themselves and toward one another.

And in the last consideration, Twain is right, I think, that it is probably best to see humanity for all of its foolish and destructive fears and aggression and pain and tragedy and just love it and forgive it anyway, warts and all.

Fear drives the worst forms of ugliness in humanity that the world has ever seen. It kills, it maims, it imprisons, it oppresses. It robs people of their lives and freedom and dignity.

But, in the end, it is also just people being afraid. People laying in their beds, at night, perhaps with a spouse or a lover or just holding tight to their pillow, and hoping that tomorrow offers more hope and peace than today. People advocating and cheering and rallying for the very policies and attitudes that are sure to make them less safe and make the realities of their lives such that they give themselves more reason for fear.

But, in the end, they are also just afraid. Scared little bitches, as I've said in my younger years. Easily and foolishly frightened and pained souls.

And I love them, anyway. Even with their cruelties. And ugliness. And fears. And the unspeakable tragedies that they impose on one another. I love them, anyway. Because they need it. Because sometimes, as my experience at Eisenhower Middle School taught me, grace is not something we receive or give because we or others have earned it, but because all of us need it. Those who are least likely or willing to give it most of all.

And, in the final analysis, those who need forgiveness and love are all of us. We have seen the enemy, and he is us. But we are also family and friends and loved ones who can summon the heart and imagination and thought to transcend this time of fear and so much unnecessary tragedy. And find love and reason and safety where timidity or terror has occupied our hearts.

I've said many times that what I am most grateful for in this period of my life, personally, is that I took seriously the idea of giving up a life run by fear and to take up the freedom and independence that offers a happier, more purposeful, fulfilled, thoughtful, and decent life. It hasn't been easy, that is for sure.

But it has been worth it.

And that is what Twain and Mencken both offer us. Examples of courage and confidence in our abilities to transcend our fearful and foolish lives. Twain with much love and appreciation and good humor for our cowardice. Mencken with much contempt for the pride and foolishness and pettiness and ugliness of the same. Both did it with very little education relative to their comparably brilliant contemporaries. Twain only attended school until the age of 12 and received the bulk of his education in the newspaper trade. Mencken finished high school at the top of his class and never turned back.

And both of their examples give lie to the idea that our circumstances or our experiences or our levels of education or whatever invented insecurities we might have for not throwing off the bowlines and exploring this world, as Twain might say, are more real than they are.

In fact, it is that quotation received at a particularly inspired time in my life that is probably most responsible for my more adventurous turn in life.

The words are too remarkably well chosen not to share for those who are unfamiliar. And for those who are, it is well worth the second look.

As Twain opined:

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.

So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

Where Mencken doubted humanity's capacity to transcend its collective and quite independent ignorance and cruelty, Twain knew that the surest path to a human race that stood a bit taller was one who felt more confident of its own abilities to take the risks that courage is molded from.

And that is why I am more Twain than Mencken, even as I admire each man's insight and aspire for their uncanny ability to choose words and images to share their wisdom.

Because hope cannot triumph over fear by random luck. Sometimes it needs a little direction and confidence to inspire the long and arduous trek.

As Brandi would say, sleep well, little ones.

Tomorrow is a better day. If only we can find the courage to make it so.

Love,
Ben

It turns out, losing everything was probably the best thing that happened to me

I've had a really amazing revelation, today.

For 6 years, now - it will 6 years exactly August 5, I believe; Brandi and I broke up a month before 9/11 - I've been mourning my loss of Brandi in my life and our really sweet romance from the end of my college days to near the end of my grad school experience.

It was a really beautiful time in my life. One of the most beautiful and warm and wonderful times in my life. If you have never been in love, for real, I highly recommend it. It is the bomb, as the kiddies say.

And for 6 years, I've been mourning, Brandi. Because she is likely, still, the most amazing young woman I've met in my life. And because, quite accidentally, I'm sure, some advice she gave to me about some diet choices I was facing, completely changed my life and form the core of personal experiences that have helped me see, better, the role of freedom in our lives and our development.

But, today, after a summer of freedom and reflection and the development of a sustainable, purposeful, and happy commitment to a life of service and independence, it has occurred to me that I couldn't have found the peace and freedom and happiness that I feel today with Brandi or with grad school or anyone, likely, who wouldn't have supported my freedom and my learning.

It turns out, I think, that losing Brandi and leaving school may have been the best things that happened to me. It would have been great to have both and have all this freedom and the sustained and unburdened sense of commitment and responsibility that is has provided. But this was more important, it's completely clear to me, today.

My life is far better for all of this freedom I have had and taken for myself. And no other person or credential or anything could have given me that.

I love Brandi. I miss her. I love my professors, is the truth. And all the grad students I studied with. And I loved my grad school experience, like I loved my undergrad experience.

But the freedom and independence to make a life for myself, to fuck up as much as I needed to and learn and not have people trying to control me in the process, has been more important to me than anything that love or guidance from anyone else could have offered or provided.

I still cry every time I hear Dar Williams' February or Tracy Chapman's The Promise or Hootie and the Blowfish's Let Her Cry or Annie Lennox's Every Time We Say Goodbye off the Red, Hot, and Blue album. Because I loved Brandi more than I had loved anyone in my life, I think. And I still think about the folks at KU, and friends and colleagues who have tried to strong-arm me and who I've not seen in some time.

But more than all those folks, I love myself enough to recognize that I have needed as much freedom as I have afforded myself during this time without Brandi and without my professors and fellow students and without friends or colleagues who have tried to force themselves on me much more.

That's been a great and hard realization to come to, after years of asking that question, "Has this all been worth it?"

A clear yes, is the answer for me, today. And as much as I miss all those people. I'm really glad I took that freedom and independence and my own life and thought and conscience so seriously.

Losing everything, as it turns out, was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. Or rather, the freedom that came with losing all that stuff (losing it all without the freedom would have just been been useless tragedy)has probably been the best thing that has happened to me.

I've got stuff I need to box up for my move. And I've got work to do before the school year starts. But I just wanted to take a moment and reflect on a time in my life that has, in a very unexpected way, been a really crazy but great dawn of something new in my life.

In honor of new dawns, I am posting some of the music of the current era that might qualify as great music of the present time (though, I should qualify that the great music I hear these days does not seem to get much radio play and the shit they play on the radio is often senselessly and soullessly commercial and lacking in creativity or substance. The failure of radio to deliver better music is my beef with the current era. But there are certainly artists who are making their go of it).

If anyone has suggestions for this category, the the 90's music/videos - the last great era in music, as far as I'm concerned - or any of the playlists that I post up here, please offer them up. I make no pretenses of omnipotence. So whatever you have to offer would be really interesting and appreciated.

Enjoy:)



Love,
Ben

Sounds good

Obama calls for shift in diplomacy

He's right. What is animating the concern about diplomacy has nothing to do with experience or naivete (neither Ronald Reagan nor John F. Kennedy had much, if any, foreign policy and diplomatic experience before they took office and both effectively used diplomacy to deal with the serious challenges of the Soviet Union).

It's fear.

This guy keeps getting this honest, he might just be our next President.

Now what I need to hear is, "We will stay in Iraq until the Iraqis tell us that they can handle security without our help."

He says that, I'm probably be voting for this guy.

Love,
Ben

Ironic

You know what's ironic?

The core of many of my ideas are based on the advice of a friend of mine that I don't even talk to, anymore.

When Brandi and I were living in Lawrence together, I was trying to give up red meat for health reasons. I was having a hard time of it and I would come home every night and tell Brandi about how I gave into temptation and ate fat-loaded meat.

One day, Brandi said, "Why don't you just let yourself eat it and not feel all guilty about it."

So I did. I just let myself eat whatever I wanted, for awhile. I would eat the nastiest, fattiest meats I could get my hands on. Kentucky Fried Chicken, Long John Silvers, Wendy's, McDonalds. Whatever I could get my hands on.

And she was right. It was the guilt that was hanging me up. And the freedom to choose badly was finally what gave me the genuine, sustainable, long-term ability to choose well. Today, I am a rare breed. I am one of the few of my friends that I know of who began eating vegitarian and who has stuck with it. Largely because of this very good advice that Brandi gave me. Whenever I wanted to cheat, I just let myself. And the consequence has been an enormously healthy diet.

And I have generalized that piece of advice to almost every area of my life where I need to make a change. And it has worked invariably without a miss.

You know what's ironic? The way that we find more genuine control over ourselves and in our lives and with others is by letting go. Brandi and Maslow were right. Freedom makes for the best choices, long term. Because it allows us to make the bad choices we need to make to learn and internalize with experience why the good choices are so good.

That's why freer people are stronger than less free people, long term, and why freer cultures are stronger than less free cultures. Because freedom is where the learning takes place. And it is the learning that makes us more genuinely strong.

And that is the core of my ideas.

I always said Brandi was my best teacher.

In Brandi's honor, I'm playing a song that wasn't of any particular significance to us when we were together, but which seems appropriate, today, from the last great era of music.



Love,
Ben

Fame, wealth, and having it all (we miss you, Kurt)

A really honest reflection on fame, wealth, and having it all by Kurt Cobain on tapes made before his suicide which have been compiled into a soon-to-be-released documentary, About a Son.



It is occurring to me that there are some events in young peoples' lives that may shape their outlook on the world differently than their parents' outlooks. Kurt Cobain's death may have been one such event for my generation.

The last great era of music - the mid-to-late 90's - as far as I am concerned.

We miss you, Kurt. And we miss the music.

Love,
Ben

Evidence that least possible necessary aggression would predict

Foreign Policy reports research that my theorizing with least possible necessary aggression would predict.

The Hidden Pandemic

What is it? Crime. And it is up all over the world.

Why would least possible necessary aggression predict a surge in crime?

Because crime is escalated, I believe, by repressive and more aggressive law enforcement measures. And repression and higher amounts of aggression are the other important variables that are up all over the world, these days.

You doubt that? Keep an eye on that Red Mosque situation in Pakistan.

It's ironic, isn't it?

Aggression and repression are natural responses to aggression and retaliatory measures against us. And aggression and retaliation, as Bobby Kennedy argued in his Mindless Menace of Violence speech immediately after the death of Martin Luther King, are the natural responses to aggression and repression. Sometimes aggression is needed. Often it is ineffective or counterproductive by increasing the overall level of aggression, repression, and retaliation. Until we face that reality more honestly and learn the lesson, that is the fate we have chosen. Let us choose wisely.

Love,
Ben

Substantive discussion, trust and governance

Joe Nye raises excellent questions in a post, today, on his blog, that gets to the heart of the problems with the rancorous political environment and its impact on the political discussion.

The Next Attack

The recent National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism shows that Bush's policy in Iraq has helped to strengthen Al Qaeda. The CIA's John Kringen testified to Congress that "we actually see Al Qaeda central being resurgent in their role in planning operations." Bad news. It suggests we will be hit again in our homeland. But in addition to criticizing the administration for its failed policies, where is the public discussion of how we should respond if we are hit again? If a dirty bomb goes off in an American city, should people evacuate or stay in place? Think of the congestion of a holiday weekend. How many people will drive into danger rather than away from it? Where is that discussed? Most politicians shun the question as too sensitive. It implies defeatism. Yet the greatest damage done to our country will likely be done by our own responses to the attack. Terrorism is like jujitsu. The small opponent wins by using the strength of the larger opponent against him. If we respond to another attack by inspecting all cargoes, cutting off visa applications, curtailing our civil liberties, and so forth, we will accomplish what the terrorists want but cannot do alone. If the NIE is correct, does that not imply that we should begin to discuss how, if we are hit in the arm, we avoid shooting ourself in both feet?

Joe is asking, "If another attack takes place, how might we engage public discussion about how to prepare for so many contingencies?"

But I think the more fundamental question is, "Given all of the partisan rancor and aggressiveness that has animated the current political period, how can media, activists, political leaders, military leaders, and scholars make themselves more trustworthy to offer advice or give instruction if such a fate should befall us?"

Here's my response:

"Joe,

It's a good question. Especially given the propensity for polarization to overwhelm almost every important substantive policy discussion, at this point. It also gets to the heart of how government can give trusted instructions about how to handle such a situation in an environment where cynicism about government and the Federal government, in particular, runs so high. It's a good reason for us to expect that political leaders and media folks to start cooling the discussion, shedding more light than heat, engaging with more good faith and open-endedness, and generally starting to build trust that they will need should such a scenario hit.

This is a point in the war when we should be talking in the tones of shared sacrafice and pulling together, especially given the political support and manpower needs no matter what plan is adopted. Scholarly discussions offer us clearer precedent that we can expect a rigorous and substantial discussion and debate that is premised on the notion of common cause. Instead, self-righteous and far-too-certain grandstanding and a whole mess of conspiracy-mindedness dominates this discussion.

I, personally, agree with Frederick Kagan, that we need to stick with this until the Maliki's government gives us the ok to leave.

Understanding General Petraeus's Strategy

I think a policy that calls for volunteers and lets servicemembers who don't want to take up the final leg on this thing step down could shore up political support for such an effort.

But more important than all of that, I think, is for media and political leaders in Washington to start cleaning up this discussion and start putting substantial discussion over political strategy, and let the chips fall where they may. No party in Washington, right now, has so many unfailing right answers that plans with predetermined notions of the current strategy and its failure or success that such a discussion cannot be engaged for purposes higher than just electoral success and begin to shore up substantial enough trust in Washington decisions and sense of judgment, right now, so that the kinds of questions you are asking, Joe, can get some attention, discussion, and ideas and so that decisions in this war and on future terrorism questions get made based on a genuine discussion and debate that occurs with more attention on better ideas and less attention on whose getting elected. It would improve trust in Washington and in decisions getting made, and it would create a more genuine environment for brainstorming ideas and thinking on the war and on future terrorism questions where the risks of particular courses of action can be shared, better, and where better ideas can be trusted better to be coming out of good faith from leaders independent of party rather than in the same pathetic polarized direction that our public discussion has taken as of late.

The Washington Post had an encouraging editorial in this direction that begins to get at the failure of substance in Washington discussions, right now.

The Phony Debate

But it's bigger than this. The rancor, vitriol, and bitterness that has poisoned the Washington debate needs to be replaced with something more honest, genuine, and hopeful. That will take some effort by a lot of players - media, political leaders, activists, military officials, and scholars - to name a few. It will also mean a strategy that focuses more on ideas, less on egos and much less on taking down opponents.

If we're going to have the kind of discussion that is going to answer the questions you raise, Joe, we're going to have to at least move in this direction. It will take some doing and will be far from over by the end of this war. But matters this grave are also where America's propensity for pulling together and being bigger than our circumstances and history are most likely.

Perhaps there is more to learn from our experience of World War II than just how much force will decide a political or military question."

Love,
Ben

An important new contribution to understanding Islamism and counterterrorism efforts

Egypt Today has a brilliant contribution to the effort to understand Islamism and the domestic and international terrorism threat it offers in the Middle East.

Memoirs of an Ex-Jihadi

Ed Husain was 16 years old, he says in his memoirs, The Islamist, when he traded in his family's traditional Islam for the radical political Islam of Jamaat-e-Islami, later the Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT).

His story of entering fundamentalist Islam and finally leaving it is a fascinating account of what motivates people to join, what daily life looks like in such groups, and what is at stake in his leaving and in the effort to persuade younger and older people to leave or never join, when possible.

This was the most powerful passage in this review, I thought:

"In 1995, during his second year of college, a fellow student — a Christian Nigerian — was murdered on campus, surrounded by a crowd of students, including Husain. 'It was inhumane, and it’s as if there was no differentiating between right and wrong,' he remembers.

Husain is certain today that the environment he helped to create in college, where outsiders felt confident coming in and distributing propaganda, led to the death. 'Who gave these Muslims this idea of supremacy?' he says. 'Who created this environment? Who created these clusters? Who gave them these ideas of jihad? Who said violence was legitimate? We did. HT did.'

One of the main aims Husain had in writing his book was to bring home the impact of ideas. 'I saw the impact of ideas on people. That’s why I have a problem with people going around calling for jihad, and calling for the kaffir to be killed, without taking responsibility for the actions that such rhetoric leads to.'"

The heart of the differences and conflict between liberal and illiberal forces in the world is their ideas and values. That is why we must be as clear as possible about the commitment in liberal democratic values to ideas rather than force animating our cultural and political life. That is the full embodiment of liberal values that we have been missing during this political period. As long as liberal peoples and governments rationalize force instead of ideas as the central value of liberal democracy, every illiberal group or government - terrorists, theocracies, Communist regimes, totalitarian regimes of all kinds - have the cover they need to engage in every illiberal imposition of force over ideas animating their own cultures and politics.

Ed Husain's experience makes that all the more clear for liberal peoples who might be and should be weary of force foolishly animating liberal and as well as illiberal cultures and politics, which is the ugly, long, and illiberal history of liberal and illiberal cultures and governments alike.

Love,
Ben

What's at stake

Do you see any substantial difference between the rationalizations of the present repressive direction in liberal democratic countries and this rationale?

Supreme Leader: Education has effective impacts on social norms

Me neither.

And you think American politicians, journalists, activists, and scholars are cynical in their arguments for power. Listen to this mouthful.

"Comparing the current educational system with that of pre-Islamic Revolution era, the Supreme Leader said that the education had focused on secular perceptions before the Islamic Revolution and was incompatible with the fundamental needs of the society.

'Notwithstanding the changes in Islamic and national perceptions of the Education Ministry, it still suffers from the outdated structures requiring radical changes to revitalize the education in conformity with the social progress.' Prior to the Supreme Leader's remarks, Minister of Education Mahmoud Farshidi presented a report on restructuring the body."

That is what is at stake during this political period. Whether liberal democracies are going to give cover to this kind of ugly illiberalism or not. Because it is fairly clear in these statements that these power-mongers take their cue from power-mongers in the West. And the question we all must ask ourselves is if we will give them the cover they want.

I, for one, will not.

Love,
Ben

Understanding is what is missing and needed

As I watch so many situations in the world - the war in Iraq, the revived Middle East peace process, and, today, the DUI and criminal drug charges being lodged against Lindsey Lohan and the criminal dog-fighting drama for Michael Vick of the Atlanta Falcons - it becomes clearer to me that what is missing that is needed in all of these situations and around almost every issue that democratic people face with one another is greater understanding, of one another and of the experiences and situations that we all face.

Lindsey Lohan does not understand the need to not be driving while intoxicated, nor to avoid drugs like cocaine, her protestations notwithstanding. She's not a bad person. She is being irresponsible. But it has clearly not been helped by the arrests and criminal charges she has faced. Journalists following the case ignore that failure and cheer it on further with headlines that speak of Lindsey needing jail time for her own good. That case is obviously without any real regard for Lindsey's own good, which Lindsey is in a better position to assess than any journalist rallying for her imprisonment. And, worse, the failure of legal efforts to correct her behavior in absence of her own conscience coming to terms with it and with a greater maturity that is perpetually undermined by young people like Lindsey by the more controlling efforts of older "wiser" heads who want to imprison her "for her own good." Most people who follow Lindsey's case don't understand this fact of life. Lindsey herself may not understand it. But the facts of her life certainly do bear it out. And the failure to face up to that lack of understanding is occurring on the part of those who would imprison Lindsey as much as Lindsey herself. The difference is that Lindsey is looking at jail time for her failure to understand. And older people wonder why younger people romanticize outlaw culture.

Michael Vick, so some say, doesn't understand the seriousness of the situation he faces, right now. He won't take a leave of absence to deal with the trial on Federal charges that he faces for dog fighting. He doesn't understand what the big deal is. And the truth is that he just doesn't. Michael, like so many people, especially young people, and like me, in most ways, does not accept the legitimacy of government to regulate his behavior (though I do very seriously appreciate the intentions; the results just aren't too whoopy, by any standard) and have trusted older people in their lives who have told them that they will learn from their mistakes, just as those same older folks learned from their own. Most people accept the legitimacy of government regulating someone else's behavior. But few people, when push comes to shove, really believe in the government's or anyone's legitimate right to regulate their own behavior, when they are honest. It doesn't make Vick a bad guy. It just means that he doesn't understand. Most people involved in that drama, and so many such situations, don't understand what it means that Michael doesn't understand the gravity of the situation. And it's easier to paint people as bad than it is to recognize that they think about such situations differently. And older people wonder why younger people romanticize outlaw culture.

The fact that most people think this way when they are in similar situations and the hypocrisy that we all demonstrate when faced with such situations is the reason for why I support the broadest scope of freedom possible for all people, and the reason why liberal values taken seriously make the most sense to me.

The war in Iraq pits American political leaders and citizens who largely look at that conflict through their own self-centered lenses against both the real needs of the Iraqi government, military, and law enforcement, and, ultimately, the Iraqi people, and the more self-centered outlooks of those same Iraqis, not appreciating the gravity of American blood being spilt for Iraqi security and the hope of an Iraqi political resolution.

And the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, similarly, involves so many parties more attuned to their own more self-centered outlooks than to the needs of one another. I generally have thought of Israelis as the more selfless party in those negotiations, and then the Israelis go and say things like they did today to the Arab League proposal that they could not accept a right of return for Palestinians displaced by Israeli forces at Israel's founding because they do not want to impugn the "Jewish nature" of their state. Read: though Israel was founded as a safe haven for Jews who face discrimination and genocide abroad, we really are the discriminatory assholes that Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims accuse us of being.

And as I watch all of this, it becomes clear that, not only is what is missing is greater mutual understanding and efforts at understanding between people, but that what, more than anything else that stands in the way of such understanding is our more repressive, forceful efforts, as a rule.

I suppose, at some level, this is something many people have just resigned themselves to. And, more nefariously, it is something that many people will perpetually dismiss, out of their arrogance and hubris that their more repressive efforts accomplish more than they do.

What saddens me is the whole of it is based on the biggest lie of all, which is that it is that understanding and not the repression and force that is responsible for most of our troubles. It is the premise that others' interests must be sacrificed to our own rather than the much more honest and enlightened and decent idea that everyones' interests are benefited when we genuinely look after and make stronger efforts to understand the interests and perspectives and thoughts of everyone better and that it is our failure to do so which undermines so much of our presumed goals and is responsible for so many of the problems in the world today.

The beauty of repression is that people can hide those more self-centered, unconcerned, uncaring sentiments under their pretenses and facades (though anyone with an eye for pretense can tell the difference, better, generally). And even when our more cynical, less mutually regarding selves are out in the open, we so often glorify them rather than be more self-reflective and self-critical. That's what motivates a Michael Vick to be engaged in the kind of cruel dog-fighting that he was involved with that has precipitated his legal and professional troubles. And that is what motivates his prosecutors, who are more concerned with abstractions about the law than they are with the reality of a man's life and freedom.

Most people resist that kind of understanding, I am learning. And since they are often rewarded for it and because they so often see more understanding efforts overwhelmed by more repressive efforts and nice guys finishing last, too often, they can rationalize their self-centeredness as a means of survival, even if it means the utter and complete dysfunction and ugliness of a world where everyone's interests get sacraficed for the interests of someone else. Or as such that wrong-headed and ugly value system is articulated in common parlance: every man for himself.

It is reinforced by a market and political system where people too often behave this way and then call it "reality". It's the same kind of reality that animates the Iraqi sectarian civil war. It is an ugly and cynical reality. And it is responsible for so much that is wrong with the world.

It is exactly what Lord Acton warned us of in his 19th century musings: power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Power persistently corrupts reality. And then power proclaims itself the savior of that same reality. It is likely the biggest lie ever told to humanity and that humanity tells itself.

It most certainly gets better, generally because it breeds mistrust in its proponents. But it does much harm along the way.

Hillary Clinton says that Barak Obama is "naive" and "irresponsible" for his suggestion that leaders of rogue nations should be engaged by heads of state rather than isolated. He happens to be right and all the writing is on the wall to suggest so. And Obama is right to point out that Clinton, who voted for the Iraq war without raising any serious objections about that war, is in a curious position to call Barak Obama naive or irresponsible about anything. Clinton is playing politics. She knows that many older voters, especially, will view Obama's honest admission of taking illegal drugs in school as "irresponsible" and that his popularity among young voters for that fact associates him with the pride that older voters and Democrats maintain that they are wiser, not more cynical, than their younger counterparts, who can thus be disregarded as "naive". It's a cynical ploy by a cynical politician. And exactly why I don't trust Hillary Clinton any further than I could throw her.

And exactly why such cynical power grabs are unsustainable. Because they breed mistrust.

Hillary Clinton might or might not win this election. I will likely be voting against her. Largely because it is clear just how power-hungry and paternalistic she seems to irreparably be.

But there is no way in hell that a Hillary Clinton administration will breed anything but mistrust among a younger generation that will long outlive here political career.

And that is the long view that Hillary Clinton sacrifices in her machinations for power. And that all people sacrafice in their rationalizations of a more repressive direction for liberal democracy.

Americans were cowered for a time by the machinations of Adolph Hitler, in the same way. But they soon enough saw through the charade, largely because an allied Japan overreached and attacked American homeland and also largely because people with more courage and clearer liberal purposes could see what a masterful and cynical power-monger he was, despite the conventional political cowardice of the times, while others were blinded by that popular cowardice. The more repressive fact of the present politics is not a fact of Hillary Clinton or Rudy Guliani or any of the candidates alone. Neither is this fetish with a governing philosophy of force sustainable, anymore than its comrades in governance, Nazi Germany or Soviet Communism, were sustainable.

It is a sad fact of life that the more decent and honest far from perfect idealism of youth is perpetually undermined, punished, corrupted and treated with contempt by the cynicism and desire to control by far from perfect older generations. It is also the quite happy fact of life that such cynicism, control and corruption of spirit fades away, slowly, each generation as young people learn to mistrust their elders, for good reason, and to face their problems more honestly than previous generations.

Slowly.

And, in the meantime, it is understanding of one another that is needed. And it is understanding of one another that is undermined by our quest for power to solve problems it cannot solve.

The only way out of this cynical mess is to recognize this. And for all of their terrible records of dealing with problems well while they are in the midst of them, liberal democracies, like the people who make them up, do seem to have a pretty unflagging ability to face their problems more honestly after everything else has failed.

Understanding that this is a fact of life made so by peoples' natural incapacity to solve problems they do not more completely understand is what is missing and needed, as much as understanding of one another.

It will remain so, and all of the problems that it harbors, until we face the need for that kind of understanding.

If I am so confident that liberal democracies correct themselves, in the long run, why, might you ask, am I so depressed about their behavior in the short run?

The answer: because I grieve for so many who will be hurt in the meantime.

May that number be as few as possible.

Love,
Ben

H. L. Mencken on what it means to be a liberal

I have been pretty discouraged these last 7 or so years, watching the liberalism of my youth get distorted into something nasty, overbearing, and ugly in the last few years. I have been discouraged by how thoughtlessly the debate about this war has been engaged by liberals as much as by conservatives in their mutually consistent effort to perpetually substitute thoughtful and practical discussion with pressure politics and self-righteous grandstanding.

I've turned a lot, these days, to H.L. Mencken for some consolation for how wrong and ugly this period has been and seemed for someone who was openly and consistently critical of the illiberal tendencies of Liberals, as he called them, in the early part of the 20th Century.

What Mencken writes about Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and liberalism of the 20's and 30's could easily have been as said of liberalism at the beginning of the 21st century, sadly. It's clear we have made progress from Mencken's time. It is also clear that no matter how far we come, that those repressive forces in liberal clothing seem to perpetually have all too dominating seat at the table of liberal democracy, and then wonder why illiberal forces in the world get so much traction around the world. One has to wonder.

"Mr. Justice Holmes
The American Mercury, May 1930

A Review of The Dissenting Opinions of Mr. Justice Holmes
arranged by Alfred Lief, with a forward by George W. Kirchwey

Mr. Justice Holmes's dissenting opinions have got so much fawning praise from liberals that it is somewhat surprising to discover that Mr. Lief is able to muster but fifty-five of them, and even more surprising to hear from Dr. Kirchwey that in only one case did the learned justice stand quite alone, and that the cases "in which he has given expression to the judgement of the court, [sic] or in which he has concurred in its judgement, far outnumber, in the ratio of eight or ten to one, those in which he felt it necessary to dissent."

There is even more surprising stuff in the opinions themselves. In three Espionage Act cases, including the Debs case, one finds a clear statement of the doctrine that, in war time, the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment cease to have any substance, and may be set aside by any jury that has been sufficiently alarmed by a district attorney itching for higher office. In Fox v. the State of Washington, we learn that any conduct 'which shall tend to encourage or advocate disrespect for the law' may be made a crime, and that the protest of a man who believes that he has been jailed unjustly, and threatens to boycott his persecutors, may be treated as such a crime. In Moyer v. Peabody, it appears that the Governor of a state, 'without sufficient reason but in good faith,' may call out the militia, declare martial law, and jail anyone he happens to suspect or dislike, without laying himself open 'to an action after he is out of office on the ground that he had no reasonable ground for his belief.' And, in Weaver v. Palmer Bros. Co. there is the plain inference that in order to punish a theoretical man, A, who is suspected of wrong-doing, a State Legislature may lay heavy and intolerable burdens upon a real man, B, who has admittedly done no wrong at all.

I find it hard to reconcile such notions with any plausible concept of Liberalism. They may be good law, but it is impossible to see how they can conceivably promote liberty. My suspicion is that the hopeful Liberals of the 20s, frantically eager to find at least one judge who was not violently and implacably against them, seized upon certain of Mr. Justice Holmes's opinions without examining the rest, and read into them an attitude that was actually as foreign to his ways of thinking as it was to those of Mr. Chief Justice Hughes. Finding him, now and then, defending eloquently a new and uplifting law which his colleagues proposed to strike of the books, they concluded that he was a sworn advocate of the rights of man. But all the while, if I do not misread his plain words, he was actually no more than an advocate of the rights of lawmakers. There, indeed, is the clue to his whole jurisprudence. He believed that the law-making bodies should be free to experiment almost ad libitum, that the courts should not call a halt upon them until they clearly passed the uttermost bounds of reason, that everything should be sacrificed to their autonomy, including apparently, even the Bill of Rights. If this [sic] is liberalism, then all I can say is that Liberalism is not what it was when I was young.

In those remote days, sucking wisdom from the primeval springs, I was taught that the very aim of the Constitution was to keep law-makers from running amok, and that it was the highest duty of the Supreme Court, following Marbury v. Madison, to safeguard it against their forays. It was not sufficient, so my instructors maintained, for Congress or a State Legislature to give assurance that its intentions were noble; noble or not, it had to keep squarely within the limits of the Bill of Rights, and the moment it went beyond them its most virtuous acts were null and void. But Mr. Justice Holmes apparently thought otherwise. He held, it would seem, that violating the Bill of Rights is a rare and deliberate malice, and that it is chief business of the Supreme Court to keep the Constitution loose and elastic, so that blasting holes through it may not be too onerous. Bear this doctrine in mind, and you will have an adequate explanation, on the one hand, of those forward-looking opinions which console the Liberals- for example in Lochner v. New York (the bakery case), in the child labor case, and in the Virginia case involving the compulsory sterilization for imbeciles- and on the other hand, of the reactionary opinions which they so politely overlook- for example in the Debs case, in Bartels v. Iowa (a war-time case, involving the prohibition of foreign-language teaching), in the Mann Act case (in which Dr. Holmes concurred with the majority of the court, [sic] and thereby helped pave the way for the wholesale blackmail which Mr. Justice McKenna, who dissented, warned against), and finally in the long line of Volstead Act cases.

Like any other man, of course, a judge sometimes permits himself the luxury of inconsistency. Mr. Justice Holmes, it seems to me, did so in the wiretapping case and again in the Abrams case, in which his dissenting opinion was clearly at variance with the prevailing opinion in the Debs case, written by him. But I think it is quite fair to say that his fundamental attitude was precisely as I have stated it. Over and over again, in these opinions, he advocated giving the legislature full head-room, and over and over again he protested against using the Fourteenth Amendment to upset novel and oppressive laws, aimed frankly at helpless minorities. If what he said in some of those opinions were accepted literally, there would be scarcely any brake at all upon lawmaking, and the Bill of Rights would have no more significance than the Code of Manu.

The weak spot in his reasoning, if I may presume to suggest such a thing, was his tacit assumption that the voice of the legislature was the voice of the people. There is, in fact, no reason for confusing the people and the legislature: the two, in these later years, are quite distinct. The legislature, like the executive, has ceased, save indirectly, to be even the creature of the people: it is the creature, in the main, of pressure groups, and most of them, it must be manifest, are of dubious wisdom and even more dubious honesty. Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle- a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism.

It is the aim of the Bill of Rights, if it has any remaining aim at all, to curb such prehensile gentry. Its function is to set a limitation upon their power to harry and oppress us to their own private profit. The Fathers, in framing it, did not have the powerful minorities in mind; what they sought to hobble was simply the majority. But that is a detail. The important thing is that the Bill of Rights sets forth, in the plainest of plain language, the limits beyond which even the legislature may not go. The Supreme Court, in Marbury v. Madison, decided that it was bound to execute that intent, and for a hundred years that doctrine remained the corner-stone of American constitutional law. But it late years the court has taken the opposite line, and the public opinion seems to support it. Certainly, Dr. Holmes did not go as far in that direction as some of his brother judges, but equally certainly he went far enough. To call him Liberal is to make the word meaningless...."

To call so much of what passes for liberal values liberal, today, makes that word sound hollow and meaningless, I must say. It's as if there really is no difference between liberalism and illiberalism except that liberalism is not quite as mean-spirited and brutal in its paternalism.

Mencken doesn't offer much real consolation except that maybe really believing in those values might remind those who don't of their failure of heart and logic and more genuine courage. And to encourage each generation to make up for where its' parents failed so miserably.

My generation won't complete the project, of that I am certain. Neither will the next. But perhaps we chip away at the rationalizations for repression and illiberal power that animate terrorism, genocide, and despotism around the world as much as they animate illiberal attitude, laws, and aggression here at home and in liberal democracies around the world so that next generation fewer innocents are murdered by terrorists and sectarians and genocidal maniacs who prey and pressure upon governments and populations with threats against their security, fewer students are killed and imprisoned by autocrats who borrow their repressive instincts from their more liberal brethren, and fewer decent citizens of liberal democratic societies have to live in fear for their freedom and safety because their neighbors have decided that they know better.

Too many tragedies must take place in this world before we will face our more ugly and menacing ways. It is the saddest and most serious hope that liberal democracy offers that it has never been the society and form of government that has unerringly treated people with dignity but the society most likely to recognize its errors long after they have been committed.

Here's to one American who looked ahead of so many curves because his notion of liberalism was consistently liberal in all of its original and genuine meaning as one committed to simple but profound notion of liberty.

Love,
Ben

Smart people are morons too

My friend, Devang, and I did this cardio work out class today up at the University. It kicked my ass. And it convinced me that I am a big fat fuckin' whiner in my own workouts and that I really appreciate someone kicking my ass.

I concede. Structured learning experiences, for all of their shortcomings - aggressive and counterproductive pressure is a very serious shortcoming that I don't ever want to deal with ever again, if I can avoid it; the inability to express and share thoughts, ideas, experiences and feelings as openly as you can in more intimate, informal, trusting, friend experiences is the biggest one - can be one of the best means of learning something new. I got my ass kicked today by a not-too-difficult workout. And I don't want to ever hear myself whine about hard work every again. Because I feel great for getting my ass kicked. Granted, our instructor offered us plenty of challenge choices - "Only do this if you want" - but it was a great experience, nonetheless.

And the experience had me thinking about all the places in my life - and there are far too many to count and it is in literally every place in my life - that I whine, internally, about how I don't want to do such and such.

But I am a fucking moron for every place in my life where I have taken for granted a great opportunity in my life. It is moronity that I have learned from. I don't take such opportunities - financial opportunities, work opportunities, school opportunities, relationship opportunities - for granted anymore. And that, as well as the tradeoff of freedom to determine the course for my own life, was the most important value that came out of taking them for granted. I think it was positive, overall, to experience the learning experiences and consequences (although, a lot of more artificial and imposed consequences are really just kind of counterproductive; the freedom to figure out mistakes with natural consequences is the ideal learning experience, by far, without a doubt) that made such learning possible.

But I just want to say that being smart doesn't mean that you aren't a moron, too. I've made big mistakes in my life and learned from them, I hope. Smart people do seem to get the bigger lessons learned more readily. But even that has limitations, I've learned. Plenty of smart people, myself included, who fuck up shit over and over and over again and still don't learn the lesson.

This question of pressure and aggression in public policy, right now, is one such fuck up.

But we're all morons, when it comes down to it. If we shared that more with one another in schools, maybe that would give everyone more confidence that everyone can be smarter and make fewer mistakes, over the long haul, as a consequence. But that would also involve me not making so many fuckin' excuses for why I'm such a whiner, so much of the time. That's my resolution tonight after getting my ass kicked by Andrea and the cardio workout I got tonight. If the point was to humble me and help me see what an out-of-shape, uncordinated oaf I am, Andrea succeeded marvelously.

I'm up for next week:).

Love,
Ben

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.