Freedom, consequences, and progress...

After reading Michael Wilbon's brilliant little critique of the arrogance of U.S. basketball teams in international competition...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/01/AR2006090101815.html

...and Jonah Goldberg's really terrible defense of Barry Goldwater as a social conservative (why would this be a legacy to defend? Could Jonah be more oblivious to the failures of this philosophy in American culture and in cultures like Iran, China, Cuba, Iraq, etc., today?)...

http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MWRiYmY2YTg1OTJkZjdlNDk5ZDFjODg3NDRiYmE4NWM

This is the same Barry Goldwater who defended the right of homosexuals to serve openly in the American military before he died, mind you...that is the Barry Goldwater legacy that is worth defending...

I grow increasingly amazed at how much a leading power or leading figures in a leading power (Jonah's got enough fame and influence, I think, to call him a leading figure) will defend its/their failures...

Here's a better quiz than at the beginning of Jonah's arrogant recasting of Barry Goldwater as a social conservative...

Can anyone name a serious successful foreign policy initiative in the last 6 years?

Iraq? Iran? North Korea? Relations with our democratic allies nevertheless with our international partners?

Aside from the the hypocritical stand to sell nuclear components to India but spend enormous, largely unsuccessful efforts to keep Iran from exercising its sovereignty and self-determined defense policy (a notion that is screamed from the rafters from the U.S. when it serves us, President Ahmadinejad might say in that hypothetical debate with President Bush)...

What major foreign policy success have we experienced in the last 6 years?

I can't name one...

More worrying to me, I am hard-pressed to identify serious progressive domestic policy (meaning, policies that accomplish their aims while genuinely respecting free and democratic principles...I know we've had such policy changes...Justice Kennedy's majority Supreme Court decision overturning sodomy laws comes to mind)...

The number of power grabs in the last 6 years -- by both liberals and conservatives -- so outnumbers authentic progressive democratic policy that it is truly amazing and strange to me that so many people could continue with such reckless abandon refer to their policy aims as progressive...the only thing that matters, apparently, for a policy to be progressive, is that the people passing it favor it...which is why everyone and their grandmother -- the Soviet Union, Iraq's Baathist Party, Fidel Castro, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Queda -- everyone can claim to favor an agenda that is progressive for humanity...

Because as long as it favors their view of progress, then it must be progressive, by God...no matter how many freedoms and human and civil rights or civil liberties it trambles or who it condescends or promotes or defends a state of inequality or inequity...

So then the question is how do you separate real progress from propaganda...

And, to my mind, there is both a progressive historical standard -- meaning, history is generally regarded as progressive the more freedoms, equality, and generally people are treated better over time...and once we have freedoms and equality and treat and get treated better, we are less likely to give up freedoms or treat or tolerated being treated worse -- and there is an objective standard...

The objective standard is pretty simple, as well...

Do things get better?

Meaning, does the way that we operate now make things better? Do we accomplish more of our goals? Do we actually advance the things that we want to advance?

The bottom-line is, "Were we successful in promoting the ideas that we wanted to promote?"

And I can't think of many policies -- certainly none in the international arena, but not a lot in the domestic arena, as well, where our more genuine progressive, democratic, and freedom-loving traditions hold more stead -- where we have been successful...

And I have a very quaint, probably naive and certainly not nearly cynical enough notion for a world that is just too ugly for my sweet and innocent notions of democratic ideals...

Perhaps policies or attitudes or ideas we adopt should accomplish our goals...

And perhaps, when they don't, we should begin to ask the question, have we gone down the wrong road?

I'm pretty clear that America (and the world, really) has gone down the wrong road for the last 6 years or so...
And the proof is in the perpetually burnt pudding...we keep fucking shit up...and we keep sticking to our self-righteous little guns no matter how much we fail...

Which is great for me, I suppose...because I've had so much success with approaches that take freedom -- my own, especially -- and equity and treating people better more seriously (and beyond plenty of failure, that, with freedom, becomes something to learn from, not to fear) that I guess at some point I'll just be able to kick back and wonder why everyone keeps stumbling on this one...when we keep failing on this one, what are we proving?...that we were willing to stick to our guns, no matter how much it fucked shit up?...not a terribly noble intention...that kind of attitude, by definition, I think, is called self-righteousness...

And the amazing thing to me and I'm sure to the world, right now, as they watch America's hypocritical leadership and example in the world...is how in the world can you be self-righteous and maintain such hypocrisy?

We love freedom, but we clamor for power...we value democracy, but just not Iran's democracy...we favor democratic norms, but not debate or diplomacy or discussion or all those tedious "diversions" from us getting what we want...we love free trade, except with Cuba...we value free expression, except with video games and saying fuck and shit on TV and showing booby at the Superbowl...

Now I'm a hypocrit, just like everyone else...I have plenty of things I've fucked up in my life...plenty of places where I owe apologies...plenty of ways that my life has not lived up to my highest ideals...

But the single most important thing I respect about Mark Twain and his own acknowledged hypocrisy...is that he was being honest about it while he worked on being a better person...and a better man he was, which is why we still read him, today, and his great contemporaries -- Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman -- but not most of his contemporaries...

Being honest about being a hypocrit is the the only real honesty there is in the world, as far as I'm concerned...because everything else is a lie...pride is a sin, the morally self-righteous amongst us perpetually forget...and the core of genuine morality and certainly of the messages of Jesus and the Buddha and Martin Luther King and Mohatma Ghandi and all of the strongest moral traditions is love and compassion and forgiveness...and Twain's disposition demonstrated compassion for his own fumbling and the fumbling of others, as well all work each day to be better people...as we make moral choices -- sometimes good ones, sometimes bad ones -- on our journey to becoming better people...

But the larger question for me is not just letting go of self-righteousness for its own sake, which I think is a noble endeavor and one that wins respect for people from me (the reason why I respect my friend, Carson Brackney, so much, as well as my friend, Brian White, for instance (Carson my more liberal debate coach and good friend from WSU debate and Brian is my more conservative colleague and good friend from WSU forensics), neither of whom have much love for the kind of moral sanctioning that Jonah favors in this article, and why I have so little respect for Jonah Goldberg, right now, who is a serious hypocrit and a half and all the while preaching all kinds of government control over drugs and guns and moral sanction for those who don't live up to his standard (although porn's ok with Jonah since he's developed a penchant for the stuff)...

The much bigger and more important question for me is, "Is it working?"

Meaning, do the self-righteous stands actually accomplish their goals better?

And generally, I think the unequivocal answer from the last 6 years, when self-righteousness and power-hunger has blinded us all to those failures...

Is no...

Have self-righteous notions of unilateralism worked to bring a stable, democratic Iraq? Have you read the papers, this morning?

Have self-righteous stands around nuclear weapons by countries we don't like or trust made them less likely to pursue such programs? Do you remember North Korea or Iran pursuing nuclear programs so ambitiously before they were linked as the Axis of Evil, with the third wheel on that Axis, Iraq, being invaded, and before the U.S. and international power pressed to have them abandon such pursuits? No...because they weren't pursuing them as ambitiously...

Have self-righteous stands around steroids rooted them out of sports? Obviously not, unless you're just blind to the clearly exponential rise of steroids in sports post-crack down...

Have self-righteous notions control and harsh punishments for drugs and guns and crime led to drops in the crime rate in the U.S.? Not if you've seen the 2005 statistics and not if you've seen the charts I've seen that show the murder rate peaking during two periods, in particular...in 1933, at the height and the last year of alcohol prohibition, and in the early 80's through the very early 90's, when the drug war was at its height...everything we know about the violence and propensity toward seriously dangerous and murderous behavior that accompanies an illegal alcohol and drug trade match that data...

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/hmrt.htm

We've seen drops in the crime rates since 1993, but they took the community of scholarly criminologists and folks like James Q. Wilson who favor harsh sentences completely by surprise, largely, I imagine, because they were related more to more proactive and more decent, humane, and opportunity-creating educational, economic and criminal justice policies than harsher polices and aggressive policing that had so consistently failed in the 30's and 80's...

And here is the true spirit of America that is captured in our capacity for progress in the last few years...

Do you know, by my lights, where the most substantial progressive efforts in the country have come in these dark days for freedom?

From free citizens...from individuals and individual groups working on such mediums as the internet, amongst average people developing less restrictive social norms, among young people not as freaked out by porn or by cursing or by a whole host of socially restricted activity, by people less scared of supporting illegal aliens no matter how they came to the country, by people more open and supportive of gays and lesbians and transgendered people, by peoples' concern for abortion rights even as they have been curbed in places like South Dakota, by peoples' concern for the right to die and for the right of free thought and expression even as Florida's terribly arrogant Governor Jeb Bush and its arrogant Republican state legislature sought to decide for Terry Schiavo when and if she could authorize her own life to be ended and whether professors and teachers in Florida can have unpopular views in Florida universities and schools...and by ordinary people with authority...teachers and police officers and diplomats who have given people more space and been more proactive in resolving issues through communication and relationships, more than with force...

The most important progress in the early 21st century, quite appropriately, has not come from politicians or America's power-hungry political leadership...it was not politicians who defeated overbearing European Union power in France or the Netherlands...it was citizen referendums that checked power in Europe...

It has not largely been opposition parties or activists who have checked the Bush Administration's arrogance in international policy circles...it has been freely expressed opinion in the international community...Bush has often been indifferent and hostile to pressure and sanctions from the U.N, from Democrats and from liberal interest groups (all while espousing pressure and sanctions and military force as the solution that it clearly to anyone honest it has not been)...but international opinion has had serious impact on the winds that the Administration has paid attention to...

Progress in the 21st century will not be led by power or politicians, primarily...it will be led by free citizens, enlarging their freedoms and expecting less overbearing and controlling leadership and more genuinely collaborative relationships from their leaders...it will not be ideological in nature, primarily (though ideology, like nationality, can be a healthy expression of identity...I am a liberal in the same way that I am a Christian...not exclusively, any more, but certainly not exclusive of my liberal or Christian roots)...it will be more thoughtful and open-minded, and less dogmatic and sectarian...

Progress in the 21st century will do what we can only imagine progress doing and being...it will fulfill our highest free and democratic ideals more genuinely...it will be more peaceful, more thoughtful, more idea-driven, more open-ended than we have been accustomed to in the 20th century, but which has set the stage for progress in the 21st century...

That seems like a bold claim, I'm sure, given the lack of peace and the amount of serious and dangerous conflict facing the world, at the beginning of the 21st century...with the clamouring for power from all sides, here in our early days in the century...and with politicians who seem to know no limits to either their power or their wisdom in exercising it...

But progress is only accomplished as we fulfill our ideals...everything else is always remembered as regress and folly...

It is our highest ideals that both define our progress and our failures and disappointments...

The reason why the situation with Iran will give way to democratic principles of self-determination is because those ideals are the only way to sustainably navigate us out of serious conflict over matters of self-determination...the reason why a peace deal with be signed between Israel and Palestine and peace will be achieved between Israel and her neighbors like Lebanon or Syria or Iran is because the conflicts that dominate there now will remain until the party come to terms with peaceful coexistence...the reason why freedom wills out is because it is more conducive to our natures as free, self-governing, democratic peoples who respect free will and engaged thought as our only real determinant of social and moral progress, with force always losing to commitments to such freedom...always...the reason why equity will be taken seriously in international power circles, the international and domestic economy, and within relationships in America and the world is because inequity undermines us and our goals...because universal values and common bonds are needed for us to achieve our dreams together...

No matter how cynical we get, our ideals always guide us because our cynicism can't sustain us...the purpose of ideals are to help us navigate the unresolved problems in the world that we often grow cynical about as we fail and fail and fail on our road to a more thoughtful, effective, mutually respectful future...

Eventually failure must give way to success...because while we may be stubborn...we are not stupid...eventually we learn our lessons...even if some of us learn them faster than others...and even if some of us seem bound and determined never to learn them at all...

Generally...we must learn from our failures...or be subject to them until we do...

The wonderful thing about our freedom is that the more we exercise it, the more we learn...we make mistakes, but we learn from those mistakes the more we have the freedom to take ownership...and ownership, as President Bush reminds us, comes from freedom, not servitude...

Freedom allows us to make choices...good and bad...wise and unwise...and from those choices, we learn better values as we try out our ideas and values in a world that often needs for us to learn and often make corrections...

Freedom allows us -- and certainly has allowed me -- to learn the lessons from the consequences of our actions...at its base, the standard for progress is not a self-righteous one...it is a simple question...

Did we fail? Or did we succeed?

And most importantly, did we succeed around those things that we know matter most?

And I, for one, am 100% convinced that such success comes with greater freedom, not greater control or acquisition of power....

And those who are similarly convinced will have to do what people who have loved freedom have had to do since the dawn of humanity to enlarge their freedom and learn and grow from that experience to accomplish our deepest aspirations and highest ideals...

We will often have to do so despite those who would force us to do otherwise...and expect relationships from those with power to be genuinely collaborative, and more genuinely collaborative over time...

I'm sure many of my students feel this very way right now...I have a lot of work to do to be more genuinely collaborative, myself...

And they do what I do in that situation...what President Bush does in such a situation...what President Ahmadinejad does in such a situation...what Kim Jong Il does in such a situation...what we all do in such a situation...

They resist and ignore anyone who won't let me make my own mistakes and learn their own lessons...yeah, I have a lot of work to do...

And a lot of lessons to learn from my failures, as much as from my successes...

Love,
Ben