For those who have the stuff

I like writers who talk about big ideas and know what they're talking about when they employ them.

A Global Fervor

It's about goddamn time H.L. Mencken gets a mention in this age of queasiness about liberal values and their role in democratic life. For all their talk about being tough, one place where most candidates and journalists and scholars, for that matter, are most weak in the knees is in their commitment to liberal values and the reason, enlightenment, and wisdom that make all of us more genuinely strong.

I've got my eye out for people who've got the stuff it takes to show real courage in the world and affirm our liberty as the core of who we are and not some backwater secret that we are ashamed and afraid of that we feel we have to keep from the world, for fear of all the evil forces that we are perpetually and wrongly afraid that freedom will unleash.

Really, how much would you have to watch freedom make the world better before you thought twice about coercion as the heart of liberal values and liberal democracy?

And that's what I like about Jim. He's got the stuff.

Mencken had the stuff. He was wrong about a lot. But this is one that he was undoubtedly right about. Because what Mencken knew better than the current crop of liberalism's wannabes is that the most important reason for presuming on the side of the freedom of each person's conscience to sort out their lives, more, is because we are so often an arrogant and petty little species far too self-righteous when we limit the liberty of others and far too often wrongheaded in that thinking to ever warrant confidence that any of us can be trusted to have somehow transcended that stupid, self-important, snotty little tendency.

I'm tired of reading pansy little excuses for why people are too sickly to take liberalism seriously. Especially from every political leader whose bread and butter is propounded in just how tough they are to deal with the world's problems.

Proof's in the pudding, you sad, small-minded little sissified nancies of illiberality. Buck up. Speak up for freedom.

If you have the stuff, that is.

Building hope in juvenile justice

After months of haranguing by Colbert King, of the Washington Post, of Vincent Schiraldi, the Director of the Washington D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, James Forman, a former public defender and current Georgetown Law School professor, and Reid Weingarten, a lawyer and Forman's partner in the See Forever Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating and rehabilitating young people of diverse backgrounds, including those who have dropped out and criminally offended, answer in a most stellar way.

New Hope at Oak Hill: Building a Juvenile Justice System D.C. Can Be Proud Of

"For the past two decades, the District's juvenile justice system has been a source of shame. Rats and roaches infested Oak Hill, the facility that housed adolescent offenders, and a court-appointed monitor found snakes in hallways and in residents' beds. Youths assaulted staff, and staff assaulted youths. Drugs, alcohol and weapons were easy to find. Escapes were common.

Post editorials chronicled the dysfunction over the years. In 1988, The Post chastised the District for ignoring long-standing problems and creating "a detention system that is little more than a warehouse that rehabilitates no one." In 2004, columnist Colbert I. King identified the same problems, including fights, drug abuse, rats and roaches, and broken windows. King wrote that "the District government -- through Oak Hill -- is aiding and abetting the hardening of young offenders by enmeshing them in a dysfunctional juvenile justice system that makes them, as one expert said, 'more apt to commit crime.'

This is the system that D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services Director Vincent Schiraldi inherited in 2005. Understanding this history is essential to a fair evaluation of the department today. Schiraldi and the city face a monumental challenge -- namely, turning around a broken bureaucracy and creating a juvenile system that protects the community and rehabilitates teens...

...First, find what works and bring it to the District. Because the D.C. juvenile justice system has failed for so long, many of us accept inadequacy as inevitable. But reform efforts elsewhere tell a different story. Schiraldi has modeled his approach on that of Missouri, where, working with kids from tough neighborhoods in St. Louis and Kansas City, officials have created a system that treats young offenders like future citizens, not incorrigible inmates. Instead of large detention facilities, Missouri uses small, dormitory-style settings in communities, with an emphasis on therapy, schooling and rehabilitation.

Missouri officials know that public safety comes first. But they also know that rehabilitation is one of the best means of protecting the public. By teaching juvenile offenders to address their past misdeeds, to read and to imagine a future, the Missouri system prepares them to become productive, law-abiding citizens. This approach works. Last year, Missouri's juvenile recidivism rate was 8 percent, while the rate in Texas -- which has a more punitive approach -- was over 50 percent.

Missouri, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has said, has "the most successful statewide juvenile justice program in the nation." Wouldn't it be nice if the District could make such a boast one day, too?"

You really need to read the entire article to get a flavor for these two very dedicated men and their efforts to help D.C. youth. It is so refreshing to see compassionate and results-focussed people come out of the woodwork to constructively criticize and work to improve the wrong-headed approaches to matters of governance that we all face that have dominated the public discussion for far too long.

Forman and Weingarten are clearly two of those people. And after reading King's columns with much concern, as much about King's approach as about the juvenile justice system that he rightly wants to address and improve, it is so nice to read folks who have a better idea of what better directions for that system look like.

We all would do better to heed the advice of people who have made systems and situations work rather than the masses of folks who are rightly frustrated when systems like juvenile justice don't work, but who have few really good ideas to make them work better.

As someone who works with such young people, I have much confidence that Forman and Weingarten are on a better track, and one that the rest of us would do well by learning from and following their better example and lead.

Why Hillary Clinton's failures of leadership matter

Frank Rich has a brilliant and dead-on criticism of the Clinton campaign, especially its dubious claims of stronger experience.

A resume can't buy you love

"We can only imagine what is going on inside John McCain's head when he contemplates Mike Huckabee. It can't be pretty. No presidential candidate in either party has more experience in matters of war than the Arizona senator, and yet in a wartime election he is being outpaced by a guy who has zero experience and is proud of it.

'I may not be the expert that some people are on foreign policy," Huckabee joked to Don Imus, 'but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.' So much for the gravitas points earned during a five-and-a-half year stay at the Hanoi Hilton.

But if McCain has so far resisted slapping down the upstart in his party, Bill Clinton has shown no such self-restraint about Barack Obama. Early this month the former president criticized the press for not sufficiently covering the candidates' "record in public life" and thereby making 'people think experience is irrelevant.' His pique boiled over on Charlie Rose's show on Dec. 14, when he made his now-famous claim that the 2008 election will be a referendum on whether 'no experience matters.' He insinuated that Obama was tantamount to 'a gifted television commentator' and likened a potential Obama presidency to a roll of the dice.

Attention Bill Clinton: If that's what this election is about, it's already over. No matter how much Hillary Clinton, McCain or Rudy Giuliani brag about being tested and vetted, it's not experience that will be decisive in determining the next president...

...But for Hillary Clinton, the problem isn't just that the Bush years have tarnished the notion that experience is a positive indicator of future performance. She has further devalued that sales pitch with her own inflated claims of what her experience has been.

Ted Sorensen, the JFK speechwriter now in the Obama camp, saw the backlash coming in a recent conversation I had with him after Hillary Clinton had mocked Obama for counting his elementary-school years in Indonesia as an asset.

"Hillary should be careful about scoffing at other people's experience," Sorensen said. "It's not as if the process of osmosis gives her presidential qualities by physical proximity."

Whatever Clinton's experience as first lady or senator, what matters most in any case is not its sheer volume, that 35 years she keeps citing. It's what she did or did not learn along the way that counts. That's why one of the most revealing debate passages so far came in an exchange that earned much laughter but scant scrutiny this month in Des Moines.

This was the moment when Obama was asked how he could deliver a clean break from the past while relying on "so many Clinton advisers." Hillary Clinton jokingly called out, "I want to hear that," prompting Obama to one-up her by responding, "Well, Hillary, I'm looking forward to you advising me, as well."

Well, touché. But what was left unexamined beneath the levity was a revealing distinction between these two candidates. The questioner was right: Obama, like Hillary Clinton, has indeed turned to former Clintonites for foreign-policy advice. But the Clinton players were not homogeneous, and who ended up with which '08 candidate is instructive.

The principal foreign-policy Clinton alumni in Obama's campaign include Susan Rice, a former assistant secretary of state, and Tony Lake, the former national security adviser and a prewar skeptic who said publicly in February 2003 that the Bush administration had not made the case that Saddam was an "imminent threat." Rice, in an eloquent speech in November 2002, said that the Bush administration was "trying to change the subject to Iraq" from the war against Al Qaeda and warned that if it tried to fight both wars at once, "one, if not both, will suffer." Her text now reads as a bookend to Obama's senatorial campaign speech challenging the wisdom of the war only weeks earlier that same fall.

Hillary Clinton's current team was less prescient. Though it includes one of the earlier military critics of Bush policy, General Wesley Clark, he is balanced by General Jack Keane, an author of the Bush "surge." The Clinton campaign's foreign policy and national security director is a former Madeleine Albright aide, Lee Feinstein, who in November 2002 was gullible enough to say on CNBC that "we should take the president at his word, which is that he sees war as a last resort" - an argument anticipating the one Clinton still uses to defend her vote on the Iraq war authorization.

In late April 2003, a week before "Mission Accomplished," Feinstein could be found on CNN saying that he was "fairly confident" that WMD would turn up in Iraq. Asked if the war would be a failure if no weapons were found, he said, "I don't think that that's a situation we'll confront." Forced to confront exactly that situation over the next year, he dug in deeper, co-writing an essay for Foreign Affairs (available on its Web site) arguing that "the biggest problem with the Bush pre-emption strategy may be that it does not go far enough."

In a two-page handwritten letter in response to a recent column of mine criticizing Hillary Clinton's Senate votes on Iraq and Iran, Bill Clinton made a serious and impassioned defense of her foreign-policy record. On the subject of her support for the so-called Kyl-Lieberman amendment on Iran this fall, Bill Clinton wrote: "If Sen. Obama, for example, had really believed it was an indirect authorization to attack Iran, he would not have stayed away on the campaign trail, but would have come back to vote against it." That's a fair point - and a fair criticism of Obama as he continues to vilify this particular Hillary Clinton vote. If voting for Kyl-Lieberman was as grave a step toward war as Obama claims, there's no excuse for his absence.

Bill Clinton's narrow defense of his wife's Iraq vote in 2002 - it was not "a blanket authorization to go to war," he wrote - doesn't persuade me.

But even if it did, her choice for foreign-policy director in 2008 makes me question her ability to profit from experience and make a clean break with the establishment thinking in both parties that enabled the Iraq fiasco. Judgment calls like this rather than failures of the press may answer her husband's question as to why the public finds her experience "irrelevant."

What Hillary Clinton clearly has learned from her White House experience, as she reminds us, is to strike back at her critics.

Unfortunately, she has assimilated those critics' methods as well.

Attacks on Obama's record and views are fair game. But the steady personal attacks - the invocations of "cocaine" and "Hussein" and "madrassa" by surrogates - smell like the dirty tricks of the old Clinton haters. The Clinton-camp denials that these tactics have been "authorized" sound like Karl Rove's denials of similar smear campaigns against John McCain in 2000.

If Hillary Clinton is to win, she won't do so by running on that kind of experience but by rising above it. Bill Clinton wouldn't have shifted gears to refer to his wife constantly as a "change agent," however implausibly, if his acute political sensors didn't tell him that Americans are not just willing but eager to roll the dice."

A powerful and accurate criticism. The Clintons and their supporters better hope that the deception and less engaged thought in this campaign and as a political strategy by Hillary Clinton for almost 6 years, now, somehow doesn't matter to more honest, thoughtful, decent leadership. Something tells me they are wrong.

Thanks to Frank Rich for making more plain why it matters and who our better alternatives might be.

Feist

If you have not heard Leslie Feist's sound, yet, you are missing out on quite the treat. Her sound and style are indescribably creative. Her voice is to die for. Her lyrics and demeanor are sweet and genuine and edgy all at the same time. The creativity of her sounds and her varied and versatile styles are quickly earning her a broad international audience.

Feist

If you can't tell, I have a Canada-sized crush on this northern-country cutie.

You will too, after you hear her sound.

Enjoy

Power vs. poppies (an early gift from Jim Hoagland)

Jim Hoagland just became my favorite columnist.

Poppies vs. Power in Afghanistan

This is the most dead-on analysis of the problems of American power, as well as its relationship to the drug war, that I think I have ever seen from a mainstream columnist.

Jim is figuring it out. And his analysis is brilliant.

And he is right. Highlights from this brilliant article that must be read in totality:

"The power to destroy does not carry within it the power to control. A century of failed colonial rule and the American misadventure in Vietnam etched that lesson on global consciousness for a time. It has taken the huge problems that affluent, nuclear-armed nations are encountering in the miserable ruins of Afghanistan and Iraq to drive it home anew.

Call it the paradox of overwhelming but insufficient force. It is surfacing in a struggle in Afghanistan over the wisdom of chemically eradicating that nation's expanding poppy fields. They are the source of (1) the livelihoods of many Afghan peasants, (2) a record flood of heroin into Western markets and (3) funding for the Taliban and other terrorist forces.

William Wood, the U.S. ambassador in Kabul, has pushed so aggressively for aerial spraying to destroy the poppy fields that he has been nicknamed "Chemical Bill" by NATO officers serving there. President Bush posted Wood to Afghanistan after he oversaw a large eradication-by-air project in Colombia, with mixed results.

Wood's priorities have divided U.S. and Afghan policymakers. President Hamid Karzai's government fears both environmental damage and the radicalizing political effect that a spraying program might have on the peasants Karzai is trying to coax away from the Taliban. For the moment, Karzai has gained the upper hand over the State Department's narcotics bureau in this ongoing fight...

...Spraying in Colombia did not diminish the flow of drugs from that South American country. Gates and other U.S. officials credit President Alvaro Uribe (and Wood's support for him) with "uprooting corruption in government" and keeping it from tipping into the narco-state category. Only in that sense could Colombia be a model for Afghanistan.

The West will begin to resolve the grim and massive problems that the international drug trade creates only when the United States and Europe make justice rather than vengeance the center of drug laws, create effective rehabilitation programs that fill hospitals rather than jails and curb the demand for life- and soul-destroying narcotics at home. Even a "successful" poppy eradication program in Afghanistan would be no more than a bandage on a gaping wound, while inflicting great damage on Karzai's government.

Afghanistan has been treated as a one-dimensional device in the current U.S. presidential political season. Democrats use it to establish that they are not pacifists, citing Afghanistan as a just war that they endorse in contrast to Bush's invasion of Iraq, which they deplore, and move on quickly. Republicans are little better on the stump.

But Afghanistan is an urgent, rapidly evolving crisis that demands the attention and commitment of all candidates for national office. So do America's overly harsh and counterproductive drug laws.

And so does the paucity of support for providing tax dollars for prevention and rehabilitation rather than incarceration of simple users. The American nation could give itself no better present in this season than a thorough rethinking of its war on drugs and of many aspects of its war on terror."

You really have to read the whole thing. But it's a sign of the trend at the Post, at least among independents and conservatives at that paper, along with more free trade commitments of liberals at the Post, of a more liberally-committed and rational period in Washington policy-making, I hope.

Thank you, Jim. You just made my Christmas. Merry Christmas, Jim. Happy New Year to us all.

Throw off the bowlines

My favorite Twain quotation:

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

So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.

Explore. Dream. Discover."

– Mark Twain

Thank you, Mark, for giving me courage when others demanded cowardice.

Merry Christmas, Mark.

Love,
Ben

The failures of power

Abdoulaye Wade, the President of the Republic of Senegal, has an excellent and straightforward critique of sanctions on Zimbabwe and their autocratic leader, Robert Mugabe.

Sanctions are not helpful

It is a welcome and important truth that the West needs to face more openly and honestly as the West and America face their failures of the last 6 years or so (as well as the hundreds of years before that, as well, obviously).

It is the nature of power, in my experience, now. People who have it rarely like to give it up. They take credit for anything good that happens while they have it. And they disavow any failures or inhumanity that occur during their reign and with their use of power.

It very much makes me thankful for democracy, where people have power for only short periods of time. And where the powerful can be replaced easily and regularly.

Because everyone wants to believe that they are successful in their efforts, no matter how much they fail. And those with power who engage in such self-defense do so most dangerously, because their defenses involves the most serious issues we face with the power to coerce, strong-arm, overwhelm, and otherwise abuse their neighbors.

That goes for Robert Mugabe and many of his rightful critics in the West.

Abdoulaye Wade is just right. And most of his critics are just wrong. And what all of us have in common is that we all rightly value the ability to sort out such issues out of our own judgments and consciences, as much as possible, and the difficulty that is involved with admitting when we might be wrong, and allowing better wisdom and more effective action to be taken instead.

It's the singular most serious and common pride of liberal and illiberal peoples throughout history. We have such a hard time admitting when we are wrong.

And many people are often hurt in the meantime.

In Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. And in the rest of the illiberal and liberal countries around the world.

The difference in the liberal world is that there is more room for better ideas to surface given more freedom for their expression and discussions and critiques of problems that can be more freely engaged.

Liberal peoples of the world perpetually take it for granted. And their illiberal neighbors wonder why they are so insistent that everyone else take liberal values seriously when they so regularly fail to do so themselves.

People like Abdoulaye Wade are right. And most people are wrong. And most people don't want to hear it or face it.

All I want for Christmas is for one person to admit they might be wrong about this one. Just one. Everyone else can have their sanctimony for the holidays. I just want one person to acknowledge the possibility that maybe we've taken a wrong turn in the last 6 years or so.

And maybe a girlfriend who I can talk with and who knows better that love and thoughtfulness offer the most powerful and honest progress for the human condition than anything sanctimony and self-pity and those who would protect it could ever offer.

I have work to do and gifts to wrap. Merry Christmas, everyone.

As Tiny Tim would say, "God bless us. Every one."

Love,
Ben

Why I take love and a life I love seriously

Why love? Because love inspires me. Everything else just is. And often it just is for the worse. And that's the truth.

Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Kwanzaa. Happy New Year.

Love,
Ben

Great question

Eugene Robinson asks one this morning. I have to say after watching Bill on Charlie Rose, I have to ask the question myself.

A Problem Like Bill

A Hillary Clinton presidency could be a pretty funny ride, now that I think about it. Perhaps I should vote for her just for entertainment purposes.

Wild, wild election season

David Broder and the Economist have two funny takes on this topsy-turvy election season.

Turning for the wierd

The nightmare before Christmas

Best lines:

From Broder: "Only a newspaper that could find Keyes a credible candidate but bar Kucinich at the door could endorse both McCain and Clinton."

From the Economist: "Mrs Clinton is still the woman to beat, however. Other candidates pander. She does her homework and then micropanders."

The Economist seems to be endorsing Barack Obama and John McCain, with the best critique/endorsement of Obama that I have read to date. Andrew Sullivan is for Obama and Ron Paul, and getting lots of gruff from readers (I agree with Ron, generally, around his libertarian commitments, but I think he'd be a difficult leader to take seriously on important diplomatic and security matters, internationally, and I think he disregards the role that many governing institutions, like the Federal Reserve and the World Trade Organization, play, politically, in buffering and maintaining a free economy and free society). George Will likes Rudy and is unenamoured with Clinton.

And I'm an independent, whose spent the bulk of his life as a liberal, who is voting for Obama or McCain (at this point; that could easily change, depending on how this election season and the larger democratic discussion and debates unfold), but who is most interested in what conservatives have to say during this liberal political period.

It is a strange democratic world, isn't it?

I love it.

And now I remember why I love teaching

How exciting. This is how education should be.

At 71, physics professor is a Web star

This is why I chose teaching rather than politics. Teaching offers more genuine happiness and fulfillment, because it is our ideas and teaching that have the most lasting impact. And that is why I chose a life I could more genuinely love: a life of thinking and sharing with others my love for doing both.

Now I remember why I hate politics

Obama's Team Responds to Clinton Camp Slams

Do my children and grandchildren have to forever look at such people and think, "These are supposed to be my heroes?"

Is this really all that democracy has to offer?

This is the reason I care about policy thought and discussions. The hope and opportunity for something better than the dishonesty and ugliness that has become democratic elections.

This could change. We would have to expect better. We could expect more reasoned, thoughtful, engaged, substantial discussions and disagreements that appreciated diverse viewpoints, ideas, ideologies, and perspectives. We could expect discussions accountable to empirical evidence and that treated the discussion and the thinking like it mattered as much as it does, no matter how much we bullshit ourselves with this ugly process.

We could expect better. If we had the courage. And the courage to expect more of ourselves as much as we expect more of others.

And if we don't, we only have ourselves to blame for this ugly mess that we call democratic politics.

We expect and reward the cynicism, we will get the cynicism. We expect and reward the more honest and decent route, we will get more honesty and decency.

When push comes to shove, it really is as simple as that.

What we are waiting for is us to expect more honesty and decency. From ourselves. And from our politics.

And when we do that, we can stop being so disappointed all the time with what a sorry spectacle we have settled for in the meantime.

For the most part, he's right

In 2008, be nicer to your neighbors

There was a time in my life when I thought the Dalai Lama's suggestion was the solution to every problem.

I've grown up, now. I've been taken advantage of and taken for granted many, many times in my life, at this point (I am a teacher, after all). I have been mugged by reality, as the old saying goes about being a liberal in one's youth and a conservative in one's old age. I have seen how nasty and aggressive and combative and unrepentant the world can be. I can see how cowardly people can be, hiding behind ideologies or power politics or religion or nationalism or race or gender or whatever, all so they never have to admit when they might be wrong. And what unrepentant cowards and bullies we can all be.

I have seen enough of the ugliness of the world to know that compassion doesn't solve every problem.

But I'm also seen enough of the world to know that compassion and understanding and thought and communication, as frustrating and patience-testing as this road can be, are, generally, far more effective than the sometimes quite reasonable but often and generally less effective route of aggression, pressure, force and the like.

Force is needed at times. And when it is, the least possible necessary force and aggression should be used to check our tendency to use maximum force which both tends to lead to abuses of power and which tends to undermine the effectiveness of even noble efforts. Overwhelming force is needed in wartime to defeat an enemy decisively. But the least possible necessary overwhelming force should be used to assure that as few innocent or even not-so-innocent people die as possible in any conflict.

Israel is a country that, for the most part, regularly defends innocents from the barbarities of terrorism and its murder of innocents. But when Israelis overreact in their hostility to peoples in Palestine who often rationalize such murder as if it is worth a better land deal or out of hatred of their seemingly endless occupation, they have clearly, by any objective standard, undermined the cause of peace that they and Palestinians share, long-term. Palestinians are rightly horrified by the historical legacy of being expelled from their land and their homes and the many human rights abuses that Israelis have inflicted on their Palestinian neighbors, but their support for terrorism has, rightly, inflamed the passions of Israelis, many of whom do not want to forgive the whole awful mess of bloodshed between these two peoples.

It is clear that force has not solved this problem. It is clear that no amount of pressure would resolve this conflict.

What is needed is genuine commitment. And it is this purpose which animates efforts to lead with compassion and understanding, to presume against force as a means of resolving conflicts, and to use the least possible necessary force when no alternatives exist.

The idea that compassion can solve all of our problems is naive.

But it is from compassion that springs understanding of the motives and experiences and thoughts and feelings of others which offers us any additional bit of insight that might resolve problems that have, heretofore, been left unresolved.

I have left behind my naive view that compassion can solve all of our problems. It cannot. And its enemies mock it with genocide, murder, and naked aggression.

But one bit of wisdom from my youth that I will never forget is that it is from that compassion and understanding that new insights, deeper understandings, and more effective solutions to our problems are found. Because if they are not found there, they will not be found anywhere. And that alternative is far more hopeless than the risks that come with keeping one's heart and mind open to new opportunities and possibilities.

And, for that, we owe a debt of gratitude to the Dalai Lama and all of the most compassionate leaders of humanity who have walked this earth.

Islamic terrorism and self-determination

The roots of Northern Irish, Basque, Chechen, Algerian, Iraqi or Palestinian terrorism on claims for self-determination are obvious ones which the experience in Northern Ireland offers much hope can be resolved with political negotiations that provide real self-governance and self-determination to the peoples terrorist groups in these regions claim to represent.

The claims of other Islamist groups like Al-Queda are more problematic and pose a much more difficult challenge for those seeking political solutions to the death and destruction that they impose.

Today, I happened upon this article by Azzam Tamimi in the January 7, 2005 Guardian - while reading up on yesterday's bombings in Algeria - that may indicate that democratic self-governance might help abate, or at least cut off the political oxygen, for Al Queda type terrorism, as well, which exploits the anger that many Arabs feel without the ability to choose their own political destinies and which blame Western democracies for their plight (despite much of the despotism being homegrown).

The right to rule ourselves

One of the serious lessons from the Belfast Agreement negotiations is that the right to self-rule is often a serious motivation for political support for terrorism in many areas of the world. Clearly the experiences of Western democracies with on-going terrorist movements - right-wing fundamentalist Christian pro-life and anti-government violence (i.e. the Oklahoma City bombings, the murder of abortion doctors and bombings of abortion clinics) and left-wing terrorism (i.e. environmentalist tree-spiking in the 1990's and left-wing terrorism from groups like the Weathermen, the Simbanese Liberation Army, and the like in the 1960's) - demonstrates that opportunties for political engagement, representation and participation do not end all risks of terrorism.

But our experience in both liberal democracies and in countries where terrorism is strong do indicate a less pronounced risk, long-term, in countries where self-governance is present. Short term, terrorists do seem to take advantage of post-authoritarian governing arrangements, as Alberto Abadie argues in his work on poverty, political freedom and terrorism.

Poverty, Political Freedom and the Roots of Terrorism

But political freedom, long term, argues Abadie, is the strongest predictor of less terrorism. And the less violent political reality in liberal democracies relative to more illiberal parts of the world seems to bear out his analysis.

All of of this, I knew, which is why I have always had much confidence that a peace agreement could significantly reduce terrorism in Palestine and Israel, given a shared commitment to a peace and security agreement (terrorists do need to be tracked down and imprisoned or killed; it can't happen on it's own).

But Tammimi's piece gives me reason to believe that the self-governance/self-determination claims of Arabs and Muslims living in more authoritarian, less democratic, more illiberal countries might be a much more important factor in reducing and combatting terrorism from the likes of groups like Al Queda, whose terrorism springs from less obvious self-determination claims. The raison de entre, of groups like Al Queda, presumably, is to impose Islamic theocratic arrangements on the world, after all, rather than liberate the Arab and Muslim world.

But the really confused reason and language of Tamimi's piece, ironically, gives me reason to think that, perhaps, the irrational claims of Islamist terrorist groups, or at least the political oxygen that gives them material and political support for their effort, might be more related to claims on democratic self-governance by Arabs and Muslims than I have recognized in the past.

It's an interesting read, even if it makes very little reasoned sense. In fact, it is its irrationality which offers the most for those seeking insight into how to neutralize and combat the kind of terrorism that groups like Al Queda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and many similar groups have to offer.

Power

Power makes cowards of us all. Every single one of us. Until we cannot stand being cowards anymore.

Liberal values for our most important liberal institution

George Will has an excellent critique of No Child Left Behind in the Washington Post, today, that sums up many of my concerns with the unintended consequences of a well-meaning law that, most teachers would agree, has very much undermined K-12 education in America.

Getting Past 'No Child'

I want to reiterate what I think is the most important question to be asked about NCLB:

What other Federal law in America controls or ever has controlled the central responsibilities of an industry nationwide and has ever experienced success?

It is the most foolish way to achieve success in a free society that I could possible imagine. And George's analogies to Soviet grain quotas are right on target.

Some of the better lines:

"No Child Left Behind, supposedly an antidote to the "soft bigotry of low expectations," has instead spawned lowered standards. The law will eventually be reauthorized because doubling down on losing bets is what Washington does. But because NCLB contains incentives for perverse behavior, reauthorization should include legislation empowering states to ignore it...

...NCLB intensified what Paul Posner of George Mason University calls "coercive federalism." Kenneth Wong and Gail Sunderman of Brown University and the Harvard Civil Rights Project, respectively, say NCLB "signaled the end of 'layer cake' federalism and strengthened the notion of 'marble cake' federalism, where the national and subnational governments share responsibilities in the domestic arena." Hoekstra's and Garrett's proposals would enable states to push Washington toward where it once was and where it belongs regarding K through 12 education: Out."

Dead on.

The Economist also features an excellent column on the results from the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment.

The race is not always to the richest

Some of their conclusions:

"Letting schools run themselves seems to boost a country's position in this high-stakes international tournament: giving school principals the power to control budgets, set incentives and decide whom to hire and how much to pay them. Publishing school results helps, too. More important than either, though, are high-quality teachers: a common factor among all the best performers is that teachers are drawn from the top ranks of graduates.

Another common theme is that rising educational tides seem to lift all boats. In general—the United States and Britain may be exceptions—countries do well either by children of all abilities, or by none. Those where many do well are also those where few fall behind. A new feature in this year's study is an attempt to work out how differences between schools, as opposed to differences within them, determine performance (see chart). Variation between schools is big in Germany (to be expected, as most schools select children on ground of ability). But results also vary in some countries (like Japan) with nominally comprehensive systems. In top-performing Finland, by contrast, the differences between schools are nearly trivial."

For those wanting to know about the most principled and likely direction for better schools and educations and about freeing up the most important institution in a liberal democracy to be free and for citizens to choose freely, this is the man who has articulated the strongest arguments for liberal values being taken seriously in our most important liberal institutions.

Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation

Thanks for the Christmas present George. It's nice to know that someone in America still believes in liberal values.

"Smart power"

Sadly, Joe Nye, an international policy scholar for whom I have an enormous amount of respect, has taken a decent idea in soft power and reduced it to a slogan for power for any purpose, good or bad.

Smart Power

From that post:

"Smart power is the ability to combine hard and soft power into a successful strategy. By and large, the United States managed such a combination during the Cold War, but more recently U.S. foreign policy has tended to over-rely on hard power because it is the most direct and visible source of American strength. The Pentagon is the best trained and best resourced arm of the government, but there are limits to what hard power can achieve on its own. Promoting democracy, human rights and development of civil society are not best handled with the barrel of a gun. It is true that the American military has an impressive operational capacity, but the practice of turning to the Pentagon because it can get things done leads to an image of an over-militarized foreign policy."

I responded thusly:

Substitute 17th, 18th, or 19th century British military or early 20th century German military or 20th century Soviet military for American military in that last sentence, Joe, and anyone not defending American power can see the problem with this conception of power using more or less coercive means to get what we want.

Power and aggression are necessary for dealing with matters of self-defense and the defense of others. But they are perpetually rationalized for whatever purposes we please. Some "smart" combination of power has been used by every despot, gangster, or terrorist who has ever lived. Dictators provide public goods as well as oppress and politically imprison. Gangsters seduce and give incentives as well as rob and plunder. Terrorists persuade as well as murder.

The use of hard and soft power, irrespective of the interests or liberty of others, has been rationalized for every purpose, for the length of humanity's history.

That is why it is so important to create a presumption against power as a means of coercing for whatever we please and in favor of liberal values and the freedom that sustains them.

Everything else is exactly what Lord Acton warned us of. And it is clear that it no longer matters whether it is done in the name of liberalism, conservativism, or any other ideology.

American power is and will be humbled. And no combination of hard or soft power will avoid the humbling of those who would try to center coercion rather than persuasion, conscience and thought at the heart of our liberal values. Theorists gave hope to those who sought freedom and independence in the New World. But it was their thirst for freedom that finally threw off the shackles of empire.

And no amount of hard or soft power could have possibly have trumped that commitment to freedom and the values of liberal democracy.

Mencken on liberty

H.L. Mencken had many faults. He was a cynic, too often, about people, because of his aversion, that I share, to the mob and to other average people, especially people of average intellect, limiting his freedom. He demonstrates enough racism and anti-semitism, for all of the mixed legacies he leaves, in this respect, to leave me uninspired. He opposed, wrongly, World War I and World War II. World War I was built on the tragic, faulty, and unnecessary premises of imperialism but which was, nonetheless, a confrontation with aggression from Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. World War II was a war of self-defense for civilized nations and for the future of freedom and democracy against the naked force and aggression of Germany, Italy, and Japan.

But for all of his many faults, Mencken was at his best when he was speaking on behalf of liberty. This is one of my favorite quotations in this vein because it illustrates the possibilities that come with liberty, alone, and the logical limits of the case against liberty.

"Liberty, at bottom, is a simple thing, whatever its outward forms. It is common faith in man, common good will, common tolerance and charity, common decency, no less and no more. Translated into political terms, it is the doctrine that the normal citizen of a civilized state is actually normal, that the decency which belongs naturally to homo sapiens, as an animal above the brutes, is really in him. It holds that this normal citizen may be trusted, one day with another, to do the decent thing. It relies upon his natural impulses, and assumes them to be sound. Finally, it is the doctrine that if these assumptions are false, then nothing can be done about it and if human beings are actually so bad, then none is good enough to police the rest. [Editorial in American Mercury, February 1929]"

It is the last sentence that resonates with me, today. It is the assumption of those who trust liberal democratic values and liberal democracy less which troubles me most.

If most people cannot generally be expected to do good and to have their liberty respected, even as the world will now and forever harbor tragedies that come from peoples' free will, then why would we think that some of us might realistically be expected to better police the rest of us when we profess to not trust their capacity to do such good?

And sadly, all the most serious tragedies of history - genocide, imperialism, slavery, despotism, sexism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and all the rest - have derived from this premise that people are better repressed, suppressed, and otherwise ruled for their own good than learning to govern themselves better with greater freedom and the responsibility to do good that comes with it.

Humanity will forever make mistakes, often very serious and tragic ones. But to premise our repression of and aggression with one another on the idea that it will somehow prevent or avoid those errors is both foolish and a serious misreading and blindness to a long history of human error despite and often because of much repression and its related ills.

There is only one path out of this ugly labyrinth. It is from darkness to light, from ignorance to understanding, and from slavery to freedom.

Every other road is illusion or deliberate deception. And a bitter legacy to be left behind.

A conservative alternative

Reasoned and moderate conservatives are coming out of the woodwork for John McCain. It's a wise course correction for the Republican party, right now, I think.

The case for John McCain

I disagree with McCain on much. I oppose campaign finance regulation, which I think is counterproductive and easily circumvented. I think a fuller discussion needs to occur around torture and exceptions to the rule that torture should never be used. I think McCain cowtows too much to religious conservatives and their Christian-centric worldview (and if I were to take him at his word that the American President should be Christian, I would be deeply offended for my Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, agnostic and atheist, and Americans of other faiths or lack thereof).

But McCain also represents an important departure from the swagger and threatening demeanor of the Giuliani campaign and leadership style, right now, which would like further alienate the international community and the Muslim world if he were to be elected. I also think that the Giuliani and Clinton campaigns represent the cynical politics of power and inevitability that corrupt and undermine more genuine democratic discussion and engagement on serious policy issues in America and internationally.

McCain is not a perfect option, in that respect. But I think he might be better. And anything would have to be better than the politics of inevitable, overwhelming, and arrogant power-mongering, right now.

For that reason, Clinton and Giuliani both need serious, credible, and effective challenges in their respective races. Obama and McCain offer those challenges.

It is a better opportunity for reasoned discourse and those who respect its central importance in democratic politics and policy-making to find its place in this election. Clinton and Guiliani could offer that opportunity, as well, as they demonstrate their commitment to that discourse and in lieu of its belligerent and less courageous alternatives and the hubris that power, rather than ideas, is the central value of democratic life.

And American and liberal democracy would be better for the commitment.

The comedy of errors that is nuclear proliferation 21st-century-style

As the Economist points out, it is pretty funny how American intelligence is so finnicky and clearly uncertain, even as various ideologues use it for all-too-certain-and-deadly purposes.

But the headline on this article is kind of funny given the failures of the least 4 years.

Pressure works ("high confidence")

Here's my question for the Economist editors:

Given the uncertainty of all intelligence claims, including what I believe to be a dubious claim that pressure rather than a whole host of alternate causalities is responsible for it's claim that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons (though it is clearly still trying to develop weapons-grade uranium and its ambitions and rhetoric were very likely accelerated, not halted, I believe, by American-led efforts to pressure them to give up their pursuit of the bomb; if you can't tell, I'm a little skeptical of the NIE findings, even as I welcome their efforts to turn down the heat)...

How many years would the advocates of pressure as the vehicle for denuclearization give the current strategy before they would be willing to give it up?

Meaning, if pressure failed for 10 years rather than 4 years, would you be willing to give it up?

If it failed for 15 years, would that be enough time? How about for 20 years? Or 50? Or 100?

It's important. Because it took 70 years for the Soviet Union to give up force as a governing philosophy before it gave it up. And much destruction was wreaked along the way.

No matter how many times the Washington Post, the Economist editors, Thomas Friedman, Joe Nye, Francis Fukuyama, or any other combination of folks who perpetually end up having to face yet another reality that challenges what I believe to be underdeveloped ideas about hard and soft power and a good cop/bad cop philosophy of doing business in international politics, they have this habit of adapting the evidence to fit their assumptions rather than questioning their assumptions to fit the evidence.

The latter is the basis for reason and more empirical assessments of evidence and policy questions. The former is an accomodation of reality rather than an embrace of empirical evidence as the basis for forming conclusions.

It also happens to be a rationalization of illiberalism and abuses of power and an example that the illiberal world has been following all-too-closely up to this point.

And the irony of this godforesaken rationalization is:

If it turns out that I am right, which I'm pretty sure I am, and that the democratic community who has been feeding this aggressive policy trend are wrong, will there be someone, anyone, who might step up and take responsibility for the mistake? In this era of responsibility, will anyone be willing to step up and take responsibility on this one? So far, responsibility has not been terrible forthcoming, certainly not enough to reassure me that the current strategy is the best means of eliciting greater responsibility.

And the larger problem is that we prolong and make more serious the already very serious problems of nuclear proliferation and a whole host of policy problems we face as long as we rationalize what I believe to be an aggressive abuse of democracy and power. There are better ways to deal with Iran, Iraq, Israeli/Palestinian peace, and a whole host of serious issues that we face that are more effective and consistent with our liberal values. But to get there, at some point, we would actually need to take those values seriously.

Perhaps this is our moment.

The slide into illiberalism

German seeks to ban Scientology

You know what they really need to crack down on. All this free thought circulating around the internet and in coffee shops and in universities and churches and living rooms. Too much damned freedom to think and worship and speak as you please. It's about damned time that someone ridded the world of these obstructions to safety and a more secure order.

Will someone now, finally, admit that safety and freedom are at odds and that security and the rule of law trump freedom and the interests of liberalism every time?

Thank Allah, the State, and the Central Party that we have rulers like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, Wen Jiabao, Fidel Castro, Bashar Assad, Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez and other such bellwethers of security and progress.

Maybe now we can finally turn this world around.

The role of skepticism in reason and politics

Benjamin Barber reminds us, today, why skepticism is the basis for any real progress in reason and in politics.

Bush is a liar, but 'intelligence' is an illusion

It is the great unspoken of the madhouse that is democratic politics: most politics is a confused mess of people too confident in their opinions. And intelligence is no different.

Power does that to people. Or rather, people do that when they take power more seriously than honesty and reason.

The cowardice of early 21st century politics

Alasdair Roberts, in Foreign Policy Magazine, tells the uncomfortable truth that Americans have been trying so hard to avoid for the last 4 years.

The War We Deserve

From the front page:

"It’s easy to blame the violence in Iraq and the pitfalls of the war on terror on a small cabal of neocons, a bumbling president, and an overstretched military. But real fault lies with the American people as well. Americans now ask more of their government but sacrifice less than ever before. It’s an unrealistic, even deadly, way to fight a global war. And, unfortunately, that’s just how the American people want it."

It is one of the most ironic, self-indulgent, dishonest facts of this repressive political period. Hillary Clinton is its most obvious champion. And it reflects the deep sense of entitlement and lack of responsibility, self-sacrafice, and service to others that animates this self-centered and power-hungry period of American politics.

Demand from, bully, and pressure others. Expect little of yourself. And, if all else fails, blame someone else.

It is the essence of the dysfunctional politics and cultural attitudes that animates this very strange and disturbingly dishonest political period. It is the consequence of a culture obsessed with power. And it has the nerve, as did Communism and Nazism, mind you, to call itself "progressive."

There is many things this period is. Progressive is clearly not one of them. Or, at best, progress happens despite our propensity to bully, pressure, leverage and otherwise try to overpower others as if it were more liberal or more democratic. And the most obvious demonstration of the lack of progress is its lack of progress. The big question that should be at the forefront of peoples' minds is "Why is so little getting accomplished?"

Much of the answer is found in this sad fact of 21st century American life that Alasdair Roberts considers in this article. Progress can only come once we face and come to terms with this ugly legacy.

Thomas Friedman redeems himself

You have to admit. This is pretty funny.

Intercepting Iran's take on America

Tom and I disagree about higher taxes. But other than that, this is funny as hell.

Kagan family wisdom

How interesting it would be to sit around this family dinner table.

Robert Kagan and Frederick Kagan have consistently offered up some of the strongest policy wisdom, especially in the later stages of this war in Iraq and the general international policy milieu, during this period.

Time to talk with Iran

Robert is right about the policy realities. Striking Iran only becomes an option for me when Iran has the bomb, for sure, and becomes provocative with genuinely imminent threats of military action against Israel or others in the region (we must anticipate a surprise attack, of course, but we can't go around assuming that one is always around the corner and rationalizing military force in its name; that was one of the animating forces of imperialism that had much of the world in constant warfare for much of humanity's history until democracy and a commitment to peace took hold).

The only realistic and most likely constructive option, right now, is talks. Obama's instincts are right on this, though Kagan is right that the risk of rebuff is present. Obviously, as much advance work as possible should be done on any summit deals. But Kagan is right that open-ended talks are also critical to getting information, generating mutual understanding, and getting at issues not likely to be revealed or resolved before a face-to-face meeting between heads of state.

It is Ronald Reagan's strongest legacy, I believe. During arms negotiations with the Soviets, Reagan believed in the cause of freedom and that democracy was a better system than Communism and was able to convince Mikhail Gorbachev of these commitments as well as the facts of Soviet life that clearly demonstrated the comparative strength of a society built on freedom and democracy. Reagan was right and he convinced Gorbachev of the case and the world was changed by all that talk. Talk could not have countered a Soviet attack, obviously, or removed a bloody dictator like Saddam Hussein. But talk and ideas do much in the world.

And especially in a country like Iran that is already built on a nascently democratic system of governance, which can elect or reject Ahmadinejad and any other leader (and looks prepared to do so, more, with each passing day), talk is the best way, as Kagan argues, to open up so many different issues that need to be addressed to work to deepen democratic commitments in that country and throughout the Middle East. As long as America acts like a hegemon in the region, Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda and so many anti-American, anti-Israeli and various terrorist causes will have much fuel for their destructive fires.

The more America lives up to her liberal democratic commitments, the more she leads from true strength and not the weak position of force without regard to liberal democratic principles that is the source of frailty, infirmity, and insecurity in governments like Myanmar, North Korea, Syria, China, Iran, Venezuela and so many repressive governments around the world.

Liberal values and commitments are the source of our strength if we could shed our insecurities about their capacity to do good in the world.

President Bush, in his remaining days, has an opportunity to demonstrate that. He is already making motions in that direction with the coordination and the tone of the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks in Annapolis.

The Kagan brothers have sensed better the policy realities we face and the relationship between force and liberalism than most folks who have written about this period.

It'd be nice to sit around their supper table just to hear the interesting conversation.

No goddamned sense

Most of life doesn't make any goddamned sense, is the truth.

Or rather it could, but we make so little sense in how we treat one another that life really ends up making no goddamned sense.

I suppose one day my children or my grandchildren will live in a world where it makes more sense, just barely, and where people treat one another better, hopefully a lot better than we treat one another today.

But too much of life, today, is pretty damned unbearable waiting for that day. I suppose that's always been true. It's just kind of funny that we are always so perpetually convinced that we have reached the pinnacle of human decency and nothing else could ever be better.

It'd be nice if we could learn from such folly. But, alas, our hubris always outruns our wisdom. And each generation seems so damned self-satisfied with itself to ever think otherwise. No matter how much any generation fucks the world up, there is never a shortage of pats it is want to give itself on the back for how its handled everything.

That could change. But only if we learn to treat one another better and be more thoughtful about our choices; to take our liberal values more seriously.

In the meantime, in every generation, life makes no goddamned sense. At least to younger generations who have to put up with the bluster of their parents and to older generations who have to put up with the nerve of their children. And to future generations who wonder at the foolishness of mistakes that they no longer have an interest in defending.

Perhaps that is as a mistake we can take a moment to avoid in the future. If only to be remembered better for the wisdom to do so. Or at least to not be thought the jackasses that we probably deserve to be remembered as in the meantime.