Mr. Sullivan is hot

Found on Eisenhower girl's bathroom wall:

Mr. Sullivan is hot

(I am otherwise known to kids who can't pronounce my name as Mr. Sullivan)

I can't say I can argue.

One person makes a difference

For the last week or so, I've been seriously thinking about quitting. I've made my peace with it, I've thought seriously about it, I've made plans for it, if necessary. And most importantly, I've worked through the heartache of giving up my life love for the last 15 years -- inner city school reform.

And, this week, one person made a difference.

My principal, Dr. Freda Ogburn, may be the strongest leader I have ever worked with. Ever. She is more realistic, more humble, and a better person that anyone I can think of that I have worked with.

And in the pinch, she came through for me, this week.

I've been more seriously thinking about leaving the teaching profession, this week, than any time in my life as a teacher.

I only got into teaching, truth be told, to do inner city school reform. I've always known that if this was not the challenge I was taking on, then I should probably take on bigger challenges like policy (international policy if I were to have to choose) or even go into something more lucrative, if the more noble purposes in schools or policy were going to be perpetually swamped in the less noble purposes of power, self-interest, pettiness, etc. If everyone is going to be more self-centered and act like it doesn't matter, I've reasoned, then no need for me to get in anyone's way. If you can't beat them, join them.

But Freda has persuaded me not to go in that direction quite yet.

Yes, it is true that everyone in both public schools, day to day, and public school reform, have all kinds of personal and often petty and political agendas that I find small and distasteful. Yes, it is true that this is not likely to change, at all in one fell swoop -- many, many people seem very resistant to even committing to a more thoughtful life, period, nevertheless to think about schools or society more rigorously and in ways that they are unfamiliar with, largely because most people I work with don't think very much about anything at all, frankly, except they're day to day lives. So, as my great friend, Carson, says, being an intelligent person in a world that often doesn't take intelligence nearly seriously enough often feels like Sisyphus, rolling the boulder up the hill only to have it fall back down, perpetually, with no immediate notion of when it might change course.

The personal advantage of working in suburban schools is that I would get the chance to work with great people like Carson's wife, Sherry, who I adore and who is, easily, 100 times the teacher than most of the people I work with (and who doesn't have need to be a martyr, because she's focussed on being great at what she does, not on making excuses about why she's so shitty). It's been nice talking with Sherry and seeing that good teachers are both kind -- clearly, to anyone who remembers being a student -- and smart and who create learning environments where people feel safer to grow and learn without being controlled and hammered, all the time.

Working in inner city schools is a double edged sword.

On the one hand, it is annoying and upsetting as hell working with teachers, parents, and students who are perpetually rationalizing their shittiness; why they're so nasty to others, why they don't take school seriously (many teachers included, sadly), why the community is the mess it clearly is to anyone not trying to defend it, why the often poor quality of inner city schools has everything to do with the craziness of inner city communities, the inability of teachers to develop clear and open-hearted commitments to kids and families regardless of their circumstances (and kids and parents to develop similar clear and open-hearted commitments to teachers and schools, and to one another), why so many excuses are made for all of the failure of inner city communities and inner city schools, and why everyone seems to think that more of the hard-edged and polarizing policies (the drug war, for instance) of the past will someone solve many of the problems that they have often exacerbated.

It's shitty to work with people who are often being shitty and making all kinds of excuses for why they are that way.

And it's only the presence of someone like Freda Ogburn that keeps me around, at all. This last period taught me the importance of Freda's presence in this school better than any period I have been at Eisenhower.

On the other hand, it is all of that shittiness that is the reason I am in a school like Eisenhower, at all. Meaning, if noone intervenes in all of that shit and offers kids and people some substantial hope of escaping all of this ugliness that comes with rationalizing why people are such bad teachers, often; why community members are, perpetually, in such bad straights; why so many people throughout the school system spend so much time looking after themselves (administrators and teachers, contrary to popular myth, actually look after the community, generally, more than many parents and teachers and others who generally live, more often, in the community; but they still look after their own behinds much more than they would like to admit, and far too often more than they genuinely look after kids or families, truth be known); and why everyone keeps pretending that their lives are really better than they are or that they are entitled to more without working harder or smarter at making life better for themselves or others.

So there's all kinds of shittiness in the inner city community that necessitates somebody give a shit.

On the other hand, I'm not the type of person who likes to be taken for granted. I don't like to stick around in any relationship or friendship where I am treated badly. I am definitely treated better at Eisenhower, by my principal, primarily, than by any job I have ever worked outside of school, and even than in schools I worked in Wichita.

But I still hate being around people who are constantly making excuses for how shitty they are to me and to others and acting like it's no big deal.

And working in schools with faculties like Sherry, who is a real sweetheart, seems very, very attractive to me, right now, given my frustration with the lack of genuine commitment to facing honestly the problems in inner city schools and inner city communities.

If people don't want to face up to their problems, I reason these days, no need for me to be trying to solve them for them. I can't. I've come to terms with that. Only individuals can solve their own problems with input and influence from others, but ultimately based on their own thoughts and choices. Everything else is illusion.

And why I wouldn't take a more lucrative, more supportive, probably more thoughtful or at least appreciative position in a place like Desoto rather than continue to swim through the bullshit in an inner city community where too many teachers, parents, and students are constantly making excuses for what asses they are is beyond me, most days anymore.

But then there's Freda Ogburn. Without Freda's support, I'm quite sure I would have left by now.

That way my experience when I was studying in poor urban schools in Wichita, Kansas. When you grow up white trash in the white trash side of town, you often encounter people who are scared and mean and intimidated by intelligence and what it means about their own shortcomings.

And I never would have returned had I not had some confidence that kids like me needed teachers like me as a break from all of the ugliness, and that if communities like Kansas City, Kansas are to get better, then they will need some honest voices to talk about why it is in such a mess so that it can clean the mess up, rather than everyone living defensive of the community in perpetuity.

I didn't get into poverty work to tell poor people that there really was no hope either because they were being screwed and there was nothing that could be done (poor people are screwed, often, but there is plenty that can be done by all of us including poor people, especially in a liberal democracy like the U.S. which takes equity and opportunity more seriously than most countries in the world, and who often have quite a bit of responsibility for their situations, whether they want to face that or not). Nor did I get into poverty work to find ways for them to help people make more money without some kind of genuine commitment to the idea that thought and higher values and education for its own sake and a million other important ideas about humanity and the world, generally, mattered quite apart from the material benefits that education provides. I genuinely believe in the value of education and the larger values of humanity, and my education was centrally important to nurturing those values, even as many of the people from the community where I grew up took all of those values and that education for granted.

I never romanticized urban schools and communities because I grew up in one and I was quite frustrated most of that time with how little people in my community took seriously values that sustained the world more substantially, including and especially intelligence.

It's funny. The biggest reason why I've learned not to be afraid of being fired is because I only came to this job because I genuinely cared. There's a million different jobs I could take if I cared more about myself than others. I just wanted to make a difference in a community like the community where I grew up in and to demonstrate that poverty and hopelessness are not the natural byproducts of urban communities. Poverty and hopelessness are clearlyfixable, if we will invest our thought and our energies and our money and our care and concern in one another more than in our own self-centered agendas. We just have to take the idea of looking out for others seriously and not constantly rationalize what selfish shitheads we can often be.

And doing so means building communities that are genuinely strong -- like suburban communities that urban dwellers constantly bemoan, sometimes for good reasons, often taking their strength for granted -- rather than being defensiveness about all of the clearly dysfunctional and foolish qualities of weaker communities.

Freda's one of the honest people who really makes working in a place like Eisenhower something worth doing. I hope that remains the case. Because I am damned tired of teachers and parents and students and people in this community acting like it doesn't matter to be smarter or wiser or more thoughtful or decent in life.

Without Freda, I couldn't possibly imagine staying at Eisenhower or any similar school or job. Because spending all your time with people who spend all their time making excuses for why they haven't taken excellence in their jobs more seriously, and making you feel bad that you have is really one of the most miserable and frustrating experiences that you can have in life.

The only thing that's prepared me for it, at all, has been an entire life growing up in such communities always being around people who never really quite took being smart and thoughtful and sensitive and loving as seriously as I did.

At some level, for me, the community I live in that I feel lives that way is the bigger world.

And strangely enough, working in a community where those values are taken less seriously than the university town I live in, for instance, or the suburbs that my close friends live in, just makes me all the more appreciative of how important those values are for everyone's lives, whether they take thought and compassion and decency and the deeper truths of life more seriously or not.

I just got a couple of emails from Brandi, this week. I don't really quite understand Ms. Fisher, anymore, except that she's just a lot more self-centered than the Brandi I knew and loved years ago. Either that or she was always that self-centered, and I just didn't realize it because I was so blinded by love. A definite possibility. I just know that I'm tired of trying to figure her out and I'm beyond tired trying to be friends with her, anymore. She's gonna have to grow up, someday, and seek me out. Because at this point, I'm tired of being such a good friend to someone who, paradoxically -- because at one point she was the best friend I had ever had -- has turned out to be such a thoroughly shitty friend. And I just don't want to be her friend until she can clean up her act, is the truth.

From now on, I live life up to my standards, and not down to the standards of others.

And I know what a difference I make and my life makes. And I know better than to think any less of my contribution to the world.

Because Frieda Ogburn has definitely taught me just what a difference one person can make.

Love,
Ben

Making my peace with quitting

I've spent the last week dealing with an insane amount of pressure. Pressure from teachers, pressure from administrators, pressure from kids, pressure from parents.

I've finally decided that if this keeps up, then I am leaving. I will write about the failures of public schools honestly, as well as a whole host of other policy issues, obviously. And I will write about possibilities for reform given a less aggressive posture toward measures meant to reform schools.

Specifically, I'll be writing about more freedom and a stronger non-profit and for-profit market for schools and a public education, with charter schools, vouchers and autonomous public schools of choice being at the forefront of those much more promising measures.

The current emphasis on pressuring and forcing our way to change is doomed. It hasn't worked in any major socialist, communist, Nazi, fascist or any other state organized program or bureaucracy and it will not succeed in public schools or any other bureaucracy, for that matter, in the democratic world, either.

Like with those governments, it will take time for Western democratic governments to face that failure. But the beautiful thing about democracy is that it offers us that opportunity more readily than any other form of government or culture in the history of the world. And figure it out we will.

Choice and markets are not the cutting edge and consensus as the most preferred means of public school reform in the most prestigious universities and scholarly communities for nothing. Terry Moe and John Chubb long ago wrote Politics, Markets, and America's Schools, which is a brilliant primer in the problems of public school bureaucracy, especially with respect to school reform. Public school monopolies limit more decentralized, diverse, innovative, and autonomously responsible efforts to improve and reform public schools and schools of all kinds. And I have gotten a first hand look, these last two years, at why that is so.

I still believe in public schools. And I believe in inner city public schools like Eisenhower.

But they have to prove themselves on their own merits, have to have support from parents and communities in ways that are realistic, forward-looking rather than backwards-looking, faciliate genuine discussion, dialogue and give-and-take, and which solve problems for real rather than hoping that bureaucracy can care for the substance of school failures.

And most importantly, they need more support and less condescension and external mandate from people who don't identify with inner city communities.

Genuine freedom and choice are fundamental to inner city school reform and improving American life, not incidental. As with liberal democratic societies, generally, freedom may be taken for granted, but it is the foundation for the culture whether we acknowledge and nurture that or not. And more of it, not less, if key to our common futures.

If I can't get support in this particular school and school district, I'm moving on to another school district until I fulfill my teaching scholarship obligations -- Desoto is looking like a nice district, these days, given the really wonderful teacher I know who works there -- and writing about the futility of public education reform until I see public school districts that begin to take more seriously the need to embrace freedom and choice as fundamental to their reform efforts and their dealings with families, kids, and teachers.

Inner city school reform has been the love of my life, up till this point. So it will be sad to leave it. But I'm not tied to anyone or anything that would treat me badly and act as if it's no big deal. And my little school district will need to decide in the near future whether or not it can learn to treat me as well as I treat those I work with and for, or learn.

And really, all you can realistically expect from people is that they learn from their mistakes, not that they don't make them:).

I hope everyone has a great week:):).

Love,
Ben

Have we achieved our goals?

I think it's appropriate that Haaretz brings us this bit of sanity amidst a paranoid and somewhat dangerous moment for the Israeli and American governments as they float threats of military invasion and press for tough and largely counterproductive action against Iran and North Korea, and never seem daunted by failure or even willing to consider that perhaps they have chosen the wrong path.

It's appropriate because it was an Israeli diplomat that once said on a documentary on the founding of Israel I once watched something to the effect that "Governments try all the wrong options first before they get to the right one."

And I have to say that I never, in my lifetime, quite witnessed a political moment when that observation about government policy was more true, by my lights, than today and as it concerns Israel's and America's policies vis a vis Iran and North Korea. No matter how many times they make the same mistake -- provoking both governments more with threats and tough action, both countries clearly pursuing nuclear weapons more ambitiously the more they are threatened, overriding each country's self-determined right to defense policy, no matter how paranoid and dangerous and provocative that policy may look to us and may be in reality -- Israel, America, and those who agree with their policies just keep foolishly taking the same path that has made the situation with both countries so much worse in just a few years, by any objective measure.

Neil Ferguson, on the other hand, makes the defensive argument for that so clearly failed policy, by my lights, ignoring the concerns of Russia and China and, as the Bush Administration did with France and Germany over the course of the Iraq War, impugning bad motives to people who think their policies might likely be counterproductive (as the Iraq War has proven to be, in so many ways). No matter how much those who disagree with forceful action and threats make clear that they're concern is one of effectiveness of the action, hawks and other advocates of a more forceful foreign policy can just never get their heads around the admittedly complicated but nevertheless important notion that perhaps aggression and force often prove counterproductive, over time, rather than more effective (necessitating, I believe, a commitment to the least possible necessary aggression; least, possible, and necessary being the crux of this very thorny question, right now). And the only way that the counterproductiveness and ineffectiveness of a more threatening and forceful non-proliferation policy towards North Korea and Iran could be missed, I think, at this point -- because the reality is just so plain, by any objective measure -- is out of a defensive attachment to a more forceful policy, no matter how much it fails.

The Soviets went for 70 years with this foolish attachment to bad policy. The Nazis were convinced it would help them conquer the world, only to lose in battle to their more liberal and democratic neighbors, in league with their Communists neighbors to the North. Castro and Cuba have remained attached to this failed philosophy for almost half a century. And the governments of Iran and North Korea govern with such philosophies, regularly, in ways that are repugnant to freedom-loving peoples of the West.

But for some reason, too many in the West still romanticize the capacity to force change more than it has proven capable of delivering.

So what distinguishes the use of force among democratic countries like the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, and the like and the non-democratic countries like North Korea or authoritarian democracies like Iran?

We are more liberal in our democratic commitments. Meaning, we have more freedom. Meaning we use less force. And why we would not take seriously the principles that underly that reality is indecipherable to me, except that we are convinced, in some arrogant way, that we have struck "the right balance" between force and freedom.

What liberal democracies need is a greater appreciation both for their freedom and for more genuine democratic engagement (meaning, we listen to the concerns of our partners in democratic institutions like the United Nations, the U.N. Security Council, NATO, etc. rather than arrogantly assuming that the only good motives are the ones that we have monopolies over) and for democratic principles like self-determination (especially when it comes to the defense policy of a sovereign nation and people, as we would very much expect ourselves). Can you imagine the U.S. rolling over if the European Union demanded that we stop building nuclear weapons or if the U.N. Security Council passed resolutions calling for tough sanctions on the U.S. if it does not scale back it's arsenal? Of course not. We just assume that because we think we know best how the world should be ordered, then our demands for the order we deem best be met, no matter how unreasonable such demands would seem if they were directed at us.

Luckily, democracy has no such requirements for agreement or unanimity. Democracy necessitates, first and foremost, honest and open and good faith engagement of our disagreements. Russia and China, or South Korea, would be remiss in their democratic responsibilities to just roll over for U.S. demands when they have legitimate and I think, ultimately, accurate concerns about the counterproductivity of U.S. policies. We are damned lucky that they are around to check our hubris, frankly. And the less proponents of tough policy engage the disagreement honestly, the more they deserve to be engaged and ignored in their persistent whining that everyone doesn't agree with them and checked until and as they begin to engage the disagreement more honestly.

The U.S. government is not in bad faith. And there is no reason to suspect, any more than the U.S. Government, that the Russians and the Chinese are in bad faith in their concerns (even as their governments do not take nearly seriously enough democratic institutions and commitments; neither do we, truth be told, without having to equivocate the stronger, more mature and intellectually and institutionally diverse democracy in the United States with the totalitarian rule of Communists in China or the autocratic democratic rule of Vladimir Putin in Russia).

The virtue of democracy is that it checks our hubris in our certainty about right policy and creates both an ethic and institutions that challenge us to consider the ideas of those we disagree with us. Particularly because we may be wrong and they may be right. It certaintly has been true of me as often as not in my own lifetime. And is true of anyone who is intellectually honest; and conversely is untrue only when people are not engaged in democratic conversations with a genuine commitment to intellectual honesty.

And in this particular case, as amazing as it may seem to the people and governments of mature democracies in the West, Russia, China, and South Korea likely have the better thinking about how to handle North Korea's nuclear proliferation. Similarly, those willing and able to face the failure of Israel's recent incursion in Lebanon are most likely right about the need to recognize, as Haaretz recognizes in its article, that a unilateral future is not an option. Neither is a hegemenous or quasi-hegemenous future.

The only future available to us that offers any potential for mutual peace, prosperity, freedom, liberal democratic government, cultures, institutions, and commitments is one that takes its own democratic principles -- like self-determination and intellectual diversity and engagement -- seriously rather than as afterthoughts to the pursuits of governments in power and those with particular agendas.

None of the players involved with the current dramas on the international scene are acting with total good faith or a total commitment to high ideals.

And that is all the more reason to hold them accountable to the highest democratic ideals, as they act less than nobly.

And most importantly, that means us, the citizens and governments in more mature liberal democratic countries, holding ourselves more accountable those principles, namely the self-governing need to hold ourselves to our highest values and ideals if self-government and self-determination are to be meaningful principles in a free and liberal democracy.

And the basic foundation for those ideals is intellectual honesty.

The most honest question for us to ask ourselves with respect to Iraq, Iran, and North Korea -- the Axis of Evil -- right now, is, "Have we succeeded in achieving our goals?"

And if the answer is no, as it clearly is, we must consider alternative options and better paths.

Love,
Ben

Fixing the world is like grading math homework

As I've been grading papers, this weekend, I've been realizing that so much of what I'm seeing that just seems so foolish in the world to me is people doing exactly what I see on math papers all of the time:

People making the same mistake again and again.

And as I grade papers, I realize how easy it is to do that.

I have kids who consistently multiply zero times whole numbers as if they are multiplying one times whole numbers. It's an easy mistake, but it's a mistake that will mean a lot of wrong answers.

And that's what I see happening in the world today.

Lot's of people making a lot of mistakes because they just don't understand what they're doing, very well.

Except, in politics, the mistakes you make affect everyone, not just you. One of the primary reasons to leave as much freedom to make choices about life to individuals, as much as possible, and not mandated for everyone.

But the bigger reason is that people resist anything they don't understand or agree with or trust when it's imposed. And that people value their freedom whether you seek to take it away from them, or not, generally for good reason. And the most important reason for valuing that freedom is because they know that it is fundamental to the development of conscience.

We just perpetually take that fact of moral, intellectual, and personal development for granted.

And it's a mistake that gets made again and again in every culture, and democratic cultures are no different.

Democratic cultures are no different except in the respect that they provide us with ways to change those mistakes more readily, to check those with power with divided power, and to more readily both codify protections for freedoms and, far more importantly, build cultures committed to freedom, equity, and other important values. Thus the importance of education in liberal democratic cultures that perpetually take the value of education for granted.

Our culture, right now, is in the midst of an extended period of regression based on this very basic and perpetual mistake that democratic cultures make: romanticizing their less thoughtful, more forceful, more brutish histories.

It's just like watching my students multiply zeroes times sevens and answering seven. It's wrong. It's a very easy mistake to make.

But you won't get to the right answer until you see the mistake.

And that is where we are stuck, right now.

And we won't get unstuck until we see the mistake.

At some level, policy work is very much like mathematics or auto mechanics. If you want the problem fixed, you have to find where the problem is at and fix it. And if you don't find the problem, you aren't a bad person. You'll just keep dealing with the problem until you get it figured out:).

What most political leaders need are some good teachers to help them understand their mistakes, better, so they can fix problems. Joe Nye and Francis Fukuyama are two such teachers around international policy issues. I think I am too. Noone has all the answers. But some people have more answers than others. And good teachers, generally, have more of the right answers. And that's true in math, in auto mechanics, and in policy.

Here's to fixing the problems instead of self-righteously getting stuck on the wrong solutions:).

Love,
Ben

I'm thinking about quitting

Today was an insane day. I have a fellow special education teacher who is seriously undermining me. And I just can't handle the bullshit, anymore. She doesn't give a shit about the kids, really. She only cares about herself. And she's become a serious pain in my ass. And I just think that maybe what my school needs is for me to move out of the way and let people like this teacher lead the way.

You know what the truth is about why inner city schools are so notoriously bad? You want to know why so many problems in the world go unresolved?

Because people don't really give enough of a shit, is why.

And noone wants to face up to that.

You know why we don't have a commitment to universal health care coverage in the U.S? Because people don't really care enough.

You know why power and wealth equity issues are still not taken very seriously by most of the world? Because people really don't give enough of a shit.

You know why we don't have a peace agreement in the Middle East or why the Administration hasn't figured out better ideas for handling Iraq or why they can't seem to face the failure of their policies in Iraq or North Korea or why their opponents can't seem to face up to the fact that they're pressuring and strong-arming the administration has failed so miserably?

Because people don't really give a shit.

Not really.

Because if they did they would look more seriously at the clear and plain reality that strong-arming our way to those goals has failed, and change course. But they are more committed to their strong-arming and the power than they are to resolving those issues.

There's plenty of that problem in any career, and with far too much of the world, in general. And there's plenty of that in suburban schools and private schools and all kinds of other schools that have better reputations.

But most of the people I work with just don't really give enough of a shit. Most of the parents don't give enough of a shit. And many of the kids (though I have become close with a lot of exceptions to this rule) do not give enough of a shit.

The truth is that about most things that matter...

Most people care more about themselves and about covering their asses and about looking good and about looking after their own wants and needs than they do about resolving the important problems.

The truth is that most of us just don't really give a shit.

And then we wonder why shit is all fucked up.

And I am tired of being taken for granted.

I work harder than most people. I confront realities more fully. I think about issues more seriously (which significance really is the big issue that a lot of people dont want to face). I'm more selfless.

And most people are just kind of dicks, really. They're constantly looking after themselves, covering their own asses, acting as selfish as they want to, and then acting like it really doesn't matter.

And right now, we are a huge mess. We are all acting like such dicks and acting like it doesn't matter.

And maybe, I'm thinking, I just need to leave people who don't care enough to their own devices.

The kids, now, really are my most serious point of connection.

But I can't do it with the kids, alone.

I need staff who support me. I need a team committed to doing a good job and trying hard. And most people, these days, are just being dicks. And they just don't want to face up.

And I'm just tired of pretending like people are being better than they are.

Everyone is covering their ass, these days.

And I just don't know why I care so much when others really don't.

It's such a discouraging reality to face about the world and about people and about schools.

And the current political moment has everything to do with it.

You threaten people all the time, people start to look after their own rear ends and stop thinking so much about helping one another.

And we just can't face it.

And I just want to escape and spend time with more people who care more about life and what they do.

I am tired of people constantly forcing my hand because they just can't face being wrong.

I am extremely good at what I do. And I thinking about quitting my profession because I just can't handle people holding me back, anymore, because they just can't face that they are wrong. And that all too many people give a shit about is themselves.

Love,
Ben

Things I expect out of life

There's that list of things that we all know is the stuff that we all will never feel quite right about the world until our expectations are met. Today, I was talking about some of those expectations with friends, and I thought I should share them.

1) I expect a world where people get treated and rewarded decently, fairly, humanely and where everyone's most basic, urgent, and deepest needs are met, getting met, or help is on the way.

I know this doesn't happen today. I know every excuse that cynics have for why it can't happen. I don't give a shit. I expect this kind of world, and until I see it and until the world sees it, we're always going to know that the world is raw deal. And the more it's a raw deal, the more that cynicism and all the worst as well as all the more innocuous consequences that result from that cynicism become reality and often get worse before they get better.

2) I expect an apology (and some sense of their remorse, at least) from people who have sold me out, wronged me, or otherwise hurt me in some significant way that has seriously interrupted our relationship, as much as possible. I expect me to give apologies when they are due, as much as possible. And I expect that everyone who owes apologies to offer them to those they are due to.

Brandi and her abandonment of my closest friendship comes to mind immediately, here. My mom didn't live in the same town with me and had little contact with me after I was 12, and has kind of been a vindictive bitch, at times, much of my life. I have some grad school profs and an advisor who really let me down for reasons that I understand but which still has created significant distance in our relationships. I have two bosses who fired me arbitrarily that I'll probably never seen again (one has already apologized). I have two youngest siblings, a brother and a sister, who come to mind (unless they have a good reason to cut off communication that I don't know about and/or can't think of, can come up with a great excuse for cutting off communication or they can grow up -- they're both pretty young -- whichever comes first). And I am tired of the million compromises I have to make with people who can't learn to grow up and be decent and responsible because its the right thing to do.

3) I expect people to be responsible for their bullshit.

Bitterness, hate, repressed anger, control issues, pettiness, etc. I expect people to let that shit go. And when they can't, to expect to be ignored until they do. I expect people to forgive. And when they won't, I expect them to be loved and accepted for their weakness and fragility, but not to have their weakness and fragility to be confused with real strength. I expect people to have priorities based on what really matters in life and not just based on what really matters in their own personal lives. I expect people to pitch in and help out with important matters of life. I expect people to pitch in and help out with all the thinking and brainstorming and other hard work that comes with solving most of life's most serious problems. I expect people to be more honest, more open, and more real. And I expect that when they are not more honest, open, and real, that life will be just as much of a fucked up mess as it often is today.

4) I expect that people will at least see through other peoples' bullshit and lying to themselves and others, even if they have a hard time seeing through their own.

Much of how fucked up our perception and understanding of social reality is is based on how much we lie and hide what we're really thinking. To ourselves. To one another. And the ways that these lies overlap and fuck up our ability to get more honest with one another about life so that we all have a more accurate picture of what that life looks like. All the ways we hurt one another fuck up our honest expression and honest communication, which is the big reason why we should stop fucking hurting one another all the fuckin' time since this is what kills the mutual engagement that is so central to a more honest and decent life.

And at the very least, if President Bush is not going to get more honest about how much his international policy is fucking shit up and making many, many things in the world worse, at the very least, the rest of us should be able to look at his fuck-ups (most of which too many of us have cheerleaded with far too much enthusiasm) and say, "Hey, you're fucking shit up." I was in a similar situation, recently, when the classes I teach were having problems and we needed some changes in course. People didn't know quite what to say to me to get things moving in a better direction. But they did know to tell me that shit was not looking good. And that's a good instinct, even when it is less than ideal in its expression.

We lie to ourselves and one another all the fuckin' time. It is the persisent fuck-up of humanity that has fueled and maintained so much of our own destructiveness towards one another and toward ourselves. And if that cycle is to end, we are going to have to get more honest.

I very much understand that that is easier said than done. I, for one, have many things to come cleaner on in my life which I have tried to be as honest as I felt safe to be honest about in my life. And I want, personally, and for us, as humanity, to get more honest with ourselves and with others about life. But it will take less aggression, less hurtfulness, less punishment, less destructiveness and less self-destructiveness to get us there, as well as some courage. I've shown a lot of courage, I think, but I'm not a fool. And we are going to need a lot more courage and to create a lot less fear so that we don't all have to be Jesus Christ or Martin Luther King or Ghandi and give our lives or sacrafice ourselves to move humanity forward when it's in the kind of rut that it's in today (and always has been, really, but with more opportunity to correct our course).

5) I expect that a world where I can trust people more and where I'm not always looking over my shoulder wondering who I have to fear today. I expect people to know the difference between a better world in that direction and a worse world in the direction of more fear, control, punishment, and force and to help turn us all in the better direction. Fear, control, punishment, and force will not move us in a direction of less fear and more trust. Clearly the contrary is true, to anyone not lost in their bullshit on this one.

We undermine the social fabric the more we turn ourselves against one another. We undermine our sense of trust and community the more we try to scare people into submission rather than appealing to their consciences. Every law that gets passed that assumes bad faith on my part, every arbitrary imposition that assumes that I don't care, every effort to clamp down on my freedoms on the arrogant notion that someone knows better than I do is a tear in that social fabric and in a more authentic sense of trust and community. Every time anyone proposes to force me to do a goddamn thing other than, in the moment, to not be physically destructive towards others they undermine the kind of more authentic trust that is the only path forward for humanity.

Every time we work more out of fear than out of hope, we tear at that social fabric. And right now, it's in tatters. Because we've all taken it so much for granted.

And if we want that to change, we have to change course in a direction that takes seriously our responsibility to strengthen and more genuinely secure that social fabric. Guns and weapons and armies and police are all important for securing our basic safety needs. But they cannot substitute for the strong relationships and love and self-actualization that is needed to more authentically strengthen and secure our lives and our futures.

Every time we lie to ourselves and to one another about our need to love one another and be more honest with one another and be more decent with one another and be more equitable with one another and respect each others' freedom and choices and to just be better with one another...

Every time we do that, we make our lives and our neighbors' lives shitier.

And we need to cut that shit out if we want the world to get better.

And we need to start being the people that we know we want to be and can be, if we give our hearts and minds to that cause.

Those are 5 expectations I have for life. I just want to put
them out there. If people don't live up, then so be it. But that's my expectation, whether people (myself included) choose to live up to that expectation or not. But they are expectations that would significantly improve our lives and our futures, whether we choose to think about that and face up to that fact of life or not.

I am tired of all of the fear and the pain in my life and in all of our lives. I am tired of acting like it is better than it really is or that it is less scary and painful than it really is. I am tired of the stress and exhaustion that come with threats and pressure as the means of compelling action and all of the ways that this has significantly undermined the progress of America and humanity, just as it did/has in the Soviet Union, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Syria, and every other force-driven regime in the world and throughout world history.

It is no mistake that the onset of humanity's most remarkable achievements occurred with the promise and fruits of liberal democratic, freer, more open and more equitable societies. Freedom and openness and equity create the space for us to do great things. So it is no mistake that our greatest leaders, thinkers, and citizens have been its strongest advocates.

If we are going to be great and to do great things, we need the freedom to fuck shit up and to make shit better. Without that freedom, we cannot be great. We will always be a petty, small species of intelligent primates too clever by half and not nearly intelligent enough to be honest with themselves or one another about their deepest needs and interests and to solve their mutual problems in light of that understanding.

What I need right now is sleep. So I'm going to go home and get some. I have grading due by Friday. But I need some sleep at this moment.

Have a great week, everyone:).

Love,
Ben

Dialogue around school violence

We had an emergency committee meeting in my school, yesterday, where we talked about what to do in case of an intruder emergency. We're relatively prepared, but not prepared enough that I feel secure should someone come into the building with the intent and the weaponry to do harm.

I studied school violence in grad school. Rob Horner is the name, I believe, of the special education/developmental psychology scholar out of Oregon whose work in this area so impressed me. I also bought a book I'm trying to track down from a friend I lent it to written by a Harvard policy researcher, I believe, about how schools and communities have dealt with school shootings in their communities.

The solutions are not as simple as security measures, though these are very important and something I'm intimately involved with here at Eisenhower. The solutions involve the way we relate with one another, with students, with families, with people in the community, and the ways that those interactions either strengthen people and the community or leave people alienated, scared, and willing to do something drastic to act out those dark impulses. Schools are not to blame for these tragedies. But there is much they can do to be more responsible for making them less likely.

The recent spate of school violence is surely something that we can come together around, as a nation, engage in the national sharing of ideas that the Administration is initiating, and come together around the common ground of keeping our children safe.

If there was any domestic issue, right now, that I wish we had dedicated people like Brandi Fisher or Theo Brown or Carolyn Lukensmeyer working to initiate dialogue on, this is the one, right now.

We've started the discussion at my school. I hope the nation takes seriously the need to rally together around this banner to make our schools and communities more genuinely safe.

Love,
Ben

What force as political philosophy and tactic is really about...

Francis Fukuyama posts on his brilliant little blog I just found, today (for liberals convinced of their ideological monopoly on brilliance, Fukuyama's website should be a humbling experience) about what force as a political philosophy looks like when taken seriously.

Fukuyama references a story about Iranian independent intellectual, Ramin Jahanbegloo.

Jahanbegloo was released from an Iranian prison and confessed his crimes against the Iranian state. As Rasool Nafisi of opendemocracy.net reports of Jahanbegloo's confession:

"The immediate cause of Ramin's arrest was a proposal he drafted for the German Marshall Fund, in which Ramin had compared Iranian and eastern European intellectuals, and purportedly discussed the balance between the strength of a country's civil society and the overthrow of its political regime. That was his mistake, he said: he had been duped into believing that this was intellectual work, while in reality the document represented opposition to Iranian national interests – an outcome he never intended. He said that now, he planned to go to India to continue his studies about that country, and stay away from politics."

That's what force as a political philosophy really looks like. Americans are pussies; they just don't know what force really looks like. The Iranians are masters of it (though the Soviets and the Nazis really perfected it long before the Ahmadinejad).

There's a reason why liberal democracies developed norms of free thought, expression, engagment, and capacity to challenge government policies and rules. This situation in Iran is the reason. It's just a history of dissent that has already been paved for Americans and Western democracies so thoroughly that their citizens can take that history for granted.

Ironically, Ramin writes this really brilliant case for independent thought along Ghandian principles.

Force is not a philosophy. It is the opposite of philosophy, as a general rule. Except when it is accountable to the highest standards of conscience and thought, force is the antithesis of thought.

And in Iran, it is clearly the most serious enemy of thought.

Love,
Ben

The 600 pound gorilla...

Why is it so hard for us to see that being dicks has not solved our problems? That forcing our way through issues has really undermined those efforts, generally, rather than supporting them?

I was watching the 60 Minutes interview about the Hewlet Packard situation -- the Wall Street Journal plays gotcha journalism with HP, HP executives authorize spying on HP employees and journalists, executives investigate board members to see who authorized the leaks and the spying, and a former HP CEO is criminally indicted for the whole incident -- and the whole time I'm thinking...

Are we just completely obvlious to how this whole strategy of strong-arming our way through life is failing miserably? The journalists, the executives, the board members, the prosecutors?

Which one of them is doing good, here, or did any good in this situation?

None of them...it's a pox on every single one of their houses...

What major issue or situation has been helped by our strong-arming and self-centeredness and thoughtlessness?

And why is it so hard to see the crazy cynical mess we've created with this ugly political period?

It's the 600 pound gorilla sitting in the middle of our terribly large, messy living room, right now...

And we can be sure that things will continue to get worse until we take some responsibility...

We only get out of this mess when we face up...

And it is more important than any particular issue we face, right now...

The environment, wealth inequities, religious freedom, gay rights, free markets, drug and gun laws...

International policy and security issues are intimately bound up in this issue...

And until we face up to our complicity in all of it, we will continue to get worse until we decide to get better...

It's the 600-pound gorilla in the middle of humanity's living room, right now...and it's not going away until we face up...

Let's hope that happens sooner rather than later...

Love,
Ben

Why I'm happy to be an intellectual and why I'm so disappointed with the Democrats, right now

The American Democratic party, like the American Republican party, has become so bankrupt as an institution in its dash for power, and this headline illustrates the point, well.

Democrats use strategy of ambiguity on Iraq: experts

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061004/pl_nm/iraq_democrats_dc

It's an article about how Democrats have decided to rationalize their own cowardice to brainstorm, posit, consider, hypothesize or otherwise think about a better Iraq strategy. And how they are hoping, in some bizarre, distorted way, that this will qualify them, in the minds of Americans, for political leadership.

And the biggest reason why they are not at all, necessarily, the better alternative for leadership this November or any November until they decide to think more than they hunt down power.

I am so sickened by the cowardice and the intellectual dishonesty of both parties this election and at this point in our political history.

It can't continue, obviously, because to any numbskull who's taken an iota to think about thinking: it matters. So when you don't think about what you're going to do with all that power or all that money or all that influence or whatever it is that you want, you inevitably end up wasting it.

And in this case, it will involve Democrats likely winning seats in the House and the Senate (and maybe next election, win the Presidency), and then stand around like a bunch of dumbasses saying, "Well we don't know what the fuck we're going to do. We just knew we were tired of the dumbasses over there. Doh, doh, doh."

Fuckin' morons.

Let me be clear. I want enough Democrats to win this election as some kind of substantial check on a Republican party that controls the House, the Senate, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court. Republicans are definitely divided, these days, thank goodness (meaning they started putting their thinking caps on and perhaps, just perhaps, operating more out of principal than power hunger...maybe). But Democrats are needed to split power in meaningful ways so that no party has too much of a concentration.

But that's where my loyalty to Democrats ends, except in those places where we agree on issues, which is a mixed bag, to say the least.

The short story is the places where Democrats favor freedom, so do I. The places where Democrats favor taking away freedom, I like someone else.

And headlines like this one demonstrate that Democrats have become just as dangerous and untrustworthy with power than Republicans. Because who really gives a fuck about a party or a person that wants power but has no fuckin' clue what they're going to do with it or what ideas would be better.

It's arrogance of power, at its worst. It is the fulfilling of Lord Acton's prophecy about power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely.

And guess what? It never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever lasts.

Because while the dumbasses of the earth can be convinced to give up their freedoms for a short time, they soon wise up and get over their stupid pride that kicking ass was going to save the world (which it clearly hasn't, if you've picked up one history book in your life).

And I have no love for any person or any party that cares more about their right to power over me than my freedom. I used to say more easily that I believed in reasonable compromises. But now that I see the manipulative writing on the wall around how people lie and bullshit and manipulate themselves around that issue to basically do whatever they want with power, I'm much more skeptical about people's compromises and negotiations.

I say let the Democrats choose whatever strategy they please, including a strategy that arrogantly asserts the right to power without any responsibility to think about how they're going to use it.

And let them lose.

This election, and all elections, I will be choosing the more responsible, more honest, more thoughtful, more genuinely moderate candidates (meaning no fakers; and I'll do everything in my power to call out those faking moderation to rationalize radical ends, which I'm beginning to understand is the most fundamental lie that power-hogs and people, generally, engage in to get their way).

And then, like everyone else, I'm going to live my life however I damn well please, thank you very fuckin' much Mr. and Mrs. American Politician.

What a shameful political moment this is for Americans.

And the one major saving grace is that history demonstrates that:

It never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever lasts.

Sometimes it gets worse, for awhile, as it is now.

But it never lasts.

Naziism captured peoples' imaginations for awhile.

Communism captured peoples' imaginations for far too long.

And force as a political philosophy (which, of course, it is not; it is, generally, the absense of thought and engagement in favor of our more brutish tendencies) will capture our attention for a brief moment.

And then float away, like every other bad idea the world has seen.

And the biggest reason?

Because the proof is in the pudding.

And the pudding is looking awfully rancid, these days.

And for this rancid pudding of power and aggression, American Democrats, like Republicans, have quite the sweet tooth, these days.

And that is why people around the world are likely to stop listening and following such obvious gluttons.

Thank goodness.

And we can only hope that that will mean that they will start following their better natures.

And if Maslow is right, which I think he is, it's likely a guarantee.

Because while people may choose to give up their freedoms and to feed the power hunger of politicians for one round or maybe two, they aren't likely to keep feeding the beast into perpetuity. And they are least likely to do so in a robust, mature, free democracy like the United States.

Love,
Ben

Progress for humanity

This weekend, in addition to a weekend of cleaning and grading and IEP's, has been a weekend of movies, documentaries in particular...

Unfinished Business, a documentary on Japanese internment in the U.S. during World War II...What America Needs, an amateur documentarian asking the question of Americans around the country, "What does America need?"...

And today...Death in Gaza, an HBO documentary by filmmaker James Miller about the conflict between Israel and Palestine, with a personal look at the conflict and its consequences for Palestine and a national culture so full of hate for Israelis and anger at Israeli occupation that they will support murder and resistance independent of its clear and disastrous consquences for their lives...

It is very tragic, I have to say, to watch histories replete with human tragedy and harsh treatment and little regard for one another and to somehow try to make sense of why so many people see the way forward in Palestine, in Israel, in America, in Europe, in Africa, in Asia, most definitely in the Arab Middle East and in other more traditional cultures around the world...

That everyone seems to be rationalizing the very ugliness that has us all so stuck and steeped in our bitterness, our disappointment, our cynicism, our foolish attachment to control and power, our obsession with force and with causing pain to others in a fruitless and foolish effort to make our own pain go away...

It is the rationalization of revenge in the name of power and morality and humanity and decency...it is the most profound lie and excuse...our failure to face ourselves and our failures as human beings that humanity faces and has faced since it's birth...

And the saddest tragedy of all...as I watch this documentary about a culture that embodies this failure and this tragedy more than any other in the world, right now, likely -- Palestine -- is this rationalization so clearly fails to promote anything decent or humane or good or courageous or true...

And if we want to make progress in our capacity to face that reality...we will have to get honest about that failure...honest with ourselves...and honest with one another...

It can only happen with more trust...and more trust can only be developed with more space to fail and to acknowledge our failures honestly without being treated harshly...there is no other way forward...no matter how we, like Palestinians, may pretend otherwise...

As I watch this documentary about Palestine, with its demolished neighborhoods, with its political, cultural, and economic bleakness, with its children repeating the hate for Israelis that their parents and adults around them have taught them, with its failure of imagination to consider a world of peace and co-existence, with its rationalizations of all of this ugliness in the name of religion, nationality, warfare and resistance...

As I watch a culture of death and destruction, with men and boys falling victim to their own contempt for Israel and Israelis...

As I watch the utter irrational bitterness and fear and hate that animate this self-destruction and destruction of both Palestinians by Israeli armies and Israelis by Palestinian terrorists...

As I watch a little girl who, over the course of the movie, loses her ninth sibling to this senseless destruction...and yet still aspires to be a lawyer to fight for justice, she says, rather than a terrorist, who fights for blood...an important step forward, I think...

I wonder how far we will go to pretend that the direction we have taken over the last 6 years has served us? How far will we go to pretend that things are better than they are? How far will we go to pretend that our hate and fear and self-righteousness have promoted progress for humanity? And how long will we pretend that we really can live like treating others as we would want to be treated is naivete rather than a necessity for our common existence and future?

How long will we pretend that this is best that we have to offer?

I worry, often, about whether I've written enough about situations like North Korea or Iran or Iraq or Lebanon or wealth and poverty or freedom, authority, and aggression...

But if you have to sum up these issues in a single thought...
It is that progress for humanity, as completely straightforward as it sounds, will only occur as we treat each other better...Desmond Tutu is right...Martin Luther King was right...Mohatma Ghandi was right...Henry David Thoreau was right...Jesus of Nazareth was right...the Buddha was right...

As are the thousands of more enlightened leaders and thinkers and writers (and millions, billions, of people who have moved consistently in this direction over the course of humanity's history) who have consistently pointed us in the direction of greater compassion and love and concern for one another...towards peace and freedom and more democratic and equitable treatment of one another...

There is no other source for our progress...every other path is illusion or folly...

And every other path is, sadly, the source of the great bulk of our misery and human tragedy...and certainly the tragedy that is most preventable, since it happens at our own hands...

And that tragedy -- the tragedy that is the consequence of our failure to treat others as we would want to be treated -- will go on as long as we fail to face that very plain fact of life, for anyone not trying to rationalize their own bitterness and fear and hate...

Hubris, the Greeks tell us, is our most profound sin, our most profound mistake...

And today the source of our hubris is the foolish thinking that either we have arrived at a final stage of humanity that needs no more thought or progress...or that we have finally mastered our capacity to control and hurt and force one another to do good and to do our bidding after 2000 years of failure with that principle...

That aggression, not freedom and free will, is the source of our virtue and our common future...

We are a proud species...humanity...too proud...

And the only way forward is found in our humility and capacity to acknowledge our failures in our humanity and how we treat one another and have treated one another...and to move forward with forgiveness and compassion and love and thought and understanding as the source of our common humanity...

There are times when aggression is needed to genuinely protect us and our freedom, our lives, and our dignity...but everything else but the least possible necessary aggression and as much thought and engagement and genuine resolution of conflicts between peoples undermines our freedom and safety and dignity and common humanity...

And the only honest progress is found in our recognition of our need to treat each other better if we are going to move forward...

I have grading and IEP's to do...and Curious George to get to:):)...

Have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

Madeleine Albright

Melissa got free tickets this week for her and I to see Madeleine Albright speak at KU last night.

It was a great talk. Madeleine is not just brilliant, she's wise and she's got a very decent heart. She's politically savvy. She was a too anti-Bush and her comments on the Iraq war being the worst foreign policy disaster ever were more hyperbole than substance, I thought, but she had so many good things to say about ways to deal with serious problems in the world like Iraq, the Palestine and Israel, proliferation of nuclear weapons by Iran and North Korea, and the tragedy of genocide in Sudan.

It was really refreshing to listen to someone talk on international policy who took thought and dialogue and diplomacy and engagement and compassion and realism seriously. She may be the strongest Secretary of State that America has had, though I do wish she would have been less petty about our current and also brilliant -- but not quite so brilliant or wise -- Secretary of State in Condoleeza Rice, or Condi's boss, the President.

There were many things that struck me about the talk that I should write about at some point.

But maybe the most important was that after spending so many of my days among children and in the inner city, it was really refreshing to spend time with people who I could more intuitively trust more.

People who attend a lecture at a liberal arts university may be more of a homogenous liberal crowd than I think is good for discussion and engagement. But people who take time to attend a discussion by Madeleine Albright, and a free one at that, are good people, for the most part. People who care about the world beyond their own day to day lives. They are people who think, and for the right reasons, often. They are people who care. And they are the kind of people that I like to be around.

After days upon days of people openly disrespecting me, perpetually finding ways out of work, people flaunting how much they don't care about others or anything of any real importance, it was nice to spend time with people not quite as lost in their own bullshit.

This was what I loved about Brandi's and my time in Washington. We didn't spend time with politicians or lobbyists. Brandi and I spent time with people like Theo Brown and Carolyn Lukensmeyer who were just more genuinely good people. Who came to D.C. for the same reason Brandi and I loved our time there: because they wanted to do good.

And those people are good people to spend time with, liberal or conservative, Democrats or Republicans, Christians or Jews or Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists or any of the major or minor world religions or ethnic groups, as flawed as even all of them and all of us are now and forever into perpetuity.

A lot of good people have gotten kind of intolerable, recently; self-righteousness makes people kind of hard to put up with, sometimes.

But self-righteousness doesn't lead, not for real. And we can only live without more genuine leadership for so long.

That kind of leadership comes from more genuine people like Madeleine Albright and her boss who she had quite a bit of good to say about, President Clinton.

And the most genuine leadership, of course, does not come from the formal power of political leaders. It is the example that they offer and that which we provide ourselves, each of us for ourselves.

Madeleine Albright and Bill Clinton are two such decent people, and for many reasons, in my book, Madeleine in particular.

And it was nice being around people who took thought more seriously than so much of the bullshit that passes for something of substance in this world. It had been a long time since I had been in the presence of people who took substance that seriously.

And last night was a refreshing coming home, in that regard.

Love,
Ben

Why I'm currently leaning toward Rudy Guliani for President

Guliani to Hillary: 'Stop This Blame Thing', Newsmax, Thursday, September 28, 2006

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/9/27/200759.shtml?s=al&promo_code=262E-1

Because this is what leadership looks like.

If the smartest people won't run because Americans don't like to be challenged to think, enough, and because political folks play too many games with personal histories, then I have to choose amongst the people with hats in the ring.

And Rudy is the best candidate, thusfar, by my lights. Barak Obama would be a better Democratic candidate, I think, if he would run. And I, for one, would support a Bill Bradley second run. As I would of Dick Lugar of Indiana, if he would run.

But Rudy's major strength as a Presidential candidate is that he knows what leadership in a crisis looks like.

Here is my picture in contrast between Rudy Guliani and Hillary Clinton.

When 9/11, Rudy got on the ground and was trying to figure out how he could help, especially considering the weight of his office.

When Hurricane Katrina his, Senator Hillary Clinton, representing one of the most powerful states in the Union, decided her most important task was to start a commission investigating the Bush Administration.

Rudy, like Bill Clinton, just has the instincts of a leader.

And Hillary Clinton just has the instincts of a party operative.

And that's why she doesn't deserve to be President, at this point, as far as I'm concerned.

There's much more to this conversation.

But I have bathroom duty to attend to:).

Love,
Ben

Daniel Madigan, the Pope, Islam, dialogue and freedom

Commonweal carries a fascinating discussion with Daniel Madigan, president of the Institute for the Study of Religions and Cultures at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, about the Pope, Islam, dialogue between Christians and Muslims and the significance of religious and other freedom -- and its denial in Muslim-majority countries -- in the reactions of Muslims to the Pope's comments.

http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php3?id_article=1743

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan -- http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/ -- for the recommendation.

Love,
Ben

Armando Iannucci on the Pope, Islam, and progress

Armando Ianucci wrote brilliantly, today, on the ridiculousness of the controversy over the Pope's comments on Islam.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1879703,00.html

The situation is ridiculous because the quotation, though unfair to the important moral and cultural legacy that Islam has served in much of the world, was also largely true.

The Pope quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor as saying: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Now, I don't know how wise and politically astute it was to call Islam evil. But his reference both to the legacy of forced faith and coversion by the sword is definitely a true legacy of Islam, as it is of Catholicism and Christianity, generally. And it's definitely roughly an "evil and inhuman" legacy, if you care at all about people getting killed because they won't convert to a religious faith. And what's really pissing of Muslims around the world today, I think, is that it is wholly relevant to far too much support by Muslims and non-Muslims, alike, for terrorism and violence to achieve political ends that need more dialogue and engagement and far, far less violence and intimidation to resolve the issues that the violence is meant to resolve, and clearly hasn't, no matter how many decades it has been used.

And at some level, I think what the Pope is saying is that if you don't like the legacy, perhaps Muslims should stop making excuses both for its history and its present in the form of terrorism in the name of Muslim values or Muslim identity or really terrrorism for any reason whatsoever. And if it pisses you off, perhaps murder for a religious or political end should piss you off more.

Do I think it was the wisest thing to say? No. But do I think it was accurate? Accurate enough, I think. And does there need to be a conversation about getting Muslims off of using the Koran or Islam or religious to excuse every murderous, violent, anti-Semetic, anti-Israeli, anti-American, anti-Western, anti-anything-that-would-rationalize-terrorism impulse that Muslims might have? Yes. And that is the real issue here, not whether Islam is inherently evil or inhuman, which is clearly is not.

Islam is clearly a very important and worthy religion and moral tradition in much of the world and worthy of study and respect by all peoples of the world.

And, like Christianity and Judaism, it is a legacy that is also rife with all kinds of dark impulses that it's adherents don't like to acknowledge.

And as Iannucci makes clear in this satire, what really is at stake in this and most divisions in the world, right now, is whether rationality and reason is going to will out, or whether the will to power, religious fervor, the forces of repression, or other illiberal forces are going to will out.

Iannucci sums up the case for rational progress in his quotation of President Warren Harding at the Republican Party convention in 1912. Harding argued:

'Progression is not proclamation nor palaver. It is not pretence nor play on prejudice. It is not of personal pronouns nor perennial pronouncement. It is not the perturbation of a people passion-wrought, nor a promise proposed. Progression is everlastingly lifting the standards that marked the end of the world's march yesterday and planting them on new and advanced heights today.'

Progress is lifting our sights higher, not bullshitting our way into oblivion. Progress follows the light of truth, not the propaganda and spin of the will to power. Progress, as Pope Benedict was arguing with his quotation, does not come at the blade of a sword (generally). Progress comes with the lifting of conscience above our the petty or vengeful historical moment. Progress comes with ideals lifted high, not by leaving our hearts and minds in the muck of a cynical past or present.

It's worth repeating:

"Progression is everlastingly lifting the standards that marked the end of the world's march yesterday and planting them on new and advanced heights today.'"

There's only one way out of our current political malaise. And it by raising our expectations for the future.

Thomas Hobbes did so for the world more than 300 years ago. Enlightenment thinkers like him did the same for a world lost in religious and political strife. It is time, today, that we did the same again.

Love,
Ben

Facing our failures

Charles Krauthammer wrote a review of Munich in January 2006 in the Jewish World Review that I just happened to come across that, for me, sums up why I am so fed up with the current political period.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0106/krauthammer011306.php3

Charles argues that because Spielberg's movie is implicitly critical of the Israeli assassination policy -- on moral and strategic grounds -- that Munich is anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian terrorist.

It is an intellectually dishonest criticism of Munich that so sickens me with its partisanship and the current hate and animus and ugliness amongst both liberals and conservatives towards one another, right now, that I just can't stomach the dishonesty of it anymore.

Liberals and conservatives have been so busy in the last 6 years playing games with radicalism, flanking, and other forms of political intimidation and warfare and muscling their way to power, that I just think most liberals and conservatives and most political people, generally, just can't even keep track of their own dishonesty anymore.

And, sadly, it's undermined most things decent about liberalism and conservativism as political and moral philosophies and ideas.

And Charles' unfair and intellectually dishonest criticism of Munich embodies that failure for people to even keep track of their own lies to themselves, anymore.

Spielberg's film is not the final comment on Israel or Palestine or assassination as a national policy or counterterrorism or any of these topics. Nor does it aspire to be. Stephen Spielberg says, personally, at the beginning of the DVD version that I saw, that he is looking to use the film to initiate dialogue about the policies between Israel and Palestine and assassination policy as a part of those policies to help bring some resolution to the situation in this region.

But what Spielberg's movie does do very clearly and well is to point out the clear failure of the assassination policy to protect Israelis. After every Palestinian involved with the 1972 massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, more Israelis are killed rather than less in retribution. The more Israelis use bloodshed to end the conflict with their less honest neighbors, the more Israelis are killed. It's a clear pattern that Spielberg paints well.

And the truth is that, like his liberal counterparts when they muscle for their own purposes, Charles Krauthhammer refuses to face that failure.

There is not one major important international policy issue that we face, today, that I can say definitively is an American or Israeli success with regard to terrorism (other than the Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland which has held together as a sustainable peace agreement throughout this period; a policy that was negotiated successfully by David Trimble and Gerry Adams , and under the leadership of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton).

The Iraq war is on the brink of civil war and well out of the hands of its American initiators. North Korea and Iran are clearly, by any objective standard, pursuing nuclear weapons more today rather than less because of American posturing and intimidation and threats around the issue. Lebanese and Arab peoples in the Middle East clearly hold more animus rather than less after the invasion of Lebanon, and none of the soldiers kidnapped, to my knowledge, have been returned as of yet.

If the current period is a referendum on the use of maximum force to leverage and intimidate one's way to resolution of important issues, including terrorism, totalitarianism, civil war and wars of self-determination, and any of the most serious violence and bloodshed that the world faces, right now, the clear verdict on that idea is that it is a failed one. The major victory that can be claimed during this period -- the pullout of Syria from Lebanon -- is largely due, from the series of events that took place leading up to the pullout, to the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon where Lebanese citizens and representatives protested in mass against their Syrian captors in view of the link between the assassination of their former Prime Minister and the Syrian government.

If the current period is to answer the question, "Do political and moral leaders in good faith committed to principles of peace and non-violence, as much as possible, get better results than political and moral leaders committed to violence, maximum force, intimidation, and bullying to achieve their ends?" the clear negative answer to the question that, at the very least should be answered at this point is "Those who use violence and intimidation and fear, primarily, to achieve their ends, and do not respect democratic ideals, institutions, norms, and commitments clearly fail more often than they succeed." I think we can also answer the question positively that those who use the least amount of force and aggression possible and only when absolutely necessary achieve their ends more successfully. But, at the very least, the last six years should be a clear demonstration that the opposite principles are clearly failed and wrong-headed.

And Spielberg's film is one of the most brilliant films I have ever seen to make that point clear with film rather than just with words.

And Charles' problem, at this point, is that he just can't face the failure of policies he's advocated.

But it's not just Charles. It's liberal advocacy groups. It's conservative advocacy groups. It's Democrats. It's Republicans. It's Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad. It's Israel's leadership and American leadership. It's too many liberal and conservative leaders and advocates to count.

There are notable exceptions.

Tony Blair, the liberal Prime Minister of Great Britain, is the statesman of the hour, as far as I am concerned, restarting negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, even during this dark hour. Jacques Chirac, the conservative President of France, has demonstrated an impressive commitment to both democratic engagement and a free economy and society that ranks him as a very important democratic leader of the day. Gerhardt Schroeder's ability to get over the arrogant uniltateral power-maneuvering of American President George Bush to join President Bush in trying to secure Iraq with German soldiers was an impressive move by a European leader. And Angela Merkl's ability to stand by the American President while his policy fumbles and to still be critical of its failures marks her as a more genuine conservative leader in Europe than the President's conservative defenders in America. And Mahmoud Abbas, despite too many anti-Israel and pro-terrorist utterances to be counted as the most serious democratic statesman, has been the proactive Palestinian peace partner that Israel has ever encountered.

But the partisan fighting and power-gambles have so deteriorated the political dialogue that a conservative like Charles Krauthammer cannot even consider the implicit and honest arguments of a director like Spielberg because to do so means to face the failure of the general commitment to retribution and maximum force and aggression possible that Charles shares with the Israeli governments that engaged in this failed and foolish policy.

Here is the bottom-line:

If we cannot face the clear failure of aggression and force to resolve our most serious conflicts -- moral, intellectual, political, violent, and otherwise -- rather than as a temporary method of dealing with immediate and clear threats to our physical security that has long-term consequences, absent trust in our intentions with the use of force and aggression, we will face this cycle of conflict, force, aggression, and violence till the end of humanity until we face that failure.

If we cannot face the counterproductive nature of our use of force as a means of guaranteeing our desires and the corrupting nature of power to imbue us with a sense of our own righteousness and a willingness to rationalize virtually anything and everything in the name of that righteousness, then we will live with the lack of resolution of our most serious problems and conflicts and righteous indignation without corresponding success in resolving the source of that indignation until we do.

Meaning, we will either face our failures or live with those failures until we do.

Louis Armstrong, -- like Martin Luther King when he taught about love and compassion as the basis for progress on race and poverty issues in America, like Robert Kennedy when he talked about love and compassion the day that Martin Luther King was killed, like Mohatma Ghandi who served as the example for Dr. King, like Henry David Thoreau whose Civil Disobedience was the inspiration for Ghandi, like Jesus and Buddha before them who had taught about the moral and spiritual advantages of a philosophy of love and compassion and forgiveness and experiencing pain as a natural part of life -- is so right in the introduction to What a Wonderful World that he gave for the 1970 live version that I first heard on The Fabulous Louis Armstrong when I was in graduate school.

"All I'm saying is see what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love, baby, love. That's the secret. Yeah. If lots more of us loved each other, we'd solve lots more problems. And man, this world would be Odessa."

Armstrong was speaking to young people in 1970 who challenged his song with the notion that the world could hardly be wonderful with so much war and hunger and pollution. A refrain that we could easily repeat today, and many, many liberals and conservatives clearly still do.

But Louis was right. It is our lack of love and compassion and respect for one another that is our most serious obstacle to resolution of the most serious problems of humanity, not our lack of fear and force and aggression. And the last 6 years should serve as a clear verdict on the failure of fear and force and aggression to inspire the most critical changes that humanity is in need of to anyone honestly evaluating that legacy.

Most awful to me is how dishonest the will to power makes all those engaged in it with each other and with themselves. It very much helps me appreciate the commitment of intellectuals and academics to an honest discussion, including and especially serious and controversial political issues.

Dishonest forces persistently exploit the failure of decent and moderate people to arrive at final answers on all problems that require on-going discussion, debate, thought, and consideration to arrive at better answers so that they can justify efforts that are explicitly intellectually dishonest and destructive.

And the explicity dishonest of these efforts is supported by the implicit dishonesty on all of our parts that thought and engagement do not matter and that force and repression solves problems rather than serving as the primary obstacle to their resolution.

In fact, it is so clear that repression is the primary obstacle since it is repressive and violent problems such as genocide and terrorism that figure as humanity's most serious unresolved problems in the 21st century.

And the larger problem that makes this possible is the utter foolishness of most people to believe that one repressive force or another will save them from the dangers that the repressive and inequitable forces of the world have to offer.

And the general obstacle that we all face in making the steps forward that would lead to genuine progress is facing that failure. The biggest obstacle to progress, right now, is not, at all, the absence of the right laws or the rule of law. It is our failure to face the failures of force and aggression to solve our most serious problems.

Our failure to take conscience and thought and intelligent engagement and the freedom to develop them as seriously as they deserve is the most serious failure that humanity faces right now and has faced since its beginning.

And our failure to face our failures will not make them go away. It will mean more failures of policy, conscience, and thought until we face those failures.

If we want resolution of our most serious problems, we will need to face our failures. If we cannot, we can expect more until we do.

To face those failures will need forgiveness and an acknowledgement of our humanity.

And that is the essence of our humanity and of our progress.

That is why love and compassion and forgiveness is the heart of our humanity and of human progress.

Absent love, compassion, and forgiveness, there is no real progress. No matter how much we try to pretend otherwise.

Because love and compassion and forgiveness and our ever expanding commitment to our own personal humanity and the broader family of humanity in the world around us is the essence of that progress. As we fail to expand that commitment, we fail to make real progress.

And facing that failure with all the love and compassion and forgiveness and openheartedness and openmindedness we can muster is the essence of our common humanity and the essence of our common future together.

Love,
Ben

The alternative to taking democratic self-governance seriously, part deux...

The Economist has a fascinating discussion of the deepening democratic and economic crisis in Zimbabwe (Thailand is in a similar boat, lately, of course and America and much of the international community is hanging on by the hair of their barely serious enough commitments to democratic institutions and ideals, though they are definitely taking steps backwards these last few years. Thank god democratic cultures are compensating for the lack of respect by democratic governments for democratic freedoms with a very quiet, very real individually-led resistance to pressure group and government imposition and a transition to a world of great and more genuinely democratic self-governance).

The Economist, Zimbabwe: No democracy, no bread and butter, September 21, 2006.

http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7950047

Money quote, as Andrew Sullivan would say:

"There is no resolution in sight. Clearing up the economy depends on sorting out the politics, and that depends on Mr Mugabe leaving office. He shows absolutely no sign of doing so. The police, the army and the ruling party are growing stronger, at the expense of such state institutions as parliament and the courts. Some observers believe that the situation is so bad it could become explosive.

So it could, but continued years of quiet desperation seem more likely. The opposition—the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the unions, the churches and civic groups—have failed to unite in putting as much pressure on the government as possible. They did get together in a “Save Zimbabwe” convention in July, promising mass resistance, but nothing came of it. Though other groups backed the unions' planned march, they made it clear it was not a joint action. The MDC, itself split, said it would watch with “keen interest” how the authorities reacted. Morgan Tsvangirai, the party's founder, has been saying since March that mass action is in the works, predicting a “winter of discontent”. But Zimbabwe's winter has passed, with much discontent, and little action."

Somehow it's not really occurred to the Economist editors that perhaps pressure doesn't work. Which seems so ironic, since American journalists and politicians and pressure groups spend so much time defending the practice, with a definitely transformed language in the last couple of years and simultaneously as if it's a foregone conclusion. Seems to me that if something was that true, you wouldn't have to spend so much time defending it. It would just be true. Hmm.

In the meantime, Zimbabwe becomes yet another example in another line of failures for pressure tactics to seriously resolve important political problems, in this case democratic government.

And if you take a look at this article you will discover that the absence of credible democratic institutions definitely has consequences for an economy and a people.

Maybe what Zimbabwe needs is some real pressure. Maybe we need to threaten to invade them. Or to actually invade them. Maybe that's too far. Or maybe that's not far enough. Who knows when you are working with such a sloppy conception of moderate sensibilities.

Here's a really wild suggestion: maybe pressure doesn't work (beyond the short term, that is, and with long term consequences).
I'm surprised with so much failure, we don't see more people really questioning this. Perhaps it is more important to be right than to seriously question your assumptions. Or maybe, and more likely, people are just too scared.

And maybe that is the larger problem.

Threatening paranoid dictators makes them more paranoid. But just causes with high ideals get a lot done in lieu of threats. Just ask the Baltic Republics and Mikhail Gorbachev. Or if you want to ask someone who has failed with pressure tactics, just ask Hamas or Hezbollah or Israel or the IRA or the Ulster Unionists or a million other parties who have pressured consistently as failed political strategy for much of their existence.

Failure is one of the best teachers for humanity. This one has got to follow it's own course, I guess. For the sake of the people of Zimbabwe, I sure hope this is a lesson that we learn sooner rather than later. Because a lot of lives and decent existence for many people hang in the balance.

Can you name a serious issue that has been resolved, for good, with pressure tactics?

The environment cleaned up? Wealth spread more equitably? Democracy guaranteed in Zimbabwe and Thailand? Nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea prevented? Morality restored? The war in Iraq under control?

Yeah, me neither.

It's amazing we have so much confidence in the strategy, isn't it?

It'd be harder to maintain our strategy if we didn't know that it was Malcolm X and not Martin Luther King who really ushered in civil rights in America.

Thank god pressure resolved issues of race for us.

I can't think of where terrorist groups get their taste for power and the use of force, can you?

Thank god we're much more civilized than all that.

Perhaps if we build a bigger nuclear warhead designed to pressure all issues of the day in the right direction, we can finally be rid of all of this thinking and debating and discussing and fruitless engagement and really get serious about taking some action in the world.

We'll call it the Democracy Bomb. We'll send Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta, Joe Peschi and Robert DeNiro, George Bush and Tony Blair to deliver to the world as our final and most serious pressure tactic to finally rid us all of all these pesky political, economic, and cultural problems.

We'll call our campaign The Right Answers on Democratic Questions or Else Campaign. We'll have U2 and Toby Keith do a concert benefit.
And we'll make Zimbabwe our example.

We send over enough bombs, people will eventually get the message.

And Zimbabwe will finally figure out that when we say Democracy, we mean business.

Or perhaps we could just take democratic ideals, institutions, thought, expression, engagement, negotiation, elections and free exchange more seriously.

Just an idea.

Ideas for Zimbabwe:

Why not organize people to vote, either with ballot boxes or with their feet or with their peaceful non-violent resistance to the Mugabe government, for a credible opposition candidate or party?

Why not organize peaceful non-resistance as was done in the Baltic Republics in the early 90's or the bloodless Cedar Revolution in Lebanon in 2005, to undermine confidence in the government's ability to enforce it's rule?

Why not just make clear to the government that noone recognizes their authority?

I would favor pressuring the Mugabe government if that tactic showed any promise anywhere in the world, right now. It doesn't.

So perhaps it's time to consider alternatives.

Maybe Martin Luther King wasn't such a dupe. Maybe Malcolm X was a distraction from the worthy progress that King was trying to make on civil rights issues. And maybe our cynicism about this legacy and the legacies of so many important democratic advancements is what is responsible for so many of our problems, today.

Just a thought.

Love,
Ben

The Johnny Cash covers...

I'm going to start this by saying that I fuckin' love Johnny Cash...not a little bit...a lot...

And the reason why I love Johnny Cash can be summed up in the large body of his music and his autobiography, Cash, and the brilliant movie about him, Walk the Line...

But most of all, it can be summed up in Johnny Cash's covers...

The reason why I love Johnny Cash is because he's a tough sum bitch who knew what it was like to be down and what it was like to want your freedom and who, out of all of that, seemed to be a friend to everyone he met...he seemed to love everyone...

And that love for people is found best, I think, in his covers...
Johnny Cash covered everyone...everyone...he's all over the fuckin' place...and I fuckin' love it...

If you have not heard the American Recordings by Johnny Cash, I highly, highly recommend them...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Cash_discography

Covers of Trent Reznor's Hurt, Chris Cornell's Rusty Cage, Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus, the Eagles' Desperado, Paul Simon's Bridge Over Troubled Waters, Roberta Flack's The First Time I Saw Your Face, Neil Diamond's Solitary Man, Tom Petty's I Won't Back Down, David Allan Coe's Would You Lay With Me (in a Field of Stone) ...

And the best goddamned version of U2's One that I have ever heard, including U2's version, as much as I've come to love that song...

This and a million other classic Cash and covers...

And this is the same man who hung with Billy Graham and Ozzy Osbourne...

Johnny Cash had a lot of warts...but he was, at heart, a decent man who was a friend to everyone...

And that's why I love Johnny Cash...for the same reason why I love Mark Twain...

Because their fundamental natures were to like people...to love them...not to villify or judge or hurt them...

I also love U2's later music much more, now that I've heard Johnny Cash's cover of One...they can do whatever music they want to...I'd much rather them do whatever the fuck they want then follow any pattern that I or anyone else would set out for them...that goes for Brandi too...

Thanks, Johnny...for reaching out so far beyond yourself...and for helping me see worthiness in every person and every artist...

Love,
Ben