Illustrating the political moment

I have yet to see a better, simpler illustration of this political moment entire, between Iran and the West, in Iraq and international affairs, generally, and domestically in the U.S., the West and the more politically repressive and regressive trends in the world at large, right now.



Flex your muscle enough and all problems will go away.

That is the tragic and regressive trend of thought that is dominating the contemporary political discourse. And like the imperial and repressive political trends at the beginning of the 20th century, the central problem of this political trend is the failure to acknowledge its failure.

"Don't you THUMPA, THUMPA me!!"

I can't think of a better motto for the last 6 years of political action and activism.

Love,
Ben

A very promising development in scholarship

Tonight, I'm finishing up a ton of paperwork that I'm behind on and I hear this really terrific show from Studio360, the late night NPR show about culture and society.

I love Studio360. They were the first to alert me to the monkey slam poetry video that lampoons the human race and how much it thinks it has evolved. Really creative stuff on this show.

Tonight, I was listening to this really terrific story on African Americans defying the politically correct push of the 1990's by the likes of August Wilson to only do African American roles and to embrace Shakespeare as their own and this really beautiful Shakespeare reading from Maya Angelo.

And then they bring on this really awesome and encouraging story about the most recent book by Yale law professor, Kenji Yoshino, called Covering: The Hidden Assault on our Civil Rights.

Now, honestly, this is not the type of book that would usually get me excited. Law books, generally, have to be really rigorous and ready to go beyond the more narrow world of law and politics to seriously interest me since I think of too much of the law springs from a narrow world view that too often ignores the human consequences from its often lengthy and involved and far too often cold logic. Ronald Dworkin writes law work that I very much appreciate. As does Richard Posner. And what both of these writers and other law writers (Alan Dershowitz is someone I've grown up reading) have in common is that they go beyond the law to look at the human consequences of their thinking.

And listening to this Studio360 interview with Kenji Yoshino convinced me that this guy's book is well worth checking out, that he writes very much like me - with scholarship and personal sharing intertwined - and in a way that is really touching, that his thinking on matters of race, gender, and identity are really wise and not at all in line with the politically-correct identity politics that characterizes far too much of the thinking and writing in this area of political discussion, and that his ideas are some of the most remarkably consistent with my own that I have ever read.

And this dude is a law professor at Yale Law School.

I would say that's a very healthy development for the life in my own ideas and thinking.

I'm very excited to check this guy's book out at the book store the next time I happen by. It's been a long time since I read a book that said something genuinely new that I could shake my head in agreement with since this whole political period has been one long head nod amongst a lot of people saying the same thing without having to say much at all, really, in my view.

Who would have thought I would have found such a fellow traveler in a law school faculty?

I didn't. That's for sure.

And that is why this is such a promising development.

A welcome suprise.

Love,
Ben

Dissent

Do you know how hard it is to dissent from popular opinion that is socially, politically and legally enforced and pressured to the contrary to your thinking?

Really hard.

I may now and always be wrong, but not a goddamn soul can accuse me of cowardice, that's for goddamn sure.

And, yet, ironically, I am regularly thought of as just that.

Too soft. Too nice. Care too much.

And this is the first time in my life that I've ever been accused of not being rigorous enough. Physically lazy I have been many, many times in my life. Intellectually lazy is the last thing I ever thought I could be accused of, given how much people are constantly complaining about how I drone on and on about some complex line of reasoning about this matter or that.

I am learning that when people believe something strongly enough, they will believe a lot of things about you if you disagree.

I am learning what it means to be on the other side. On the other side of liberals. On the other side of conservatives. On the other side of Christians. On the other side of Muslims. On the other of whatever group sees itself as the righteous cause and the other group as the major obstacle to their prevailing ideals.

I am learning what it means to be on the other side of everyone.

It's a strange feeling for a guy who has largely fit in with almost every group I've ever belonged to because I'm such a nice guy, to now often not fit in because of what a nice guy I am.

All while I'm being pressured and bullied and having whatever view strikes whomever as righteous (preferably with some claim on legal backing, these days, even when those claims are, far too often, these days, in the school I work in, in contradiction with one another) being enforced on me by whomever they can get the backing to do just that.

I spent my whole youth resisting peer pressure only to face the by far hardest challenge to that capacity by adults engaging in a far more forceful peer pressure.

Ironic, isn't it?

Thank god they all really do have the right cause, because what would this world look like if everyone was going around pressuring one another for whatever cause they thought worthy.

Or maybe, sadly enough, that is what the world really looks like today.

Do you know how hard it is to dissent and resist that kind of pressure in the kind of climate where everyone is strong-arming for their point of view?

It's a real bitch is what it is.

You can accuse me of a lot of things. People regularly do. But being a coward isn't one of them.

And that is one of many, many things that people have thought about me during this period that they haven't thought about nearly enough.

Isn't it ironic that we keep rationalizing pressuring and bullying people to have right causes will out and yet so many consciences seem to survive intact despite that pressure?

That's a sign of the most fundamental strength that freedom affords liberal peoples and a liberal society that we all take for granted, no matter how much many of us have studied everything that our predecesors went through to teach us through our horrific historical experiences as much as through affirmatively taught values around the importance of conscience and free will.

Surely our consciences must expect that we square ourselves with the contradictions and the hypocrisy and the more honest reality of our talk and our action around the matter of force and rules and law. It is this weakness that terrorists and bullies play upon when they do their dirty work and exploit our fear that we are too weak.

We are too weak. We are too weak to be more honest with ourselves about who we really are. And once we can be more honest with ourselves about that matter and about where our hearts really lie around this matter of force - meaning, how we actually respond to force, not just as we grapple for a means to make others do as we desire - we will find that what we thought was weakness was actually our most powerful strength. We care as much as we do, we are as generous as we are, we are as forgiving as we are, we are as decent as we are because of how strong we are to do all of those things and how weak and tempting and little our more frail, petty, small, unforgiving and forceful, aggressive instincts actually serve us.

How much we care is our strength, not our weakness. Our weakness is our fear that we care too much. And it is a weakness that we are all too tempted by these days. And ironically, it is the this weakness that we most have in common with terrorists and dictators.

And the only true path of strength is taking seriously our need to give a shit about the world and about other people. And forgiving what aggressive, mean-spirited, rationalizing pricks we can often be. The only real strength for us, individually and as a culture of liberal democratic peoples is on the other side of that acknowledgement, forgiveness, and willingness to square our consciences with who we really are. We all need forgiveness. And far too many of us are far too reluctant to give it. And yet, ironically, they all need it. And that is the weakness we must face if we are to be strong and not just perpetually afraid, for good reason, that we are weak because we refuse to face the path of real strength.

That strength comes from our failures as much as from our successes, I am learning, from experience and from more honest reflection on the world. It will come slowly. But it will come. Because though weakness can be tempting, it cannot sustain us.

Only real strength can sustain us. And that is why our highest liberal values are our most enduring legacy. Because it is in our highest values that we find our most sustaining strengths.

Love,
Ben

Respect for the rule of law

I don't typically read Slate magazine, anymore, for the same reason I don't typically read the New Republic anymore: because they seem more polemic - smart polemic to be sure, but polemic nonetheless - than honest argument. I've learned more over the course of this war how that term is both meaningful and relative, though the relative distinctions are important to me, since neither of those liberal publications approach the intellectual integrity of liberal scholars like Joe Nye or Amartya Sen or Abraham Maslow.

But today I made an exception.

Jacob Weisberg did a very nice review of the most recent book by George Bush's favorite historian, Andrew Roberts, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900. If Weisberg is even half-way accurate in his review of Roberts' book, it looks like a terribly self-serving effort by a conservative to affirm a number of long-standing and currently popular conservative views of conservative leadership and the world rather than to critically examine history and the world - from a conservative perspective or otherwise - and to bring the best integrity from conservative ideas and thinking to that challenge.

And reading that review got me thinking.

I've been frustrated with how "the rule of law" has rationalized all kinds of pressure, bullying, control, various strains of self-righteous thinking about the world (with not-so-open hypocrisy about why various groups support certain freedoms that other groups oppose and why their assertions of "the rule of law" are genuine appeals to a "right application" of the rule of law, while applications by opponents are abrogations of important freedoms; the illegal immigration debate comes to mind, here, as does the Lewis Libby affair, in very recent political discussions).

I've been frustrated with how I believe the rule of law has been used to justify all kinds of intellectually dishonest arguments to favor various causes and how a debate and discussion about the how much respect really should be accorded the rule of law has been overrun by a popular notion of the rule of law being rationalized for purposes of political pressure rather than a more intellectually honest discussion of the rule of law.

But it occurred to me that I need to engage that discussion with more intellectual honesty, as well, genuinely engaging the issue of respect for the rule of law with the integrity that this principle has brought to a number of issues, even as I often disagree that the law should, ideally, be used to resolve so many such issues, and very strongly believe that the use of legal means of pressure and coercion are often counterproductive, unnecessarily disruptive and destructive of peoples' lives, do not resolve many of the issues that they are meant to resolve, and create enormous confusion about such questions amongst ordinary people and are often far too intrusive in the lives of ordinary people that very much undermines respect for authority and the law which is a necessary and important principle around the most serious questions that democratic people face.

I am a liberal in the tradition of John Stuart Mill with a much more square presumption that life amongst free peoples' should not be regulated, as much as possible, and that free peoples should find more mature and the least aggressive ways possible (even in the rarest of circumstances possible when aggression is or may be necessary), to resolve important differences between them.

I have always had a generally stronger respect for authority than most of my peers, I think, despite often many legitimate and other times many petty concerns and differences with authority figures and the application of rules and law. I have a much stronger respect for law and authority the older I get, despite so many situations where I think law and authority are overwrought and overused and undermine their own credibility amongst people, except in those situations where they want to impose on their neighbor or when law and authority are, as a matter of fact more than a matter of opinion, necessary to resolve matters of physical violence and aggression between people.

So much of my writing is written within that context and the context of a political period where "the rule of law" is rhetoric and propaganda as much as principle being used and rationalized to pressure for all sorts of causes, many of which positions are in contradiction, but where all of the parties involved claim "the rule of law" as their ally (very much like how God and the Church and other appeals to popular ideas have been used to rally support to various causes; the danger of which is that advocates become increasingly convinced that there is no need to question if they are right or might be wrong about the causes or solutions they advocate and only must marshall sufficient means of persuasion to convince others of the rightness of their cause, which stifles and undermines more honest intellectual differences, debate, and discussion).

But reading this review made me very glad that I've waited to write my first book about my ideas since it reminds me that alternative ideas, even if I think they are being used for less than utterly noble or honest reasons, need to be treated with the respect that they deserve. And the truth is that the rule of law is a principle that has done much good for humanity as it has tried to leave behind its more barbaric past. And that principle deserves an honest discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of our reverence for this principle, especially in a liberal democratic culture which rightly is committed to freedom and honesty as two of its highest principles, but which both are worthy of critical examination of how much we revere these principles as well.

Reverence and adherence to principle can be healthy. And it can be overwrought. And especially revering a principle that gives us power, control, or coercive or aggressive presumption over the lives of others is and always has been a very, very dangerous idea that has been responsible for most of history's most serious abuses, ugliness, and bad deeds. That is why liberal democratic societies do and should take freedom most seriously among its values and why this period is a regressive political era, I believe, in so many important ways.

Things for me to think about as I write this book.

A reasonable, substantial debate

Two articles caught my eye, today.

E.J. Dionne wrote one of the more arrogant columns I have seen him write in the very long time that I have followed his work.

An Antiwar Tide on the Rise

E.J. doesn't even hold open the possibility that he might be wrong about the war. That there is still a substantial debate and discussion, on-going and which needs to be on-going, about what to do with the situation in Iraq. His column is one long screed about how he and and those who want to pull out are right and how President Bush must be brought to heel to see just how right they are.

Sounds a lot like a President I know, actually, doesn't it? Stubborness and self-righteousness doesn't distinguish between ideology, it seems.

Meanwhile, John McCain makes some really interesting comments today.

McCain: Progress is being made in Iraq

From that article:

"Using a color-coded map of Iraq as a prop, McCain said Iraqi army battalions have arrived for duty as called for, many at or above 75 percent of their programmed levels, bomb attacks and murders are down since the new policy was implemented and the number of civilians killed in Baghdad dropped from 1,222 in December to 494 in February.

He said U.S. forces have moved out of large bases to take up positions in small outposts as part of a shift in strategy. "Contrary to predictions, this has not increased U.S. casualties. And, not surprisingly, our presence has resulted in a dramatic increase in actionable intelligence about terrorists," he said.

McCain said the debate in the Senate had an Alice in Wonderland quality to it, with critics of the war attempting to "micromanage a conflict based on what the conditions were three months ago — not what the reality is today."

Ironic, isn't it? A Democratic Congress being criticized for being out of touch with reality on the ground in this war. I thought liberals had a monopoly on being in touch with reality and conservatives were all in denial? Or that's what you'd assume listening to so many liberals and Democrats, these days.

The truth is that I've not really thought seriously about supporting for John McCain for President, necessarily. I have been more of a Barack Obama, Rudy Guliani, Ron Paul sort of independent, with my eye on Barack because I like the tone he's set in terms of how political debate and discussion needs to take place. Barack seems more genuinely committed to lifting up the political debate, generally, and having discussions that transcend traditional schisms between right and left that I really appreciate, even as he has many views that are more conventionally liberal as I might hold. All of the candidates have views I don't like. Rudy's tough on crime attitude sours me, ironically, even as it endears so many to him. His effort to rid New York City of smut struck me as Puritanical and too nanny-state for my tastes, even as I appreciate that he is pro-choice, as am I, and in favor of gay rights, as am I, and has an unconventionally liberal view on gun control, even as I favor gun rights and take gun responsibility very seriously and am very aware and concerned about the dangers that guns in the wrong hands can pose in the world.

I am in favor of gun rights, ironically, for the very same reason that Rudy is in favor of gun control, I imagine: because I think it will make us safer and that people will be more responsible with guns and will have more responsible conversations among gun owners the more their freedom is respected. I'm also convinced that more dangerous folks like the militia-men and the slightly off-kilter Timothy McVeigh/Terry Nichols types will both more likely stay above ground and out in the open and feeling less threatened by government intervention in their lives the more freedom there is around this issue and, thus, less likely to engage in the most dangerous behavior around guns and do things like the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing the less they have to fear from government, which is their most typical and seriously-felt rationale for maintaining such gun-focussed paranoia.

I disagree with Rudy about how to get to better resolution of this serious issue. But I am sure that he supports gun control for the very same reason that I supported gun control all the way up past the 2000 election, when I supported Bill Bradley with nearly indistinguishable views from Bill on this issue and most issues: because he wants the world to be safer. It's the reason that George Bush invaded Iraq and that liberals want to withdraw and the reason why so many of our political discussions get so fucked up. Because we all want our fears about the world to go away and we are all sure that we have all the right answers to get us there.

Ron Paul was a name around my house when I was growing up because though my dad has been a liberal since his college days when he carried around petitions to impeach Nixon at his and my alma mater, Wichita State University, he had a very serious libertarian streak that he and my extended family has always had and that I have shared. It is the reason that he voted for John Anderson in 1980 (it may have been the libertarian candidate, Ed Clarke, but for some reason I remember him voting for John Anderson, the independent, that year) and the reason why he voted for Ronald Reagan in 1984.

My dad has never been a social conservative in any meaningful way (neither have I) except when he would awkwardly avoid sexual conversations when I was growing up and the fact that he wouldn't let us watch rated-R movies until we were actually 17 (something that my sisters and brother and I would routinely circumvent at my grandparents' house when they would go to bed on weekends and leave HBO and Cinemax to a bunch of curious, horny little teenagers). But he has always been a businessman and had a pretty serious libertarian streak in him, one of the more important things that my family, split unevenly between liberals and Democrats, like my dad and my immediate family, and conservatives and Republicans, like my grandma and grandpa and most of my uncles and aunts who have been red-state folks as long as Reagan has been President (my grandpa was very much like Reagan, as it turns out; both macho and gentile, but also a Roosevelt Democrat and a Reagan Republican).

I like Ron Paul and I'm interested in what his candidacy will bring to the Republican party. I'm concerned about whether he has genuine leadership and executive capacity (an edge I have to give to Rudy Guliani over all of the major candidates, I have to say, including Barack, largely because of his mayoral experience, and because he did a fine job, I thought, of handling the 9/11 crisis, in striking contrast to Ray Nagin's flailing performance in New Orleans when the hurricanes hit). But I'm very interested in what his candidacy will bring to the Republican party and general election political debates and discussions ahead of the 2008 election.

The point of this long-rambling post, though, is not to flush out my views on major Presidential candidates.

The point of this post is that it is becoming crystal clear to me that stubborn self-righteousness and the failure to engage more open-mindedly and open-heartedly serious policy debates, like the Iraq war, is not something that is monopolized by the President. Quite the contrary, I find the President refreshingly open-hearted compared to the drumbeat for withdrawal from the likes of E.J. Dionne, these days (seems E.J. may have more in common with the Vice President he imagines as so evil than he's likely reflected on).

The number of civilians who have died since the surge has dropped from 1,222 in December to 494 in February, McCain argues. Bomb attacks and murders are down.

All of which begs the question at this point in the war: who is not open to hearing that they are wrong, at this point?

I don't pretend to have any crystal ball about this war or any issue. I could be wrong about everything I've ever believed in my short little life, up until now, and could be wrong, still, in ways that I've never imagined. I probably am. I do think I have pretty decent political instincts, including about the limitations of politics and government and people who make choices about both. But I could be completely off-kilter myself (I've never wanted to blow up a Federal building. But I have had my own little disgruntled moments in life, even as most people probably think of me as Ms. Mary Sunshine. Of all of the contradictory things that people have thought about me, that would probably be the most ironic, if true).

And the one instinct I hold near and dear to my heart probably more than any other is that popular opinion is no reliable or necessarily reasonable guide to anything in this world and that the only reasonable guide to anything in this world is more thoughtful, engaged, open-ended, open-minded, open-hearted discussion and debate about important issues in the world. That is the reason why reason and education rather than the will of the majority are among the highest values in a liberal democratic culture. Because they are more reliable than the will of that majority that swings in the wind with every popular attitudinal swing of an ever-finicky and often brute and mob-like electorate. Popular political attitudes are like fashion: the hot thing, one moment, and not-to-be-caught-dead-in, the next.

And that is why a thoughtful, engaged, open-ended, open-minded, open-hearted discussion is the only one worthy of an open, free, liberal democratic people, society, and government.

Because noone knows anything with unfailing certainty. Noone. About anything. And anyone who tells you differently, no matter how liberal, how conservative, no matter how educated, how experienced, no matter how Christian, how Muslim, how American, how anti-American - no matter how much someone assures you that they have finally hit upon all unfailing wisdom about the world is exactly the Buddha in the middle of the road that you must at least engage in a healthy discussion if you're more averse to killing it.

A reasonable, thoughtful, more deeply-considered, substantial debate. That's all I ask for. I don't think that's too much to ask. All this bullying is counter to every reasonable impulse we have and it certainly doesn't do one iota to resolve either the situation in Iraq or any policy issue. Not for real. Perhaps some people don't care if issues get resolved for real and not just based on some self-righteous notion of how the world should be. But the most fundamental way that the world should be is that important matters like this war and any policy issues should be resolved on their merits, by reasonable, substantive discussion, rather than by brute force.

Let's hope that is where the discussion will head after this most recent effort to bully the conversation where certain folks want it to go.

Love,
Ben

The way forward

We are so strange. We are a generation of people probably more aware of our own failures and frailties and shortcomings than probably any other generation in history, because we are able to acknowledge them so openly. And yet our most important shortcoming is that we hold one another to impossible expectations of insight knowing that, given our propensity for lack of insight, we will likely fail those expectations. We make it remarkably hard for one another to own up for those failures, honestly, and then we persistently marvel that people do not take responsibility for their mistakes and failures of insight.

If Joe Nye, one of the most important, insightful, and serious thinkers in the world can come as close as this to believe in this war, then how in the world can we hold President Bush or Tony Blair or anyone involved to such an impossibly high standard of insight that we can't possibly forgive them when their (and our) insight fails them?

What makes us so self-flagilating that we just can't accept that peoples' humanity doesn't always give them the crystal ball into the future that we would like? Same goes for me, as I angrily deride liberals and conservatives for making the same fundamental mistake as the President in this war: arrogantly believing that others can be persuaded merely by force or pressure or bullying of your better policies and good intentions. They cannot be persuaded by force. Not really. And that goes for liberals as well as conservatives.

Force must be used in extraordinary circumstances. But it must be used as little as possible. And using it beyond that minimum undermines its credibility and undermines the authority that it is predicated upon. And, more importantly, it undermines the self-governance and self-determination that are at the heart of both liberal democratic values and are needed for self-actualizing, self-determining people to genuinely embrace and internalize values that sustain us.

As Dwight D. Eisenhower argued well (and as Andrew Sullivan posted on his blog, today):

"Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace."

I know what it's like to make serious mistakes and to not be able to take them back. I think most of us do. If we say we don't, we are generally lying and likely much more dangerous than those who acknowledge differently, because such claims are designed to make us appear more lacking in frailties than any human being can actually ever be, no matter how they might rationalize otherwise. It doesn't make us bad people or people worthy of flagilation, by ourselves or others. It makes us perpetually, and without any other alternative, human. Frail, lacking perfect or omniscient insight, foolish, failing, full of any number of shortcomings, and human. The President is no more and no less human than any of the rest of us, no matter how much he may, at times, appear, to believe to have a direct line to God. He doesn't. Which should make us more understanding and compassionate toward him and his foolishness, not more hateful or harsh.

This foolish, small-minded, narrow way of looking at the world has us locking ourselves in this unecessarily and counterproductively harsh way of dealing with the world and ourselves. It does not solve the problems we wish it to solve. And, generally very plainly if we could look on life without having to defend our and its failures, it makes many of our problems worse. But we are too afraid and too lost in defending it to consider its failures. We embrace contradictory arguments - that we are lost without strict authority and rules and the pressure and means and will to enforce them and we are lost without mercy and with too strict an overreliance on rules and a dependence on authority to resolve our problems. We think that if we embrace a nebulous "middle ground" between those two positions that we have, in fact resolved the matter. When what we are persistently doing is rationalizing whatever decisions we make in the name of whatever middle grounds that we claim (much of the time which we actively manipulate) rather than thinking harder and deeper about how and under what circumstance force should be used and what presumptions we should have for its use.

What we need, as opposed to what we will rationalize in the moment, is a clear presumption against the use of force and pressure, as much as possible, instead of the regular rationalization of its use which is so popular today. What we need is an clear embrace of liberal democratic principles - meaning principles that appreciate the underlying premises for freedom and a more democratic culture, as much if not more than more democratic institutions - and which presume against the use of force, including the force of law, to resolve important questions of conscience between us. As much as possible, our problems, as liberal democratic peoples, need to be resolved by free, independent and interdependent grown-ups, without resorting to bullying and intimidation, and force to resolve problems that are deeply involved matters of conscience.

To do otherwise demeans the conscience and the process of thought and learning and engagemement and debate and discussion that both undergird the highest liberal democratic principles and values that we have to offer and which are, necessarily, as a matter of reality, the foundation for any of our thought and action, no matter how well or poorly developed. No matter how well or not we have thought through the important matters that we face in our lifetimes, our thought and consciences are our only reliable guide, no matter how much we may wish otherwise. Even if we were to only and strictly follow the authority or guidance of others, we would still and always be subject to our own imperfect interpretations of their intent and will. There is no way out of this predicament of making judgments as a human being, nevertheless in a world that expects more independent and critical thought about the world around it.

And the saddest fact of all is that it has us now and perpetually in conflict with our family and friends and neighbors in ways that do not resolve such matters of conscience because they do not fundamentally respect that conscience and those judgments, which are much more fundamtentally important both for each of our development and ability to test and trust our judgment, and which are more fundamentally important to us than any of the particular judgments we might have to offer. This goes for those who give into cynicism about conscience and judgment as much as for those who aspire for something better (which is all of us, really, when we are honest with ourselves about that).

Our consciences are more important to us than the impositions of others for good reason. Because they are far more reliable and because they are our only real guide to the world, no matter how well or little reliable they may be in reality. Germans or others who submitted to Nazi authority on the question of whether or not to turn in Jews would be engaging in forgiveable but unspeakable evil to submit their neighbors' lives to try save their own. Free peoples who turned over slaves in 19th and 18th century America in the name of following fugitive slave laws are not acting morally in any recognizable use of that term. They are acting in a way that protects their interests and what the law deemed the property of others, not in a way that is most decent or good. Japanese internment or deplorable treatment of Native Americans or African Americans or the legally denied right to vote for women are not made more moral or defensible because they are or were defended by the rule of law. To the contrary, they all undermine the credibility of the rule of law as some guiding principle that can replace conscience as our most credible and trustworthy guide.

And we don't assert the supremacy of the rule of law, today, because we really believe that the law has reformed itself magically to replace our consciences, which the most honest of us know the law cannot, could not, and will not ever replace (nor has it ever in the past; which is how good people behave, generally, in reality, even if their rhetoric does not match their behavior). We assert its supremacy, today, because it serves our ends, even if we don't really believe it, down deep, or believe it selectively at best. We believe it when it doesn't include our own indiscretions, is the truth. And always has been. No matter how much we try to talk ourselves out of that fact of life.

This lie is one more in a long line of lies that we tell ourselves as good people to try to maintain that we are better than we actually are, rather than becoming better people than we actually are. It is more liberal democratic principles and virtues, more freedom, more self-reflection, more self-governance and self-determination, more investment in conscience and enlightenment rather than coercion and brute force, that light our way to genuine progress. What most people do today, including the most intelligent and thoughtful and self-reflective, is live amidst the contradictions, rather than search deep for a more consisent, thoughtful, integrated idea of how to resolve this serious question.

But living amidst the contradictions without resolving them leaves all of us more vulnerable to their confusion and thus more in need of one another's compassion and understanding and forgiveness, not more of its pressure and force and harshness and mean-spiritedness.

And living admidst the contradictions means that we need someone, as well as each of us, individually, to find a way through the mess and confusion, rather than pretending like its all really more resolved than it really is.

George Bush is not a perfect man. Nancy Pelosi is not a perfect woman. Neither is Joe Nye or Abraham Maslow or Amartya Sen or Francis Fukuyama or Milton Friedman or E.O. Wilson or any of the greatest minds. No leader, no thinker, no ordinary human being has more perfect insight than we would expect of them to avoid the pitfalls of judgment and life. And yet we perpetually demand of them that perfection and more, and worse, what we demand of them is that they just do what the hell we tell them, for better or for worse, even, often, if we make demands that contradict one another or our own professed goals or our whether we give or shit or not that they contradict the demands and force of other actors.

We just want what we want when we say we want it. And if our minds change, we want what we say that our minds have changed to what we want when we say we want it. It is ego run amok. And when it is a function of groupthink, very much as it was with the Nazis and the Communists and so many of the worlds' most serious abuses of power, we expect that no independent conscience will or should be able to resist it. Because if we all agree with it, it must be right. And that is the most dangerous of vanities that groupthink engages in when it wants its collective egos' appeased.

And what we want most of all is for all of that ego and self-centered orientation towards the world to be recognized as better than it really is. I do too, is the truth. We all do. It's just no good for any of us. Because it's not decent or respectful to those around us, and certainly not decent or respectful to their consciences, which are some of the more precious possessions they have, because it is who they are.

And we are going through a period where that kind of self-flattery and self-centered orientation around power is being glamourized and romanticized and popularized. There is no strong, thorough, consistent argument being made on its behalf. Nowhere that I have looked in the last 6 or 7 years that we have gone through this period have I seen such an argument. Not really. What has been going on has been one long assertion that flatters itself to think that it doesn't need defense because it has done us just fine all these years, even if it has been far from ideal and often terribly unfair, unjust, unforgiving, inhumane, indecent, repressive, and otherwise ugly in its application.

The truth is that the rule of law was and is an important progression from the law of the jungle. But it only progresses as it supports our growth and development as free and self-governing people, not as a regression to the rule of the jungle in the form of both the tyranny of the majority and legal, political, economic, and social intimidation to get our way in lieu of persuading others of our cause.

The rule of law is only meaningful insofar as it supports our highest liberal democratic values, not when it equates that principle in liberal democratic cultures and societies and governments with the rule of law in more repressive cultures and socieities and governments like Communist China or Cuba or North Korea or repressive Syria or Pakistan or even democratic but still repressive Iran with the just and moral rule of law in liberal democratic countries that take liberal democratic values more seriously.

Meaning, the important distinction between the most repressive and brutal regimes of the world and more liberal democratic cultures is not some minimum test that we aren't quite as brutal and repressive as they are.

The important distinction is the positive test that we take liberal democratic values, especially the values of free and open thought and discussion and debate and engagement and choices, as seriously as we can take them and as seriously as we and they deserve. And those fundamental liberal values should be taken more seriously than any other set of values, including the rule of law, since the rule of law makes no distinction between Nazi imposition and American or international or more liberal or democratic aspirations.

Our current political moment is one long rationalization for why what we say should go. It is not the highest values that liberal democracy has to offer.

And the first step to acknowledging that is acknowledging our own failures. In this war. In our overweaning thought and application of the principle of force during this period. In our motivations in using that principle. In our worthiness to enforce our will on others.

Lucky for us, future generations will forgive our stubborness and intransigence on this question. They will have to. What else can they do, if they wish to move forward? And they will help us clean up our messes. But these are the kinds of messes that are best cleaned up ourselves, since doing so would meet the basic responsibility that we are so persistently demanding of others, these days: to take responsibility. And best of all, doing so might actually resolve some of the more serious problems that we share, rather than letting them fester in our polarization and our self-righteousness and our petty parochialism and our desire to get those we disagree with or oppose and the rest of the distraction that obscures more serious, mature, wise and insightful thought and discussions that might seek resolution rather than make cynical excuses for our failures.

We should embrace more liberal values to support us as much for ourselves as for future generations that will be saddled with our unresolved problems and questions absent their resolution. It is us who has to live with the consequences of our failures until we are willing to face up to them. But we should also embrace them because each time we do, we avoid both such failures and the classic folly of every generation of liberal democratic peoples: believing that we have finally arrived when it is so clear to future generations just how far we have to go.

No generation or person ever does or can escape that fate completely. To do so would require an omniscience and perfection that noone and no generation is capable of, hence why they must always be forgiven their shortcomings. But we must and would be better served to avoid this mistake as much as possible. We'll be forgiven as we fail, of course. What else can future generations do but forgive us? Unless they want to live in a bleak and lifeless past as so many in Palestine or Cuba or other repressive countries must because their present is so overcast, as we all seek out nostalgia when the present has so little to offer.

But we cannot sustain ourselves on nostalgia. It is not substantial feeding. Which is why we must slowly but surely make our way forward. The past and present are littered with mistakes as much as blueprints.

And it is from those mistakes from which we learn, when we do.

Love,
Ben

Responsibility

When it comes to responsibility, we are all so awful, aren't we?

Why would our children want to follow our example, we have to ask ourselves, when we so reluctantly take the kind of responsibility that we demand from them?

The truth is that it is hard for all of us - me, especially - to admit our failures. I have quite a few, myself. All of us do, when we're honest. Yet, somehow, we often pretend that we got to where we are by trial and no error. We've spent the last 6-7 years making it that much more difficult for us to face up to ourselves, nevertheless to others, about those failures.

The only way forward on that is to admit the bigger failure around being so harsh and aggressive with people, nevertheless the smaller failures that we want ourselves and others to take responsibility for.

I've been really disappointed with Americans and liberal democratic citizens and governments, generally, around this issue for the last few years. But my most empirically-validated hope is that liberal democracies, better than most if not all other cultures and governing arrangements, tend to take responsibility for their failures, better, with time, than do less liberal democratic cultures and societies. We didn't own up to our treatment of Native Americans or slaves or for Japanese internment immediately. It took time. And the hope in liberal democratic societies is that big failures, like the one we're in the middle of, today, in how we hyperaggressively pursue accountability much more than the war in Iraq, is that we are the most likely of cultures, most if not all others which are far more brutal, harsh, aggressive, and punitive, to own up for our failures. At some point, at least.

Reading Joe Nye's somewhat harsh assessment of the justness of the war in Iraq and assigning responsibility solely to the President, responsibility that people like Joe and Andrew Sullivan and Peter Beinart, Hillary Clinton, and many of the Administration's harshest critics share since they supported this effort publicly before it was underway, reminds me that everyone, even people as smart as Joe, have a hard time owning up for their failures. All of us do. Which is why we all need more space to do so, not more aggressive, punitive, forceful efforts to bring us down.

Our model for responsibility - for ourselves and for others - is hardly the most effective possible, given all of its failures. What we need is more of the liberal democractic values that respect our free will and appreciate our humanity to create and extend a better model than the failed one we carry around today.

It is difficult for all of us to admit our failures, especially when we are afraid of looking bad or being treated badly.

It is also the only way forward. And admitting the biggest failure - our failure to provide the space for failures, even the biggest ones, to be acknowledged openly and publicly, if at all - is the most important acknowledgment of responsibiliy that will be needed for a more genuine progress on our most serious concerns.

Love,
Ben

Joe Nye and moral reasoning

Joe Nye, the international policy scholar who coined the term "soft power," has an interesting commentary on moral reasoning and the Iraq war worth perusing.

My Lesson for this Anniversary

I agree with Joe's general argument - that moral reasoning is both more complicated, in reality, than many moralists suppose and that means and consequences are as, if not more, important in reasoning through the "goodness" of an action as intentions.

I do agree, with many conservatives, though, that many liberals are all about appreciating the complexity of moral reasoning and being compassionate about peoples' mistakes, except when a conservative is involved, a reflection of the polarizing times as much as ideological differences, I think. And as I wrote in my comments to Joe, the irony, of course, is that so many of the Administration's harshest critics about the war supported it up front, including Joe. I did not support that war, and was disappointed to read the New York Times article reporting Joe's meeting with the President and supporting the war (Joe has since indicated in communication on his blog that that February 2003 New York Times article was not correct when it indicated that Joe supported the war and that his March 2003 Boston Globe column indicates his opposition to the war), as well as the support of so many of the President's harshest critics, today, including Andrew Sullivan, Peter Beinart and the editorial board of The New Republic, and so many Democratic leaders, with special inclusion of Hillary Clinton, who supports the war, when it is popular, opposes it, when it is popular, and wants credit for "courage" in her political and moral leadership.

The saddest fact of the current political period around the issue of moral reasonsing for any honest observer is how aggressively this period is touted as a period of accountability, and yet how infrequently anyone takes responsibility, as a consequence of the aggressive efforts to secure accountability, much of the time, I am convinced, even and especially the advocates of those efforts. Joe, like others who advocate both this harsh concept of accountability and who are now critical of the war, when so many of its failures have become clearer and when it is unpopular (Joe's significant credit is that he became critical of the war's mistakes long before it was unpopular, though after his initial advocacy of the war; not something to be ashamed of, but a mistake to be responsible for and which should offer some compassion for the situation of the President who is in a similar boat).

The truth is, as I wrote in my comments to Joe, that accountability, we all seem to cynically reason during this time, is for someone else's actions, not for our own. The same critics who advocate harsh judgment, oversight, and accountability for the President for engaging in this tragic mess are not measures that these folks want for their own work, despite the fact that so many of them came to the same conclusion as the President at the war's outset.

And, consequently, we live in this bleak, harsh period of blatant moral hypocrisy, where the only thing that seems to matter, most of the time, is to take someone's, anyone's, head to end all of our problems. It's not an original idea. To the contrary, is the one of the most consistent policies of humanity for more two millenia. It has never worked. And that has never daunted us.

The following is my discussion with Joe about that matter and why I'm clear, at this point, that we have created our own failure, here, no matter how reluctant we might be to admit it.

"I definitely agree, Joe, that means and consequences need to be considered in moral reasoning (as well as classical moral virtues like forgiveness when people make mistakes).

But to be fair, Joe, you and many political observers who are now harshly judging the President's decision today supported this war publicly up front. I remember reading it in the New York Times and being disappointed because I opposed the war and thought it was a mistake that needed more discussion and debate to create a policy that included Iraqis (covert discussions with Iraqi opposition groups and alligned militias, likely) that could have developed a more coherent policy that shared risks with Iraqis for leadership if a revolution was something Iraqis were prepared to undergo (which, in all likelihood, given the desperate situation and the support from many Iraqis, they likely would have been prepared to do, in theory, had they been consulted, though unprepared to do, in reality, without the overwhelming force of the U.S. military).

The irony is to me is that at a time when it was very difficult to dissent from this war because the popularity of the war was very strong, many current critics were signing on, only to repudiate not only their support at later points when it became clearer that this war was a far more difficult venture than originally considered, but that so many have been harsh with the President over a policy that they share responsibility around.

At this point, as far as I'm concerned, we have a war that I did not support but which is a present reality to deal with and that has the potential to create some kind of workable democracy (more or, likely, less liberal), which would undoubtedly be a significant improvement over dictatorship. I think we engaged the policy wrong, and, more importantly, I think we engaged the discussion about the policy wrong, up front.

But having said that, we now have thousands of troops in Iraq that may be on the verge of a political resolution given adequate security measures to open up space for a political resolution. An oil agreement has been negotiated and the current Iraqi government has asked that we stay until they are ready to take over security for themselves (a completely reasonable request, I think, given that we, inadvertantly, created much of this mess and that our help might be needed to help try to clean it up).

It is somewhat shocking and very frustrating to me, frankly, that so many in Washington and around the country so blithely less critically supported this war, also convinced, as I was at the time, of its good intentions, and then are all washing their hands of their responsibility in the war in that way and then both laying it all at the President's lap and letting him hang for it, as if his fate is more important than the fate of the Iraqis whose security we have responsibility for in the advocacy of this war.

The real lesson in moral responsibility around this war, I think, is that when any person or any group is wrapped up in its self-righteous reactions to the world, it becomes justification for washing their hands of their own responsibilities and of persistently pecking at the splinters in the eyes of a scapegoat, even one who is ultimately responsible, and ignoring the beams in their own.

Hillary Clinton does not have the courage to oppose the war, up front, but she wants credit for having "courage" to harshly criticize the President and the war after it is unpopular?

That hardly looks like courage to me. And it certainly doesn't look like responsibility.

And during this era of accountability, it strikes me with regularlity how rarely anyone actually takes responsibility.

Accountability is for other people, we are all cynically reasoning during this period. It is not for our own advocacy or actions.

It's a sad reflection on the times, when the most important wisdom that the man who inspired our most dominant religion - that we should stop plucking the splinters from our neighbors' eyes and pluck, instead, the beams from our own - is both ignored and its opposite is treated like a moral virtue.

The best lesson in moral reasoning and responsibility, this political season, is very much a lesson in means and consequences.

This effort to aggressively hold others accountable both betrays our own general unwillingness to take responsibility and it is, generally, its source, since noone wants to face responsibility that is harsh and punitive. Contemporary critics of the Iraq War want to hold the President accountable, but none of the President's harsh critics are willing to face the same accountability for their own support of the war, up front. Which is quite reasonable, because noone wants to be treated in that manner. And that is exactly what undermines our propensity to take responsibility.

The most important lesson in moral responsibility for the current period is that the highly aggressive manner in which we have sought accountability has clearly not created a culture of responsibility that we have sought. To the contrary, not even its advocates wish to take responsibility during this cynical period. And that is a failure of moral reasoning based on means and consequences that will only reverse itself when we face what is the only true path to moral responsibility - freer independent and interdependent moral reasoning that seeks to enlighten rather than to take people down.

Today, we live with the rather bleak consequences of its popular alternative. It's strange that some of us might call it "progressive" when it has created so little real progress. And that is our most important lesson in moral consequences of our reasoning during this period."

That is the moral lesson that needs most learning, right now.

I can only hope that future generations will not be so harsh with us about our failures, in this regard, as we are with one another.

Love,
Ben

Being realistic

If there is one thing that I am most sick of hearing at my school, it is people trying to be "realistic" about a kids' future.

The reason why it fuckin' drives me crazy is not because there may not be realistic choices that kids and adults will make in their lives or realistic options that will be available given various developed intelligence, abilities, talents, etc.

What drives me up a fuckin' wall with this discussion is that it is generally one long discussion betting against kids' and their futures and all for the sake of rationalizing both a) their jadedness in a world full of disappointment, now and forever, b) their failures as teachers and as people, and c) some sense of expertise they lack diagnosing limits in kids that they have no way of knowing without kids testing those limits, and even then those limits are not known with any certainty, ever.

It's drives me crazy, because the whole thing is one long excuse for why they gave up on a kid and why they were right to give up on a kid.

And that is exactly why kids and parents should have and should take advantage of as much freedom as they have available to choose better teachers and better schools if and when they have teachers betting like this.

If you are betting against kids, you should not be teaching. Period. It is the wrong career for you. There are plenty of other more lucrative careers that you should explore and leave teaching behind.

Sadly, many, many of my colleagues bet against kids all the time. Teachers, administrators, staff. They confuse their disappointment with the reality that many kids fail in school and in life, and that many kids fail badly, with prison or serious crimes or death, with some kind of wisdom that the kids in front of them are going to fail similarly. And they don't just bet against kids to themselves. They do so openly. And they do so, frequently, against kids who need them to bet for them the most. Kids who are either already betting against themselves, or kids who have no clue how tough life is going to be for them without choosing to take seriously skills that they will need to be successful in the world.

It makes me ill is what it makes me. And it completely validates for me why kids and parents need to be able to choose better and other schools, especially when they find themselves in a situation where people are betting against them. Especially when so often what adults are rationalizing is why they can't control kids, which is exactly the problem so much of the time.

There are so many controls in schools that are counterproductive, that it becomes very difficult, over time, even as a very smart adult, to know, always, when you are compromising and when something is really a concern for kids. So often, there are so many rules for adults and kids in schools that seem to be more an excuse to control adults and kids, which I'm becoming more convinced is actually the case, much of the time. I am learning that there are many, many petty adults in schools, in groups that regulate and control and lobby schools and legislators and regulators, and in the world at large, who seek to control adults and kids often for its own sake, I'm coming to believe. Some people who don't do anything important with their lives become convinced that controlling others is some kind of worthy substitute, I'm coming to believe, as well as a rationalization for what cynical, scared people that they have become that limits their pursuing bigger opportunities. It's such a sad, sad way to live life. And it is a reality that cynical adults create and then tell you how realistically there is no other option. It's like watching Stalin kill your family and tell you how, realistically, there is no other life for you, anymore, except for one without your family.

It's so fucked up. And it is exactly why education needs a free market. So this shit doesn't get rewarded or held afloat. And so teachers who want better for kids can come and kick the living shit out of sad, pathetic schools and teachers who engage in such bullshit. You don't want to believe in something better for yourself or for kids. Well, then you can face your failure more squarely and stop trying to put it off because you're such a fuckin' whiny loser.

I grew up with a million like-minded people in the poor, white trash neighborhood and poor, white side of town I grew up in, in Wichita, Kansas. Adults who had given up on life telling their kids how dreams really can't come true. All so they don't look like the losers they were, doing the worst thing that an adult can do to any kid: kill their dream or bet against them, all so they don't have to face their own failures. It's disgusting. It's forgiveable, definitely. Everything is and must be if you want any kind of happiness in life, I'm convinced. But it's a load of shit that kids shouldn't listen to anymore than they should listen to anyone bet against them or their dreams. But parents and teachers who bet against kids' dreams are the saddest adults alive, as far as I'm concerned.

Jaded folks in the world need to get something straight. Your jadedness is your own business. It is not reality. Reality is what happens outside of your distorted worldview. And, in reality, people are defying your jadedness every day of fuckin' week, generally, if you would open your eyes and stop confusing your cynicism with something better than it is.

And why people with that kind of jaded, distorted outlook think that they should be able to impose it on others and never have to take responsibility for their failures as a consequence of actions taken on behalf of their jadedness, I have no clue, except that they are too cynical to be responsible for even this.

Luckily, back in reality, people don't put up with that shit for too long. You can be jaded all you want, but someone, inevitably, has hope for that area of the world that you have decided you just can't bring yourself to have hope for anymore and they don't give a shit that you've given up. And they don't give a shit about your excuses for why you've given up. And they don't give a shit about whatever ways that you've tried to control the situation so that you never have to face your excuses for why you've given up or your failures as a consequence of giving up.

Eventually, in my experience, no matter how much someone who is being a shithead and a loser decides that they want to hold back stronger, better folks, stronger, better folks find a way around their bullshit and to be successful despite them.

And that is the challenge of teaching in a school like the school I work in. It's not starving children or basic needs going unmet. Typically, my kids' basic needs are met and they are not starving. The biggest challenge of teaching in a school that has a lot of kids who live below the American-interpreted poverty line is that they are living amidst adults - parents, teachers, and others - who have given up, on themselves, and often, on kids.

Many of the advocates for such schools and neighborhoods have given up on them, is the truth. Or they are betting against them. And that is exactly why kids should be skeptical of such teachers and parents and adults. And why kids and parents should be able to choose different schools when they sense that people are betting against them so that they don't have to face their own failures.

That is what killed Jesus and Ghandi and King. A fucked up human race betting against them while they sought to help them, better and more lovingly, face their failures, honestly and with forgiveness.

What a shitty, petty little species we are sometimes. And one of the shittiest and pettiest things you can do in such a sad little life is bet against the dreams or opportunities or possibilities or futures of a child or an adult just so you can be right that your jadedness really is the way the world is and not some unresolved disappointment with a world that doesn't always live up to your expectations.

Fuck jadedness. You disappointed with the way the world turned out? Sit down and shut up and stop pretending like your jaded prognosticating is reality just so you don't have to find the courage to let go of the pain and disappointment that is the source of your jadedness.

And certainly, you shouldn't expect that anyone should follow your lead. Because anyone with half a brain most certainly should not.

So you definitely shouldn't be demanding or forcing it upon anyone. Because you don't deserve it. No matter how deluded you might be that the right to command people is rightfully yours.

People are stupid enough to give into that, at times, sadly. But not for long. And, no matter how long it might go on, they will eventually get it figured out. And your name will be mud, rightfully, with more historical light shed on your petty tyrrany.

Being "realistic" in this way is a code for quitting. And quitting is no basis for genuine realism. Quitting isn't the basis for anything. Quitting shouldn't be listened to at all, even by quitters. The only thing worth quitting is quitting. And people who give up on humanity or others or life should not be taken seriously as wise about anything at all, nevertheless the dreams of a child or an adult.

Jadedness is being disappointed with reality. Realism is coming to terms with realities and finding ways to aspire beyond realities that don't serve us and creating realities that serve us better. Jadedness is giving up on all of that, which is why it should be seen for the charade that it is.

And the truth, I realize, after dealing with far too much of this kind of "realism" than I think I can stomach, much of the time, especially since it impacts the lives of so many very real children and their very real futures is that is that this is exactly why I nor any person, child or adult, should give more ear to jadedness cloaked as realism than it deserves.

Fuck jadedness. And people who try to use it to rationalize why not only they have given up on life, but why you should too. There is nothing more ugly in my mind than infecting your children with your cynicism because you're too fuckin' pussy to face up to your own fuckin' choices and failures.

My kids all did better on their final state assessments than they did on their practice assessments (though most of them were on a substantially modified - easier and shorter - test than the test we practiced with). And contrary to the trend among many of the teachers I've seen - who have many kids lose ground on district tests - my kids, with one exception, all improved on their district assessments from their first testing. And that one kid we put on a faster, but more genuinely realistic track, and he improved substantially on his final state assessment. The same was true of the collaborative class I work with, substantially better than the other classes this teacher I work with teaches, she said.

Realism is looking at a fucked up situation and thinking, "Somehow we have to fix this shit and make it better." Cynicism is looking at a fucked up situation and saying, "That shit will never get better and anyone who tries will fail. Trust me."

And the sad irony is that cynicism should never be trusted. No matter how much it masquerades as realism.

Here's a big fuck you to all of the jadedness in the world. Either give that shit up or keep it to yourself, I say. Have some balls and live with this world and make it better rather than bemoaning why it sucks and tearing down people who are trying to improve things for real and not just validate your cynicism.

I've got to go drink a beer and think about what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. Have a nice spring afternoon. I know I will:).

Love,
Ben

Isn't it ironic?

Isn't it ironic that forcing our way through issues and being forced means noone ever taking responsiblity, really?

It makes total sense to me, really. The question is when we will face up.

Love,
Ben

The political philosophy of Austin Powers

Final scene: Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery.

Austin Powers: I've got you now, Dr. Evil.

Dr. Evil: Well done, Mr. Powers. We're not so different, you and I. However isn't it ironic that the very things that you stand for - free love, swinging, parties - are all, now in the 90's, considered to be...evil.

Austin Powers: No man. What we swingers were rebelling against is uptight squares like you, whose bag was money and world domination. We were innocent, man. If we had known the consequences of our sexual liberation, we would have done things differently, but the spirit would have remained the same. It's freedom, baby. Yeah.

Dr. Evil: Face it. Freedom failed.

Austin Powers: Freedom didn't fail. Right now, we have freedom and responsibility. It's a very groovy time.

Sadly, his Shagginess spoke too soon. It turns out that the current era is about neither. But how nice a world of freedom and responsibility might be.

Groovy, baby.

Love,
Ben

Fairy tales and bikini briefs

I think I just heard some of the most profound bullshit that I have ever heard in this long, foolish period of romanticizing force.

We have a paraprofessional who drives the kids (and her colleagues, too often) crazy. She's abrupt. She's too often rude. She's far too dependent on others to make decisions for her. The kids hate her guts, is the truth, some of which she has earned.

And she's gotten a lot better. I've stood by her when others were ready to throw her overboard because I felt like everyone needs a chance to learn and get better at life.

And I just listened to this woman say that she was well-behaved as a kid because her parents forced her to behave.

And I'm thinking, "So what fucked that all up?"

Because she's got a long way toward learning to be a better behaved adult, nevertheless a kid. Many, if not all, of the adults who are caught up in the most popular craze in child-rearing - forcing, people, and among them, your kids to be good - are like this, in some relative degree. As were their parents. And their parents before them. And their parents before them. It's not really the most original idea. And it never really has delivered on the goods that it promises.

It's a big load of horseshit, is what it is. It's a lot of people pretending to be better than they really are. So of course they know what to tell everyone else to do because look how great and infallible they turned out. It's the most vomit-inducing form of undeserved self-congratulation that I've ever watched a whole society of adults ever engage in.

And this woman had the gall to say to a group of fairly real world-savvy adults that she couldn't misbehave as a kid because she was forced otherwise. And this is a woman who has a hard time getting along with teachers, some of the nicer folks in the world, nevertheless with students, who think of her as rude and overbearing, which she too often is.

The sad thing about not being honest with yourself is that it is you who suffers for that, ultimately. When you claim to be a better person that you really are to justify whatever it is that you want to justify, you are the one who starts to lose touch with reality, as your defenses for your self-image loses track of the reality of who you really are.

We all do this. Me too. I was just thinking about it yesterday morning, actually. All the ways I have to work to be the kind of person and man I would like to be. And who I am absent those qualities in the meantime. I have a long way to be my most positive image for myself.

And so do we all. Which is exactly why we are all in such need of looking after the beams in our own eyes more than forcing out the splinters in the eyes of others.

This is where Twain was brilliant and I have such a long way to go. To give us all needed shit, all in good fun and in loving seriousness, about what jackasses we so often are, especially when we are getting all worked up about one thing or another, and often when we are getting worked up about our children.

We're all a bunch of petty emperors, bossing everyone around and wearing nothing but our bikini briefs. And telling everyone about what saints we were as children because our parents had the sense to shackle us to the prevailing moral and legal order.

And the really big question is, "If we're really all so damn good, then why has the world turned out to be such shit so much of the time?"

And the other really big question is, "If this is a route that has been tried and true in the past, and has never really gotten us to the promised land, why do we keep pretending like we've crossed the Red Sea?"

I know, I know. We haven't done it enough. One elusive day, we will have used enough force and imposed enough of our will and coerced our way to higher ground and then it will finally be enough and the world will live happily ever after.

Nothing wrong with a fairy tale. But I think I'll stick with Twain.

Love,
Ben

What I want more than anything else, right now

I want someone to be nice to me.

I want a nice girl to spend quality time with. I want to go down to Wichita and hang out at the River Festival, maybe.

I want to spend some relaxing time with someone who is more interested in being decent than in being right. I like debates about important issues. And my experience is that the people who feel most comfortable with debating and arguing openly are the most sensitive and decent of the people I know.

And I want a girl like that to spend some quality time with. Lay in bed and talk about nothing. And everything. Watch a movie. Take a roadtrip. Bitch about my lousy, stressful day with someone who can be a good listener and give me a hug and not lecture me about knowing what I got myself into. Long, deep kisses with someone more passionate about being in love and about how people are doing than about any other self-righteous cause.

I want some kindness from a girl who treats everyone decently, so that I know that I can count on her treating me decently, more often than not.

If you make me choose between nice and smart, I'll choose nice, because I'd rather have someone be decent to me than someone I can verbally spar with. I'm afraid I will never really feel close to someone unless she is nice and smart and have a little courage in the world, though. Because I need someone who understands the slings and arrows of my life to be able to have any reasonable level of empathy.

I want a nice girl, because I've had quite enough of a people being rough with me. I think everyone has, no matter how tough they might be.

I want someone to be nice to me. Because having people be jaded or mean or calloused just doesn't get me out of bed in the morning. And it certainly doesn't put me to bed at night.

Love,
Ben

Why the blog?

I've only got a few moments to blog, here, because I have mucho work. This blog comes from a meme from Carson Brackney at Content Done Better, who has another blog meme that I have been meaning and wanting to do around pornography and the internet that I will try to find time to blog on this weekend, perhaps.

But, for today, the question is, "Why blog?"

Actually the questions were:

To whom are you blogging?
To whom do you want to be blogging?
Am I talking to you?

But I'm going to address them and sum them up in a more general question, "Why blog?"

Here's the why and whom I am writing to in a nutshell:

There really is only one thing in the world that I really care about, other than falling in love and having and caring for a family, and being a decent human being. And that is contributing something to the world long after my stay here. The only thing that anyone can contribute that really matters, as far as I'm concerned, is some sort of wisdom. Other stuff is great, but less important than some sort of wisdom, I think, since it is wisdom that presumably offers us a better, more fulfilling, more decent life. You can buy a lot of stuff, and seek thrills, and get your way around other stuff. But none of that offers the higher values of life that make it worth living.

Also, there is far too much needless tragedy in the world. I want to minimize my contributions to the unnecessary tragedies in the world, which reflection offers us the opportunity to do, and I want to write in a way that might teach others in the future to avoid the mistakes of current generations too stubborn or too self-centered to face their failures and shortcomings. We can avoid our own shortcomings all we please, I'm learning. But future generations can see them more clearly, because there's no reason for them to defend us. Especially when we're responsible, even inadvertantly for unnecessary tragedy. I've done enough bad in my life, as we all have, no matter how little we may reflect on our past behavior, to know not to want to contribute to any more. And I've done enough good in my life to know that this is the only thing worth contributing.

So I am writing to perhaps less jaded future generations, as much as to my own, jaded or not, to talk about everything that is and was great about this current period and current generations and to leave a record of all of the consequences of the poor choices of this current prevailing generation, of my own generation, my own choices included, and probably younger generations, as I age, by my judgment, as best as I have to offer.

It makes me sad that there are so few opportunities to talk more honestly about all of the experiences I have had that leave me with conclusions that seem counterintuitive or too good to be true to some. But life is life, and I speak as honestly as I can without being too foolish.

I do speak to current generations - average people, political leaders, journalists, policy, social science and any scholars concerned with people, teachers, parents, law enforcement and military personell and experts, historians, political junkies and wonks, and anyone who is interested in how people are more honestly than we might say out loud to one another and to understand, better, why so many important problems in our world go unresolved despite so many protestations that people care about solving them.

But I am also aware of the limitations of this current generation to speak only to them. Their pride. Their propensity to be tough rather than wise. Their propensity to either learn lessons the hard way or not at all, depending on what makes them look better, too often. Their propensity to look for evidence to support their biases rather than consider that they might be wrong. Their propensity to look more after themselves or those they identify with rather than the interests of everyone, as much as possible, and then scratch their heads and wonder why they don't understand why people respond to them and their efforts the way they do. And, most of all, this generation, their propensity to not give much or enough of shit about others around them, and then wonder why their lack of empathy has everyone pissed off at them or uncooperative or unresponsive to their demands or their examples, so often.

The next generation will have these same failings, undoubtedly. But what they will lack is the pride involved with defending the failings of the current generation. And they will, generally, be subject to the self-centeredness of the current generation, and have some empathy for others who are subject to it, today.

When I was in grad school, I asked myself a lot, "Why, 30 years after Abraham Maslow had passed away and his influence was so clearly pronounced in psychology and throughout the social sciences, which have influence on every professional field in the world, have we still ignored so many of his most basic ideas, especially around the need for love and freedom in resolving so many of the world's most serious problems? Why, 2000 years after Jesus' crucifixion, almost 60 years after the assassination of Mohatma Ghandi, and almost 40 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, have we all failed to take seriously the teachings of these men to love one another and treat humanity as we would want to be treated?"

Why do the words of wise men so often get ignored?

And the answer to that question is that each person in each new generation, having studied or taken seriously or considered that wisdom or not, each live new lives, borne of each of our choices, wise or not. Often, perhaps more often than not, our choices are not so terribly wise. That is how each of us learns many of the even very important lessons in life, after all, assuming we learn them, that is (Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Queda, Kim Jong Il, Fidel Castro, the Chinese Communist Party, and many others of the worlds' most despicable and self-centered despots and petty tyrants challenge my hope that everyone will learn the most serious wisdom humanity has to offer, though even the better members of humanity challenge this hope, for me, too often). And often, it takes many, sometimes far too tragically far too many, of our bad choices before we face up to our need to make better choices.

Wisdom is not always heeded. Far too frequently, it is not. Which doesn't make it any less wise. It just makes it unheeded, until wiser choices prevail (or they don't, which lead to stagnation, for a culture, and stagnation and hardship and perhaps worse, for individuals).

That does make me very sad when the wisdom involved can save lives or avoid harship or avoid unecessary tragedy, especially when that tragedy is imposed by some upon others whose interests and concerns they often insensitively ignore.

So I write for everyone, including those I just described, but especially for future generations who will have no interest in defending our mistakes and poor judgment and failures of compassion (except, perhaps, as it defends their own mistakes and insensitivity, just as we do today and will do every generation as we learn to let go of our most serious mistakes that we reinforce together as a culture).

I also write for friends and family and people who might be interested, for people in my fields and who might learn something, and for anyone who might be interested in my life or thoughts.

The truth is that I want to be blogging and writing for everyone. I especially want to be blogging to generate a much more substantial debate and discussion about how we are handling so many of our contemporary problems in more liberal and less liberal democratic and nondemocratic societies (societies, that, thankfully, look more and more alike in ways that promote peoples' freedom, and, sadly, look more and more alike in ways that curb that freedom). I am learning about my limits within that discussion. But I am also completely clear about the failure of so many alternative approaches that are not connected to more personal, more honest, and more thoughtful discussions and debates that are more genuinely concerned with resolution of serious issues and not just defending failures.

Am I talking to you?

Undoubtedly, I am. No matter who you might be. I am not looking to cater to peoples' biases, though I would like to write in ways that are as easily accessible as possible and do some writing that is as much entertainment as substantial.

I do wonder, often, when I am so frequently out of step with popular opinion, if I am writing for anyone at all, since popular opinion prevails, generally, whether we think that is a good thing or not. Am I just a kook? Or a kindly fool?

I ask that question of myself probably more often than people ask it or think it of me.

And every time I do, I think, "Where is the stronger argument?"

I am, ultimately, always amenable to a stronger argument. Always. I think I can be proud of being one of the most genuinely open-minded and open-hearted people I know, even as I have no interest in being naive or a fool.

And I've not seen stronger arguments than those I've made around those issues where I am out of step with conventional wisdom or popular opinion. I see a world that makes mutually reinforcing assertions that they believe, in the moment, amount to something truer than they actually are. And I see a world that does that persistently, and mistakes it for wisdom, persistently. As do I, frankly. So none of us can claim any monopoly on insight, at all.

But I am always open to a stronger argument. Always. Because that is where wisdom and knowledge and the strongest understandings are derived.

So, I suppose the reality is that my blog is most especially written for those who care about and are interested in distinguishing where the stronger arguments are at. Not in affirming my arguments, necessarily, but providing stronger counterarguments when they don't find stronger arguments here.

Ultimately, the opinions I care about the most are those who have and consistently make the strongest arguments and those who understand best the matters of life that I care and write about. Often those are one and the same. Often they are not.

And, as, if not more importantly, the people I write for are those who have better arguments to offer when and if I am wrong. Because those people help me grow and learn and see my mistakes.

In fact, what I crave most in life is people who have things to teach me because of my the blind spots that are now and perpetually in my own judgment (and all of our judgments, no matter how much we might pride ourselves otherwise; a more appropriate use of the word pride I cannot imagine than assuming otherwise).

That's why I blog. And write. And argue. And debate. And discuss. And share.

Because I want to care and know. And I want others to care and know along with me. Far more than I will ever want to be right or be rewarded.

I've got to eat and work. Someone's got to pay the bills.

Love,
Ben

A personal breakthrough

I had a huge breakthrough this weekend with some work and personal priorties that has made a huge difference in getting some stuff done that I was feeling overwhelmed by and which, along with a conversation I had with a girl in a class I'm taking, gives me some very important insight into struggles that kids have in school.

The breakthrough was that I have felt perpetually overwhelmed by a long to-do list that a whole host of people - parents, administrators, other teachers, students - seem to perpetually add to, often, in the case of the administrators and other teachers - without any real input from me about whether the priorities are manageable for me or not. I've tried talking about it with administrators, but often to no avail. It's a problem that all of the teachers I work with struggle with, but I've been looking to both resolve it and be honest about it with administrators, two significant departures, it seems, from my conversations with them.

And finally this weekend, I seem to have made a significant breakthrough. And one that completely illustrates the foolishness of trying to intimidate our way through important priorities, with adults as well as with kids.

The problem I've been having is that there is always far more things on my to do list than I can ever seem to get done at any particular time. And while I was trying to get my head wrapped around that and the priority and time management and organization that I have improved light years on this year, I was perpetually getting really intimidated by the list. This goes for personal stuff at home and in my own life - cleaning, finances, personal priorities and errands - as it does for professional priorities. It's swamped me and had me feeling terribly overwhelmed and without really understanding what the problem was, and learning very slowly how to come to terms with real time and resource and energy limits and do the work one thing at a time.

And yet I was still feeling overwhelmed, which was blocking me from feeling a sense of real control or real satisfaction or seeing a clear and substantial light at the end of the tunnel (I've had faith, the entire time, that as I learned as much as I was learning about managing my priorities and my life - and I have been learned tons, in the last year especially - that I would get it figured out. But now I know what it's going to take to get me there much more).

The big breakthrough was not just learning to write everything down, to write appointments and as much down in my carefully looked after planner as possible, to keep my papers and office and life organized, to take time to do this all a little at a time rather than all in one fell swoop when a deadline creeped up on me, and to stop burning myself out and making myself a grumpy teacher by burning all my candles at both ends. These were all lessons and more that I learned this year as matters of habit and not just matters of abstraction.

The big breakthrough was to stop feeling intimidated by the big list and to do each priority one thing at a time. Now, I need to clarify. The big breakthrough was not to just do one priority at a time, which was a big lesson I learned earlier this year.

The big breakthrough was learning not to feel intimidated by all of the priorities I had to get accomplished, in my personal life as well as in my professional life. Focussing on doing one priority at a time helped me break down each thing on the list into much more manageable chunks that helped me see how everything could get done and that I could even play a manageable catch-up on some stuff I've fallen behind on, given a commitment to getting each thing done in more manageable, realistic chunks.

But the big breakthrough, ironically, for all of the intimidation that at least one former advisor and every administrator I've ever worked with (this job is my first professional job; every other job I've had have been jobs where you do the work you're told, like in junior high or middle school or high school, but which you are not ultimately responsible for completed projects) was learning to not be intimdated by the big list, to keep track of and organize and schedule all of my priorities meticulously (something that I think I've gotten very good at and that I think, within a year, I should be a serious pro at, meaning at the level of some of the more organized managers and neatfreaks and anal-retentive professionals who have always intimidated me a little, with their abilities as much as with their personalities, but who do keep their stuff organized, something that has always been impressive to me even as I have scoffed at it out of a lack of understanding of just how important keeping my life and my priorities organized and managing them well).

And as I think about my experience with this and about a conversation I had with a girl on Saturday in a class I'm taking about her feelings of being intimidated by school and academic learning, I completely understand why a lot of kids blow off school, now.

Like me, if this girl is right, which I think she is, many of them feel intimidated and overwhelmed by the work. And without a life raft to pull them out of that ocean of feeling overwhelmed - which can only come with the lesson learned, not just with teacher direction - they begin to intuitively learn to not be intimidated by the work and by the teachers, just as I've been doing. Often trying to learn to not be intimidated looks like blowing off the work. And sometimes it does involve blowing off the work. But, ultimately, the lesson involved is learning how to do the work out of a sense of self-discipline and self-direction without, in my case, feeling intimidated by all of the million things to get done and the million ways you can think to improve them. But the bottom-line, for me, at least, was that I cannot not concentrate and get the work done when I'm feeling overwhelmed or intimidated by it. Or, at least, I cannot concentrate nearly as well or as for long as if was not feeling so frustrated with it, perpetually.

That's why it's ironic that you have people trying to intimidate you or reintimidate you. Because the whole point when people do this is to not feel intimidated.

I remember in grad school have a distinct time in my studies and my life when I decided that I was tired of being scared. Of professors, of my workload, of politics and the law (which seemed a really nasty place to operate, and is far nastier today than it was when I was in school), of work life and the job market, of financial issues, of all of it. I was tired of being afraid of all of the high stakes issues in my life, after struggling with pressures of both those priorities and resolving important policy matters in my own mind and the consequences all of this had for mine and Brandi's relationship and then losing that relationship, which was more important to me than all of these things.

And today, I think I'm finally getting past all of the fear, as much a possible. And, ironically, it was all the fear and the intimidation and the feeling intimidated that was blocking up the learning that needed to take place to get to resolution on a lot of these issues.

I never fail to be amazed how often this happens. How often the fear blocks up the learning, which is what was needed in the first place. And yet how often a huge barrier to solving so many problems is the fear and intimidation and pressure imposed on people, like me, presumably to get to a resolution. And yet no matter how long the pressure tends to undermine rather than facilitate resolution, how long its proponents will maintain their advocacy of it.

The Middle East peace process is the best example of this counterproductivity that I can think of. Militants use terrorism to pressure for favorable conditions for an Israeli withdrawal. All Palestinians, Hamas and Fatah and all of the many independent Palestinians in the region, presumably want a safer, freer (of Israeli occupation, at least), more culturally and economically strong and vibrant, more respected, more self-respecting and contributing Palestine. All of which need space for engagement, discussion, debate, and learning. And yet it is all of the violence and terrorism and political pressure imposed by pressure tactics like terrorism that keeps Palestine in such shambles and at war with Israel.

It's a tragic situation, where the people most responsible for the problem refuse to take responsibility for fear of looking weak and for fear of losing their leveraging power, and for fear of being prosecuted for the murder of all of the people they have killed in the name of their cause.

In the West, we have a similar but less pronounced problem where the people most responsible for the pressure and arm-twisting that is persistently undermining resolution to so many important issues, including important security issues, liberals and conservatives among them and most people, not just a few, who rally and cheerlead such efforts, very much like in Palestine, foolishly believing that such tragedy and counterproductivity have somehow accomplished more than they clearly have not, all on the premise that enough muscle will solve a problem without ever considering if that premise is true or not, especially given the plethora of evidence that it is not true, but with a broad number of people of all kinds of authority all over the world still acting as it is more true than it is, they continue to advocate the muscle.

The only way out of it is to see the failures more honestly. And to do that means to end the denial and talk about the failures more honestly, which the pressure and the intimidation often blocks up and undermines, as well.

And in my life, and I am finally getting one area of my life where I have felt intimidated organized and under control despite and often being undermined by the efforts to intimidate me into shape, rather than facilitated by them.

And the best thing I can do for the cause of ending this sad, failed, foolish myth of muscle over mind or muscle independent of well developed thought about its use is to call it out for its failures as often as possible until the message becomes clear that it does not work.

Melissa and I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey, this weekend, while I cleaned the apartment on Saturday, and it is amazing to me two themes of that story: how far we have come since our most primitive, unevolved days of as predators and aggressive primates, and how little we have learned in that same time, about the failure of aggression to solve so many of our problems. The reason why reducing aggression is such an important goal for pscyhological health and individual and cultural progress is because it so rarely solves problems we want it to solve, so often creates them and worsens them, and how often we fail to recognize that fact because we are too busy using the same strategy, uncritically, no matter how often it fails and no matter how much it bullies and intimidates people, in the meantime, undermining bonds of trust and love and mutual respect and responsibility and learning which are the building blocks for accomplishing more of our goals.

Realistically, there are still important places where aggression and force must be used, to deal with the clear and physically dangerous aggression of others, in particular, but we are going through a very serious period of cultural and political regression around this issue, right now, rationalizing its persistent and overwhelmingly counterproductive overuse and abuse, and not taking responsibility or account for how much it has failed to achieve our goals.

There are limits to power, as my first book will argue, and as an article I read this weekend about the frustrations of Democrats in Congress to achieve their priorities rightly argued, no matter how much we might fantasize otherwise.

The good thing is that in a more liberal democratic society, there is more open, honest reflection, discussion, debate, and room for acknowledgement for such an idea. And all of the failure, right now, is an opportunity for us to learn the lesson.

In my own life, lessons that I've been working at learning for quite a long time, now, are getting learned despite all of the fear and intimidation I've both felt that I've had people try to use to foolishly motivate me to learn and to get priorities accomplished. And, ironically, it is so much of the fear and intimidation that creates so many of the problems we seek to resolve, rather than solving them. And this is one of them.

Now I've got work to do:).

Love,
Ben