The Life of Ben

I've often said that I want people to play the last 15 minutes of Monty Python's The Life of Brian at my funeral.

There is no movie or story, I've decided, that better matches the experience of my young adulthood than this clever little critique of fanatical and self-righteous left and right wing politics.

Very much like Brian, I was a kindhearted young man just looking to do good and help others. And that ambition has now turned into one long self-righteous crusade against me and anything I say or think that doesn't fall in line with any of the various dogmas. My experiences in grad school, with the Kaw Valley Living Wage Campaign, at Community Living Opportunities, and now Eisenhower Middle School have all been broadly negative in the sense that I have perpetually been bullied and aggressively pressured by those who you would presume would be in common cause.

The greatest irony of this whole experience has been that I have spent the great majority of my life identifying with, ideologically, the very kind of folks that I have been repeatedly bullied by: liberals. It has shaken my faith in liberalism in very real ways. And none of them seem to give two shits about that fact, persistently rationalizing that I am worth sacraficing to their various causes.

My contract at Eisenhower wasn't renewed this year. I was recruited by the Olathe school district within the week, who I had interviewed with halfway through this year, when I was feeling most miserable at Eisenhower. I had turned down Olathe, indicating that I was committed to Eisenhower and the kids in the lower income community I was teaching in, even though the money would have likely been better in Olathe and the kids less challenging. I only got into teaching to work in inner city school reform, so it seemed to defeat the purpose to move to a higher paying district when I could just move to a much higher paying professional field.

I will, of course, find, likely, better paying work in a more educated suburban district. And long term, I will likely get my Ph.D. in policy and who knows what I will do with education. But I'm a little bitter with Dr. Ogburn and Ms. Cowan the two liberal administrators who bullied me all year and who decided that it was easier to get rid of me than to take responsibility for the consequences of their poor handling of and mentoring for me during my first full year of teaching.

They had good reasons to be frustrated with me. My special ed paperwork has been a mess, with me trying persistently to catch up with this and that way that paperwork must be handled. Many of my problems centered around trying to make the IEP process more personal and less bureaucratic and legalese, and then losing track of the bureaucracy and legalisms (I would persistently forget to get signatures for paperwork, for whatever reasons). They thought I was too unstructured and seriously pressured me to change that. I changed it as a matter of conscience and principle, finding nicer and softer ways to actually create stronger structure rather than enforcing a principle that students persistently broke or where I established a relationship of fear with students that traded off more important qualities of a teacher/student relationship including a willingness to challenge me, a fear of being themselves in my presence, breakdowns in communication for students who become to afraid to communicate openly, and learning to hate school rather than love education because of the million fear-mongering teachers that we have all encountered but which the lowest achieving students find the most frustrating, I would imagine.

The bottom line was that on every single issue that my administrators had with me - without exception, actually - I was finding smarter ways of dealing with age-old problems that have not been sufficiently resolved by most teachers, including my administrators, no matter how much they might pretend otherwise. And invariably, I found better strategies. With raising hands and classroom structure. With the IEP paperwork and all of the responsibilities that I have as a teacher, outside and inside the classroom. With enforcing rules. Not to mention communicating with and relating to students, inspiring critical and independent thinking, inspiring value for education and dreaming big with education in mind amongst many kids who might not otherwise take education seriously or dream with education in their horizon.

The truth is that I am well on my way to becoming a really outstanding teacher. I have much room for improvement. But I make up ground quickly. And one of the more base goals I have with such an endeavor (I admit it; I'm not always so noble) is making my administrators feel kind of stupid for firing me. Not just because I'm a brilliant motherfucker. But because I am such an outstanding teacher.

Ironically, since my field is teaching, I have repeatedly remarked to friends and colleagues that this is the least supported that I have ever felt in my life doing anything for the first time. My first year of forensics in high school and especially my first year in college were difficult, but I was supported by friends and family fairly decently. First being accountable to the standards of college was not the easiest thing in the world, but my professors were fairly supportive folks.

But this is the first time that I have ever had superiors bully me my entire first year of doing something that is very difficult to learn how to do well: to be a good teacher. Nevertheless special education, which involves an enormous amount of paperwork and extra work on top of the very rigorous experience of being a quality classroom teacher.

My experience, at this point, has been very similar to Brian's, discovering the self-righteous and yet cowardly motivations of dogmatists of all stripes. Being perpetually bullied by assholes of all ideological stripes.

This year has been an enormous learning curve for me. A learning curve largely obstructed by two people who have, in the past, held the title of teacher.

And a situation that has been largely fueled by a period of self-righteous liberal and radical political action that my administrators have been lost in, as much as anyone else, these days.

It's a period that Python lampoons well in Life of Brian.

If there is anything I've learned during this period it is that bullies teach no lessons that I take seriously, anymore. At all. Ever. And this whole experience has completely reinforced that for me.

The most important consequence of this whole affair and all of my experiences with similar work, at this point, is that after everything I have been through, my commitment to the needs of others has been seriously shaken, at least temporarily. Which is appropriate, because I'm pretty clear, at this point, that none of the people I've worked with have maintained as serious a commitment to others more than too serious a commitment for too many of the people in public service to covering their asses.

And knowing that this is the philosophy that really guides so much of public service work, and that those involved have very little interest in changing that situation, I just haven't been feeling the level of commitment to teaching or inner city schools or public service, generally, that I did going in. That will likely change. But, right now, I feel no special commitment to inner city schools absent a more supportive administration.

What so many of my liberal friends have been successful in doing, this political period, is to take someone whose idealism and commitment to public service was stronger than most, by far, and to seriously shake it, out of a self-righteous commitment to beliefs that they, themselves, have not typically thought about very seriously and which they perpetually refuse to reconcile with the hypocrisy that they are more typically guilty of on this question of adhering to the law and the use of force, both of which they, like everyone, advocate for others and abhor for themselves.

The truth is that I've been treated like serious shit by a lot of people who I used to think of as friends and of similar mind. And what it has taught me is that noone can be trusted to force themselves on anyone, except in the most rare and extreme of circumstances. Liberals can be and are just as ruthless and self-righteous and absolute in their certainty in their use of force and pressure as conservatives who I had always stereotyped my entire life as having the most mean-spirited instincts in politics, religion, and life.

But I was wrong. Liberals can be just as mean-spirited and ruthless, if not more so. And those who are typically pride themselves as such. It's wrong is what it is.

And then we all sit around and wonder why kids bully and who they learn it from.

My life has been a live-action version of the Life of Brian, a kindhearted young guy who has to deal with the contradictions, self-righteous bullying, and crazy adventure of life in political circles where having one's own mind means being an obstacle to ambitious plans of power and "progress."

It is not a story that is isolated to liberals, at all. And neither is the Life of Brian, which pokes fun of right wing and left wing ideologues alike, lost in their hypocrisy and their self-righteous bluster.

But Python gives so much attention to liberals for the same reason I do: because they're liberals, and this is the self-righteous bunch they spend time with. Though I don't identify as a liberal, anymore, so completely fed up am I with the propaganistic manipulation of these group identifications and with the thorough lack of independent, critical, and deepest thought in any dogma, no matter how benign it may pose as being.

When I was in grad school, the Life of Brian was a wise and humorous observation on the foolishness of self-righteous politics and religion from every quarter. Today, Python's masterpiece is a strange parallel to my own very difficult, strange, and remarkable adventures through the world of public service and politics.

The last 15 minutes of the Life of Brian. In case any of the many friends I have informed forget.

I want the last 15 minutes of the Life of Brian played at my funeral. So people can laugh and maybe even cry at a life of a guy who has done his damndest to serve others, but whose outlook was a bit too independent and far too compassionate and caring and not nearly dogmatic enough to really be of good to anyone.

It's too bad. I had such potential. But I'm just not tough or sanctimonious enough to be any good to anyone.

I just want a nice life with a sweet, thoughtful wife and some kids and a job where I can be hassled least by dogmatists and bosses and bullies of every stripe.

I just want to be left alone, is the truth. Because the more I get bullied, the less I give two shits about your cause. You'd think that intelligent folks would wisen up about this, at some point.

But until they do, I just want them out of my hair.

Love,
Ben

Virginia Tech and gun laws

Other teachers and I have been talking a lot about the ramifications of the Virginia Tech shootings for schools. One teacher was convinced that it was a sign of the end days. Others are concerned about what it says about the culture. There is still much more to be said about the psychological dynamics that are involved with why someone feels driven to kill in a situation like this. We talked a lot, today, about students and people feeling powerless and turning to guns to have power over a life that feels out of their control and about feeling pushed too far, I think, particularly during a time when there is no point that is "too far" when it comes to pressuring and pushing and forcing the hand of others.

The debate I was waiting for was, of course, the gun debate.

This A.P. article frames this debate on terms positive to gun control advocates very well.

U.S. gun laws draw heat after massacre

But Ravenwood cites the Virginia Tech gun policy which pretty explicitly makes illegal the possession of the firearm in this situation.

"2.2 Prohibition of Weapons The university's employees, students, and volunteers, or any visitor or other third party attending a sporting, entertainment, or educational event, or visiting an academic or administrative office building or residence hall, are further prohibited from carrying, maintaining, or storing a firearm or weapon on any university facility, even if the owner has a valid permit, when it is not required by the individual's job, or in accordance with the relevant University Student Life Policies. Any individual who is reported or discovered to possess a firearm or weapon on university property will be asked to remove it immediately. Failure to comply may result in a student judicial referral and/or arrest, an employee disciplinary action and/or arrest, or arrest for trespass and/or violation of the appropriate state criminal statute."

As Ravenwood points out, this is a stricter policy than Virginia state law since it indicates that such firearms are prohibited even if they are in accordance with local and state laws and the gun owner has a valid permit.

Which really goes to the heart of my pretty straightforward critique of both gun and drug laws which is that they, as a rule, don't work. They create an obstacle to a one of many legal paths to owning a firearm and leave open any number of illegal paths to both gun and drug access. Worse, they create a taboo and cultures of folks obsessed with owning and using both, largely because of the prohibition and they're generally immature relationship to such prohibitions.

This killer violated those state, local, and university laws and policies, nevertheless the moral law against murder. That does not daunt those who say that with a new law, we could have prevented it.

There is no law that gun control advocates would consider strict enough after one of these such incidents. And the fact that the gun ownership and the murders, themselves, were illegal never deters those who look for any excuse to legally wish away a problem.

I don't even trust peoples' good intentions on such questions, anymore, because I so rarely find people who will engage in an intellectually honest discussion of whether their means are effective or not. They generally advocate regardless of the consequences. Most people engage in policy discussion without much attention to consequences, I'm learning. It almost makes such discussions fruitless, frankly.

Why do we have any freedoms at all, I wonder, when people will clearly use whatever freedom we afford them to do bad things to one another. Better to remove all that temptation and the freedom that offers it.

That's what more repressive regimes reason, at least. And given the direction of democracies, these days, maybe they have a point.

Maybe we've been going about this whole freedom thing all wrong. Perhaps, given the direction of our international discussions, generally, on such questions, at this point, we have conflict with Iran and North Korea because we envy just how pliant and submissive they have made their society. Perhaps we have come to end of the line when it comes to the expansion of freedom because we just cannot afford, anymore, to believe in our liberal values and virtues. They don't leave us as safe as more repressive regimes like Cuba and Syria. We just can't find the courage to admit that we think they're direction should be our direction.

Because we are too weak to admit just how effective repression really is to solving a cultures problems.

What we need is more of it. And soon, someday, our problems will float away with our rules and impositions.

Someone should pass a law. Come to think of it, I'm sure someone's on it.

Love,
Ben

The greatest tragedy of the early 21st century

I have much to write on that shooting at Virginia Tech, when I get a chance. I've spent a lot of time studying school violence. I work with the most violence-prone and behaviorally difficult students in our school. I think I have some insight into at least the mindset of those who engage in this kind of violence. I'll write about it when I have more time.

In the meantime, after reading another brilliant article by Francis Fukuyama on Iran vs. Britain: Who Blinked, I am struck by what I think is the greatest tragedy of the early 21st century and the consensus that has developed in favor of force and pressure and might to accomplish what we think (and what everyone who has ever used that means believes) is right.

That this logic is exactly the logic that was used by the Soviets, the Nazis, the Fascists, the Baathists, despots world round, terrorist groups and their state sponsors, and revolutionaries of all kinds who impose their ugly regimes on unwilling, at, at times, willing populations.

The logic of governance and power that we are embracing today in the democratic world is exactly the logic that was embraced by the illiberal and anti-democratic world and all of the worst abusers of power and authority in the 20th century.

"We don't go to such extremes," we assure ourselves. "We are the good people," we remind ourselves. "Good people don't use force for bad purposes," we reassure our consciences. "Good people only use force for good purposes. And the road to hell is paved with bad people using force for bad purposes, not good people using force for good purposes."

Lord Acton's aphorism, we persistently assure ourselves, is for other people who really can be corrupted by power. We, on the other hand, could not possibly we corrupted by power. Because we are good people. And the only people corrupted by power are bad people.

And all the while we rationalize the logic of governance and action used by the old Soviet Union, the Nazi regime, the Fascists, the Baathists, Communists in China and North Korea and Cuba, repressive and illiberal regimes in Syria, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Iran and all the rest, left and right-wing terrorists and radical groups of every generation, including our own, and all of the rest of the most brutal, repressive, and force-centered regimes and groups in the history of humanity.

We look at the liberal advance of civilization along a trend of greater freedom and less brutality and force to resolve problems and we say, "Not too much. We might go too far."

When too far in the more forceful direction is the ugly and long-standing history of humanity and the most evil fact of 20th century history and life.

And this kind of logic is the very kind of logic that leads terrorists and despots and illiberal regimes and thugs around the world to look at decent people and say, "We believe the same things that you do about power. We just have the balls to really use it."

When the truth is that this direction is not a direction of courage.

The direction of courage it towards more liberal values. Jesus, Buddha, King, and Ghandi. None of these men were perfect. And neither were their visions of governance or power, for which none of them had responsibility. But these are the heroes that our civilizations rightly honor, and not men like Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Mussolini and the figures of force that littered the 20th century with death and destruction.

The great irony and tragedy of the early 21st century is that we have decided to pay homage to the despots and mass murderers of the 20th century over the essential goodness of our truer heroes of that same century. We aspire to use the tools of Stalin and Hitler because we are afraid of looking too much like Ghandi and King. We play up the less savory stories and facts of Ghandi's and King's legacies to rationalize why we are so afraid of looking too soft, too decent, too genuine and good.

And it is our fears that pay tribute to the despots. That has always been the case. Even and especially when they ruled. It was peoples' fears that not only led them to submit beyond their control, but to secretly cheer these leaders' willingness to force the world to reckon with their leadership.

The tragedy of the early 21st century is that we say that we love King and Ghandi and Jesus and Buddha. But when push comes to shove, we prefer the cold-hearted force of Stalin and Hitler.

Only then, we reason, will we finally ward off all of our attackers. Only then, we rationalize, will we really be safe. Only then, we hope, will we finally end our vulnerability to the elements and to the world.

Even when the world becomes less safe and not more for our efforts. Even when our goals become harder to accomplish and not easier. Even when our aspirations are not met with results that favor them.

And that is our truest homage to the logic of despotism.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

But not me, we all say. Not me. Not us.

Love,
Ben

Sound and fury signifying nothing

Speech, the lead singer for my favorite rap band and the most positive rap group that I am familiar with, Arrested Development, posted this article by black sports columnist Jason Whitlock on Myspace about Imus. It's some of the more thoughtful and decent things I've read written about the whole Imus affair.

Imus isn't the enemy

I have to say that some of the more thoughtful pieces I've read on Imus' behalf have been written by thoughtful black folks.

The best article I read was by Michael Meyers, the executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition and former assistant national director of the NAACP.

Let the Idiocy Be Heard

The truth is that I don't care anymore about self-righteous outrage on anyone's behalf, anymore. It's useless. And accomplishes nothing. The only worthwhile thing that has happened over the course of this whole sordid affair is Imus' apology to the girls on the Rutgers team and their accepting his apology. Everything else is sound and fury signifying nothing.

I suppose enough people will have to be taken down by this period before we face up to that fact and our own ugly hypocrisy and mean-spiritedness and otherwise vice masquerading as virtue.

In the meantime, if I saw Imus, today, I'd offer to buy him a beer and wonder why people can't seem to reconcile themselves to what self-righteous hypocrits they so clearly are and how this whole episode makes that so much more crystal clear than anyone wants to take responsibility for.

You know what the bottom line is to all of this, I think?

It's not that most people are without sin. That's definitely not true. To the contrary, it is that they feel so bad about the sins in their lives, about what shitheads they have been at various points in their lives, about their own mistakes and foolishness and stupidity. And, probably more importantly, they still harbor all kinds of bitterness and pain and cynicism about all the ways they've been wronged by others in their lives. And instead of just forgiving themselves and others for the sins and the mistakes and the bad judgment and the learning involved with all of that, instead they hold onto that bitterness and cynicism like it is a security blanket that will somehow keep them safe from all of the pain. It won't. But they don't feel strong enough to encounter more. None of us do. But we will. And sadly, we will encounter more pain and bitterness the worse we treat ourselves and one another.

When really what we all need is to just be cut some slack and to forgive and to be forgiven more readily. Jesus and Buddha and Ghandi and King didn't say all that stuff just to hear themselves talk or just to prove how much better they were than anyone else and how noone could ever really live up to that example. We're all just too big of dumbasses to see that. They said all that stuff about love and compassion and empathy and forgiveness because it is the only way that we can function best in world where pain and power were all too present in our lives.

And the bottom-line is that we will all live lives of pain and subject to the bullying and aggression of others as long as we rationalize all that pain and aggression as our excuse for why we must bully and hurt others for our own purposes.

None of which touches conscience and thought, which is the basis for any real progress in a culture. In Jesus' time. In Buddha's time. In Ghandi's time. In King's time. In our time. At all times. At every moment in history. And the most serious sign of progress in every historical period has been how much we have left that more brutish, aggressive means of resolving our problems behind us and how much we have given space for genuine conscience and thought to have room to breathe and grow and learn and develop.

Until then, all this bluster is sound and fury signifying nothing.

It is more justification for everything that divides us and polarizes us and keeps us apart.

And we will never been fully reconciled as people until we can search deeper for what we have in common, including our propensity for the not-so-noble, if we ever aspire to strengthen and elaborate and reconcile ourselves with our highest values.

And we will never be able to lay claim to those highest values centered around anything but our most reconciled liberal values. Values that look after everyone. Period. No exception.

Those are the liberal values that really matter most. Imus, Speech, me, you. All of us. Terrorists may have to die as we protect those values, but we must do everything we can to prevent that and to bring them to justice, if we take those values seriously. And our freedom to be less than our most noble selves must not only be taken seriously. It is the only way that we will ever see more clearly that we are without a doubt not being our most noble selves, in this political period. We are not living up to those highest values. Not yet. And the only way forward in that direction is found in the very same forgiveness of Imus that we need ourselves for what shitheads we've been this entire period. Our progeny will have to forgive us to move forward. And we must forgive ourselves and others if we want to move forward as well.

Love,
Ben

The dumbass in the mirror

Two stories illustrated the foolish, foolish hypocrisy and counterproductivity of this current period and its self-righteous effort to beat the bad - and the disagreement and differences of interpretation and perspective - out of us. And our perpetual failure to look at the dumbass in the mirror.

Howard Kurtz writes writes about the accuser of the Duke University Lacrosse players of rape.

The important paragraphs for me:

"New York Post columnist John Podhoretz makes the case:

'It is the policy of the news media not to publish the names of rape accusers on the grounds that they should not have to fear public shame for coming forward with word of a horrifying personal violation.

'That is a noble policy. But it needs a codicil. The codicil is that if a rape accuser is revealed as a liar, her name should be spoken loudly and often -- as loudly and often as the names of those whom she falsely accused have been over the past year . . .

'She must be denied anonymity because she makes a mockery of the very policy of granting anonymity to rape accusers. We do not publish their names so that they will not fear public exposure. But people who are tempted to do the monstrous thing [the Accuser] did should fear public exposure.

'They should be terrified of it.

'They should have nightmares about it.

'They should be given no encouragement whatsoever to believe they can launch a nuclear weapon at someone's reputation and escape unscathed."

Andrea Peyser, in the same paper, recounts a piece that was controversial at the time:

'This story so neatly fit the radical agenda of our 'newspaper of record,' The New York Times, that the paper disgustingly advanced the hoax on its front page, long after other media outlets had backed off.

'In a case of 'all the lies fit to print,' the paper on Aug. 25 affected an air of Timesian authority in a damning article, spoon-fed by DA Nifong. It tried to put to rest some of the alarming inconsistencies in the accuser's story about the night she was 'attacked.'

''While there are big weaknesses in Mr. Nifong's case, there is also a body of evidence to support his decision to take the matter to a jury,' quoth the Times. And, 'The full files, reviewed by The New York Times, contain evidence stronger than that highlighted by the defense.'

'Will the Times make reparations now?"

The Times, as this Post article alludes to, relishes in taking down those who they think need just deserts, but who, now, will take down the Times? Or the New York Post, for that matter, when they inevitably screw up a high profile story or case?

And that really is the question. Given our now and inescapable tendency to screw up, who will take any and all of us down when we inevitably screw up? More importantly, to me, how can we all be so sure that we have arrived at final truthes on this case or any case or newsworthy situation, when everyone is clearly both following the various media feeding frenzies and trying to avoid the fates of so many public figures being taken down for various sins and alleged sins, these days? How in the world can we always assume that we have arrived at final truthes when we both take so little time to really consider all the available evidence and arguments and when we are all so clearly trying to stay one step ahead of those who would beat us into submission if they think we are wrong?

We can't, is the only honest answer to that. And those who say otherwise are buffering and defending their own arrogant, self-congratulatory views of themselves - psychologists call that being defensive - and their final renderings on important matters so that they don't have to face their own fallibility and likelihood of screwing up in their bullying and pressuring and take-downs.

When those Duke boys went up for trial, originally, the conventional wisdom was that wealthy white boys at a wealthy white school playing a wealthy white game had abused their privilege and raped a low-class black stripper, engaged in a no-respect profession if not from a lower class background, and that someone was going to have to pay for that. All based on the reportings of the prosecutor involved.

Now the conventional wisdom is that a no-class stripper accused a group of innocent college students of a horrific crime in a lie that necessitates a stiff public rebuke and exposure. All based on the reportings of the prosecutor involved.

Each time, members of the media and the chattering classes and the legal and political professionals and junkies who follow them are sure that they have finally gotten the story right, that goodness has been restored, and that the bad people will get their due.

Curiously, it sounds very much like how journalism, criminal justice, politics, and especially the democratic mob has operated for as long as democracy has been around, and worse when it has not been around.

Interesting how that works, isn't it? How often, frequently, and unabashedly we screw up, and yet how righteous we are all along the way, at each juncture. The war in Iraq was right up front. Now it is wrong, just as vociferously. Those boys were presumed guilty, up front, no matter what lip service everyone gives presumption of innoncence, and then, just as aggressively, innocent young men slandered by a low-life stripper, today.

This is an ugly, hypocritical, and foolish political period we are going through, right now. And here is exactly the consequence of all that ugliness that we should expect.

Conservatives are now talking about impeaching Nancy Pelosi.

Robert Turner writes in the Wall Street Journal about Nancy Pelosi's Illegal Diplomacy, accusing Pelosi of committing a felony with her trip to Syria and violating the Logan Act, which prohibits diplomacy by anyone other than those authorized by the White House. I was alerted to this development by a Newsmax email in my inbox about impeaching Nancy Pelosi.

The take down for liberals is coming. Revenge is the dish served most reliably in D.C. They will call it justice. Just as the TrueMajority email I received recently referenced the take down of Alberto Gonzalez as "Justice is a dish best served cold." But, just as that topic sentence implies, it will really be revenge. And it will come and come and come and keep coming until Americans decide that they have had enough of this nonsense.

And that is how America and the world will look, and on and on and on. Until we've had enough of this ugliness.

The absolute insanity of it all is that everyone is hypocrits to high heaven about this one. They relish the take down of those they disagree with. They defend their friends and those they agree with from similar take-downs. And when they consistently advocate for self-righteous efforts to take everyone down, friends and foes - efforts that, remeber, they are perpetually right about no matter how many times they are wrong about them - they seem all the creepier as far as I am concerned.

And all of this is responsible for the deep and dysfunctional cynicism that characterizes Washington and the adult world, once young people discover that adulthood means everyone always living in fear and suspicion of one another all the time and noone talking honestly about themselves or their weaknesses and mistakes in public, largely out of fear of what they think might happen to them. Meaning, all of this cynicism creates a world that so many people don't trust, and then the cynical reality that this cynicism creates is used to rationalize why that cynicism is right and why people really do just need the shit kicked out of them to get the world right.

You know what drives me craziest about this long line of rationalization? It is the rationalization that is the basis for all of the worst abuses committed in the world. All of the terrorism, the repression, the despotism, the genocide, the political violence of all sorts, all of the worst human rights abuses and crimes against humanity follow from this much more fundamentally cynical view of humanity and human affairs and the need to war, metaphorically or literally, on those about whom we harbor suspicions.

Until we've had enough, that is. I've had enough. I had enough 6 years ago when this ugly political period - where all parties rationalized it more fully - began.

Cynicism is not truth. It's not reality. It's the perpetual disappointment with a reality that fails to live up to our expectations. And it is self-fulfilling. It will continue to fail to live up to our expectations the more we act cynically and are perpetually beating the shit out of one another. That is why more liberalized worldviews lifted the world out of that darkness. And it is only more liberalized worldviews that will lift us out of that darkness still. There are many signs of hope. But none of them come from the more cyncical and brutish behavior that is dominating during this period. Hope comes from every indication that some people are looking to let go of this legacy and leave it behind.

Bill Clinton's impeachment trial was most assuredly revenge for Richard Nixon. Talk about impeaching George Bush was most assuredly revenge for Bill Clinton. Talk about Nancy Pelosi's impeachment are most assuredly revenge for talk about George Bush's impeachment. And on and on and on.

And what drives me craziest about all of this is not only how many people are hurt and killed in the name of these self-righteous crusades.

It is that none of these partisans are right. They are not right about the righteousness of taking down those they disagree with. And, more importantly, they are not right, with any final rendering, about even the more substantive disagreements that are really at the heart of so many of these efforts at political and professional take down. Liberals are not right about everything or even all of the most important things in public or social life. Conservatives are just as wrong about many, many important policy issues and often the most important ones. There is no person or group who is right about all of their positions - especially the propensity of their favored policy positions to accomplish the results they desire - which is exactly why we should presume more liberal values that respect peoples' freedom, self-governance, and self-determination and that humble themselves in the face of that fact.

And the thing that we are all most wrong about is both our ability to tell the difference unerringly, that others will not err and make mistakes if we just apply enough pressure, that our propensity to err is a sign of our need to be taken to task rather than a sign of our need to freely and openly explore our options for thinking and speaking and acting in the world and learn from our mistakes as much as we learn from our successes, and that beating up on one another contributes anything at all to our ability to avoid mistakes in the future. It doesn't. It never has. If it did, we would not be making mistakes at all, at this point in humanity's history, because we have used far more force and pressure in our more illiberal past than we have in today's more liberal present.

We do all of this out of stubborn habit. And our most stubborn habit is to believe that being tough with problems is more important or somehow a real solution to so many problems that needs us to be smarter and more deeply thoughtful, more open-minded and open-hearted, to communicate more openly without fear of reprisal, to be ourselves in the open and not have to hide our true selves for fear of punishment, and that tough actually solves more problems than it actually does, even though the evidence is fairly incontrovertable to me, at least, that tough solutions often make our problems worse, not better, no matter how much we try to pretend otherwise.

The Soviets would always take responsibility for any progress in Russia or its satellite countries, as will the controlling parties in China, Cuba, and North Korea. Saddam Hussein would always take credit for any positive developments in Iraq, as would Hitler in Nazi Germany and Mussolini in Fascist Italy. Every repressive leadership claims that it causes progress in any country. And sadly, no matter how self-righteously their cause was engaged, it takes engaged debate and discussion and historical perspective for people to more honestly evaluate their legacies. The French Revolution was not a righteous sacking of a despotic monarchy most reasonable historians would agree, today. But you couldn't have told that to the revolutionaries in France at the time. The Catholic Church's harrassment of Martin Luther was not the righteous disciplining of a heretic. But you literally could not have told the Church's leadership of this at the time since this capacity to speak honestly of the Church's mistakes was at the heart of Luther's Protestant Reformation.

That is the beauty of democracy, really. Even if it does not get us all of the right answers, it is the least worst government, as Winston Churchill said, because it provides us with more checks on the self-righteous power-mongering of all parties. That should not be confused with an affirmative stamp of approval for our final renderings. Because that stamp of approval could never exist.

That is why people fight so aggressively, today, to prove that they are right. Because they are afraid that such uncertainty means that no meaningful resolution of important matters can take place if a resolution is not imposed. The irony, of course, is that such final resolution cannot exist at all, except in the ever fallible minds of individuals in a free and democratic culture. That is a fact of life for us to accept, not to fight, futily hoping that our impositions will finally resolve such fears of uncertainty.

And sadly and paradoxically, our ability to more meaningfully resolve such issues and find more workable ideas and solutions is clearly and perpetually undermined by our more aggressive efforts which undermine the honesty and engagement and thought and respectful discussion and debate that is now and forever the only best way to find more meaningful resolution of our more serious questions and problems.

Our ability and propensity to solve our most difficult problems, to be better and more thoughtful people facing and wrestling with those problems, and to more meaningfully and intelligently consider all of the factors involved with our common problems and the consequences from our available courses of action are made available only by our more liberal democratic commitments to free thought and expression and engagement and conscience. They are the foundation for our contemporary society and social mores that we so perpetually take for granted. This is why intellect makes the most important contributions to culture. Because it lays the foundation for all of our most successful adaptations, changes, habits, thoughts, values, ideas, worldviews, institutions, and other choices we make that sustain and strengthen the culture.

But we have a stubborn and wrong-headed commitment in an opposite direction that values tough and quick action over patient and thoughtful engagement and reflection. Sometimes tough action is inescapable. And sometimes quick action is necessary. But both need and must follow from more thoughtful engagment and an appreciation for why that thoughtfulness is the foundation for everything meaningful that we do.

The perpetual hypocrisy and inanity of this get-tough period is that everyone knows this, but only selectively enough to consider their own situations rather than with empathy and insight into the situations of others. And everyone pretends that their own mistakes are innocent and needing of forgiveness and an appreciation for their humanity while the mistakes that others make are in need of a serious ass-kicking.

They demean and disrespect the kind of empathy and insight into the situation of others that compassion affords because they refuse to take it seriously, despite its central place among virtues among civilized people. And they refuse to take it seriously because they are afraid that it makes them and and those who harbor it weak. "Faggy," as citizens of the future Idiocracy think of Mike Judge's protagonist, Joe Bowers.

As the young doctor in Idiocracy describes their resident smart guy, "You talk like a fag, and your shit's all retarded." And that is about the essence of the mentality of that line of logic. Much like Joe, I get very tired of taking this line of logic more seriously than it deserves. No matter how smart its proponents purport to be.

Especially when it is so clearly not working to rid the world of all of the harms that they seek to rid the world of, by any objective standard. They will take credit otherwise. But the remarkable thing is that kicking ass and taking credit, much like Mike Judge's dystopia, doesn't actually make the problems go away.

Everyone wants to kick ass. Noone wants their ass kicked. Schools rightly teach thought and engagement to solve problems. And every dumbass in the world looks upon thought and engagement with suspicion thinking, "But how will I convince people that I am right if they don't agree with me or if they just don't see just how wrong they are if I can't force them to do otherwise." And that is the dumbass logic the fuels this foolish little period.

Clearly missing the point that the dumbass who might be wrong just might be us.

Love,
Ben

I'm too nice

I'm finally giving in. I'm too nice.

And to rectify the situation, I am going to, over the course of my lifetime, find every person who has ever wronged me, and kick them in the balls. Or pull their hair. Whichever is most appropriate.

And if you've wronged and me and you've called me too nice, you get kicked in the balls twice. Just cause you probably deserve it.

I figure if I'm going give up being a nice guy, I should take advantage of the opportunity to really do some damage to those who have made being a nice guy so difficult all these years. And I figure you kick someone in the balls or pull their hair, they can hardly call you too nice anymore, can they?

So bullies of the world beware. And watch your testicles.

Love,
Ben

Why I can't even listen to political commentary anymore

I can't even listen to E.J. Dionne anymore. I certainly can't really take Bill O'Reilly seriously. The constant scandal-mongering, self-righteous pressuring and posturing, and all the bullshit efforts to take out people who disagree with one another.

I just can't handle the total and utter bullshit political correctness and political maneuvering anymore. It's bullshit. There's no substance to it. Not really. People of real substance don't need to use pressure and posturing and propaganda and manipulation. And stronger arguments, empirical outlooks, and deeper understandings get lost amidst it all. And all of it, all of it, is about getting people who disagree with you.

I don't want any part of it anymore. I don't care why you're offended by such and such bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, is the truth. I am way overexposed to and underwhelmed by scandal and take downs and political hardball. I don't listen to people who bully anymore. I may still try to listen to the substance of a position. But your credibility is seriously undermined in my mind if you feel like you have to bully me or anyone to take your position rather than persuade me. I may take your ideas seriously. But I can't take you seriously, as long as you think that your right to strong-arm me is more inviolate than my right to make up my own mind.

I'm fairly confident that in the very long term, this is the direction that people will take, generally. Young people, generally, are turned off by adults in their lives who bully them. We all are. But, in the short term, scandal is all the rage to take out people you disagree with. It's really ugly is what it is. And I want nothing to do with its proponents anymore.

I think E.J. Dionne is an asshole. I think Robert Novak was the same upon Ford's death (although, to be fair to Robert, for all his dickishness, E.J. has been the far bigger asshole, these days). I want nothing to do with these assholes or any of the shitheads who regularly pressure and strong-arm and otherwise fail to persuade others of their point of view, so they turn to force when their intellect fails them and to persuade others.

I can barely listen to NPR, these days. And only because I want something more serious than commerical rock radio. But I didn't support them, financially, this year. And probably won't be supporting them in the near future.

When liberals talk about dialogue, they're full of shit, is the truth. They don't really believe in dialogue. They believe in bullying. And I want nothing to do with those who engage in that kind of bullshit, anymore. Or conservatives who do the same. When liberals talk about diversity, they mean every kind of diversity except for intellectual diversity or a diversity of ideas. Because when there is diversity of ideas, liberals do everything they can to rid the world of that, is the truth. They'll pretend differently. And its just pretense. It's more lying. And hypocrisy. And bullshit. And the truth is, they don't even care, sadly enough. All they care about is proving that they're right. And they're not even that, sadly enough. So ugly and so sad all at once.

The truth is that the culture war is fully engaged aggression by both conservatives and liberals who both will die by the same sword that they live by. When conservatives come after liberals as they reenergize, I will think it's sad that we are engaging another cycle of political recrimination and attack. But I won't cry for liberals who gave as well as they took.

And I don't want anything to do with any of it or anyone who engages in it.

If you do it with me, expect me to take your ideas seriously. Because I take ideas seriously, no matter what. But don't expect me to take you seriously. Because I won't. And I never will as long as you take yourself and your own ideas so unseriously.

Love,
Ben

A life of peace and politics

It's so funny. After a lifetime of studying politics and difficult political issues, all I want, today, is to just have a nice little life away from it all.

People are incorrigibly self-righteous, I am convinced. They can change, need to change, and will change. But I just want them out of my hair until they do.

It's tedious to be constantly dealing with their ugliness and pettiness and self-righteousness and cynicism and especially their bullying, in the meantime. I want the more radicalized elements of society that are perpetually rationalizing strong-arming, violence, terrorism, genocide, repression and whatever the hell they can get their hands on, really, in the name of this or that cause neutralized. But to do so, moderate peoples will have summon up courage, to get stronger, and to become a better people who more genuinely embrace their highest liberal values more readily, and stop rationalizing radical action that just fuels that cycle.

I want depressed communities - whether they be in Palestine or Pyongyang or Damascas or Salt Lake City - to face up to the ugly and brutish ways that are constantly undermining their cultures, their neighborhoods, their economies, their governments, and their lives. But to do so, moderate peoples in those communities and in communities surrounding them will need to respect more freedoms that will allow those communities to take more responsibility for their plights, and all individuals and communities will need to take more responsibility for the impact of their own choices on all members of society, especially choices that involve strong-arming one another into submission without a more open, honest debate and discussion of issues and without making substantial progress on those same issues.

I want all kinds of problems in the world resolved. I've dedicated my life to their resolution.

But, mostly, right now, I just want to be left alone. I want just want a nice little life where I can live with some peace and without so much persistent fighting for no good goddamn reason and with no real resolution in sight.

I just want to leave politics to the bullies, and to let me be left out of it.

I don't know how realistic that is. But I sure could use a break.

Love,
Ben

Joe Biden's plan for Iraq

Joe Biden writes a piece today in the Washington Post - The Real Surge Story - that demonstrates both that he is a brilliant mind with many good ideas for Iraq - his commitment to a decentralized, federal political system in Iraq is a very good principle to operate from - and utterly clueless about how to separate a good idea from his own ego, which demands that such a plan somehow be divorced and, indeed, undermine a security effort which is the only one that would make any political resolution to the fighting in Iraq - his or anyone else's - possible.

Joe is at his best when he is arguing that America should "help Iraq make the transition to a decentralized, federal system, as called for in its constitution, where each major group has local control over the fabric of its daily life, including security, education, religion and marriage."

That part he is right about. It's a good plan. It respects important democratic principles like decentralization and federalism that are both liberal in their commitments and clearly necessary when you have groups looking to violently impose upon one another and likewise fear the same.

What Joe is clueless about, right now, is that waving around that Constitution and saying, "It says it right here. It's in the Constitution. It's the law. You got to do it" is no fuckin' plan for bringing security to Iraq. It's mindlessly telling people what they should do without creating a relatively secure space for them to do the real political negotiating that will be necessary to make a political resolution like Joe's - or whatever political resolution the Iraqi people and their representatives decide on, frankly, though Joe is right that they should respect this principle and work to bring it into being - possible.

Joe is fighting the very thing that would make such a plan a possibility. Largely because he wants to be President, and he thinks that such a plan will not see the light of day until he becomes President. But the funny thing is that Joe's Presidential ambitions will not see the light of day until he faces up to the real responsibility to provide security, here, that is an unavoidable prerequisite to his plan or any plan getting any real playtime on the political field. You don't have adequate security, you don't have a political resolution of any kind. Period. There is no way around this. And bringing the troops home is no fuckin' plan for creating that kind of security.

Whether Joe wants to face it or not, the truth is that conservatives like Frederick Kagan are right about this one. You cannot wish political negotiations into place. They either have real prerequisites for enactment in place - and adequate security to have a political negotiation is a pretty bare essentials basic prerequisite for a political settlement - or they do not. Joe apparently believes that the tooth fairy brings security to a war-torn region. What John McCain understands is that it is a substantial, credible, troop presence authorized by a governing authority. Iraqi troops could be authorized, but lack substantial enough credible numbers of people prepared to handle that job. So American military forces are the only other alternative, right now, until Iraqi troops can handle that job.

Hence, my response to Joe's editorial. Enjoy.

"As much as you would love to fantasize that appeals to the Iraqi Consitution will somehow end the fighting, how in the world, Joe, were you imagining that Iraqis would search out a political resolution - yours is good one, but something tells me that Iraqis will need to ultimately decide their own fate on this one, despite what I think is a lot of wisdom in your plan - without some kind of security on the ground for those negotitating a political settlement?

Were you proposing that they should stand on soap-boxes and yell at insurgents, "But the Constitution says we should have a decentralized, federal system."

Nonsense. Obviously security must be established for those parties to negotiate a political settlement that can line up with that Constitutonal principle or change that principle in whatever way their Constitution allows. There is no resolution to this war waving a piece of paper around.

There is either real security on the ground that allows for a real political negotiation or resolution or that Constitution remains paper with no power. Either people respect this Iraqi constititutional principal and so many other important democratic principles - enshrined in their constitution or not - or they don't. But a bare minimum requirement for respect for abstract political principles is a relatively secure space in which principles can be discussed, negotiated, applied, learned from, and otherwise become real in the lives of Iraqi people and their representatives and not just an abstraction voiced by an American Senator thousands of miles away.

The truth is that a military component is needed for a political resolution of this mess whether Democrats like that or not or whether it makes them look like they have all the answers or not.

John McCain understands that. And if you can't get that straight, Joe, you have no chance in hell of becoming President of this country or any other country for that matter."

Joe's website for his Presidential candidacy - planforiraq.com - is more specific in his proposals. On that website, he concludes his very well thought out proposals with this argument:

"That leaves federalism as Iraq's best possible future. But unless we help make it work for all Iraqis, it won't stop the violence. We should start with a major diplomatic offensive to convince the major powers and Iraq's neighbors that a federal Iraq is the best possible outcome for them, too. Then, together, we should convene a Dayton-like conference to move all the Iraqi parties from civil war to the negotiating table. Through a combination of pressure and reassurance, we would persuade the Sunnis to accept federalism and press the Shiites and Kurds to give the Sunnis a bigger piece of the pie.

The course we're on leads to a terrible civil war and possibly a regional war. This plan is designed to head that off. It offers the possibility - not the guarantee - of producing a soft landing for Iraq. I believe it is the best way to bring our troops home, protect our fundamental security interests, and preserve Iraq as a unified country.

The question I have for those who reject this plan is simple: what is your alternative?"

The alternative that Joe is clearly not taking seriously and is the reason why Democrats have so much less clue about how to handle Iraq than they perpetually give themselves too much credit for is to avoid the fundamental mistake that was made over the course of this war: to make decisions for Iraqis versus including them in decisions like revolting against their dictator and, at this particular political moment, letting them decide their own political fate.

Iraqis are not going to adopt a political resolution that Americans or even the Arab world imposes upon them or pressures them to adopt. And we are arrogant in the extreme to think that either they should or they will. Would Americans really have adopted a Constitution that the British pressured us to adopt? Of course not. We would think they were the most arrogant, power-hungry fools in the world to believe such nonsense. And we would be right. And Iraqis will, pretty soon, just stop listening altogether to Americans trying to impose such nonsense.

What is Joe thinking? That Iraqis will just hop up on the America-pressures-for-progress bandwagon just like Iran and North Korea? Is he fuckin' blind? Iran and North Korea are not bending to our will, you fuckin' nimrods. They're fighting us all the way. Whenever progress looks to be in sight, Americans go and fuck it up by applying some kind of military or economic or political pressure that undermines all that diplomacy.

What Iraqis need, right now, is our help and for us to sit the fuck down and stop trying to run the goddamn show all the fuckin' time. They've asked for our help to create a workable security for them to find a political resolution to their situation. And we need to respect that wish and sit our happy asses down and learn when your pressure or advice is not welcome, thank you very fuckin' much. Maybe they enact the principles of decentralization and federalism enshrined in their Constitution. I agree with Joe that this would be a very good idea. But I'm not the fuckin' Iraqis. And neither is Joe. And whether Joe or Democrats or Republicans or anyone fuckin' likes it or not, Iraqis will decide their own fate, thank you very fuckin' much, whether Americans insist on trying to call all the shots themselves or not.

Maliki has got to have the patience of a fuckin' saint to put up with this kind of bullshit. And he needs the Americans' help, is the truth. Thank god Joe Biden is just a fuckin' Senator and not the President making military decisions here. I hope Joe Biden gets his arrogant little ass beat in this election and maybe, just maybe, goes home to his wife with his little fuckin' tail between his legs and says, "Maybe I don't know it all, Jill. Maybe the Iraqis, like the American people, may just be able to live much of their own lives without my making all the decisions for them. Maybe they can and have to - whether I fuckin' like it or not - find a resolution to their own problems, regardless of my input. Maybe there are limits to my intellect and my power." Maybe, Joe. Just maybe.

When Joe Biden says that the security efforts in Iraq are "doomed," he is not someone to be taken seriously as Presidential material to lead such efforts. He is automatically disqualified from that, as far as I'm concerned, until he can more humbly think through how exactly he is going to provide for the very security that he is undermining, right now, with his comments.

Joe Biden gets zero support from me until he gets serious about the current security efforts. If he can't, then he is more than welcome to make another failed bid to win the Presidency and to be humbled in front of millions of Americans. Because that is exactly what he needs right now.

Love,
Ben

How the current period completely undermines my trust its tough proponents

I've given up trying to understand the persistent rationalization of the million heads rolling, these days. It's ugly. It's wrong. It's wasteful. It's self-righteous. And it needs to end.

That's why I don't like to concede to bullies. Because once they get a taste for the power that comes with bullying, they won't stop. Terrorists are bullies with heavy weapons. The current period is about bullies with the weapons of words and social and political pressure. And it it needs to end.

I have no trust in them or their causes anymore. None of them. If I have any trust in the issues they are concerned about, I have to completely separate it, to the degree I can, from their bullying. That is difficult. But it also is a sign of both just how ugly this period has gotten, how arrogant its proponents have become, and how little they can be trusted.

First Don Rumsfeld. Then Lewis Libby. Then Alberto Gonzalez. Then Don Imus. Then Paul Wolfowitz.

If everyone hasn't become clear now, like Hamas or Hezbollah or Al Queda, these political bullies will never be appeased. And shouldn't be appeased. That's why conservatives are gearing up for a fight. And so this sad, twisted, ugly, wrong, rationalized story will go forever and forever and forever until people face up to their ugliness.

I have zero trust in Democrats anymore. I have zero trust in Republicans anymore. The truth is that I have zero trust in anyone anymore.

Because they've all earned the distrust. Noone follows the rules. And everyone enforces them selectively for their own purposes.

It is the most fantastic mess that I have seen in my entire life. It is hypocrisy without limits. And it is thus hypocrisy without an ounce of credibility or trustworthiness, at this point.

As with my kids, if you push your limits too far, eventually I don't trust you at all. And that is where the proponents of the current political era are with me, at least, at this point, no matter how much they may pretend that they can get away with this nonsense into perpetuity.

Keep trying to get away with it, I say. But I don't trust you at all. And I won't for a very, very long time, until you change your ways.

If your bullying, and I know about it, I'm not listening to goddamn word you say anymore. And I don't give a shit whether you think that's fair or not. It's not fair. Life ain't fair. Too fuckin' bad. Change your ways. Or I don't trust you anymore until you do.

What was that argument you made? I have no fuckin' clue. Because I'm not listening to bullies anymore.

Love,
Ben

My paper on effective teaching

I'm turning in a paper on effective teaching, tomorrow. Here it is, sans references. I enjoyed writing it.

Effective teaching: A humble perspective

Many years of review of the literature on effective teaching has convinced me of a few truisms. First, teachers and researchers, as a rule, are far too focused on what teachers are doing and thinking and too little on what students and the people they teach are doing and thinking. Second, teachers and researchers are far too convinced of and focused on learning that happens in the classroom rather than learning that happens in life, inside and, as and sometimes more often, outside of the classroom. Third, teachers are far too invested in the idea that the right management, the right model, the right theory, the right approach or the right lesson is the key to effective teaching and learning, when, largely, I believe, most learning and certainly the best learning happens despite our efforts to control and predict it, even as well-organized, creative, thoughtful, and engaging efforts can have important added value to students’ and teachers’ educations. Finally, teachers and researchers seriously undervalue the self-determined nature of learning. They are too focused on what learning teachers make happen and seriously undervalue learning experiences that students choose and influences on kids and people outside of teacher efforts. None of these truisms mean, in the least, that teachers do not have important influence. It suggests that, perhaps, we just take our efforts a bit too seriously.

In a non-random, non-scientific review of 20 education and teaching related sources (that I could gather on a Tuesday evening), only two focused on self-determined learning by students and people, independent of and as a function teaching and education. One was a fiction book that my 7th grade students are reading in their Read 180 class, Freak the Mighty. It is a fictional story of a young man, Max, who “is L.D.” and frequently refers to himself as a “typical butthead” who befriends a brilliant same-age friend with a serious physical disability, Kevin, who is known to Max and his friends as Freak. Freak the Mighty is a fictional account of kids and learning, but it is one that more thoroughly acknowledges the limited role that teachers and school have in a young person’s or even an older student’s learning, and yet illustrates that much learning and self-determined notions of the world develop both in conjunction with school and classrooms and largely independent of both. The second source is a true life account of a student who returns to his teacher decades after studying sociology with him in college, Tuesdays with Morrie. Tuesdays with Morrie is a very sweet true story of an acclaimed sports journalist, Mitch Albom, who returns to discuss life and lessons learned with his university sociology teacher, Morrie Schwartz, very close to the end of his mentor’s life. It is a beautiful story of learning in the unguarded context of a two men sharing a love for ideas and life wisdom independent of a formal classroom setting.

The significance of far too disproportionate focus on what happens in classrooms in education research and by teachers working with kids, rather than on the larger learning and life experiences that shapes kids’ and students’ lives is that the research literature and the teaching profession, I believe, develops a myopia about how much influence or control they really have over young peoples’ or older peoples’ lives.

More than any of the research that I have encountered that touts heterogeneous grouping or homogenous grouping, basic skills or higher order thinking, full or limited inclusion, independent, paired, small group, or large group learning, live or on-line engagement, a results orientation or a compliance orientation, large or small school communities, more or less money committed, mixed or same gender, race, disability, nationality or language spoken, the most effective teaching fundamentally comes to terms with this limitation. The most effective teaching accepts that it has influence, but that its influence is limited by the self-determined and critical thinking and choices of students and people who take learning more or less seriously.

That thesis would likely need a carefully developed hypothesis, thoughtful research questions, a carefully controlled experiment with randomly selected control and treatment groups, and a peer-reviewed publication to serve as any kind of science of effective teaching. But absent my ability to produce any of those things, at this point, I think it is a thesis that rings more true to me as a teacher, today, than it wholeheartedly rang true to me as a student, forever wondering why teachers ambled about with such self-importance, assuming that their accepted wisdom was mine as well. It is much easier to me to see this when I am the teacher being ignored than when I was the student doing the ignoring. Effective teaching, I have concluded at this point in my life, is humble. It recognizes that the highest value of teaching is one that models and takes seriously critical, skeptical, and undogmatic thinking enough that it has no expectation that it will have any influence except insofar as students and those who encounter it find it valuable. And wise teaching, at least, accepts that many people will not find value in a thesis or an argument or a lesson even if it is most certainly there.

Effective teaching most certainly involves facilitating independent and cooperative student learning to master concepts and solve problems and appreciate learning for its own sake as well as performing well on assessments of academic skills. But the most effective teaching, I would hope, at least, is the kind that assumes that students and people will engage in learning far beyond the classroom – at home, with friends, with family, while watching movies and television, while listening to music and sales speeches, while reading books for professional endeavor, books for pleasure, and labels for soup cans – and that what happens in the classroom is a humblingly small proportion of that learning. It is a proportion to be engaged with as much powerful attention to high intellectual and otherwise standards and real student learning as possible. But it is a small proportion nonetheless. And coming to terms with that fact of life is one of the most powerful things of all that all teachers could do to enhance their effectiveness as people who offer something of value that may not always be taken or as seriously as they would like but which offers a substantial opportunity to understand something in the world better.

Love,
Ben

Politics and the realities of war

Thomas Ricks writes a very impressive lead article for the Washington Post, today, that gets right to heart of the problem in the Iraq war debates in Washington, right now.

Politics Collides with Iraq Realities

The headline really captures the problem. Political debates in Washington that demand too much of realities on the ground and which impact realities on the ground, as insurgents and Al Queda hope to outlast the political will of the American people.

It's not Republicans who are out of touch with reality. It's not Democrats who are out of touch with reality. It is all of us who are always less than ideally aware of the realities we need and want to understand. Because life is just not ever so simple that anyone ever has all the right answers. That goes for politicians too. Though the truth is that politicians and average Americans are constantly demanding that everyone know more and better than they ever really could know. And certainly more and better than any of them know or ever really could know.

Here's the bottom-line in Iraq: a reasonable security must be created in Baghdad and in the rest of the country. We have no control or any real influence over a political resolution. We wish we did. We may try to use the threat of a pull-out to pressure for influence.

But the truth is we have very little influence other than hoping that Iraqis can negotiate exactly what Maliki and most Iraqis hope for, which is a political resolution that can end sectarian warfare and insurgent resistance and create a climate of legitimate political authority which can help to create a presumption that the Iraqi government and the American military will effectively monopolize force and bring a reasonable security to Iraq.

If we run tail after starting this thing and think that we are getting out without being or taking any responsibility for both starting this thing and not seeing it through, and if we think that somehow the Iraqi people or the international community is going to look at this mess and think, "Well, that's all on George Bush. All the rest of those Americans, especially those liberals, are goddamn saints who tried to prevent this damn thing," we are fuckin' deluded.

We will hope that Iraqis arrive at a political resolution and we need to stay and help them secure their country until they do. We created this mess. Not George Bush alone. The by-far-majority of Americans who supported this war when it started and who have grown weary with that decision since then. All of us. I didn't support it going in. I opposed it publicly. But I know better than to cut and run when the going gets tough just because things aren't exactly as I would like.

This is our mess. And we need to clean it up. It's the least we can do for the Iraqi people whom, when we dig deep and give up all that bullshit cynicism that animates too much of the political conversation about this war, we know that we should be looking out for here.

This is not about the politics of gay marriage or wealth inequities or abortion or the environment.

This is about making sure that we do the responsible thing, here, and help the Iraqi government, which wants and has made clear that they need our help. This is a mess we are responsible for. And we need to stay and make sure it gets cleaned up.

If Democrats can't get clear about that, then perhaps John McCain, who wrote about The War You're Not Reading About, in today's Washington Post, should lead this country until they do.

The biggest problem with this war is too many egos pretending they know more than they really do about this situation. It should be humbling for all of us.

And what we so desperately need, right now, is a humble discussion and debate about how to handle this war. No leader can make us do that. We have to, all of us, grow up together and have a mature and thoughtful discussion of what is happening and what we are going to do.

Right now, I have to say that John McCain's cautious optimism and his efforts to make Americans aware of moderate progress in Iraq are persuading me of his serious leadership potential and capacities. And what I really respect about John is that he voted for the war and instead of whining about how he was deceived - as Hillary Clinton has been doing and which makes so much clearer why she would be such a bad leadership choice, at this point - he is trying to make things right. And that is exactly what we should be doing, right now.

I respect Barack Obama for honestly opposing and criticizing this war, up front, which more sitting Senators should have done until a stronger debate and discussion could have been engaged about what to do in Iraq and if war was the option chosen - over strengthening sanctions, removing sanctions, etc. - then a better debate and discussion should have taken place in the lead up to that war. I do believe there was a very strong case that a war to remove Saddam Hussein was the only best option, even as I opposed the war, up front. But to make sure that was the case we should have had a stronger debate about how to engage that war in a way that would have more effectively included Iraqis.

The best option I've arrived at was collaborating with Iraqi opposition parties and alligned militias to let them lead the effort backed up by overwhelming force from the American military to undercut the insurgency, politically, and to reassure Iraqis in good faith that we were there, genuinely, to liberate them not to occupy them and to provide the firepower that Iraqis who opposed Saddam Hussein lacked to succeed in a revolutionary effort.

Had we had that debate and discussion, I am confident we could have arrived at better options for handling this war. But we did not have that kind of substantive debate or discussion. Nor are we now, really. What we are really doing right now is exchanging self-righteous political volleys between groups convinced that they've already figured out the best plan, not an engaged discussion and debate about what a best plan might look like and brainstorming options for that purpose.

Right now, I respect the shit out of John McCain for keeping America focussed on what is going well and keeping us on track with our responsibilities, here. His cautious optimism and his presence of mind to use the media to maintain our sense of responsibility for this war and our sense of hope in the positive signs that we are seeing, knowing the political realities of insurgents using American despair about the war to strategize for victory, is both brilliant and a sign of genuine leadership. I think, perhaps, I may be voting for him, this election, unless a Democrat or another Republican shows comparable leadership, now, not just 4 years ago for Barack or 5 1/2 years ago for Rudy Guliani.

This is the kind of leadership we have needed during this war. President Bush has done a fine job despite his many mistakes, as far as I am concerned. Barack Obama impressed me with his leadership in openly opposing and criticizing this war, up front. Rudy Guliani impressed me on the day after September 11th. Ron Paul interests me for what I think he can bring to the political debate in the Republican primary and the general election in 2008. Hillary Clinton has really disappointed me and followed the political winds far too much and betrayed a lot of poor leadership instincts, I believe.

But this is the first time I have seen leadership during this war that has really impressed me. I disagree with John McCain on a lot of issues. I agree with George Will and oppose campaign finance regulation and John McCain's leadership on that issue - despite what I am clear are many very good intentions on the part of folks like John McCain, Bill Bradley, Russ Feingold and all of the very good people who have supported that effort - for the very same free speech reasons that George consistently cites. I favor abortion rights and am more shaky about McCain's commitment to this freedom than I am, say, Rudy Guliani or Barak Obama.

But I have to say that this is first time that I have been really impressed by the leadership of an elected representative during this period. And I am impressed because it is a sign, to me, that John understands the very, very complicated political realities that are at play in this war, which he and David Petraeus uniquely, likely, understand, John because of his service in Vietnam and David because of his extensive study of how Vietnam shaped post-Vietnam political and military realities. These terrorists are some crafty sons-a-bitches, I have to give them some serious credit. We have to be smarter. And John is doing a fine job, right now, if doing just that.

I thank God I live in a democracy, right now. Do you realize how much stronger our individual and general understanding and capacity for absorbing political and military blows that all this diversity of understanding and perspective and open debate and discussion make our strategizing, politically and militarily, over the course of this war? Democracy makes that possible. Goddamn. I totally take it for granted.

Not anymore.

By the way, if you haven't seen Flags of Our Fathers, yet, I definitely recommend it, especially for this political period.

Love,
Ben

Education markets

Andrew Coulson, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Education Freedom, writes one of the best articles on the better direction for education reform that I have read in a long time in today's Washington Post.

Education Standards are Not the Answer

And unqualified, "Exactly."

Why is it so easy for us to trust freedom, markets, and the marketplace of ideas to create competitive standards for achievement in almost field in our lives except for education?

Particularly, as Milton Friedman argued well, when the strongest area of American education - higher education - is so great precisely because of all of the qualities that Andrew highlights as the potential for our K-12 education system.

It is so nice to read someone say this without having to cowtow to the current popular fascination with Big Brother solving all of our problems.

Love,
Ben

A really beautiful sentiment from Marvin Olansky

Marvin Olansky, I have to say, is a conservative very much after my own heart. And he has a really beautiful piece I read on Townhall.com, today, that very much exemplifies why I am so endeared to his thinking and his work.

How Some Conservatives Hurt Conservativism

Marvin's view of government and self-sacrafice and helping others is very similar to mine. It is the ideas of folks like Marvin which are the strongest among conservative ideas to take on various social ills, especially poverty. It is a stronger model, long term, I think, than is Big Government approaches to dealing with wealth inequities on so many levels.

It is closer to home and to the people it is helping. It is far more likely to encourage voluntary giving from a very robust economy where people will give if they have institutions they think are worthy of the giving (When was the last time you heard the Red Cross or the United Way complain it couldn't pay it's bills? When was the last time you heard a public school make that complaint?) It is a more sustainable model for individual and community improvement since it is predicated on capacity built and not just demands made. It is a more diverse route that allows people who disagree with one another to create institutions that don't necessarily have to look the same or carry the same philosophies. It avoids the "One size Big Government fits all" mess that public schools find themselves in and the various federal mandates, state regulation, and district control that now severely limit their autonomy and thus their ability and willingness to take responsibility for their failures and take real credit for genuine successes, and to have the freedom to make decisions of conscience around what choices will best improve situations (the mindless repeat of the refrain to "force out" all problems is just one of the many very troubling mantras that undermine our ability to think through and arrive at diverse approaches to resolve difficult problems in schools and non-profits and community groups). It involves more responsibility both on the part of those building and manning community institutions and those being served by them, rather than the very easy and less responsible route of advocacy and demands with little accountability to the actual successes and failures in institutions.

And, best of all, ideally, it removes much of the politics that currently plagues public school and social service efforts that are constantly being leveraged by whatever political action and pressure group that has something that it wants, noble or not. In reality, non-profit groups will be subject to pressure from government and activist groups and those they serve and just about anyone who wants to apply the pressure. That's the beauty about pressure groups. You don't really need to be right to pressure to get what you want. Just willing to make peoples' lives uncomfortable enough that you can get your way.

For some people, that is progress, I suppose. Makes you thank goodness for progress, don't it?

Marvin Olansky reminds me that there are people in the world who have genuinely robust ideas of what a better world might look like and they don't necessarily involve putting the screws to your neighbor.

Would if only there were more Marvin Olansky's in the world.

Love,
Ben

Destroying the village in order to save it

I'm beginning to see that so many of our problems are because we take our problems and our feelings and opinions and our political wrangling about our problems too seriously.

I don't mean that we shouldn't take them seriously, obviously.

I just mean that we hurt so many people in name of helping people.

Constantly destroying the village in order to save it. And yet it's always on fire.

The NPR report on the drug war, this week, is a serious example of this problem, and an important reason that so many young people look at life so differently than so many older people.

And older people think that if they can just knock some sense into those kids then they can save them.

Constantly destroying the village in order to save it.

Just once it would be nice if maybe we could just save the village in order to save it.

Love,
Ben

The law and conscience

I just had about the hundredth conversation with my principal about "the law".

It's becoming clear to me just how romantic people are about the law.

And why it was just so easy for the Nazis to do what they did.

Without any historical consideration, the law can be a pure, romantic arbiter of everything good and evil in the world.

But there is too many of the world's evils that have been rationalized in the name of the law. Naziism and the Holocaust. Communism. Slavery. All of the worst forms of political repression and state and privately sponsored violence against people.

Terrorism is rationalized in terms of the law both as terrorists and their sympathizers indict those they oppose based on arguments about their legal behavior and as they use terrorism as a means of political pressure to guarantee political and legal outcomes that they prefer. I have talked with political advocates, personally, who have rationalized the use of murder and terrorism as a political tool to guarantee legal and political outcomes they favor, nevertheless studying the larger swath of terrorist movements who have this as an explicit strategy, generally, and at least an implicit or unspoken strategy.

Political and legal negotiations, when military options cannot possibly win an open war, are THE rationalization for terrorism. And it is the reason why radicals of every stripe feel more comfortable with legal language and outcomes associated with their activism - often very violent and threatening activism - and propaganda associated with their causes: because they are pressuring for legal and political outcomes - in the form of legal agreements - that they prefer.

Legal arguments typically having infinite elasticity limited only by the judgments and proclivities and arguments of those engaging the political and legal battles that define their limits, at least for the moment. Many political advocates argue otherwise. And then proceed to argue for relaxing or strict enforcement or leeway in more punitive or forceful enforcement of a law based on their sympathy for parties and causes involved. It's more typical than not, really. Everyone just pretends that they are more objective in their concerns than they really are. And so many people get caught within that crossfire.

Lawyers and judges and legal experts will argue until nightfall about the objectivity of their enterprise, about the letter of the law, or about the integrity of their effort.

But the clear reality of legal history and proceedings, from the beginning of civilization, from Solomon on down, is that judgment, not some mythically clear and objective notion of the letter of the law, has always been the final deciding criteria for all legal renderings. Lawyers and judges will hem and haw around stricter or less obvious advocacy for a cause driving their arguments or their decisions. But the bottom-line is that their many, many diverse, often contradictory, often mutually exclusive - hence the need for an appeals process - often unpredictable decisions, by judges, juries, legislators, courts, executive interpretations, and the many other multitude of ways that law is interpreted and applied carries any particular day in any particular way.

To their credit, legal professionals and those who interpret the law in democracies generally try not to interpret the law in arbitrary ways (though that is a very low standard, indeed, for the fairness of a society and its enforced judgments). And they can and often are very generous, lenient, merciful, forgiving, and otherwise genuinely concerned.

What they and the political and legal process is not is perfect or always fair or decent and certainly many, many laws that we are faced with enforcement around are often arbitrary, wrong-headed, counterproductive, undermining of more values critical to more important, honest, genuine, decent, supportive human relationships. And often, far too often, the legal and political process is used as a means of settling scores, exacting revenge, enforcing inhumane and indecent majority opinions or minority preferences.

And the law, worst of all, is often used to rationalize just whatever people please. It is used to rationalize oppression, in the case of thousands of years of slavery and so many of history's most repressive regimes and their social mores of the times, even genocide, in the case of the Holocaust, of groups and individuals, to enforce draconian and often ugly worldviews on a people, to satisfy a politically popular notion of a moment, and all of so many of our worst human instincts.

The law is hardly an arbiter of everything good and evil in the world. Indeed, it is often the facilitator of so many of the world's most serious evils.

That does not indict the law inherently. It is clearly necessary to provide political and legal and moral authority to protect us against murders and rapes and arbitrary invasions of our personal, professional, and jurisdictional self-determining concerns. But that is where lies the rub. From that point is the rationalization of the law for any number of incursions on the freedoms of others, even if those incursions are unjust or unfair or counterproductive or overreactive or otherwise wrongheaded.

And that rationalization and the fear and intimidation that the law is regularly meant to instill became the basis for the evil legal regime imposed by the Nazis which passed laws depriving Jews of property and mandating their reporting to ghettos for starvation and death and mandates that Germans report Jews they knew of with similar threats to enforce such grotesque laws. Similar legal regimes underpinned and underpin, currently, the horrors of political, economic, cultural, and legal repression, even mass murder, sadly, in the name of Communism. They underpin the evils of theocratic and secular autocracies around the world and throughout the world's history. They underpin many of the world's most serious evils in more and less mature liberal and not-so-liberal democracies and republics.

Law is used to rationalize most of the worst evils that society faces, generally, is the truth. It is hardly the arbiter of everything that is good and evil in the world.

It is the means by which the worlds most seriously and horrifically oppressive regimes, activists, cultures, and other groups have enforced their worst forms of oppression and often violently-backed beliefs and preferences, since the law inherently involves coercion and often has involved violent police action - on populations.

The law was the rationalization for the ugly treatment of Mohatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King and their civil disobedient followers. Indeed, civil disobedience was a concept first coined by Henry David Thoreau and studied by Ghandi and King in response to societies where law was used to overwhelmingly oppress those with minority opinions, even ones that history has judged as the most seriously just of their times. In fact, many if not most of the most seriously just movements and causes in history have challenged some law or another or some politically or social enforced more. Hence the aversion to repression - political, legal, social, personal, or otherwise - amongst liberal democratic peoples. Because such repression has been commonplace in the law, in the politics, and in the cultures of most civilizations since the dawn of humanity.

And, yet, consistently, each generation treats its rules and laws, that have often oppressed and quashed even the most just dissent as more sacrosanct than they every could be. Law has been used to resist important change for purposes of justice like civil rights and civil independence. And so many laws have consistently been used to rid the world of the various evils only to fail. Alcoholism, adultery, sexual deviance like homosexuality or sodomy or contraception among heterosexual, often married adults, religious heresy (of those of the most serious religious courage in the cases of figures like Jesus of Nazareth, Martin Luther, and many other religious heretics of their times), abortion, civil unrest in the case of legal harrasment of civil rights and independence movement advocates, and so many of the too-many-to-count examples of perceived evils of a time have been legally sanctioned, many, though not all, of which turned out to be much higher goods than societies at the time ever imagined.

And worst of all, law is the most salient means of manipulation by groups like Communists and the Nazis to impose their worst moral crimes against humanity. And it is so salient and powerful a means of manipulation for exactly the reason that democratic peoples are romanticizing it today: because they treat it as so sacrosanct.

Meaning, it is the very attitude that prevails today that made the Holocaust and mass murder in the name of so many political, religious, social, and cultural causes possible. Nazis, Communists, and other political groups have most certainly had the upper hand, in terms of the use of force. But it was the compliance of their populations, in contrast with the courage of too many peoples in those cultures and times - Pope John Paul II, Jewish resistance movements, the underground railroad, civilly disobedient protest movements, conscientious objectors, dissidents and underground resistance movements - so many of the most courageous people of the 19th and 20th centuries nevertheless the long history of humanity - have been so BECAUSE they were willing to break laws that others were too afraid to break, thus rendering so many majorities of people compliant and complicit in the terrible treatment of the people at which those laws were directed or for which laws well-intentioned but nevertheless destructive against those who they were directed.

The law is one of the most powerful means to enforce cowardice on a population and enforce socially or politically popular thinking about groups, thereby scaring into submission those who might otherwise challenge their immorality or inhumanity or wrong-headedness. Jim Crow was codified by popular support and legal and political frameworks and Naziism and Communism and genocide and political repression of all sorts and all of their ugly repurcussions experienced and experience considerable popular support in countries that sponsored them.

Clearly, the law is not always used for these purposes. And many well-intentioned laws, and most wrong-headed laws, often are genuinely designed for higher, better purposes.

And the road to hell and to much of the political, legal, social, and cultural repression over the history of humanity is paved up and down with good intentions.

And yet, still, despite all of that, so many people still look at the law not as an imperfect instrument that is strengthened and more authentically credible and morally sound and persuasive the least possible that it is to resolves difficult matters of the human condition and human heart or to correct perceived or real harms. Despite this torrid and ugly history that follows legal and political means of resolving our most difficult human questions, even peoples in liberal democratic countries, with cultures educated and infused with values borne of the ugliest experiences with political and legal repression, still romanticize the law as more useful or credible a moral arbiter than it really is or ever could be. Clearly, some problems - though far fewer for which law and politics is actually used, these days or ever in human history - can, as a matter of fact without alternative that I can imagine, at least, only be resolved by law and government. But the great majority of human questions are best resolved with the highest of liberal democratic values: the freedom, conscience, self-determination, and self-governance of independent and interdependent individuals, through honest engagement, appreciation, and concern for shared interests and for one another as individuals. We will fall short of that ideal, surely and often. But we fall short as a rationalization for our more petty, self-centered, less empathetic and compassionate, and baser impulses and priorities at our own risk to our humanity and of living into perpetuity with problems that would often, generally, be better resolved by free peoples acting freely and with good faith with one another and with better faith toward those act in bad faith.

And we risk rationalizing and giving support to the rationalizations into perpetuity, even inadvertantly, of the ugliness of evils like terrorism, Communism, autocracy, political, religious, social and other forms of repression, and so many of the world's ills that are predicated on the righteousness of their cause and the need to reconcile the law and governance to such a cause, the use of violence and political pressure to bring that reality to bear, and the belief by many who favor such causes that liberal democratic peoples are really like themselves, only too afraid and cowardly to fully enforce their views. It is the modern evil of radicalism that democratic peoples consisently support and fall victim to, never fully reconciling themselves to the ugly consequences of such support.

So when my principal gets a head full of steam about what "the law" is, it is somewhat difficult for me to treat that kind of reasoning with more seriousness than it really deserves.

Conscience, not law, is, always will be, and always should be the final arbiter of all things good and evil in this world. And if anyone associated with the politics or the law tells me or anyone else differently, it is clearly, to my mind, because they do not take their consciences nearly seriously enough.

They certainly do not take their consciences as seriously as I do. And, as has always been true, they certainly do not deserve to be taken more seriously than those who take their consciences more seriously.

Because taking our consiences more seriously than the law and anything else in our lives is and has always been the most serious undertaking that any generation of liberal or not-so-liberal democratic or not-so-democratic peoples have ever engaged in.

And anyone who tells you differently, as far as I am concerned, has not and does not take their consciences and the judgments it renders nearly seriously enough.

And that is the most serious tragedy of human history that liberal democratic values have been meant to rectify.

Love,
Ben