The moral underpinnings of a liberal democracy that we all take for granted...

The BBC tells the very sad tale of a 16-year-old girl, Atefah Sahaaleh, in Iran executed for removing her veil in an Islamic court...

Execution of a Teenage Girl...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/5217424.stm

Documents filed with Iran's Supreme Court of Appeal reported her as 22 and guilty of "crimes against chastity"...

There are many girls like Atefah in the United States and the world over...

Atefah's mother died when Atefah was 4 or 5...her father, subsequently, became addicted to drugs, from grief, presumably...Atefah was sent to live with her grandparents who were reported to have shown her no affection...Atefah became noticed for wandering the streets of her small, traditional town of Neka, and after run-ins with, lashings and jail time from police for being found in the presence of a boy, Atefah became involved with an abusive man three times her age...

When she was arrested a fourth time after a local petition described her as a "source of immorality" and a "terrible influence on local schoolgirls," Atefah reported her relationship with her older suiter as sexually abusive...when she believed her case was hopeless, she tore off her veil in outrage...

Her judge, Haji Rezai, sentenced her to execution by hanging...

The sad tragedy of more traditional, theocratic societies like Iran is not that they do not suffer similar problems of the West, as many both in those countries and in Western societies who romanticize theocracies would have us believe...

The sad tragedy is that those problems do exist...and that they are just far less honest about the moral consequences of their inhumanity, so concerned are they with proving their moral worth, despite their harsher more barbaric treatment of girls like Atefah...

For all of the open faults in liberal democracies, the moral underpinnings of a liberal democracy that soften and moderate such ugliness are the clearest indication of what we take for granted in the democratic West...as much as we perpetually underestimate and undervalue the freedom and the thoughtfulness and the compassion and the wisdom that make this so...

And it is that softness and moderation that allows us to take responsibility for our injustices and inhumanities as we begin to feel less defensive and face more honestly our complicity in injustice...

It is liberal democracy that is the basis for our highest ideals of justice and decency...we just forget...

Until we see just how bad the world can be without such moral underpinnings...

Love,
Ben

Humanity limps ahead...

After a discussion I had with a leftist debater in Illinois who says that she might be voting for John McCain, my roommate and I have been talking a lot about different candidates for the 2008 election...

And I have to say that I am feeling more than a little underwhelmed by the various political candidates...

After John Kerry's failure to articulate ideas (other than a good but predictably safe idea of involving NATO in the effort in Iraq) to improve international policy, particularly in Iraq, I've kind of given up on the foolish notion that I can vote for a candidate who will at least oppose a bad policy without a more constructive solution...my worst protest vote was for Ralph Nader in 2000 (in a state where Al Gore could not win), who would have been a terrible President, really, even as I was frustrated with how money and power were wielded brazenly by the Democratic Leadership Council and the Democratic National Committee...

And while I believe in accepting the limitations of leaders and voting for a leader who offers the best option...I have to say that I'm more than a little underwhelmed, right now, by the various people being bandied about...

Like my debater friend, Hillary Clinton is kind of scary to me...she's the schoolmarm I don't need...her desire to regulate the video game industry and her complaining that the most educated younger generation in American history are lazy are just kind of indicative of a larger nanny complex of Ms. Clinton that I find really distasteful...I've got two moms...I don't need another one...and her "leadership" during Hurricane Katrina -- which consisted of investigating the FEMA effort rather than contributing to that effort from a very powerful and influential Senate position -- just kind of reflected for me what kind of leadership she has to offer...meaning a recriminatory leadership rather than a constructive one...we have plenty of recrimination in America...an overabundance, really...and I'm just not interested in recrimination being the centerpost of American policy...

John McCain does seem a better option, by comparison, at times...the fact that he cheated on his wife and knows what its like to be forgiven is a big plus for me, ironically...his favoring of legislation to relax obstacles for illegal aliens to live in the country with peace of mind is something that endears me to him...I don't believe in hard and fast rules on torture, after discussions about the issue with military friends who are concerned that such rules make military people subject to political prosecutions when even relatively humane interrogation practices are unpopular...and I agree with George Will that campaign finance regulation is a cure that is no cure for the problems of money and power and an infringement on free speech that has been abused, as it was by Common Cause in Russ Feingold's reelection in Wisconsin, and will be abused in the future...but I understand McCain's concern for these issues and share them...

The truth is that I know that both Hillary Clinton and John McCain have their hearts in the right places...as a long-time liberal, I'm just used to rooting for the Democrat and against the Republican, and this last round of radicalism on the left has just kind of absolved me of that feeling altogether...

Barak Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, as many of my Democratic friends promised, was a nice indicator of the kind of unifying leadership that Barak might provide, even as with the other candidates, I have differences with Barak about the direction of the country...

I guess what I want in a President and in a political leader is someone who is smart and has creative ideas about how to deal with problems like North Korea, Iran, Israel, Lebanon and the rest (if one candidate would talk in any depth about soft power, I think I would be impressed)...who might have creative ideas about how to transcend our various domestic divides in ways that get us to results and not just leave us mired in good intentions...

And I guess, most importantly, I just want political leaders who can both accept peoples' humanity, better...and stay out of mine and everyone elses' lives, so much...

I want political leaders who can respect the principle of self-governance in a democracy...of self-determination in international matters...of the need for individuals and sovereign jurisdictions and self-identifying groups to lead their lives and their communities without overweaning power limiting their self-governance...

I want political leaders who take freedom and democratic discussion seriously, and not just rhetoric to be manipulated for various individuals and groups to just get what they want...

I want political leaders who hold the very basic political notion that seems fundamental to a democracy to me, which is skepticism of power and a respect for the freedoms that are fundamental to a authentically democratic people...

Much of our problem in dealing with North Korea and Iran and the Middle East and much of the world, right now, in my view, is due to our failure to respect principles of self-determination and to convince North Koreans and Iranians and most of the world that we are genuinely fair brokers in international affairs who are not looking after our own interests at the expense of theirs...which of course we are doing, often, which is exactly why so many in the Middle East are suspicious of us, as the New York Times and International Herald Tribune led with today and that Marc Sirios of Lebanon's Daily Star makes clear in his brilliant editorial...

http://www.dailystar.com.lb//article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=74278

The truth is, I'm discovering these last 6 years, is that everyone hates the other guys' autocrat...but people all want their own strong man to make the world right by their own eyes...

Republicans hate Hillary Clinton's nanny state tendencies, but they'll jump for joy for President Bush's tough stances against international allies...Democrats hate President Bush's incursions on their civil liberties, but they want revolutionary action on nationalized health care...Americans hate Vladmir Putin's curbs on a free press and savvy Americans grow weary of Putin's ongoing military efforts to keep Chechnya from breaking away from Russian rule...and those same Americans want a President who will put Russia and China in their place, both in their domestic dealings and on the international stage...Russians hate American hubris in its belief that it can persistently bully the world around international issues...but they love their homegrown autocrat who they think is taking on an out of control free press and keeping order in Russia...Iranians may express disgust with Western liberties and elect Ahmadinejad to maintain conservative Islamic values, but they are forever infuriated with what they believe is the tyranny of American and Western governments meddling in their internal affairs...

We all love freedom for ourselves...but want control over others...it's the famous libertarian refrain except that such a refrain lacks a constructive message about what we do to intervene in situations that are dangerous or more seriously problematic...

The nature of my work around least possible necessary aggression is to resolve that issue...

To argue that all people should have as much freedom as possible to promote greater self-governance in the world...a world where people are genuinely good because they choose to be, not because they are scared to be otherwise...

And yet still provide us with a responsible and intelligent way to engage and intervene to promote more responsible behavior...aggression should be avoided as much as possible...we should respect peoples' freedoms and the responsibility that they better demonstrate the more free and authentically democratic we are -- meaning in our relationships with one another far more important than in our governing -- and we should engage with one another in ways that are as least aggressive as possible and only when situations are violent or dangerous to others...drugs and guns always come to mind when I consider domestic issues that need more responsibility which comes with more respect for freedom around these issues, not less...

In international policy, we should respect matters of sovereignty and self-determination...principles that the U.S. and Israel clearly have selective respect for depending on how badly they want an outcome...invasion of a democratic country and occupation of a democratic authority on the part of Israel, and bullying with whatever means necessary to stop Iran and North Korea from pursuing weapons that they have clearly pursued more ambitiously the more they believed that a military attack post-Iraq from the U.S. was eminent to more objective observers not caught up in defending U.S. policy...

It's so funny and ironic...this is the time in my life when I am most convinced of the good intentions of all political candidates, for the most part, even as I am aware of all of their more potentially cynical motivations...and it is also the time when I am the most underwhelmed by the choices I have in front of me, as of now...

It's not just my more DeToquevillian libertarian tendencies these days that has me underwhelmed...domestic issues are one place where citizens can and do an awful lot of work very, though often not wholly, independent of government and political leaders...health care and education and other domestic efforts are ones that citizens can and do already have much impact on completely independent of the political process...in schools and non-profits and hospitals and charitable giving and churches and the thousand points of light that President George H.W. Bush referred to during this Presidency...

Drug legalization and gun rights would promote more openness, less violence, less organized crime and terrorism, and greater responsibility around both of these issues, I am wholly convinced, in ways that our lifting of alcohol prohibition have already demonstrated ("How many people kill each other over a Budweiser?" is my favorite question on this issue...a lot, was the answer when alcohol was illegal and was run by the mafia and organized crime...hardly at all since it has been legalized)...

But this is the not the place where I am most underwhelmed by our political leadership...

Where I am most underwhelmed is where is counts most...around the very serious situations in places like Lebanon, North Korea, Iran, Palestine and other hot spots in the world where Administration policy seems to have brought us no closer to solutions...but where noone, including Democratic leaders, seem to be thinking outside the box to get to better ideas and solutions...

Republicans fumble and Democrats carp...

And all the while they preach to the rest of the world that they should take responsibility...even as they all fail so miserably to do the same for themselves...

I think a lot about Martin Anderson, these days...that 14-year-old kid who died on the first day of his custody in that Talahassee, Florida bootcamp...

I think about how sad and tragic and ironic it is that he was sent to that boot camp to take responsibility for his life...

And when he died, noone took responsibility for his death...

How convinced we have become that we can force responsibility...

And how much we will deny the clear and plain reality that it does not work...

How we will deny it so much that when a 14-year-old kid dies in an institution we created to teach him that very lesson...

Noone can demonstrate that they've learned it...

Because the truth is...many if not most of us often haven't...

Because taking responsibility always involves the one thing that most people can just never often bring themselves to do...

To admit failure...

It is the reason that I hold the Economist in such high regard, these days, as an honest international news source...

Though the Economist and I often disagree about solutions to problems...the one thing I can always count on the Economist to do honestly is to acknowledge failure...

"Bad to worse" is the theme in the most recent Economist...
And they are right...

And as dark clouds circle, all I can do is hope for the dawn...

Three Brookings Institutions scholars I listened to on C-SPAN today all seemed completely convinced of the power of force to make the world safer, even as the world is clearly less safe and more threatened by terrorism and paranoid autocrats pursuing weapons of mass destruction, today, post-Iraq war, by any fair measure of that notion...

And that, I am discovering, is the way power corrupts...

People get close to it...they fall in love with the short term gains they can make from it...they wield it like the mafia Don's gun to get what they want when they want it...and they ignore all evidence that it undermines confidence in those who wield it...

Just once, as mid-term elections approach, I would love to hear one politician take Lord Acton's wisdom that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely seriously...maybe even quote it...

And this is the clearest lesson I have ever gotten in how the road to hell is paved with good intentions...

Can anyone think of any issue on which they would not think that power could be used to enforce their good intentions?

And there is the rub...

The final domestic political campaign of Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov before he died in 1984 was to curb alcoholism and improve work discipline...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andropov

It will always remain in my mind of one of the most brilliant examples of good intentions gone bad...of how much people will rationalize power and the use of force to promote favored ends, no matter how foolish and counterproductive...

And the last 6 years have been of a world, democratic and otherwise, engaged in that same poor reasoning for the sake of a million causes in search of a strongman or strongwoman to finally make the world whole...

And as the discussions of the upcoming elections and the Presidential primaries that will be upon us soon enough begin to take place...

I just wish that I could hear one Presidential candidate say that they have fresh and innovative ideas to deal with the most serious problems that government uniquely can handle, like international policy...and that they are committed to using the power that government offers as sparingly as possible, trusting Americans and the self-governing citizens of the world to care for themselves and one another as the only and necessary foundation for a genuinely democratic society...where progress happens first and foremost among people within in a free and democratic culture rather than by permission of any head of state or any parliamentary body...

For now, I have Hillary Clinton and John McCain and Al Gore and Rudy Guliani and a whole host of others to settle for...

I'm confident that will not always be so...because I'm confident that values of liberal democracy are more deeply rooted than any political leader...

But just once I wouldn't mind hearing a political leader say something to the effect of, "I am committed to using the power I am granted as little as is possibly necessary and no less"...

Not because we shouldn't follow through on good intentions...

But because the history of the world is littered with the hubris of good people who believed that they could forge good intentions into effective policy, by means of social, economic, political, legal, military and other repression...by force rather than by good ideas and free and humble efforts...

Force is necessary, at times...but it is broadly interpreted by nearly everyone as being far more necessary than it actually is and certainly far more constructive than it turns out to be...

And sadly, that same history is littered with death and destruction in the name of ideologies that promise to force submission upon those who might prefer a route of freedom to the common destination of a good and decent world...

Why free peoples persistently undervalue their freedom...why decent peoples persistently undervalue their decency...why humane peoples persistently undervalue their humanity...I will never know...

But somehow humanity always limps ahead...

Largely because things often get so bad, I imagine...that there is no other option but to change course...

We may be hypocrites, fools, and knaves...but we are generally hypocrites, fools, and knaves who want life to get better, no matter how bad things might get...

So this coming Presidential election will be my first to both genuinely respect all of the leading candidates...completely clear that none of them will offer any magic elixirs for our national and international problems (save better ideas, which would be a novel introduction, indeed)...

And completely convinced that my destiny will be decided largely by me...

And not by some large, omnipresent forces beyond me...

Including the American President and any and all elected officials...as important a role as these people play in our lives...

I can say that because I'm not Martin Andersen...

Like Martin, I too took a joyride in a relative's car at the age of 14...Martin took his grandmother's car...I took my father's car and was caught by the Haysville police, just south of our home in Wichita, Kansas, at 2 in the morning...

But there but for the grace of my father go I...

Martin's parents sent him to a boot camp...where he died his first day there...on the notion that the guards could force Martin to accept their authority...

My father talked with me...I cried to him about how people thought of me as a nerd...and how not being cool left me feeling left out...

He never punished me for it...and I never took his car or anyone else's ever again...

Two different teenagers...two different destinies...

And choices that can shape us forever...at least in the case of Martin...

Have a great weekend, everyone...

Love,
Ben

The last time I experienced real beauty...

Now playing: Diana Krall...I Get Along Without You Very Well...

I'm listening to Diana Krall, this morning, as I work on some papers/cleaning/errands and it all of a sudden occurred to me why I feel so nostalgic for my time with Brandi, especially our summer in D.C., even though in most substantial ways my life has gotten better since that time...

It's because, today, I have more freedom, more maturity and wisdom, better relationships with people, generally, a more substantial future in front of me -- personally, professionally, financially, and otherwise -- and a far stronger handle on life, generally...

But the one thing that I have less of in my life is what Diana's music is fully imbued with: beauty...

If you've really been in love, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about and what Diana is singing about...

It never ceases to amaze me how many people never take that kind of love seriously and, consequently, never experience one of lifes purest joys...

And it is that kind of sweet, soft joy that is the essence of Diana's music...

And I've only really experienced that particular kind of joy one time in my life...

I experienced it some during my time with Jenny and with other girls that I've dated...

But I've never quite felt it as fully as I did with Brandi...

That feeling of un-self-consciously living in the glow of someone else's life...being dedicated to someone else's joy as much as to your own...loving someone completely...for their faults more than despite them...where a smile or a laugh hangs more in the memory than a place or an activity, because it's that smile or that laugh that you live for...

It's so funny...so many of the things that Brandi and I used to hate about our relationship -- we fought endlessly in private, in public, and without shame, sadly and comically:):) -- are often the very things that I remember fondly, today...not because I want to fight, obviously...but because Brandi was the only other person I had met in my life who was like me in this respect...she fought openly, got angry openly, and was otherwise unashamed of her feelings, even as she worked to be as loving and respectful and decent to others as possible...

I don't think I've ever had that particular kind of relationship with anyone else, other than family...even close friends...

Brandi was just like family, I suppose...Brandi was family...

Which made the connection all the closer...and my nostalgia for it all the stronger...

I've learned in my short time here on this planet that our experience is life is often determined by the people we spend it with...

People like Diana Krall and Harry Connick Jr...

...and Brandi Fisher...make that time a very special one...

They make it an experience of beauty that really can't be found in a book or a class or a movie or a story...

Thank you, Fisher, for giving me that experience...

Love,
Ben

Feeling shitty...

I just got back from the Illinois State speech camp...had a great time, for the most part...it's a great team...competitive...smart...ballsy...nice and supportive as all hell...just a great group of folks...

I was something of an anomaly, I guess, since I was one of the very rare non-Big-L-liberals at the gathering...I'm a small-l liberal...meaning I believe that democracy and freedom are the foundations for everything that we value in modern societies...small-l liberalism is big tent liberalism that has plenty of room for conservatives and liberals, alike...my whole life has been liberal -- both Big-L and small-l -- in all functional respects...my family, and my father and I at the forefront, were peace activists and poverty activists...

I got into special education and education as a part of my commitments to poverty efforts and inner city school reform...I'm a vegitarian and eat organic, as much as possible, for health reasons, primarily, but also for non-self-righteous moral reasons...I've been gay-friendly and environmentally aware and committed for an awful long time...much of my study in grad school was of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. and Ghandi's Independence Movement in India...I have this really soft spot in my heart for outsiders, the downtrodden, and others that it is all too easy to exclude or hate or hurt or repress...I generally have a much stronger commitment to keeping people together on a team or in a group or in a family or a world than most people do...I genuinely care about people from all backgrounds, even people who it is very easy to not care about or to hate...

In all personal and social ways, people would probably recognize me as a liberal...

Except one really important caveat...I don't think that liberals have all the right answers...and on many very important questions, I think conservatives, particularly more libertarian conservatives -- the Economist may just be the smartest periodical in the world as far as I am concerned -- have better answers...and I'm not shy about saying so...Which is kind of awkward, sometimes, when you are in social gatherings where liberals dominate, I have to say...

Now, I would far prefer to deal with that kind of awkwardness with so many friends than somehow align myself with the nasty, vengeful, punitive, controlling sort of conservativism that characterizes, say, the Chicago Sun that I read for a bit while we were visiting Chicago...and I'm definitely not socially conservative, though I do very much understand the concerns of social conservatives...I just think a moral society is best achieved with more freedom and thought than with more control and punishment and conversion...and like Mark Twain, I just think the whole world would be a lot better off if it just wasn't so obsessed with morality and controlling one another in all kinds of unhealthy ways, even as I think moral concerns are important and valuable concerns in a free society...

But I seriously digress...It was a great time, in most respects...but also an awkward one, at times, because I'm just not a radical...and I felt like my liberal friends were being somewhat unfair to conservative ideas and thought while we talked politics...I also though folks could be a little obsessed with forensics success, at times...I was surrounded by national champions:):)...but that's for another day:):)...

Anyway...we talked about Israel and Lebanon, health care and education, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and a whole lot of forensics...

And I guess the biggest thing I took back with me is that I'm just kind of tired of all the fighting, I guess...

Brian and Bond, my fellow extemp leaders, were right and I was dead wrong, as it turned out, in our conversation about Martin Luther King...they were saying that King got more radical as the civil rights movement progressed...I was convinced that King's later years were the ones where he got more focussed on love and compassion and changing hearts and minds...And I was wrong, as it turned out...King did get more radical over the years, it seems...he advocated a poverty Bill of Rights and for racial reparations, and social democratic programs and politics...none of which I would advocate, today -- and just think those same concerns are better cared for in the civil society than by the government -- but none of which are serious concerns for me...

The big concern for me was King's support for the various left-wing revolutions of the 60's...that advocacy -- of revolutions that killed so many and destroyed so much over the the course of the 20th Century which so many liberal and Marxists, like conservatives who rationalize the means of Nazis and Fascists, never seem to be able to face up to and take responsibilty for and which is the basis of support for so many terrorist groups, today -- is the one most seriously dissappointing quality in King's legacy, as far as I'm concerned...his cheating was human and not something that seriously concerned me in the same way that this kind of ill-considered advocacy of revolutionary activity that has so undermined so much progress in so many areas of the world and killed and maimed many people and their futures in the process...And as someone who spent so much time studying Martin Luther King in grad school -- civil rights and poverty issues are at the heart of the reason why I wanted to teach in inner city schools -- I was just kind of embarrassed to find out that I didn't know about King's advocacy for left-wing revolutions (King argued, foolishly, that America was on the wrong side of such revolutions)...

Apparently King not only seriously underestimated his own and Mahatma Ghandi's non-violent legacies, he was unaware that it was left-wing revolutionaries that would go on to kidnap the 11 Israeli athletes killed at the 1972 Munich Olympics...and left-wing revolutionaries who would slaughter millions of Vietnamese after the U.S. abandoned its military engagements there...and left-wing revolutionaries who sponsor terrorist groups including the Irish Republican Army, the armed ETA Basque separatists in Spain, the FMLN in El Salvador, the Sandanistas in Nicaragua, and several other bloody left wing terrorist and revolutionary groups in the latter half of the 20th Century...not to mention the Bolshevik, Maoist, and Communist revolutions in Cuba and North Korea...and certainly not to mention the domestic left wing terrorism in the United States...the Weathermen, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Panthers (though, to King's credit, he was also very critical of violent and radical civil rights organizations like the Panthers and the later ironically-titled Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee)...

Plenty of right wing radical activity that was bloody and ugly in the 20th century...Nazis in Germany, Fascists in Italy and Spain, radical Islam in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Palestine and much of the Middle East...Al Queda and the Muslim Brotherhood...dictators like Augusto Pinochet of Chile and Major General Park Chung Hee of South Korea, the KKK and militia groups including the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in the late 90's...

The lists of terrorist and violent groups who have killed and maimed and threatened and bullied in the name of ideology is really far too long for me to list them all...And the point really is that everyone thinks they're right...and everyone seems to be willing to go to some pretty gruesome extremes to prove just how right they are...And this weekend, I just got really tired of listening to people rationalize and excuse all that bullshit...like somehow it was/is really more noble than it really was/is...

I'm tired of fighting about it...but I'm more tired of people acting like its no big deal...like murdering people in the name of a cause is really ok...like the only thing that matters is winning, no matter who gets hurt...

I have to say that the reason why I don't identify as a Big-L liberal anymore...is because I am just so goddamned tired of listening to this bullshit like it should taken more seriously than it really should...It is kind of interesting to me how the debaters I meet -- the far more aggressive competition between speech and debate I think most of my debate friends would agree -- have tended to be far more moderate than many of my forensics friends...crazy, huh?...I had this really long, great talk with this CEDA debate champ from University of Northern Iowa about truth and reconcilation, which happens to be central to a lot of my political thinking and was the case that she ran in the final round the year she won the national championship...she was thinking of working on John McCain's campaign because she, like I, was terrified of Hillary Clinton as President and because she thought McCain would swing the country left (the latter reason I doubt, but I imagine that she, like I, is beginning to see beyond the blinders of ideology)...

I also met some really smart, bitchy, ambitious liberal women this weekend, that totally reinforced my feeling that I am much more interested in someone nice and decent and smart for a wife/life partner much more than someone smart and ambitious, alone...the latter can also mean heartless, I'm learning -- my concern about Hillary Clinton, really -- and I just want no part of that for my daily life...I met a girl this week who reminded me very much of my first really serious girlfriend, Jenny Burrington, who was and is a doll, really, and it totally reinforced for me that I would, in a heartbeat, rather date someone nice and decent than brilliant and bitchy, any day of the week...though I must say that Illinois State is largely a team of really wonderful girls and guys...

I guess I'm just weary of the fighting...and mostly, of all the rationalizations of all the people we kill in the name of the "right" ideology...which doesn't exist...never has existed...never will exist...I feel very much like Thomas Hobbes in 17th Century Great Britain trying to make sense of all of the religioius warfare of his time, watching the foolish divisions among Catholics and Protestants rationalize warfare that would take so much life for so little reason...and beginning to understand the first and foremost responsibility of government is to protect people from that kind of violence...though much more squarely with John Locke, Jacques Rousseau and John Stuart Mill that such protection must be democratic and protect freedom as fundamental...

As I watch the Bush Administration and the Olmert government in Israel rationalize an ugly incursion in Lebanon and longer term warfare that has clearly not ended hostilities in the Middle East and never will...ever...absent a realistic peace process...

I am sad as I watch so many of my friends line up on sides...rooting on the killing and the death...in the name of ideology...I just want it all to end...And the excuses for it that make it all possible, most of all...The world has just taken this really ugly path the last 6 years or so...conservatives...liberals...even many moderates...it's been a period of coercion and force rationalized as if they really can solve problems if we would just give force a chance (John Lennon must be rolling in his grave)...

That 14-year-old kid in Talahassee died on the altar of all of our hubris...

And I just want it all to end...

Do people really believe that the Soviet Union could have made the independence efforts in Lithuania and Latvia and Estonia go away by rolling in tanks?...do people really believe that China and Cuba and North Korea and Vietnam really will be the last remaining bullwark of a socialist utopia? Do people really believe that democracy, at its heart, is really no different from Nazism or Fascism or Communism or theocracy, even as all of these ideologies can be accomodated in a democracy? Do people really believe that murder and political blackmail and violence are really no different from democratic engagement and discourse to resolve important problems that humanity faces?...Do people really believe that we can make terrorism in Palestine, Lebanon, and Afghanistan, Communism in North Korea, China, and Cuba, the nuclear ambitions of a theocratic democracy like Iran, or any of the other most important problems of the world go away with military force?...Are we that completely blind to the power of ideology and politics and the universal aspirations of freedom and equity?

I'm just tired of all the pointless, destructive fighting...I'm tired of so many people being killed for absolutely no good goddamn reason at all...and certainly no reason that has ever ended any of the hostilities...

That's why Louis Armstrong's 1970 version of What a Wonderful World was always Brandi's and my song...

As Louis says,

"Some of you young folks have been sayin' to me, 'Hey pops, what you mean what a wonderful world? How about all them wars all over the place? You call them wonderful? And how about hunger and pollution? They ain't so wonderful either.' Well how about listening to old pops for a minute? Seems to me, it ain't the world that's so bad, but what we're doing to it. And all I'm sayin' is see what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love, baby, love. That's the secret. Yeah. If lot's more of us loved each other, we'd solve lots more problems. And man, this world would be Odessa."

I just want all this stupidity to end, is the truth...

I'm realistic...but I also know that its the only way through this mess...it's like a peace process in the Middle East...I'm realistic that the Administration, the Israeli Government, and Hezbollah and Hamas are not going to take up a formal peace process, right now, for whatever stupid, foolish, destructive reasons...but I'm also realistic about the long term enough to know that there is no way out of that mess without a mutual commitment to a peace process...no side will ever admit defeat...they will go on fighting until they finally exhaust their foolish rationalizations and save some face through a peace process that they, like Gerry Adams in Northern Ireland, develop something of a genuine commitment to that peace...

But what I'm most frustrated with...is the 6 billion or so people throughout the world who just can't seem to find it in themselves to think for themselves and to stop encouraging this ugly nonsense and find the courage to speak in favor of a world where they can be independent thinkers and not have to root on this ugliness as if one side or the other is ever going to win in any meaningful way...

Our children and grandchildren, I'm convinced, will look back on all of this foolishness and shake their heads as we do, today, at Catholics and Protestants fighting for dominance in 17th and 18th century European governance and imperial ambitions...

So much destruction...so little reason...

And I just want it all to end...

And it'd be nice to surrounded by more folks who also want it to end and aren't interested in rooting on the various groups around the world who murder in the name of ideology and being right...

The Economist did this really great piece in their recent Kim Jong Il Rocketman edition celebrating the political accomplishment of the Socialist Prime Minister of Spain Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in brokering a deal with the ETA, the militant wing of Basque separatism in Spain which is responsible for the deaths of approximately 800 people, and criticizing Spain's conservative leaders for opposing the deal...the conservative editors of the Economist surely recognize the proven success of the Belfast Agreement in their home country of Great Britain in ending terrorist violence in Northern Ireland with the approval of the Clinton and Blair governments and the significance of conservatives in Britain supporting that agreement...

And that's what democratic engagement should look like...looking a reality square in the face and doing the right thing and being willing to criticize even those you identify with if it means moving the world ahead several paces...The consistent theme in so many Economist articles, these days, is "bad to worse"...that's how so much of the world has moved in the recent weeks...bad to worse...and there's nothing that good faith observers can do but watch it, note it, and hope for an end to all of the senseless tragedy...

I just want it all to end...and I especially want for average people to stop rationalizing it like it's somehow all better than it really is...

Martin Luther King was mistaken when he excused left wing revolutions for the sake of social democratic ends...supporting democratic revolutions is one thing and certainly justifiable when there is no way to peacefully usher in a democracy, as was the case with the American revolution...a democratic revolution, not an ideological revolution, largely...but justifying perpetual violence and revolution for the sake of an ideology, any ideology, except to usher in a democratic government where people can peacefully and freely decide these questions together is wrong...and so are everyone who rationalize it today...it has caused and causes today so much death, destruction, violence, and power gambles that are arrogant and fail to face their own terrible legacy...

King's far stronger legacy was his legacy of non-violence and his commitment to peace and democracy and love and compassion and forgiveness and the more authentic justice that comes out of those impulses and values...it is that legacy that is the basis for the truth and reconciliation processes in South Africa, East Timor, Chile, and around the world...and the only hope for escaping the cycle that Desmond Tutu and Pablo Friere and Martin Luther King and Mohatma Ghandi and Henry David Thoreau and The Buddha and Jesus of Nazareth have so eloquently cautioned us against of groups exacting revenge one another into perpetuity...and the practical justification for a world of love and compassion and decency...

And I just want all the violence and bloodshed in the name of ideology and certainly in King's name to end...

We will never resolve our various political concerns until this fundamental respect for one another is taken more seriously...and as often as humanity seems wont to prove that it is unworthy of such faith, it not only stumbles forward in this direction, consistently...this direction is the only direction that it can stumble forward into lest be stuck in cycles of violence and power and destruction and control and inequality that humanity is forever trying to escape...

And as the Economist recognizes...this is just a really bad time for humanity, right now..."bad to worse"...has been for a while, truth be told...

Darkest before the dawn, I can only hope?

All I know is that it has to end...Including the moral support that we all provide to this ugliness...

"Seems to me, it ain't the world that's so bad, but what we're doing to it. And all I'm sayin' is see what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love, baby, love. That's the secret. Yeah. If lot's more of us loved each other, we'd solve lots more problems. And man, this world would be Odessa."

That's the secret...he's right about that...whether we find the courage to dig deep and move in that direction or not, at this moment...

Love,
Ben

To tame the savageness of man...

I found this video link, yesterday, in the Miami Herald, and I'm still mourning this kid's death...

Wrongful death suit in the case of 14-year-old killed in boot camp custody...Miami Herald...July 13, 2006...

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/15025553.htm

Apparently Martin was turning things around for himself...

He was a kid...somebody's son...Tallahassee Democrat...March 3, 2006...

http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060303/NEWS01/603030348/1010

...which makes this case all the more tragic...The sad irony is that the officers involved, here, clearly needed counseling as much as this kid did for anger/control issues...but so much of what we say people need to resolve situations like this reinforce these officers in their more aggressive and controlling ways...

Sadly, we often tell teachers and officers and parents and others who work with kids if they would just get a strong enough hand on their kids, then, finally, their kids would know who's boss...and in this case, it meant that this 14-year-old kid died...

It's beginning to occur to me that the reason why our children and grandchildren have to learn our lessons for us is because our persistent tendency towards hubris in our assumption of having arrived at final answers on human questions that the Greeks warned us of more than a millenia ago is, like Jesus' observation about the need to pluck the beam from our own eye before we pluck the splinter from our neighbor's eye, a truism better than an approbation...

Future generations and families of kids like Martin will hopefully forgive us all for the role we play in this death...and we do play a role...whether we acknowledge that or not...

Love,
Ben

"Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until at last, in our own despair, comes wisdom, by the awful grace of God...Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago. To tame the savageness of man, and make gentle the life of this world."
- Bobby Kennedy upon the news of the death of Martin Luther King

Making peace...

Well I think I've finally made some peace...

After 4 years of torturing myself about my decision to leave grad school...I think I've finally decided that, on balance, I think it was a good decision...

It had all kinds of consequences I never expected...alienating my professors...foreclosing, for now, my Ph.D. and two M.S.Ed's (gifted and adaptive special education)...abandoning what I think was a really brilliant dissertation idea, that I could never have done a millionth of the job I'm capable of now that I've spent 4 years in the real world...

But the most important consequence it had for my life...and the reason why I think that it was on-balance, the right decision...

Is because it made me less afraid...

Of everything...of grad school...of writing deadlines...of being fired...of taking unpopular positions...of what kind of person and leader that I might be...of innovating...of defying ideology and orthodoxy...of following my heart and conscience and developing a more genuinely strong and independent mind...

I left...and I proved my mettle...and of that, I'm really proud...

It'd be great for those things to come with a Ph.D...

But if that or anything comes at the expense of what really matters in an education or a life (which it definitely felt like was the case when I was in grad school, even today)...then fuck it:):)...

As it turns out...for all of the twists and turns of my decision to leave...all of the economic uncertainty, the really profound self-doubt, the loss of faith from my family and some of my friends...

I actually think after the whole ordeal...

That it may really have been worth it...

Crazy, huh?...

Because it put my feet underneath me...it made me me my own man...and it demonstrated to me, at least, a commitment to learning and independent thought no matter what fears I might have had about the matter...

That's what I wanted out of a graduate education...

And quite accidentally, much of the time, that's exactly what I got...

Now, 4 years later, I have come to terms, much better with my own personal limits and the more universal limits that life offers...gotten to know people and the real world much closer and in person than I ever had in grad school...secured a much more real sense of independence and freedom, financially as much as anything else, ironically...

I've developed my thought much more than I was able to do when I was in grad school, I think (grad school was an invaluable experience, giving me the time and opportunity, as much as anything else, to expand my thinking and challenging me to think about life with my deepest capacities...but there's just something about the real world that anchors all that thought that I very much appreciate today in a way I couldn't before I left)...and developed a far more independent mind and outlook than I had before I left school...

I wish all the pressures of grad school and all the mistakes I made amidst them wouldn't have taken down Brandi's and my relationship...

If there was one thing in the world I could take back, it would be that...

But I'm glad she's happy and in love, now...I wish I would have been better about it, up front...I just didn't know anything about heartbreak like that, I suppose...I know better now...

As I head off to this camp...I remember why I loved debate and forensics so much...all the learning, and the friendships, and the bullshitting, and the love of serious thought for its own sake...

I put together what I think is this really killer extemp source and serious policy thought resource list that I can't wait to talk with the kids about next week...

It will be my first informal chance to teach kids about policy...

I have these really great ideas for teaching policy in a university and even high school and middle school setting, as much as possible...more open-ended reading and sharing (with none of the bullshit lying that college students have to perpetually engage in to pretend to have read shit they really haven't)...more student direction and more equitable relationships with students...more serious problem solving and workshopping of real-world problems with accountability to serious analysis and data-collection about efforts...all kind of laid back and totally consistent, as much as possible, with a healthy and balanced life that doesn't create, I hope, the kinds of pressures that help take down mine and Brandi's relationship...

All the shit I wanted more of in school...

And I have a week, here, where I get try some of those out...

I'm looking forward to it, and the beginning of the school year here soon enough...

And there's a dance at the camp, so that can't be a bad thing:):)...I'm bringing plenty of music, though I've lost my B-Side compilation version of Ice Cube's It Was a Good Day (a WSU team favorite) so I'll probably have to burn some CD's, for Bond to take with him as much as for us for the week:):)...

My one experience with making a tape for a friend was a collection of audio and music dedicated to love and politics for Brandi, when she was in D.C...this will probably have to be someting similar, including Bobby Kennedy's impromptu eulogy for Martin Luther King in Indianapolis in April of 1968, the most beautiful political speech I have ever heard in my entire life...

That speech captures better than any other I've ever heard the essence of politics and life...

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/robertkennedyonmartinlutherking.html

"To tame the savageness of man, and make more gentle the life of this earth"...

Yeah...that's a worthy way to live one's life, I think...

Have a great week, everyone...

Love,
Ben

A life for myself...and not believing my own bullshit, so much...

Now playing: Lay Down Sally...Wonderful Tonight...Eric Clapton (turns out Slowhand is a pretty decent album:):)...

I've got a week to get some important stuff done in my life before I head off to Normal, IL...I've been a serious slacker these last couple of weeks, but in a good way...I spent 12 years in school being crazy ambitious and anxious the entire time that I was going to somehow fuck it up in some major or minor way...

And now...4 years after I did kind of fuck it up -- but also got some independence for myself, as a scholar and as a person...as a grown up -- the great thing is that I'm not afraid the way I was then...

In preparation for this trip, my conversations with Bond (via email) have totally reminded me of just how crazy ambitious I was when I did forensics...how political I was (and sadly, much of the time, successful in my politicking)...

When I went to grad school, I had had enough of that bullshit...I could see how patently superficial and useless all of the political nonsense was...and I was totally committed to a more genuine, honest academic experience in grad school...

In the biggest picture, that's what got me in trouble, in grad school....that I wanted too pure an experience...that I was just too goddamned ambitious and demanding of myself and others than really was feasible...or fair to people, probably, in many ways...

But I was young and dumb and unrealistic...and now I have a whole life ahead of me to take the lesson learned and to appreciate a teaching and scholarly career, as well as a life as a husband and father and whatever I end up doing with my life, with a more realistic understanding of the possibilities and limitations of teaching and scholarship, of the consequence of my life, and of people, in general...

I've got a life to get organized before I head off to Illinois State next week (which I just found out, tonight, was the 2005 AFA-NIET Championship team...I had no clue I was signing up for such an ambitious gig...but Bond assures me that they are very laid back and like having fun as much as competing, which is just alright by me)...

In the meantime, all this free-time outside of any real serious institution or structure (except for my June classes) has taught me this really valuable lesson...

That my life...and everyone's life...is, ultimately, my/their own...if things are going to get done in my lifetime to achieve my goals, I will have to do them...and I, ultimately, am completely responsible for those efforts...

A lesson better learned, in my experience, by having the freedom to determine my own destiny than strictly following any particular template for life...

Having experienced that freedom out of grad school and fairly thoroughly thought about the possibilities and limitations that one life can have on this world...I think it's about time I start organizing my life the way that would better support my aspirations...

Also...something I'm definitely learning from my adventures at the International Debate board at EZBoard.com and out of my discussions with Carson in a way that I think is really good...and something that virtually everyone is guilty of, I think, especially in politics and political discussions...

I'm learning not to take my bullshit so seriously, any more...there is so much more that I don't know than I do know...history, knowledge, principles, ideas...especially in policy discussions...nooone knows exactly how to deal with all of life's most serious issues...the amount of stuff that I don't know so far exceeds the amount that I do know, that it gets very hard to keep up with my ignorance, much of the time...

I've decided to give it a rest, some...to make some peace with it...to do my best...and offer what I have to offer...

And spend the bulk of my time with my family and my wife (someday) and raising my kids and just kind of learning and growing and not taking myself nearly as seriously, any more (I know...Brandi's got to be thinking, "Finally!":):)...

Hope everyone has a great week...

Love,
Ben

The freedom of conscience and thought...

David McCullough, one of the nation's most respected historians, is interviewed in this week's USA Weekend by descendants of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Patrick Henry...

http://www.usaweekend.com/06_issues/060702/060702founding_fathers.html

It's fascinating the perspective that McCullough has to offer about how human and yet how idealistic the founding fathers were...and his analysis of John Adams' last words to some of his supporters when asked what they should say on his behalf at a ceremony commemorating the 50th Anniversary celebration of the Declaration of Independence, the July 4th that both he and Thomas Jefferson died...

He replied...

"'Independence forever.' They asked him if he'd like to add a little bit more to that. He told them, 'Not a word!' He was thinking about independence of the mind -- the freedom to think for yourself -- not just freedom of religion or speech. To many, this is one of the greatest of freedoms."

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, ideological and political rivals during much of their political careers, reconciled their personal relationship later in life and wrote letters that are some of the more thoughtful reflections on American democracy of that time and, McCullough argues, of all time...

They both died the same day...July 4, 1826...the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of the Independence...

And it's interesting to me that McCullough would affirm what I agree was probably the most fundamental of freedoms that the founding fathers offered us...

The freedom of conscience and thought...

It's a freedom so often taken for granted...and yet so fundamental to who we are, today...one that we have much work and thought to reconcile with our policies and ideas about how to improve humanity and our country...but one that is our most fundamental guide to resolving the questions and issues we face...

Gordon Woods, another most respected historian of the American Revolution, argues in The Radicalism of the American Revolution, one of his finer histories of the Revolutionary War period, that the history of America is not only progressive, in the sense that it improves over time and that it follows ideals that are both held and discovered over time by each generation...but that it is also guided, ultimately, by the only most important power, alone...

The power of ideas...

His Radicalism of the American Revolution both details the radical elements -- both in the contemporary sense of radicalism, meaning extremes on all sides of political questions of the day, but also in the classical sense of radicalism, as in the affirmation of democratic principles and reform, such as universal suffrage -- but how the great shaping force of American history during this period was the slow evolution of thought...

From monarchy to republicanism to democracy...

It's a brilliant book, if you ever get the chance...and one of the most deeply insightful histories of the American Revolutionary period that I have ever read...

The book is divided into the progression of that history along those three ideas...how monarchy, republicanism, and democracy each hold, lose, and then gain sway over the American imagination...and often in ways that framers never imagined and, at times, never intended...

It's brilliant...and a brilliant illustration of how ideas and ideals are the great animating forces of the progression of history...and a powerful and difficult to rebut illustration of both the idea that history is progressive and that people improve, over time, and that it is the highest ideals and the strongest ideas that lead us in more progressive directions...

The American Revolution, Woods argues, was not the kind of social revolution embodied in the French Revolution...it was a much more orderly transition from more hierarchical relationships between governors and the governed, patriarchs and plebians, fathers and sons to a more democratic and egalitarian society invested with faith in middle class virtue...and a progression of ideas, from more monarchical to more democratic thought and relationships...

And it is likely, I think, that the animating nature of thought was the reason why founding fathers like Adams and Jefferson believed that independence of thought, freedom of conscience was one of if not the most important freedom that the American Revolution and the American democratic experiment offered Americans and the world...

We so take it for granted...our freedom to think for ourselves and to exercise independence of thought...the Founding Fathers did as well...Adams is famous for passing the Alien and Sedition Acts, some of the most restrictive legislation on freedom of speech and conscience in American history, repressing criticism of the new American government, especially in war time...

But he and Jefferson, both, had lived through a period of world history where that freedom was not so easy to come by...and they finally decided that they would be willing to risk life and limb to secure that freedom, so that their progeny would be able to take that freedom for granted and work to affirm it at every point at which it was challenged...

This Independence Day offers us the opportunity to reflect on that freedom and the way that it animates our lives and how, like the Founding Fathers, we are human even a we strive for ideals, and how we often take that freedom -- the freedom of conscience and thought -- for granted...and how opportunities for reflection can give us a better appreciation for how important that freedom is...

I hope everyone has a great 4th of July...a time to reflect humbly on the powerful ideals that shape our lives...

Love,
Ben