Crazy what lengths we'll go to keep our minds and hearts closed. Even when, clearly, the only honest resolutions to our problems and the only real way to sustainable happiness are when they are open.
Sound and fury signifying nothing, Shakespeare says. Big waste of time, I say.
Or as the kids would probably tell it, kinda retarded, really.
George Will eviscerates the power-driven faith that has replaced more open-ended and thoughtful science that would be global warming scientific and policy discussions in today's column.
Blinded by Science
"The global warming industry, like Alexander in the famous children's story, is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Actually, a bad three months, which began Nov. 19 with the publication of e-mails indicating attempts by scientists to massage data and suppress dissent in order to strengthen 'evidence' of global warming.
But there already supposedly was a broad, deep and unassailable consensus. Strange.
Next came the failure of The World's Last -- We Really, Really Mean It -- Chance, aka the Copenhagen climate change summit. It was a nullity, and since then things have been getting worse for those trying to stampede the world into a spasm of prophylactic statism.
In 2007, before the economic downturn began enforcing seriousness and discouraging grandstanding, seven Western U.S. states (and four Canadian provinces) decided to fix the planet on their own. California's Arnold Schwarzenegger intoned, 'We cannot wait for the United States government to get its act together on the environment.' The 11 jurisdictions formed what is now called the Western Climate Initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, starting in 2012.
Or not. Arizona's Gov. Jan Brewer recently suspended her state's participation in what has not yet begun, and some Utah legislators are reportedly considering a similar action. She worries, sensibly, that it would impose costs on businesses and consumers. She also ordered reconsideration of Arizona's strict vehicle emission rules, modeled on incorrigible California's, lest they raise the cost of new cars.
Last week, BP America, ConocoPhillips and Caterpillar, three early members of the 31-member U.S. Climate Action Partnership, said: Oh, never mind. They withdrew from USCAP. It is a coalition of corporations and global warming alarm groups that was formed in 2007 when carbon rationing legislation seemed inevitable and collaboration with the rationers seemed prudent. A spokesman for Conoco said: 'We need to spend time addressing the issues that impact our shareholders and consumers.' What a concept.
Global warming skeptics, too, have erred. They have said there has been no statistically significant warming for 10 years. Phil Jones, former director of Britain's Climatic Research Unit, source of the leaked documents, admits it has been 15 years. Small wonder that support for radical remedial action, sacrificing wealth and freedom to combat warming, is melting faster than the Himalayan glaciers that an IPCC report asserted, without serious scientific support, could disappear by 2035.
Jones also says that if during what is called the Medieval Warm Period (circa 800-1300) global temperatures may have been warmer than today's, that would change the debate. Indeed it would. It would complicate the task of indicting contemporary civilization for today's supposedly unprecedented temperatures.
Last week, Todd Stern, America's Special Envoy for Climate Change -- yes, there is one; and people wonder where to begin cutting government -- warned that those interested in 'undermining action on climate change' will seize on 'whatever tidbit they can find.' Tidbits like specious science, and the absence of warming?
It is tempting to say, only half in jest, that Stern's portfolio violates the First Amendment, which forbids government from undertaking the establishment of religion. A religion is what the faith in catastrophic man-made global warming has become. It is now a tissue of assertions impervious to evidence, assertions which everything, including a historic blizzard, supposedly confirms and nothing, not even the absence of warming, can falsify."
The numbers I've seen seems to indicate that the planet has warmed in the last century. Those numbers could most certainly be wrong, which should come into question as much as anything else if this is an honest scientific endeavor. The big claim that George has very powerfully poked holes into for the last few years is whether moderate warming actually means catastrophic scenarios. And this is where the real rub is, as far as I'm concerned, at least.
People get so wrapped up in their talk in politics that they, more often than not, lose track of whether what they're saying is true by more rigorous empirical standards. That's true in life, as well, by the way. It's just a fact for the whole damned race, is the truth.
And that standard is one that can survive even the most unreasonable of dissent.
The only people who have to worry about dissent are the only people who have ever worried about dissent. The people who were wrong. Or the people who may be right but are too afraid to let people question if they are wrong.
The people who have always coveted power, especially power in lieu of reason.
People who are afraid. People whose minds and hearts are too weak to allow others to disagree and choose differently. People who are afraid they do not have the right stuff.
I'm one of those people. Learning to be stronger in the face of my fear. Perhaps that describes all of us.
If we genuinely want things to get better, that is.
That's the strength that always finds a way. The more genuine strength of greater wisdom. Of heart and mind.
And that strength is the only honest path of progress that humanity will ever know.
As I follow coverage of world issues, these days, it's undeniable to me, anymore, that the source of most of our problems and their lack of real resolution is power and our efforts to manipulate one another.
I don't know what's wrong with humanity, most days. Except that we are too stubborn to ever admit when we might be wrong. Which really is the most foolish pride to have.
It's foolish because most of humanity's progress has come when it has acknowledged that it was wrong on serious issues they faced.
Without mistakes, there is no real progress. Otherwise we remain at a standstill, biding our time until we pass from this mortal coil.
My kids in 2nd hour and I debated the Rennaisance, today, and whether it made humanity better. We all agreed, for obvious reasons. But I took the negative since the kids were nervous to take a position that seemed so obviously wrong.
I argued as the Church argued, at the time. That freedom and free thought undermined the Church's authority. That challenging the Church's authority would make morality and criminality rampant. And that our hedonism and decadence in the West was a consequence of this break from the Church and its teachings. And that all of the developments of the Rennaisance and the Enlightment - in science, in art, in literature, and in reason in all matters of humanity, as well as in other matters - could be used for good or for bad. Science brought us medicine. But it also brought us nuclear weapons. Philosophy brought us John Stuart Mill. But it also brought us Nazism. And that undermining Church authority has led to a downward spiral of corruption and perversion, ever since.
The kids made good counterarguments. They argued that none of the major advances we have made, in science and technology, nevertheless in our humanity, could have been made or were made without the freedom and free thinking of the Renaissance. They argued that advances like the printing press and the mass production of books, including the first mass produced book, the Bible, educated people in ways that improved peoples' understandings and their capacity to improve society. And they argued that people like Hitler had developed their own sorts of religion to justify their ugly deeds, and that it was free peoples, from America and the rest of Europe, who challenged Hitler's ugly ideology and war machine and saved the world and made it free from his tyrrany.
After the debate, I showed them the evidence I had found, while researching, that demonstrated that crime rates, in all likelihood, according to Cambridgeshire Criminal Justice Board research, were higher in Medieval Europe, the period before the Rennaisance, than after or today, while punishments were much more brutal and publicly humiliating.
That evidence, if it is true, is consistent with the vast majority of other evidence I have researched on the subject of criminal justice, that punishment generally has very little effect on aberrant behavior, long term, despite far more brutal punishments that one might imagine would have much larger substantial deterence for would-be criminals in both our own illiberal history and illiberal cultures in contemporary times.
The fact is, I think, that we are either unaware of that debate, that we disagree for various reasons, or, often, that we largely ignore that evidence for the same reason that we have always ignored it. Because it challenges our more fearful and vengeful impulses.
It is fairly plain, really, that our society is a better society than that of Medieval Europe. On every count. Including morality and criminality. And it is fairly plain that liberal societies are better, safer, more prosperous, and more decent societies than their illiberal counterparts, left and right.
We are just too scared to embrace that fact. Because we are afraid that if we do, it will confirm our deepest insecurities about ourselves and about our cultures. That we are weak. And immoral. And indecent. And just waiting to be overrun by our more brutal, illiberal enemies. Same as it ever was.
It is a sad state of affairs. The hollow victory that is the insecurity of liberal democracies that their liberality makes them weak. Rather than, quite clearly, for anyone being objective about the matter, what makes them strong.
There is no mistake why most people, including people from illiberal cultures, would rather live in liberal countries like America, Europe, and the various other liberal nations growing in number around the world.
It is because our liberality makes us stronger.
If only we would have the sense to embrace that fact about ourselves.
And to embrace ourselves, in the process. And all the good and bad we have to offer.
And the freedom to do both that offers us the freedom to do so much more good than our illiberal ancestors or brethren were ever willing to imagine.
An excellent sum up of the current political malaise in America by former Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence, Herbert Meyer.
The U.S. Political Establishment Has Failed
From that column.
"Americans don't like getting tangled in the details of politics. We prefer to stand back and see the big picture. What the big picture is showing now is that our entire political establishment has failed. These were the men and women, both Republicans and Democrats, we relied upon to focus on the details, and by doing so, to keep us safe from terrorists and to keep the world's most powerful economy from imploding. And they blew it. So we'll replace them with a wholly new establishment -- some of whom will be Republicans, others Democrats, and a few Independents here and there -- and hope our next political establishment will get it right.
In the looming political battles, persona will matter more than policy. As we move toward the 2010 elections, of course we'll ask candidates to outline their plans for how to improve our health care system, what to do about illegal immigration, how to bring down the unemployment rate, how to fight the war, and all the rest. But what will determine who gets elected this year won't be a set of specific policies, but something simpler, and in a way much deeper: a recognition among grassroots voters across the political spectrum that character is more important than personality, that education isn't the same thing as judgment, and that expertise without common sense is dangerous.
Stand back from politics and you'll see the same re-establishment trend unfolding in other public arenas. Americans have decided that the mainstream media has failed, and so we are replacing The New York Times, the television network news departments, and all the rest with an entirely new media, including FOX News and websites like American Thinker and Lucianne.com. Americans have decided that our country's education establishment has failed -- our kids are barely learning to read and write, let alone taught our country's history -- so we're seeing the rise of private schools, charter schools, and home-schooling. Would anyone like to bet that within just a few years, we'll have a wholly new financial establishment on Wall Street to replace the greedy idiots who run it now?
The re-establishment of America won't be easy, and we'll make mistakes along the way. Some of the new people will prove just as worthless as they ones they replaced. And some very good people who now hold key positions in politics, the media, education, and finance will be swept away by the avalanche. That's too bad, but collateral damage is unavoidable.
No other country in history has ever attempted to replace its establishments so smoothly and so peacefully -- and so cheerfully -- as we are doing right now. And it isn't likely that any other country ever will attempt something like this. How exhilarating to realize that 234 years after our revolution, the United States is still the most dynamic, forward-looking, optimistic place on Earth. Boy, what an exciting time to be an American."
You really should read the entire article. It captures the moment better anything I've read to date.
He's right. The current political establishment has failed. And another will replace it and either get things moving in the right direction or be replaced.
And most Americans, thankfully, could care less about which team they fight for.
Which is exactly the way it should be.
This too shall pass. Failure always does. Only to bring a renewed commitment to real success. And as much renewed commmitment as is necessary to finally turn this ship in a direction that is going somewhere for real.
The Bard was right. All the world's a stage. And all of us mere players.
May we play our parts well.
Evan Bayh, a favorite American politician of mine, warts and all, is right, in the broadest terms, in this interview.
And the fact that men like Evan Bayh believe, rightly in many instances, that leaving Congress will help more people than staying in is exactly what's wrong with American politics, right now. Because it means decent men like Evan Bayh, a better representative of middle America than most of his Senate colleagues by far, get strong-armed out of a process that is running on the fumes of cynicism and manipulation, right now.
That's exactly what Montesquieu and Madison labored so hard to check with their ideas and with the construction of the American Constitution.
But checking it only goes so far. Which is what ideologues perpetually exploit. And which is what has so seriously undermined the confidence of Americans in their government, to this point.
I doubt you will ever hear an ideologue take responsibility for this fact. That their manipulations and machinations is what has undermined confidence in the American government for those functions that only government can perform.
But they are responsible. Whether they want to acknowledge that or not.
It will be corrected. It will take time.
And having Evan Bayh leave the Senate is not a bad way to make some headway in this direction, given current circumstances.
What Evan says in this interview is exactly what Americans need to hear, right now. Those ideologues who tell you that only they know what is best for you, even against your will, are not honestly concerned with your welfare, long tern. And that message undermines what will be best for you, in the bigger picture.
Which is taking responsibility for your own life, no matter what anyone else, including American political leaders, tell you different.
There is no ideology or political party or religion or group of any kind that can live your life for you. And the only people who can solve the vast majority of your problems, and America's problems, are you. Americans. No matter what American politicians do.
And anyone who tells you different is shortsighted, at best, and seriously dishonest, at worst.
And selling you a bill of goods.
Don't buy it. Because it just isn't true.
If we really want our problems, as Americans and as people, really resolved, rather than appearing to be or perceived to be resolved, we will have to look to ourselves and to one another. Period. Government is generally the cop-out that allows us to pretend otherwise. For awhile. Until times like now, where it is clearly failing.
The message of government and political activists in the last 10 years, "Fear us, or suffer our wrath," is a far cry from the sentiments of Franklin Roosevelt in those words in his first inaugural, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
There is a reason why Roosevelt's words inspired. The same reason why the last 10 years have undermined our self-confidence.
Because one message is meant to uplift. And the other is meant to cower.
And the decision Americans are making today is, "Are we a country that needs inspiration and to have more honest self-governance over our own lives? Or are they a country who needs cowering."
Choose wisely, this election.
Choose wisely, for your lifetime.
That goes for me, too. More than most.
A fitting tribute to America's first President.
Mighty Washington: The greatest President
Sometimes the cynicism that swarms around power like a vulture waiting to strike at any signs of decency weighs heavy on our nation's capital.
President Washington, a man known more for his humility than his strong political passions, was a healthy reminder that leadership does not necessarily mean having all the right answers. And his maintenance of slaves in the face of his own concerns of the ugliness of the institution reminds us that great leaders do not make all the right choices on matters of import at every juncture.
Noone does.
That's why we honor the man, today, who helped form a government committed to limiting the power of those would believe otherwise.
Thank you, Mr. President. For getting us started on this long and winding road to better judgment about governance and our fellow man.
President's Day. We have the day off. Been watching news coverage, this morning.
I have never seen Washington such a mess. Or the media. Or most people in the thick of politics, these days.
Thank goodness they all so unerringly have all the answers. Makes it easier to understand why they do such a poor job of listening to one another and engaging more thoughtfully about how to tackle problems together.
It's remarkable to me how much certainty people experience when they are sure they have all the right answers or all their friends agree with them. Or why their opponents are unerringly wrong.
Much easier than honest discussion, debate, and reflection. Self-congratulation. Much easier than self-correction.
Strange, when it is altogether clear to most Americans that what Washington needs, right now, is some correction. Though self-correction and a strong dose of humility is the only thing that will do any real good for that town, long-term.
Just like the rest of us.
Power does strange things to people. It gives pride the illusion of certainty. And animus the pretense of better judgment.
It allows everyone to believe that their outrage is the source of wisdom.
It just makes me tired, is the truth. Tired of watching a bunch of jackasses pretend they have more final answers than they have. And that their lack of use for more honest listening, engagement, and thoughtful debate and discussion is a consequence of their unchallengeable genius.
There is a reason that our wisest thinkers look skeptically on power. And on all of us who seek to wield it. Because we screw it up more than we get it right. And because we're so loathe to ever admit it.
That is the purpose of liberal democracies. To check that tendency. Not to embolden it.
And certainly not to pretend it's progress.
Perhaps it's time for all of us to turn the page and start again.
The more time I spend living in America, the more I like Americans.
And George Will illustrates why.
Progressives and the Growing Dependency Agenda
I actually disagree with George's argument about Federally-funded school vouchers. While I agree that government money that is spent on education is best put in the hands of parents and children to choose schools that best fit their children's needs - a learning curve that would be valuable and that government paternalism cannot possibly replace - I agree with progressives that school vouchers, if they are going to be funded consisent with the ideas that inspire them and if they are going to be better funded, need to come from private donors. Federal funding of education is and always will be a disaster, with No Child Left Behind and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act demonstrating George's concerns about dependency and quality in public education.
George is right that if we are going to spend Federal money on schools, private vouchers are more consistent with the liberal values and liberal education that better schools would provide. But I think this is the dead end, ultimately, except as a redirection of already codified Federal funding that, like Medicare and Social Security, should, ideally, be transitioned into efforts that fund and administer help for people who need it into private non-profit, and, when appropriate, for-profit hands.
Having said that, George's criticism of progressive ideology as one that, too often, foolishly and counterproductively - for everyone involved - promotes dependency of citizens on government is on-target.
And this line sums up what contemporary progressive ideology has reduced itself to when it does not take more honest and consistent liberal values seriously.
"A century ago, Herbert Croly published 'The Promise of American Life,' a book -- still in print -- that was prophetic about today's progressives. Contemplating with distaste America's 'unregenerate citizens,' he said 'the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities.' Therefore, Croly said, national life should be a 'school' taught by the government: 'The exigencies of such schooling frequently demand severe coercive measures, but what schooling does not?' Unregenerate Americans would be "saved many costly perversions" if 'the official schoolmasters are wise, and the pupils neither truant nor insubordinate.'
Subordination is dependency seen from above. Today, it is seen approvingly by progressives imposing, from above, their dependency agenda."
The heart of liberal values and the strongest liberal education - the heart of what makes liberal democracies stronger than their illiberal brethren - is teaching people, kids and adults, to be good people of their own accord and the folly of every other path.
The problem with our schools, like the problem with our culture and society, is that we are not liberal enough, in this sense. We lack confidence in the strength of our liberal values.
And George's criticism gets right to the heart of those fears we harbor. And their counterproductive consequences.
As it turns out, it is the American people who will correct this problem. Not her leaders or her intellectual, media, or other elites. It is each of us. And all of us. Despite our insecurities.
That's how courage works. Courage is not the absense of fear. Courage is doing what is good and what we fear despite our insecurities.
And the truth is that Americans would rather do the courageous thing, even when they are afraid of it. Including taking responsibility for their own lives.
It just takes time for them to work up the courage, I think.
Me too. And I like folks like me. Folks working at doin' the right thing, even when the wrong thing is sometimes too tempting to pass up.
The truth is this describes all of us. Every one of us. Some people just have more courage to admit it, to themselves and to the world, which makes it easier for all of us to find the courage to be honest, as well.
Yeah, I think I like these people. These Americans. And the whole lot of us homo sapiens. And I like them more the more honest they get about who they really are underneath all that fear, that fear of what others might think if they knew, and honestly aspire to be better, to the best of their ability.
Like every generation, it will take courage to do that.
Luckily, it's our strong suit. Even when it takes time for us to find it.
Since Valentine's is my holiday - the kids will tell you that, by far, the great majority of music I play, in class, are love songs, of one sort or another, because "Mr. Sutherland is a little bitch" is the most popular explanation, I believe - I thought I'd share some all-time favorites.
And, of course, what Valentine's Day would be complete without a wedding dance?
Happy Valentine's, everyone. Be sure to tell people how much you love them.
Speaking of which. I love you, too. For reals, homey.
It's been so strange and sad watching free peoples of the world pretend, these last 10 or so years, that it is their might and not their freedom that makes them great.
And the almighty Kingdom of Saudi Arabia offers a story to give us perspective on that ugly and foolish belief.
Saudi Valentine's Day: Authorities Crack Down on Anywhere Selling Red
"The Saudi religious police launched Thursday a nationwide crackdown on stores selling items that are red or in any other way allude to the banned celebrations of Valentine's Day, a Saudi official said.
Members of the feared religious police were inspecting shops for red roses, heart-shaped products or gifts wrapped in red, and ordering storeowners to get rid of them, the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.
Red-colored or heart-shaped items are legal at other times of the year, but as Feb. 14 nears they become contraband in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom bans celebration of Western holidays such as Valentine's Day, named after a Christian saint said to have been martyred by the Romans in the 3rd Century.
Most shops in Riyadh's upscale neighborhoods have removed all red items from their shelves. A statement by the religious police, informally known as the muttawa, was published in Saudi newspapers, warning shop owners against any violations.
'Those who don't comply will be punished,' the statement said, without spelling out what measures would befall the offenders.
The Valentine's Day prohibition is in line with Saudi's strict Wahhabi school of Islam that the kingdom has followed for more than a century. The birthplace of Islam also bans several Muslim holidays except the two most important ones because it considers them 'religious innovations' that Islam doesn't sanction.
Even birthdays and Mother's Day are frowned on by the religious establishment, although people almost never get punished for celebrating them.
Many Saudis, who still want to mark the popular Valentine's, do their shopping weeks before the holiday.
Each year, the religious police mobilize ahead of Feb. 14 and descend on gift and flower shops, confiscating all red items, including flowers.
Attitudes toward Valentine's Day vary across the Arab world, with devout Muslims opposing the holiday as a Western celebration of romantic love that corrupts Muslim youth."
Repression is the long history of humanity. The presumption that it will make us good and make all the bad go away, or too afraid to raise it's unholy head, has been with us since the evolution of moral codes to organize human behavior in every grouping of homo sapiens since the beginning of humanity.
It just happens to be wrong.
And it is responsible for the great bulk of the history of human tragedy.
And led to reversals of real human progress in every generation.
The Rennaisance and the Enlightenment, in early European history, marked a break from the long history of repression of Medieval Europe.
And their central theme was freedom. Freedom of thought and freedom of conscience. And the freedom and responsibility to challenge repressive governments that had chilled the development of thought, art, and science for hundreds of years.
Does it not seem strange to anyone that the last 10 years, the first sustained liberal democracy in the history of the world has seen it's public debate and discussion shy from embracing the very value that was the original purpose for its existence, at all?
Valentine's Day in Saudi Arabia should be a reminder to those of us in less repressive countries of what that kind of repression looked like in our own history. And why there is no future in that past.
It does not matter for what purpose repression is used. Those who are a genuine threat to others need to be contained until they are no longer a threat. And confusing fear with likely probability of real threat is not an honest substitute for better governance or real safety. But freedom to follow our conscience on all other matters is central to what nurtures all that is great, including real security, in liberal democracies and for all peoples who are more honest about the consequences of repression.
It is the scared and the weak who must bully those who disagree with them.
Courage, greatness, comes from respecting the value of the freedom and conscience that make us great. And it is with that courage that we become better, for real. Not a means of pretending that we are better than we are.
Perhaps we are a species that cannot live up to its highest ideals. Because we lack the courage.
And if so, we should at least have the decency and honesty to acknowledge that we are frauds and cowards. And stop pretending to be anything better.
The Saudi Kingdom has taken this approach. Without all the honesty or courage.
Perhaps we will pride ourselves that we are not quite as bad as them.
Perhaps that is all we have to offer.
If so, we will most assuredly get the lives that we deserve.
Choose wisely.
Happy Valentines.
What class looks like.
You can't fake it. So stop trying.
Or nice guys will just keep kicking your ass all over the park.
Gerard Alexander, associate professor of politics at the University of Virginia, has an excellent, if one-sided, criticism of everything that is wrong with politics in America and the world, in today's Washington Post.
Why are liberals so condescending?
"Every political community includes some members who insist that their side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration. Indeed, all the appeals to bipartisanship notwithstanding, President Obama and other leading liberal voices have joined in a chorus of intellectual condescension.
It's an odd time for liberals to feel smug. But even with Democratic fortunes on the wane, leading liberals insist that they have almost nothing to learn from conservatives. Many Democrats describe their troubles simply as a PR challenge, a combination of conservative misinformation -- as when Obama charges that critics of health-care reform are peddling fake fears of a 'Bolshevik plot' -- and the country's failure to grasp great liberal accomplishments. 'We were so busy just getting stuff done . . . that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are,' the president told ABC's George Stephanopoulos in a recent interview. The benighted public is either uncomprehending or deliberately misinformed (by conservatives).
This condescension is part of a liberal tradition that for generations has impoverished American debates over the economy, society and the functions of government -- and threatens to do so again today, when dialogue would be more valuable than ever.
Liberals have dismissed conservative thinking for decades, a tendency encapsulated by Lionel Trilling's 1950 remark that conservatives do not 'express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.' During the 1950s and '60s, liberals trivialized the nascent conservative movement. Prominent studies and journalistic accounts of right-wing politics at the time stressed paranoia, intolerance and insecurity, rendering conservative thought more a psychiatric disorder than a rival. In 1962, Richard Hofstadter referred to "the Manichaean style of thought, the apocalyptic tendencies, the love of mystification, the intolerance of compromise that are observable in the right-wing mind.'
This sense of liberal intellectual superiority dropped off during the economic woes of the 1970s and the Reagan boom of the 1980s. (Jimmy Carter's presidency, buffeted by economic and national security challenges, generated perhaps the clearest episode of liberal self-doubt.) But these days, liberal confidence and its companion disdain for conservative thinking are back with a vengeance, finding energetic expression in politicians' speeches, top-selling books, historical works and the blogosphere."
Be on the lookout for Harvard Professor Paul Peterson's forthcoming column, "Why do conservatives act like such morally self-righteous jackasses?"
It's a strange tendency in the human race. Fueled by insecurity, and the everpresent joys of self-righteous indignation, I think.
Christ says love thy neighbor. So Christians interpret that for centuries as, "Kill thy neighbor you suspect doesn't love thy neighbor."
Jews bring us the wisdom thou shalt not kill. And then modify it in the early 20th century to mean, "unless you're Arab and we don't want you around."
And Muslims. Don't even get me started.
It is a strange tendency. This tendency to confuse self-righteousness with being right. Passion with reason. And the damned foolish and without exception literally impossible notion that any person or any group can have all the answers in the world and thus know without having to listen and thoughtfully consider alternatives. And willfully ignore how the strong-arming undermines the more honest discussion.
Why has it caused so much death and destruction and insanity in the world?
Fear. And power. And the ways that we make excuses for our unending use of the latter to unfailingly fail to conquer the former.
Outside of disease, we are our worst predator and source of insecurity. And, thankfully, today, our wisest fellowtravelers have developed ideas and clarified our thinking to assure that our worst problem is that we just don't get along very well.
But it's all the same ball of wax, in the end.
It humanity's most foolish fault, by far. And it is isolated to no group or individual.
And the tendency to turn to power to resolve it and all of our problems once and for all, and to pretend that this tendency is our strength rather than our deadliest weakness, is the long and failed history of humanity. Until more genuinely liberal pathes were paved. Liberal meaning liberty. Especially our liberty of conscience.
And our choice to use that conscience to either listen, genuinely, honestly, to one another. And to humble ourselves in a world where what we know is far surpassed, without exception, by what we do not.
Or to keeping pretending that this more aggressive, less reasoned and reasoning path has taken us forward rather than backward.
It should be obvious to anyone who is still not defending this strange journey that we have taken in the last 10 years that it is a path to nowhere. And that it is hardly the path of our highest values at play. And that it is anything, really, other than one long manipulation in the name of the arrogant notion that anyone, anywhere can use power unerringly to resolve our woes.
If there is any one insight that would more genuinely move humanity forward, I think, it is recognizing this folly. From there, many other problems find resolution. And many more people live and thrive. And many more people learn to seek out answers with less false assurances that they or anyone has more right answers than they really do. And thus more real answers can be found.
We talk plenty. We need to listen more. A lot more. For real. Not faking it. And stop pretending that our aggression, and not our minds and hearts, are the source of our progress. It's in that listening where everything else gets tackled more honestly.
Everything else is the story of my life. Plenty of failure. Plenty more stupidity.
On a personal note. Thanks, Brandi. You were right. And I was wrong. About a lot of things. Namely about how unerringly full of it I am. About everything. Especially about what really matters in this life.
Jacob Weisberg introduces some needed honesty into the debate about challenges facing politicians and Americans, alike, and their general reluctance - both of those groups, really - to take them on squarely.
Blame the childish, ignorant American people
"Our inability to address long-term challenges makes a strong case that the United States now faces an era of historical decline. Our reluctance to recognize economic choices also portends negative effects for the rest of the world. To change this story line, we need to stop blaming the rascals we elect to office and start looking to ourselves."
The first line is wrong, except as it reflects America's waning ability to get its way on any issue on the global stage (a positive development, even for Americans, who, believe it or not, do not have all the answers). On every other matter, America's future lies bigger and better ahead of her. But only after she learns about the limits of her use of power and manipulation to get her way.
But the last line is dead on. It's also what Jesus said, by the way, if anyone's keeping count.
And it is that advice - looking to ourselves - that offers the only real option for being better and improving our lives on every issue we face. Including the few that only government can be responsible for, really. And if we're not sure about which ones those are, how about we stick to government's original purpose - matters of security, domestic and international - and assume that the rest are our responsibility. Because they are and must be, for any real good to be done, no matter what government does or does not do.
That vision for the world, and America as a far humbler contributor, is one that offers much real possibility for improving life for humanity. After everything else has failed, I suppose. And the one that we will need to be responsible for, regardless, if we want our challenges successfully resolved.
A really impressive analysis of the unfolding events inside of Iran, events far more important than anything Washington has up its sleeve.
Iran's leaders are worried about history's forward march
"The greatest difference between 2009 and 1979 was created by the revolution itself. Revolutions give birth to a new political class, and Iran’s Islamic revolution was no exception.
The Iranian leadership formed after the revolution consisted of a narrow ruling stratum and a much broader supporting group that was given charge of administration and political mobilization.
In the 20 years since Khomeini’s death, the composition of this political class has changed drastically. The clerical elite has gradually lost power to the military-security groups, from whose ranks the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, emerged. Bureaucratic and security services dominated by the Revolutionary Guards and its militia, the Basij (the Mobilization Corps), are now firmly in command.
The supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, blessed the Revolutionary Guards’ decision to steal the presidential election. By identifying squarely with the military-security apparatus headed by Ahmadinejad, Khamenei has alienated an important segment of the ruling clerical elite. He has also reduced his own status as the ultimate arbiter in Iranian society, a role that was central to Khomeini’s dominance of the system. As a result, he has produced a rupture between the two pillars of the revolutionary regime: the clerical elite and the military-security structure.
The growth of Khamenei’s personal, extra-constitutional power introduces a strong element of uncertainty into Iran’s future. Political regimes that rely on personal power – commonly known as dictatorships – prove to be fragile in crisis. This was the weakness of the shah’s regime, which collapsed as he became paralyzed in his decision-making. There was nothing behind him supporting the system.
Khamenei’s backing of the June 2009 putsch now appears to have been a costly mistake. With this single error, he has undermined what had appeared to be a robust post-revolutionary course for the first and only theocracy in modern history. The cries of “God is great!” have now been overtaken by chants of “Death to the dictator!” in recent demonstrations in Tehran, Tabriz, Shiraz and other Iranian cities.
The Iranian regime is now critically dependent on decisions made by one man, the supreme leader, Khamenei. For that reason, it is demonstrating a degree of fragility that is comparable to the shah’s regime in the latter part of the 1970s.
Most spokespersons of the Green protest movement advocate civil disobedience instead of revolution. Earlier this month, Ezattolah Sahabi, who was a member of the revolutionary provisional government in 1979, issued a statement in Tehran stating categorically that 'a revolution in today’s Iran is neither possible nor desirable.' At roughly the same time, five prominent opposition intellectuals living in exile released a reformist, not revolutionary, manifesto directed against the 'despotic guardians.'
But there is little chance that these children of the Islamic revolution – who have become graying reformists – will remain in control of the Green movement, which now reflects the aspirations of a post-revolutionary generation of young women and men and students.
The ayatollah-dictator and the Revolutionary Guards have tried their best to discredit their opponents by concocting, through forced confessions at show trials, a conspiracy of regime change based on a 'velvet revolution' produced by 'Western social sciences.'
Deep down, they know there is no conspiracy. Their fear is grounded in what they see in front of them: the forward march of history."
Whether people know it or not, the 21st century will be a vindication of the same principle that the 20th century vindicated: the end of force as a governing philosophy. And it doesn't matter who is taking up that banner. They will all fall. Every single one of them. One strong man at a time.
Because liberal values serve us better. All cynical calculations to the contrary.
You know what the most impressive part of this period of tough guy politics is?
The courage of all the tough guys to admit when they're wrong.
You hear it all the time, don't you? I was wrong. Things went badly because I screwed up. It's my responsibility.
It's amazing. All this courage.
It's so sad, this little period in our history.
Everyone wants the power. Everyone wants the money. Everyone wants exactly what they want. And not one person will admit that maybe things aren't going well because their screwing up. And, from there, all the lying and bullshit proceeds.
The antidote to all that?
More real freedom to admit when we are screwing up.
And, if all else fails, find someone else who will take more honest responsibility.
That's the beauty of political and economic freedom that most free peoples take completely for granted. It is the reason why the world was so stagnant in so many real ways before liberal democracies and liberal values were taken seriously. Because people lacked both the freedom and the real courage and wisdom to just choose differently when they disagreed rather than seek power that, more often than not, was and is abused and defended at all costs, even when that means avoiding any honest responsibility for choices made.
And no matter how we spin it, not taking honest responsibility for our lives and electing leaders for the most powerful nation in the world who will not take responsibility for their failures is weak. No matter how tough we try to appear.
Real strength is found in more real responsibility for our lives. And better understanding. And the courage and integrity to act on that understanding. Period. Everything else is one long lie.
What stands before us is the choice between real strength or the fake kind.
May we choose wisely.
| I'm loaded. It's official. I'm the 359,597,702 richest person on earth!  How rich are you? >> |
