Finding peace

Now playing: February, Lovin' You, Iowa, What Do You Hear in These Sounds, After All, When I Was a Boy, The Babysitter, Christians and the Pagans- Dar Williams

I just had this really beautiful dream. And when I woke up, I was so at peace with conflicts I've had with some people. And so at peace with Brandi, in particular.

In the dream, I was teaching and coaching basketball, of all things (I love basketball, but I wouldn't say that I would necessarily be a brilliant basketball strategist).

I was meeting all of these new, strange people. And one girl, in particular, Elizabeth or Katherine or something like that, and I were talking together, a lot.

One day, I was supposed to be getting to a basketball game that I was late for (and my guys were wondering where the hell I was undoubtedly), but I was enamoured with this girl. We were talking and I was so charmed by her. At one point in the dream, I'm asking her questions alluding to why we shouldn't date. And in a vulnerable way, she's giving me answers alluding to all kinds of excuses for why something like that wouldn't work out. And all I wanted to do was hold her. I was falling in love.

And I woke up and all I could think was that when I saw Brandi next, whenever that might be, that I'd just want to give her a hug and tell her that it's alright. That it was sad that we couldn't make our relationship work. It was sadder that she didn't feel like she could make a friendship work, after the fact. But that it's really alright. That I've just missed her. And that we'll both be ok.

There is so much in the world that I can't control. No matter how much I might want to and sometimes need to.

Sometimes it is tragic, as with Brandi's and my break-up (if you've never heard Dar Williams' February, I think it captures the experience pretty well), and our subsequently losing our friendship. But we may still have limited control over some circumstances, especially when they're not in our hands only.

And do our best to love our lives despite the tragedies that life sometimes has to offer. We cannot always prevent them, no matter how much we may try.

Losing that relationship and all of the beauty it held for me was the most serious tragedy in my life, thusfar. My professors and I don't talk anymore. My mother and I don't talk enough, these days. My family and I don't talk enough, generally, these days.

But losing that relationship is the saddest thing that's happened to me in my lifetime. Because my love was so strong, so complete, and as pure a feeling as I've ever had in my life.

And it's ok.

If you ask me, I'll tell you this really beautiful story of two young people in love. It's a great story. And today I can tell it without bitterness or pain on my heart or self-pity. It's a really beautiful, sweet story if anyone ever wants to hear it, some day.

Two kids spent most of their time together, in college, for about a year. Best friends (at least Brandi was my best friend; she always said that her mom was her best friend forever, so I could never crack that category). The girl headed to Washington, D.C. for an internship and they held hands all the way to take the boy to the airport so he could return to Wichita. They talked on the phone all the time while the boy did his pre-student-teaching at Wichita North High School and the girl did an internship with the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C.

When she returned, they were counselors at a Kansas Regents' Honors' Academy at their college. And they fell in love.

She returned to D.C. He went to grad school at KU in Lawrence. And they spent three amazing months together in Washington, D.C., exploring the big city and experiencing the bigger world around them, together, for the first time. They lived together, they worked together, they walked all over the city, together, and generally spent almost every waking moment together, many days. They saw Cornell West and Reverend Eugene Waters and a million artsy movies at artsy theaters and from artsy video stores that they didn't have in Wichita, Kansas. They talked about race relations and social security and about every political issue under the sun, because they were young idealists out changing the world.

The girl returned to Lawrence to study for her Master's in Public Administration, even though the boy encouraged her to check out more prestigious schools since she had the grades. But she wouldn't have anything of it. She missed him and she wanted to be close to him.

They lived together and studied at the University. He studied for his Master's in gifted education, his Master's in special education, and a Ph.D. in special education policy, which soon became study for something much more than a Ph.D. or special education policy. She studied for her Master's in Public Administration and worked with a great group called Study Circles at the United Way of Wyandotte County bringing parents and community members together to discuss important matters of education policy.

They fought. A lot. Far too much. They were in love. But their passion was perpetually spilling over.

I understand a lot of that fighting better in my old age. A lot of frustrations about different outlooks on the world. The bulk of Brandi's life was in her real world job; the bulk of my life was wrapped up in a very theoretical Ph.D. I was studying a lot; a lot of things for the first time. And Brandi and I would talk about them, all the time. And argue about them, all the time. And it wore on Brandi, I think.

But, you know, it's funny. A lot of people give up on those arguments, I think. It does wear on them, and their relationships and friendships.

But the truth is that, generally, it is our failure to engage those difficult conversations and issues, and the ways that we discourage them, that undermines so many of our relationships and larger efforts, rather than our engaging them too much, I'm pretty clear.

More specifically, it is our failure to listen.

That was my greatest failure in Brandi's and my relationship, I think. Which is ironic, because it is one of my biggest strengths, today.

I didn't listen to Brandi, nearly enough. I was too focussed on "being right." On insisting on my passionate, self-righteous outlooks on the world. And I listened far too little to Brandi during that time. To be fair, she listened to me far too little, as well. But it was too much bickering and not enough listening and appreciating one another's perspectives, I think.

And that is what undermines most of the important things that we want and need in life, I think. We don't listen and appreciate each other well enough. I'm getting better at it. And now and forever I have a long way to go. But it featured so big in the friendship and relationship in my life that was closer than any I had had then or since.

And after two years of living together in Kansas and bickering fairly regularly, the girl broke it off.

It's a really sad and sweet story. The early part, in particular, is very sweet. And there's many more details to that story that would really fill in the sweet. Eating lunch at the park, every day. Finding free snacks at happy hours around town. Visiting DuPont Circle and being around an openly gay community of people for the first time (I had visited the Castro in San Fransisco, but it wasn't quite the same thing as living and working in D.C. and visiting DuPont Circle regularly). Renting porn with a girl for the first time. Long, deep discussions with Brandi's amazing boss and USC professor, Theo Brown. Experiencing everything great that Washington D.C. has to offer.

And it has a sad ending.

And I am making peace, this year, with both that initial sad ending. But, much more importantly, the sad turn that this story recently took, where the boy and the girl, who were best friends in college, don't talk anymore because the girl, who married another boy, decided that she couldn't keep talking.

And the sad thing about the whole mess was that learning to talk and listen to one another better was what kept two friends from staying friends.

I've got to get to bed. Hopefully, I'll have similarly sweet dreams for the rest of the night.

Love,
Ben

A brilliant social security retirement solution

Senator Jeff Session (R - Alaska) has just become one of my favorite Senators.

Today, in the December 26, 2006 Washington Post, Jeff advocated a social security solution that is really brilliant, both substantively and politically.

A Bipartisan Fix for Retirees

Jeff's plan would establish personal savings accounts for every child at birth with $1000 invested by the Federal government. It's an idea that has been floated around in wealth equity/poverty circles for quite awhile, now, and Jeff combines it with a lifelong, cradle to grave, social security personal savings plan with small paycheck contributions from both employees and employers over the course of every citizen's lifetime, that can be invested in 1 of 6 investment accounts (building on an already established Thrift Savings Account program for Federal employees) resulting, Jeff thinks, in a retirement nest egg of at least a half a million dollars at retirement.

There are substantive and political problems with Jeff's plan, I think. The first and most important, I think, is a budget problem. Where does $1000 for every newborn child come from? There's plenty of wealth in America to make that happen. The problem, as always with wealth equity issues, is the political will. But unlike many liberal political activists, I have much confidence that the American people might support this kind of bill in spirit, but very little confidence that they will want to pay the tax bill along with the tax bill for a million other programs in an already bloated Federal budget.

The problem and resolution around almost every wealth equity issue is peoples' willingness to give. If they are willing to give through this or any other Federal program, I say so be it. But many, many people and businesses and lobbying organizations generally fight and resist and kick and scream and complain and yell bloody murder whenever new spending is proposed. And at a time when the Federal budget is out of control, it makes sense that people would be skeptical of new spending until it is clear that the current spending commitments are covered.

It's the very sad consequence of so many groups demanding that their cause get funded now, that a very worthy cause like fixing Social Security gets lost in the shuffle of Washington pressure politics.

The substantive problem, I think, is that while some kind of retirement nest egg will be created and mandated for every American, it still doesn't resolve the responsibility issues that are involved, with every American needing to take more seriously their long term financial needs. I'm definitely guilty, here. I've thought about retirement, but, overwhelmed with work responsibilities, I've done almost nothing about it, as of yet. That will be changing, soon, as I organize my financial affairs this Christmas vacation. But it's a serious responsibility that needs, long-term, to be taken seriously by every citizen, so that savings and money earned in accounts is not frittered away. A half a million dollars can go quickly if retirees are not serious about being responsible for their limited resources rather than too enthusiastic about their newfound wealth. And no federal program can mandate that kind of responsibility.

But that substantive problem illustrates the really remarkable strength of Jeff Sessions' proposal here. There is no way for any government to guarantee responsibility by citizens for their financial welfare. And the bare minimum protections of the current Social Security guarantees are so small that they leave far too many older citizens, in a nation with this much wealth, among the lower middle class, the poor, or worse, wards of the state, as state governments require the elderly citizens sell off assets and enter nursing homes before medications and services will be provided, among other fates.

Once legislators and citizens come to terms with that limitation of federal involvement to promote the kind of responsibility that we need long-term and with the really remarkable amount of wealth in the United States that could potentially stem the problem of elderly poverty, it only makes sense to adopt some kind of proposal, public or private, that provides this kind of modest but substantial nest egg for seniors. The private for-profit or non-profit market could help provide for this kind of proposal and there has been much talk in philanthropic circles about just that (at least the $1000 at birth proposal) for some time now. Philanthropies could pool resources and ask for investments and contributions that could guarantee this kind of idea without generating the kind of conflict and resistance that typically follows efforts to raise taxes to fund such efforts.

Or Congress could take the path of shrinking the Federal budget to levels within their means and to find money through cuts in other programs. Or they could roll the dice and ask for a tax increase. If any proposal might get a tax increase, it is a plan to resolve Social Security woes with personal savings accounts, that would likely be more popular with the very people being asked to fund them.

The tax increase, itself, still has consequences for GDP increasingly absorbed by government largesse and the subequent government spending and borrowing crowding out private spending and borrowing, which is much more likely, long-term, to grow the economy (the goose that lays the golden egg, and all that).

But potential to resolve some of the more serious woes of the Social Security system and its woes is pretty hard to pass up.

Ideally, I would prefer for such an idea to be coordinated and funded through the private and non-profit sector, where it would have the huge long-term advantage of a more flexible and responsive system that could make adjustments in the proposal as problems are identified and opportunities are recognized. A private system would also have much more opportunity for a market of non-profit giving and investment by beneficiaries, where all parties would have far more choices and could engage much more thoughtfully and responsibly in making wise choices for contributing and investing money made available. Money contributed to such a proposal beyond that needed for individual accounts could be pooled and invested by philanthropic funds or for-profit investment firms to create a self-generating fund that would not need to ask for future tax increases or government spending each year, for instance. The Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, FINCA in Latin America, and many other microenterprise lending models throughout the world operate under just such a self-sustaining, self-generating model of poverty alleviation and wealth equity generation. A more successful model of wealth equity could be initiated and sustained around the basic proposal like Jeff's nurtured in the private and non-profit communities and grown to tackle a whole host of wealth equity issues, very much like how philanthropic and non-profit groups, themselves, grow to tackle many issues well beyond their original charters.

And private and non-profit system modeled after Grameen and other self-generating, self-sustaining wealth equity proposals would have the other benefit that Grameen offers: offering a road out of poverty and to fuller participation in the global economy with support from non-profit and for-profit financial planners to help individuals become more responsible for their financial futures. Supporting retirees in becoming aware and taking serious long-term financial planning is a valuable service that could be better provided by private and non-profit sector financial planners, I think, who are not bound by the bureaucratic, inflexible, red-tape suffocation of Federal, state, or other government efforts.

I think that would be a better idea that funding such an effort through Congress. But the two are not mutually exclusive, necessarily, given the vast wealth in America. And I very much applaud Jeff Sessions' efforts to tackle this very difficult problem, politically and substantively, head-on with intelligent proposals that much better account for workings of the market than far too many proposals for government programs and spending.

Thanks to Jeff for putting together a proposal meant to circumvent the substantive and political problems with efforts to improve Social Security and to resolve its most serious issues.

May that kind of intelligent bipartisanship lead this next session of Congress and Washington politics.

Love,
Ben

The way of the future in public education

A review of a brilliant effort by an excellent math teacher at a KIPP academy charter school in Washington D.C.

New Teacher Jolts KIPP

So many limitations that we face at Eisenhower to create these results. Limitations that we are overcoming, slowly, but limitations nonetheless.

The largest and most tragic limitations are the legal and political limitations.

So many of the kids I face, ideally, should not be in special education. Like Lisa Suben's students, these kids should be in regular education math, reading, social studies, and science classrooms with teachers who are committed to their success and unsatisfied until they achieve it.

My kids end up in special education, largely, because so many general education teachers refuse or don't know how to do what Lisa Suben is doing: remediating problems with basic skills from lower level curriculum, covering the curriculum with enthusiasm and an expectation of success, engaging students regularly and with higher level thinking skills, and expecting students to think at the highest levels.

And, sadly, the paperwork requirements of special education put limitations on time and energy by teachers like me who are committed to these higher standards and levels of achievement. This is not an excuse. It is just a reality of the world of special education.

We are making progress in my special education math class. But it is far slower than if we had teachers like Lisa Suben doing the kind of work that I do in my special education math class (and far better than me) in general education classes.

I am curious to see how that model sustains itself with teachers raising families and with teachers and students who do not make explicit choices to attend a KIPP school, as Lisa's students did, but I very much believe that having many more schools like KIPP available and more often the norm will change the dynamic of teacher and student commitment to their work substantially, over time.

Teachers will fight this. Even good ones, who are stubbornly committed to models that emphasize district, state, and Federal compliance, mandates, and bureaucracy. And which keep teacher unions in business. And expect far too much in terms of meaningless bureaucracy and expect far too little of schools and teachers, generally, in terms of results.

It is clear that it will take a long time to make Lisa's experience more the norm. But it is clear to me that it is possible when teachers are freed up to do exactly the kinds of things that Lisa has done to produce results rather than lose precious time and energy complying with regulations in general and special education which have very little to do with achievement and much to do with justifying labels, attitudes, and elaborate intellectual rationalizations for why teachers do not expect success from students.

A rising tide of achievement of folks like Lisa and her students could raise a lot of ships, if we would let it. But it will mean letting go of the excuses and the political and legal squeeze on teachers to comply rather than to achieve when student achievement lags and when kids and teachers are not doing what we want them to do.

We can change this. But it will meaning coming to terms with the failure of the current approach. Even Lisa's amazing performance did not meet the impossible mandated standards of the No Child Left Behind Act, which is a failed effort to improve student performance and which, even in Lisa's case, is clearly a significant barrier to student and school achievement.

Money for schools is great, but it can come from other more private sources, as it does in the KIPP case. The choice provisions of the law could be expanded, but ultimately local district politics must welcome choice and a more open education market in a way that no Federal law can ever mandate.

Support for school choice must be created from the ground up in school districts, rather than imposed from above, where it entrenches and produces resentment and resistance that will become hardened down the road without support generated at the ground level. Political history is plentiful with examples of good ideas, like school choice, being imposed from above and producing resistance and resentment, no matter how strong the idea may be. And certainly the results from mandated efforts like IDEA (the Individuals with Disabilities Act) and the No Child Left Behind Act do not show promising results in terms of welcome embrace and fulfillment of legal obligations by schools facing those acts, since those obligations, more often than not, conflict with much more basic commitments to teaching and learning.

Milton Friedman's commitment to education as the centerpiece of the Rose and Milton Friedman foundation is no accident. Education is the field in America that is most in need of market reforms and more freedom, generally, to cure its ills and it is a fundamental need by a liberal democracy to fulfill its values and commitments to freedom, equity, and democratic self-governance.

Lisa Suben's performance should rightly be a shining example to everyone in public and private education of what is possible with kids when teachers believe they can perform and when kids choose to be with teachers who believe in them and expect much of them.

And efforts like Lisa's and the KIPP school she teaches with are only possible with the freedom to excel without the legal and political double-binds that afflict public schools today. As those double-binds are removed, we should not be under the illusion that all teachers and schools will perform as strongly as Lisa. But our efforts will be stronger as schools and teachers and students have the excuses and limitations for their performance removed from their forward momentum.

The poorest performers in schools and in life will only find dignity when they are held to the standard of the best performers, and when they finally learn to hold themselves to that same standard. There is much discussion and debate that will be necessary about what they will look like, given the needs of parents and children to live lives together without achievement as their only or even primary priority. But the only real dignity available to children and adults is one where we support and expect the best from and for all children and adults.

Thanks to Lisa and KIPP for showing us the way.

Love,
Ben

Liberal democracy, humane treatment, and learning to embrace our freedom

There are a million ironies to force and harsh treatment as an attempt to produce progress.

A just cause, like the American civil rights movement or the Indian independence movement, should give us pause that any society knows best always what and how to punish appropriately.
And the contradictions of our most powerful modern day social movement being in peaceful nonresistantance and civil disobedience to the law and the current fetish with power and force and layers of law to solve problems should give thinking people pause, though many very smart people have ignored those lessons.

The failures of alcohol and drug prohibition should give us serious pause, given the correlation between alcohol and drug prohibition and the murder rates in the United States, though they too often do not, tragically.

The wrong-headed and failed efforts to enforce sexual morality through prohibitions on pornography, adultery and homosexuality should give us pause, though they too often do not.

There are a million ironies to harsh treatment.

But the single most serious irony, I think, is that all lessons, no matter how serious or minor, are only learned when people understand the lesson and not a moment earlier. If they understood the lesson, it would already be learned. And punishment does not learn lessons for people. At best, it can serve as a warning, that always eventually wears off, no matter how serious the crime or deed. And it can protect people from someone who is likely to engage in something that it physically dangerous to others until they take responsibility for their behavior.

But punishment cannot learn a lesson for anyone.

Learning and understanding, are, ultimately, the only and most sustainable means of changing behavior. And learning and understanding necessitate mistakes. Meaning, to internalize a lesson, rather than just being afraid but not really knowing anything, we often (though not always; we don't need people committing murder to learn the lesson that murder is wrong) need to screw it up.

And we only learn a lesson when we learn it. It takes time to figure it out. And we only learn it when we finally internalize it. And internalizing it can't happen a moment sooner than it does.

And no amount of harsh treatment, no matter how harsh or how light, can learn a lesson quicker than it takes for us to learn it.

Sometimes, people may attribute their learning the lesson to the harsh treatment. And sometimes harsh treatment can signal us that something is wrong. If I kill your mother when your rent is late, you'll probably figure out to get rent to me on time. But that doesn't mean that killing your mother taught you a lesson. You're afraid of me and so you do what I want because you're afraid of who I will kill next. And fear isn't internalizing the lesson, which explains why a lot of people do bad things when they're fear eventually wears off.

We can only genuinely choose to be a good person of our own free will when we internalize the need to choose it. Otherwise, we are being good out of fear. Which means we have not internalized the lesson at all. And which makes us seriously vulnerable to manipulation by others, especially when they are doing bad things in the name of doing good. That would explain why a lot of people support dictators and autocrats and authoritarian leaders and other ugly figures and why free people are less likely to do so. Because many if not most people are seriously vulnerable to manipulation because they are always looking to others, rather than to their own consciences and independent judgment, for whether they are doing good or not. That is how Naziism dominated Nazi Germany. That is how Communism dominated the Soviet Union and China and Cuba and North Korea. That is how Fascism dominated in Italy. That is how Islamic theocracy dominates in much of the Middle East and the Muslim world. That is how dictatorships all over the world maintain their power.

But liberal democracy offers people the freedom to remove themselves from those social, religious, political, and legal pressures to become authentically free. Often, as in America and the West, despite those social, religious, political, and legal pressures. Often despite the political and legal systems altogether.

Liberal democracy is, at its heart, a cultural and social and political attitude and thought process, much more than a set of institutions. Institutions are valuable, especially in teaching and offering space to learn and elaborate on liberal democratic values. Educational institutions - below college grade and at the university level - are among the most important institutions in the society, as a consequence (after and co-joint with family) I am convinced, as important as other institutions like the institutions of government, of criminal justice, of the military, the free press, libraries, film, music, literary institutions, business and industry. But education holds a very special place, in both schools and in the family, in guaranteeing (and, sadly, too often, undermining) the strongest values of a liberal democratic society.

And the clear trend, for good reason - because it reflects our commitment to our highest humanity -- is towards more decency and less harsh treatment. And the reason why that is so important is because more decency and less harshness, in our interpersonal relationships with our children and our parents, our students and our teachers, our family members and loved ones, our employees and our employers, our partners, our customers, and those we do business with, our political and legal opponents, our judicial and political and military authorities, our police and civil servants, and even our military enemies, except when force and aggression are necessary and then the least necessary aggression and force should be used as much as possible (overwhelming force, in the form of military force, is often, but not always necessary, and it shouldn't be rationalized, as too often is, in the name of victory except when no other options exist), but also in our more general political, business, and legal dealings, is critical to developing an authentic liberal democracy of self-governing citizens because the freedom is critical to supporting the growth of self-governing and responsible adults who are genuinely committed to liberal democratic values and to the growth of the culture, to their own growth, and to doing good in the most proactive and responsible ways.

Freedom is the basis by which that kind of liberal democratic culture grows and is maintained. And our highest values are more genuinely actualized, as are individuals more genuinely self-actualized, the more freedom is offered and assumed by liberal democratic citizens to more genuinely commit themselves to doing good.

The larger problem in liberal democratic societies since their inception as thinkers like Milton Friedman have alluded to, is that liberal democratic cultures lack confidence in their liberal nature. Liberal cultures embrace freedom, on the one hand, but are perpetually plagued with handwringing about how much freedom is too much as they face difficulties and insecurities about the future. They do not appreciate, well enough, how the very freedom that they are afraid of is exactly what distinguishes their rich, developed, and stronger cultures from weaker, more insecure and more repressive societies that resist liberal values.

When faced with the choice between looking more like the societies that terrorists and Jihadists fantasize and create when they have power, as in Palestine and Afghanistan, or more free and democratic, liberal societies in the last 6 years as with other regressive periods in their history, have chosen more repression and force as a mutually-exclusive substitute for more freedom and liberality. And that choice, as with the choice of Hamas in Palestine and Ahmadinejad in Iran, is borne of a deep insecurity and fear by liberalizing, democratic societies, that their expanding freedom, rather than their older more entrenched repression is responsible for so many of their societies' ills. It is a mistake that liberal democratic societies can see clearly in the choice of Hamas and Ahmadinejad, but they are blind to in their own governments and cultures. And it is a mistake with serious and tragic consequences.

Why liberal societies that spent the entire 20th century fending off challenges from more authoritarian, autocratic, and totalitarian societies and successfully persuaded many of those societies, the Soviet Union, in particular, to adopt more liberal, democratic ways would turn to the very governing philosophy of force which was the central features of those governments and societies they challenged and fought for a century is one of the more serious puzzles and tragedies of the early 21st century, I think. It is a reality borne of that insecurity, I believe. And it is a choice that will only change as these more mature liberal democracies face the failure of force to deliver what only freedom, equity, and democratic self-governance can.

Why everyone should take policy discussions more seriously

I think I'm beginning to understand, better, the rationalizations that make up the self-fulfilling prophecy of cyncism.

When a cynic's efforts don't work out, they just give up. They give up on others. They give up on themselves. They give up on an effort. They just give up. Same goes for all of us who get cynical, in the moment, or reason cynically, when we do.

And so when an important goal - a personal goal, a social goal, a political goal - doesn't turn out, the cynic just says, "Well, it couldn't have worked out."

The tough part of policy work and social scientific work is that sometimes things really can't work out. It's not cynicism. It's reality. And distinguishing between a less changeable reality and a more changeable reality for which we have just become cynical is really difficult work. It is the essence of policy work, at some level.

And our failure to make the distinction in so many areas of life is exactly what fucks many things up.

It's complicated, I realize. But knowing the difference between a reality that can be changed and a reality that can't be changed is one of the most important skills and bits of wisdom that people can have, I think.

Hence, why I think everyone, at some level, should take policy discussions - meaning the strongest intellectual discussions of politics - more seriously. Because it is these people who are bearing witness to some of the most profound truthes about humanity and human nature, I think.

Love,
Ben

Christmas Blues

Listening to: The Indigo Girls - Retrospective (why? because it was the album Brandi listened to while she was making plans to leave)

This is the first year I can remember when I have had this kind of Christmas blues.

I've had Christmas blues before, of course. The year my mom left was a rough year. The year Jenny broke up with me, I dealt with some pretty serious post-Christmas blues (she broke up with me New Year's Eve). The year I left grad school was a tough year (I left right before Christmas).

This year has been different.

Maybe it's because I'm just much more aware and in tune when I'm feeling shitty. I don't try to pretend, anymore, that I'm feeling better than I am. Maybe it's because this is the first year Brandi and I are not talking anymore. And her leaving behind our friendship has hurt me more deeply than anything I've experienced in recent memory. I hurt worse when we broke up. But other than that, I can't think of many things that have hurt worse. Jenny and my mom leaving are the other two that really rank up there.

I'm sure it's all of this.

But I do have some serious Christmas blues this year.

I really don't know quite what to make of my life, these days. I'm not sure that my life has much meaning, these days. I'm not convinced that my teaching or my written work or my presence really makes much difference at all in the world, is the truth.

I'm afraid that I've made a serious mistake dedicating so much of my life to helping others when so few people seem like they really want to help or want the help, frankly. I've dedicated myself to high ideals around equitable and inclusive education that so few people really take seriously, honestly. The number of my friends and people in my life who take education really seriously, enough that they pursue it and their own intellectual growth with some enthusiasm or curiosity or seriousness, is very small, really.

I often feel like all of my efforts are wasted. I can't stand the idea of wanting to be with a girl who would want to be with me for money. And yet I am becoming increasingly aware of the more cynical motivations of women in seeking men, and the less my efforts are really seriously needed or appreciated by others, the more I think, "Why the fuck would I keep doing this shit?"

I really don't know why I chose this life, anymore. It's been nothing but hardship and misery for very little reward. I have lots of friends, but I don't have one person in my life who shares any of my more serious commitments with me. I don't have professors or teachers or parents to look up to, anymore, because they're all betting I'm wrong. Or they just don't care one way or another. Or they're all holding out for their right to bully me in one direction or another.

It's very lonely to take intellectual pursuits seriously. Because very few people do. And they're all always just a little tired of hearing you talk about this or that issue.

And I look at the political landscape, right now, and I think, "Why the fuck would I keep doing this?" There's nothing but cynicism and dissatisfaction and pressure and strong-arming out there, for me. "Who would want to keep doing all of this?" I wonder to myself, all the time. My colleagues and I are persistently pondering why we keep teaching, especially in an inner city school where we're being sanctioned for taking on the challenge that so few of the people who advocate for the sanctioning would or have actually taken on themselves.

And I'm not discouraged about just teaching, at this point. I'm discouraged by the whole thing. The teaching. The politics. The making a living in a world full of such cynicism that has absolutely no interest in facing it and taking stock of what a mess they've made of life with their cyncism in their outlooks and choices.

Maybe none of it really does matter.

Maybe I'm holding a flame that noone really wants a piece of.

What I know is that I don't really have anyone to share the idealism and commitment and love and passion for what I do with at my age. People my age have generally given up on all of that childish nonsense. I have been fighting a tide that I just can't fight my entire life. I need others to share it all with. I need a soulmate to share the trials and tribulations as much as the victories and excitement with.

I need to know that my life is something more than just a nice guy finishing last.

Because right now, that's what it is. I'm a nice guy with a big brain and big mouth that I'm not convinced has really made much difference in this world.

And I don't know what to make of my life with that.

I look back on my more unselfconscious idealism of 10, 5 years ago and think, "How naive of you to think that others might share that, or really give much of a shit."

I'm a nice guy from a white trash background and a third-tier university, who couldn't even complete one nevertheless two Master's degrees or a Ph.D. I teach kids that most people pity because they just don't know what else to do with them and I write work that is horribly naive because it lacks the cyncism and recrimination and enthusiasm for the use of force and the exercise of dominance that more tough-minded thinkers need to understand the world more adequately.

And 5 years ago, the person who I've cared about most in my life and my best friend walked out on me and married an insurance and banking man. And she stopped talking to me a couple months ago.

By any objective measure, I'm kind of a loser, who identifies with losers, which is exactly why my life is such a fuckin' mess. Because my whole life is dedicated to making sure that we look after the losers in life and not be so goddamned wrapped up in being and betting on the winners.

And it has condemned me to a life of losing in the name of a lot of folks who I think could give two shits about what I have to offer.

And I'd abandon it all today, if I didn't care so much about it. And what it means about me if I give it up. Even though noone else gives much of a shit, I don't think.

I have a couple of scholarships that require that I either teach special ed for 8 years, 4 years in Kansas, and I'm sure my liberal benefactors are convinced that these and their regulation of my work and the work of my colleagues and all the other ways that they can force my hand are what keep the universe in order. When the truth is that they are the most important reasons that would drive me out of the profession.

There is not much to celebrate about my life, right now. I am a modern day agnostic Job, wondering why the fuck I keep setting myself up for all of this shit.

Faith. And that is waning quickly.

Public service is hardly inspiring in a world where I am told to "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you're going to fuckin' do for your country whether you fuckin' like it or not."

But there is very little that is very inspiring, these days.

And as long as everyone seems quite content with that, it doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon.

So that is the life that I get to share with the rest of this miserable, cynical little world.

Merry fuckin' Christmas.

Love,
Ben

Transcending partisan politics (make sure my funeral doesn't look like this)

I just happened by this link, today, for a review of the coverage of the funeral of Coretta Scott King back in February.

Everyone who cares about me: make sure my funeral isn't like this. It was an ugly partisan-fest. I understand why liberals wanted to use the occassion to criticize the President, after years of feeling like the President would not listen to criticism about the war or anything else. I agree with a lot of their concerns even as I have differences about how to address them.

But my major concern reading the coverage of this funeral was seeing just how tragically wrapped-up people get in politics. How it becomes the only or most important lens through which they see people. What a hard time people have just accepting that people have differences with them, that people just look at things in life differently -- with potential for a future reconciliation of views, rather than a foreclosed difference -- instead of assuming that people are in bad faith or trying to be destructive.

The problem is power, I think. When you want to use power to hurt peoples' friends, they tend to get pissed off. Everyone. So people do what they did at this funeral which is take pot shots at one another. Even people associated with a legacy as great as Coretta Scott King's and Martin Luther King's legacy.

One of the best things that has happened to me over the last 5 or 6 years is that I don't look at people through partisan lenses, primarily, anymore. I'm not really a partisan in any meaningful sense, these days. I don't think anyone or any group has all the right answers. And I know every group has plenty of wrong answers.

And what that has meant for my life is that I just have a lot of friends and family that I love, that I agree with much of the time, but that I also disagree with plenty, and with whom our common ground is always more substantial than our disagreements.

The idea that people would kill one another over partisan differences, as happened over much of the 20th century, or that they would kill and threaten revolution, as was supported by far too many liberals and conservatives and their more militant, radical counterparts in the 60's; the idea that people would threaten one another, prosecute and persecute one another, villify and embarrass them in public, insult them in a way that is meant to hurt them rather than enlighten anyone, strong-arm them, force their hands, or otherwise seek to hurt them or threaten them to win a political point is just ugly and certainly not a standard we should aspire to, from my vantage point.

Funerals should be a time to honor someone, their life, and their legacy. Not to tear down someone else.

So many people are filled with so much anger and rage and hate and envy and other destructive impulses towards one another, politically and otherwise.

It's so sad to me. That politics and religion and education and all kinds of high-minded aspirations get used by people to direct their rage and hate and envy at one another.

It's the saddest kind of rationalization, to my mind. To use high-minded pursuits to cloak one's ugliness and destructiveness. We all have nasty impulses. Everyone. No exceptions. And we need an opportunity to vent them or share them openly so that we can accept ourselves for them, despite them.

But so many people waste so much of their lives trying to pretend that they don't operate with such impulses. Or that those impulses are more nobel than they really are. Fearing that others wouldn't accept them or that they couldn't accept themselves if they admitted just how ugly their attitudes had gotten in the name of whatever self-righteous cause.

It is the basis for terrorism, Communism, Naziism, Fascism, authoritarianism, autocracy, genocide, apartheid and all of the worst evils of the history of humanity.

And it exists with more or less power in contemporary democracies and will continue to have much power as long as democratic citizens both fail to acknowledge it and allow themselves to be manipulated by it and to manipulate others with it.

Our great hope is that we have escaped this kind of ugliness in the past, and we can escape it in the future.

Almost 400 years ago, Thomas Hobbes wrote a book that students of politics still read today, The Leviathan, which was a comprehensive effort on Hobbes' part to help Great Britain escape the vestiges of religious partisanship and sectarianism that has torn apart his country in bloody civil wars.

Hobbes is recognized today as perhaps the first political scientist, attempting to account for political thought and behavior in a secular, scientific way rather than cloaked in religion -- though Leviathan has plenty of religious arguments as well; if you've not read it, I highly recommend it, especially in a modern political theory class with a professor as quality as Dr. David Ericson, my modern political theory professor at Wichita State University -- and in a way that was meant to transcend the bloody religious differences that had torn apart his country in 1642.

It was clearly a noble cause from our vantage point, today. Leaving behind the vestiges of a destructive religious sectarianism that could never resolve itself in any meaningful way except in common ground. It was very similar to the destructive ideological partisanship that we experience today, where so many people claim to have found ultimate truth about matters that they clearly have not out of a self-righteous notion that they or their thinking about the world is superior to their neighbor.

It is our democratic commitments that have more consistently than not saved us from the fate of Hobbes' 17th century England. I'm not quite sure how America would have fared the tumultuous 60's with their violence and ugliness without a mature, committed democracy. Democracy cannot save us from civil war, always, as America learned in the mid-19th century (a civil war that I've increasingly wondered if it might have been averted with diplomatic intervention by the French or another party and differences resolved more peacefuly and substantially, rather than through so much bloodshed).

And the saddest part about studying that period in English history or any such similar period in history or any such similar situation, where bloodshed or force replaces reasonable engagement, like genocide or holocaust or apartheid or segregation or oppression or repression or colonization or occupation, is that it is always for naught. So many people die or are hurt for so little valuable a cause.

Noone looks back on 17th century Protestants and Catholics and celebrates the heroism of partisans. Noone looks at dominance of Hutus of Tutsis, of white South Africans of black South Africans, of the British or French or Spanish or Portuguese over their colonial subjects and thinks thank goodness they imposed their will. Noone looks back over any political period and says those Democrats or those Republicans always seemed to get it right and the other guy always seemed to get it wrong. At least not honestly.

But, for whatever reasons, we all get so caught up in our partisanship, trying to prove our true colors, our true convictions.

When you would hope that the reason we would even care is to make peoples' lives better, not to destroy them or hurt them.

But for whatever reasons, we get so lost in our destructiveness and our desire to prove that we are right.

When the irony of the strongest reasoning is that it does not try to prove that it is right. The strongest reasoning is characterized by disconfirmability. The strongest reasoning tries to test if it is wrong. It is open to challenge. It looks for ways to prove it is not true, knowing that only an idea that can withstand such a challenge can be more true.

Everything else derives from other, less noble impulses. The impulse for power or to exact revenge or to hurt those who you believe have hurt those you love.

And so the cycle continues, unabated. A self-fulfilling prophecy of hurt and hate and control and threats and ugliness.

And all for naught.

It is so sad to me that people would be so lost in their animus toward one another that they would do this.

As Pablo Freire writes, those who are hurt or oppressed are likely to take it out on those who have hurt them or others.

I've been really angry with Brandi, lately. I've been trying to let it go. She was my best friend, after all. And by breaking off communication she was doing what most women and men likely do when they get married.

I've just been feeling really hurt. Hurt at the idea that I would not be able to keep up with her life or know how she was doing.

But I don't want that kind of shit on my heart. And I don't want to take it out on others.

I just want to wish her well and hope she's doing ok.

Whether we like it or not, love is what animates our lives. And it is what needs to animate all that is best about us. It is what we all need, most, and need to share most.

Jesus was right 2000 years ago. It's too bad they crucified him. I bet he would have been a pretty decent guy to hang with, even with all that Messiah talk:). I would have had a beer with him and suggested that he tone down the Messiah stuff and maybe hang with the rest of our friends. Or maybe find a girlfriend. But keep teaching. Because he had a lot of good things to say.
I hate all this hate. I don't understand why we have such a hard time to learn how to treat each other decently. I don't understand why we are so mean-spirited with one another in the name of being good to one another.

Why we are constantly forcing one anothers' hands in the name of freedom or equity or democracy and goodness or decency.

"Can't we all just get along?" Rodney King asked 15 years ago (my freshman year of college).

Can't we all just get along?

It's a good question.

"And if we can't, then who really gives a shit about any of it?" is my question.

Here's to loving our friends and family and neighbors just because, and not because they agree with us.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Love,
Ben

All I want for Christmas is a new soulmate

I'm exhausted. I'm getting home ASAP and sleeping, I'm so tired.

You know what I want more than anything in life, I think?

Someone who thinks about and cares about the world like I do and who'll keep me company in that concern, support me in my efforts and in my life, and challenge me to do better, to think better, and to be a better person. Someone who enjoys a healthy lovelife and who has a kinky side would be nice, too:).

Most of all, I want a best friend. I want someone who shares my interests and whose interests I can share. I want someone that I want to spend all my free time with because she's just that fun to be around. I want someone who is constantly amazing me with her knowledge, understanding, love, compassion, courage and commitment.

I want to be with someone of substance who cares more about being a person of substance than any of the million more petty concerns that most people take up in life.

I want someone I respect to be my best friend and lover and all-around decent human being in my life.

I want someone in my life who I can persistently think, "I wonder what she thinks about this?"

I want someone who makes sense, generally, when we disagree and challenges me to make more sense in my own thinking and who agrees on all the important stuff that really matters.

I want a lover without pretension but who doesn't settle for second best as a human being. I want someone who engages in some friendly competition around who can be smarter, more decent, more loving, more charming, more reliable, and an all-around-great-mind-and-heart-to-spend-time-with.

What I want for Christmas this year is someone who will make my heart ache so badly when she passes on after years of marriage because the world so rarely sees such a decent human being.

I don't have many people, if at all, that I look up to, anymore. I have plenty of people I admire and respect and love. But rarely do I meet anymore and think, "God, they have all their priorities straight. That's someone whose wisdom I need to follow because my own priorities pale by comparison."

But that's who I want for a soulmate. Someone who inspires me and impresses me, or aspires to do all of these things.

That's all I want for Christmas.

Someone who senses my lonliness in a world where everyone seems to have a million excuses for why we can't make the world better in the big ways and who seeks to be my companion in making the world better despite the excuses of its inhabitants. Someone who likes thinking for its own sake. And who aspires to adopt my strengths and challenge them and me to get stronger, rather than try to make me feel bad for all the qualities that make me a great guy, I think.

This Christmas, I want someone who I think, "I think that is likely the best mom for my kids that I could ever meet." And who thinks the same about me.

Because, ultimately, I'm learning, that sums up everything I want in a woman. Someone who will be a mom for my kids, a best friend for me, and an amazing person in her own right, that I can bask in the glow of my admiration for what an amazing catch I have snagged.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Happy Hanukah. Happy New Year.

Love,
Ben

Some reflections for the Christmas season

As I've thought about the problems that America and the world faces right now, the more serious problems in finding resolution around them, and why so many good people keep facing so many dead ends...

I have become convinced that most of the problems that good people face and that persist are the consequence of well-intentioned efforts that don't go well. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and all that.

All over the world you see people do ugly things in the name of some cause with some notion of good purpose that resonates with others. Even terrorism and communism and authoritarianism have someone making excuses for why their ugliness are in the name of a good cause.

And if this were the exception, rather than the rule, then they would be alone in that distinction.
But they're not.

We all rationalize all kinds of things in the name of doing good. We make excuses for why we're such shitheads to one another for one good cause or another. We're all a lot of well-intentioned folks who too often fuck with one another's lives in the name of doing good by people. We do a lot of good for one another, too, to be sure. But we also undermine a lot of good in the name of good intentions. There are many noble intentions, I'm convinced. And all those noble intentions get fucked up by the rationalization of " by any means necessary," as Brother Malcolm would say.

What we need this Christmas and Hanukah and Kwanzaa and New Year is what we need every holiday time. We need more love. We need more understanding. We need more people walking in other peoples' shoes. We need more thought and engagement and communication and willingness to consider that we might be wrong or that we might not understand the world or other peoples' situations, enough. We need more decency and generosity and humanity.

We need a lot more of the very values that we know are our highest values.

And this is a great time to celebrate those values.

During a season that celebrates the birth of a man who led Jews and Christians and Romans and many others for millenia after his life toward a vision of love and compassion. During a season when Jewish leaders challenged a Syrian state that imposed its more Greek-inspired cultural values and stood for religious freedom and integrity. During a season that celebrates strengths and purpose in the African-American community. And the renewing of a new year and a new season.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Happy Hanukah. Happy Kwanzaa. Happy New Year.

Love,
Ben

Hearts, Minds, and Schools

A brilliant article by Lawrence Harrison of U.S. AID.

Hearts, Minds, and Schools

Very worthwhile read for anyone interested in the substantial possibilities and benefits for promoting education, freedom and democracy.

Cynicism, or why Vietnam and Iraq breed mistrust in Washington

I was working with my speech team, today, exhausted from the stress and pressure of the last few months and the last week, in particular.

And it occurred to me in the middle of it all why young people in the 60's carried the mantra: "Don't trust anyone over 30."

I have very few heroes at all, these days. The ones I have are academics and people with serious forethought and even those are few and far between.

I love and respect everyone who contributes to my and our general welfare. But heroes, people who have significant forethought and insight on our most difficult problems, are just very hard to find, right now.

They are definitely not found in the print or television press, who I think, along with a lot of cynical political leaders, are largely responsible for the cynical, highly aggressive, pressure-based bullying that is the cyncial subsitution for thoughtful policy that dominates the current political period and larger popular and general culture.

There are many scholars who I respect, but the calloused disregard for thought and engagement and persuasion and other more democratic forms of discourse amongst even many of these scholars looking to bully their way through difficult international and domestic policy matters is very discouraging, to say the least.

Politicians are often the worst of both worlds: mindless and self-righteous pontification combined with power way out of proportion with their wisdom to use it.

Money and power and leverage and pressure and all sorts of cynical means of getting one's way dominate the culture and the politics, right now, in ways that should inspire noone and certainly cannot possibly reflect a better society, since it offers up milder versions of all of the worst features of our uglier, less free, less thoughtful and enlightened, more forceful and barbaric past.

And there are so many people on this foolish and ugly bandwagon of all sorts and of all education levels that it is just very difficult to find heroes amidst all of this low-minded bullying.

And it occurred to me, tonight, that this must be why young people lost faith in their leaders during the Vietnam war era, the civil rights movement, and during a similarly tumultuous era in the 1960's and 70's.

When young people have nothing to look up to in the culture and in political institutions because their leaders are so clearly rationalizing their own ugliest and most power-hungry and aggressive impulses, there is far too much darkness in all of that to find inspiration or idealism. And cynicism breeds mistrust, both existentially, because it preaches mistrust, and substantially, by breeding fear with force and pressure that divides and polarizes people rather than inspiring and teaching and committing and challenging and uplifting them, as more idealistic and accomplished eras create.

Noone could have possibly been inspired by a John F. Kennedy asking Americans to ask not what their country could do for them but what they were going to do for their country whether they fuckin' liked it or because he planned on forcing their hand to do so whether they thought it was a good idea or not. Ronald Reagan could not have possibly inspired a resilience in the face of the Soviet threat and a commitment to ending Communism with promises of rooting out red-leaning liberals and conservatives soft on the Communist peril and pressuring them to give up their Commie buddies. Franklin Roosevelt could not have possibly faced the Nazi threat without a willingness to persuade Americans to face that threat squarely rather than forcing them to enjoin against the Germans and the Japanese whether they were ready for such a commitment of military force or not.

The clear truth of the 20th century, more than any other, is that force as a governing philosophy is bankrupt, dangerous, and anti-democratic. Even within the context of a democracy, force as a governing philosophy is a serious compromise of the strongest democratic principles of thoughtful engagement which respects differences rather than seeking to trample over or bully those we disagree with.

And contemporary Washington, like Washington in the late 60's and early 70's, in particular, is awash in the cynicism that the compromise doesn't matter as long as the prevailing party gets its way and pressures everyone else to go along with their vision, whether it's been sufficiently explored and debated and engaged and whether it respect peoples' freedoms -- in particular, their freedom to disagree -- or not.

In 1998, I spent one of the most idealistic summers of my life in Washington, D.C., in love with a girl, and in love with a mutual commitment to improve the world.

In 2006, there is no way I could spend a comparable period in Washington, D.C. Because it is awash in cynicism and bullying, pressure-tactics and leveraging, power-hunger and the accompanying cynicism about the capacity to engage and understand and appreciate the perspectives of others we might disagree with. And to genuinely respect their differences, and to engage them without force, except in those more rare occassions when our immediate physical safety is in clear danger.

As with many young people in the 60's, I can understand why young people would not trust anyone over 30 (including myself; I'm 33). Because it's a cynical lot. And it is an especially cynical lot during a cynical political period when the ugliest visions of humanity are rationalized and rationalize our basest impulses and reactions.

It makes me sad, mostly.

Because what we need -- what young people need, what we all need -- is people we can believe in, far more than people who don't believe in themselves or, as is often the case, believe in themselves too much and one another stong-arming their way through the cynical life that they have chosen.

I will say this. No matter what excuses people give for cynicism and force as a governing philosophy, it most certainly is a choice in outlook. There are other choices.

An ideal world, I think most people would agree, is one where free people work together freely to solve their problems together and independently. Progress is judged by our capacity to fulfill that ideal, more or less.

And to the extent that we compromise that ideal with a commitment to a governing philosophy based primarily on force, which is mutually exclusive with that ideal, rather than a vision of freedom and force only when necessary, and then the least possible force necessary being the operating principle for our use of aggression, we engage in a more permanent and fundamental compromise of our liberal democracy in a way that cannot possibly fulfill its our our ideals or potential.

And that would explain why it is so difficult to find heroes in Washington and Washington discussions, these days.

Because so few people, these days, believe in the ideals that make that democratic discussion worthy of our trust.

Love,
Ben

Under Pressure

I am seriously thinking about playing the classic Queen/David Bowie collaboration every day in the background at Eisenhower as teachers and administrators and students deal with the new pressures being brought to bear by the No Child Left Behind Act.

My whole team just watched one of our math/science teachers, who is one tough cookie, cry in the middle of our content meeting, dealing with all of the stress and pressure of Annual Yearly Progress. Morale is paradoxically low and the teachers are rallying together. Administrators are simultaneously under pressure to put the screws to teachers and are lightening up, much more immediately aware that the stress is too much for everyone.

And all I know is that the friends of force have made a lot of enemies at my school, where teachers are simultaneously trying to meet the law's demands and resenting the shit out of everyone responsible for this stupid law and its cheerleaders.

And the bigger lesson for me is that people can claim credit all they want for their more forceful themes, but the people they've been abusing are very unlikely to give them credit. Or anyone else for that matter. You can pretend like you've been more responsible for a result than you really have, but the in the end, everyone who knows better will know what a shithead you were for making their jobs harder rather than helping them be more effective.

The funny thing to me is that the policy scholars and makers who debate NCLB can debate it like it's a real debate all they want. Teachers, on the other hand, are almost universally opposed to it. And you can only ignore the people implementing your bidding for a time until it just becomes perfectly clear to everyone that the Emperor is wearing no clothes.

Lots of people in Washington with lots of good intentions, marching everyone down a road to hell.

The most serious consequence of this foolhardy political period: less power in Washington, domestically and internationally.

The heydey of Washington D.C. as the center of power in the world, as Robert Samuelson wrote today in the Washington Post, will soon be behind us, I think.

But whereas Robert seems to lament the passing of Pax Americana, I am thinking, "It's about fuckin' time."

The truth is that is that is not just American power and Washington power that it waning. It is centralized power of all sorts. Old and wrong-headed legacies just die hard. But they die nonetheless.

And the reason why so many Washington insiders fail to see it or lament it's passing is that they aspired to get a piece of the action. But it is action that is losing its real capacity to effect change. And that is the only power that is really worth anything.

Happy Hanukah, even to Michael Medved, who is officially a fundamentalist nutjob

I don't think I've ever read a creepier Hanukah wish.

The Real Hanukah: A Celebration of the Religious Right

Michael Medved essentially uses Hanukah to make an argument for sectarian Judaism. Meaning he coopts a profoundly meaningful religious holiday for most Jews and for people like me who have a profound respect and appreciation for the Judaism and tries to argue that it means that all those people who celebrate Hanukah but who disagree with Michael are wicked.

I'm not exaggerating here. That's what he says.

If you celebrate Hanukah but disagree with me about what Judaism or Hanukah means, you are wicked and celebrating wickedness, is the clear and essential message of this column.

Creepy, huh?

Michael Medved is quickly becoming the Jerry Falwell and Osama Bin Laden of Judaism.

For all of those who are or are not familiar with the Hanukah story and the profoundly meaningful role that it plays in the history of Judaism and the history of religious freedom, as Jews threw off their Syrian-Green oppressors, you might check out

Chabad.org

Ba-ruch A-tah Ado-nai E-lo-he-nu Me-lech Ha-olam A-sher Ki-de-sha-nu Be-mitz-vo-tav Ve-tzi-va-nu Le-had-lik Ner Cha-nu-kah.

Happy Hanukah, everyone:).

Love,
Ben

Federal regulation means noone has to take responsibility

We just had another math meeting today.

And I have to say that I am convinced that Federal regulation means that noone has to ever take responsibility.

We have mandates on performance on state assessments built into the No Child Left Behind Act that come from the Feds. All of the district energy is spent pleasing the feds. All of the school energy is spent pleasing the district, and the feds.

The problem is that the feds have no intimate involvement in the situation at all. So when teachers say, "I don't think getting this particular thing done is realistic," or "we can't possibly do several of these goals all at once within this limited time frame," noone is around to listen. Because everyone is just trying to please the feds. And the feds are 2000 miles away.

So when the feds live with the illusion that they can force the kids to perform better than they will or can (at this particular moment) -- which they don't have to come to terms with in the same way teachers do because they don't have to work with the kids every day -- there's no reality check for them. They're just passing legislation under the very complex and highly pressurized environment of Washington politics.

And at the end of the day, noone has to be responsible.

Blame games ensue. Noone is responsible. People are threatened and pushed and cajoled. Noone is responsible. People are fired. Noone is responsible. People are unelected. Noone is responsible.
It's very much like the Iraq War. People keeping saying the same dumb repeated theme. Put the screws to people and they'll do what you want. Even if it doesn't work. And even if it is counterproductive. And even if it isn't sensitive to actual capacity. Even if it ignores all of the real and important people and logistical variables that are necessary to get the work done.

Noone is responsible.

It's the total irony of the situation and reflects the degree to which our rhetoric overwhelms our reason. Good intentions persistently get confused and defended as the same as good results.

And noone is responsible.

You know what drives me most crazy? It's journalists and policy thinkers and academics and activists and politicians and a whole host of people who have no intimate knowledge or involvement in schools -- and in most institutions they regulate -- who create support for these mandates. And when it goes awry, noone is responsible.

It's so goddamn foolish.

So when we get to the end of this foolish goddamn political period where getting tough is confused with getting smart and communicating and engaging people and understanding their sitautions and listening and responding and being more generally responsive to their concerns and getting to resolution rather than always picking a fight and trying to force others to do our bidding...

My question is...

Who will take responsibility?

And you know what my bet is?

Noone.

Not until we all grow up a little bit and learn that responsibility comes from understanding and commitment, not from force. Force is something we have to use as little as possible on the road to building understanding and commitment. My very real and persistent experience is that those kids who are the least responsible are the ones whom have parents who use far more force than parents with kids who are better behaved.

And the supreme irony to me is that all of the toughest situations in the world, right now, demonstrate this principle far more effectively than the experiences of teachers with the No Child Left Behind Act, right now, but the tough people who are making recommendations around international affairs, right now, are just too stubborn to admit the failure of the principle.
I don't know why.

I just listened to Stephen Biddle from the Council on Foreign Affairs make recommendations on NPR last night around pressuring Iraqis in ways that their Prime Minister and popular opinion has consistently indicated was out of touch and, they and I think, arrogant and ignoring how overwhelming the responsibilities that were being imposed really were.

And I thought, "This is what Lord Acton meant."

What Lord Acton meant by power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, I think -- or at least the way I see it playing out -- is that power can begin with all kinds of good intentions. But then people with power become convinced that their use of power was what was responsible for any of the good that happened in the world during their tenure or that their pressure or influence made it so. They develop a relationship with people based on creating enough fear to compel their will. And then they ignore the frustrations of those they compel out an arrogant belief that they could not possibly know what is good for themselves.

And often, in democratic societies, popular opinion leads to this kind of abuse of power. The current political situation arose out of an popular attitude that America and the world hadn't gotten tough enough about its problems, rather than smart enough or communicating more effectively or setting limits more effectively through greater efforts at creating understanding, when possible, and force only when necessary.

America should at least have the balls to do what Palestinians and North Koreans and Syrians and Cubans never seem to be able to do: to admit that its' our fault.

I can share some blame in that. I advocated the No Child Left Behind Act before it was enacted into law. I believed that good intentions would lead to good results before I understood the problems more thoroughly. I believed more, at one point, that you could force your way to progress. That's why I identified more, at one point in my life, as a more conventional liberal. I thought guns could be cleaned up with tough gun control and campaign finance could be cleaned up with tough campaign finance laws. I was wrong. In a big way. I'm totally clear about that, today. But I believed those things in good faith.

And the NCLB is very similar.

What's scary to me is what our society looks like with people not willing to take responsibility for the failure.

How long do we keep running with this failed policy before we give it up, I wonder?

How long do liberals continue to see the splinter in the eyes of the Administration and Republicans and conservatives on this one but ignore the big ass beam in their own eye around the same principles?

"We can't force democracy abroad, but we can force democratic outcomes at home," liberals seem to be saying, if they would square their rhetoric on this one.

But they haven't thought this one through enough to call this a thorough philosophy. It's not a philosophy, in the sense that liberals or conservatives have really thought through all of the consequences from this idea. It is a political slogan that is being confused with a more thoroughly developed idea.

And the scary part for me is when do we give it up?

How long does it have to fail before we begin to face its failures and limitations?

How long do we ignore the concerns of those being forced upon before we acknowledge the corrupting arrogance that power breeds?

Never, is what many policy thinkers and journalists and politicians and activists seem to be saying, right now.

If they complain, you just make clear that their lives will be made miserable if they do not comply.

It's policy made mafia-style.

And noone seems to be recognizing the logical conclusion of this road.

Which is exactly what made the Soviets and the Nazis so scary. Because their political heads and true followers and even not so true followers kept making clear that they had no intentions of ever letting up on force as the means of promoting their vision of progress. Ever. And if anyone had a problem with that, then they would face death or imprisonment or ostracism or many very bad things before that would ever change.

It definitely inspires fear. The question is, "Is is progress?" And, "Does it inspire progress?"

The real answer to both of those questions is clearly no to anyone who cares more about genuine progress and about freedom and democracy than about getting their way.

The truth is that there is an awful lot of people right now who are much more interested in getting their way than in principles like freedom and democracy and progress, because they're convinced that the stakes are too high for them to take high ideals too seriously.

Which means they'll sacrafice the things that really matter to get what they want right now. And when it comes to the highest stakes situations, no fear is too small to rationalize that ugly abuse of power.

And that is exactly what Lord Acton meant by that phrase.

That maximum power in the name of alleviating fear is an excuse that has no end, even as it often creates more fear and more danger than it actually alleviates.

Our great hope, right now, is the war in Iraq, where people can see more clearly that forcing our way to progress has clearly been counterproductive, no matter how you try to rationalize it otherwise.

The question is can we see that this is true almost entirely across the board when it comes to forcing our way to progress?

Things looked bleak to me in 2003 when we first initiated that invasion. So maybe we can get it right, at some point.

But the trick will be that to do so will mean that we cannot scapegoat President Bush or Don Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney or the Republican Party.

The trick is that the American people, or at least a substantial number of them, will have to look themselves in the mirror and say, "I created this mess. I asked for this. I demanded this. And they gave it to me. Because I demanded it. And I am responsible."

The trick on this one is that the people most responsible for the major policy messes that we are in will have to take responsibility for them.

And the people most responsible...are all of us.

Love,
Ben

The most important problem people face

I am probably guilty of this as much as anyone else.

But after dealing with the school and district politics over the last few months (and the last year), I think I'm beginning to see the problem with school politics:

So many people are just in the habit of fighting all the time.

People who don't learn to listen and engage and discuss and politely debate with one another toward practical resolution of issues end up fighting all the time -- openly or not-so-openly -- until those issues get resolved.

And most people just fight about the dumbest shit because they aren't committed to listening and understanding one another enough to get to resolution on important differences.

It just became clearer today after a meeting with a colleague.

I've got a meeting to get to.

Love,
Ben

An uncompromised liberal democracy and cynicism as a lens for policy

You know what bugs me most in policy discussions?

How cynicism gets used as this circular lens for policy questions without ever having to defend itself, or consider alternative perspectives.

Realism is an important feature of policy discussions. In fact, it is often what distinguishes policy discussions from other discussions. It is the most important reason that I am so committed to policy as a study.

But, far, far too often, realism, in politics and political discussions, gets confused with cynicism.

Cynicism is not realism. Cynicism is disappointment with a world that doesn't live up to your expectations. Meaning, cynicism is a twisted function of idealism. "I was once an idealist," the reasoning goes, "but then I discovered how the real world works." Hence the pretense of realism.

But it's bullshit. The reality that is being referred to, generally, in that disappointment, is one that is clearly ugly or dysfuntional or otherwise in need of change. Hence the purpose of idealism, to hold an ideal that points the way out of a cynical reality. "It's the whole point of idealism, morons" I so often want to yell at cynics. "You wouldn't need idealism if the world already lived up to all your expectations, geniuses. You'd just have an ideal world and everyone would be happy and gay."

The whole point of idealism, as a practical matter, is the belief and commitment that cynical realities can and will give way to better realities and better options to get us to those better realities. It's the whole fuckin' point, really. There'd be no reason for the discussion, otherwise, for goodness fuckin' sakes.

The whole thing infuriates the shit out of me because it's so goddamn obvious to anyone who is really committed to changing changeable realities for the better, rather than defending why they've given up. Quitting is not realism. Quitting is quitting. You want to be a fuckin' quitter and face the ugly realities of the world and say there's nothing you can do, then so be, I say. Just get the fuck out the way of people who are committed to changing changeable realities. And defining an ugly reality as unchangeable is the last refuge for cynics resisting important change or quitting in the face of difficult obstacles.

As someone who grew up a liberal most of my life, one of the things that I admire most about Ronald Reagan is that he didn't give up the important and idealistic notion that the Soviet Union and Communism were not inevitable parts of the human political experience. That Soviet Communism was an ugly betrayal of humanity's aspirations and that it could and would fall with committed leadership and vision that worked in that direction. His discussions with Mikhael Gorbachev and his sustaining of that vision and idealism had much to do with the efforts of East Germans and citizens and leaders of the Baltic Republics and Boris Yeltsin and others to finally bring about the end of Soviet Communism from within. And during a time when liberal and conservative academics confused cynicism about the reality of Soviet domination of so much of the globe as unchangeable, Reagan knew that it could and would change with enough commitment in that direction.

Mohammed Yunus is a player in wealth equity discussions who understands that the complexities of wealth equity do not necessitate the cynical acceptance of inequities that dominates in the world, today. His work with microenterprises in Bangladesh both address many of the complexities of poverty, ownership and responsibility, and wealth and development and offers real hope for people most seriously impacted by the cynical realities that dominate around wealth equity in the world, today. His microenterprise work demonstrates that market can address wealth equity issues. The question is not whether we can commit ourselves to equity, but will we.

As I listen to so many political discussions, today, where thought, discussion, and engagement are being overwhelmed by force and organized propaganda and manipulation of rules and institutions to substitute for such engagement in ways that it never will really substitute, I am perpetually in awe of the staying power of cynicism and force around serious policy issues.

Make the reality shitty enough, people seem to reason, and people will have no other choice but to accept the shitty reality. Or rationalize that a shitty reality is unchangeable, and noone need be responsible for changing the reality. Or maintain a self-righteous notion of the world or an issue, and you'll never have to engage those who disagree with you honestly and with a desire to understand them and their thinking. You can always just strong-arm them into submission. Who needs all that tedious thinking and discussion and understanding.

It's an ugly, ugly way to operate in a democracy. And it is not only the only logical conclusion from a force-based philosophy of democratic governance, but it is this advocacy-based power-jockeying that forms the basis for force being treated seriously as a philosophy rather than as the most significant alternative to ideas animating a democracy.

The Soviets and the Nazis reasoned this way. If you successfully force others to comply with your vision of the world, they will have no other choice but to accept your imposition.

Except resist it. Which is exactly what I plan to do, as reasonably as possible, for as long as it takes until this "philosophy" of democratic governance is effectively dissolved.

There is no other discussion in policy and on social questions that is so reinforcing than cynicism as the lens for important policy issues. I create and/or reinforce a cynical reality out of my cynical lens on the world and that cynical reality becomes the basis for my argument that no other reality can prevail but the cynical reality that I created and reinforced with my observations.

It is Heisenberg's principle with a vengeance -- both literally and figuratively -- around policy and social issues, and issues of humanity. In psychological circles it is called a self-fulfilling prophecy and a vicious cycle. The virtuous circle of liberal democratic values if found in free thought and engagement and expression and disagreement, not in strong-arming. But the nature of regressive historical periods like the one we are currently experiencing is that the vicious cycle takes hold, and repression is rationalized in the name of progress.

And it is ugly.

And that ugliness is due to beams in our own eyes, rather than to the natural inclination for humans to carry around splinters in their eyes or for them to need us to remove them for them.

We have a much better legacy to offer our children, if we embrace it. A legacy that takes thought and engagement and understanding and deep reflection and wisdom as well as specialized and experienced knowledge seriously. A legacy that prefers argument to force and constructive engagement to strong-arming.

This political period more than most must leave many young people considering a university education asking themselves, "Why?"

"If force is more important and effective than education, engagement, understanding, and reflection, why would I or anyone else need an education (except perhaps to get the credentials necessary to force my thinking on others)?"

It's a really good question, actually.

The truth is that force and freedom are mutually exclusive. Force may be necessary, at times. But force as a philosophy naturally begs the question, "Why is a liberal education so important, then?"

If liberalism, in this sense, refers to free thought and engagement, why would an education that prefers these values be necessary in the world that not only operates primarily by force but is rationalized and actively supported and given intellectual heft by so many of its liberally educated thinkers and political actors?

And the cynical embrace of that reality must leave many others to wonder, "Then why were Communism and Fascism evil, if they were only more strident versions of our own force-based governance?"

Good question, would be my response. Assuming that someone with that question pursues a liberal education, at all, given the low value that so many liberal thinkers put on the values of free thought, engagement, expression, and conscience that animate that kind of education, but which naturally conflict with the governing philosophy of force that animates international policy and politics during this political moment.

The truth is that most liberal thinkers don't trust liberal values. Not fully. And certainly not more than they trust their own capacity to enforce their own more powerful wisdom.

It is the saddest realization by a young scholar more committed to the values of a liberal education than probably any of the values I hold in my life. To find out that so many, if not the great majority, of liberal thinkers that helped reinforce those values for me, as it turns out, do not really believe in those values, except when it conforms with their own enforced wisdom.

What I know is that such a compromise of the values of a liberal democracy and the liberal education that supports that democracy should be recognized for what it is: a compromise. It is not the full realization of those values. And the full realization of those values is by taking the freedom that is inherent in those values and the potential for genuine self-governance, self-determination, and self-actualization found in those values will only be found with more freedom, rather than less.

I have no interest in leaving a compromised legacy of liberal democracy and liberal democratic values for my children and calling it a fulfillment of those values that it is not, any more than I would want an American Constitution that reinforces the institution of slavery to be treated as more than the compromise that it was simply to alay the insecurities of its drafters that their compromise was consistent with their highest ideals.

We may choose a compromise of liberal democracy during this political period or even for a substantial period after this political moment. But like slavery, force as a governing philosophy will always be a serious compromise of liberal democratic values. And those values will never be fully realized until it is abandoned, except in situations where the least possible aggression is needed because immediate physical danger is otherwise unavoidable.

In a million years I would rather be the person who pointed to freedom in the face of slavery and oppression than the cynic who argued that slavery was the only alternative because freedom was too dangerous.

Freedom is fraught with risk and fear of the other side of that risk. But, more importantly, it brings opportunities. Specifically, the opportunity for a more genuinely self-governing liberal democracy. And that vision for liberal democracy is the only vision that more fully realizes liberal democratic values. Everything else is compromise.

There is only one vision for a liberal democracy that offers us the opportunity to fully realize our potential. And that is a liberal democracy that offers us the most freedom possible and with a government that is more fully engaging in those liberal democratic values rather than more forceful in its imposition of any particular idea.

Everything else is cynicism and compromise. And a short-sighted vision of what liberal democracies and liberal democratic citizens have to offer.

As a matter of democratic principle, I will accept compromises forced upon me. But much stronger than the principle of compromise is the principle of freedom and engagement and understanding and thought and expression and disagreement that underpins liberal democratic thinking.

Everything else is cynicism and compromise masquerading as the real deal.

Love,
Ben

Jesus is magic

If you have not seen Sarah Silverman's Jesus is Magic, yet, I highly recommend it. It is a little over an hour of hilarious and very politically incorrect fun, with footage in the bonus feature of Sarah's performance for a similar movie, The Aristocrats.

Together, Jesus is Magic and The Aristocrats are a very refreshing break from the strangle-hold of political correctness that has taken hold during this political period.

Silverman holds nothing back, breaking every major comedy taboo in the book. She does ethnic jokes, holocaust and Jewish jokes (Silverman is Jewish), outrageous porn and sexual humor, she makes fun of old people and young people and she does so in the most disgusting, politically-incorrect ways possible. It's a really nice departure from a political period run amok with self-righteousness and bullying to prevent offense or insensitivity (I've always found bullying on behalf of sensitivity a fairly peculiar combination of political strategy and purpose).

It was a great time for Melissa and Devang and I (and Melissa and I, in particular, who share a rather disgusting and very politically incorrect sense of humor).

What so many bullies and hypersensitive babies who have and seek power in the world right now need is someone to make fun of them. And Sarah delivers powerfully.

Enjoy.

Ben

The lingering consequence of force: mistrust

Today, as much of the arm-twisting that I have faced, recently, I am faced with the lingering consequence of force: mistrust.

The truth is, no matter how much I would want to see things differently, I don't trust people who have pressured and forced my hand.

It will take time for me to forgive and let go of the emotional consequences of all of the bullying people have been engaged in. And always will.

Getting your way always comes with a cost. As they say in What Dreams May Come, sometimes when you win, you lose.

There's a lot of folks in the world, these days, who I don't trust and/or trust less after this period. That list will grow as long as the popularity of force persists.

And the saddest consequence is that it will all be for naught. Because it fundamentally disrespects peoples' need for freedom of thought and conscience. Which means they will rebel and fight it. And we will only be better for the experience if we learn the lesson for good.

Love,
Ben

What it means to be committed

I had an interview, today. It was with a more affluent suburban district.

Lots of things I liked. Generally more motivated kids and parents. Fewer excuses. Better funding, which translates into more teachers and collaborative coverage (meaning special education and general education teachers in every classroom). A lot of coordination to resolve a lot of the problems that our teams persistently struggle with. A lot more proactive, supportive, and engaged staff resolving more problems and bitching about them less.

That last part -- a committed staff -- is the most attractive quality to me. My major problem at Eisenhower is not the kids or the pay. It is the overwhelming idea of overcoming the resistance of an entire staff and student population to let go of the excuses and to take seriously the idea that if we are going to get strong we are going to have to face our weaknesses honestly. We are going to have to face our faults, as teachers and students and parents and as a community -- including me -- more openly and honestly and readily if we are going to be competitive. And my goal at Eisenhower is to make us competitive. To be the best school possible. And, if possible, to the best middle school in the city, in the state, in the nation, in any nation in the world.

Inner city doesn't mean disabled. And that is the myth I am looking to sever. Inner city means a lot of inertia in terms of helplessness and giving up and finding excuses and a million other reasons why we do not achieve at the highest levels.

My goal, my job, is to remove those excuses, from myself as much as from the students and colleagues and the families that make up our community.

It is an overwhelming task, right now.

But after my interview, today, I am doubly determined to make it happen. Because it is why I got into this work.

And I am beginning to recognize that being a leader sometimes means that people depend on you to get the job done, whether you like it or not. Even as and if your job is to empower them, more, to do excel at the job on their own.

My job is to take a school which has been successful, has recently experienced some failure and disappointment, and to turn it into the strongest school I absolutely can (and to stretch far beyond my own immediate capabilities to do so).

And I decided, today, that I am up to that challenge.

Jaime Escalante was a great teacher. But my job is to take his idea -- that all students could succeed at the highest levels -- and make it true for all children, disability label or not.

Full inclusion does not just mean that everyone is involved. Full inclusion means that every student, as much as is realistically possible, is achieving at the highest levels, whether we or they anticipated that for themselves or not.

My larger goals is a school full of Ph.D.'s and generally brilliant, creative, talented, courageous, and extraordinarily achieving folks. I will have to accept less as long as people do not make the choices that make this goal a reality. But we will raise everyone's sights by setting and working powerfully and realistically towards the goal.

But I will never settle for less in my heart until that goal is achieved. For any kid, person, or any school I work with.

Love,
Ben