Policy and people

I said something today, while checking out for the final time at Eisenhower, that I don't think is true, upon reflection.

I was telling Ms. Toomey - the administrator at Eisenhower that I trusted the most; Dr. Ogburn is the most ambitious administrator, but Ms. Toomey is the one I trust - that most of the most serious problems in special education were at the policy level.

I don't think that's true, actually, when I think about it.

Most of all of our problems in life and in politics are at the people level. They are in the interpersonal dealings we have with one another, the ways we think about one another, and the ways we treat one another.

In special education, the biggest problem amongst both special educators and general educators is that people are not genuinely committed to the kids' interests in a way that opens up as many opportunities for them as possible while being an honest reality check and example for kids' behavior, academic achievement, and aspirations. The biggest problem in special education and in schools, generally, is that teachers and parents don't believe in kids enough. They look too often for what is wrong with kids or what will explain their failures rather than what will support their success. They look at kids through the lens of their weaknesses and failures and not enough through the lens of their strengths and their successes.

Many very good teachers are looking out for kids often much more substantially than likely their own parents do. But better parents and teachers do so more genuinely in ways that both believe in their success and look for every route to get there rather than trying to find an explanation for failure or a area of struggle rather than trying to figure out a way to improve or succeed.

And the truth is that the law and policy could never touch this problem. It could raise awareness, I suppose. It could break down barriers, largely by removing legal barriers and bureaucracy that compete for time and energy needed to create success for students.

But, ultimately, either people believe in the bigger goals and do the thinking and the work and engage the effort to achieve them, or they don't. And there is no law, ever, and never from here on out, that can mandate that kind of effort, thought, work, and ambition. Ever. That was the fundamental mistake of even the best intentioned efforts for the Nazis and the Communists (I know it's strange to talk about the best efforts of totalitarian and mass murdering regimes, but both have their apologists). Neither could come to terms with the fact that freedom and not force was the key to allowing people to reach their highest, best potential, because not everyone chooses to do so, for whatever reasons. They don't believe they can. They have a shitty attitude. They have given up. They have low expectations for themselves. They have been talked down. They only see a future that is like the present they inhabit. For whatever reasons, many, many people do not choose to reach for their highest potential. And many, many people spend far too much of their time and efforts tearing others down. I don't know why people waste their time and the time of others like that. But they do. And there is no way out of that but a world with more freedom and an expecation that if we want to achieve more, then we must take advantage of our freedom and the opportunities and make it so. There is no utopia where the ideal world will be mandated for everyone to follow and achieve their highest potential. There is no utopia where everyone will be mandated to behave well and those who don't will learn because they will face the consequences until they do.

We could have a world where people are given more freedom and support to achieve more of their goals and dreams and where people behave better. But that is a world that we would have to create. It is not a world that could ever be achieved by fiat or mandate.

It's so funny, when I think about it, thinking about so many very smart people, many of whom had to have been debaters at one point in their lives, adopting a governing philosophy that is essentially the same position of those who argued in debate rounds that any of the various problems that a case might have could be resolved by government fiat to just mandate the solution into existence. Everyone who ever debated knew what a cheesy, dishonest way this was to debate because problems in government and society cannot be simply fiated away. Every reasonably intelligent debater knew that if this were true, there would be no reason for debate or discussion or thoughtful engagement at all. We would simply fiat all of our problems away and there would be no need for any more discussion of the matter, at all.

But, of course, that can't happen. As any reaononably intelligent debater knows. Because it is a fairy tale that avoids the real problems and pitfalls that face thoughtful efforts to deal with serious policy and people problems.

The truth is that the most serious problems need thought, commitment, work and energy, engagement, and learning, over time, to get us to more substantial resolution. Everything else is propaganda and bullshit. And it certainly isn't a thoughtful, substantial resolution. In the real world as well as in the debate world.

Policy can help to solve a problem by presenting options that were not present, previously, sometimes in the form of a government effort, that can help find resolution. But, so often, policy can solve a problem by removing so many barriers that we create to more long-term, substantial, and broader solutions in our scurry to pass legislation and create policy to solve a more narrow, too often self-centered, and less thoughtful solution to a more narrow problem.

But real solutions, whether they involve law or government or policy or not, occur with what people choose to do to create them. And that will never be alleviated by any law ever. I don't care how much we pretend otherwise. The most genuine solutions to people problems happen with genuine efforts by genuine people. Other than that, you have a world of people doing their minimum to help out a little and largely look after themselves. If we want that world, it is plenty available to us. But it creates a lot of problems that can only be resolved by the more enlightened among us who are willing to look beyond our more narrow self-interest. That's true no matter where the solutions are coming from. From the market, from government, from liberals, from conservatives, from Americans, from Europeans, and from people all over the world, from educated people, from less educated people, from family and friends and people we identify with or from people who seem more different from us and who we don't identify with. The bottom line to most issues getting resolution is a genuine commitment by people involved to one another and to resolution and to each persons' freedom and self-determination and self-governance to resolve those problems and make those choices independently and with one another.

I need some vegi phad tai, some beer, and to watch some Joe Versus the Volcano, right now. This has been a long year. And I need a little time to reflect.

Love,
Ben

Idealism and happiness

It's all of a sudden dawned on my why so many adults are so cynical and why they are so bound and determined to sap the energy from young people:

They're unhappy.

And all that idealism that some young people - though, by all means, not all young people - carry with them is, at least in my experience, fueled by a life that they are much more generally happy with, and largely because they are freer, I think, than most older folks.

That is the feeling I have been missing, some, lately, facing the prospect of being treated badly and aggressively around whichever corner I happen to turn.

I don't want to be unhappy. And, in that sense, leaving Eisenhower is a unexpected blessing. Because I, too, would have likely learned to live with and accept feeling more and more unhappy just to hang onto a more secure situation, for the moment. I can only hope that I will not repeat that mistake - more than any other mistake I could possibly ever make - ever again in the future.

That is why I am so nostalgic for that summer in D.C. with Brandi. It's not because that time was perfect or that we didn't have a million fights and a million problems.

It's because it's the happiest time I remember in my life.

And that should be a sign that I am not happy and need to find happiness elsewhere, as best as possible.

Love,
Ben

Happiness

It's starting to occur to me the most important advantage to how I've lived my life as I listen to a teacher, next door, who I love very much and think is a very good teacher:

Many, if not most, of the teachers I work with often are very unhappy.

Many of the teachers I work with are burnt out, is the truth. They're scared and they're unhappy, but they're too scared to go find a happier situation. It's very sad. It's one of the most important things I decided when I was in grad school that I am happier about, today, than I was when I first decided to move in this direction: I did not want to spend my life scared. Of losing a job. Of the law. Of peoples' approbation or disapproval. Of poverty or failure. Of anything. I did not want to live my life scared. And, in that respect, I am very, very happy that I have chosen a life that leaves me less scared and learning more and, long term, achieving more, I'm quite sure.

I first encountered how serious burnout can hurt an organization when I worked at B'nai Brith, the summer Brandi and I spent together in D.C. All of the older folks who worked there were seriously burned out, amused and somewhat put off my Brandi's and my idealism and energy, and had just very pessimistic views of the world and their capacities and opportunities within it. I remember we had a fundraising campaign that B'nai Brith was considering and I suggested that someone try to make contact with Stephen Spielberg, who had just reembraced his Jewish heritage with Schindler's List and the Shoa Foundation, and see if he can not only give but perhaps do some publicity for our organization, which was the oldest Jewish organization in the United States. The sign of a dying organization is that noone is interested with ideas that might step up an organization's capacity, and that was the case at B'nai Brith. It was disappointing. But it was also an important lesson in how peoples' attitudes shape an organization and how burnout can suck the life out of an organization as negative attitudes sap the organization of imagination, creativity, ideas to resolve important issues and long-term strength. It is very sad to watch.

Eisenhower is more alive than B'nai Brith was, I think. There are plenty of negative attitudes. And there are too many people unhappy with their jobs and their lives to count. But there's still more energy here than in many places I've worked, likely because of the kids and because of the strong sense of commitment and purpose in the job.

I never could live my life unhappy, I don't care what the payoff is that comes with that.

But I'm pretty sure that the big payoffs come with more thought, vision and imagination, strong and positive attitudes, and otherwise staying focussed on always doing a better job.

I'm sad that people choose to live lives that they don't like or love. But I've accepted that a lot of people would prefer those lives and the illusion of security that it provides than the real happiness and security that comes with a life of freedom and thought and positive commitment.

I couldn't live, long term, with burnout, though I have lived with it more this year than I likely have in the past. Now I just want a life where I either don't have to live it at all, or where I can avoid it as much as possible until I create opportunities that get me away from it, as much as possible.

That's why the money or the power or the influence or the stuff never compensates.

Because people are unhappy. And whether they admit it to themselves or not, what most people really want is to be happy. And when they're unhappy, they have a million excuses for why that's the way things are supposed to be. But what doesn't change is that they are still unhappy.

I have work to do (though work I feel pretty good about, right now, thankfully).

If you have not seen Joe Versus the Volcano, I highly recommend it. It is the best movie on this subject that I have ever seen. I think I've going to go watch it as soon as I get home.

Love,
Ben

Fear and learning

Two things:

1) I was being hard on myself, yesterday. I was looking over my work, today, and looking at my progress over the course of a year and realizing, "I came a long way in a year." The fact is that I've been learning over the course of this year. And there is just a lot to learn on this job. My administrators have just been dicks, is the truth. They've been hostile and aggressive and they've made a learning curve that was already a steep one more difficult. They get no credit for my progress. And their aggressiveness totally undermined my learning and progress.

The biggest lesson I learned, today, while I was reflecting on this is that the quality of liberal societies and institutions that promotes so much more progress is learning. And the degree of aggressiveness and hostility in an institution indicates the degree to which that learning is undermined. It wastes time. It undermines learning and growth that needs to take place. It soils relationships where learning takes places. It undermines common objectives. And it is just, generally, a very poor strategy for promoting progress. It's no secret, then, why more aggressive, hostile societies - the Nazis, Communists, theocracies and repressive societies - why they fail so regularly. Because the aggression and hostility and inappropriate use of force undermines learning which undermines growth - cultural, intellectual, economic, political, etc. - and it creates regressive, more threatening and threatened, less honest and dishonest tendencies. Socieities and communities mired in aggression and hostility stay mired, when they do, because people get less honest about the dysfunctionality of that way of handling life and because they begin to accustom themselves to its fear-driven ways because they give into the fear rather than expecting better. I came from more aggressive, less thoughtful poor communities and I have no interest in expecting less than more thought and less aggression and hostility in my own personal life, nevertheless the larger politics and society, anymore.

2) The best thing that's come from the last 5 years for me is watching just how scared most people live their lives. How easily cowered they are and how easily they will settle for less in their lives as a consequence. The fact that people are so circumspect about what they talk about on their jobs versus how much more freely and openly they will talk with one another on a university campus is evidence of just how accustomed people get to this kind of fear. I have no interest in doing that and do it as little as possible. And I am really proud and glad that I didn't choose a path of least resistance that might have led to a life like that for me, as well.

That is the source of the term "path of least resistance": people are coerced down a certain path that others want them to take, and they follow it to avoid resisting the flow and facing the consequences that come with that life.

And I could not be more pleased with myself for resisting that temptation and taking a stronger route even when others took a less resistant one.

I'm going to go take a walk and enjoy the freedom that I've earned this year.

Love,
Ben

Exactly

Still convinced that intimidating our way through difficult policy issues resolves problems more effectively or quickly?

Read on.

The showdown goes on

Intimidation as a means of governing and dealing with the world

A substantial number - the great majority - of the world's conflicts are derived from people trying to intimidate one another and those they are trying to intimidate trying to prove to the world that they will not be intimidated.

The conflict between the United States, the United Nations, and Western nations and Iran, right now, is a classic example of this stand-off and its ineffectiveness.

It is the hubris that intimidation instead of reason is the most powerful force in the world.

And if that were the case, wouldn't you expect a culture that celebrated its power to intimidate more than its power to reason?

Either one of two things is the case: either we are lying about the things that we say that we value, or we doubt our values for fear that they are not as strong as our power to intimidate.

But one thing that is for sure that gives me hope amidst all of this foolishness is that reason is how we will end up resolving this issue, because reason is the only way that we can make sounder judgments when the world is not moving forward in the way it needs to.

And that is how reason sustains our culture and why it is the pinnacle of our cultural values.

If only we could have more confidence in that fact of life.

Love,
Ben

Failure

The more I've thought about it, the more I've come to conclusion that the bottom line is that I failed at Eisenhower.

I have a lot of strong qualities as a teacher. I'm smart. I've got a positive attitude. I have excellent people skills. I genuinely believe that kids who a lot of folks don't necessarily think can do very much can do much more than people give them credit for. I teach kids to the highest standards possible (or at least the highest I know), with realism about how much they are likely to learn how quickly. I have a lot of good qualities as a teacher.

But my organization has been shit, this year. I have improved substantially. I am much more organized, prepared, manage time and resources much better, at this point, and just constantly thinking about all kinds of organizational issues than when I started the year or when I started teaching in November of 2005. The bulk of that has involved getting my head wrapped around it. For whatever reasons, I haven't done that very well up to this point. I think it is likely because I was just so used to running on adrenaline and someone else's structure and organization, in the past, and that these last two years have involved, more than I've experienced in my life, the responsibility to create the structure and provide the organization that I have taken for granted that others have provided for me in the past. I also think is is likely because I was really smart in college and high school and could always get by without it, alright (though this was my most serious challenge all 12 years of my post-secondary experience). And I also think that I was genuinely engaged in more rigorous intellectual thought substantially enough that organization and time management and other such skills seemed kind of mundane and boring.

But mostly I think it is because it has only been in my post-graduate school period of my life when I have much more seriously thought about limits of time and energy and other kinds of limits that presuppose the need for organization, time management, and the such.

But if there is one thing I have learned this year it is that organization is one of the most important skills that a teacher brings to structuring a learning environment and learning experiences for kids, who do not and cannot offer such skills, and which they need to be successful and to learn the lessons they need to learn about how they use their time and engage their efforts and the consequences this has for their learning. And special education, in particular, is a sea of bureaucracy and red tape that must be organized to keep all of the paperwork straight.

I failed to do that well enough and my bosses found someone who could do it better, which is exactly what they should do, in retrospect.

I do think that my other qualities - my intelligence, my people skills, my positive attitude no matter the circumstances and the persistence and determination that come with it, and the fact that I think I genuinely care about a lot of kids that a lot of folks find it very easy to give up on - I think these qualities are likely more important qualities than organization alone. And I also very much resent how aggressively I was treated by my principal and assistant principal this year in ways that completely shut me down, at times, making it difficult to recover emotionally enough to complete the very work that I shared a very strong commitment to. Their treatment was clearly counterproductive.

But the bottom-line is that I failed and my organization was not up to the task.

My principal has a job to do. And part of it means looking after the school around this paperwork and all of the legal and bureaucratic issues that it touches. I think it's a classic case of CYA overwhelming the central mission of a school or an organization. But it's not my call to make.

I failed with a lot of good faith and strong effort and long hours and nights and weekends. And I did it working my damndest to get my head and heart wrapped around all of the challenges that I was facing this first full year of teaching.

But the bottom line is that I failed and my principal brought in someone who could do the job better.

Failing in private is difficult. Failing in public is one of the hardest things I've ever been through. It's really tough watching everyone give you looks like they have to keep their distance for fear of facing the same fate, especially friends. And its really difficult watching everyone give you looks like they told you so and people condescending who haven't give a scintilla of the same effort or thought you've given to both what will make organizations and schools function more effectively and have not a clue what your own experience was with a strategy they are justifying and romatincizing. If there is any reason at all for me to not trust more aggressive strategies to accomplish results with people it is that that strategy both failed so miserably with me and it completely undermined my ability to do a stronger job. All of the intimidation just made a job that was already overwhelming and intimidating enough all that much more intimidating and overwhelming. I have a tough exterior like a lot of folks. I don't like to show when I'm feeling overwhelmed or intimidated. But I felt it enough this year trying to do my best when my weaknesses were all out for everyone to see.

But the bottom line is that I failed. It is something that I will spend my entire summer working to make sure never happens again. And I am working extra duty to make sure that my paperwork is as clean as possible for the guy taking over for me next year.

I know the guy they've hired to take over for me, next year. I like him. He's a good guy and a good teacher. He'll be good for the kids. And I want him to succeed next year.

I have to get out of here before the janitors string me up. They hate it when I stay so late:). But I'm bound and determined to set the next teacher up well as I move on to next position.

Love,
Ben

Laws, judgment, and our honest motivations

Shankar Vendantam has an excellent article in the Washington Post, today, that very much gets to the heart of the current period: getting revenge.

Are we judging actions, or the people behind them?

Shankar is right when he says that when we identify with others, we tend to cut them slack and make observations about their actions without necessarily judging them, personally. But when we see people as a member of an out-group, we tend to think of them as bad actors, not just people who make mistakes.

The wrath that has been brought down upon Don Rumsfeld, Lewis Libby, Don Imus, Alberto Gonzalez, and Paul Wolfowitz is not about constructively dealing with mistakes that people have made. The same folks who have taken after these men - Lewis Libby, especially, since his punishment was much harsher and his crime almost identical to the crime that Bill Clinton committed in the course of the Monica Lewinsky investigation by Independent Prosecutor Kenneth Starr - regularly defend liberals who make similar mistakes. Bill Clinton and Lewis Libby both committed perjury when they lied to grand juries. As did Ronald Reagan, likely, when he claimed not to remember important details of the Iran-Contra affair.

These scandals, and most political scandals, really, are public demonstration of our tendency to defend those we consider friends or allies and to take down those who we consider enemies.

It features largely in both politics and life, including and especially the law, the civil justice system and the criminal justice system, both being political institutions as much and sometimes more than impartial institutions of justice.

The truth is that most of us reason this way. We support our friends. We relish the fall of our enemies. It is not just a matter of partiality or impartiality. It is a matter of the heart and mind. Most people would like to believe that they are impartial and treat all people fairly regardless of their relationship. That is, of course, foolish nonsense, much of the time, despite our pride otherwise. It is something that people tell themselves while, generally, rationalizing whatever sense of judgment that they derive to argue for themselves that they're particular judgment is the most impartial or the wisest or the most reasonable or the most technically sound or the most respectful of the law or most moral or ethical or whatever rationalization that we/they can come up with for why their judgment is sound despite its inconsisencies or the fact that good, decent, and wise people disagree with their judgment.

Judges who say that they reason impartially in their courtroom relish the downfall of political opponents in elections. Supreme Court justices who say that they are impartial interpreters of the law make partisan decisions that favor their positions or candidates as a rule, really, rather than as the exception (Bush v. Gore being only the most stark example that we have seen recently). Politicians who say that they faithfully execute laws execute them as they see fit, including avoiding the execution of laws they disagree with or more cooperation with those they identify with and more animosity towards those that they don't. Interpretations and executions of the law regularly shift in their broadness or narrowness, their leeway or their strictness, their punishment or their mercy, and, by the interpretation of some, their conservative or liberal rendering, depending on the political moment, their political, moral, and historically attuned temperament, their experiences, their study, their relationships, their understandings, their perceptions, their interpretations of the world as much as their interpretations of the law, their religious, educational, class, race, gender and other backgrounds, and every other element of their lives which affect their judgments and interpretations of events and people.

This is and always has been the rule rather than the exception. This is the only rule that has ever really governed how people in power have executed or interpreted laws. This does not mean that they have been wholly arbitrary. They have not. It is the arbitrariness of human judgment that introduced the need for the law. The law was meant as a means of avoiding such arbitrariness and bringing some regularity and predictability in the relationships between governments and people. It has definitely achieved that in great part. It is a very serious progression from periods where more arbitrary rule have dominated. But it has done so not because of the presense of law alone. If that were the case, the law of Rome or previous governments or generations of civilization would have done just fine and no improvements or reforms would be necessary. The arbitrariness of government rule has been largely lessened and the predictability and better judgment derived from wiser, better educated, more reflective, more decent interpretations and executions of law and its relationship to the lives of the people it is meant to govern.

Police and prosecutors who do not enforce laws against adultery or sodomy are engaged in wise judgment, not being scofflaws. Those who commit and committed adultery and sodomy in places where such laws are in place are breaking laws that are bad laws. An impartial interpretation of such law enforcement might argue that they should be enforced regardless of their wisdom because they are the law which supercedes any other wisdom or fact. That would be a bad interpretation, I believe, and I would have very little respect for any other interpretation of such laws and those events, regardless of the argument, I imagine (I'm now and always open to such arguments, but I'd have to hear a very good one on this matter).

Liberal societies have rightly supported and celebrated - at least after the fact - those police and judges who exercised such wisdom in cases where laws were inappropriate. And that is much of the reason why people reason they way they do about the law. Because we all know this and we apply that interpretation to whichever laws we disagree with and apply our stricter interpretations to those laws we agree with. That's what is so dishonest about this current period. It either involves each of us lying, to ourselves and others, about what we really think about laws we disagree with, or it involves celebrating those who enforce all laws strictly in order to defend our pride that laws should be enforced impartially, even if people are hurt or their lives or liberty seriously disrupted or abridged by such reasoning.

Enforcing adultery or sodomy laws is wrong, regardless of arguments of impartiality by prosecutors. The enforcement of the death penalty law for homosexuals in places like Iran is wrong independent of arguments of impartiality of application by prosecutors. And the enforcement of such laws is wrong by any objective standard of liberal democratic values, which are higher values and more touch the purposes of law and government and their relationship to the lives of people and citizens than do narrow and often self-serving arguments about impartial prosecution of laws.

Enforcement of Nuremburg laws or fugitive slave laws or laws imposing death sentences on homosexuals or political dissidents are much clearer violations of those values. But it is clear, by such examples, that it is those values which decent people are more seriously accountable to than to a narrow argument about impartial application of the law. Those who enforced Nuremburg laws or fugitive slave laws or laws imposing death sentences on homosexuals or political dissidents are morally wrong by any decent standard. Those who enforce them are making profound and serious mistakes and crimes against humanity, even if those crimes are not explicitly outlined in or prohibited by law. How could behavior that is clearly within the law be immoral by any reasonable standard of humanity? Because moral judgment, as Martin Luther King and Mohatma Ghandi and Henry David Thoreau understood when they theorized about and engaged in civil disobedience, an explicit challenge and disobedience of the law for a higher purpose, is far more serious a matter than any narrow writing, passage, interpretation, application, enforcement, or prosecution of the law.

Moral judgment, for those who take such judgments and the consciences that make them seriously, supercedes and should supercede the law.

But that is not just a matter of the world of what should be or what is ideally. That is an empirical fact of peoples' relationship to the law. People, all people, make judgments about the law and live their lives in conjuction with the law or circumventing the law as their judgments - good and bad - lead them to do so. All people, no matter their position in society. They defend their interpretations. They defend their choices as it concerns the law. But they all make their judgments based on their best understanding of the law and their lives. Often they do so for bad purposes. Other times they do so for good purposes. But it is those purposes and not the law which ultimately matters and which ultimately carries each day and each decision, including passage, enforcement, prosecution, and interpretation of the law. There not only is no escaping this fact. It is this fact of life which allows decency to guide our civilization, especially when laws are wrong or illiberal or morally repugnant, rather than forever leaving civilization vulnerable to the machinations and manipulations of people like Hitler and Stalin.

It is our consciences and moral judgments which can make the distinction between enforcement of the Nuremburg laws and enforcement of laws against murder or genocide. They are both laws by any technical standard. Nuremburg laws mandated genocide. International law makes such behavior illegal. We make our distinction not based on which law has the jurisdiction or which law is likely to be enforced or held constitutional or be given power by those governing, or at least we shouldn't, though, I'm afraid, too often we have and still too judge laws by that immoral standard today. We make that distinction based upon our consciences and sense of decency and compassion, our liberal values and our moral judgments. We make that distinction because we know, down deep, that that decency and humanity matters more than any law or rule, at least when we are not rationalizing our baser, less noble instincts. Sadly we do this, as well, often with the law. Jim Crow laws allowed such rationalizations to oppress African Americans in the South. Laws against women voting have enforced such tragic gender discrimation and still do so in jurisdictions all over the world. Laws authorizing child marriage rationalize and codify support for pedophilia and the abuse of children in Iran and wherever such laws are in force.

The truth is that now and since the beginning of humanity laws are used to favor our interpretations of the world and are ignored when they contradict such interpretations. There has never been a time when that has not been true, just as there has never been a time when people have not sinned or violated one another's trust. It is now and forever true, no matter the pretensions otherwise by everyone involved.

And the only way out of such arbitrary and self-serving and often destructive facts of our human judgment and how it relates to the law is not a narrower, stricter interpretation of such laws and rules, narrower interpretations being the enduring fact of our less decent, more destructive and oppressive pasts. The only way out of this fact of arbitrary, often self-serving, and destructive application of law is the embrace the very liberal values which are the heart of more moral, decent, and wise judgments about life and the law. Those liberal values tell us to embrace freedom, as much as possible, and to facilitate the self-government and self-determination of individuals, even when that judgment is often flawed, except when it physically interferes with the freedom of others or when legal remedies are the only, most just remedy available.

I've got grading to finish up. But I needed to share why I am so mistrustful of the political rhetoric of the current period and what alternative judgment about this period and law and society I think is necessary.

Love,
Ben

Our need for a stronger discussion

Robert Dallek has a column in the Washington Post, today, that exemplifies a disturbing trend I am seeing in the debate and discussion about the war in Iraq.

Iraq Isn't Like Vietnam - Except When It Is

The war in Iraq, Dallek argues, is lost. All that is needed is for President Bush to recognize this.

As he argues:

"But unlike Johnson and Nixon, who eventually accepted that victory in Vietnam was probably impossible, Bush can't bring himself -- in public, at least -- to admit that success is out of reach. He and GOP surrogates pilloried Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid, a Nevada Democrat, for saying recently that "this war is lost." But even LBJ was wiser than that. In 1968, after the Tet Offensive, Johnson finally understood that South Vietnamese ineptitude, Viet Cong strength and American impatience with the grinding conflict meant that the United States simply had to end its involvement and cut a deal at the Paris peace talks."

The study of history, apparently, from Dallek's comments in this column, creates an ominiscience that stupid people like President Bush and Frederick Kagan and myself just don't have access to. Iraq is Vietnam, if we would just open our eyes. Liberals were right about Vietnam and they are right about Iraq - just as they are right about every serious policy issue is everyone else would just open their eyes or trust their clearly greater wisdom - and what they are waiting for is for conservatives and independents, like me, to face this reality that is so plain to them.

It is an arrogance about the better wisdom of liberals and liberal academics like Dallek that bothers me. Conservatives have it too, especially when the political moment favors them as it does liberals, today. What bothers me most has nothing to do with ideology. It has to do with people in powerful and influential positions like Dallek's acting like there really isn't even a need for more engaged discussion and debate, if we could all just accept their wisdom. That is the reason why liberals are in love with force as a means, today. Because they are tired of people questioning and challenging and disagreeing with all of their wisdom. What they need is for people to finally just do what the hell they say, because noone is smart enough to really be trusted to offer any other credible option.

Dallek has no crystal ball. He has an expertise, that is now and forever limited, in 20th century history and history around President Lyndon Johnson, in particular. He is a good man. He is a very smart man. I really enjoy listening to and reading everything he has to share about Lyndon Johnson that I've read and heard from him. But he is still a man. As is President Bush. As is Frederick Kagan. As am I.

Hubris, the Greeks whisper to us. Hubris that we have finally figured it all out. Especially when we are all engaged in one big political and cultural civil war, today, where each of us is going to finally prove that one ideology or the other has really figured out all of the answers that we need.

I sincerely hope that every student or person I read is seriously skeptical of everything I say and write, because I and everyone else who wishes differently is remarkably full of shit to wish that they or anyone has all of the important wisdom that they might want or need in life. Our wisdom and understanding of the world is now and forever limited by our limited outlook, study, and experiences. There is no way to escape that fact, no matter how hard we might try. Our efforts matter. But they are limited. Now and forever. There is no exception to that very real fact of life.

The arrogance of so many more established and less established people, these days - and likely all days - that they have finally figured out everything that we need to know to make wiser choices in the world is remarkable and bullshit all at once.

This is why we all need so much more freedom to make our calls. Because noone knows for sure what the future holds. Ever. We are lying if we say that we do. We may have wisdom that can help guide us through the uncertainty. But the uncertainty is far more present than our certainty. The more we know, as Einstein said, the more we realize what we don't know. And what we don't know far outstrips what we do, now and forever.

What we need in America and in the world, right now, around all of the issues that matter most in our lives, is a more patient, engaged, decent, humble, noble, committed, constructive, and intelligent discussion about how to deal with all of our most serious issues, including the war in Iraq and so many issues that we face together.

We need more people who take those discussions more seriously, who take the thinking and the reflection and the engagement that makes them stronger more seriously, and who take the ambition that makes our common goals more achieveable, and more understanding when our goals are not always achieved. We need more genuine open-minded and open-hearted thinking and discussions around serious issues like the war in Iraq and so many issues that we face in America, the world, and in our own lives. We need more people who can make better realities of so many of the issues we face and who treat one another better in achieving those realities so that they will be more genuinely achieved rather than all of the lying and ass-covering that occurs with more aggressive, forceful approaches. We need more appreciation for the liberal values that make so much of what we have available to us, currently, possible, and an appreciation for the need to constantly enlarge those values, not to shrink them in the name of whatever cause we advocate for.

None of us are the gods or the clairvoyants or the masters of all knowledge and wisdom that we would all like to pretend.

That is the most important lesson this war has taught me. That all people, no matter how smart or wise or decent or rich or successful or whatever - everyone - are kind of full of shit. Me too. Me especially.What we need in this world is more people who know that so that we can root each other on more, support each other more, know our own shit stinks, and otherwise stop trying to prove, all the time, that we have all the answers or that peoples' lives would really be so much better is everyone just followed our advice. There is noone, no matter how smart or ambitious, who has all the answers. Noone. That is the real lesson to be taken both from this war and probably the most important lesson from history. Will people use that fact to rationalize all kinds of bullshit pursuits or treatment of other people? Sure. Sadly. People use it all the time to rationalize whatever they might do other than be more honest and decent with one another. Me too. Though I try to honest about the important stuff and lie only when it really is the more decent thing.

This world we have full of violence and pressure and murder and mayhem, full of pain and hurt and selfishness, in the name of power or wealth or whatever purposes we might pursue with our more insensitive and indecent ways. It does not have to be this way. But it will take letting go of this cynicism and pursuing more common decency and engagement and non-threatening opportunities for honesty and sharing and thought to make that possible.

That is what made Bobby Kennedy a great leader. It wasn't his policies, necessarily. I disagree with many of this policies and think many of his intentions have likely resulted in counterproductive results. What made Bobby Kennedy great was that he was a political leader who took the idealism and the high-mindedness that made politics purposeful and he infused his speeches and commitments with them. He did not get lost in bitterness and dispair after his brother was murdered. After John's death, he experienced as he said announcing Martin Luther King's death and as Aeschylus once wrote:

Even in our sleep,
pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.

Bobby forgave his brother's murder and he found deeper wisdom in it. It is the opportunity that all of us have to face the ugliness and hardship and meanspiritedness and selfishness of the world and build something better in its place.

And the most serious and important place that could start, I am convinced, is in a more humble, decent, and honest, and unpretensious discussion about our most important issues without a need to figure out who is right all the time and who is wrong all the time because that is most certainly not any of us. Ever. There is no way around that fact.

If there is any more important wisdom that we could all have about this war and about policy and humanity, generally, I think that may be it.

And bringing that spirit to our work together makes for a far stronger discussion and far better choices and support for one another, even when our choices are not so hot, in the long haul.

Love,
Ben

A clarification about freedom and limits

I just wanted to take a moment to talk about freedom and limits and what my work and experience has meant in this regard.

My belief is not at all that we should not live within limits for our freedom. To the contrary, I very much believe in limits governing our lives. What I believe is two-fold. First, that limits that revolve around reason, which are gentler, more loving, and more understanding, and which create as much room as possible for self-determined choices are the best limits both because they indicate to those we are responsible for - children, employees, citizens, etc. - that they need limits and creates relationships and engagement that allow us to spell out, over time, what those limits might be, while acknowledging the reality that they will make choices that exercise their own limits or lack of them over their behavior. Second, that the only real sustainable limits that people will exercise over their lives are ones that they self-govern their behavior with, regardless of what others do.

Long term, adults will either figure out the need for limits or they will ignore them. We need to step in only when people are in real danger. Otherwise, what we need people to learn is having limits for their own behavior and self-governing their choices and behavior. Limits that are based more in reason - in love and logic, as Jim Fay would say - which are more loving and understanding of and sensitive to the need for autonomy that children have and the confusion and conflict they experience for themselves and with adults in exericisng that autonomy appropriately, and where better choices are made freely by people from that reason are the only real sustainable means of governing behavior over the course of a lifetime.

As children grow up, this is the only way that they can govern their behavior as adults that is most reliable. They, generally, are the only people who are in their own presence all of the time. Hence the reason why we emphasize that consciences tell us how to behave when noone else is present. People will, inevitably, screw this up. We are all sinners, as many Christians remind us. But they can only sustainably and reliably learn to live within limits for their behavior insofar as they internalize those limits and the need for them, especially the recognition that without them our more hurtful or dangerous behavior can go on without limits and hurt many people in the meantime. The only sustainable path out of this possibility is people, of their free will, learning to set limits for their own behavior. Parents, teachers, religious leaders and peers, family, and others can only limit behavior for us and one another so much. For the most part, either we learn to set limits for ourselves or we spend our lives constantly testing those limits and making mistakes largely out of an immature desire to test limits that is on-going in lieu of our understanding of the need to set limits for ourselves.

Many people live entire lives or long lives testing their various limits and those set by society. It is a clearly immature way to live life, perpetually challenging limits set by responsible adults around them in lieu of learning and discovering why setting those limits was so important and valuable and why it is important to set them for ourselves.

In the meantime, the reality is that until people learn to set those limits for themselves, no amount of external policing by others will set those limits permanently for them. Either those limits will be internalized by reason and understanding - especially the understanding of the need for limits - or people will either spend lives obsessed with challenging limits, or, almost as bad if not worse, they will spend their lives obsessed with having those limits rigidly in place. Either extreme - one generally considered a more liberal extreme and the other generally considered a more conservative extreme - are foolish wastes of life that miss the point of limits and their relationship to freedom and free will, as far as I am concerned, as people obsess about limits rather than using them, freely and effectively, to govern their choices and behavior so that they can live rich, engaged, contributing lives.

The limits which are most based in reason and genuine concern - love and logic - are the most likely to promote this kind of reasonable self-governance where limits are internalized as an understanding of how to govern one's own behavior and choices so that they can live fulfilling and contributing lives, because fear is a sign of an externally imposed limit rather than a more mature internalized limit based on reason and understanding, especially for the need for limits in life.

So a life of freedom is not at all a life of unbridled behavior. Quite the contrary, a life of freedom with responsibility is a life where limits are more reliably and sustainably internalized, where they govern behavior more effectively, rather than externally imposed by fear and force, which often, unintentionally but counterproductively, undermine internalized, self-governing limits.

I do not advocate, at all, a life without limits. Such a life would be foolish and wasted. I advocate freedom as the most sustainable path to a life of self-governing, internalized limits which are more reliable and effective and more ever-present in the long run. And all efforts to impose limits externally, primarily, waste the potential of people who might otherwise learn and need to learn to internalize self-governing limits which are more sustainable, reliable, and effective for the long term. I don't doubt the intentions of the teachers I work I with. I doubt their understanding of the consequences of adopting a policy that is focussed, primarly, around externally imposed limits rather than working to cultivate internalized self-governing limits based on reason and understanding. More effective schools and more effective parents clearly work, primarily, to inculcate the latter form of limits, while falling back on externally imposed limits when they are concerned they have no other alternative. Less effective teachers and parents rely primarily on externally imposed limits, which limits their effectiveness and their capacity to be more effective, self-governing, contributing adults.

Similiarly, more effective leaders, managers and administrators, and others responsible for the efforts and welfare of others will work, as much as possible, to develop a sense of reasonable, understanding, self-governing limits. We generally call the kind of people who exemplify those qualities and virtues professionals (though their understanding of those limits is generally limited, as well), and we develop those professional abilities in liberal universities and schools which give people the freedom to be responsible for their activities so that they can learn to be more responsible, autonomous people and professionals. Often adults don't learn these skills well enough in college, which often leads to all kinds of disgruntlement on their part with what college did not teach them (which is somewhat ironic since this is a skill of independence that adults and young people must learn to internalize on their own, ultimately, though many teachers and responsible people help along the way).

Our failure to learn this lesson about limits leaves us perpetually lamenting the very freedom that offers us the capacity to internalize limits more sustainably, thus perpetually waiting for someone or something to impose limits that they could never reliably impose as well as we could internalize them. It's a very sad, immature fact of many, many peoples' lives. And it is a fact of their lives nonetheless.

I am learning a lot of these lessons just this year, actually, so I share them as I learn them. I have always known I was on the right track on this question. And now I am sure of it because I am internalizing, myself, the need for limits and how not learning to respect them and internatlize them abuses trust and undermines more responsible, proactive behavior. I didn't want to be afraid my whole life, or forever lamenting my incapacity to be responsible for my own behavior, choices, and limits as so many of the adults who mentored me did. I wanted to be responsible for myself genuinely. And it turns out that to do so means to internalize limits based on freedom and conscience and thought and understanding rather than externally enforced by some external force or authority.

The least possible necessary aggression is the most sustainable way to facilitate the free internalization of limits and to externally enforce them only insofar as all other methods have really been exhausted (and not just rationalized because of more aggressive, less reasonable instincts). As much as possible, we want a world of maturity where people limit their own behavior by their own self-governing reason. And even when that ideal is not lived up to, the reality is that the most sustainable, reliable, and effective way for limits to be set and taken seriously is when they are internalized and self-governing reason. And insofar as they are not, people still have their freedom and make their own choices. The question is will we face this, substantially enough, and the reality of the limits of power and externally enforced limits to recognize the need to focus our primary efforts and setting limits in this more internalized, self-governing realm. Liberal societies are not strongest for no reason. They are strongest because they recognize this need to facilitate more self-governing behavior, and the potential that is unleashed when people and a culture learn to limit their own behavior and proceed to engage in contributions that are most reasonable and valuable, rather than relying on the more artificial, less reliable, less effective, less sustainable, and often counterproductive method of imposing limits externally, which often creates rebellion among those who have not or do not know how to set limits for themselves as they persistently fight and engage passive or open conflict with effort to impose limits.

After a entire history of humanity experiencing largely failure with a more externally imposed route and a 200+ year history of more success in more liberal societies, you would think that liberal socieities would embrace the need to internalize reasoning self-governing values, limits, and understandings, at this point. Too little faith in our capacity to do so, I think, very much like the too little faith that representatives of the British Empire expressed in the notion that the people of their North American colonies could be self-governing. They were wrong, and so are we.

With freedom comes responsibility - especially the responsibility to set limits for our freedom and behavior - is a bit of wisdom that has been handed down from generation to generation among liberal societies. And it is this kind of wisdom that allows us the opportunity to live more self-governing lives, and which is the perpetually taken-for-granted basis for the level and quality of self-governance that we practice today.

If we think about, there is no other serious option but to embrace that freedom and the responsibility that comes with it, both because it is the clearly most sustainable route to self-governing behavior and, almost as importantly, because it is the only real alternative, since externally-imposed discipline or limits is limited in its capacity to actually govern behavior for any longer than any brief period of time. For the long term, we need freedom, responsibility, and reason.

Here is to the liberal democratic world embracing the freedom, responsibility, and reason that are the foundations for their values, societies and ways of life.

Love,
Ben

The debate over withdrawal from Iraq

I am watching Bobby, tonight, the beautiful movie by Emilio Estevez about the tragic assassination of one of America's truly great and courageous politicians, Robert F. Kennedy, which, if you haven't seen it, is brilliant. It embodies so many of the principles of liberalism that inspired me in my youth.

There are three debates about withdrawal of troops that I think matter most to the situation in Iraq.

The first, of course, and the one that is catching the most headlines, these days, is the debate between the President and the U.S. Congress and in the American public over how long they will support troop deployment in Iraq, funding security and other efforts in Iraq, and how much patience the Congress and the American people feel for the situation in Iraq.

The second, and more important debate, I think, is the one occurring in the Iraqi parliament, right now. There are conflicting reports about what the Iraqi government might want. The Washington Post reports that Iraqi lawmakers are backing a bill on troop withdrawal. The Post reports that a bare majority of 138 of 275 lawmakers have signed a measure to establish time lines for American troop withdrawal. The Associated Press indicates that Al-Sadr alligned officials report 144 signatures, a stronger majority.

The Associate Press reports that the Maliki government and its allies, on the other hand, are urging the American Congress not to authorize an American pull-out until Iraqi troops are ready to take over security responsibilities.

Which one of these government representations of the view and will of the Iraqi people should be taken most seriously is unclear to me, at this point. My democratic instincts would tend to say what parliament says goes. But my instincts as a political observer tell me that Prime Minister Maliki is a far better faith political leader for the Iraqi people than is Moqtada Al Sadr and his political coalition which helped secure the legislation to compel an American withdrawal.

But there is another debate about the war in Iraq that I think is as important and, in many ways, more important than the debate going on the Iraqi parliament. And that debate is the thoughtful, empirical policy debate about what would be the best course of action in Iraq given the current situation.

Joe Nye argues that, "[T]o defend this (or any future war) on the basis of the moral clarity of our intentions is impoverished one-dimensional moral reasoning. Whatever the president's motives, his inadequate attention to means and the full range possible consequences makes this an unjust war."

Francis Fukuyama argues that we need to start having "a very different debate from the one we have been having up to now, a debate not about surging and not about withdrawing with our goals accomplished but about how to draw down our forces in a way that minimizes the costs that will inevitably accompany our loss of control.

Benjamin Barber argues that "potential American partners (and perhaps even friends) are being kept at arm's length by a U.S. government obsessed with a losing campaign in Iraq. When the final balance sheet is produced, it will be clear that in failing to win his foolish war against global terrorism in a country where there were no global terrorists until we got there and drew them into the battle, Bush may have also lost several winnable campaigns for friends and allies elsewhere around the globe."

Frederick Kagan makes what I think is the most thorough and reasonable argument, which is that security is a necessary and non-negotiable prerequisite for political resolution of the chaos in Iraq, and that Americans must stay as long as is needed in a situation that we created, whether we want to take responsibility for that decision or not. Abandoning the Iraqis, Kagan argues and I agree, leaves them vulnerable to Al Queda terrorists and Shia (and Sunni) militias who seek a permanent base in Iraq, in the case of Al Queda, and to dominate militarily and politically, in the case of the Shia (and Sunni) militias, which will result in the brutal, needless, and tragic deaths of Iraqis who are counting on American assistance to the elected Iraqi government to provide security.

As Kagan argues:

"In Iskandariyah, I met Major General Qais, the commander of the Babil Province police forces. I asked him the same question, What is your greatest challenge. Without hesitation, he, too, said: Shia militias. The Iraqi police are known to be infiltrated by Shia militia fighters, but General Qais has molded a force that he uses against those very militias on a daily basis. He has survived attempts on his life, and he and his family are under constant threat. They, too, rely on America to help them fight the agents of Iran who seek to defeat us. Across Iraq today, decent people are standing up and identifying themselves. They are reaching out to us, working with us, and fighting alongside us against our enemies, even against the powerful Shia militias. If we abandon them now, they will be tortured and killed, along with their families, by the militias. We will have exposed every decent person in the country to destruction...

...But the most moving scenes were in some of the worst neighborhoods of the city. Our uparmored Humvees rolled through Ghazaliyah and Dora, two Sunni neighborhoods heavily infiltrated with al Qaeda and under pressure from Shia militias. There are few services in these neighborhoods, and IED attacks and killings had been regular features until very recently. We walked through raw sewage in the streets and saw bullet and bomb holes in the buildings. But to my amazement, we also saw children in those streets who did not glare or run or stand dourly as the occupiers passed. Instead they smiled and waved, asking for candy or just saying hello. Even in the worst places in Iraq, we have not lost the children. They still look to us with hope. They still expect us to deliver them from death and violence. They still believe that we will honor our commitments to their parents.

What will happen if we abandon these children? Death will stalk them and their families. Al Qaeda will attempt to subjugate them. Shia militias will drive them from their homes or kill them. And they and their neighbors, and everyone in the Middle East, will know we left them to their fate. Everyone will know, "Never trust the Americans." Everyone will warn their children, "The Americans will only betray you." We will cement our reputation as untrustworthy. We will lose this generation not only in Iraq, but throughout the Middle East. And we will have lost more than our reputation and our ability to protect our interests. We will have lost part of our soul."

He is right about that, I believe. If the Iraqi parliament is expressing a genuine belief by the Iraqi people that American troops should withdraw, then we should honor that desire, I believe. But if that vote is a manipulated effort by Iraqi militias, whose allies in parliament led and secured the votes to pass this legislation, to undermine a more just peace so that they can impose a sectarian and bloody end to this war on their Sunni and Kurd neighbors and undermine a more genuine democratic future for Iraq, then America should think twice about pulling out.

Frederick Kagan is right about one very important feature of this war. As he writes:

"From time to time, nations face fundamental tests of character. Forced to choose between painful but wise options, and irresponsible ones that offer only temporary relief from pain, a people must decide what price they are willing to pay to safeguard themselves and their children and to do the right thing."

America, right now, is indicating a preference for what I believe to be the less responsible option to bring some speedy kind of closure to this tragic war regardless of the consequences for Iraqis and their security. That is understandable, given the more than 3000 American soldiers who have died and the countless Iraqis who have died.

The question before us is not, "Who is right, liberals or conservatives, Congress or the President, Americans or Iraqis?"

The question before us is, "How do we engage this discussion and make this decision with much more genuine integrity to our best understandings, highest ideals, strongest character and most serious responsibilities and commitments?"

Do we abandon a situation because we fear futility, even as many people are counting on us to stay with our commitments in order to find a more honest way through this war? Or do we stick with this situation until it is either clear that the Iraqi government, military, and law enforcement do not need our assistance or until it is clear that they do not want our help?

Colin Powell's comments on this situation are the ones that make the only sense to me. It is Pottery Barn rules. You break it, you buy it.

We broke the situation in Iraq. We are responsible for it, even if we don't feel like being responsible for it. I opposed this war, up front, with concerns about exactly the kind of political and military situation that we face in Iraq today. But I know better than to abandon a responsibility this serious just because it doesn't feel as hopeful as I might like, right now. If Iraqis are unequivocal that they want us to leave, then we should leave. The worst hubris in this whole situation has been our stubborn pretension that it did or does not matter what Iraqis think when, as it concerns Iraq, what Iraqis think matters more than anything else, and certainly anything that we might wish differently given how we invaded their country, without their permission or consultation. Iraqis, ultimately, should decide the fate of Iraq. If they say that they need our help, then we owe it to them to provide it. And if they say they want us to leave, then it is our responsibility to respect that wish and to leave.

I am unclear, at this point, what the Iraqis really want. I want to take the Iraqi parliament seriously, but it is very difficult to do so when the vote for American withdrawal was so clearly orchestrated by the very militias who threaten a very bloody and brutal end to this war for fellow Iraqis. And I trust that Prime Minister Maliki and his government, which have pleaded for American troops to stay, is a better faith actor than Muqtada Al Sadr and his militias and political representatives who arranged for this vote for Americans to leave. I trust the Iraqi government, better, to offer a credible monopoly of force to work more impartially on behalf of the interests, better, of all Iraqis, than the sectarian ambitions of Al Sadr or the Jihadi or anti-American interests of Al Queda. That is where my trust is invested, at the moment. But I am open to a discussion about what we might do next given the evolving political situation in the Iraqi government and, more importantly, among the Iraqi people.

Bobby Kennedy, in the film, tonight, has a beautiful speech that he delivers and that they play after his assassination at the end of the movie, that is appropriate to our current political period, the political discussion, and the decisions we are contemplating:

"To often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force. Too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of other human beings. But this much is clear. Violence breeds violence. Repression breeds retaliation. And only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our souls. But when you teach a man to hate and to fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color, or his beliefs, or the policies that he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your home or your family, then you also learn to confront others, not as fellow citizens, but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation, but with conquest, to be subjugated and to be mastered. We learn at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens. Alien men with whom we share a city, but not a community. Men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in a common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force.

Our lives on this planet are too short, the work to be done is too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in this land of ours. Of course we cannot banish it with a program, nor with a resolution. But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life, that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness winning what satisfaction and fulfillment that they can. Surely this bond of common faith, surely this bond of common goals can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at the least, to look around at those of us of our fellow men. And surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again."

I cannot think of a more appropriate sentiment than this at this dark and polarized moment in our nation's history and in the course of making grave and important decisions about the fate of Americans and the fate of Iraqis whom we have involved in this war that they did not invite us to wage.

None of us are inherently superior to one another. None of us. We are a common nation and common international community engaged in a common debate and discussion about our common efforts in Iraq, the country, and the world. We cannot substitute constructive disagreement and discussion with force, because it does not substitute. What we need is a common discussion of our common goals in Iraq and in the world that is premised on the notion that this kind of nobility may be beyond many of us, at this point in our lives, but it is the responsibility that we share in the terrible and grave consequences that we face in a failed effort in Iraq and in our common efforts as Americans facing our common problems beyond Iraq.

Reason is the only sustainable means of governance and self-governance. Force and politics can persuade when reason fails. But we must neither abuse that trust that comes with force and power when it is not necessary or when it disrespects the consciences of our fellow citizens and fellow men and women on earth, nor should we shrink from the need and responsibility to use force wisely and with the most genuine concern for those whom we protect with it when it is needed. Matters of security, as are pressing in Baghdad and Iraq, today, are those times when force is most assuredly needed. We must use reason, whenever ideally possible, politics, only when reason fails, no other option is available and as a protection against imposition by those who seek and manipulate power against us, and force only when absolutely necessary, and then as least and as little as possible and necessary.

But our efforts must, ultimately, be guided by reason if any real purpose is to animate our thought and actions. We must seek a world where reason, much more than power or force and as exclusively as possible, is relied upon to govern ourselves and one another. And above all, our reason must be used to guide our efforts when power and force are necessary. Reason will fail us. But it will fail us less than brute force alone. And genuine courage and humility must animate that reason which seeks to wield power and force. But that is within our grasp as well. If only we will reach for it.

This is the kind of discussion that we need about the grave situation in Iraq, currently. A thoughtful, reasoned, engaged discussion and debate, which acknowledges honest disagreement and seeks to engage dialogue about how to account for genuine concerns so that our most thoughtful, reasonable policices can be adopted, and if those policies fail, to discuss what more reasonable options we might face next.

That is the debate and discussion about the war in Iraq that needs to be taking place, right now. A reasonable debate among reasonable people with reasonable differences facing common problems and with common faith, common goals, and common humanity that seeks policy options that we can only hope can protect Iraqis and honor our commitments to them.

That is the debate and discussion we should all be most focussed on. And to the degree that this is where we are focussed, then more reasonable options will be proposed and adopted, and, as importantly, chosen in future rounds of policy discussion, where future choices can be animated more by thoughtful and reasonable understanding and options rather than by propaganda, power, or force.

This is the debate that would honor America and Iraq, and be worthy of Americans and Iraqis engaged in common aspirations for a free and democratic Iraq.

May we be wise enough to choose such a course, and approach this standard as we face our reasonable options for resolving this tragic war. I can only hope that we will choose such wisdom.

Love,
Ben

The principal and the girlfriend

I have finally had an experience that once and for all puts my ill-fated romance with Brandi Fisher behind me. All because I had a principal who was just like her.

Freda Ogburn and Brandi Fisher are very much alike. They are both smart, very charming, committed, idealistic in their own way, and completely full of themselves. You don't achieve the way that Freda or Brandi achieve and be completely self-centered. The most self-centered members of the human race are frequently in jail or terrorists or gangsters or the prevailing despot in some sad country likely romanticizing their authoritarian ruler. Freda and Brandi are not despotic rulers, thankfully, because they would be the most intolerable despots, always wanting people to like them even as they ran roughshot over them.

Freda and Brandi are both relatively smart women with lots of charm who are too tied to what people think about them. I've always said this about Brandi. And the same is definitely true of Freda. They are smart, charming people - people better suited for politics - who are far too concerned with what people around them think about them. It is only with some distance from that that it is easier to see what a powerful and yet somewhat dangerous position that is for people. Bill Clinton very much had that quality. I've said in the past that Bill was the likely the best President of the 20th century. I don't know if that is true with some distance from my stronger identification as a liberal, but there is certainly a strong argument to be made, I think, that he had many of the qualities of a stronger quality President at the end of the 20th century that other Presidents have lacked. Clinton's remarkable intelligence and more genuine heart were his two strongest qualities, I think.

George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan each had qualities that were unique to them that I appreciated. Reagan's willingness to speak honestly and unequivocally about the need for Communism to give way to democratic norms was a very important quality he brought to the Presidency, as was his commitment to smaller government and a free market, even as he and Democratic Congress' repeatedly enlarged the government in all of their favored arenas. Knowing Reagan's charm and his level of intelligence, he likely too, among conservative Presidents, had this quality of being very sensitive to popular notions, good and bad, and sticking closely to popular winds. I would want to spend more time with studying Reagan to say that with more confidence.

But Freda and Brandi are most definitely of this ilk.

And I realize, after a year of it with Freda Ogburn, there is no way that I could have stayed in love with someone like that. Freda and Brandi are both very likeable. But, over time, I would become skeptical and disappointed with the tendency to use charm to keep pace with popular winds and constantly worrying about what others think about them rather than acting out of conscience. Bill and Hillary Clinton seem subject to this temptation, right now. It's a very disappointing spectacle to watch, frankly.

It was Freda's and my most serious disagreement. I believe and said that conscience should be our more serious guide. And Freda, reacting to and reflecting the political moment, which just so happens to be a liberal moment, argued that it was the law and not conscience which should guide us most seriously. And over the course of a year of that conversation it became much clearer to me just how Hitler was able to do all that he was able to do in Germany. Because people will get lost in the zeitgeist and inevitably confuse it with something more substantial.

It is an argument, of course. Just as Communism versus democracy was an argument, Nazism versus democracy was an argument, slavery as moral or immoral is an argument, and every single important moral question that we have faced is an argument. It is also an argument with serious consequences that seriously hurts and disrupts the lives of others for the sake of argument. It is the heart of serious wealth inequities, as political and economic zeitgeist's lead to people treating one another as pawns in a game of maximizing profits (even as real profits are maximized with more attention to the sounder fundamentals and integrity of businesses, meeting customer needs and satisfying customer desires, and using profits to reinvest and pay dividends to investors). It is an argument with serious consequences for our culture, as baser, more popular, more aggressive and less intellectually taxing insticts get rewarded in a culture that appeals to the lowest common denominator, as Mike Judge powerfully lampoons in Idiocracy. And it was an argument at the beginning of the 20th century which Nazis won for a period of time that allowed them to murder 6 million Jews and countless Europeans and Americans and other foes. And it was an argument during the course of the 20th century that Communists were winning in many countries which allowed them to murder and imprison millions of Soviet citizens and people all over the world in the name of revolution.

And the truth is that I could not live my life with someone who would perpetually rationalize the political moment for her own or her own ideology's gain and treat people like me like shit and sacrafice people like me in the process. I have given up on defending any ideology that rationalizes this way. And I could never live the rest of my life with someone who would perpetually rationalize their way through life, this way. I don't care how much money they make or how much political clout they achieve this way. It's meanspirited and its bullshit and there is no way in hell that I could stay in love with someone who operated this way. And I could never stay in love with someone who believed that she could find happiness in that kind of situation and without more accountability to more substantial integrity in life.

I like people like Brandi and Freda. But I don't respect that way of thinking. And I can't respect the cowardice in the choices that each of them have engaged during this period.

I need someone in my life with more courage. I've not met her yet. I don't know many women or men, for that matter, with the kind of courage that I've found in myself during this period. But I very much want to find that woman and learn from her and for her to learn from me and to develop a relationship of love that can last long past the initial romance.

I had that kind of love for Brandi. But like my love for poor people and public schools and modestly funded schools, in particular, it was blind. Blind love isn't mature love. And mature love is the kind of love that I want to have myself, my wife, my life, and for everyone, poor or not.

This period of my life has finally put Brandi behind me. Because I realize that as sweet and beautiful our little college romance was, the kind of love I'm looking for is one that can and will stand the tests of time, independent of my or her fortunes or fears. I want to love someone and be loved for real, in good times and in bad, with eyes wide open to our flaws as well as our strengths.

Freda and Brandi both have other important qualities in common. Their charm creates loyalty that can be a bit blind. And neither of them likes criticism.

I inspire loyalty. But I am happy to say that it is rarely blind. I actively solicit people's thinking about my flaws. Because I want to know about them. So I can address them. I'm sure I'm still blind to many of my own flaws. Aren't all of us. But I try to face them actively. So I can do a better job of addressing peoples' concerns.

But neither of those qualities are ones that can substitute for an acknowledgement of each of these woman's most important flaw: neither takes intelligent thought nor engagement nearly serious enough and both of them think sticking close with what others think is the right thing to do is some kind of substitute.

Both could be aggressive. Brandi was aggressive, though had no power over me in any serious way. Our aggression was between two equals, and we both gave as well as we took. Freda is the most aggressive boss/administrator I have ever dealt with, though I think largely because of a romanticized aggressive liberal political period that she, like so many liberals, are caught up in the zeitgeist around. She didn't start out that way. She started out like Brandi. Charming, sweet, supportive. But she grew more aggressive as my first full year unfolded. And it was one of the single-most miserable and counterproductive experiences of my life. And I have not once heard an apology for her behavior. And for that she and the liberals and aggressive teachers who egged her on can fuck off, as far as I am concerned.

I am finally over Brandi. And I have absolutely zero romantic attachment to schools in poor and middle class neighborhoods, anymore. Like Palestine, if you want progress in your schools and neighborhoods, then liberalize and build that progress. You want to muscle your way to progress, good fuckin' luck and you can do it without me.

And anyone who puts power or money or ambition or any of those things above being decent in the world could never ever be the person that I would want to work for nor spend a life with.

I need more substance than that. I need someone who impresses me because she knows how to have life that is ambitious and independent and thoughtful and not dependent on what others think of her. I need someone more like me, and someone who can nicely help me see when I'm full of shit when I need to see it. I need someone I can genuinely count on and not just someone who counts on the popular winds to guide her and me. I need someone who I can trust.

Love,
Ben

Bitter

I think this is the most bitter I've ever felt in my entire life.

I've been through a lot of shit in my life. But I don't know that I've ever felt this bitter. At least openly. It's the no win part of it that is killing me, right now.

I've got to get over this because this is no way to live.

This is why we forgive.

Love,
Ben

Dumb and arrogant

You know, an alternative to all of this writing I've done has occurred to me.

Maybe I'm just kind of dumb and arrogant.

All kinds of good reason for me to think so. I have been kind of stupid financially. I've been kind of arrogant in my youth, no matter which way you cut it. I don't seem to have any of the aspirations for money or power or prestige that other ambitious folks have. I'm constantly talking like I know more than I really do and then I learn something different the next day that changes the way I look at things. I can't seem to hold down a job. I'm constantly getting in trouble. I've been in trouble with the law more than I would like to admit. For someone who is politically-minded, I'm more open about my life than most people would find tolerable or that most political people would find safe. I'm a teacher, which no sane person would choose to be, and I'm a special ed teacher, to boot, which means that I spend most of my days with kids who don't particularly like school, much of the time, or, if they do, they aren't as interested in intellectual pursuits as I am. I'm a stupid fuckin' martyr is what I am.

So maybe I'm just kind of dumb and arrogant and not honest enough with myself about that. Plenty of good reason to think so. Better to acknowledge it, for me and for my kids, than to pretend otherwise.

I'll be thinking about that.

I entertain all alternatives. Or at least I pride myself that way. Maybe I'm just a hick and a dumbass with too much education. I could easily name a dozen people who would agree.

Maybe I've just been too arrogant to admit it.

One thing everyone agrees on: I talk too goddamn much.

Love,
Ben

Respect and skepticism for authority

It's so ironic.

I both have far more respect for the role of governing authority, generally, and more appreciation for the limitations of particular figures of authority, legal, political, and organized authority, generally, and more of a sense of my own independent thought, choices, and free will, than I had before I began my thinking and writing and teaching work.

I respect individuals. I also respect their strengths and their limitations, with more understanding, today, how their limitations and the limitations of a culture, generally, make it more or less vulnerable to making serious and too often tragic mistakes in the ways that people treat one another and the ways they use government to do so.

Winston Churchill is right. Democracy is not at all a perfect system. Because it reflects the limitations of those who lead it, vote in it, and make up its culture (a fact of liberal democratic existence that liberal democratic people need to better account for in their thinking and behaving in their politics and their dealings with one another). Democracy is the least worst form of governance. What would make it better is a much more humble appreciation for its power and the limitations of those who advocate for it, vote for it, and wield it.

I no longer have any political heroes that I trust without serious appreciation for both their weaknesses and their limitations, and the single most important limitation of liberal democratic countries being the propensity of its people and political leaders to turn to power to solve problems, many of which it could not possible solve and many times power makes far worse for its use.

My respect for the role of authority in our lives has definitely improved over my adulthood. Someone has to make decisions around self-defense, defend us and establish and maintain security. Someone has to make sure that people who murder and rape and commit the most violent offenses are contained while they learn to take responsibility for their behavior and until they can be trusted to not hurt people in the future. Someone has to make the important decisions that affect our lives, especially those that leave us freedom and room to make them ourselves. Someone has to decide how freedoms should be preserved and justice done. Someone has to be responsible for churches and schools and universities and all of the places where we learn our most important values. Someone must do this work to make the strongest liberal democratic life possible available to all of us.

The irony is that while my attitude about these things has changed, my trust for authority figures has also waned. I am more skeptical of authority - any and all authority - than I was when I was younger. I see better its limitations and the limitations of individual authority figures. I am more aware of the self-righteous and polarizing tendencies of those who seek power, and the ways this undermines a more genuine, honest, broad-minded, empirical, and decent vision of the world, and how that undermines their capacity to make wiser judgments. I am more aware of the small-minded and futile tendency by so many to turn to authority to solve problems many of which it doesn't understand enough to solve. I am more aware of how arrogant those with authority and power can be, including myself, assuming that they can or should solve more problems than they actually can or should with their authority and power.

I am more aware of just how arrogant we all are, these days. I see better the limitations of myself and others to solve problems that they don't really have genuine solutions for because they haven't figured them out, as of yet.

And I have much, much more respect for those who engage in the rigorous and difficult task of trying to figure out solutions to our most serious problems, not just out of civic duty but out of a decent sense of self-interest that solutions to problems should be real and sustainable and not just popular in the moment.

That is what I respect about serious thought most. I respect that it looks beyond the immediate moment and looks to a time when popular notions of expended themselves because they have failed, sufficiently, to persuade those who use them to look to better solutions.

It is tragic that so many of the failures in humanity's history involve death, imprisonment, unnecessary pain and poor treatment, and inequitable and unfair treatment of so many people. It is more tragic that we so often fail or wait so long to finally take responsibility for this treatment of people.

But the hope of liberal democratic societies, especially, and of humanity, generally, is that it eventually gets these things figured out. Because we have failed substantially enough to lead us to reevaluate our path and reconsider our direction and our choices.

Sadly, as an empirical fact, we have always have freedom. Free will, after all, is the basis for moral responsibility and the foundation for every faith, religion, and moral, legal, and political institution that we have originated. The tragic part of that fact is that we have, so often, abused that freedom and used our own freedom to limit that of others, often to validate some form or another of some self-righteous notion of how the world should be, even if the merits of the debate warrant more appreciation for our freer and responsible thought to resolve many issues. It does not, always, which is what makes us so skeptical that it might. And yet there is no substitute for that thought, no matter how much we might look elsewhere. It really doesn't matter how much we try to substitute force for thought. It just could never ever replace it, because force cannot think through a solution like thought can.

And I am much more skeptical for the ability of authority and authority figures to solve more problems than they are actually capable of solving, anymore. And I am quite convinced that many uses of force make those problems far worse, ironically and tragically.

And yet we invest our confidence in it, here at the beginning of the 21st century, even as it fails us. Because facing that failure leaves us vulnerable to a notion that I suppose scares us or that we just can't bring ourselves to believe: that our existences are either won or lost by our thoughts, our consciences, our commitments, our efforts, our courage, our love and respect for one another, and our capacity to use those to solve our problems more effectively. Nothing else will save us. And anything else that might doom us is subject to solution only insofar as our thoughts and consciences and commitments and efforts and courage and love and respect and capacity for problem solving bring those solutions into our lives.

Maybe that scares us. Maybe we just haven't thought about it long enough to realize this. Maybe we've just created our own trap by making one another too nervous or scared to have discussions that might think our way out of our present problems that more fear and threats and sanctions will certainly not solve. Maybe we just foolishly believe that all that force and aggression really always has made the difference. Maybe, as Mike Judge lampoons, we are just too stupid or cowardly to face our limitations in this and most arenas.

I don't know, is the truth. Maybe it's all of these things. Maybe it's our failure to appreciate any of them enough. Maybe it's our pride that we don't need such wisdom, and that all we really need is a strong hand and a clear set of rules. It's the same pride that has animated humanity far longer than historians have kept track of that history.

And this question, this question of the role of authority, has problably plagued us more than any other question that we faced in that long, long history.

We do seem to get it more wrong than right most of that time. And yet we persisently pride ourselves as getting it more right than we ever really have. That is true both in terms of governance of one another and in terms of each person governing himself or herself. We peristently rationalize and romanticize that we have governed ourselves and one another far more effectively and decently and respectfully and without harm than we really have.

And the reason why I respect historians and social and political scientists and other students of human history and nature is that they are, generally, the most honest assessors of humanity's more honest and genuine history and nature.

There isn't a consensus among historians and social and political scientists that authority should be approached with skepticism for no reason. It is the clear and abiding consensus because authority so frequently fails us. And we so frequently fail our leaders and our values, including respect for the law and the purposes of the law and our own aspirations with the law and with one another that it is the saddest irony of history that we perpetually come back to an affirmation of the infallibility of our use of authority that ultimately undermines respect for its use.

It's the strangest and most paradoxical fact of human history and existence, I think. And, yet, it is so. Political polarization and efforts at forced religious, political, and legal conversion inevitably are the lightning storm that remove the ground for authority, end in failure and the slow unravelling and entropy of authority's credibility and result in a rethinking of our cultural values. Our ground is found in our solid relationships between people and our better ideas for how our most important problems can be resolved. And power can sometimes serve those efforts. But its use beyond its limitations cannot sustain our confidence because it so clearly fails to resolve the problems we want it to resolve. Many people profess a belief in God or religion to provide divine intervention into their problems. But they generally look for God or religion to be solutions they often cannot be, as a matter of empirical fact, rather than questioning whether they are right or wrong about that fact. Power works similarly. Wealth also works similarly. And yet, no matter how much these paths fail to offer solutions that people want, they still seek them, because the central mistake or distortion continues to fail them. Greed does not sustain wealth, and yet people are tempted by it because they become convinced that it does or that it might. And, similarly, power does not sustain the values of a culture, and yet people give into that temptation regularly as a fuction of their fears rather than as a function of their more genuine faith.

My respect and skepticism for authority, I suppose, must derive from a respect for the institutions and the individuals that are responsible for it despite my skepticism for this flaw and so many mistakes of judgment that individuals, institutions, and even cultures are subject to in the course of humany history. The idea that freedom and liberal values can be replaced by force as the guiding principle that animates human socieities and liberal democratic societies, in particular, is a very sad and serious mistake indeed, and our most serious failure of conscience, during this political moment and over the entire course of human history. It is the mistake by humanity that has needlessly cost the most lives, oppressed the most people and repressed the most freedoms, created the most cynical realities of human life, and is responsible for the most unnecessary tragedy that the world has ever witnessed.

It's captivation of our hearts and minds wanes. Slowly. Too slowly. And yet it wanes.

Because there is no replacement for more genuine and committed thought to solving problems. Everything else is fiction and fantasy.

And no culture could survive long whose penchant for fiction and fantasy ignored the patent reality that our most important human endeavors and institutions are founded and sustained ultimately on thought, and with aggression and force subject to that thought and the wisest engagement of that thought.

How much wiser and less tragic would we be if so many more of us took such thought more seriously. We would all be wiser and better served by that world, even if we would not all be equal on every matter of merit, but where we could all benefit from the varied and diverse merits of one another. We would all benefit where a world of merit rather than a world of politics and power held sway in the world. And God knows we would have much better quality lives as a consequence.

That is the life I seek. I can only hope that I can find it or see the way toward creating it.

Love,
Ben