Thank goodness

President Bush Commutes Libby's Sentence

And fuck the Huffington Post and Democrats in Washington for their bloodlust in this case.

I can't stomach this godforesaken political era anymore. Is cynicism and revenge the only prevailing values in Washington and America these days?

And if so, why in the world would Washington and America think that they have earned the right to lead the world? And why would Washington believe that Americans would or should look to Washington for leadership?

Perhaps our lust for power has so blinded us to decency that we can't tell the difference anymore.

One thing is for sure. Cynicism does not grow anything. So eventually Americans and the world will have to look to where they can find ideas with which they can lead their lives as they discover that they cannot count on Washington to lead their lives.

Thankfully, there are too many signs that they are looking beyond Washington to lead their own lives to ignore. Those close to power may miss those signs in their efforts to rationalize it. But its pretty clear that this last gasp for force and power to rationalize itself as decency and better ideas for living will not outlive the next generation.

The great part about working with young people is having an ear to how they think about the world. And one thing is for sure: force will not be the governing philosophy of Americans for very long. Ideas about governing and the use of force will be necessary. But force as a blunt tool has lost much serious support among average people, in my experience, especially young people, during this period. Which is to their credit. George Orwell would be proud.

And the most hopeful fact that arises out of that trend is that people may then begin to try to do what they have needed to do all along: to lead their own lives, independently and together, without looking to Washington, government, or anyone beyond their own developing judgments and consciences, independently and together.

And that is a future that might transcend the moral and intellectual bankrupcy of power and its obsession in Washington D.C., which this convinction was a function of much more than anything good or decent.

We can only hope that it signals a better, more honest and genuine liberal democratic future for America. But, in the meantime, it means something almost as meaningful. It means that a decent man doesn't lose his freedom.

Love,
Ben

The tragic consequence of our romanticism of the law

Radley Balko writes in Reason magazine about the most tragic consequence of both our romanticism of the law and the most recent moral panic we've experienced around sex and sex crimes.

Blinded by the Law

A 17-year-old boy, Genarlow Wilson, is sentenced to 10 years in prison for oral sex with a 15-year-old girl at a New Year's Eve party. The sentence was overturned. But the prosecutor will appeal arguing, "It is my responsibility to follow the laws of Georgia as they are written, not how some may wish they were written."

As Balko argues:

"In other words, as the Charles Dickens character Mr. Bumble famously proclaimed in "Oliver Twist," "the law is a ass." And it's Thurbert Baker's job to slavishly follow that ass wherever it may lead.

That, unfortunately, is an increasingly common sentiment among many prosecutors-"I don't make the laws, I just enforce them." It's also not entirely honest.

Prosecutors have enormous discretion in when and how and against whom they bring charges. They can overcharge and pressure the defendant to plea bargain. They can undercharge if they feel there are mitigating circumstances associated with the crime. Or they can determine that despite the fact that a crime has been committed, in the interest of justice, charges ought not be brought at all.

What's more, every prosecutor's office battles with limited resources. A prosecutor can't possibly enforce each law against each person who breaks it. So prosecutors set priorities. And in choosing which laws they will enforce vigorously and which laws they will let slide, they make public policy.

It's entirely appropriate, then, for citizens to question those policies.

So why were the charges against Wilson brought in the first place? Why would Wilson's prosecutors choose to pursue a charge of "aggravated child molestation"-a law clearly aimed at pedophiles-against a teenage boy who had consensual oral sex with a teenage girl? And why would Georgia's attorney general continue to expend taxpayer resources to ensure that Wilson stays in prison?

Part of the answer may lie in the crime's sexual nature. Whether because of latent Puritanism, moral panic or the media's infatuation with them, prosecutors seem particularly aggressive in prosecuting sex crimes. This, of course, is what we want when talking about actual sexual predators. But that clearly is not the case here. And there has been a rash of stories of late about similar overreaches.

In one of the more egregious examples, in February, the tech news site CNET reported a case in Florida in which a 16-year-old girl and 17-year-old boy were prosecuted for producing and distributing photographs depicting the sexual exploitation of a child. The two had photographed themselves having sex. The distribution charge came when the two e-mailed the photos from the girl's computer to the boy's. Inexplicably, a state appeals court upheld the conviction.

From silly anti-sodomy laws, to prostitution stings, to prosecutions of consenting minors, sex seems particularly adept at clouding a prosecutor's judgment.

More generally, after 40 years of "get tough on crime" rhetoric, many prosecutors and politicians have unfortunately come to measure success in our criminal justice system by the number of people they put in jail. Criminal laws-particularly those pertaining to drug and sex crimes-are increasingly written with extraordinary breadth and reach. Police officers typically are rewarded for arrests, not for preventing crimes. Prosecutors tend to be promoted or re-elected based on their ability to win convictions, not their fairness or sense of justice. Appeals courts, meanwhile, generally focus on constitutional and procedural issues. Only in extreme cases will an appellate court review the appropriateness of a verdict.

From the writing of laws to their enforcement and prosecution, our system has evolved to the point where justice, mercy and fairness often go overlooked. It's no surprise that the U.S. leads the world in its rate of incarceration, and by a wide margin.

Polls show that most Americans think our criminal justice system usually gets things right. Yet we're finding through the use of DNA evidence just how alarmingly often it doesn't. Sometimes the culprit is incompetence. Sometimes it's malfeasance or corruption among forensics experts, police officers, DNA lab technicians and other criminal justice gatekeepers.

But as the Wilson case shows, even when there is no corruption, no lying and no shortcuts taken-even when everything is done by the book-you can still get a result that's far from just.

Traditionally, that is why we grant executives the power to issue pardons and clemency. It's why the Founders gave those powers to the president. As Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist No. 74, "The criminal code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity, that without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel."

Unfortunately, we've drifted from that notion. Today, governors (and the president), loath to appear soft on crime, tend to be stingy with their pardon power, using it more for political patronage or to bestow mercy and forgiveness on repentant lawbreakers than to seek out and correct real injustices. (Georgia's pardons are granted by an appointed pardons board, not the governor.)

That makes it essential that prosecutors choose cases in which there is a clear demonstration of guilt, where the crime caused real harm to another person and where the potential punishment is proportional to the crime. The ability to secure a conviction isn't enough.

In the Genarlow Wilson case, there was no question of the teen's guilt. Yet the jury's forewoman shed tears as she read the verdict. Other jurors expressed regret after the trial, outraged that they weren't told their verdict would result in a 10-year sentence. The point here is that the prosecutors should have shown the good judgment never to have brought the molestation charge in the first place.

Prosecutors need to be more than inveterate slaves to the (often poorly written) law. And more broadly, we need to stop gauging our criminal justice system's effectiveness by how many people it puts in jail. We need to measure it by how well it metes out justice."

That's been my favorite part of this whole period. Noone is responsible. No matter how ugly and wrong the consequences, noone is responsible. Because, as in Nazi Germany, everyone is afraid of the consequences they will face if they do not mete out the consequences that they believe that everyone else wants.

That is one of the most tragic consequences of our romaticism of the law. That it makes cowards of us all, and unwilling to face our own cowardice.

But it is not the most tragic consequence of this godforesaken political period. The most tragic consequence is 16-year-old and 17-year-old kids going to jail for our pride and cowardice and unwillingness to acknowledge our failure to do much good at all with all of this fear and prosecution and bullying in the name of doing good in the world.

The saddest tragedy of the old Soviet Union and Nazi Germany was that so many Russians and Germans cheered and actively supported or said nothing and followed orders towards the ugly ends of those regimes.

And the saddest tragedy of the 21st century is that we are repeating their mistakes out of our own fear and ignorance and cynicism and cowardice.

We have seen the enemy and he is us.

The question is whether we will summon the courage to face our cowardice and the tragedy that it has produced.

Love,
Ben

Dick Lugar and the war

I respect Dick Lugar a lot. As someone who grew up very liberal, in a family of peace activists and poverty lobbyists, Dick Lugar - like Ben Gillam and Mark Hatfield - was a Republican I could trust.

As I get older, and my politics becomes more thoughtful, less ideologically narrow, and more independent, I have more reason to respect Dick Lugar. Because that's the kind of politics he practices. And that's why everyone respects Dick Lugar so much. That and because he's one of the keenest minds on international policy issues on the Hill. And since I'm someone who opposed this war, up front, publicly and with plenty of thoughtful and vocal opposition, you would think that I would welcomeDick Lugar's comments that the President needed to start looking towards a draw-down.

I have to admit, Dick's speech was very smart. Far more thoughtful than the typical boilerplate that fills the halls of Congress. This is a speech you should read, not just read me bragging on it. It is a thoughtful assessment of the risks and benefits, the various interests, a long-term diplomatic and security strategy for the Middle East and Iraq, and a brilliant assessment of so many overlapping and complicated issues related to this war.

I agree with Dick about the constraints on policy that we face and about the need to use diplomacy more assertively and more readily and with more long-term dialogue forums and opportunities more readily available and established. I also agree with him that the most serious and underdeveloped work in the Middle East is more diplomatic efforts that have much more likelihood of earning friends and allies and moderating more the more radical, murderous tendencies of many terrorist groups and winning friends to coordinate military and law enforcement efforts to arrest or, when arrest is not possible, kill terrorists who murder innocent civilians. I wholeheartedly agree with Dick and with the findings of the Baker report and the support from folks like Henry Kissinger and others for a more established, long-term dialogue with Middle East governments and political players around future Mideast policy, especially Arab-Israeli peace.

But I do think that on one major policy issue that Dick is mistaken. I don’t dismiss the Baker report or the need for diplomacy like too many conservatives I read dismiss such efforts for fear that they are too weak to resolve all of our problems associated with terrorism. It is true, as many conservatives argue, that there are many terrorist groups with him negotiation is not likely to be fruitful unless and until they show indications of genuine commitment to laying down their arms. And for many terrorists and terrorist groups, that is not a risk that we should take lightly or pretend that the likes of Al Queda or Hamas or Hezbollah will do so without the risk that military personell or innocent civilians will be used as pawns in game of cynical pressure politics that terrorism is meant to reinforce. Neither, of course, should we take lightly the risk associated with continuing down a road of more militarism that has clearly increased our risks associated with terrorist violence, which has spiked substantially during this period. Nor should be dismiss, lightly, the success of efforts in Northern Ireland to end terrorist campaigns through diplomatic means and the much more substantial steps toward success in Spain and Palestine to do the same, even as those efforts have not ended violence in those areas.

Military and law enforcement efforts will be needed in situations like dealing with Al Queda and Hamas, in all likelihood, and might be needed in dealing with Hezbollah in Lebanon (though there are differences in those situations which make me more hopeful for political and diplomatic efforts to be more fruitful and make military efforts less necessary in Lebanon than, say, with our dealings with Al Queda) as well as diplomacy. Efforts by the Israelis to win support from moderates associated with or responsible for governing in countries that are home to terrorist groups to initiate home-grown efforts to use military and law enforcement in efforts those countries, that respect the sovereign jurisdiction of states and which support the self-determined efforts of populations that live in state-less terrorities like Palestine are a good model of how such efforts might look. Such efforts should operate under the highest integrity – meaning they should seek to arrest and try those who murder for political ends, with truth and reconciliation efforts between populations and within those criminal justice efforts, as much as possible, as a part of that strategy, and kill only as is needed in genuine self-defense in carrying out such law enforcement measures – and should serve as a model of the practical security details that will be necessary to make such diplomacy and negotiations workable.

So, around the broad vision of diplomacy playing a more assertive and necessary role in resolving matters around much terrorism and otherwise potentially violent conflicts between states, Dick and I are in full agreement.

Where I think Dick is mistaken is getting the politics backwards with the substance of this godforesaken situation in Iraq. Dick's explanation for the need for a drawdown was that the country would not support the war into perpetuity, and that the President needed to accept that reality. Meaning, Dick's explanation puts the domestic politics of how long Americans want to support this effort in Iraq above the substantial operational and security needs of Iraqis and a democratically-elected government in Iraq who have made clear that they still need American support, who did not ask for this war and who, all of a sudden, have been thrust into a situation where they have the most serious security emergency that a government can face, without the developed capacity, at this point, to maintain that security, and an American people and government who have basically said, "Sorry we fucked up your country. But we didn't anticipate what a fuck-up this would become when our people supported with huge majorities as we went into this thing. And now that same majority of Americans whose only and most important concern is the security of the Iraqi people that they have stuck with this situation have decided that we just don't want this responsibility on our plates any more. In other words, 'Sorry. Our bad.'"

It's so noble, that sentiment, isn't it? We're such noble defenders of democracy aren't we? And I don't mean President Bush. I mean us. I mean Americans. It's just all so noble, I could cry.

What Dick Lugar said today was, essentially, "I don't have any confidence in this effort anymore. The American people don't have any confidence in this effort, anymore. And we're not going to support it for forever."

Which would be fair enough, except...

Except that Iraqis didn't initiate this thing. We did. And I don't mean President Bush. I mean the robust majority of Americans who supported this war, up front, when it was really difficult for folks like me to oppose it publicly without looking like the biggest pusses in the world and virtually in league with Osama Bin Laden.

And that same mass of noble Americans has now decided, "Sorry bout that. We didn't realize it would be this hard. I know we risk plunging your country into sectarian warfare and genocide - the kind that the very same people who are begging for a pullout are simultaneously and with a straight face begging our government to engage in to intervene in the civil war in Sudan - but we just didn't realize it would be this hard. And while we'd like to help, and we're sorry about the mess, we've got other things to do."

It's all so noble, isn't it? It just inspires the soul, doesn't it?

And Dick essentially argued, today, that this terribly noble - if utterly logically inconsistent - sentiment was more important than the express wish of the Iraqi executive branch (who are clearly in better faith than the Al Sadr-led sectarian Shiite parliamentary majority who voted for an American pull-out for obvious reasons) to have Americans stay until they can handle this situation on their own.

If that government - who is clearly in better faith than any of the other representatitives we've seen in Iraq and represent less than ideal but more noble concerns than Al Sadr or his sectarian Shia representatives in parliament - says, "Americans, we're ready for you to leave," I'm all for it.

But if Americans leave, after plunging Iraq into this insane situation, before the Iraqi government has established substantial enough security that a political solution has enough safety and psychological space to negotiate a workable democratic settlement, and this situation devolves into more serious sectarian warfare and whatever brutal, ugly consequences might come from that, then the Iraqi people and the Muslim world will have reason in the world to look at America and say, "Those are the assholes who threw our country - that Muslim country, for other Arabs and Muslims - into chaos and then bailed and let things devolve into a blackhole of destruction, and wiped their hands clean. Because they stopped feeling like helping us. Oh, and then they moved onto Sudan."

Nothing in this godforesaken political period makes any sense to me at all, is the truth.

FUBAR.

If you haven't seen Saving Private Ryan, in awhile, I recommend it. This whole godforesaken political period. FUBAR. Fucked up beyond all recognition. Doesn't make any goddamn sense.

I don't know if I've ever lived through any political period where I had less respect for the American people. I love 'em. But I've lost a lot of respect for them, right now. Because at every point when they can lame out and choose cowardice over more genuine courage, they take the easy way out. Because it's easier, of course. I've been that kind of coward in my life. I know what it's like to not want to admit when you've fucked up. But as someone who regularly takes the hard route, sometimes the too hard route, I can't respect when people are always taking the easy way out instead of doing the right thing.

And Americans have the gall, right now, to look at the Iraqis and the Muslim world and say, "I know we were all too cowardly to dissent from this war when it needed dissent and we invaded your country because it was the popular sentiment after our country was attacked by people who kind of looked like you, but, really, ideologically, are very different from you and for which there is no substantial evidence (that I've seen, at least) that they were alligned with the asshole who ran your country. And, now, today, I know we are all too cowardly to take responsibility for that mistake and ante up when we created this godforesaken mess for your country."

"But, despite all that. You should follow us. Because all we care about is you and your interests. Oh, and by the way. We're going to force you to follow us, even if you don't want to. Because you've got to agree that we've done a pretty fuckin' marvelous job of leading you up to this point."

It's all so noble, isn't it? Doesn't your soul just sing with all the nobility in America's leadership and the American people, right now.

Dick is trying to address a political reality in domestic American politics, right now. He's trying to acknowledge a reality so we can forge better policy.

But what we need Dick Lugar - above anyone in the U.S. Senate that I can think of, at this moment - to do is not just to acknowledge the reality. We need Dick to lead.

We don't elect leaders so they can pander to our every prejudice and impulse, in the moment. Especially on the big things. We elect leaders to lead.

That's why I don't trust Hillary Clinton. Because at every chance that she has to lead, she panders. At every point that she might show some genuine courage - which involves risk - she hedges and does whatever she thinks the American people want. Hillary Clinton plays consumer politics. What the American people want, the American people get.

And that's why I don't trust her. And that is why I typically trust Dick Lugar. Because he doesn't typically play that kind of politics.

And, these days, what America needs more than anything elss is a leader.

Dick is our best possibility for that in Washington, right now, I think, of the people I am familiar with in positions of leadership.

What we need from our political leaders so desperately, right now, is not people who will do what we demand from them, pressure them, and otherwise bully then into doing.

What America needs, right now, is leadership. We need leaders on this war who will be guided by the most noble concern for the Iraqi people and American forces that we all plunged into this bloody mess and not by more cowardly impulses to do whatever our finicky, whiny, self-centered, child-like, popular moods dictate.

I have confidence that David Petraeus is that kind of leader. I have confidence that Robert Gates is that kind of leader. I have confidence that Frederick Kagan is that kind of leader. I have confidence that John McCain is that kind of leader. And I have confidence that every Republican candidate in the primary will stick with this situation in Iraq, even as they scare the shit out of me with their get tough attitudes on every other question.

I better start feeling some confidence that some Democrats are committed to making sure that we take care of our own mess, here. Because if I don't, I will likely be casting my first vote for a Republican for President in 16 years, 4 elections after my fatal and foolish first vote in my life for President George H.W. Bush over a stronger, if somewhat self-centered President in William Jefferson Clinton.

If we want to do the right thing in Iraq, what we need to do is ask ourselves, "Who in Iraq do we trust most to lead this country out of this mess? And what do they tell us they need from us to make sure that this thing doesn't go more sour than it has already gone?"

To my mind, that is the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki. And I haven't heard them give word that they are ready to take over security without American help yet.

So my vote, and I think the right thing, is that we stay. Even if it is hard. Even if we're not sure, at this point, where this thing is headed. Even if it means a leap of faith that we're having a hard time mustering, right now.

As far as I'm concerned, every American soldier who doesn't want to do this duty should be able to stand down with no shame or dishonor. They should be able to follow their consciences and thanked with deep appreciation for the service they've give their country.

But every man and woman who wants to make sure that the most trustworthy and democratic folks, here, don't get overrun by those with less noble, more power-hungry, and more sectarian and murderous motivations should be supported by the American people until this job is done, which is when the Iraqi government tells the Americans, "We've got it. We'll handle it from here."

Read Frederick Kagan if you want to understand the military and political situation, better, in Iraq, and the specific political realities that American support for the security situation in Iraq will support: a workable negotiating environment for a democratic future in Iraq, a reconciliation process that will be needed to move Iraq beyond the ugly mess that is has devolved into today, and an environment that is more genuinely open for legitimate and honest discussion of what a more ideal democratic government and society in Iraq might look like rather than a democratic compromise manipulated by the military maneuvers of various sectarian militias, insurgents, and terrorist groups for more narrow political advantage. Those are the best reasons for sticking around until the Iraq government says that this situation is under control.

But my reason is a more personal one. For me, it's a matter of owning our fuck-up. As Colin Powell has remarked, these are Pottery Barn rules. You break it, you own it. And we need to own this thing until the Iraqis responsible for the security of their country say they don't need our help anymore.

I didn't favor this war going in. But it's our mess now. It's an American mess, now, no matter how much we may try to pretend that the Iraqi people invaded their own country and just won't get their shit together after all the brilliant and selfless and noble leadership from the American government.

This is our mess. And if we leave, it's still our mess, whether we want to take responsibility for that fact of life or not.

And no amount of domestic political reality will make that larger and much more important reality reality go away. No matter how much we might wish that it would.

Dick Lugar is right to acknowledge the political realities that we face in this war. But we still have work to do. I think every day about joining up in a military capacity in this war, if only to put my money where my mouth is. But I certainly hope that we aren't going to walk away from this thing with me losing respect for the American people because they just can't own up and do the right thing on this one. Because I've faced quite enough FUBAR to last me a lifetime on this war, as it is.

Love,
Ben

A sign of hope

David Broder reaffirms for me that, perhaps, some liberals might have some humility to acknowledge that perhaps, just perhaps, liberals sometimes have illiberal insticts too.

A Victory for Free Speech

The Roberts Supreme Court decision validating Wisconsin Right To Life's right to engage in public discourse about a policy issue they care about was a fine decision and an important rebuke to the illiberal instincts of liberals, these days, when it comes to speech from people they don't like or from sources they find tainted with money or influence they are unduly afraid of.

I don't know if I trust, yet, or not, that liberals or conservatives in established or non-established circles will ever acknowledge their hypocrisies on so many such issues of free speech and issues of freedom, generally.

I do have faith they will do so long after I'm dead. Because it's obvious to anyone not trying to defend those hypocrisies that most political folks have people they identify with whose freedoms they often defend to the ends of the earth and others who they don't identify with for whom they will advocate incursions on their freedoms often seemingly without end.

And it's pretty plain to me, at this point, that the only consistent way out of both this mess of hypocrisy and authority that people have trouble trusting because of the hypocrisy and the many lines of rationalization that it offers illiberal folks - terrorists, despots, secular or religious autocrats, those with theocratic impulses here or abroad - for their illiberal ways - the single most important rationalization for terrorism is that it is a more "committed" - read: stubbornly homocidal - form of political pressure that folks in liberal societies are just too pussy and cowardly to engage in.

And, sadly, many cowardly people in liberal societies think this about themselves, so they romanticize the "courage" of radicals of all stripes who act out murderous plans in the name of political ends. It's all fairly sordid, really, since those who claim the strongest religious or ideologically pure affiliations also often give the strongest support to radicals of various stripes - socialist radicals, pro-life activists who murder abortion doctors, militant environmentalists, Islamic radicals, radicals and militants of every shape and color.

How people who rationalize murder could ever consider themselves moral or right or decent in any way, shape, or form is completely beyond me. But, sadly, it happens all over the political spectrum, in the name of so many different causes.

But the source of so many of their rationalizations is that their more moderate brethren in more established circles are persistently rationalizing more illiberal efforts to deal with difficult issues - pressure politics, the ugliest of political attacks and cynical power politics, the use of radical pressure to warrant "moderate" ends, hyperventalating rhetoric that shuts out more reasonable debate and discussion. Radicals reason that they just have the balls to do what moderates don't have the balls to do. And, too often, moderates will hang their heads in shame at what cowards they are afraid that they are for not joining their more illiberal brethren.

It is the most important dynamic that drives Middle East terrorism, I believe. And it is the explanation for terrorism that is the most overlooked, I think: power. Terrorists want power. Such an explanation would have all of us looking at ourselves in the mirror, which might be why we are so late coming to it.

I've been a more conventional liberal in my life. I've never really rationalized radicalism, because I was quite aware and disgusted with all of the violence and ugliness and murder it wrought in the 1960's and 1970's in America (and long after; the 1992 L.A. riots were a symptom of similar sympathies for revolution and mayhem running under the surface of political life in Los Angeles, I think). But I've known the frustration of wanting a political end so badly - even one that may turn out to be a case of "be careful of what you wish for," since many of the ends in my more conventionally liberal days I am far from enamoured of today, knowing better the limitations of those ideas and liberalism and conservativism and any ideology).

So I know what it's like to rationalize just about anything in the name of being the right ideology with all of the right thinking on any particular issue. And I know what it's like to root for my guys at every point and to root against the other guys at ever point.

I just know from much experience and reflection and thought and engagement with others, today, that it's bullshit, largely because it avoids difficult, thoughtful, engaged discussion of important issues that might resolve problems with more integrity to all people involved. And I want nothing to do with that self-righteous bullshit except to encourage people to come down from their high horses and take some time to take an honest look at so much of the destruction that it has wrought today and over the centuries.

I want us to stop.

And little signs like David's column, today, give me heart that perhaps, one day, it will.

I wonder aloud, all the time, why I still choose to do work that has not really lined my pockets and created plenty of problems for me when I feel so unsure of how quickly people in liberal cultures, nevertheless people in illiberal cultures, will give up all this nonsense.

And the answer I always come back to is that if I had to choose a life where I was rich and famous and had all kind of luxury and celebrity-hob-knobbing available to me and a life where maybe I could contribute some thinking that might help end so much if not all of the needless violence and bloodshed and murder and even the needless incursions on peoples' freedoms, which I think offer all of us the best hope of being responsible for our lives, not because we will do so without making mistakes but because freedom is, in my study and experience, the much more likely route by which people will take responsibility for their lives, and, in doing so, open up visions and opportunities and dreams that can become realities for themselves that could make this world that much better for everyone, well then, I'd rather have a life where, perhaps, we could lessen and maybe remove altogether the sources of the most dangerous and bloody and illiberal rationalizations in the world.

I need financial and personal security in my life, as well, obviously. We all do, when we're not taking for granted what we have available to us.

But my strongest commitment is to a world where my children and my grandchildren will ask me, more, "Why did we all behave like that?" rather than "Why do people continue to behave like that?"

I'm tired of radicalism and the violence and bloodshed and illiberal impositions on the lives of good people that go with it getting truck in Western societies. I'm tired of terrorism and illiberal revolution having supporters that give it political oxygen. I'm tired of self-righteous politics, religion, even philosophy under the auspices of scholarship, dominating and being destructive of so much that is good and needs our appreciation and support rather than our ugly impositions in the liberal democratic world.

And freedom is the most important of these values, because it makes all of the rest of our values available to us, for real, and not just abstractions that we rationalize our basest instincts in the name of. Freedom and liberal values allow us to be more honest with one another, and, more importantly, more honest with ourselves, about who are and who we've been. And, out of that, to acknowledge our failures in our efforts to be better people. And our ability to acknowledge those failures is critical to working toward doing and being better.

Perhaps we will inch forward towards a world where that will be more possible.

Love,
Ben

Good luck

The Washington Post argues, today, that the next step in Iran, after what, to their credit, they acknowledge is the clear failure of the current strategy for the 3 years it has been tried, is, of course...to do more of the same.

Meanwhile, 2005 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mohamed ElBaradei, says the obvious:

"For his part, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, has begun arguing that the Security Council should simply concede that its three legally binding, unanimous resolutions ordering an end to Iranian enrichment have been "overtaken by events" and that it should give up the effort to enforce them."

And the post villifies ElBaradei as "an unelected international civil servant whose mission is to implement the decisions of the Security Council -- and who proposes to destroy the council's authority by having it simply drop binding resolutions."

You know, I have to have respect for any public servant who puts independent, empirical analysis above the partisan whims of either the liberal Washington Post, convinced of ElBaradei's suggestion that "any chance to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons through diplomacy would be lost" (apparently oblivious to the fact that their current suggestion means more of the same strategy that has all too clearly failed, for those, like ElBaradei and myself, who are not trying to defend the failure but just face it) or the conservative Bush Administration, who has tried to repeatedly remove ElBaradei from his post when he didn't give them the advice they wanted to hear on Iran, Iraq or wherever in the world they wanted to dominate events.

This is the same public servant who, a year before the International Atomic Energy Agency he represents won the Nobel Peace Prize, was treated thusly by President George Bush:

"The United States helped install ElBaradei in his job eight years ago, but his refusal in 2003 to confirm White House allegations that Iraq had rebuilt its nuclear weapons program lost ElBaradei the American support he had enjoyed.

When he began openly resisting U.S. calls to intensify pressure on Iran, Washington responded by trying to prevent him from taking a third term as agency director. But the effort, led by John R. Bolton, who was in charge of nuclear issues during President Bush's first term, was abandoned in June when no candidate emerged to challenge ElBaradei."

That's my kind of public servant. And was for the world. Except when his honesty challenged any ideology's sacred cows, that is.

This is all I have to say about this, anymore, for the Washington Post, the Bush Administration and every liberal and conservative who is having a hard time facing up to the failure of force to accomplish your ends.

When you're done failing and you want to face the failure more honestly and stop scapegoating Mohamed ElBaradei for the country's failure to face its aggressive, controlling, and otherwise illiberal ways, there are folks like ElBaradei and myself who might have one or two suggestions to get us moving in a better direction.

In the meantime, good luck. You're gonna need it.

Love,
Ben

Why presumption of innocence is so important

US juries get verdict wrong in one of six cases: study

And this is in the most mature democracy in the world.

The method this statistician used to do this study is both fascinating and clearly logically sound: he looked at disagreement between judges and juries. As he pointed out, if they disagree, one of them is wrong. And they agreed only 77% of the time, meaning that times when they disagree demonstrate a propensity for one of them to get it wrong.

And, of course, the direction we err, in reality, is just the opposite that our jurisprudence and decency indicate that we should err: we tend to convict the innocent.

Sad. And worse is how every conversation I have about law enforcement and criminal justice issues seems to persistently reinforce peoples' self-righteous notions that more people need to be put behind bars.

As it turns out, perhaps the problem with criminal justice is that not enough people trust it because we have not made our criminal justice system trustworthy enough, as citizens on juries and professional citizens involved with criminal justice (or civil justice, for that matter).

Hubris, the Greeks whisper to us. Hubris. That we have more answers than we really do.

Love,
Ben

Forgiveness and peace of mind and heart

I just had an email exchange with my sister, tonight, about some stuff that's been on her heart. She's been upset with me about some stuff and she just wanted to get it off her chest.

And in that exchange, I made some really important peace in my heart that I'm really grateful for.

It's around forgiveness and peace of mind and heart that we find or don't find for ourselves.

I've hurt people plenty of times in my life. We all have, when we're honest with ourselves. It's when we think we haven't that we're in real trouble, because that's when we have and we just aren't taking responsibility for it, even in our own hearts.

And the one thing that has stood out and various times in my life has been, "What if people don't want to forgive me? What will I do then?"

I forgive people fairly readily. So people generally take this for granted with me. I offer up far more apologies than I've received in my life. And while it doesn't always feel fair, what I'm learning to accept is that some people take a stronger route that involves more responsibility and part of that responsibility to be patient with folks while they take weaker pathes for awhile or make the choices they make until they find better choices.

And, tonight, after wrestling with that issue plenty in my life, I'm finding some more real peace around the fact that there really isn't much you can do about how other people choose to handle their own choices, like forgiveness, other than encourage better ways of handling things and maybe talk about the consequences of not-so-wise ways to handle things and hope for the best.

And in the meantime, you can offer yourself and everyone else a whole lot of slack. As much slack as they need. Because it's the slack they're going to need, not just the slack you want to give them in the moment. And God knows each of us needs more slack than others might want to give us but that we need at any given point in our lives.

And it just occurred to me that that issue doesn't have to have to be such a difficult one, because there really isn't much you can do, other than learn the lesson and try to not to screw up or hurt people if you can avoid it, in the future.

The standard of perfection or aggressive pressure that dominates, today, is clearly a dysfunctional one. It involves a lot of pride on the part of folks who don't want to admit how much it kind of fucks things up. But it's clearly dysfunctional, and has undermined many of the goals that we say we want to achieve. And we just won't make any forward progress until we face up to that.

So we all need plenty of slack and forgiveness and love and generosity to get through all of that. Because they are the only things that offer us a genuine way out. Every other way is pretending. And there really is no other way around that.

I've really probably taken a lot of things too much to heart, instead of not enough. It's important to be responsible for our mistakes. But there are limits to that even, as there are with anything in life. At some point, either we accept one another for our limitations and we all share the responsibility for forgiving one another our mistakes, or we all get drug down a little, but particularly those who don't forgive.

And my experience is that those who forgive the least usually have the most to be forgiven for. Hamas comes to mind, here. As does Al Queda. And Fidel Castro. And Kim Jong Il. Hitler had an unforgiving soul. And he clearly had the most that needed forgiving.

Either we offer it and make the better choice and forgive or we don't. And either way, we live with the consequences of our choices. Virtues aren't virtues for no reason. And if you ever have any questions about that, practice a vice for awhile, until you figure out what a hole it leaves in your life. In fact, it's because of vices like bitterness and cynicism and hatefulness that we need virtues like forgiveness and generosity and love. Because we just couldn't make things right or better in life without the virtues like forgiveness and love that make life decent and good.

And the only person who really can forgive us our sins and trespasses and mistakes that we will ever have any control over, for real, is ourselves. So we can offer ourselves as much slack and forgiveness as we need. Because we all need plenty.

Love,
Ben

What the contemporary politics says about us

A.A. Gill has a fascinating, if snarky, column on Tony Blair in the New York Times, today, that has some insightful observations on the current, perpetually, and unappeasingly angry political mood in liberal democracies.

Great Britain and America look to me as part of a larger trend that I've observed, including the rejection of the European Constitution in France and the Netherlands, of an often anti-statist, anti-government mood among liberal democratic citizens (as well as pro-statist, pro-government moods, as it tickles their various fancies), as well as the angry pressure group mentality that has taken over so many of our political questions, this period and for much of humanity's history, really.

Tony Blair, Three-Time Loser

"Hatred of authority figures and rule-makers might all be an amusing part of the national character, the collective DNA — a Falstaffian, trenchant, robust skepticism to be admired, if it hadn’t grown so destructive and so intimidating.

This national knee-jerk abhorrence debilitates. Hate numbs the judgment, paralyzes the vitals of democracy. Revulsion leads to cynicism, which salts the field of open government. Nothing grows out of cynicism. This isn’t the same as the apathy that afflicts all rich, fat world democracies. Apathy can be turned; cynicism is implacable."

We clamor for our politicians to do our bidding. And then we hate them for doing so. We reject more reasonable, deliberative, intelligent engagement for a pressure-based politics that seeks our ends by any means necessary. And then we hate the politicians who accomodate our demands for curbing our freedom or failing to curb our violent or criminal ways or not delivering public services how we want them when we want them because we said so.

He's right. We've kind gone over the bend a little bit, this period. We're grown increasingly aggressive, angry, and cynical, feeding an attack-dog style of politics and journalism that substitutes take-down for engaged and thoughtful debate and discussion. We've given into our basest impulses around power. And then we've pretended that those impulses are more noble than they really are.

We are perpetually and literally fucking public servants and other folks, this period, using them up and then throwing them to the curb when we're done with them.

It's a fairly awful display, is what it is.

And the sad, crazy part is that it hasn't made things better. It's cynicism, which is another word for saying, "We have no vision for the future."

And then we've pretended, to ourselves, that it's all much more noble or more meaningful or more concerned for others than it really is.

It's one long load of bullshit, is what it is.

And we are responsible for it. All of us. Not Tony Blair. Or President Bush. Or any number of representatives in parliament or Congress. We are responsible for it. Whether we want to acknowledge that or not.

The world is a mess, right now. And it is our responsibility.

And the only way out is to genuinely take responsibility for that mess and cleaning it up, not to keep pretending like it's better than it really is.

But the hopeful note is that, in many places I encounter people, today, they are often taking more responsibility for life on their own. There are many places where people are still playing children, persistently whining for Papa Government to fix their problems for them and then railing against the very government that they've invited to be their paternal guardian. Or railing for more aggressive measures in the press or in the government, and then lamenting how dysfunctional the whole ordeal is.

People are kind of stupid and juvenile, much of the time, is the truth.

But they'll grow up. If we give them the space to do so. And maybe if we act as better reality checks for each others' foolishness rather than persistently pandering to peoples' basest and most aggressive, punitive, destructive impulses.

Those impulses are clearly not our most thoughtful or most noble.

But offer people freedom, and I think a fair comparison of liberal societies and illiberal societies will bear out, that, on balance, people will generally be better and more responsible for their choices, and their messes and their lives, I think.

It's not quite as bad as Mr. Gill thinks it is, here, I don't think. People aren't always the most noble creatures. But they'll get more noble the more free and responsible for their choices that they are. I'm fairly confident of that. Abraham Maslow convinced me of that in The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. And I think he's right. And, as it turns out, there may not be really any other choice in the matter, in the end. People generally and often take freedom that they are not given. Repression generally produces rebellion, of one kind or another.

But, for most people, rebellion generally gives way to a more mature responsibility. It's not generally so hateful as it is lacking trust and confidence in authority. And those are much more reasonable issues to take with government and authority, these days and all days, we must admit. Though taking government officials down has almost exactly zero to make that situation better.

Tony Blair and George Bush are dealing with the consequences of choices made that engender mistrust. They are not choices which are dramatically different than similar choices made by past political leaders, revered and reviled. And there is a lot of serious overreaction to those choices in the electorate and in the media, I think. But they're big boys. And all of us citizens are big kids. They and we will be ok. We'll pick ourselves up and fumble forward finding a better path to trust and build confidence in ourselves and one another again.

For all of our alternating role-playing as bullies and victims, we're really quite a resilient little culture, liberal democracies. And it is our liberal values, our love for liberty, that makes us most resilient in the face our ugly political displays like the one we've created this period.

We're children, often. Whining, complaining, temper-tantrum-throwing children.

But, like most children - and all children, at some level - we grow up.

And like most children, we grow up the more our freedom and our consciences are respected. Most sociopaths are raised in less loving, more aggressive households, likely. And most decent people are raised in more loving, more decent homes, generally.

And it is creating a loving home of our life here in liberal democratic cultures and societies and communities that we need to be focussed on if we want things in our lives to get better.

More aggression and manipulation is clearly not the direction of a better life for any of us. More decency, compassion, and liberal values clearly are.

We'll be alright. Because there really is only one direction that leads us to work better, relate better, and live more productively and decently with one another. And that is the direction of more decent, liberal values, which have made us as strong as we are today.

The whole world romaticizes illiberal values, because we want to believe that we are better than we are and that we can make all that bad stuff in the world go away with the simple force of our command.

But life doesn't work that way. Because liberal values are what make us more sociable and decent with one another so that we can accomplish goals together more readily and sustainably.

Decent, liberal values don't happen out of thin air or overnight. They are learned, over long periods of time, in schools and with teachers and with the more decent practioners of those values throughout the culture for much of our youth, our young adulthood, and then, hopefully, for the rest of our lives. And the more such values are learned consistent with our most liberal and open-minded thoughtfulness, the more likely they will be internalized by individuals within a culture.

We can't accomplish everything by being nice. But we accomplish more, together, by being more thoughtful and decent with one another while we tackle our common problems.

And repeated failure with more aggressive, illiberal impulses will probably be the only way that we will learn the big lessons on this the hard way. And that's ok. Sometimes the hard way is the better way. Though finding ways to make our hard lessons learned easier are probably better for everyone involved.

So, I think the better way of looking at the contemporary political mood is not necessarily the angry and unappeasable mob that would substitute cynicism and anti-social behavior for decency and thoughtfulness.

I think the better way of looking at the current period is a period of people fucking up for a good long time until they finally get a better path worked out. God knows I've done my share of fucking up. I imagine we all have, if we're honest with ourselves (which is what makes me nervous about Ms. Clinton, I must say; that she has such a hard time acknowledging, to herself, even, her fucking up).

The better path is in the direction of liberally educated and liberal democratic values. Which has almost zero to do with being a Democrat or a Republican and has everything to do with being a decent, thoughtful, compassionate, wiser, and independent-minded human being. Those people come in all shapes and sizes and ideological backgrounds. And the real work we have to do is encouraging everyone to want to be that kind of person. And for all of us to find more real safety, peace, prosperity, and life-affirming qualities of life as a result of a culture that takes such commitments more seriously.

Love,
Ben

Press, freedom, and power

In places in the world where press freedom is threatened, like Zimbabwe, this is what it looks like.

Zimbabwe Special Report: On a Rampage

The government or other groups intimidate journalists with jailings, charges, violence or other means. This is the essence of an illiberal society using force to undermine the freedom of one of the most important insitutions in a society, a free press.

In America and the West, bizarrely, the free press uses its freedom to pressure and intimidate - public servants, businesses, and other public and private institutions - through public pressure and aggressive investigation meant to take down public figures, whether such efforts serve constructive ends or not.

It's not as illiberal as, say, Zimbabwe. But neither is it the strongest liberal democratic commitments.

It'd be nice to live in a liberal democratic country or world where liberal commitments around engagement, thought, and free, open, and honest expression were taken seriously by its liberal democratic institutions, including the press.

But as long as those more substantial liberal values and commitments are not taken seriously, dictatorial regimes like Robert Mugabe's in Zimbabwe or wherever will be able to perpetually look at the more illiberal instincts and tactics of those of us in the West and say, "I do what you do, but with more force and more conviction to get the job done." That is the very same argument offered by radicals of every stripe in Western countries to their less radical brethren for why force is necessary and why they are the true believers in their various causes.

Is Robert Mugabe illiberal or a true believer? He is clearly illiberal. And so are all of our tactics for using force instead of persuasion to bully our way through difficult issues that need more thought and engagement and free, open, and honest expression.

It's not just that Robert Mugabe is worse. It's all bad. And always will be, no matter how we spin our more aggressive, illiberal ways.

Love,
Ben

A dark turn

I don't know why. But the world has taken a dark turn in the last few years.

Actually I do know why.

Because people are busy rationalizing their fears, their insecurities, their cowardliness, and their unwillingness to be bigger and more thoughtful.

We have convinced ourselves that shedding our compassion is a virtue. That it's a sign of progress.

And we are reaping the consequences from that effort.

And no matter how bad it gets, we just keep telling ourselves, "This is better." No matter how bad it gets.

When did compassion become a vice? When did mean-spiritedness and aggression in the form of "accountability" become a virtue?

Not in my lifetime. I don't care how many times you try to sell me that bottle of snake oil, I'm not buying.

People can bullshit themselves and one another all they want to on this one. I'm not buying it. You treat people like shit, you're not the harbinger of progress. You're an asshole.

Progress is treating people better, no matter which way you cut it.

And pretending differently just makes us assholes until we face up.

When President Franklin Roosevelt forcibly removed 120,000 Japanese-Americans from their homes during World War II, Americans did not see, at the time, what a dark turn the country had taken in the name of its fears. But they had taken a dark turn, clearly, with the light of historical hindsight. And no matter how much Americans clung to the banner of progress, a regressive, repressive, and mean-spirited policy removed hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens from their homes in the name of that dark turn.

Let's hope we face up to this dark turn sooner rather than later.

Love,
Ben

The logical (if racist) conclusion to force as a governing philosophy

I just read the craziest shit that I have read in a long time, today. And a perfect illustration of the logical conclusion of this godforesaken political period.

Australia to Ban Alcohol for Aborigines

It seems our fear of child sexual abuse will rationalize anything these days.

For those who think that force and repression will end such problems, this is the logical conclusion of that position and should be a clear indication of the insanity of this period.

The most interesting sections:

"Australia's prime minister announced plans Thursday to ban pornography and alcohol for Aborigines in northern areas and tighten control over their welfare benefits to fight child sex abuse among them.

Some Aboriginal leaders rejected the plan as paternalistic and said the measures were discriminatory and would violate the civil rights of the country's original inhabitants. But others applauded the initiative and recommended extending the welfare restrictions to Aborigines in other parts of the country."

"I'm absolutely disgusted by this patronizing government control," said Mitch, a member of a government board helping Aborigines who were taken from their parents under past assimilation laws who uses one name. "And tying drinking with welfare payments is just disgusting."

"If they're going to do that, they're going to have to do that with every single person in Australia, not just black people," she said."

"The child abuse report was commissioned by the Northern Territory government and is widely regarded as credible although it attracted some critics. It was unable to quantify the extent of the sexual abuse problem, since anecdotal evidence suggested much of it went unreported.

Conducted by an indigenous health worker and a government lawyer, it found children had been sexually abused in all 45 remote communities visited. The abusers were both Aborigines and non-Aborigines operating in or near their communities.

The report made 97 recommendations, including boosting procedures for reporting and monitoring offenders, and addressing widespread poverty and alcoholism.

Australia's original inhabitants suffer far higher rates of poverty and substance abuse than the rest of the country's 21 million people, and their life expectancy is 17 years shorter.

For years, white men were banned from marrying Aboriginal woman, and mixed-race children were taken from their Aboriginal mothers to be assimilated into mainstream society.

Though many found employment in the cattle and sheep industries, they were paid less than whites, sometimes working just for rations. Unable to achieve economic independence, many have become welfare dependent."

There is no easier call on racism that I have seen in a long time on any piece of legislation I've recently seen. And the paternalism does make so much clearly just how insane this governing logic is.

I know, I know. It's just gone too far. We need to find a better "balance." So what principle should guide us? Keep bouncing between these extremes and calling it all moderation?

Would it kill us to think through what kinds of force and what presumptions we might have for the use of force that we might use?

I don't think it will. I just think we've been been taking a shortcut and avoiding the hard thinking and engagement and honesty with ourselves and one another that an issue as important as child sexual abuse and issues like poverty, alcohol and drug abuse, and pornography deserve.

And this foolish, foolish, counterproductive policy is the logical conclusion of this sad line of reasoning we have been taking this tragic and counterproductive political period.

Perhaps a more honest and constructive discussion is in order.

Love,
Ben

Getting to the promise land

I'm reading this really fascinating discussion, today, in this most recent and brilliant edition of New Perspectives Quarterly and I'm thinking about the world.

It's a complicated world we live in, isn't it?

It's fully of all kinds of beauty and nobility and courage. And it's also full of all kinds of depravity and immaturity and rebellion and far too often it has more than its share of real evil.

What makes it complicated is, how, in the face of all of us, are we to look at some direction and call it "progress"? How do we know that when we move, we're moving forward. Especially in a world where we so often avoid, repress, supress and otherwise discourage the discussions of those things and values that really matter to us in life. In a world where everyone is too afraid of everything, including and especially discussions about those things that really matters to us, for fear that getting upset and getting each other upset is a worse sin than avoiding the conversation altogether.

See, when I read academic discussions about common values and common ideas and looking squarely at questions of right and wrong and respecting peoples' freedom and understanding relative rights and relative wrongs and respecting different judgments and perspectives and I can nod at all of those discussions and say, "Yeah, I can see that."

But a lot of times, I think we make those conversations too complicated. We make them more complicated than they need to be to account for a life that, admittedly, is not black and white. And I don't just mean liberal professors make it complicated. I mean conservative intellectuals make it too complicated as well. And, yet, they try to account for it more honestly and fully than do so many average folks - media folks, political folks, moms and pops, all included here - who are persistently trying to fit oversimplified solutions on so many of life's problems. It's often all they know. And what various intellectuals know is all they know. And, yet, if we're going to find some resolution on the issues we care about, we're going to have to gather some courage and have those conversations in ways that don't try to artificially resolve them with legalisms or "rules" discussions that consistently miss the real people substance of the issues that matter to us most.

Yet, despite all of this anxiety and confusion and the various artificial certainties - artificial because they are, generally, an incomplete accounting for the reality that people want to be more simple and certain than it is - all of these ideas and unresolved problems and the problematic reasoning that doesn't get to the heart of so many problems that people carry around with them, there is, generally, a much more straightforward conversation that people can have about various cultural, moral, religious, political, and other conversations than they have now.

In fact, it's often not the substantial differences that stand in the way. It is usually the strong feelings and the aggressive, passionate postures that we take when discussing the most important issues we face that undermines more substantive resolution of our most important issues. We get passionate and aggressive, and then we often give up on the possibility of having the conversation or getting resolution so we just give up on an open, engaged conversation, altogether. And then we're stuck with the consequences of that giving up and the fatalism that it gives way to. Forceful consequences - distinct from natural consequences and more effectively and less aggressively set limits - undermine that conversation, as well, making it difficult for people to be honest about themselves and what matters to them.

Are there universal rights and wrongs? Sure. Does everyone agree on them or will they forever agree on them, independent of the times? Not necessarily. Sure, there's common, timeless, universal values that every culture holds dear and that can and should be common to all cultures. But those values are also constantly being reevalutated and considered and challenged and updated, as they should be in societies that take thought and reflection and liberal education and debate and discussion seriously (which I will be so bold to say should be all communities and cultures, liberal or illiberal; choose to be illiberal, I say, but you can deal with the repressive and clearly dysfunctional consequences of that choice for your communities and cultures, if that's the case).

Do we now and forever know the consequences of those debates and discussions and thought and reevaluations? No. Nor should we. That's the hubris of every generation, liberal or illiberal. That all the important questions are decided. Which, if it were true, would effectively nullify the very liberal culture that made such a conclusion and the discussion that made it possible. It's a foolish notion meant to affirm our self-righteous certainties in the face of an uncertain world that we're afraid of, to be honest, and that we want resolved, artifical or otherwise, just so we don't have to face that fear that comes with a world that is perpetually uncertain, no matter how we try to make it more certain than it is.

But having said all of that - which looks really complicated, as I look at it - I think we often lose the forest for the trees.

I think we think that somehow because our ideas of how to deal with the various cultural challenges we face are confusing or uncertain - which are often a variation of how much established authority is going to be taken seriously and how much freedom are we going to allow or take in the face of that authority - we make them too complicated in our initial fumbling efforts to find some workable resolution of our conflicts.

Should gays be allowed to marry? I think so, because I take seriously the notion that people should self-determine their own lives and only be interfered with insofar as it interferes with the lives of others. And, even then, we should discuss those interferences before and in lieu of bullying our way through them. Should straight people and religious people be forced to accept marriages that they don't accept as moral? No. Everyone's conscience should be taken seriously, as far as I am concerned. Both as a matter of respect, but also as a matter of reality. No matter how much we try to force matters of conscience on one another, we will now and forever fail to decide questions for one another, this way.

Racism doesn't go away because you fire Imus. The irony of that situation is that the one thing that does have us come square with it - our consciences coming to terms with our mistakes and sins and flaws - got the shit beat out of it, telling everyone else in the world who needed to face up to some racist impulse, "You better keep that shit under wraps, or else you're gonna get smacked down too." It's foolish and shortsighted. And it doesn't give a shit about anyone except those people we identify with. So it's self-centered. And it certainly isn't noble. It's vengeful and counterproductive and it treats people like they are characters in a morality play rather than people worthy of our love and concern and forgiveness in their own right. You don't want to love and forgive, I say, so be it. But don't expect the high ground while you do it. You accept the low ground that you're taking. And the high ground goes to people who say, "Why don't we listen to what Imus has to say and what's in his heart."

But what fucks up these and so many situations is that instead of having those conversations, we just go around scaring the shit out of people to have any conversations at all. And then we say, "See, there's no other way."

It's cynical and it's bullshit. And if the current political environment is any sign, it's utterly and hopelessly dysfunctional.

So how about this?

How about we gather some courage and start having those conversations with one another and stop worrying, so much, about whose going to lose their jobs or who we're going to fire or who won't show up to family holiday dinners next year or which friend just couldn't handle knowing what we really think because we or they voice an unpopular view or a view that offends someone or gets someone upset.

How about we start opening up some honest space for people to start having some honest conversations with one another about the issues that concern us that don't talk around issues the way that too many academic conversations do and yet don't give into simplistic and all-too-certain and self-righteous conversations that too many average folks have as well?

How about we have honest conversations with honest differences with opportunity for honest resolution because we more honestly understand one another and how we come at our differences and our focus is on the understanding rather than futile and fruitless efforts to prove how people are just hopeless or clueless or just don't get it.

And the most important effort we could make in this direction is to face up to some serious humility that, perhaps, on even the most important issues - like the war in Iraq or abortion or liberal democratic values or economic well-being or law and order - that there isn't a single person that does, has ever, or ever will have some foolishly conceived monopoly on wisdom or insight or knowledge or righteousness or any of it.

People are constantly losing the forest for the trees on the most important issues that we face together. They are perpetually taking more seriously their self-righteous notions of the world than the honest and decent relationships with people they care about that are the reason why they care about all of those issues.

I had a relationship with a best friend and then a serious girlfriend that taught me this lesson the hardest way someone can learn that lesson: when you lose the relationship because the fight takes precedence over the people.

The people in our lives are more important to us than being right about any particular issue, when we're really honest with ourselves. And if they're not, they should be. And when they're not, the truth is that such perspectives should be listened to, but then squared back with the people that we do or should care about.

People are what really matters in those discussions and in our thoughts about complicated moral and political issues that we face together. And understanding them, better, and their many various and independent and strong and not-so-strong and interesting and not-so-interesting perpectives on those issues is the surest way to more genuine resolution of so many of the issues we face.

When you know that someone who opposes abortion does not want fetus' or babies to be killed or made to experience pain, and really, generally, just want people to consider and take seriously alternatives like giving birth and adoption or surrogant parenthood or any of the other alternatives available, then it makes it harder to demonize such folks and their ideas about the world. And when you know that abortion rights advocates just want to make sure that women and girls have as much freedom as they might possibly need to make those decisions about their bodies and the fetus' they carry in a way that also has integrity to their own situations and dilemnas, and especially when you know a particular woman or girl facing that choice - like the 12 year old who got pregnant at our school, last year - then it makes it harder, or should, to demonize people who face that choice and are wrestling with their consciences about difficult issues.

Our dysfunctional alternations between a repressed politics that does not express our differences nearly enough with one another, person to person, and ugly periods like the current one, where we try to substitute for more honest engagement with efforts to impose our will on all of those who disagree, are both illiberal and they cannot sustain a more honest, decent liberal democratic discussion that gets us more honest with ourselves and one another, including about our failures to resolve difficult questions by fiat rather than by open-minded, open-hearted, and open-ended discussion that is not always trying to protect self-righteous notions about the world.

We can keep doing that. But the world is a mess for it. And it's not our most honest, most decent, wisest values at play.

And you know what the kicker is?

We, generally, when we take such discussions seriously, find, as an empirical fact of our liberal democratic history, that we have more in common on the most important questions that face us than different.

What we need to do, now, is to start having the hardest conversations out in the open, without accusation or grilling or efforts to play gotcha or get one another. We need to let go of this far too aggressive, ugly mess that we have created with this more mean-spirited conversation that disrespects these questions of conscience that has been led by an overzealous media and overzealous activists and politicians in the last few years.

We need to start having conversations that we know in our hearts are more honest and decent and constructive. They will take trust. And that will have to be built and earned.

But trust built and earned is a far more genuine path to resolution of our most important issues than any imposition, democratic or otherwise, could ever be. It also happens to be a better life. A happier life. And more decent life. A life that respects liberal values better and more honestly. A better life.

A better life. That's the one we want, right?

We'll learn this lesson the hard way. We'll fuck it up and we'll get all heated and fuck up some peoples' lives, sadly. And then we'll be this crazy, foolish, dysfunctional little mess that we are, right now.

And then we'll pick ourselves from that mess. And we'll fumble our way toward something more honest and decent. Eventually. Or we'll be stuck in this mess until we do.

But we can't stay stuck here forever.

We'll get there. A little bumped and bruised and worser for wear. But we'll get there.

That's a promise.

Love,
Ben

We do what we value

That's my profound lesson for the day.

As someone who spends far too much time talking and perhaps too much time thinking (though I really can't think of any better use of anyone's time than thinking), today this was my conclusion.

If you are concerned that you are not getting things done in your life that you care about, as I am, then this little bit of wisdom and common sense is for you.

We do what we value. Meaning, if you care about it, you're doing something about it. If you care about it more than the other things you're doing, that is. Meaning, if you want to see what you really care about in the world and not just what you say you care about, then you might take a look at what you're doing. Because that, apparently, is what you really care about because that's what you've been busy spending your time on.

We do what we value. If there's something in my life I want or need done and its not getting done, well then perhaps that's a sign that I either I really don't care about it, or, more likely, that I need to assess or rearrange my priorities and figure out what it is that I really want or need to do with my time and then do that thing.

It's so simple isn't it? But it's actually an important bit of common sense for a book-smart fellow like me.

Lately, I've cared about choosing and being responsible for my life as a matter of my own free will and free choice. So I've been prioritizing my freedom (and my responsibilities) this summer. But I want to use that freedom for something purposeful. And that doesn't come because someone made you do it. That's what someone says when they really don't care about something, but they're gonna do it anyway. It's also what people say when they really don't care if others care about something, they just want to make people do it whether they care about it or not (a foolish and shortsighted path to change, if you ask me; changing hearts and minds is where it's at if you don't want something to succeed beyond your lifetime and involvement, but I don't even have a Ph.D., so what do I know).

Right now, what I value is draining my organic macaronni and cheese which is undoubtedly sticking to the pan on my stove. And then I'm going about the business of prioritizing my life, for real. Figuring out what I really value.

Love,
Ben

Progress

I've thought a lot about progress in the last 16 years or so.

When I was a young first year college student, I had two goals: wisdom and to be a good dad. I think I found a lot of the former, often completely at odds with my plans, and I hope to be the latter, with enough grace and forgiveness from my children for the fumblings of a well-intentioned if clumsy and foolhardy father.

In the end, I can only offer them the only best guarantee that any father can offer his children. I will do my best.

But the last 5 years, in particular, are a time when my expectations have been most frequently and with constant surprise met with realities I could not forsee. It's been a humbling experience, to say the least.

And it's had me thinking lots about progress.

I no longer naively believe in progress which is authorized by my liberal professors or liberal activists or journalists. That was an innocent, somewhat pretensious, and ultimately wrong-headed view of my youth.

Neither, though, do I hold to romantic notions of the past or tradition or a past or present that is better, more moral, more decent, more thoughtful, or headed in a stronger direction than the current time.

I believe in progress. I believe people generally move in the direction of progress, in the direction of more decent and broadly liberal and more empirically and consequentially better fruits of better ideas over time. But I do not hold to the foolish notion that all change is progress or that progress is inevitable or the monopoly of certain groups or ideologies or even certain englightened people. I am well aware of many of the pitfalls and dangers of that term and the propensity for us to claim it as a mantle in the name of any number of causes, whether they actually produce progress or not.

And, after a lot of reflection and serious, engaged thought, I think I've decided that much progress is created by more enlightened and deeply reflective and considered views of the world taking hold because of the better ideas of life that they offer. And still much more progress is simply the result of much failure and disappointment and unexpected bad tidings that are turned to some better, more decent, more thoughtful, more constructive efforts because everything else has fallen through.

Progress is something that we guide because we have better ideas of how the world should be. And, equally if not more so, progress is something that guides us, as we flail and flounder dealing with the challenges in the world that we face.

We get there. But, often, the promised land looks very different than we anticipated. Oftener yet, it looks nothing like we imagined.

Keeps life interesting, I suppose.

But still, somehow we muddle forward, as often as we create visions and make them realities.

I couldn't have anticipated this path of progress, which always looks like a straight line that just keeps getter better if you romanticize it and chart it on a ever improving line-graph (after you've removed or downplayed every setback and failure or regressive blip).

But I like it better. Because it leaves me more humble. And more curious about what is on the other side of tomorrow.

If I can only get through today.

Love,
Ben

Another reason to like David Petraeus

David Petraeus, the U.S. army commander of the Multi-National Force - Iraq, has always impressed me. He wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on post-Vietnam military conflict. He's struck me as a remarkably humble yet brilliant military leader. And now I have one more great reason to appreciate this very smart military leader.

Beyond the Cloister

Petraeus writes this really well-argued and open-minded case for the need for military personell and officers to pursue a civilian graduate school education outside of military-specific institutions.

It is an excellent argument and an excellent idea to be promoted by the highest ranking army officer in this war. It is with profound appreciation that I can read such a respected and high-ranking officer encouraging future officers to engage in such a serious, important, and valuable experience in their lives.

But then there is this little tid-bit that made it stick that this is the kind of guy that I might trust, more, if he had my back:

"In my own experience, I found the most valuable situations to be those in which exceedingly bright senior professors held views substantially different from my own. I developed a particular friendship with one such professor at Princeton, one of the country’s leading international legal scholars at the time—even though we truly saw the world through different lenses. In the end, we decided that we never disagreed on anything but substance.

I happened to be taking a course with him when the United States invaded the island of Grenada in 1983. Now, some of you will remember that the legal underpinnings for that action were not the most robust to have ever justified an American military operation. Indeed, it later turned out that U.S. officials had actually written the request for American intervention that the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States submitted back to the United States to get us to intervene against one of their own member states. Nor was the action anchored in the most rock solid of ground when it came to traditional norms associated with the just war concept. Nonetheless, I wrote a paper for that professor entitled, “The Invasion of Grenada: Illegal, Immoral, and the Right Thing to Do.” It was great fun to write, and decent enough to earn an “A” despite a conclusion I know the professor did not share."

Now that is a military commander that I could trust, more. That's the kind of guy I want having my back in a tight situation. And it is gratifying to me that a man of such a powerful, legally-bound, and serious insitution could be thoughtful enough to know the distinction between taking democratic rule seriously without taking legal matters more seriously than doing the right thing.

And people who know that doing the right thing is more important than doing the legal thing are the kind of people who I can trust.

Love,
Ben

Taking up for Scooter

An excellent exorcism of liberal hypocritical and vengeful demons in this beautifully written piece by Richard Cohen, today. One reason to keep up with the Washington Post, depite the liberal sanctimony that is gives far too much truck to, these days.

Saving Scooter

Best lines:

"For some odd reason, the same people who were so appalled about government snooping, the USA Patriot Act and other such threats to civil liberties cheered as the special prosecutor weed-whacked the press, jailed a reporter and now will send a previously obscure government official to prison for 30 months.

This is precisely the sort of investigation that Jackson was warning about. It would not have been conducted if, say, the Iraq war had ended with 300 deaths and the mission had really been accomplished. An unpopular war produced the popular cry for scalps and, in Libby's case, the additional demand that he express contrition -- a vestigial Stalinist-era yearning for abasement. No one has yet explained, though, how Libby can express contrition and still appeal his conviction. No matter. Antiwar sanctimony excuses the inexplicable.

I don't expect George Bush to appreciate this. He is the privileged son of a privileged son, and he fears nothing except, probably, doubt. But the rest of us ought to consider what Fitzgerald has wrought and whether we are better off for his efforts."

Amen and pass the refreshing bit of honesty, brother.

Love,
Ben

Appreciating the good faith of average Americans (and facing my pride)

There has been a seriously H.L. Mencken side to me during this political period. It's Mencken's libertarian impulses, his misanthropy and his contempt for the pretension of common wisdom and virtue, and both his mocking and revulsion at the hypocrisy and bullshitting of average people that I have found so refreshing.

But something that I have never really seriously shared with Mencken (and why I have much more in common with Mark Twain) is his complete disenchantment with average folks.

I have skated those edges in these last 5 years. It has been the hardest time in my life. I've been treated harshly for good reason and I've been treated harshly for bad reason. I've learned that, either way, it really doesn't matter except to acknowledge that when you've been treated harshly for good reason, that good people can be appreciated even when you think it's kind of bullshit and you don't like all the ways they make their decisions, especially as it concerns you.

I got a call, today, from one of my best friends in the world, Stephanie Martell. Stephanie is one of the sweetest souls you will ever meet in your life. She has a disability - Prater Willy's Syndrome - and she is one of the most decent people I have ever known in my life. I've often thought of Stephanie as my Clarence; this sweet-natured angel in my life who always reminds me that being good and decent has nothing to do with intelligence or wisdom or world-savvy or any of those things. It has to do with having a decent heart. And Stephanie has one of the most decent hearts I've ever encountered.

And Stephanie reminded me, today, that while I don't always like the thinking and the choices and I certainly take issue with the jadedness and cynicism of most people over the age of 7, that I love and respect and appreciate the good faith of average people even when I'm not enamoured with their wisdom or their self interested interpretations of the world.

I think average people in liberal democracies make a lot of mistakes. Their most important mistake is my most important mistake. It is the biggest mistake that people make. It is numero uno among the seven deadly sins. It is pride. Otherwise known as self-righteousness. It is my number one sin, which has led to far too many sins in my life that I am ashamed to admit are my own.

Our pride. And I mean our pride. It's not the pride of some people, or the pride of bad people, or the pride of stupid people, and certainly not the pride of other people.

Our pride is that we perpetually think that we have arrived at more wisdom and more understanding than we really have. All of us. Me included. And we are perpetually making decisions that reflect our having convinced ourselves that we have more wisdom than we really do.

The best thing that happened to me leaving school is that I had the most substantial opportunity in my life to face my pride, to have my sense of my own wisdom and self-righteous understanding of the world humbled by a world that defied and changed so many certitudes that I maintained, and fill in plenty of the spaces in my brain that ignorance has largely taken up.

I've not always liked the way I've been treated. I think a lot of the harsher experiences I've had in my life in the last 5 years have been counterproductive and seriously undermined my trust and faith and confidence in professors and teachers and employers and cops and judges and politicians and all sorts of folks.

It's been the most jaded and cynical and disillusioned that I've ever been in my life.

And though I've been I think reasonably disillusioned with the counterproductive harshness and efforts to impose themselves on me and every person or problem they encounter, I got a reminder, today, that I love and respect and appreciate all good folks in this world (and a lot of the onerier ones, as well, and even evil folks though I don't cry when despots face poor ends).

That's why Mark Twain is my true hero and H.L. Mencken is an intellect with liberty commitments that I admire.

Good people have done so many bad things, as individuals, but worse, as societies, that is is hard to keep count of them all.

But we all know, down deep, that most people are good people (even when they fuck up). And that good people are good people, even when they're screwing up or lost in their self-righteousness. Self-righteousness, I'm learning, pride, is the most serious, most pervasive, most common and the one sin that none of us avoid.

It is the sin of the average man. It is the sin of power. It is the sin of authority. But it is also the sin of all of us average folks, with or without authority or power. Every parent, every teacher, every employer, every cop, every lawyer, every judge, every politician, every military official. But also, every kid, every student, every employee, every drug addict, every criminal, every grunt, every person who has ever faced authority has also been guilty of pride at some point in their relationship with those folks and with others and with authority in their lives.

All of us are subject to the sin of pride. It is our most serious, most damning, most tragic legacy, when you account for every terrorist, every despot, every ideologue, every most serious ugly act that has been committed in the name of every cause that someone has deemed worthy and in the name of that pride. But it is also our most common, most often committed, and, ultimately, most forgiveable sin, as well.

And if I can forgive my own pride (which I don't really have much choice about, really) then I surely I can forgive the pride of average folks and not-so-average folks who are just wrong, even as they're decent and good folks in good faith and trying to do good by their neighbors and their family, and, all too often, by themselves.

I do want the pride that gives traction to terrorists and radicals and despots and perpetrators of murder and genocide and mayhem and repression in the name of whatever cause to lose its power, permanently. And I'm pretty clear that the way to do that is to do what is also best for our own lives as well: to embrace and teach and nurture the liberal values and liberal education and the virtues of a liberal democracy that have supported and created all of the genuine progress in the world, up to this point in our history and, in all likelihood, for the rest of our time around these parts. And, most importantly, it means embracing the liberty and freedom and decency and humanity and compassion and thoughtfulness that make all of that possible.

But I was reminded, today, that average folks - who give far too much license and support and intellectual cover to all of that ugliness in the name of their pride that thought really doesn't matter and that action and authority and power accomplishes more than it can and that force that helps more than it hurts around so many issues in our lives - that average folks who engage in all this serious bullshit - the lying, the covering up, the denial, the taking credit where its not due, the paternalism, the fucking with one another's lives, and the support for strategies of political leverage which rationalize every power-hungry, despotic, authoritarian, terroristic, genocidal impulse that the world has borne witness to - they are also decent and good people.

Even when they're fucking shit up. Including when they are fucking with my life.

I'm reminded, today, that even when the common man, when average folk, when "good people," as we would refer to such folks back home, even when good, decent, average people are fucking shit up in the world - as they do often, pride or no pride - that they are still good and decent folks, despite all their faults.

We do reap what we sow. I've sowed a lot of good seeds. And I've sowed plenty of bad seeds. And I've reaped plenty accordingly. And all people do and will do the same.

And I'm ok with that, today. As I face my pride. And rebuild my faith in average people, despite their persistent fucking up and too much pride to face it.

That is the heart of liberal democracy. We are liberal and democratic not because of our inherent virtue. We are liberal and democratic because it is through the fucking up and the learning and the facing our pride - even in hindsight - that we stumble forward and finally make progress, often and generally despite ourselves.

God knows that that's the only way I've done it.

Maybe it's time that I cut most folks slack the same way that I want people to cut me slack for all of the multitudinous fucking up that I've done in my poor, pathetic little lifetime.

Maybe it's time that we all faced a little bit of our pride.

Then, again, maybe it'd be easier to just pop in a movie and fuck it all. We're gonna deal with the consequences that we deal with no matter what we do. But maybe a little less pride might be a good thing, after all. If only on the long shot that maybe our lives might mean something in this short little time we have here on this planet.

I'll take that bet. Even if it means facing a bit of my own sinning and a lot of my own pride to do it.

Love,
Ben

The destructive temptation of radicalism

Fred Siegal has an exellent review of Paul Starr's new book, Freedom's Power: The True Force of Liberalism, outlining the destructive and irrational temptations that radicalism persistently promises liberals, no matter the empirical evidence of its failures.

Blinded by the Left

Do you notice the depth of the propaganda and failure to face its contradictions and hypocrisies that are found in a title like Freedom's Power? Does someone who is concerned with force and power as the primary route to freedom really care about freedom at all? Not likely. It's a clever coopting by the same kinds of radical folks who have forever tried to coopt a more genuine liberal democratic heritage and the values that they perpetually take for granted in their peristent efforts to extinguish them, or at least command and dictate them to their own requisite purposes.

Force is freedom. Power is source of all that is liberal and good. George Orwell must be rolling over in his grave.

And like the majority of the commenters on this article (note my poorly edited comment at the end of this piece) smarter folks who take that more genuine liberal heritage seriously should not be fooled. I'm not. What I am is put off and disillusioned by liberal activists, journalists, politicians and others who espouse a radical agenda in the name of and simultaneous as an affront to the more genuine liberal, freedom-embracing values that make liberal democratic values and the liberal educations which make them possible mean something.

The idea that liberal democracies and liberal education and liberal values would be characterized, primarily, by power and force is not only laughable, it is dangerous. It is the very kind of abuse of power that more genuine liberals like Lord Acton - "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" - John Stuart Mill, George Orwell, Alexis DeToqueville and others made sure to warn liberal democratic citizens and thinkers about.

Force is freedom. Power is liberalism. The purpose of a liberal democracy, liberal education, and liberal values is force and power. Power solves all. Force solves all.

Any of that sound familiar?

Now you understand why Communism and Naziism survived as long as they did.

Because power doesn't stop to honestly reconcile itself with its own illogic. And because liberal democratic peoples are perpetually doomed to repeat the ill-fated history that they do not study nearly seriously enough.

Love,
Ben