Madeleine Albright

Melissa got free tickets this week for her and I to see Madeleine Albright speak at KU last night.

It was a great talk. Madeleine is not just brilliant, she's wise and she's got a very decent heart. She's politically savvy. She was a too anti-Bush and her comments on the Iraq war being the worst foreign policy disaster ever were more hyperbole than substance, I thought, but she had so many good things to say about ways to deal with serious problems in the world like Iraq, the Palestine and Israel, proliferation of nuclear weapons by Iran and North Korea, and the tragedy of genocide in Sudan.

It was really refreshing to listen to someone talk on international policy who took thought and dialogue and diplomacy and engagement and compassion and realism seriously. She may be the strongest Secretary of State that America has had, though I do wish she would have been less petty about our current and also brilliant -- but not quite so brilliant or wise -- Secretary of State in Condoleeza Rice, or Condi's boss, the President.

There were many things that struck me about the talk that I should write about at some point.

But maybe the most important was that after spending so many of my days among children and in the inner city, it was really refreshing to spend time with people who I could more intuitively trust more.

People who attend a lecture at a liberal arts university may be more of a homogenous liberal crowd than I think is good for discussion and engagement. But people who take time to attend a discussion by Madeleine Albright, and a free one at that, are good people, for the most part. People who care about the world beyond their own day to day lives. They are people who think, and for the right reasons, often. They are people who care. And they are the kind of people that I like to be around.

After days upon days of people openly disrespecting me, perpetually finding ways out of work, people flaunting how much they don't care about others or anything of any real importance, it was nice to spend time with people not quite as lost in their own bullshit.

This was what I loved about Brandi's and my time in Washington. We didn't spend time with politicians or lobbyists. Brandi and I spent time with people like Theo Brown and Carolyn Lukensmeyer who were just more genuinely good people. Who came to D.C. for the same reason Brandi and I loved our time there: because they wanted to do good.

And those people are good people to spend time with, liberal or conservative, Democrats or Republicans, Christians or Jews or Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists or any of the major or minor world religions or ethnic groups, as flawed as even all of them and all of us are now and forever into perpetuity.

A lot of good people have gotten kind of intolerable, recently; self-righteousness makes people kind of hard to put up with, sometimes.

But self-righteousness doesn't lead, not for real. And we can only live without more genuine leadership for so long.

That kind of leadership comes from more genuine people like Madeleine Albright and her boss who she had quite a bit of good to say about, President Clinton.

And the most genuine leadership, of course, does not come from the formal power of political leaders. It is the example that they offer and that which we provide ourselves, each of us for ourselves.

Madeleine Albright and Bill Clinton are two such decent people, and for many reasons, in my book, Madeleine in particular.

And it was nice being around people who took thought more seriously than so much of the bullshit that passes for something of substance in this world. It had been a long time since I had been in the presence of people who took substance that seriously.

And last night was a refreshing coming home, in that regard.

Love,
Ben

Why I'm currently leaning toward Rudy Guliani for President

Guliani to Hillary: 'Stop This Blame Thing', Newsmax, Thursday, September 28, 2006

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/9/27/200759.shtml?s=al&promo_code=262E-1

Because this is what leadership looks like.

If the smartest people won't run because Americans don't like to be challenged to think, enough, and because political folks play too many games with personal histories, then I have to choose amongst the people with hats in the ring.

And Rudy is the best candidate, thusfar, by my lights. Barak Obama would be a better Democratic candidate, I think, if he would run. And I, for one, would support a Bill Bradley second run. As I would of Dick Lugar of Indiana, if he would run.

But Rudy's major strength as a Presidential candidate is that he knows what leadership in a crisis looks like.

Here is my picture in contrast between Rudy Guliani and Hillary Clinton.

When 9/11, Rudy got on the ground and was trying to figure out how he could help, especially considering the weight of his office.

When Hurricane Katrina his, Senator Hillary Clinton, representing one of the most powerful states in the Union, decided her most important task was to start a commission investigating the Bush Administration.

Rudy, like Bill Clinton, just has the instincts of a leader.

And Hillary Clinton just has the instincts of a party operative.

And that's why she doesn't deserve to be President, at this point, as far as I'm concerned.

There's much more to this conversation.

But I have bathroom duty to attend to:).

Love,
Ben

Daniel Madigan, the Pope, Islam, dialogue and freedom

Commonweal carries a fascinating discussion with Daniel Madigan, president of the Institute for the Study of Religions and Cultures at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, about the Pope, Islam, dialogue between Christians and Muslims and the significance of religious and other freedom -- and its denial in Muslim-majority countries -- in the reactions of Muslims to the Pope's comments.

http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php3?id_article=1743

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan -- http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/ -- for the recommendation.

Love,
Ben

Armando Iannucci on the Pope, Islam, and progress

Armando Ianucci wrote brilliantly, today, on the ridiculousness of the controversy over the Pope's comments on Islam.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1879703,00.html

The situation is ridiculous because the quotation, though unfair to the important moral and cultural legacy that Islam has served in much of the world, was also largely true.

The Pope quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor as saying: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Now, I don't know how wise and politically astute it was to call Islam evil. But his reference both to the legacy of forced faith and coversion by the sword is definitely a true legacy of Islam, as it is of Catholicism and Christianity, generally. And it's definitely roughly an "evil and inhuman" legacy, if you care at all about people getting killed because they won't convert to a religious faith. And what's really pissing of Muslims around the world today, I think, is that it is wholly relevant to far too much support by Muslims and non-Muslims, alike, for terrorism and violence to achieve political ends that need more dialogue and engagement and far, far less violence and intimidation to resolve the issues that the violence is meant to resolve, and clearly hasn't, no matter how many decades it has been used.

And at some level, I think what the Pope is saying is that if you don't like the legacy, perhaps Muslims should stop making excuses both for its history and its present in the form of terrorism in the name of Muslim values or Muslim identity or really terrrorism for any reason whatsoever. And if it pisses you off, perhaps murder for a religious or political end should piss you off more.

Do I think it was the wisest thing to say? No. But do I think it was accurate? Accurate enough, I think. And does there need to be a conversation about getting Muslims off of using the Koran or Islam or religious to excuse every murderous, violent, anti-Semetic, anti-Israeli, anti-American, anti-Western, anti-anything-that-would-rationalize-terrorism impulse that Muslims might have? Yes. And that is the real issue here, not whether Islam is inherently evil or inhuman, which is clearly is not.

Islam is clearly a very important and worthy religion and moral tradition in much of the world and worthy of study and respect by all peoples of the world.

And, like Christianity and Judaism, it is a legacy that is also rife with all kinds of dark impulses that it's adherents don't like to acknowledge.

And as Iannucci makes clear in this satire, what really is at stake in this and most divisions in the world, right now, is whether rationality and reason is going to will out, or whether the will to power, religious fervor, the forces of repression, or other illiberal forces are going to will out.

Iannucci sums up the case for rational progress in his quotation of President Warren Harding at the Republican Party convention in 1912. Harding argued:

'Progression is not proclamation nor palaver. It is not pretence nor play on prejudice. It is not of personal pronouns nor perennial pronouncement. It is not the perturbation of a people passion-wrought, nor a promise proposed. Progression is everlastingly lifting the standards that marked the end of the world's march yesterday and planting them on new and advanced heights today.'

Progress is lifting our sights higher, not bullshitting our way into oblivion. Progress follows the light of truth, not the propaganda and spin of the will to power. Progress, as Pope Benedict was arguing with his quotation, does not come at the blade of a sword (generally). Progress comes with the lifting of conscience above our the petty or vengeful historical moment. Progress comes with ideals lifted high, not by leaving our hearts and minds in the muck of a cynical past or present.

It's worth repeating:

"Progression is everlastingly lifting the standards that marked the end of the world's march yesterday and planting them on new and advanced heights today.'"

There's only one way out of our current political malaise. And it by raising our expectations for the future.

Thomas Hobbes did so for the world more than 300 years ago. Enlightenment thinkers like him did the same for a world lost in religious and political strife. It is time, today, that we did the same again.

Love,
Ben

Facing our failures

Charles Krauthammer wrote a review of Munich in January 2006 in the Jewish World Review that I just happened to come across that, for me, sums up why I am so fed up with the current political period.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0106/krauthammer011306.php3

Charles argues that because Spielberg's movie is implicitly critical of the Israeli assassination policy -- on moral and strategic grounds -- that Munich is anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian terrorist.

It is an intellectually dishonest criticism of Munich that so sickens me with its partisanship and the current hate and animus and ugliness amongst both liberals and conservatives towards one another, right now, that I just can't stomach the dishonesty of it anymore.

Liberals and conservatives have been so busy in the last 6 years playing games with radicalism, flanking, and other forms of political intimidation and warfare and muscling their way to power, that I just think most liberals and conservatives and most political people, generally, just can't even keep track of their own dishonesty anymore.

And, sadly, it's undermined most things decent about liberalism and conservativism as political and moral philosophies and ideas.

And Charles' unfair and intellectually dishonest criticism of Munich embodies that failure for people to even keep track of their own lies to themselves, anymore.

Spielberg's film is not the final comment on Israel or Palestine or assassination as a national policy or counterterrorism or any of these topics. Nor does it aspire to be. Stephen Spielberg says, personally, at the beginning of the DVD version that I saw, that he is looking to use the film to initiate dialogue about the policies between Israel and Palestine and assassination policy as a part of those policies to help bring some resolution to the situation in this region.

But what Spielberg's movie does do very clearly and well is to point out the clear failure of the assassination policy to protect Israelis. After every Palestinian involved with the 1972 massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, more Israelis are killed rather than less in retribution. The more Israelis use bloodshed to end the conflict with their less honest neighbors, the more Israelis are killed. It's a clear pattern that Spielberg paints well.

And the truth is that, like his liberal counterparts when they muscle for their own purposes, Charles Krauthhammer refuses to face that failure.

There is not one major important international policy issue that we face, today, that I can say definitively is an American or Israeli success with regard to terrorism (other than the Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland which has held together as a sustainable peace agreement throughout this period; a policy that was negotiated successfully by David Trimble and Gerry Adams , and under the leadership of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton).

The Iraq war is on the brink of civil war and well out of the hands of its American initiators. North Korea and Iran are clearly, by any objective standard, pursuing nuclear weapons more today rather than less because of American posturing and intimidation and threats around the issue. Lebanese and Arab peoples in the Middle East clearly hold more animus rather than less after the invasion of Lebanon, and none of the soldiers kidnapped, to my knowledge, have been returned as of yet.

If the current period is a referendum on the use of maximum force to leverage and intimidate one's way to resolution of important issues, including terrorism, totalitarianism, civil war and wars of self-determination, and any of the most serious violence and bloodshed that the world faces, right now, the clear verdict on that idea is that it is a failed one. The major victory that can be claimed during this period -- the pullout of Syria from Lebanon -- is largely due, from the series of events that took place leading up to the pullout, to the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon where Lebanese citizens and representatives protested in mass against their Syrian captors in view of the link between the assassination of their former Prime Minister and the Syrian government.

If the current period is to answer the question, "Do political and moral leaders in good faith committed to principles of peace and non-violence, as much as possible, get better results than political and moral leaders committed to violence, maximum force, intimidation, and bullying to achieve their ends?" the clear negative answer to the question that, at the very least should be answered at this point is "Those who use violence and intimidation and fear, primarily, to achieve their ends, and do not respect democratic ideals, institutions, norms, and commitments clearly fail more often than they succeed." I think we can also answer the question positively that those who use the least amount of force and aggression possible and only when absolutely necessary achieve their ends more successfully. But, at the very least, the last six years should be a clear demonstration that the opposite principles are clearly failed and wrong-headed.

And Spielberg's film is one of the most brilliant films I have ever seen to make that point clear with film rather than just with words.

And Charles' problem, at this point, is that he just can't face the failure of policies he's advocated.

But it's not just Charles. It's liberal advocacy groups. It's conservative advocacy groups. It's Democrats. It's Republicans. It's Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad. It's Israel's leadership and American leadership. It's too many liberal and conservative leaders and advocates to count.

There are notable exceptions.

Tony Blair, the liberal Prime Minister of Great Britain, is the statesman of the hour, as far as I am concerned, restarting negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, even during this dark hour. Jacques Chirac, the conservative President of France, has demonstrated an impressive commitment to both democratic engagement and a free economy and society that ranks him as a very important democratic leader of the day. Gerhardt Schroeder's ability to get over the arrogant uniltateral power-maneuvering of American President George Bush to join President Bush in trying to secure Iraq with German soldiers was an impressive move by a European leader. And Angela Merkl's ability to stand by the American President while his policy fumbles and to still be critical of its failures marks her as a more genuine conservative leader in Europe than the President's conservative defenders in America. And Mahmoud Abbas, despite too many anti-Israel and pro-terrorist utterances to be counted as the most serious democratic statesman, has been the proactive Palestinian peace partner that Israel has ever encountered.

But the partisan fighting and power-gambles have so deteriorated the political dialogue that a conservative like Charles Krauthammer cannot even consider the implicit and honest arguments of a director like Spielberg because to do so means to face the failure of the general commitment to retribution and maximum force and aggression possible that Charles shares with the Israeli governments that engaged in this failed and foolish policy.

Here is the bottom-line:

If we cannot face the clear failure of aggression and force to resolve our most serious conflicts -- moral, intellectual, political, violent, and otherwise -- rather than as a temporary method of dealing with immediate and clear threats to our physical security that has long-term consequences, absent trust in our intentions with the use of force and aggression, we will face this cycle of conflict, force, aggression, and violence till the end of humanity until we face that failure.

If we cannot face the counterproductive nature of our use of force as a means of guaranteeing our desires and the corrupting nature of power to imbue us with a sense of our own righteousness and a willingness to rationalize virtually anything and everything in the name of that righteousness, then we will live with the lack of resolution of our most serious problems and conflicts and righteous indignation without corresponding success in resolving the source of that indignation until we do.

Meaning, we will either face our failures or live with those failures until we do.

Louis Armstrong, -- like Martin Luther King when he taught about love and compassion as the basis for progress on race and poverty issues in America, like Robert Kennedy when he talked about love and compassion the day that Martin Luther King was killed, like Mohatma Ghandi who served as the example for Dr. King, like Henry David Thoreau whose Civil Disobedience was the inspiration for Ghandi, like Jesus and Buddha before them who had taught about the moral and spiritual advantages of a philosophy of love and compassion and forgiveness and experiencing pain as a natural part of life -- is so right in the introduction to What a Wonderful World that he gave for the 1970 live version that I first heard on The Fabulous Louis Armstrong when I was in graduate school.

"All I'm saying 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 lots more of us loved each other, we'd solve lots more problems. And man, this world would be Odessa."

Armstrong was speaking to young people in 1970 who challenged his song with the notion that the world could hardly be wonderful with so much war and hunger and pollution. A refrain that we could easily repeat today, and many, many liberals and conservatives clearly still do.

But Louis was right. It is our lack of love and compassion and respect for one another that is our most serious obstacle to resolution of the most serious problems of humanity, not our lack of fear and force and aggression. And the last 6 years should serve as a clear verdict on the failure of fear and force and aggression to inspire the most critical changes that humanity is in need of to anyone honestly evaluating that legacy.

Most awful to me is how dishonest the will to power makes all those engaged in it with each other and with themselves. It very much helps me appreciate the commitment of intellectuals and academics to an honest discussion, including and especially serious and controversial political issues.

Dishonest forces persistently exploit the failure of decent and moderate people to arrive at final answers on all problems that require on-going discussion, debate, thought, and consideration to arrive at better answers so that they can justify efforts that are explicitly intellectually dishonest and destructive.

And the explicity dishonest of these efforts is supported by the implicit dishonesty on all of our parts that thought and engagement do not matter and that force and repression solves problems rather than serving as the primary obstacle to their resolution.

In fact, it is so clear that repression is the primary obstacle since it is repressive and violent problems such as genocide and terrorism that figure as humanity's most serious unresolved problems in the 21st century.

And the larger problem that makes this possible is the utter foolishness of most people to believe that one repressive force or another will save them from the dangers that the repressive and inequitable forces of the world have to offer.

And the general obstacle that we all face in making the steps forward that would lead to genuine progress is facing that failure. The biggest obstacle to progress, right now, is not, at all, the absence of the right laws or the rule of law. It is our failure to face the failures of force and aggression to solve our most serious problems.

Our failure to take conscience and thought and intelligent engagement and the freedom to develop them as seriously as they deserve is the most serious failure that humanity faces right now and has faced since its beginning.

And our failure to face our failures will not make them go away. It will mean more failures of policy, conscience, and thought until we face those failures.

If we want resolution of our most serious problems, we will need to face our failures. If we cannot, we can expect more until we do.

To face those failures will need forgiveness and an acknowledgement of our humanity.

And that is the essence of our humanity and of our progress.

That is why love and compassion and forgiveness is the heart of our humanity and of human progress.

Absent love, compassion, and forgiveness, there is no real progress. No matter how much we try to pretend otherwise.

Because love and compassion and forgiveness and our ever expanding commitment to our own personal humanity and the broader family of humanity in the world around us is the essence of that progress. As we fail to expand that commitment, we fail to make real progress.

And facing that failure with all the love and compassion and forgiveness and openheartedness and openmindedness we can muster is the essence of our common humanity and the essence of our common future together.

Love,
Ben

The alternative to taking democratic self-governance seriously, part deux...

The Economist has a fascinating discussion of the deepening democratic and economic crisis in Zimbabwe (Thailand is in a similar boat, lately, of course and America and much of the international community is hanging on by the hair of their barely serious enough commitments to democratic institutions and ideals, though they are definitely taking steps backwards these last few years. Thank god democratic cultures are compensating for the lack of respect by democratic governments for democratic freedoms with a very quiet, very real individually-led resistance to pressure group and government imposition and a transition to a world of great and more genuinely democratic self-governance).

The Economist, Zimbabwe: No democracy, no bread and butter, September 21, 2006.

http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7950047

Money quote, as Andrew Sullivan would say:

"There is no resolution in sight. Clearing up the economy depends on sorting out the politics, and that depends on Mr Mugabe leaving office. He shows absolutely no sign of doing so. The police, the army and the ruling party are growing stronger, at the expense of such state institutions as parliament and the courts. Some observers believe that the situation is so bad it could become explosive.

So it could, but continued years of quiet desperation seem more likely. The opposition—the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the unions, the churches and civic groups—have failed to unite in putting as much pressure on the government as possible. They did get together in a “Save Zimbabwe” convention in July, promising mass resistance, but nothing came of it. Though other groups backed the unions' planned march, they made it clear it was not a joint action. The MDC, itself split, said it would watch with “keen interest” how the authorities reacted. Morgan Tsvangirai, the party's founder, has been saying since March that mass action is in the works, predicting a “winter of discontent”. But Zimbabwe's winter has passed, with much discontent, and little action."

Somehow it's not really occurred to the Economist editors that perhaps pressure doesn't work. Which seems so ironic, since American journalists and politicians and pressure groups spend so much time defending the practice, with a definitely transformed language in the last couple of years and simultaneously as if it's a foregone conclusion. Seems to me that if something was that true, you wouldn't have to spend so much time defending it. It would just be true. Hmm.

In the meantime, Zimbabwe becomes yet another example in another line of failures for pressure tactics to seriously resolve important political problems, in this case democratic government.

And if you take a look at this article you will discover that the absence of credible democratic institutions definitely has consequences for an economy and a people.

Maybe what Zimbabwe needs is some real pressure. Maybe we need to threaten to invade them. Or to actually invade them. Maybe that's too far. Or maybe that's not far enough. Who knows when you are working with such a sloppy conception of moderate sensibilities.

Here's a really wild suggestion: maybe pressure doesn't work (beyond the short term, that is, and with long term consequences).
I'm surprised with so much failure, we don't see more people really questioning this. Perhaps it is more important to be right than to seriously question your assumptions. Or maybe, and more likely, people are just too scared.

And maybe that is the larger problem.

Threatening paranoid dictators makes them more paranoid. But just causes with high ideals get a lot done in lieu of threats. Just ask the Baltic Republics and Mikhail Gorbachev. Or if you want to ask someone who has failed with pressure tactics, just ask Hamas or Hezbollah or Israel or the IRA or the Ulster Unionists or a million other parties who have pressured consistently as failed political strategy for much of their existence.

Failure is one of the best teachers for humanity. This one has got to follow it's own course, I guess. For the sake of the people of Zimbabwe, I sure hope this is a lesson that we learn sooner rather than later. Because a lot of lives and decent existence for many people hang in the balance.

Can you name a serious issue that has been resolved, for good, with pressure tactics?

The environment cleaned up? Wealth spread more equitably? Democracy guaranteed in Zimbabwe and Thailand? Nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea prevented? Morality restored? The war in Iraq under control?

Yeah, me neither.

It's amazing we have so much confidence in the strategy, isn't it?

It'd be harder to maintain our strategy if we didn't know that it was Malcolm X and not Martin Luther King who really ushered in civil rights in America.

Thank god pressure resolved issues of race for us.

I can't think of where terrorist groups get their taste for power and the use of force, can you?

Thank god we're much more civilized than all that.

Perhaps if we build a bigger nuclear warhead designed to pressure all issues of the day in the right direction, we can finally be rid of all of this thinking and debating and discussing and fruitless engagement and really get serious about taking some action in the world.

We'll call it the Democracy Bomb. We'll send Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta, Joe Peschi and Robert DeNiro, George Bush and Tony Blair to deliver to the world as our final and most serious pressure tactic to finally rid us all of all these pesky political, economic, and cultural problems.

We'll call our campaign The Right Answers on Democratic Questions or Else Campaign. We'll have U2 and Toby Keith do a concert benefit.
And we'll make Zimbabwe our example.

We send over enough bombs, people will eventually get the message.

And Zimbabwe will finally figure out that when we say Democracy, we mean business.

Or perhaps we could just take democratic ideals, institutions, thought, expression, engagement, negotiation, elections and free exchange more seriously.

Just an idea.

Ideas for Zimbabwe:

Why not organize people to vote, either with ballot boxes or with their feet or with their peaceful non-violent resistance to the Mugabe government, for a credible opposition candidate or party?

Why not organize peaceful non-resistance as was done in the Baltic Republics in the early 90's or the bloodless Cedar Revolution in Lebanon in 2005, to undermine confidence in the government's ability to enforce it's rule?

Why not just make clear to the government that noone recognizes their authority?

I would favor pressuring the Mugabe government if that tactic showed any promise anywhere in the world, right now. It doesn't.

So perhaps it's time to consider alternatives.

Maybe Martin Luther King wasn't such a dupe. Maybe Malcolm X was a distraction from the worthy progress that King was trying to make on civil rights issues. And maybe our cynicism about this legacy and the legacies of so many important democratic advancements is what is responsible for so many of our problems, today.

Just a thought.

Love,
Ben

The Johnny Cash covers...

I'm going to start this by saying that I fuckin' love Johnny Cash...not a little bit...a lot...

And the reason why I love Johnny Cash can be summed up in the large body of his music and his autobiography, Cash, and the brilliant movie about him, Walk the Line...

But most of all, it can be summed up in Johnny Cash's covers...

The reason why I love Johnny Cash is because he's a tough sum bitch who knew what it was like to be down and what it was like to want your freedom and who, out of all of that, seemed to be a friend to everyone he met...he seemed to love everyone...

And that love for people is found best, I think, in his covers...
Johnny Cash covered everyone...everyone...he's all over the fuckin' place...and I fuckin' love it...

If you have not heard the American Recordings by Johnny Cash, I highly, highly recommend them...

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

Covers of Trent Reznor's Hurt, Chris Cornell's Rusty Cage, Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus, the Eagles' Desperado, Paul Simon's Bridge Over Troubled Waters, Roberta Flack's The First Time I Saw Your Face, Neil Diamond's Solitary Man, Tom Petty's I Won't Back Down, David Allan Coe's Would You Lay With Me (in a Field of Stone) ...

And the best goddamned version of U2's One that I have ever heard, including U2's version, as much as I've come to love that song...

This and a million other classic Cash and covers...

And this is the same man who hung with Billy Graham and Ozzy Osbourne...

Johnny Cash had a lot of warts...but he was, at heart, a decent man who was a friend to everyone...

And that's why I love Johnny Cash...for the same reason why I love Mark Twain...

Because their fundamental natures were to like people...to love them...not to villify or judge or hurt them...

I also love U2's later music much more, now that I've heard Johnny Cash's cover of One...they can do whatever music they want to...I'd much rather them do whatever the fuck they want then follow any pattern that I or anyone else would set out for them...that goes for Brandi too...

Thanks, Johnny...for reaching out so far beyond yourself...and for helping me see worthiness in every person and every artist...

Love,
Ben

The alternative to taking democratic self-governance seriously

The Washington Post has a decent article on the military coup in Thailand subverting Thailand's democratic institutions to remove a Prime Minister who may be engaged in a cash for votes scheme to keep power.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/23/AR2006092300372.html?sub=AR

"Analysts note that Thaksin's adversaries had yet to exhaust all legal means of opposing him, and they said the checks and balances of Thailand's constitutional monarchy had recently begun to function.

With a nod from the king, Thaksin loyalists on an election commission were purged by the still largely independent Supreme Court -- opening the way for a more level playing field in elections that were set to be held in the coming months. Thaksin's critics say his party was already gearing up for a cash-for-votes campaign that would have kept him in power.

Instead, with the military now in charge, Thailand has reverted to martial law. At least four of Thaksin's top aides have been detained by military authorities, who have also outlawed political meetings of five or more people. TV and radio stations have been warned to prevent criticism of the new military government, with armed soldiers stationed inside or near major domestic networks as a reminder. The military authority on Friday also named an official body to probe allegations of corruption under Thaksin.

Resistance to military control has already begun to fester. A group of about 100 university students staged an ingenious protest on Friday near an upscale shopping mall. To avoid violating the new military rules against political gatherings, they clustered themselves in groups of twos or threes across a broad public area.

"This coup is not what we wanted," said a 19-year-old university protester who declined to give his name, but held a sign saying: "No to Thaksin, No to the Coup."

"Thailand needs real democracy," he said, "and we don't feel this was the right way to achieve it."

We take democracy for granted in the U.S. This is what it looks like when democratic institutions are not taken seriously. It's a path that humanity took for most of its history up until the last 200 years or so, in America and France and the rest of the civilized world, and still very recently for much of the rest of the world. It's a path full of tragedy and failure.

It is also the logical conclusion of a philosophy of force rather than thought and conscience being the primary weapon of those pursuing what they hope are good purposes. It is the reason why the democratic countries in the world support liberal institutions so seriously which support freedoms that we all take for granted.

We should not be surprised that terrorism is taken more seriously as a tool of warfare, that militarism is romanticized, that nuclear proliferation has taken such a sad turn, that radical and fundamentalist forces have gained so much sway, and that thoughtful engagement has taken such a back seat when the obsession in even the most mature democracies, these days, is with the clearly failed and foolish notion that real, sustainable change can be forced or that force can make those we disagree with feel the pain of our weapons of power.

We should not be surprised that force is used when force is so romanticized everywhere in the modern world, in this foolish and small-minded political moment. We shouldn't be surprised that when noone takes thoughtful engagement seriously, that weapons and power are used instead of thoughts and words.

The whole world has gone mad taking freedom for granted and all the while exercising as much as each person pleases.

Did noone take the same history classes I took?

Was the Catholic Church able to make Martin Luther or the Protestant Reformation go away with force and threats and intimidation? No.

Did the British Empire successfully squelch Mohatma Ghandi's Independence Movement with military force and political pressure? No.

Did local governments in the South in America undermine the civil rights movement with the use of dogs and watercannons and police force? No.

Did the Soviet Union put out the fire of freedom by murdering one or even millions of people? No.

Did Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime conquer the world around a philosophy of force and totalitarian rule by military strategy based around maximum show of force? No.

Can anyone name a successful form of government that has sustained itself primarily through force?

Nazism? Communism? Fascism? Imperialism? Monarchy? Even democracy?

Before the democratic revolution that formed the first sustainable democracy in the world in the United States, what animated those founders that committed their lives, fortunes, and liberty to the cause of a democratic America?

Did George Washington corral the American colonists and apply sufficient political pressure on them so that they would go along with the scheme? No.

Did Benjamin Franklin rally to force the colonial governments to support an effort to break free of Great Britain? No.

What animated the American revolution was ideals about humanity. Force can be used in the name of those ideals, when no other option is available. But it should be used as little as possible, not as standard operating procedure.

The American revolutionaries used force because they believed -- rightly, likely -- that peaceful means were not available to secure their freedom and their right to a self-determined government. They also believed, rightly, that democratic self-governance was more important than any particular issue between themselves and the British government.

Caleb Carr suggests in his essay in the American history volume in the What If? series of counterfactual history that the American revolution could have been avoided if an American representative in the British parliament, like William Penn, could have negotiated greater American representative voice in parliament and thus both averted the war and ended slavery in America earlier, given a British Empire that outlawed slavery decades earlier than the bloody civil war was able to produce in the United States.

But Caleb was wrong. The fundamental issue between the American colonies and the British government was not slavery or representation in the British empire. It was democratic self-governance. A principle that is fundamental to the world we live in today and fundamental to the free development of individual conscience.

Caleb, like so much of the democratic world, nevertheless the non-democratic world, these days, just did not take that principle, the ideals that animate it, and the realities that necessitate it, seriously enough.

Self-governance does not rationalize the use of force whenever a democratic or non-democratic government or group does not get its way. To the contrary, it necessitates freedom of conscience, thought, expression and all the rest that is fundamental to making the quality of our lives and the world better.

It is a principle that is variously found in liberal and conservative thought, and even amongst theocrats and radicals. It is found in Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and every other religious tradition, at some point in their histories. It is the cornerstone of a liberal intellectual tradition, which is, generally, the foundation for every freedom that we take for granted in modern liberal democracies.

It is the foundation for our ability to ponder the use of force at every turn and to study and support philosophies of force and intimidation like Communism, Naziism, Fascism, theocracy, and the lesser evils of socialism and the various impositions of liberal and conservative governments and bureaucrats.

That same liberal intellectual tradition is the basis for any seriously thougtful consideration of morality or conscience, which are meaningless without taking seriously the freedom of conscience and thought and study and learning and expression and engagement.

It is the foundation for our economic abundance, our educated civilization, our cultural traditions centered around thought and knowledge and understanding as the basis for our cultural evolution, above and beyond the biological evolution of intelligence that this tradition affords us the opportunity to study and consider and debate and discuss and prove and disprove and study and consider and debate still more.

And this idea of democratic self-governance -- by political institutions and by individuals -- is what affords all of this. It is the space, the breathing room, in which all of this development of our thoughts and ideas of life that animate our individual lives and cultural heritage takes place.

Humanity, decency, civility, generosity, humility, forgiveness, open-mindedness, compassion, intelligence, thoughtfulness, courage, idealism, perspective, realism, honesty, sincerity, equality, equity, freedom, love...

These and many more values are what animate this tradition of free thought and free will and conscience and which now and always transcend any and every legal or political institution, no matter its power.

This is the essence of goodness. We do not want a world where free people return slaves because fugitive slave laws command it. We do not want a world where Germans turn in Jews because of legal requirements. We do not want a world where freedom of religion is denied because Communist or other legal institutions deny it. We do not want a world where Indians or African Americans are denied their independence or their right to vote because laws deny them, where they are forced to comply or submit to those laws instead of non-violent resistance and peaceful stands of conscience.

We do not want a world where laws trump conscience.

We want a world where conscience does exactly as it should. Where conscience trumps law and anything else that comes in conflict with conscience and its development.

The learning and the egagement and the thought involved with conscience needs freedom to grow and thrive. Conscience, and those of us who depend on it -- which is all of us -- cannot grow and thrive without the freedom to do so. Our progress and the learning and growth that makes that progress possible is dependent on as much freedom as possible and necessary to support the learning that is the basis for our consciences.

And that freedom thus necessitates as little aggression as is possible and necessary to support that learning and growth.

It is a fundamental reality of human learning, growth, and development. And we ignore it at the expense of the credibility of efforts that do so and the credibility of those who do so.

The alternative to democratic self-governance, for individuals and for nations and governments, is not a world commanded by force. It is a world in constant conflict with that fundamental reality until it comes to terms with it.

It has always been the case. And it will always be the case, whether we recognize and come to terms with that fact of life or not.

Love,
Ben

Needing to relax...

I've been really stressed, lately...so many things that people want done...so little time to do them...

And I think I've been a little edgy with the kids...

Friday, progress reports went out...and I informed the kids, yesterday, that the largest proportion of kids in both classes got F's...

Why?

Because they sat and stared at me or socialized with their neighbors and didn't do or turn in any work...

And by last Friday, I was sick of it...so I let them hang on their F's until something changes...

It gets really annoying working your ass off all of the time, listening to complaints from parents, administrators (though they've been fairly good, this year) and the public (though terrorism has really overshadowed the very complex and difficult policy discussion around public education) about how you're never doing enough...

And, in class, watch students persistently stare at you or their neighbor...and do no work...

This is one of the little intangibles about pressuring for results that so many people don't account for when they decide that their desire to get stuff from other people is more important than their own welfare or their own sense of their lives...

The frenzy for it, these days, is so strong that quite a while ago -- 4 or 5 years ago -- I finally decided that I wasn't playing ball...

Once it becomes clear to you that people who are ordering you around or who are pressuring you for results are not really terribly interested in your welfare...

You learn to blow them off...

I'm sure that's how many kids feel about their teachers...and administrators...and many about their parents, sadly...

And I'm afraid that, lately, though my frustrations have plenty of validity...

That I've become one of those people...

So...

Today, I'm working on a permission slip...to see if maybe we can watch a movie, together, on Friday...

Ever since I saw Glory Road, this summer, I've wanted to show it to the kids...

It's a great movie, if you haven't seen it, about the 1963 Texas Western Miners winning the NCAA championship with the first college basketball team to start 5 black players, many of whom never planned on going to college, who not only defy all of the odds to win the tournament, but who earn college educations to go and contribute much more to their community than they had probably ever planned before graduating college...

We're going to watch the movie or do something to relax together, and not just be all work and no play...

Because I'm tired of being a grumpy teacher always complaining to the kids and to Melissa about how the kids won't do any work...

Before the last 6 years, there were plenty of people that I looked up to for guidance on how to work and live my life...

Now there are very few...

And all I know is right now, this is what I and the kids need, I think...

Have a great week, everyone:)...

Love,
Ben

Expecting better from our leaders...

E.J. Dionne writes about all the ways that politicians will try to get your votes these next elections other than by having better ideas...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401416.html

Why do people makes themselves such easy targets for this bullshit?

Why would we spend all of our time trying to avoid thinking about the kind of world we want and have politicians be accountable to those better ideas than we would allow ourselves election after election to be propagandized and pandered to by manipulative lameasses?

Why would we so settle for such bad policy, such stupid and foolish consequences, such blatant bullshit in our elections processes...

Rather than just expect better?

Do we have no self-respect at all?

Surely we do...

You know what I expect out of this election?

Politicians who have better ideas to solve problems...I don't want slogans...I don't want the same old line of bullshit that didn't solve the problem the last time...I don't want stupid catch phrases meant to get me heated rather than to shed light on situations...

I want thought...I want serious thought...and I want political leaders who will challenge and inspire me and everyone else to think bigger, rather than pander to our smaller instincts...I want political leaders who hold high ideals, rather than those who will reinforce our baser impulses...I want politicians who seem like they genuinely care about people, rather than weasels who keep making excuses for what such fuckin' pricks they are...I want politicians who will take responsibility, the best they can (and, as importantly, the best that we will let them) rather than always looking to exploit peoples' anguish over problems to unseat their opponents...

I want leaders who inspire me to be a better person...not a perfect person...perfect people don't exist...

I want leaders who inspire me to be better...

Because they care more, themselves, about being better people than they do about getting elected...

That's a tall order, I'm aware...

But I don't give a shit...

Either step up, I say, or step down...

This year...I want political leaders, journalists, policy thinkers, advisors, consultants, diplomats, bureaucrats and other civic leaders who step up their humanity and their leadership...

And if they can't, they need to step down until they can...

I don't expect people to be perfect...but I do expect people to be better...and to know the difference, in their hearts, between leadership and trying to bend a populace to their will...

If you think leadership is forcing people to do your bidding...

You need another line of work...

And if you can't learn to let go of that bad idea...

You need to find another job than elected office...

And my goal this election is to elect as many people who respect freedom more this election...who will respect freedom more than this election...or any election...and to have those who don't respect freedom to sit out an elected seat until they can...

The only antidote to the propaganda that E.J. is profiling in this article is to expect leaders to think more and more seriously...

And they will either do so for my vote...or they will be held to the highest intellectual standards, by my lights, until they do so...

An election where politicians compete to demonstrate how thoughtful they are...now that would be a democracy to be proud of...

This election, my goal is to persuade citizens, average people, to expect better of their politicians...to expect them to think...to have one new idea...just one...at least...to demonstrate how much better they understand how to navigate the world rather than to pretend like somehow any dumbfuck can do the job...

I don't want politicians who appeal to our vanity, any more...

I want citizens who have the courage and honesty to face themselves and say, "I expect politicians who understand the world better than me and expect me to do the same"...

Because that is the only place where we will find real solutions to our problems and not more of the same bullshit...

By expecting better...

Of our leaders...

And more importantly...

Of ourselves...

Love,
Ben

Evidence of a world gone mad...

Caroline Glick writes a column in today's Jersusalem Post that reflects clearly a world gone mad with power...

Our World: Politically correct perfidy...Jerusalem Post, September 13, 2006...

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1157913606853&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Caroline is a right-wing Israeli who essentially argues simultaneously against breaches of free speech for those who she favors and for breaches of free speech of those she opposes...when people Caroline disagrees with exercise their free speech they are "silencing" debate...when people Caroline agrees with are indicted -- wrongly, of course...I have a consistent standard...free speech for everyone -- they are subject to corrupt hypocrisy...

Carolyn's convoluted logic illustrates why free speech and freedom should be consistently defended for everyone...

But more serious is Carolyn's desire to see Iran confronted millitarily, economically, and any other way that Israel and her allies can force Iran to do their bidding...

But her objection to Harvard University hosting Iran's former more moderate/liberal President Mohammad Khatami for a discussion as an endorsement of his views...

Has the world gone completely mad?

Are we now, all of us, so completely convinced of our righteousness that we no longer see a need to engage one another and only to find the best way to force ourselves upon one another?

Are we all so lost in our arrogant assertions of self-righteousness that we must seek power instead of engagement?

As Caroline writes:

"Many argue that the only way to stop the Left's subversion and so win the war of ideas, is to attempt to co-opt its agenda from the inside. By this logic, champions of free speech, democracy and liberty should eagerly seek opportunities to speak at Harvard, or be the token "fascists" on panel discussions at Hebrew University.

Unfortunately, this view is wrong. Accepting the legitimacy of leftist institutions prolongs their power, expands their undeserved legitimacy and erodes the power of the message of those who defend liberty, free speech and democracy.

Rather than supporting the Left, those concerned about the protection of liberal values should work to expose the corruption of these institutions and build alternative institutions that can replace them."

Are we all so lost in our power-hunger and failures of conscience to listen and engage and learn from one another that we think that we have or ever will somehow reach an end-point where engagement will not longer be necessary? Where power can or ever will replace thought?

Have we all so thoroughly lost our minds with hostility and blame and dark fantasies of a world that always does our bidding or always agrees with us?

Most importantly, Caroline's argument makes so clear to me that either we accept her dark dystopia as our future...

Or we begin to take freedom far more seriously...

I can't think of anything more ugly than an assertion of self-righteous deservingness of power without any accountability to engaged thought...

Surely we have not gone so mad...

The only way out of the problems that democratic peoples face, right now, is taking freedom and democracy and thoughtful engagement far more seriously...

The idea that people can be led by power in lieu of thought is the most arrogant idea that humanity has ever devised...and the fact that it would find an audience at the start of the 20th Century, the new dawn after a century of force and power being the leading ideological thrust of such thoroughly evil regimes at Nazism, Fascism, Communism, and a million other autocratic rationalizations, is almost unfathomable to me given what a bloody, destructive, power-mad history that it has...

It just became eminently clear to me how important it is to stand for a world of honest, genuine, authentic respect for free and democratic thought and engagement...

Love,
Ben

This is why I love international policy scholars...

"Five years after the worst terrorist attacks ever on American soil, most members of a panel at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum suggested Monday evening (Sept. 11) that major strides in securing the nation against future terrorist attacks are being undermined by an aggressive foreign policy that has alienated many in the Muslim world. "

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/09.14/99-911panel.html

"Power said she remembered thinking on Sept. 11, 2001, that the attacks could push the nation in one of two opposite directions: toward greater empathy with the world or into a destructive cycle of fear and defensiveness. Five years later, she said, it's clear to her America has taken the latter path.

Oelstrom, who argued against immediately pulling American troops out of Iraq, said the country must do a better job of promoting its democratic credentials around the world.

"We need to figure out how to get our message out without forcing it out," the retired general said.

Moderator Joseph Nye Jr., a Kennedy School professor and former assistant secretary of defense for international security in the Clinton administration, rejected the notion that America is in the throes of an epic clash of civilizations with Islamic radicals.

"There's nothing Osama bin Laden and his colleagues would like more than to turn it into a clash of civilizations," Nye said, adding, "We cannot win unless the mainstream realm of Islam wins."

This is why they are the best. Because they can see things that others can't.

I couldn't concur more strongly.

Love, Ben

What it all boils down to...

The larger philosophies and theologies and ideologies and ideas about life, amongst people, at least, boil down to this question, I think...

Given that people can be kind of shitheads, sometimes or much of the time...

What kind of people are we going to be in the face of that?

Are we going to make excuses for why we should be able to be whatever kind of shithead we want to be?

Are we going to spend our lives condemning ourselves and one another for what shitheads we are or have been?

Or are we going to reach deep and be better and forgive the fact that we can be such shitheads, much of the time? And work constructively to change ourselves and prompt thinking in others to change, as well?

Most of us both lie between the two extremes of rationalizing our worst behavior or condemning ourselves and one another into perpetuity for it and simultaneously entertain those extremes...

You know what makes childhood such a special time, I think?

Because it's the time in our lives when we, no matter what shitheads we often are...people so regularly forgive us our shitheadedness...

It's in adulthood when people start holding our mistakes over our heads that we stop believing in humanity as much, I think...our cynicism is fed by the cynicism of others, as they deal with us as spoiled goods rather than as flawed human beings...

The truth is that what we need for life is what we offer to children...

More commitment to more authentically forgiving and loving ourselves and one another...

The petty among us will demand different, I'm quite sure...that's what makes them petty, after all...

But humanity would be a lot better off if we all weren't so petty...if we faced ourselves more honestly, rather than perpetually avoiding the more challenging realities in our lives...

And we face ourselves more readily with more genuine forgiveness, love and compassion is my more than ample experience on this one...

Forgiving myself, when I've needed it, has been the most confusing experience I've ever had in my life, I think...

Forgiving Brandi has been about as difficult...until recently, I wasn't completely sure I had to...but I'm more confident that she needs -- and deserves -- the forgiveness...

Most pain does...

And its forgiveness that, as I give to myself, I want and need to give freely and generously...

No matter how you cut it, it's harder to forgive others than it is to forgive yourself...because you instantly know that you need forgiveness...but while you may know someone else needs forgiveness, your heart just feels pain...

But I want to give forgiveness freely to Brandi and anyone like I would for myself...this is the hardest experience I've ever had with the stuff...but I know life is better on the other side...

What it all boils down to is are we going to rationalize or condemn our weakness...or are we going to embrace our more genuine strength by forgiving our weakness...

That's the only true strength there is in this world, I'm convinced...other forms are necessary, too, of course...physical and intellectual, of course...

But the genuine moral strength that comes from forgiveness and love and compassion is the only true strength that offers any real hope in the world...everything else is momentary and illusory...

What life comes down to is are we going to aspire in that direction? Or not?

It is a choice with the most profound and serious consequence...and it is the choice that makes all the difference in the world, I am convinced...

And it is a choice that only we can make, no matter what laws people passed or encoded into tradition to make it so...

It is the most profound question of conscience...and it is a question of conscience that I have scarcely questioned since I was a very little boy...or rather I have, but everything I know tells me and my conscience only ever gives me one answer to that question...

To forgive...

The only question I have as an adult is why do people resist this matter of conscience so strongly? How does it serve them? How does it serve us? And how does it get so interwoven with almost all of the most serious matters of uplifting good that is done in the world and its absence so conspicuous in all of the most serious evil done in the world?

But what it all boils down to is are we going to get lost in the darkness?

Or are we going to search and fumble for the light?

I nor anyone can be drug into the light, as Plato suggested in his Allegory of the Cave...

But we can find our way out of the cave, if we seek out light from shadows...

And that light comes with a clear heart, I think...

Hopefully, today is a day of clarity for me...God knows I need it:):)...

Love,
Ben

Finding strength over the horizon...

After reflecting about 9/11 on my friend Carson's blog...

http://content-writer.blogspot.com/2006/09/it-is-nice-for-you-to-help-people911.html

It occurs to me as I consider both wanting to both honor and to not live in the past as it concerns that terrible tragedy 5 years ago...

That something else is on my heart, today...

That my friendship with Brandi is now, officially, I think, in the past...

As much as I have genuinely wanted friendship with my ex-girlfriend and once best friend, that
we're at a point where I need/want to see over the horizon...

Brandi was a good friend, as long as I knew her...she was a great girlfriend, despite our inexperience and red hot love...

She was one of the stronger people I knew...not strong enough for us to have a friendship or a relationship, it turns out....but stronger than your average bear...and I assume she's got more strength than she is betraying for me, these days...

I'm a pretty strong person, really...so it never really occurred to me that others would be weaker, when the chips were down, before they were in ways that have had more serious consequence in my life...Brandi deciding that she's not strong enough for friendship is only one of those ways...my relationships with my professors in grad school were the first situation to really surprise me...my relationship with my parents in adulthood is the other relatioship that has seriously disappointed me...

Strength involves a lot of work...it involves a lot of responsibility...it involves looking at realities squarely -- about ourselves, primarily -- and facing them honestly...

And the last 5 or 6 years has demonstrated, for me, at least, that it is something that most people struggle with or lack in serious ways...

The trouble is that weakness can't really lead us anywhere...it just has us putting off the more serious work that makes us stronger...strength does not mean and has never meant for me to never give into weakness...to the contrary, we often recognize strength from our failures, is my experience...and the experience I see in others too often to really assume differently...one of the worst forms of weakness is self-righteousness, because it is the weakness that is most afraid of looking at ourselves most honestly and challenging ourselves to be better...self-righteousness is borne of fear and insecurity, rather than more genuine strength and wisdom, which, like the tree amidst a storm, bends without breaking...

Conscience is our guide through that experience...no government, no teacher, no boss, no leader can protect us from our weakness...

Conscience is our most powerful guide through that experience...

I am disappointed, obviously, that Brandi seems to have perpetually decided to take the weak path...the path of her fears rather than the path of her hopes (or what I can only assume is the path of her fears, since she is too afraid to let me see anything different)...

But I need to see over the horizon of our past...

It's funny, isn't it?

Brandi and I broke up a little more than a month before September 11th...around the 5th or 6th of August, 2001...she signed a lease on a new apartment, and I moved her into her new place...

And despite the clear and consequential tragedy that was 9/11 in my life as much as in the lives of all Americans and people all over the world...despite my own serious reactions to that day...a serious consideration of military service only dissuaded by my Grandma Sutherland, the grandmother most committed to the armed services in my family...scared calls to Brandi about whether we needed to get gas masks or other protective equipment...fear for our friend, Wendy, who was heading to Bangladesh amidst a time of serious antagonism between Muslims and Westerners...

Despite all of my serious reactions at that time...

The strongest reaction I have today is that I miss Brandi, my best friend from my late college years and the closest friend I ever had in my life...before she decided that she couldn't handle a friendship...

For some reason, that minor tragedy in my own life outweighs, in my heart, the tragedy of my fellow Americans...I don't know why...I just know where my heart is at, today...

It occurs to me, today, that when most people say "Forgive but don't forget" what they really mean, often, is "I'm not forgiving"...and that a lot of the "Never forget" discussion around 9/11 and even the Holocaust and so many tragedies in human history are code for "I'm not willing to forgive"

That has consequence in life, I think...terrible consequences, generally...for individuals as well as for all of us...

I need to forgive Brandi because I don't want to grow old at 33...I don't want to live my life in the past, as so many people my age and older do without always being completely honest with themselves and others about that fact...

I don't want to have all that grief on my heart...I want to leave it behind and to look at the world with fresh eyes...like I did when I was 18 (bitter with my father, and mother, as it turned out, still, but looking at the world with more freedom and more future and opportunity than I ever had in my life)...

I didn't admire and love Brandi for her good looks or her money or her background...

I loved her and admired her for her strength...for the overwhelmingly loving person that she was...for the really remarkable person that she was...

I'm sad to have that taken away from me for reasons that make no sense to me, at all...

But I want to live my life looking forward to more strength like that, and stronger, obviously, in my life, rather than looking back at a lifelong friendship that could have been...a friendship that Brandi decided that, no matter how much stronger than most folks she was, that she just wasn't strong enough to handle...

The last 5 years have me feeling like Job more than any other in my life...

And this is the overcast that most responsible for that feeling...

I need strength, right now, to look beyond the horizon...I'll spend tonight and as long as I need to find it...

Love,
Ben

The Annie soundtrack...

Melissa and I have been listening to the Annie soundtrack all day while we've cleaned, she's done homework, and I've graded math work...

Brandi kind of spoiled the Annie soundtrack, somewhat, and a whole slew of movies and music for me for now...after listening to the Annie soundtrack for the umpteenth time, today, I'm starting to be able to appreciate it independent of Ms. Fisher (the reason why she got me excited about the album is now far too sadly ironic to really let me think about her, too much, while I'm listening to the soundtrack)...

It's kind of dulled my sense of wonder with the world...having Brandi abandon our friendship...

I've lived through a lot...I've studied humanity at its worst for enough time, now, to know how ugly the world can be...still, it's when someone let's us down, personally, that really gets to us, isn't it?...I'm sure many people must feel this way with me, often, so I can't really hold it against Brandi...

When I was a kid, that song...Tomorrow...would just fill me full of wonder and hope and faith in the world...

I'm working up to hope and faith, these days...with everyone, really...it's not just Brandi...it's just that Brandi has been the biggest disappointment...not because she's been such a shitty friend...people fuck up...but because she just can't find it in her to say, "I'm sorry"...

People are kind of shitty lot, often, obviously...but when you have someone who represents something better, it does something for the soul...

And when those people give up on that, even for awhile, the dissappointment is deeper, for me at least...

I have that kind of disappointment with America, right now...I love her...but she's really in bad shape, right now...and she's pretending that she's doing better than she really is...and it's just kind of letting everyone down, right now, I think...

I feel the same about Brandi...

I love this album...but I can't listen to it in any other way but half-hearted anymore these days...and I'm a pretty hopeful guy, much of the time...

It just reminds me that I can't do it alone, if I wanted to...others have got to pitch in, too...and Brandi was someone who for a good long while was someone I could always count on pitching in...

Sadly...I don't really count on her for much of anything, these days...except as a source of persistent disappointment and heartache...

So I try to listen to Annie independent of Ms. Fisher the best I can and hope that I'll encounter a friend, soon enough, who makes Brandi feel like a distant, unreliable, but forgiveable friend who hasn't really earned the place in my heart that she has, out of my generosity rather than because she's really merited it...

I know the conventional wisdom by cynics is that generosity is taken advantage of because people can...

But I just kind of think that's one long excuse for what shitheads people are who somehow want to blame my decency for their shitheadedness...including the cynics...

And my decency is responsible for noone's shitheadedness...it's the lifeline they have for imagining themselves being something better, should they choose to be better people...

That includes Brandi...

And that's what I love about Annie...it's a tribute to how all of us can be better people even amidst the cruelties that life has to dish out...

"Just thinking about tomorrow clears away the cobwebs and the sorrow, till there's none...when I'm stuck with a day that's gray and lonely...I just stick out my chin and grin and say, 'Oh...the sun will come out tomorrow...so you gotta hang on till tomorrow...come what may'...Tomorrow, tomorrow...I love ya, tomorrow...you're only a day away"...

Till tomorrow...

Love, Ben

Between relativism and fundamentalism...

Peter Berger has what looks like the beginnings (I'll have to get ahold of his entire article to get a better picture of his thinking) of a brilliant analysis of the interrelated problems between relativism and fundamentalism in dealing with serious moral and political problems in the most recent American Interest...

http://www.the-american-interest.com/ai2/article.cfm?Id=157&MId=5

As he writes:

"For reasons that may not be immediately obvious, relativism and fundamentalism as cultural forces are closely interlinked. This is not only because one can morph and, more often than may be appreciated, does morph into the other: In every relativist there is a fundamentalist about to be born, and in every fundamentalist there is a relativist waiting to be liberated. More basically, it is because both relativism and fundamentalism are products of the same process of modernization; indeed, both are intrinsically modern phenomena of going to extremes. What follows is an attempt, by means of a sociological analysis, to show how the two phenomena are related."

So true, so true...and perhaps the most important thing they both have in common is being organized by reaction rather than more rigorous thought...

Linda Lovelace and Jim Bakker embody Berger's notion that "In every relativist there is a fundamentalist about to be born, and in every fundamentalist there is a relativist waiting to be liberated" to a tee...

But the truth is that there is at least a little relativist and fundamentalist in all of us, I think...I know I learn more each day about my own extremes...

Looking forward to reading this article...

Love,
Ben

Finally some sanity on North Korea and Iran...

Two excellent op-eds in the Washington Post, today, that point us in a better direction for both North Korea and Iran...

Donald Gregg, the former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, and Don Oberdorfer, chairman of the U.S. Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, write brilliantly about the central problem in dealings with North Korea (and with Iran): recognizing the obvious failure of the current policy...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/05/AR2006090501144.html

"Why, at such a time, choose sanctions, a policy option whose historical record is overwhelmingly one of failure? One possible reason is that sanctions give vent to the visceral hostility that senior Bush administration officials feel toward North Korea. Another is that sanctions could be a defense, however inadequate, against political charges that the administration has done little or nothing to slow North Korea's nuclear programs. But a sanctions-based policy ignores the damage it would do to those in North Korea seeking transformational change and greater openness. Some longtime foreign observers believe such trends are gathering force.

Some high in the Bush administration have argued that dangerous actions by North Korea are likely whether or not the United States undertakes new sanctions against Pyongyang. Perhaps so, but they are much more likely if, instead of carrot-and-stick negotiations, the administration withdraws all previous carrots and multiplies the sticks. In this case a U.S. administration will have to share the blame with North Korea if a new international crisis erupts."

I disagree with the notions that negotiations of carrots and sticks are the best negotiation...they can have impact, carrots especially...but the best policy would be a policy of engagement where Bush Administration and U.S. leadership makes an honest and convincing case of the threat of nuclear proliferation and of hostility between the U.S. and North Korea to the interests of the North Korean and the American people (which is the most honest and obvious reason to end nuclear proliferation)...

As these two very astute authors note, more sticks will get more of the same problem we have currently...and communication and negotation are the only way out of this mess...

But more than communication, what needs to change is the motivation for the U.S. government and any other governments in approaching these talks...they need to happen for the good of both the American and the North Korean people, and both governments need to be working toward that end...the Bush Administration and any Administration cannot work toward that end until they genuinely believe that end...so they must face, honestly, their more selfish impulses, and be led by a more honest concern for the North Korean people as well as for the American people...absent that, the North Korean government and the North Korean people will always feel manipulated by the machinations of the American government and the American people, and no sustainable resolution to the proliferation issue can result...it will always be contigent on carrots and sticks because we never worked for something better...so if we want something better, then we need to expect better from ourselves and then lead in that direction rather than leading down the more self-centered path that we have taken in international policy for the last 6 years...

Post columnist David Ignatius writes a similar, less strategic, but still more constructive article than most of what is written about or said and done with the Iranian government from any of the parties involved, right now, which is looking for common ground and trying to understand the Iranian position...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/05/AR2006090501134.html

As Gregg and Oberdorfer describe for North Korea, threats of military action, sanctions, and other approaches that have clearly failed demonstrate, such actions only threaten these two far from trustworthy regimes and make them more likely to pursue weapons as an act of defiance, but I would add as a perceived need for self-defense...if a government links three governments as an Axis of Evil, invades one, and then orders the others to give up weapons regarded by themselves as needed for self-defense, it makes it all the more likely that those governments will act both defiantly -- since they don't recognize the Western Powers or the United Nations as legitimate authorities, rightly or wrongly -- and act on behalf of their self-defense when they have reason to believe they might be attacked, which every threat of military action or ever time that military action is mentioned as not being off the table clearly gives them rational reason to believe that they need to pursue...

We point a gun at Iran and North Korea and tell them to do what we say or be shot...they're first thought, get a gun...

So that's what they're doing...and we are so stupid and arrogant in our swagger that it doesn't even occur to us, "Oh, yeah...if I had a gun pointed at me, my first thought would be to get a gun..."

"...unless...unless I trusted the person with the gun"...which they clearly don't...and we want them to trust us, then we need to earn that trust...

And if we don't earn that trust, then we can expect that we will get both defiance and a very logical sense of a need for self-defense...we've made threats about invading their countries...what did we expect?

Arrogantly, we expected nothing...because we aren't concerned with the Iranian and North Korean people genuinely enough...because we are far more self-involved and self-concerned than we would like to admit...

And self-absorption and self-centeredness has consequences...

And understanding others and their motivations has consequences, as well...which is exactly the point of these authors...understanding, and building understanding through communication and engagement, has better consequences than does threats and force, as a general rule...threats and force can have short term favorable consequences, which desolve over time, since the threat dilutes itself the more it is used...

Thought, engagement, communication and mutual understanding are far more effective and do far less harm...to others and to their sense of safety in a world that is far too dangerous, as it is, notwithstanding our constant threatening, bullying, and forceful efforts...

You want to see how dysfunctional a forceful environment can be, go to Palestine or Iran or North Korea or Cuba or a million more autocratic places in the world where force is proscribed -- as it has by the long trend of humanity's history, unsuccessfully, which is why humanity gives it up to make movements forward, meaning to more authentically progress -- and where fear and threat are more the norm in the world...

It's an awful way to live...and the sad, sad tragedy of the whole thing is that is doesn't do a lick of real good...it just suppresses problems and leaves them in hiding, rather than dealing with them more honestly...

Ever wonder why so many awful things like murder (in the case of Abraham of his son Isaac) or incest (in the case of Lot with his two daughters) are rationalized by the Bible as if they are better than they really are?

I don't...because awful realities have been rationalized from the beginning of time to account for our terrible inability to face our failures...not just our moral or personal or political failures...but our failures as people to teach limits effectively...

Aggression typically surpresses social realities, it does not make them go away...people have always done bad...they just did it more undercover in the past...and the more we try to repress peoples' need for freedom and to make choices, as in the case of alcohol or drug prohibition, the more we likely we make it that they will identify with those who make even the most dangerous choices, like murder or rape, and the more we create underground cultures that subvert our highest values...

The highest murder rates in the United States have occurred when alcohol prohibition was at its height, in 1933, and when the drug war was at its height, in the early 1980's through the early 1990's...

The reason...because prohibition created an underground and popular illegal trade that was then, because it was illegal, enforced by the illegal vendors in that trade...organized crime and the mafia with alcohol at the beginning of the 20th century...and organized crime and gangs at the end of the 20th century...

And like the Iranian and North Korean leaders, the more we threaten those involved in that trade, rather than deal with force only when real physical threats present themselves and make appeals to conscience with them and with those involved with genuine leadership that is genuinely concerned with their well-being, the less they will play ball and the more they will be defiant...

Threats and force only work in the short term...and they have costs when they are used for more self-centered ends and ends less genuinely concerned with others...

And one of the most important costs is that they generally and often make our goal harder, not easier, to achieve...

It's a lesson to be learned from Iran and North Korea...

And these two articles (as well as David Broder's Washington Post column on Karl Rove, today) are two good signs that some people are starting to learn the lesson...

Love,
Ben

Trouble in paradise...

The teachers are slowing showing signs of war with administration...

In meetings and situations with administrators...they bicker, they villify, and they're showing serious signs of being pissed about having decisions forced upon them...

These are the same teachers, by the way, who begged to have decisions imposed school-wide, district-wide, some of them statewide and federal-wide (though federal impositions are being opposed more and more, thankfully, by teachers)...and definitely imposing all kinds of stuff on kids...

It's not even particular issues...it's just being bossed around all of the time...

Which is natural...if people would get honest about this whole foolish, romantic political period they would realize that noone likes to be bossed around...so imposing on people will quite naturally result in all kinds of foolish conflict and soiled relationships...

But what do I know?:)...I'm just a second year special education teacher:)...

Tensions are running high in meetings...so high that I can't navigate them with humor and cooling people off anymore...and the failure of teachers, in particular, and administrators, secondarily, to face the failure of the logic of all of their advocacy of imposition and force is kind of baffling, sometimes, as I persistently watch them buck the very impositions that they so romanticize in the abstract...

Very bizarre behavior, indeed:):)...

In the meantime...it's making life uncomfortable, these days...and it means that teachers and administrators both follow the failed and foolish logic on this, which just escalates the tensions and conflicts...and that they all persistently engage these discussions failing to be sensitive to the position of one another...to listen to one another...and to resolve conflict, rather than just trying, foolishly, to win them all the time...

The best hope is that, paradoxically, it is administrators who are typically much more on the ball about this issue...and are learning, at times, to navigate conflicts much more easily...
And the other hope is that you just can't keep being foolish forever...eventually you got to face up...or at least most people have to face up...and if you can't...things will just keep getting worse...

I have to say that I am amazed to what lengths most people will go to not have to face up to their failures of logic or just failures, period...

And these are dark days for honest acknowledgement of responsibility, I have to say...

Kind of ironic, huh? That this is supposed to be a period pushing for responsibility...and yet so few people will take responsibility for the clear failures of policy and logic and action, these days?

Can you remember the last time you heard someone say, "I was wrong" or "I'm sorry" for something important in the world?

I can't...

Responsibility is for the weak, apparently, is the logic of those who would strong-arm to get their way rather than face the failure of their thinking...it gives the impression to the other side that maybe you don't know what you're doing...

And here's the real kicker...

Maybe folks don't know what they're doing...

Maybe the reason why the Administration does not want to face the failures of these last 6 years in international policy circles is because they really don't know what they're doing...maybe that is the reason why social conservatives don't want to admit that it is likely the culture war that has so dramatically lowered the standards of the culture, as of late...that a culture war was declared, and that social conservatives have clearly lost that war, if the cultural indicators mean anything...if anyone would just take a moment to look around at the baseness of the dominant pop culture in America and the world, right now...

Maybe the reason why Democrats claim the "high ground," as I just heard Senator Charles Schumer from New York claim today without ever having earned it to my mind (what are Chuck's ideas for improved international policy? I haven't hear them...though I've heard him talk plenty during this period) is because it is easier to make a claim on higher ground than to actually earn it...maybe Democrats have confused criticizing a position with developing a better one...maybe Democrats just don't know how to come out with it and say, "I don't know how to improve international policy over the current Administration...because I've been too busy trying to figure out win power and haven't spent even a fraction of that time trying to figure out how to develop more constructive policy"...and maybe that will be kind of embarrassing for us if we do win power, because we won't know what to do with it once we have it...and we will find ourselves subject to similar criticisms that we make as a part of the opposition"

Yeah...some people just don't have the guts to admit when they may not know what they're doing...when they may be wrong...

Most people really...

But we can't just keep fucking up forever...eventually you have to face the failure...or just keep experiencing failure...

What a sad, arrogant period we are going through, right now...

What a sad failure of conscience and honesty we are experiencing, right now...

If we just don't admit how scared we are that we don't know what we're doing...maybe we just won't have to face that fear, we reason...

All the while...failing to resolve problems...many times over...
If I were a kid in America or the world, right now...who would be my hero? Who would I look up to? Who would inspire me?
Democrats? Republicans? Liberals? Conservatives? Teachers? Administrators? Parents?

Maybe that kid who has the guts to admit that he doesn't know how to read and but who gives his honest effort to learn rather than persistently act as if it doesn't matter...

Maybe that's who Hillary Clinton and George Bush and Republicans and Democrats should look to for inspiration, these days...

The kid who can admit that he doesn't know what he's doing...so that he can study and learn...

And who can admit that is matters to know what you're doing...even if you've studied it...but your efforts are failing anyway...

My experience is that people who have studied something are often the ones who have the easiest time admitting when they're wrong...

Because they didn't study to fail all of the time...they studied to find a better way to succeed...and once one path has run itself dry...

Eventually...you have to find a better way...

Love,
Ben

Finding a hero...

At the risk of sounding sentimental, I've decided to tell you about someone who became something of a hero for me, tonight...

I have a student that I just discovered, tonight, may be dying...

He's got a rare disease which the majority of kids who suffer with it don't make it to adulthood...I looked up the disease, tonight, but I don't want to name it out of respect for this kid and his privacy...but the bottom-line is that according to his mom, who tells me this without self-pity, he may or not make it into adulthood...

He's a really great kid...he's one of my favorite kids, actually...

He's goth...he's got a band...he loves the guitar and dreams of being a rock star...

He struggles with reading and is on my special education caseload...

But I really like this kid a lot...he's tries really hard and is really respectful with adults...he's just a really great kid...

And he may die before he reaches 18...

And I spent about a half hour, tonight, just talking with his mom about it...she's such a sweety...and I just can't even imagine being in her shoes...knowing that your son could be gone at any moment...

Up till now, the biggest tragedy in my life has been losing Brandi...but I can't quite imagine what it would be like to lose a child and I can't even imagine how tragic this kid's life might be (I've been balling just trying to comprehend the unfairness of this situation for this kid)...

And you know what the crazy thing is?

Most of my kids (and most adults) totally take their lives for granted...

So few of them have any serious dreams or plans for their future...and so many adults have so many opportunities to pursue dreams that they never pursue...

And here is this kid, who knows that the odds are against him making it to adulthood, still dreams of being a rock star...

Most people give up on dreams and most kids I work with never really formulate them seriously...

And this kid who doesn't know how long he's going to be with us talks with me about music he writes, how his band is trying to learn a beat, and I talk with him about bands to listen for to learn to keep a beat...bands that are percussion driven, like AC/DC and White Stripes...and today I was telling him about David Byrne's version of Don't Fence Me In on the Red, Hot and Blue album I was listening to this weekend with all this incredible diversity of creative percussion...

I really like this kid a lot...he's a really good kid and he's really laid back and the fact that he's not the smartest kid doesn't even really occur to me because we spend all of our time talking about music...

And then I just found out tonight that he may die...

I don't want to sound like a total sap...but I can't stop balling, tonight...it's just so sad that a kid this young and this decent may not make it...but that he's just decided that he's gonna be a rock star anyway...it's too goddamn sweet...

And if you saw this kid in his goth gear and his anagrams and his love for Slipknot...you just wouldn't normally think, "Sweet kid"...but he is...and I know a lot of teachers may be put off by all the gear...but I just remember a million friends from school who dressed, looked, acted the same...and, generally, they just wanted to be loved and accepted for who they are...

It's so sweet to watch this kid and his girlfriend hug in the hallways between class...you can tell that they're just kids...they're just kids...and no matter what the gear, they're just kids like I was at that age...fairly innocent, I imagine...and just wanting to be loved and accepted for who they are...

And I just feel, in a really mentor-like way, like this kid is my kid...and I just can't imagine what it must be like for his mom...everything they've gone through on this...his mom having to come to terms with the fact that her son may die before he reaches adulthood...and this kid having to deal with the fact of death as well a kid ever could...

I had two friends die in junior high...but it never occured to me just how sad their deaths must have been for their parents who looked forward to long lives and seeing their kids off and having them pursue big dreams and having all of that fall apart...one of my friends, like this friend, was a really sweet kid, too...he was really well liked by all of our friends in junior high...and as kids you just can't quite fathom how tragic it must be for parents who lose a child...

This kid and I, as far as I'm concerned, at least, will not be acting like he's going to die, even though his mom says that the odds are against him (you can tell she doesn't live like that, either, to her credit)...

But I'm also realistic...

So...my plan is to see if maybe we can get him some kind of rock concert before he's 18...I've built a relationship with the instrumental music teacher...and we've even talked about this kid, together...and I'm his advocate...and the kid is sweet to me...so I plan on being super-advocate for this kid...

I want to see if we can get him an opportunity to play his guitar in a public performance -- see if we can give him the opportunity to be a rock star for a day, if he's interested -- at a point at which he might feel comfortable or be interested in something like that...maybe there are groups that might sponsor a kid like this, too, that might help with something like this...he says he's written a couple of instrumental numbers...and I think he ought to get a chance to put on a concert before he's 18...

It's amazing to me that so many of my kids...that so many people...have these amazing opportunities that they totally take for granted to live the lives of their dreams...who don't face terminal diseases...for whom the odds are much more in their favor...and yet who pass up all of those opportunities and give into their fears rather than living into their hopes and dreams...

And then you have this kid...this middle school age kid...who knows that he may not live past adolescence...

And he still has a dream anyway...because you know what...fuck the odds...that's why...

And I'm proud as hell of this kid for giving the finger to the odds and deciding he's going to be a rock star anyway...

I can only hope that all my students learn from that simple but fairly profound example from a middle school student...

The whole thing kind of blows me away, really...

I think I just found my new hero...

Love,
Ben