Taking up for Scooter

An excellent exorcism of liberal hypocritical and vengeful demons in this beautifully written piece by Richard Cohen, today. One reason to keep up with the Washington Post, depite the liberal sanctimony that is gives far too much truck to, these days.

Saving Scooter

Best lines:

"For some odd reason, the same people who were so appalled about government snooping, the USA Patriot Act and other such threats to civil liberties cheered as the special prosecutor weed-whacked the press, jailed a reporter and now will send a previously obscure government official to prison for 30 months.

This is precisely the sort of investigation that Jackson was warning about. It would not have been conducted if, say, the Iraq war had ended with 300 deaths and the mission had really been accomplished. An unpopular war produced the popular cry for scalps and, in Libby's case, the additional demand that he express contrition -- a vestigial Stalinist-era yearning for abasement. No one has yet explained, though, how Libby can express contrition and still appeal his conviction. No matter. Antiwar sanctimony excuses the inexplicable.

I don't expect George Bush to appreciate this. He is the privileged son of a privileged son, and he fears nothing except, probably, doubt. But the rest of us ought to consider what Fitzgerald has wrought and whether we are better off for his efforts."

Amen and pass the refreshing bit of honesty, brother.

Love,
Ben

Appreciating the good faith of average Americans (and facing my pride)

There has been a seriously H.L. Mencken side to me during this political period. It's Mencken's libertarian impulses, his misanthropy and his contempt for the pretension of common wisdom and virtue, and both his mocking and revulsion at the hypocrisy and bullshitting of average people that I have found so refreshing.

But something that I have never really seriously shared with Mencken (and why I have much more in common with Mark Twain) is his complete disenchantment with average folks.

I have skated those edges in these last 5 years. It has been the hardest time in my life. I've been treated harshly for good reason and I've been treated harshly for bad reason. I've learned that, either way, it really doesn't matter except to acknowledge that when you've been treated harshly for good reason, that good people can be appreciated even when you think it's kind of bullshit and you don't like all the ways they make their decisions, especially as it concerns you.

I got a call, today, from one of my best friends in the world, Stephanie Martell. Stephanie is one of the sweetest souls you will ever meet in your life. She has a disability - Prater Willy's Syndrome - and she is one of the most decent people I have ever known in my life. I've often thought of Stephanie as my Clarence; this sweet-natured angel in my life who always reminds me that being good and decent has nothing to do with intelligence or wisdom or world-savvy or any of those things. It has to do with having a decent heart. And Stephanie has one of the most decent hearts I've ever encountered.

And Stephanie reminded me, today, that while I don't always like the thinking and the choices and I certainly take issue with the jadedness and cynicism of most people over the age of 7, that I love and respect and appreciate the good faith of average people even when I'm not enamoured with their wisdom or their self interested interpretations of the world.

I think average people in liberal democracies make a lot of mistakes. Their most important mistake is my most important mistake. It is the biggest mistake that people make. It is numero uno among the seven deadly sins. It is pride. Otherwise known as self-righteousness. It is my number one sin, which has led to far too many sins in my life that I am ashamed to admit are my own.

Our pride. And I mean our pride. It's not the pride of some people, or the pride of bad people, or the pride of stupid people, and certainly not the pride of other people.

Our pride is that we perpetually think that we have arrived at more wisdom and more understanding than we really have. All of us. Me included. And we are perpetually making decisions that reflect our having convinced ourselves that we have more wisdom than we really do.

The best thing that happened to me leaving school is that I had the most substantial opportunity in my life to face my pride, to have my sense of my own wisdom and self-righteous understanding of the world humbled by a world that defied and changed so many certitudes that I maintained, and fill in plenty of the spaces in my brain that ignorance has largely taken up.

I've not always liked the way I've been treated. I think a lot of the harsher experiences I've had in my life in the last 5 years have been counterproductive and seriously undermined my trust and faith and confidence in professors and teachers and employers and cops and judges and politicians and all sorts of folks.

It's been the most jaded and cynical and disillusioned that I've ever been in my life.

And though I've been I think reasonably disillusioned with the counterproductive harshness and efforts to impose themselves on me and every person or problem they encounter, I got a reminder, today, that I love and respect and appreciate all good folks in this world (and a lot of the onerier ones, as well, and even evil folks though I don't cry when despots face poor ends).

That's why Mark Twain is my true hero and H.L. Mencken is an intellect with liberty commitments that I admire.

Good people have done so many bad things, as individuals, but worse, as societies, that is is hard to keep count of them all.

But we all know, down deep, that most people are good people (even when they fuck up). And that good people are good people, even when they're screwing up or lost in their self-righteousness. Self-righteousness, I'm learning, pride, is the most serious, most pervasive, most common and the one sin that none of us avoid.

It is the sin of the average man. It is the sin of power. It is the sin of authority. But it is also the sin of all of us average folks, with or without authority or power. Every parent, every teacher, every employer, every cop, every lawyer, every judge, every politician, every military official. But also, every kid, every student, every employee, every drug addict, every criminal, every grunt, every person who has ever faced authority has also been guilty of pride at some point in their relationship with those folks and with others and with authority in their lives.

All of us are subject to the sin of pride. It is our most serious, most damning, most tragic legacy, when you account for every terrorist, every despot, every ideologue, every most serious ugly act that has been committed in the name of every cause that someone has deemed worthy and in the name of that pride. But it is also our most common, most often committed, and, ultimately, most forgiveable sin, as well.

And if I can forgive my own pride (which I don't really have much choice about, really) then I surely I can forgive the pride of average folks and not-so-average folks who are just wrong, even as they're decent and good folks in good faith and trying to do good by their neighbors and their family, and, all too often, by themselves.

I do want the pride that gives traction to terrorists and radicals and despots and perpetrators of murder and genocide and mayhem and repression in the name of whatever cause to lose its power, permanently. And I'm pretty clear that the way to do that is to do what is also best for our own lives as well: to embrace and teach and nurture the liberal values and liberal education and the virtues of a liberal democracy that have supported and created all of the genuine progress in the world, up to this point in our history and, in all likelihood, for the rest of our time around these parts. And, most importantly, it means embracing the liberty and freedom and decency and humanity and compassion and thoughtfulness that make all of that possible.

But I was reminded, today, that average folks - who give far too much license and support and intellectual cover to all of that ugliness in the name of their pride that thought really doesn't matter and that action and authority and power accomplishes more than it can and that force that helps more than it hurts around so many issues in our lives - that average folks who engage in all this serious bullshit - the lying, the covering up, the denial, the taking credit where its not due, the paternalism, the fucking with one another's lives, and the support for strategies of political leverage which rationalize every power-hungry, despotic, authoritarian, terroristic, genocidal impulse that the world has borne witness to - they are also decent and good people.

Even when they're fucking shit up. Including when they are fucking with my life.

I'm reminded, today, that even when the common man, when average folk, when "good people," as we would refer to such folks back home, even when good, decent, average people are fucking shit up in the world - as they do often, pride or no pride - that they are still good and decent folks, despite all their faults.

We do reap what we sow. I've sowed a lot of good seeds. And I've sowed plenty of bad seeds. And I've reaped plenty accordingly. And all people do and will do the same.

And I'm ok with that, today. As I face my pride. And rebuild my faith in average people, despite their persistent fucking up and too much pride to face it.

That is the heart of liberal democracy. We are liberal and democratic not because of our inherent virtue. We are liberal and democratic because it is through the fucking up and the learning and the facing our pride - even in hindsight - that we stumble forward and finally make progress, often and generally despite ourselves.

God knows that that's the only way I've done it.

Maybe it's time that I cut most folks slack the same way that I want people to cut me slack for all of the multitudinous fucking up that I've done in my poor, pathetic little lifetime.

Maybe it's time that we all faced a little bit of our pride.

Then, again, maybe it'd be easier to just pop in a movie and fuck it all. We're gonna deal with the consequences that we deal with no matter what we do. But maybe a little less pride might be a good thing, after all. If only on the long shot that maybe our lives might mean something in this short little time we have here on this planet.

I'll take that bet. Even if it means facing a bit of my own sinning and a lot of my own pride to do it.

Love,
Ben

The destructive temptation of radicalism

Fred Siegal has an exellent review of Paul Starr's new book, Freedom's Power: The True Force of Liberalism, outlining the destructive and irrational temptations that radicalism persistently promises liberals, no matter the empirical evidence of its failures.

Blinded by the Left

Do you notice the depth of the propaganda and failure to face its contradictions and hypocrisies that are found in a title like Freedom's Power? Does someone who is concerned with force and power as the primary route to freedom really care about freedom at all? Not likely. It's a clever coopting by the same kinds of radical folks who have forever tried to coopt a more genuine liberal democratic heritage and the values that they perpetually take for granted in their peristent efforts to extinguish them, or at least command and dictate them to their own requisite purposes.

Force is freedom. Power is source of all that is liberal and good. George Orwell must be rolling over in his grave.

And like the majority of the commenters on this article (note my poorly edited comment at the end of this piece) smarter folks who take that more genuine liberal heritage seriously should not be fooled. I'm not. What I am is put off and disillusioned by liberal activists, journalists, politicians and others who espouse a radical agenda in the name of and simultaneous as an affront to the more genuine liberal, freedom-embracing values that make liberal democratic values and the liberal educations which make them possible mean something.

The idea that liberal democracies and liberal education and liberal values would be characterized, primarily, by power and force is not only laughable, it is dangerous. It is the very kind of abuse of power that more genuine liberals like Lord Acton - "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" - John Stuart Mill, George Orwell, Alexis DeToqueville and others made sure to warn liberal democratic citizens and thinkers about.

Force is freedom. Power is liberalism. The purpose of a liberal democracy, liberal education, and liberal values is force and power. Power solves all. Force solves all.

Any of that sound familiar?

Now you understand why Communism and Naziism survived as long as they did.

Because power doesn't stop to honestly reconcile itself with its own illogic. And because liberal democratic peoples are perpetually doomed to repeat the ill-fated history that they do not study nearly seriously enough.

Love,
Ben