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

New ideas

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

Mark Twain

Sahar al-Haideri (1962 - 2007)

Sahar al-Haideri was an Iraqi journalist from her hometown of Mosul who died in the cause of saving her country from sectarian division and civil war.

Requiem for a Brave Woman

As Americans and the world give thought to the question of whether they will stick with the current situation in Iraq, one that Americans, for better and for worse, largely initiated, we should remember Iraqis like Sahar al-Haideri.

al-Haideri undoubtedly knew of the complicated nature and purposes of her country's invasion by American forces to remove a despot who had reigned over the Iraqi nation without democratic or any other recourse for more than two decades. She undoubtedly knew of both the good intentions of the American military and political leaders who had initiated the invasion and the tragic and often counterproductive consequences of that decision.

But Sahar al-Haideri also knew that a stable, democratic government and culture must sprout in its aftermath if there is to be any decent alternative to the sectarian warfare and insurgent attacks on the Iraqi government that currently plague her home country.

As Americans consider what course of action to take next in this terrible and often tragic situation, it is wise and necessary for us to remember the risks and sacrafices of Iraqis like Sahar al-Haideri for her country's democratic future.

Democracy is not just a governing arrangement for any country, including Iraq. For al-Haideri and many journalists, teachers, political representatives, law enforcement, military, businesspeople, non-profit and humanitarian workers, and many, many other Iraqi citizens and those from outside her borders offering help, democracy is a future for Iraq that might transcend the sectarian, theocratic, authoritarian, gender-discriminating, illiberal and other impulses which too often animate the bulk of the political violence and deaths of people like al-Haideri in Iraq today.

Americans and the world should take pause before rushing or abandoning the substantial security work on the ground that is needed to create the political space and sow the political imagination needed for such a future to be realized.

My wishes of peace in the hearts of the family of Ms. al-Haideri and for Sahar, may she rest in peace.

Love,
Ben

When liberal values are thought to be a threat

Afghan's press: Thriving yet threatened

"No less worrying to local journalists and Western governments is debate over a new media law. Freedom of speech is enshrined in the constitution and the existing media law is the most liberal in the region. But the lower house of parliament has just finished discussing a law that includes ill-defined bans on “discussion that would ridicule, offend or defame an individual” and, more vaguely still, on anything that has an impact on “the manners and psychology of people, especially children”. Even so, it is less the wording of the law than the spirit in which it will be interpreted that worries Afghan journalists. Saad Mohseni, Tolo TV's founder, is one who argues that the press can expect little protection from harassment by government officials and other bigwigs.

The new law still has to win approval in the upper house of parliament. But there it is not likely to become more liberal. A bill put forward by the upper house's National Reconciliation Commission suggests censoring “trite movies and those TV programmes that are contrary to Afghan beliefs...and harm the feelings of our people”. It proposes an increase in religious programming instead."

What's scary to me is that this sounds an awful lot like my own country and its aversion to liberal values, today, by the media as much as against the media.

All over the world, we benefit from liberal values in so many substantial ways that it is hard to count. And yet, all of us, liberal and illiberal, mature democracies and recently established democracies, we run from liberal values as if they are the bain of our existence. We have always done this. And we will continue to do this as long as our fears of our freedoms overwhelm our faith and confidence in our abilities to enjoy our freedoms and, from them, learn a more honest sense of responsibility to one another and to the world.

Love,
Ben

Pitying the poor

It's starting to occur to me that for me many journalists, activists, political folk, that their concerns around poverty are not really genuine. That for a lot of such folks, it is pity in part based around guilt for how shitty they have treated people in their lives.

As someone who grew up poor and who has experienced serious enough adult poverty, all I can say about that is that no poor person wants anyone's pity. In fact, it is probably the single most important concern that most poor people I know have: not being pitied.

What bothers me about that state of affairs is that what most poor people want more than anything else is to just be treated better, and then to be left alone to make their own choices with their own lives.

But, instead, what they get is pity from more educated advocates on their behalf that they generally haven't asked for and a political period that rationalizes poor treatment of everyone, poor or not.

It is all of our worst impulses treated as if they are more noble than they are. Plenty of good intentions. But not nearly as honest an engagement of whether good intentions result in good consequences.

Most of the poor people I grew up with would want people to put away their pity and focus more on treating people better (though, honestly, many poor people do not treat people very well either; poor people come in all shapes and sizes, too).

How nice it would be for advocacy like this to be genuine; to have people treat other people, poor or not, as individuals and on their merits. And without pity.

If you have never been poor, you may not know the singular indignity that is associated with people pitying you, even when you have much to offer. Poor people generally know that such pity is unworthy of their dignity. And so is all of the bad treatment rationalized as tough love, these days.

Martin Anderson, a 14-year-old boy in Panama City, Florida, died in a state-run boot camp in the name of our rationalizations of "tough love." Love that resulted in his death. I, still, to this day, have not seen anyone take responsibility for his death. All in the name of responsibility. And tough. And love.

We owe it to Martin to face up to this legacy.

But to do so means to face ourselves in a way that I'm not convinced most people have the courage to do. I suppose the irony is that none of us feel love for ourselves or others, enough, to show that kind of courage. But I'm not interested in Martin dying so all of us can pretend that we had nothing to do with his death. Every single person who encouraged the kind and culture of toughness and bullying that resulted in Martin's death are responsible. And I don't really give a shit, anymore, whether people have the courage to take responsibility for that or not.

I don't think kids like Martin need pity. Or tough love. Kid like Martin need people around them who genuinely care about them. There's no way that Martin could have died the way he did with people who genuinely cared about him. But we've become convinced in our hubris and our self-righteous clamoring for tough more than love or thoughtfulness or decency or any of our better impulses and higher values that all of our bullying and pressure and force are better or do better than they really do.

Sounds a lot like other regimes I know. Regimes that sacrafice people - their lives, their freedom, their dignity - all in the name of helping them all or making their own kind strong. Regimes that became corrupted by power, and corrupted more absolutely the more power they had.

The greatest tragedy of the early 21st century is that we spent almost a hundred years trying to remove that ugliness from the world. Only to repeat it ourselves.

And Martin Anderson hangs there like a once living testament to our hubris. He waits for us to take responsibility. But, sadly, noone is likely to do so. Because this period isn't about taking responsibility at all. It is about rationalizing our most vengeful, ugly, illiberal impulses all in the name of patting ourselves on the back for our liberal values.

That is the great tragedy of the early 21st century.

If we can't forgive ourselves for this ugliness, I only hope that Martin Anderson can.

Love,
Ben

A man after my own heart

"All the extravagance and incompetence of our present Government is due, in the main, to lawyers, and, in part at least, to good ones. They are responsible for nine-tenths of the useless and vicious laws that now clutter the statute-books, and for all the evils that go with the vain attempt to enforce them. Every Federal judge is a lawyer. So are most Congressmen. Every invasion of the plain rights of the citizens has a lawyer behind it. If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones sold to a mah jong factory, we'd be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half."

–H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), "Breathing Space", The Baltimore Evening Sun, 1924 Aug 4. Reprinted in A Carnival of Buncombe.

Cynicism

Do you know how discouraging it is to find so many, most, adults looking at the world through more narrow, cynical, small-minded lenses?

It's overwhelmingly discouraging.

Cynicism is disappointment with a reality that doesn't live up to our higher expectations.

But sadder than that original disappointment is our complicity and more helpless and hopeless hanging onto that cynicism as a function of a world that doesn't always live up to our expectations, and, even more sadly, is generally created by our own cynicism.

Psychologists call it self-fulfilling prophecy.

I just call it damned foolishness.

Either way, the world is a shitty mess for it all.

Thank goodness for country music:).

Love,
Ben

On being right

Gates in Baghdad defends war assessments

I am becoming convinced reading Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's comments in this A.P. article that if 5 million Iraqis had to die so that liberals in the West could be right that there is no hope in Iraq, then they would be just fine with that. I know liberals want to save Iraqi and American lives just like everyone else. But I have to say that the persistent cynicism parading as "being in touch with reality" is getting wearisome when it means perpetually betting against an effort that is a noble one - helping Iraqis and their goverment to secure a democratic path forward -if we wouldn't constantly be trying to prove just how dumb George Bush is and just how smart all the rest of us are.

Personally, I don't care about being right about something like this that much. I'd rather be wrong and have this thing work out.

But I guess it's just Pollyanna to hope for anything to be successful, these days, isn't it? Unless it happens under a Democratic President and Congress, I suppose.

You got to hand it to Democrats, don't you. All they think about is the Iraqis.

Why is it so easy for us to constantly argue and defend for why we're right about everything and so hard for us to pull together to root for a decent cause even if we have disagreements about how it got started?

Are the days of an America that can come together around common goals behind us? Are the days of America even having common goals, so lost are we in our persistent snarking about which one of us or which group or which ideology has all the answers, something that we can't imagine happening without something as horrible as Adolph Hitler or Japanese Imperialism threatening our homeland?

And if that's the case, who would want to be right about that? Who would want to be right that no decent cause can ever be achieved unless people of your own ideological umbrella make the call? Who would want to be so blind as to put ideology or any group affiliation above doing the decent thing?

I wouldn't want to be right that badly.

How sad for us that so many of us do.

Love,
Ben

This is what force as a governing philosophy looks like

For every liberal and conservative, these days, who is romanticizing force as a governing philosophy, they now have a situation in the Gaza Strip that embodies that dark, ugly fantasy.

Abbas dissolves Palestinian government

"It was a day of major victories for Hamas and its backers in Iran and Syria — and of devastating setbacks for the Western-backed Fatah. In one particularly humiliating scene, masked Hamas fighters marched agents of the once-feared Preventive Security Service out of their headquarters, arms raised in the air, stripped to the waist and ducking at the sound of a gunshot.

The violence has killed at least 90 people in the past five days, including 33 on Thursday alone. Witnesses, Fatah officials and a doctor reported executions by Hamas militants of defeated Fatah fighters Thursday; Fatah said seven of its men were shot in the head gangland-style. Hamas denied any such killings."

Those infatuated with force have a dystopian fantasy scenario in Hamas' efforts to take over the Gaza Strip, since there really is few other groups in the world who would more concur with that governing philosophy.

I know, I know. Hamas is too forceful. Liberals and conservatives who argue for a governing philosophy of force are just "the right balance."

Isn't it convenient how anyone who wants to justify their power is always "just the right balance." "Fair and balanced," as Fox News would say. Everyone is fair and balanced, have you noticed that. They want to use force for their own priorities, for the "the right balance." It's convenient, isn't it? The only people who are too forceful or who are too liberal or too conservative are someone else. It's never the people who claim justification for power.

Lord Acton and George Orwell would be having a high old time trying to sort through this godforesaken and propaganda-soaked period.

In the meantime, like the Nazis and Soviets before them, Hamas takes seriously the idea of force as a governing philosophy. And 90 people in the last 5 days have been murdered in the name of that governing philosophy.

Force is freedom. Freedom is pressure. We care more for people, thus we repress them. We don't want too much freedom or too much repression. We want "the right balance." Somewhere between Ghandi and Hitler. Somewhere between King and Stalin. Somewhere between Jesus and the Roman Empire. Somewhere between Buddha and Castro.

Yeah. Yeah. I know. Somewhere between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Guliani.

Because everyone knows that Ghandi can't lead a country or a culture like Hillary Clinton can.

If the Washington Post or National Public Radio or Frontpage Magazine or the National Review or any of the various liberal or conservative publications romanticizing force as a philosophy of governance think they have nothing to do with this Hamas takeover, they are tragically mistaken.

I'm not suggesting that any of these publications want a Hamas takeover. None of these publications want that. But they do encourage the activities of Hamas and similar groups when they preach that a tougher philosophy of governance by force, primarly, rather than policy and political philosophy that promotes liberal self-governance, primarily, is the ideal that liberal democracies should aspire to and which leaves liberal cultures, like America, and illiberal cultures, like Palestine, alike, less vulnerable to the manipulations of terrorists, despots, dictators, autocrats, tyrranical and illiberal religious, political, and secular leaders, political, business and leadership practices and philosophies and lobbying reltionships with government which flaunt and romanticize how they can force, buy, and otherwise manipulate government and people for their own purposes.

When you use political pressure as a regular means of getting your way in democratic politics, you not only engage in an abuse of power in democratic societies and cultures, you provide the rationalizations that groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Queda, hardliners in Iran, Syria, and throughout the Middle East, the Cuban Communist party, the Chinese Communist party, the North Korean Communist party, and every such group to engage in every abuse of power that they engage in.

Illiberal practices in liberal societies rationalize illiberal practices in illiberal societies. And they look at us and our illiberal practices and say, "Look at those fuckin' pussies. They don't know how to fuckin' pressure for power. We know how to fuckin' pressure for power."

And then situations like the one we are seeing in Gaza take place. Or the sectarian warfare in Iraq.

Or 9/11.

We are not responsible for these awful, ugly facts of pressure and power.

But we are responsible for the rationalizations that gives them mileage and appeal, when we persistently fail to face our own illberal hypocrisies.

We are definitely the better guys, the good guys, so to speak. But we need to people who live consistent in our commitment to liberal values and make freedom as available to all people, as much as possible. And to only limit freedom when it is for purposes of dealing with genuine, immediate, and dangerous threats to our safety that cannot be handled in any other way except with force. And when we use force, we need to put our presumption on the least possible necessary force, the least possible necessary aggression, if we are to take those liberal values, and their far better and stronger consequences for our societies and cultures, seriously.

What is happening in Gaza is the logical conclusion of a political period that has rationalized and romanticized force, pressure, and aggression for all too often our far too self-centered purposes.

Hamas and Al Queda and the hard-line leadership of countries like Iran and Syria and the Communist governments of China, Cuba, North Korea and illiberal forces all over the world are the embodiment of force as a governing philosophy and, tragically, our rationalizations of illiberal ideas, philosophies, governance, policies, social, religious, educational, business, and other practices which support the rationalization of such practices among illiberal groups and governments and which are used to rationalize illiberal practices in liberal democratic countries and cultures.

It is a tragic and ugly self-fulfilling prophecy which can only be resolved with a more serious commitment to liberal values in liberal democracies and cultures.

A lot of people in my life, I think, wonder why I spend so much time and risk so much to make this argument that, to many of them seems like a crazy obsession with politics and everything political.

But the reason that I take this line of argument and this work so seriously is because I want peoples of the liberal democratic world, and the world of less liberal democratic and even illiberal cultures and peoples, to give up this sad and ugly rationalization that persistently feeds these cycles of aggression and force overwhelming liberal values and virtues. Namely, I want us to give up the propensity for such pressure, force, and aggression to overwhelm our capacity, willingness, and opportunities to reflect on, discuss, debate, and decide the most important questions in liberal societies on genuine liberal democratic grounds which respect the consciences, thoughts, and expression of all people and decides questions more honestly and openly based on their merits and the principle that more open and honest expressions of our thoughts and consciences and which are make for more honest, decent, open-ended lives which respect liberal values and their role in better supporting our lives rather than perpetually taking such values for granted and fruitlessly and cyclically arguing that it is those values that better support us that are responsible for the downfall of our culture and our lives.

I am tired of people in liberal societies being perpetually hornswaggled into the notion that it is our liberal values that are the greatest threat to us and our culture and our more illiberal notions which romanticize tough over throughtful that are our savior. Our saving grace is found in our thoughtfulness, decency, openness, compassion, freedom, consciences, and good natures. We do not need to bully people for them to be good. We do not need to be bullied to be good. And I am tired of the rationalizations that bullies in liberal democratic socieities, nevertheless illiberal societies have for bullying me or other good, decent, thoughtful people to get what they want.

I don't want it from Al Queda or Black September. I don't want it from Robert Mugabe or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But neither do I want it from Hillary Clinton or Rudy Guliani, Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, or anyone in the liberal or illiberal world.

I am tired of being bullied by anyone is the truth. I am tired of it. And I am tired of my thoughtfulness being disregarded by those who would rather get their way than to engage me more thoughtfully. I am tired of teachers, administrators, bosses, officers, judges, friends, family and authority figures of all kinds and anyone who wants to bully their way through my life disregarding more thoughtful efforts on my part, especially when it concerns my own life.

I am tired of bullies getting their way and using getting their way as the rationalization for why the world is just a place where the world isn't fair, nice guys finish last, and bullies get their way.

I am tired of it in Gaza. I'm tired of it in America. I'm tired of it in Europe. I am tired of it in Africa. I'm tired of it in Asia. And I am tired of it in South America and North America. I'd be tired of it in Antarctica and the North Pole if it turns out that people were getting treated like shit there too.

I don't care where it happens. I'm tired of it. And I'm tired of liberal peoples, especially, giving it the gas and the mileage that it needs to dominate the liberal and illiberal world in the 21st century and any generation. If we want to end terrorism and despotism, then we must give up the illiberal notions and governing philosophies that animate our own more liberal cultures.

Gaza is what force as a governing philosophy looks like. And we need to face up to that and take seriously the need to give up our illiberal rationalizations for that kind of ugliness. And the ugliness we rationalize in our own lives.

Love,
Ben

Heroes risk their lives and careers. Cowards cover their asses.

Richard Holbrooke has an excellent review of Mordecai Paldiel's new book, Diplomat Heroes of the Holocaust. His is an excellent reminder that moral courage is a rare quality, not a common one. And that most people fail it.

Defying Orders, Saving Lives: Heroic Diplomats of the Holocaust

Cowards follow orders, even when it means the lives or fortunes or heartache of others. People of courage operate out of conscience.

It is a lesson that Freda Ogburn, Marsha Cowan, and many, many people would do well to learn.

But most people fail this test of their character as Paldiel reminds us. Most people follow orders. Because the threat of enough aggression can make cowards of any of us, really, no matter how courageous, is the truth. For awhile, that is.

But as Hitler learned the hard way, that soon turns around. Because people of genuine courage and decency beat assholes with aggressive and indecent intent any fuckin' day of the fuckin' week, in the big picture and in the long term that counts.

And every fuckin' political bully that is bathing in their newfound glory and power can take that sentiment to the fuckin' bank.

Or, like Hitler, they will learn that more genuine liberal democratic values trump force and the abuse of power soon enough.

Speaking of heroes, this is what one looks like.

Officials: Barak wins Israeli party race

Ehud Barak put everything on the line for those Camp David Accords. Yasser Arafat left him hanging and the Likud and the Israeli people decided to go back to their old ways and give them a try. The last 6 years has been one long and bloody lesson in the ways of warfare trying to replace the more genuine path of peace in Israel and Palestine. Someone of courage puts it all on the line and loses, if necessary, so that the right priorities get accomplished. Someone of cowardice covers their asses at the expense of doing the right thing. We all have plenty of courage and cowardice in us. But the good guys shore up their courage and win out in the end. That was the most important lesson I took from Stephen Ambrose's military history. And he's right.

And the cowards who are animating the current political period will learn that lesson, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Love,
Ben

Tony Blair gets it right and media folks hate it

I have to say that the news media are the archetypal bullies. They love pushing people around. But they whine like little babies when they get called on the carpet for it.

Blair Likens News Media to 'Ferral Beast'

Tony Blair is exactly right. The major problem in the last 6 years or so is a news media that has figured out that it has power and has been abusing it for as long as they can get away with it.

It's the dark side of DeToqueville's truism about the media. 200 years ago, Alexis DeToqueville observed that the beauty of democracy in the new world of the United States was how people came together in voluntary organizations, like the news media, to engage important questions of life and governance. And journalists, among all of such citizens, were the most influential on the public morality of the day. It was a terribly accurate observation, and we are seeing the ugly side of how an aggressive media abuses that trust and power in the last few years.

From Walter Reed to Alberto Gonzalez to Don Imus to the war in Iraq, the media, forever convinced of their unassailable wisdom about anything and everything have done exactly what Tony Blair has argued in his speech: they use their ability to scandalize and rip people to shreds to get their way on any particular news item of the day. It's political bullying, pure and simple, and it is the ugliest display of a failure of journalistic integrity in any era that I have seriously followed the media.

The folks at the Guardian and others who have commented on Blair's comments of course hate them. Because the media love to criticize, attack, take down, and otherwise tear apart anyone in public life, except for themselves. And Tony Blair does not offer an attack, a take down or a tearing apart in these comments. He offers honest, legitimate, and accurate criticism.

And the folks who responded hate it because like every bully that has ever hit the block, they are as thin-skinned as they are determined to get their way. It's an ugly display. And unworthy of an international liberal democratic culture.

And good for Tony Blair for calling this feral beast on its bullshit. E.J. Dionne, Bill O'Reilly, and so many people in between who love to bathe in their power to tear others apart and who carry the thinnest skin possible when criticized for even legitimate mistakes on their part.

Jesus' approbation was better aphorism. We tend to pluck the splinters from the eyes of others and to ignore our own beams because it is much more difficult to look at yourself than it is to judge someone else.

It's an ugly, ugly display.

And it has completely drained my trust in the media, in politicians, and in everyone who is engaged in this ugly, aggressive, forceful, meanspirited charade, right now.

I have no heroes in the media. Because how could I, really. Noone seems to be able to rise above this ugliness masquerading as righteousness. It's fundamentalism of another stripe. Bowing before the shrine of Woodward and Bernstein, and seeing how many of the bums you can take down before you can call yourself a journalistic prophet.

And it is exactly what folks in liberal democracies should expect when they treat politics like professional wrestling rather than engaged thought and discussion. You decide you want to use politics to vent every ugly impulse you have. Then you get this cynical, ugly, meanspirited mess that you create with that mentality. The media is pandering to it, right now, because it satisfies their most cynical and power-craving urges. And because, as Tony suggests, they suspect that it was their less critical public demands. And they will continue to engage this bullshit until people like Tony, me and whomever else cares to lend a voice to this discussion expects better of them.

The truth is that such nastiness is worthy of noone's ear. I have lost interest and trust in the people who do it. And I, for one, expect better of them.

Love,
Ben

New feelings, old feelings

I've met a girl in my practicum that has me facing some pretty difficult feelings. She's nice and smart. Just the combination I'm looking for.

Today, when I was hanging out with her, I found myself asking myself, "Does this mean that Brandi is gone forever?"

It's had me hurting ever since I thought that.

I miss Brandi something awful is the truth. I miss how much she opened up my heart and my life. I miss our experiences together, in Wichita, in D.C., in Lawrence, and in Kansas City. I miss being able to reminisce with someone about the most mind-opening, open-hearted time in my life. I miss having a real connection to that time in my life. I hate all of the cynicism I encounter in adults. And I miss having a companion who shared and nurtured my idealism, before she got swallowed up by all of the cynicism that is so plentiful in the world, I'm afraid.

Most adults are pretty cynical, is the truth. As Joe says in Joe Vs. Volcano, when they were young they were full of piss and vinegar. They wanted to know. Everything. And then they had some experiences.

Most adults get hurt. And their hearts start to close up. And the cynicism begins to creep in and take over so much of their hearts and minds and outlooks on life. It's kind of sad, really. And Brandi is no different, I'm convinced, though I haven't seen her in 5 years or so, so it's hard to confirm that.

And right now is a moment when cynicism is getting far too much play in our lives, because we've decided to give into it and to empower it, even when, down deep in our hearts, we know better.

I miss not having all this pain and cynicism clogging up my heart. I miss being able to listen to a young love song and not feel pity or cynicism because I think my pain means more than it really does. I miss not having all this shit on my heart to try to filter all my experiences in the world, through. And I especialy miss a time when the all the responsible people I knew in the world weren't trying to convince me, all the time, that the cynical realities of the world were the ones I should settle for because their hearts were too lost in their pain and disappointment with the world. Fuck their pain, I say. They don't want to deal with it and get over it, then shut the fuck up and stop trying to pull young people down into your pain and cynicism.

I miss experiencing that kind of unqualified, uncynical, unbaggaged kind of love. The kind that you don't think about, because you're too busy just loving it.

That pain hangs on my heart like a bad cold that just won't go away.

I love the idea of meeting someone new. But I hate the idea of giving up my memories of my beautiful little romance with Brandi. And my heart is aching for it, tonight.

Love,
Ben

Good conversation

My practicum experience is going really well, right now. I say that cautiously, anymore, after absorbing so much school politics in my last situation. But I really like my cooperating teacher. Bill has been great. He's helpful, patient, gentle, nice, smart. He's easily the best cooperating teacher I've worked with. It's refreshing after many bad cooperating teacher situations, with the exception of my gifted and special education practicums.

Bill and I can sit and talk for hours about matters of substance. He was also a special education Ph.D. student at KU, so we have that to talk about, too. And he's the first teacher to really help me with classroom organizational habits, and I really appreciate that. It's been so long since I've had a really rigorous conversation, and it's really nice to have them reguarly again.

It's kind of renewing my faith in education, again, where I've kind of had my faith shaken, lately. The whole faculty seems very nice and supportive. And it is nice to not have to deal with the school politics of contending with teachers who are more aggressive and more used to scapegoating more supportive, decent, patient teachers as being the source of all of their problems that they haven't spent enough time thinking about. That and administrators being convinced that they could create sustainable change with aggression was the most stressful part of working at Eisenhower that I am happy to be away from, frankly.

There is another teacher, Patrick, in the building who also does a very nice job with kids and who I observed, today. It was very nice to see him both have a fairly calm classroom and to have high academic standards for kids. Patrick had stations set up so he could work one-on-one with kids in turns, he hold high expectations with kids when he works with them and uses our wage system to reward kids for good work, and he seems to be making an organized effort to make sure that kids have basic skills like multiplication down, an important priority for me, last year. I learned a lot in the one hour I spent with him, especially a very nice affirmation that patience and assertiveness are both important qualities for working with kids with academic and behavior issues. He seems like a really nice guy. We'll have to hang out sometime soon.

Women have been totally coming out of the woodwork in this practicum. There is one girl, in particular, Tiffany, who is really nice and seems really smart who I'd kind of like to get to know better. I had this brief moment, today, when I thought, "Uh. I like this girl so much I'm thinking about Brandi being gone from my life forever. And it makes me really sad." I can't really tell if that's a good sign or not, because the idea of Brandi only being a memory from here on out really leaves me feeling empty in a very special place in my heart and my memory. The fact that I could never adequately share that place with someone else and that only Brandi would ever really have an inkling of why that time was so special to me is what is saddest and lonliest. It will take a very special woman to fill that void for me.

I hope Brandi emails me/calls me one of these days. I don't want that time to just be a memory.

And the woman who has to fill her shoes will have to be a pretty special woman. So it makes dating a much more complicated, difficult experience. I don't want to be thinking about how in love I was with some woman from the past. I want to think about how in love I am with the woman I am in love with. But it will take an awfully special woman to make that happen.

It keeps me grounded. Because I know that there is nothing in the world like being love, for real with no qualifications. And I'll never be really happy again until I find that, I'm completely convinced.

I have work to get done. I just also have pain on my heart that is so hard to let go of completely. I need someone in my life who I can share it all with. So maybe I can have a shot at letting in go.

Love,
Ben

Losing faith

The one place I always invested my faith when it was shaky in the world elsewhere was education.

I always believed that education is where people got a fair shot.

And for the first time in my life, I'm not really sure of that, anymore.

That's true as long as you agree. And comply, to their satisfaction.

But not if you question or offer a different explanation or think for yourself, it turns out. Not on the important questions, at least.

For the first time in my life, I'm convinced that intelligence and thought matters. But my faith in education - its politics, its genuine commitment to others and students, the degree to which cynicism or ideas animate it - has been seriously shaken.

I don't trust teachers, anymore, necessarily. And I trust administrators much, much less (administrators, as a rule, in my experience, thusfar, could give two shits about what you think and are much more interested in whether you agree with them or do what they say).

I used to have faith that more honesty was rewarded and paid off. I have much less faith in that notion after Eisenhower. I used to trust teachers and administrators to be fair. I no longer have that faith.

I don't know where that leaves me, exactly. Because my experience, at this point, is that they really don't care as long as you don't agree with them. Any of them. At least when you don't agree on things most important to them, like whether the most important priority in education is to learn or be controlled and compliant. Clearly, most teachers and administrators and just people in the world, these days, have become convinced that the most important value in life is to be compliant.

I wish I did, too, these days. I really do. Because my life would not have been as hard as it has been had I believed this. I wish I could submit myself as quietly as most people can - or at least look like they do when they have to - these days. Because it would have meant much less misery in my life.

I'm sure what they wanted to teach me is that I better do what they fuckin' say or I will pay the fuckin' price.

But really all it did was just lead me to trust them less, and to lose faith, at least for awhile, in an institution and people that I have trusted more than any other, up to this point.

I don't think they care about that, particularly. My experience is that they only care is you agree with them. Otherwise, you're expendable.

Kind of ironic for an institution that says its committed to everyone isn't it?

I wish I'd done something easier. Like theater. Or physics.

But I decided to do political work. And specifically political work in a field that has every interest in proving it's right that the kids they work on behalf of have no real future.

Two and a half more years of this shit and my scholarship is paid off. And then I can go do work that does more real good.

But one guarantee is for sure: there is no real, substantial good that can be done in any field as long rules and compliance are used to shut off and out debate and discussion about whether what we're trying to accomplish is actually being accomplished. It's all lying and bullshit until that conversation is possible.

And one thing I know is that I can't live my life in environments where that kind of discussion is shut out because people just can't be bothered with realities that don't match their self-righteous notions of the world. And I don't care how much that might keep me in a job. I didn't get into this work to keep a job.

I got into this work to make the world a better place. And I have all intentions on doing just that.

Love,
Ben

One place where liberals seem to never learn

The Washington Post features a dismal report on the state of Washington D.C. public schools, this morning.

Can D.C. Schools Be Fixed?

This is my favorite line of analysis in this poorly reasoned article:

"In his nearly three years in the District, Janey has drawn praise for imposing rigorous systemwide standards on what should be taught at each grade, a curriculum to accomplish that and a testing program to measure its success. That reversed a trend of letting each school set its own path, which was widely criticized in education circles."

The results from those efforts?

"Tests show that in reading and math, the District's public school students score at the bottom among 11 major city school systems, even when poor children are compared only with other poor children. Thirty-three percent of poor fourth-graders across the nation lacked basic skills in math, but in the District, the figure was 62 percent. It was 74 percent for D.C. eighth-graders, compared with 49 percent nationally."

The District spends $12,979 per pupil each year, ranking it third-highest among the 100 largest districts in the nation. But most of that money does not get to the classroom. D.C. schools rank first in the share of the budget spent on administration, last in spending on teachers and instruction."

Wow. I can see why Superintendent Janey got all that praise.

At some point, don't you look at this situation and say, "Maybe we've failed. Maybe we need to try something new."

Not if you are the D.C. public schools or their staunch supporters.

That's the problem with politics. Bad ideas and bad situations don't just get too much play. They get imposed on everyone.

Love,
Ben

Burning the village to save it

What makes us look at a situation like this and think we have done any good for anyone?

Party Host Mom Set for Virginia Jail Term

This is tragedy, all around. This mom was trying - in a way that I would not, but trying, nonetheless - to make sure that her teenage boys were not drinking and driving and otherwise getting in trouble or worse.

And now she's going to spend 2 years in prison.

What's wrong with us that we have lost any sense of perspective or decency to understand this mother's concern for her children? Or to believe that we always know best for others how to handle such situations?

This is not an America that I am proud to be a part of. This is an America of self-righteous scolds who don't deserve the power they have legislated for themselves.

Burning the village to save it is lunacy. Destroying families to save them is self-righteous insanity.

We will need forgiveness after this is all done, for all of the destructiveness we offered up instead of genuine concern.

And I have to say that the more I see the Post cheerlead this kind of bullshit, the more I need to look for a new daily newspaper to keep up with.

Love,
Ben

A liberty-minded international policy

Michael Young, the opinion editor for the Lebanon Daily Star, writes brilliantly about the need for a more liberty-minded international policy.

Left, Right, and Wrong

I hope my work will better fit that bill and contribute to the on-going discussion of how state power should be used to promote liberty and should not be used in the name of power for its own sake, especially in places like Lebanon, Egypt, Iran and other emerging Middle Eastern democracies where the need for individual freedom is so much clearer when liberal values are respected so much less.

Love,
Ben

The alcohol nannies

Jonah Goldberg writes a brilliant piece on the crackdown on drinking occuring in Great Britain and the backlash it is generating.

Winey Warriors

I have to say that if this more libertarian direction - freeing Lewis Libby and all -is the direction the National Review will be taking in the coming years (their talk about border fences is a little scary to me, frankly), then I might find some renewed hope in the National Review.

Jonah's brilliant deduction for why Great Britain, uniquely, is attracting the beer and liquor scolds and nannies: the National Health Service.

And he's right. As he argues:

"Britain still subscribes to a system where health care is for the most part socialized. When the bureaucrat-priesthood of the National Health Service decides that a certain behavior is unacceptable, the consequences potentially involve more than scolding. For example, in 2005, Britain’s health service started refusing certain surgeries for fat people. An official behind the decision conceded that one of the considerations was cost. Fat people would benefit from the surgery less, and so they deserved it less. As Tony Harrison, a British health-care expert, explained to the Toronto Sun at the time, 'Rationing is a reality when funding is limited.'

But it’s impossible to distinguish such cost-cutting judgments from moral ones. The reasoning is obvious: Fat people, smokers and — soon — drinkers deserve less health care because they bring their problems on themselves. In short, they deserve it. This is a perfectly logical perspective, and if I were in charge of everybody’s health care, I would probably resort to similar logic.

But I’m not in charge of everybody’s health care. Nor should anyone else be. In a free-market system, bad behavior will still have high costs personally and financially, but those costs are more likely to borne by you and you alone. The more you socialize the costs of personal liberty, the more license you give others to regulate it."

It's true. And it is an important reason to be very skeptical of national health insurance. Canada and other countries with socialized medicine have similar problems with costs and available technology for even serious and life-threatening health conditions.

I've rediscovered Reason magazine, lately, which leads, today, with the cover article and perspective that I've been wanting to read for the last year:

Bashing Barry Bonds: The Campaign Against One of Baseball's Greats

That's the direction the country needs to take. And it's gratifying to see the National Review following the lead of Reason and Andrew Sullivan and other more openly libertarian thinkers and publications.

Now if only the country would give up its government-as-daddy complex and learn to grow up, be responsible for themselves, and let each of us be responsible for ourselves, we'd all be better off.

And finally figure out that Prohibition era mentalities that regulate alcohol, smoking, drugs and the like are the direction of regress, not progress.

Love, rape, whatever

A brilliant blog post by Reason contributor David Wiegel, yesterday.

I have to say that libertarians are looking more and more sensible the more I listen to liberals and conservatives trying to prove just whose tougher, these days.

Love, rape, whatever

Think it doesn't matter if love and sex are consensual or not consensual? Then you are likely one of those who doesn't think it matters if anything is voluntary or consensual or free or not.

And people like that scare me in a way that gay men who have conensual sex in prison never could.

Love,
Ben

Margaret Spellings gets something right

I've been more than a little disappointed with the leadership of Margaret Spellings as President Bush's Secretary of Education. She has, up until now, been an almost unqualified cheerleader for the No Child Left Behind Act, which, no matter how much journalists like those at the Washington Post celebrate the consolidation of education policy in Washington, D.C., has, by the accounts of most teachers you will talk with who are required to implement this well-intentioned but counterproductive effort, been a miserable experience which has correlated, though not been caused by, higher assessment scores, but which has been simultaneously undermining the most critical functions of education, namely to develop independent, critical thinking for a liberal democratic society.

But, finally, Margaret Spellings got it right.

A National Test We Don't Need

Margaret's rebuttal to the poorly reasoned Washington Post lead editorial that assumes correlation of NCLB with higher assessment scores means the success of NCLB -post hoc ergo propter hoc or the fallacy of false cause is probably the most common fallacy that partisans engage in; they want to believe that their favored efforts work, so they look for evidence to make their case rather than engaging in a more rigorous questioning of whether or not their ideas are correct, the higher standard that social sciences aspire to meet - moves in the right direction.

Spelling argues, correctly, that one-size-fits-all and stiffer national standards create a scary universe of Washington-run education (George Orwell would piss his pants if he heard of partisans arguing that Big Brother should be in charge of a nation's education system) and that such authority should be devolved from federal control.

This is where conservatives can be much more genuine classical liberals than political liberals. Where liberals are constantly emboldened by their romance with FDR and his consolidation of everything good and correct in the Federal government, conservatives tend to be more skeptical, for good reason. It is exactly this kind of consolidation of power that more genuine liberals like Lord Acton warned the world against. Journalists like too many at the Washington Post - David Broder, especially - and too many politicians in Washington arrogantly disregard the persistent and wide-spread concerns by teachers about the tendency of NCLB to drive all curriculum, to encourage teaching to narrow tests rather than for a broader liberal education, to press teachers in directions that are counterproductive to the broader purposes of an education that both cares for students' individual goals and needs and which teaches independent, critical thinking.

And my most serious concern is the hubris by the less intellectually-inclined, like the editorial writers at the Washington Post and too many politicians in Washington (though, to the credit of many political representatives, the tide is turning against NCLB and has been for quite awhile), deciding for the rest of the country what should be required curriculum and instruction through assessment. It's an arrogant grab of power by a group of folks who, generally, have not demonstrated a propensity to engage in the most rigorous intellectual thought, at least not by the standards of academic scholarship.

I, personally, would be skeptical of even philosopher-kings in the academy deciding for the country what should and should not be studied. But I would listen to their ideas much more readily than I would to the editorial board of the Washington Post (no offense to the smart, but too clever by half members of that editorial board).

Margaret Spellings has not gotten much right in her tenure as Secretary of Education. She has persistently cheerleaded No Child Left Behind over the objections of teachers, administrators, superintendents, and critics all over the country. But she has figured out what the Washington Post has not figured out in its recent period of flexing its journalistic muscle: to listen to the people your laws impact.

Those who ignore people whom are impacted by their favored legislation engage one of the most persistent forms of abuse of power that democracies experience: the desire to will out over others rather than to listen to and engage them.

It is a tendency that a truer liberal, Bobby Kennedy, warned us about months before his death in 1968. The wielders of force seek to control their neighbors rather than live and work in common effort. And their hubris should be rebuffed and treated with the skepticism that Margaret Spellings offers it in this column.

The power of the press, as Alexis de Toqueville observed over 200 years ago, is one of the most serious powers in molding the morality of a nation of any in a democracy.

But it is a mistake for independent-minded people to cede the authority to decide such important matters to anyone but their own independent consciences and judgments.

It is time for liberals like the writers at the Post to take more seriously the independent, critical judgment that education is supposed to nurture.

Love,
Ben

Swagger, bluster, and the wielders of force - The Mindless Menace of Violence, Bobby Kennedy, April 5, 1968

Bobby Kennedy has a beautiful quotation in his impromptu eulogy announcing the assassination of Martin Luther King, anticipating the impulse to violence in the country and appealing for white Americans and black Americans, to do what the Greeks had written so many years ago, to tame the savageness of man, and make gentle the life of this world.

The day after King's assassination, Bobby gave this beautiful speech to a world shaken and likely jaded by the inexplicability of such a terrible tragedy.



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

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

The older I get, the more I become aware of the darker and sharper edges of civilization and middle class America and the world as much as the clearly darker underworlds in the West and throughout the world and in a violence-obsessed and harsh, sometimes barbaric traditional developing world and the romanticism of violence and harshness and revenge and mean-spiritedness that is still all too present in all parts of the world, liberal and illiberal. I become more aware of how all of us – liberal and illiberal peoples, alike – rationalize our basest, harshest, most vengeful and ugly impulses in the name of our most decent and strongest virtues. And, tragically, how we persistently debase our most decent impulses – especially virtues like forgiveness, love, compassion, decency, and humanity - in our efforts to make our ugliness look more pretty than it really is.

I do not want to root out those basest impulses. Such an effort is fruitless and counterproductive. It is the essence of repression, which only buries our feelings. It does not resolve them. It leaves the ugliness in our hearts and has us pretending that it is more resolved in our hearts than it really is. I want to soften those sharper impulses, not eliminate them. I want to love them, to accept and forgive them and us for them. I want to tame the savageness of man, and make gentle the life of this world.

Bobby Kennedy, following the assassination of Martin Luther King, articulated the most decent, gentle, loving message of people and their common destiny of any American politician I have ever encountered. I have plenty of policy disagreements with Bobby, as I do with all politicians and people who are politically-minded. But Bobby Kennedy was one of the most decent people who ever aspired for the Presidency, virtues and vices.

And this speech, with music from the 2006 movie by Emilio Estevez about Senator Kennedy, is one of the most beautiful that he ever spoke and is one of the most beautiful speeches I have ever heard a politician speak, save perhaps his impromptu eulogy for Martin Luther King.

To tame the savageness of man, and make gentle the life of this world. It is the most decent instinct that could ever animate a liberal democratic world and a world of common humanity.

Love,
Ben

Andrew Sullivan reminds me why I love liberty

Andrew Sullivan has a post, today, that totally gets to the heart of why liberty and liberal values are a more honest accounting of human nature, its needs, its wants, its evils and its aspirations.

Islam's One-Hour Marriages

This story - about Islam's attempt to rationalize prostitution and make it into something holy that it is not - completely captures the heart of liberal values.

Liberal values are not meant to rationalize bad choices or bad situations, like selling your sexual wares or risking one's ding-a-ling and life, potentially, for a little hoochie-coochie.

What liberalism does is both get us honest about the universal and time-tested temptations that such opportunities offer, despite their unfortunate consequences, and the hypocrisy of middle class folks taking advantage of them, being tempted by them, regularly enjoying their benefits - readily available pornography is both the most open version of this and the most hopeful opportunity for middle class peoples to let go of their pretensions and hypocrisy - and then criminalizing, sanctioning, repressing, suppressing and otherwise punishing the very activities they often support or are sympathetic to in private.

Liberal values are about looking at our propensity to be tempted in the wrong directions, to acknowledge its presence and reality in our lives more honestly, and to offer us the freedom and the expecation and responsibility to choose wisely, even when we sometimes choose foolishly.

Liberal values acknowledge that fundamental to every choice we make, no matter the character of the society - free or repressed, liberal or illiberal - is our free will, to make good choices and to make bad choices. Liberal values acknowledge that bad choices might be made, but that better choices are made from those experiences.

Liberal societies are involved in one long bad choice, right now - to somehow expect that a more repressive direction that respects our freedom less can somehow be progressive in a free world where more freedom is the only real direction forward.

It is a bad choice we will learn from, I am confident (today; that hasn't been true, here, lately, as I have lost some faith in a world that has been seriously fucking me, lately). But, right now, we are rationalizing the bad choice. As we do in every generation. Until we learn our lessons, face ourselves more honestly, and move forward in the more liberalizing direction.

I have to say that for all of their faults (and liberal societies have many) this is the one thing that I am most proud of that I can count on in liberal societies - the likelihood of moving in the more liberal democratic direction, even while it sputters and fumbles and hurts a lot of people in the process. We fuck up a lot in liberal democratic societies, it's true.

But the great thing about liberal values is that they make it easier for us to face the fuck up once we make it.

That's why liberal values and liberal societies are great, despite their many shortcomings. Because they are the societies that most readily face their shortcomings. Because of the liberal values and the forgiving tendencies that go with them that allow us to face ourselves and one another more honestly and to take better responsibility for our faults.

And that is why I love liberty. Because it offers us the surest way to become more genuinely good people.

Love,
Ben

I sometimes get afraid

I sometimes get afraid that the harsher experiences of my adulthood harden me.

I felt this most seriously the first time I was fired and had no money for rent and nowhere to go. I visited Melissa in Milwaukee only to have her roommate decide that I couldn't stay with them. Melissa and I left for Lawrence and to live together here. Melissa found a job, first. I found a job, second. But the whole experience was very scary and cold.

There was a time, in there, where Melissa and I had a fight and I left the apartment and spent the night in my car. I was overwhelmed with fear and the pain that people were so cold during my first experience with hardship.

That was the first time I felt myself getting hardened by life.

My most recent experience is similar, though not nearly as serious. I just find myself meeting new people and new colleagues with a lot of guardedness and mistrust.

I now know that there is virtually noone that I can really trust. Bosses are harsh. Friends, family, and colleagues rally for the very kind of treatment that they bemoan when it touches them, and, sometimes, when it touches me.

We just live in a world, right now, that is constantly rationalizing every harshest way of treating people. And then wondering why they have such a cynical, harsh world in which they live. It's the most foolish and bizarre form of hypocrisy and stupidity and cold-heartedness rationalized. But it is the reality we live until we choose something different.

I've decided there is only a limited amount that I can do about it. I am very well aware that every individual and every individual choice makes a difference. But I can't do this alone. So if people want an ugly, cynical, harsh world, then so be it, I say. Just give up the pretense that someone else is responsible for it, I say. Be a grown-up enough to admit that if you advocated for the harshness of this world, then you are responsible for it.

The idea that the nice folks of the world are somehow responsible for the ugliness is the asshole's rationalization for why decent people are responsible for all of the cynicism they breed and not their cynical rationalizations and treatment of people. It is the shitheads among us saying to themselves, "If more people were just like me and somewhere between Adolph Hitler and Mohatma Ghandi - Hitler and Ghandi being equally evil extremes, you see, who lack the wisdom and decency of average people - then this world would be a decent place. But until then, the reasoning goes, we need to harden up the fuckin' peaceniks, make 'em a little bit more like Hitler, so we don't have people going soft in the world (that was Hitler's problem, of course; he went soft...or he was too hard...I can't keep track of all of the rationalizations for why the dicks of the world really have "the right balance").

In the meantime, the only thing that makes us more decent and human and honest with ourselves and one another and make genuine progress (not the bullshit kind that we propagandize about to make ourselves look better than we really are) is folks like King and Ghandi and Jesus and Buddha and Desmond Tutu and all those softy intellectuals and freedom-loving scholars and thinkers and the occassional politician, like Bobby Kennedy or Bill Bradley or Dick Lugar or Mark Hatfield who have us stop and think to ourselves, "Have we lost our souls in trying to stave off our fears?"

I get afraid like anyone else does.

But my biggest fear is getting hard. And cynical. And old. And justifying everything I do as good for someone else, even when it's not.

I understand how and why people get like all of those things. I've been feeling like all of those things, lately.

But I have no interest in being like them just to make my life easier.

There's a lot of pressure to do so, of course. Just as there has been a lot of social pressure to do just about anything - good or bad - that people have wanted since since the beginning of humanity. Pressure, force, coercion, imposition. None of these things are new. They are the mainstays of every oppressive and repressive version of human society since the dawn of humanity. I understand why they are used. I also understand how easily they are abused. How easily they corrupt, as Lord Acton wisely observed. How easily authoritarian is confused with more genuine and concerned and wiser authority and self-governance. How easily self-interest is confused with the public interest.

As a teacher and as someone responsible for children, I understand much better today why they are used. I understand why aggression is substituted for reason, so often. I understand they are sometimes needed and why it's important to forgive their failures as much as criticize them. I also understand that there are failures of those who do not take the responsibilities that they are meant to impose seriously enough that have consequence, as well.

But I also know that there is no way out of the mess that the world finds itself in today without reason having a much more serious role in our lives and aggression having a much less frequent role. There is no genuine progress without that development. We are pretending and defending a bad idea without this development. We are being defensive of failures that cannot be resolved by defensiveness. They can only be resolved by thought and discussion and appeals to conscience. Everything else is pretending.

Perhaps that is what people will settle for, today. I certainly know an awful lot of good, decent, and nice people who seem to be settling for it, today.

I'm afraid that it, periodically, hardens me and makes me suspect that there truly is noone I can trust, neither trusting the power-driven ambitions of middle class and upper class partisans with balls and the cowardice of the less ambitious and more risk aversive folks of the lower and middle class.

There really is just no other way you can cut it, for me. I just don't trust anyone these days. Even the people I want to trust, I don't. Because I know that the closest people to me have turned their backs on me, at various points in my life. And I just don't trust people, anymore.

It's a sad way to live. But it's the only realistic way I know to live, right now, in the current political period when everyone is rationalizing what mean-spirited pricks they have to be to face down their fears of the world. The ugly, cynical world that they created, themselves, with all their fear and mean-spiritedness.

As with Jesus' time or Ghandi's time or King's time, it is a long-running self-fulfilling prophecy that can and only will change as we face our own responsibility and hand in creating the very world that we so fear. The people of each of those times killed the men who appealed to their consciences. Specific people were responsible. But everyone created the fertile soil for it, rationalizing their more aggressive, mean-spirited instincts. And so the world turns and turns and turns, until we face our hand in it.

Some of us won't. Most of will, long after the damage is done.

And I sometimes get afraid that I won't see that day without losing my own soul to a hardened fear that life will always be this harsh.

I can only hope that a more genuine faith is rewarded in this lifetime.

If not, this has all been for naught. And that really does scare me more than anything else.

Love,
Ben

Wishing

I wish I could have learned so many of the lessons I have learned without screwing them up. I really do.

I've experienced some pretty serious and, at times, harsh consequences for learning I've done and mistakes as a part of that learning.

Losing Brandi was the most serious consequence I probably experienced. Though my life has been pretty harsh, at times, up to this point, as well. Financial, job, school and other consequences have sucked in a major way. And sadly, so many of the artificially imposed consequences have done no good, at all, and have often been counterproductive, making things worse for everyone.

I wish I could have avoided all of those consequences. Especially losing Brandi, which really was the most heartbreaking consequence I've experienced for mistakes in my life - largely, fighting so much with someone who was my best friend and who it made no sense to fight with, at all, really.

And yet all of the learning that went with all of those consequences was not, generally, available to me without experiencing all of those consequences (except for the artificially imposed ones, which were, as I said, largely useless and/or counterproductive and made things worse).

The consequences sucked.

But the learning was more important.

And I'm glad I risked the consequences for the learning that went with them.

I hate listening to Every Time We Say Goodbye - Annie Lennox, Sarah Vaughn, or whomever - and thinking, "How in the fuck did I push away someone I loved so much?" It fuckin' sucks.
I hate listening to Darryl Worley's I Miss My Friend, Diamond Rio's Beautiful Mess, or Rascal Flatts' These Days and thinking, "I remember when I learned to love country music. When I lost Brandi."

I hate seeing people give me the eye when they know what a fuck up I was at KU or what an organizational oaf I was at Eisenhower or whenever they know I've been rejected or fired or expelled or convicted or proclaimed an official fuck-up by someone somewhere and thinking, "What a fuckin' loser," or "There is no fuckin' way I want to end up like you."

But as much as I hate all of those things...

I love and I'm proud of the fact that I've been and remain willing to risk the fucking up to learn the lessons for real and not in some abstraction or rule or proclaimed wisdom or someone else's idea of how I should live my life.

I'm proud of the fact that I put the learning ahead of the wishing.

I have a feeling that's going to pay off in my life. But even if it didn't, I'd be proud that I put the learning first.

I'd rather live with my heart and my mind open and experience all of the love and the disappointment and more genuine commitment that comes with that than I would live my heart full of fear and disappointment and absent more genuine commitment and without chasing the life that I know, deep down in my heart, that I want.

I'll take that, in a heartbeat, over a life without failure or mistakes or disappointment.

And, most important, that's a life that's my own. I own it. Good and bad. And the lessons I learn from it go toward making my life and the lives of people around me and those I love and hopefully as many people as possible better as a consequence of all of that learning.

And I'll take that consequence over any wishing anyday.

Love,
Ben

The future of the abortion question?

George Will makes a bad argument for Hillary Clinton's popularity, right now (which happens to be falling and to be matched by high unfavorables, as well). George knows better to conflate popularity with a strong leadership choice or choice of any kind, but he gives into the temptation of that reasoning, nonetheless. The same temptation E.J. Dionne's been giving into, lately, equating the unpopularity of the war in Iraq with the wisdom of pulling out before making sure that Iraqi security forces are up to the task of taking over security for themselves.

But George makes an excellent argument for what may, in fact, be the future of the abortion question.

What Voters Want: Competence

George argues:

"By 1972, 16 states with 41 percent of the nation's population had liberalized their abortion laws, and the Republican platform did not mention the subject. The next year the Supreme Court ripped the subject away from state legislatures. In 1976 the Republican platform protested the court's decision, recommended "continuance of the public dialogue on abortion" and endorsed a constitutional amendment "to restore protection of the right to life for unborn children."

The 1980 platform was similar, but four years later and afterward, the party, while continuing to favor a constitutional amendment, advocated "legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections" -- no "person" shall be deprived of life without due process of law -- "apply to unborn children." So, the party has repeatedly endorsed a constitutional amendment it thinks is a redundancy.

The party asserts that one of America's most common surgical procedures is murder. So, last year perhaps a million women and their doctors committed murder. However much a person deplores abortion and embraces that legal logic, nobody believes that either the legislation or the constitutional amendment that Republican platforms have praised will be passed. Hence the sterility of today's abortion debate. And hence the inclination of some social conservatives to focus on limiting abortion by changing the culture, and their willingness to evaluate candidates by criteria unrelated to abortion.

Writing in the New Republic, Thomas B. Edsall notes that in the late 1980s voters by a margin of 51 to 42 percent believed that "school boards ought to have the right to fire teachers who are known homosexuals." Today voters disagree, 66 to 28. In 1987 voters were evenly divided on the question of whether "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behavior." Today voters disagree, 72 to 23.

Recent Pew polling shows that a combined 48 percent of Republican voters say that Iraq (31 percent) or terrorism (17 percent) is their principal concern. Abortion? Seven percent. Gay marriage? One percent.

Edsall wonders whether Giuliani, who is appealing to "the Republican longing for managerial competence" with his "idiosyncratic brand of conservatism," might be a transformational Republican figure. But perhaps his conservatism is not idiosyncratic. Perhaps it is, in a way, traditional. Perhaps some conservatives are really serious about turning back the clock. To 1972."

Essentially what George seems to be arguing is that Rudy Guliani's position on abortion is the most genuinely conservative position. The simplified version of that argument would be:

Conservatives don't like abortion. But they both respect and endorse the right of states to make these decisions, which is their major beef with Roe v. Wade, overriding state legislative resolution of this issue. George's argument for conservativism increasingly emphasizes its more limited government, classically liberal, libertarian roots, with a commitment to traditional values like the immorality for abortion. But perhaps, George seems to suggest, if Rudy is elected, and a conservative Supreme Court were to endorse his view that it would be just fine to send the question of abortion back to the states, just perhaps, they will endorse a more classically liberal, limited government view of this question and continue to liberalize as George points out they were well on their way to doing as early as 1972.

Meaning: perhaps the path of liberal democratic integrity might be to endorse principles of federalism and democratic decision-making and allow states to decide the abortion question, which will actually lead to the more liberalizing result that conservatives and liberals both seem to be moving toward, at this point, anyway, and which Rudy Guliani seems to be embody: they believe it should be avoided, as much as possible, as a personal decision, but they endorse that it, generally, is a woman's choice (with input from fathers and families, we would all hope) that she should employ rarely if at all, when other alternatives are available and reasonable.

It's a good argument, actually. And it might finally resolve this godforesaken issue in the political arena and allow us to focus on more important issues while the culture rather than political representatives sort this matter out. It sure would be nice to have a consensus that is sustainable because it's based on liberal democratic principals with some integrity. As Rudy seemed to suggest in the debates, I'm fine with Roe v. Wade deciding the question, as well. But perhaps this is the only solution that will finally move this question in the right direction.

Something to chew on.