To tame the savageness of man, and make gentle the life of this world

In honor of Bobby Kennedy and the 40th anniversary of his tragic assassination, today, I wanted to offer a glimpse of why I take Bobby Kennedy's legacy as seriously as I do.



Bobby and I would have our disagreements, if he were alive, today, I am sure. We both have a passionate concern about real poverty, the people around us, and improving the conditions of the lives of our neighbors. Where Bobby was a lifelong liberal who often looked to the heritage of his party - an affiliation I shared most of my life - to government to solve those problems, I am a independently-minded policy thinker who sees a government as often a temporary solution, around most issues that are not directly related to national and international security and domestic law enforcement, that needs to give way to freely engaged efforts by a democratic civil society to look after our neighbors and be our brother's keeper.

Where Bobby was loyal to the American Democratic party and all of its ideological failings and blindspots, I am a political independent, loyal to all decent peoples, a cautiously idealistic realist, inspired by the noblest ideals of all humanity and highly disillusioned by both major parties in America and most who seek power in the world and their self-righteous tendencies towards pious assumptions of final answers on so many serious policy questions that they do not nor could they ever have in any final form, who simultaneously assumes, largely, a good faith commitment on the part of most political participants and most liberal democratic and often many illiberal and undemocratic citizens to address questions in ways that they care about passionately and sincerely, if often wrongheadedly. I am a liberal and a conservative in both of their most noble liberal democratic traditions and aspirations, I hope. And I am and have been subject to each of their sanctimonious and foolish shortcomings, as well, sadly.

Where Bobby saw a Vietnam War irrevocably lost, a source of seemingly endless unnecessary tragedy, and desperately needing an American withdrawal, I see of that war as I see of our current war, a tragic but noble effort to liberate millions of people from the grip of despotism and autocracy that can only be abandoned at the expense of many innocent lives. Both wars were engaged poorly, I believe, with the United States failing to take nearly seriously enough the fears and aspirations, the consultation and the self-determination of two sovereign peoples, too careless with its enormous power and the trust it is founded upon, and with failures of pragmatic political and military planning associated with both efforts which led and continue to lead to far too many unnecessary and tragic deaths, of Americans and of Iraqis and Vietnamese.



Bobby Kennedy was a man subject to such failings, as well. As am I.

But Bobby also embodied America's and liberal democracies' most noble aspirations, as well.

And most noble of all is his commitments to humanity articulated in these two beautiful speeches, and, most especially, the final lines from his impromptu eulogy for the Reverend Martin Luther King.

"My favorite poem, my -- my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:

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

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King -- yeah, it's true -- but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love -- a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past, but we -- and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.

And let's dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people."

To tame the savageness of man, and make more gentle the life of this world.

I have never heard a stronger articulation of the aim of humanity and its governance.

And this speech is the finest, I believe, I have ever heard from any American politician.

For all of our romance with "swagger and bluster and the wielders of force," at this tragic point in American and world history, Bobby Kennedy is an important reminder for all of us of the perils of the divisions and painful realities such swagger reflects and sows.

As Bobby said it much more eloquently:

"For 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 are different 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. Our lives on this planet are too short, the work to be done is too great. But we can perhaps remember, 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, surely this bond of common fate, this bond of common roles can begin to teach us something, that we can begin to work a little harder, to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again."

It is for this reason that Bobby Kennedy is one of greatest political figures in American history, and one of its wisest thinkers and leaders.

And it is for this reason that I mourn and mark every 5th of June, not just this one.

"To tame the savageness of man, and make gentle the life of this world."

We will do our sincere best, Bobby. Godspeed.

"I can't hear you. Take those boogers out of your mouth."

A friend recommended Zach Galifianakis, recently, and I located this gem.



Pretty hilarious and adorable.

Nice way to get the day started.

Back to Hobbes.

Torture and the realities of force as a governing philosophy

Andrew Sullivan alerts me to Taxi to the Dark Side, winner of the Academy Award for the 2008 Best Documentary, that I'll have to see if I can get my hands on it, when I get the chance.



It is very troubling to witness what people will rationalize, foolishly, in the name of fear.

I actually do believe in exceptions on matters of torture. I agree with experts that, typically, winning the confidence and relative trust of captives is more likely to yield more reliable information and that torture tends to yield less reliable information by means that are often very ugly, especially when one considers the innocent people against which torture is too often used.

There are times, though, when I would be willing to make exceptions. They are rare and ones easy to rationalize in uglier directions. But there are times when danger is genuinely imminent, when interrogators are clear, without doubt, that they are dealing with someone who is responsible for and/or has important information about that imminent danger, when time is of the essence and is too short for more decent efforts to yield information, and when more aversive, aggressive methods have a higher likelihood than more trust-building measures to yield information. The least possible necessary aggression and force should be used, generally. But I have a broad tolerance for compromising that principle when lives are on the line and other methods are not likely to save them in time. Such circumstances are rare and generally hypothetical. But I think it is valuable to acknowledge and discuss and debate them, up front, so that interrogators are less likely to rationalize torture.

But, generally, torture is both wrong and counterproductive. The case of Ibn Shaykh al-Libi, cited in this documentary, who was tortured to provide testimony to a connection between Saddam Hussein's regime and Al Queda developing chemical and biological weapons capability, is an excellent example of the problem with this tendency when torture is used.

It is a classic and foolhardy human tendency to turn to tough when we are afraid, when deeper, more honest and reflective thinking is what is needed. It is the oldest, most tragic, and most pernicious of mistakes of human history.

The rationalization of force for whatever purposes, even when our purposes are undermined by force, is the oldest, most destructive, most foolish tendency in human history.

In fact, it was because of this tendency, in the religious wars of 16th and 17th century Europe, where millions of people lost their lives over hundreds of years of struggle to forcibly convert Protestants and Catholics and to determine which religious followers would govern nations, that people like Thomas Hobbes, Baron de Montesquieu, Voltaire, John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill and so many other political thinkers, challenged this notion that force rather than liberty and reason should guide our consciences and the ways we govern.

Modern liberal democracies are so removed from that horrific and tragic legacy, that we have the luxury of forgetting its destruction and its valuable lessons.

Torture is a function of that legacy, not the inevitable villain amongst the heroes of force as a governing philosophy. It is this philosophy and its ugly history that has rationalized torture and its ilk for the long stretch of humanity.

And that is the still tragic history of regressive periods, like our most recent and still historical and political period, when force rather than freedom and reason is rationalized as a means to finally rid the world of its vices, like torture, and their practitioners.

It has never accomplished either. It never will accomplish either. And the illusion that it might has plagued humanity at least since the beginning of civilization.

And today, as then, it has left a wake of human destruction that is undoubtedly unparalleled by any other human vice imaginable.

It is time for that legacy to end.

The last throes of ideology

Brilliant analysis, after my own heart, by Janet Dailey in The Daily Telegraph, this morning.

The death throes of 20th-century ideology

Just a taste:

"You and I, and the millions of despairing Britons who are either personally victimised by these idiotic policies or who sympathise with those who have been, can see clearly not only that common sense and proportionality are vanishing commodities in public policy, but that those in power seem to be losing their grip on recognisable reality.

So who is it, then, that is technically insane? Lots of people, obviously: this mania has infected whole swaths of the governing and public administrative classes.

In order to understand how perfectly ordinary functionaries - and even some seemingly lucid politicians - have come to be swept up in mass psychosis, we need to understand what all these various instances of it (not to mention dozens of others, which there is no space to list here) have in common. What is the thread that runs through the obtuse failure to understand the consequences of not collecting rubbish, of making the police (and the hospitals) conform to Soviet-style production targets, and of using draconian espionage techniques on blameless citizens?

It is the confusion, the desperate disorientation of a collapsing belief system. What we are living through is nothing other than the death throes of 20th-century ideology: the idea that the state is the only repository of civic virtue and moral authority.

The notion that Big Government (whether in the central or the local form) could solve all social problems, and through its interventions achieve absolute justice and harmony, is collapsing. And in its last moments, in its disbelief and agony at its own failure, it is lashing out in every direction: if the earlier measures haven't dealt with crime/public disorder/anti-social behaviour/under-performing hospitals/insufficient recycling, we must add yet more layers of official interference.

If government fails to achieve its objectives, it must be because it isn't doing enough, isn't being sufficiently pro-active - so let's pass another law, bring in a further layer of intrusion, take away another dimension of personal responsibility from community life.

But somehow, everything that government does makes things worse: leads to more perverse consequences and unforeseen complications. And the panic increases and the desperation grows and we get yet more laws and rules and targets and misapplied regulations.

Because they have taken so much power over our lives, we feel free to blame the governing classes for everything that goes wrong. And they feel they must address our every difficulty because everything is their fault. (Indeed, their interventions so frequently exacerbate our problems that we are actually quite right to blame them much of the time.)

When there is a real crisis - not just dog poo or over-loaded wheelie bins - the solution always follows the same formula: take more power away from the people.

For example, the price of home-heating is now a serious problem, so what does the Government suggest? A return to zero VAT for heating fuel, which would lower the price instantly and significantly for everyone? Nope. What they propose is a hugely intrusive programme (at present illegal under data protection laws) in which private financial information about the poor would be handed to power companies, in the hope that the disadvantaged might be given more leeway in paying their bills.

So somewhere in the corridors of Whitehall, someone could have the power to decide which of us is deserving enough to have the confidential details of our hardship handed over to some anonymous manager at British Gas or Npower for their compassionate consideration. (Why not medical records, too? Surely the chronic sick could be given heating privileges?)

This madness is not all Gordon Brown's fault. He just happens to be the man presiding over the final moments of a political philosophy that has reached a dead end."

Brilliant. Dead-on. And much more genuinely liberal and democratic, in the John Stuart Mill and Alexis DeToqueville sense of those terms, than any of the nonsense pretending to be both this political period.

This is one of the central theses of my book. Ideology functions, today, much like religion in 16th and 17th century Britain and Europe. Protestants and Catholics fought and warred over which sect had rightful claim on legitimate religious authority and political governance throughout Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. It was these wars, in Great Britain, in particular, that inspired Thomas Hobbes to write The Leviathan as a treatise in favor of reason and secular thought to guide and provide legitimacy to governance. This is the reason Hobbes is considered the father of modern political science. His writing was a turning point in enlightened thought and reason, inspiring many Europeans, and, later, Americans, to commit themselves to reason as the basis for modern life that could transcend such bloody and pointless divisions and wars.

Ideology, I believe, serves a similar, if moderately more reasoned, function in 20th and early 21st century liberal democratic politics. Politics and matters of governance are not only seriously confused and confounded by ideological political battles. Reasonable policy, and the reasoned debate and discussion for pragmatic policy, is seriously distorted and obscured by ideology and its adherents. And more genuine liberty and democratic engagement is undermined by ideology and its commitment to power at the expense of both liberty and more reasoned policy and use of force, when force is necessary and the only best option.

And Janet Dailey does a nice job of illustrating the insanity that ideology, especially the ideology of power and the state settling matters of personal and public morality, engenders in contemporary life.

Ideology, like religion, is a lazy person's means of letting groups and an established body of thought attempt, futilely, to think for us, rather than taking up the responsibilities of independent and critical thought, judgment, conscience, and subsequent action more seriously and honestly.

Ideology is the last throes of humanity in its immature state attempting to settle its problems by the intellectually and otherwise lazy and dishonest means of power and imposition rather than by engaged and honest liberal and democratic thought.

And like its dubious ancestoral precedents in religious warfare, ideological warfare will and is similarly failing to reasonably and pragmatically address our most serious problems because it cannot do so.

Only reasoned thought and engagement offers that opportunity.

And folks like Janet Dailey and I make those arguments and wait for the world to come to terms with the limits of ideology and power to resolve our most serious problems and conflicts.

And if the efforts of Hobbes, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Locke, Rousseau, DeToqueville, Mill, Wolstonencraft, Dewey, Hayek, Friedman, and the like, offer us any guide, it is that though such a wait involves patience, history has a way of vindicating reason and liberty and more honest, genuine, and democratic engagement over the pursuit of power of so many illiberal forces that the hubris of those who would substitute power for free thought and conscience is stunning, to say the least, if not ultimately doomed.

My theoretical work in the use of least possible necessary aggression addresses the issue of how and how much force should be used when it is necessary and no other real options exist, not just when the use of force suits our fancy or our self-righteous notions of the world, and offers a guide for how the most limited government reasonable can be effectively employed to address the limited issues that government, and government alone, can do effectively and a plan for how many functions that liberal democratic and even illiberal and/or undemocratic governments have assumed but perform more poorly than a liberal democratic civil society would perform can be transitioned to a freer, more decentralized civil society that provides for needs independent of central governing authority.

Liberal democracy - meaning, a free egalitarian, meritocratic, democratic community and marketplace of ideas, choices, and consequences - is still the most viable and workable governing and living arrangement available, more honestly and thoughtfully conceived. And though the use of force is an important and limited function of a more genuinely conceived liberal democracy, it is incompatible with liberal democracy as a central governing philosophy. Hence the reasonable conflicts between liberal democracies and their illiberal, force-driven counterparts throughout the 18th, 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries.

The early 21st century, as Janet Dailey wisely observes in this piece, have been the last and regressive throes of 20th century statist, power-driven ideologies of the 19th and 20th centuries. And the failure of those ideologies will give way to a patiently cultivated commitment to independent thought and reason guiding political thought and governance in the 21st century and beyond.

Pragmatic reason is the only practical guide to policymaking now or in any era. And that it has been overcast by ideological battles, in the 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, and religious battles in the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, is a foolish legacy for the world to come to terms with if we want more reasoned, effective, and honest policies and liberal democratic societies and cultures in the future.

And recognizing the problem of ideology for what it is, as G.I. Joe would say, is half the battle.

Or as Shakespeare might have put it:

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

- The Trial of MacBeth, Act V, Scene V

Here's to signifying something.

Freedom and virtue

Freedom, like reason, science, technology, and the rest, is a source of good in the world. But like those other sources of good, freedom is not necessarily used for good or evil, alone. Freedom is the rich soil from which virtue, and all things that flow from it, grows.

It is soil that must, because of our initial vulnerability, be planted with seeds by others before virtue can sprout.

But virtue's seeds cannot, ultimately, be tended to by others, primarily. We must grow our own garden ourselves. There will be weeds and parasites that threaten the growth of virtue. At times, they may overwhelm its blossoms.

Still virtue must, in the end, be nurtured and harvested by each person in their own soil.

Virtue that is hovered over or controlled by another, is not real virtue, in the end. Real virtue does not need the control or oversight of others. We might seek or accept the input of other gardeners. But if virtue is not grown by our own hands, if conscience does not make our final judgments, if self-discipline does not, finally, come from ourselves, then it can never fully express itself and never fully mature. Discipline that is forever imposed by others never really becomes self-discipline or independent judgment and maturity at all. Only our own consciences, the fruits of our own labors and reflection, can develop the seed of virtue, lest we be stuck in the immaturity that is found by being tended to, persistently, by another. And, even then, it is only how and what we learn and how to thrive that determines the trajectory of our growth or lack thereof.

Many of us begin with soil that is rocky, dry, infertile, or otherwise difficult to grow from. But grow we must. And no amount of oversight from others can ever, ultimately, grow the harvest that only we can cultivate. And our dependence on that oversight, and its false promise, at long last, is the source of so much failure to mature, grow, and thrive by, all too tragically, the vast majority of humanity.

Freedom does not guarantee virtue, any more than repression.

But it does offer far richer soil, the only real soil from which virtue can grow, in fact, and the only real opportunity, for virtue to grow sustainably and fulfilling the promise of its seed to thrive given conditions that support its development.

If we do not live under such conditions, we must create them.

That is life's clearest lesson.

And the need to create conditions that support our growth, even if they do not currently exist, is the basis for the march of freedom, and virtue, and genuine progress for humanity.

Rationalizations for power and the use of force

David Rees gets to the heart of the rationalizations of power and the use of military force, during this period, in this really hilarious post on Thomas Friedman.

Thomas Friedman "Suck-on-This" Anniversary Celebratory Book Excerpt

First, the video (you gotta see it to believe it):



"'Suck. On. This.' Three little words every lonely, lovelorn Middle Easterner longs to hear. What Iraqi or Iraniani or Afghanistaniani doesn't secretly hope to open their shabby, sand-caked door to find American boys and girls leaning seductively against the wall, smacking their Zionist Bubbalicious, and inviting -- demanding -- someone suck upon their flawless American private parts? Atten-SHUN!

Or was Thomas Friedman suggesting that Iraqis needed to suck on the American boys' and girls' guns? In that case, when the American boys and girls go house to house, saying 'Suck. On. This,' maybe they should stick their guns right in front of the Iraqis' mouths, pressing the cold steel against their lips, so the appropriate response is obvious. Gives new meaning to the phrase BLOWBACK, doesn't it?

But wait, sports fans! Maybe I took too many "Left-Wing Dummy Dumb-Dumb Pills" this morning, and have misinterpreted what Friedman meant! It makes more sense that Friedman wants the Iraqis to suck on the very concept of American-ness, fellating the values and heritage that make our way of life the envy of the world. Or, perhaps he thinks the Iraqis should give even more ambitious blowjobs-- and suck not only on American-ness, but also on the principles of Western Enlightenment thought, with special emphasis on free-market, representative democracy. Talk about a mouthful! (YUM!)

Of course, knowing those stubborn Iraqis, they'd probably resent being forced to suck on something so awesome. I bet they wouldn't even swallow."

It is pretty remarkable, really. The rationalizations of power and the use of force that people engage in.

It almost makes you want to cry for Robert Mugabe or Fidel Castro or Kim Jong Il or the Chinese Communist government, so hard is their job wielding force as a governing philosophy, maintaining a strong state in the face of recalcitrant citizens.

Francis Fukuyama gives the Chinese government a great big hug in his most recent blog post he so sympathizes with the need of the Communists to maintain a big, macho "Strong State."

I want to cry with folks like Francis Fukuyama and Thomas Friedman about the dilemmas of forcing the world into compliance with their greater wisdom - I mean, really, can you watch an interview like Friedman's there or read a post like Fukuyama's and doubt their greater wisdom? Come now - but then I remember all the people who have died or been imprisoned or otherwise had tragedies made of their lives in the name of that hubris.

And I, for one, am humbled.

But apparently humility is for the weak. Not big macho men like Thomas Friedman and Francis Fukuyama.

Death, destruction, and endless tragedy, apparently, only emboldens the strong amongst us to rationalize force as a governing philosophy - liberty and democratic engagement are for the weak, you see, who do not understand the genius that is embodied in power for whatever purposes they deem it necessary - against the weak, who do not know enough about their own interests to wield liberty freely without offering sufficient obedience to the strong.

So, sometimes, the strong must say, to all of us, really, not just the Iraqis:

Suck. On. This.

Otherwise, what would this world come to, really? Peace and harmony and kumbaya, you fuckin' hippie.

No. Thomas and Francis are right.

Sometimes the world just needs to learn three simple words:

Suck. On. This.

Really. It's for our own good.

"Yeah, I did"

That's why conservatives are jumping all over Scott McClellan. I kept seeing "snitch" all over conservative websites. Drudge Report. Wonkette. And I kept thinking, "Snitching about what? What was Scott saying that was not already public knowledge?"

And then I saw this interview:



"But that was a very disillusioning moment for me when I found out, uh, when the press, it initially hit the press. And we were in believe it was in North Carolina, if I remember correctly. And a reporter shouted out to the President, is it true that you authorized the secret leaking of this previously, it was classified information, but the President does have the legal authority.

Walked onto Air Force One and the President asked what was the reporter was asking.

And I said, 'He asserted that you were the one who authorized Scooter Libby leaking this information.'

And he said, 'Yeah, I did.'"

That's why the shit's hitting the fan. All of the vitriol and accusations of financial motivations for this book seemed terribly premature and overreaction by conservatives to me.

But now it all makes sense.

Power represses honest engagement and reflection.

But not forever. Only as long as people are afraid.

I'm not a big fan of snitching - in this case, the prosecutions just need to end; Scooter Libby never should have been prosecuted in the first place and notice how much more information we get from someone coming forward voluntarily rather than through that ridiculous and vindictive prosecution - but we do need more honesty to clean up politics, more people being less afraid, not more prosecution.

Prosecution, like other forms of power, tends to repress more honest engagement and reflection, no facilitate it. That's why liberal thinkers wisely advise us in the direction of greater freedom and not less, prosecuting less human folly, not more. If prosecution or power really could solve more of our problems, Nazism, Communism, theocracy, and repressive government of all kinds would all have made and make more sense. They do not. Because power undermines a more honest citizenry, and more honest efforts to address our problems, it does not facilitate it. That is what Lord Acton was getting at, if we could all just take two seconds to think on the matter.

Scott, fuck the critics. Keep speaking honestly. Congress needs to step the fuck off and let an honest discussion of this war and our dysfunctional, vindictive, and repressive political system clean things up and stop romanticizing their own power to do so.

It's the fear of snitching when people fuck up, and the exacting of harm on those who do, that undermines more honesty. Obviously there are times when we must use force to contain people or defend ourselves. But that is why it is so important to be so discriminating about when that should happen. And that is why we presume in favor of freedom. Because the rationalization of our vindictive and aggressive natures and counterproductive thinking is so tempting.

It's always everyone else who we think we need to be suspicious of, especially when it comes to power, we tell ourselves. Never us.

And that's the problem.

And that is why we presume in favor of liberty and against the notion that power will or can accomplish more than it will or can. Or that we are safe with its use because we, uniquely, favor the right causes for its use.

None of us have any final say on the right causes. And believing so is the bane of human history.

And there is much tragedy left in the wake of that tendency.

More honesty. Less repression. More freedom. Less force.

Let's make sure that George Orwell's efforts were not in vain and sacrificed on the altar of our own vanity.

More truth. Less power.

Skepticism and self-importance

Andrew Sullivan posts this terrific challenge to our self-importance.



It is a challenge to skeptics and intellectuals like Andrew and myself and all thinking people in the world, including the most thoughtful, as much as it is to those with governing power.

That's what I like about Andrew. He knows this better than most people.

We all need to know greater humility. All of us. Me especially.

The foolishness of force as a governing religious philosophy

Vatican: Excommunication for female priests

The sexism and foolishness in this decree are not difficult to understand.

We are just too stubborn to learn the lesson.

Because, sadly and strangely, too many are convinced that repression is responsible for our security, even more tragically and bizarrely, our liberty, and everything that we hold true.

And so we rationalize ugly, sexist rules like this one.

This is not difficult to understand.

We are just too stubbornly foolish to face up to our self-deception.

We are too stubbornly foolish to face up to the bullshit.

And I, for one, am tired of the bullshit.

The insanity of force as a governing philosophy

Fulbright scholarships canceled for 8 Gaza students

You've got to read this story to believe it. I can think of no other single more clearly counterproductive policy by the Israeli government than this in solidifying enmities against Israel, other than the occupation, about which Israeli conservatives seem to be digging their heels in, at this point, or the killing of innocents, which is policy for Hamas. So Hamas rationalizes killing innocents, and Israel rationalizes imprisoning Palestinians in Gaza, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad rationalize terrorizing Israeli citizens, and Israel rationalizes its occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. And on and on and on.

And innocent Israelis and Palestinians, like these students, are subjected to the killing and repression of their governments or non-governmental terrorist actors, with no way out. And these governments and terrorist groups ask them coldly, if they dare protest, "What are you going to do about it?"

The one hope that the world has amidst its ugly and repressive ways is democratic engagement - education, thought, communication, free expression, debate, discussion, freedom of choice, learning about one another, understanding, compassion, friendship, family, love, wisdom - and the Israeli government shuts all of that down for a few Gaza students who could bring all of that back with them to this godforsaken situation or work for greater understanding and peace between Israel and Palestine from outside of Gaza, if they, quite reasonably, choose not to return. The one real hope that Israel and the Palestinians have for resolving their differences honestly, decently, and peacefully - to allow their children to seek and create a better future - and Israel and Hamas choose to repress and imprison these people instead.

This is what force as a governing philosophy looks like, for those who were curious about rationalizing it in liberal democracies, by the way. We so take our freedom for granted, we often need a healthy reminder of just how poorly force and repression as a governing philosophy have served humanity for much of its existence. And what it looks like to try to kill, imprison, and leverage our problems away rather than learning how to handle them better together, as much as possible.

This is no way to govern. It is no way to live.

And it is a legacy we must end.

How the use of force often undermines its ends

Fareed Zakaria shares good news on the terrorism front. And his analysis is a nice snapshot at how those romanticizing force to further political ends - the central purpose of terrorism - might want to reconsider the practical consequences of such a strategy.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear

"You know that we are living in scary times. Terrorist groups are metastasizing all over the globe. Al Qaeda has re-established its bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Hizbullah, Hamas and other radical Islamic groups are gaining strength. You hear this stuff all the time, on television and on the campaign trail. Amid the din, it's hard to figure out the facts. Well, finally we have a well-researched, independent analysis of the data relating to terrorism, released last week by Canada's Simon Fraser University. Its findings will surprise you.

It explains that there is a reason you're scared. The U.S. government agency charged with tracking terrorist attacks, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), reported a 41 percent increase from 2005 to 2006 and then equally high levels in 2007. Another major, government-funded database of terrorism, the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terror (MIPT), says that the annual toll of fatalities from terrorism grew 450 percent (!) between 1998 and 2006. A third report, the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), also government-funded, recorded a 75 percent jump in 2004, the most recent year available for the data it uses.

The Simon Fraser study points out that all three of these data sets have a common problem. They count civilian casualties from the war in Iraq as deaths caused by terrorism. This makes no sense. Iraq is a war zone, and as in other war zones around the world, many of those killed are civilians. Study director Prof. Andrew Mack notes, 'Over the past 30 years, civil wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Bosnia, Guatemala, and elsewhere have, like Iraq, been notorious for the number of civilians killed. But although the slaughter in these cases was intentional, politically motivated, and perpetrated by non-state groups-and thus constituted terrorism as conceived by MIPT, NCTC, and START-it was almost never described as such.' To take just two examples, Mack pointed out that in 2004, the Janjaweed militia killed at least 723 civilians in Sudan (as documented by independent studies). The MIPT recorded zero deaths in Sudan from terrorism that year; START counted only 17. In Congo in 1999, independent studies identified hundreds killed by militia actions. The MIPT notes zero deaths that year from terrorism; and START, seven.

Including Iraq massively skews the analysis. In the NCTC and MIPT data, Iraq accounts for 80 percent of all deaths counted. But if you set aside the war there, terrorism has in fact gone way down over the past five years. In both the START and MIPT data, non-Iraq deaths from terrorism have declined by more than 40 percent since 2001. (The NCTC says the number has stayed roughly the same, but that too is because of a peculiar method of counting.) In the only other independent analysis of terrorism data, the U.S.-based IntelCenter published a study in mid-2007 that examined 'significant' attacks launched by Al Qaeda over the past 10 years. It came to the conclusion that the number of Islam-ist attacks had declined 65 percent from a high point in 2004, and fatalities from such attacks had declined by 90 percent.

The Simon Fraser study notes that the decline in terrorism appears to be caused by many factors, among them successful counterterrorism operations in dozens of countries and infighting among terror groups. But the most significant, in the study's view, is the 'extraordinary drop in support for Islamist terror organizations in the Muslim world over the past five years.' These are largely self-inflicted wounds. The more people are exposed to the jihadists' tactics and world view, the less they support them. An ABC/BBC poll in Afghanistan in 2007 showed support for the jihadist militants in the country to be 1 percent. In Pakistan's North-West Frontier province, where Al Qaeda has bases, support for Osama bin Laden plummeted from 70 percent in August 2007 to 4 percent in January 2008. That dramatic drop was probably a reaction to the assassination of Bena-zir Bhutto, but it points to a general trend in Pakistan over the past five years. With every new terrorist attack, public support for jihad falls. "This pattern is repeated in country after country in the Muslim world,' writes Mack. 'Its strategic implications are critically important because historical evidence suggests that terrorist campaigns that lose public support will sooner or later be abandoned or defeated.'

The University of Maryland's Center for International Development and Conflict Management (I wish academic centers would come up with shorter names!) has released another revealing study, documenting a 54 percent decline in the number of organizations using violence across the Middle East and North Africa between 1985 and 2004. The real rise, it points out, is in the number of groups employing nonviolent means of protest, which increased threefold during the same period."

The truth is that force as a political tactic generally fails, in the long-run, despite sometimes achieving narrow, short-term objectives, and should be weighed very carefully as an option with very serious costs, including counterproductive consequences for our long-term objectives, and only one option among many.

We need to learn to use the least possible necessary force, when it is appropriate, and no force at all, when it is not.

But, in the meantime, failure can be as solid a teacher as more careful thought and planning, and generally it is one if not the most important teacher for most people. Failure will have to be our teacher, on this matter, it appears, because we have proven to be quite stubborn fools on this matter.

But it cannot last forever. Noone wants to fail forever, no matter how embarrassing it is to face or acknowledge failure. We will face it. Give us time.

In the meantime, it's good to know that the folks who need to learn this most are doing so with increasing frequency: our terrorist enemies.

Cowardice and power

I am convinced, at this point - as I read coverage of possible peace deals between Israel and Palestine and Israel and Syria, and as I read the vitriol being slung around this Presidential election season - that the single most serious obstacle to progress on most serious policy issues is not a lack of will, power, knowledge, and certainly not pressure or leverage.

The single most serious obstacle to progress on most issues is cowardice.

And it is a particular and perhaps the most pernicious form of cowardice: the pride associated with not ever, and certainly not very often, admitting that we are wrong. About anything. And certainly about anything that matters most.

An important part of the problem is that all of the power and manipulation, the pressure and the leverage and others forms of aggression, make it very difficult for people to let down their emotional defenses adequately to acknowledge mistakes or the need to rethink.

But watching a world, liberal and illberal, that is perpetually rationalizing illiberal practices, consistently rationalizing forcing their way through issues that need more respect for conscience and the thoughts and judgments of others, it has become clear to me that the only way out of this mess of cowardice is more courage.

Meaning, cowardice got us into so many of the messes we face. Cowardice is the animating feature of terrorism that cannot reason or engage respectfully with those whom terrorists have disagreements and kills innocents instead. Cowardice is what animates a polarized liberal democratic politics that is more insistent on forcing others to submit to our will than on engaging in free, good faith, and honest democratic discussion that builds understanding rather than enmity. Cowardice is what animates all efforts to overpower those who disagree with us rather than to reason with others and to take reason and its rigors seriously.

The cowardice that animates so many power engagements and uses of power is the rationalizing logic of terrorism, despotism, Communism, theocracy, genocide, organized crime, and so many of the ugliest facts of contemporary life. And it is a cowardice that, sadly, liberal democratic peoples share with each of these uglier commitments and crimes of petty and dangerous people.

And liberal peoples are too beholden to their illiberal impulses to give up the practices that give such people the cover they crave to continue their ugly practices

It is our cowardice that keeps us stuck in our most serious dilemmas, I am convinced. Not the cowardice associated with avoiding anything that smacks of danger and aggression. That cowardice is the one we are most afraid of (it's kind of a funny fear to have, when you think about it).

The cowardice that keeps liberal peoples stuck is the cowardice associated with refusing to acknowledge that, perhaps, they might not fully understand the problems they face. That they might be wrong. And that they might need to engage those they disagree with to understand, more fully, whether we are in fact wrong or not.

It is the cowardice of terrorists and despots. In fact, it is this cowardice that is the animating logic of terrorism and despotism.

And, today, liberal democratic peoples have embraced this cowardice as their own. With very little to show for it, too, tragically.

You see it every time an Israeli or a Palestinian argues that peace is not achievable. It is clearly achievable, with partners who are willing to make peace. It is only unachievable because such people poison that well and want others to join them in their ugly rationalization.

You see this cowardice every time that anyone of any ideological stripe claims to have more answers than they do - which is more often than not, really - or that ideology offers them or anyone more answers than it does because ideology is forged in the heat of issues of the highest stakes, like somehow the heat of high stakes makes one more likely to have a better understanding. More often such heats clouds understanding, because it stalls us in incomplete and self-righteous ideas of the world. Such is the reason that most thinking people do not turn to religion to resolve most serious problems of reason in the 21st century. Because it too often offers answers with much heat and little light.

And the temptation to believe that heat rather than light is needed to solve most serious issues is a problem of cowardice, fundamentally. It is a instinctive tendency to turn to aggression, the instinct that most consistently betrays a thinking humanity trying to avoid the mistakes of unreasoning animals that we so often compare ourselves to in an effort to understand ourselves and this instinct, rather than the one quality that most consistently solves humanity's serious problems: our reason and understanding.

Aggression obscures reason and understanding. It drives them below ground, as people become afraid to talk and reason more honestly and openly, more with one another rather than at one another's expense, and undermines our fuller capacity for more genuine understanding. More pernicious, we have a million variations on aggression as a means of containing it, but generally just rationalizing it in different forms, which still undermine reasoned discussion and understanding all in the name of promoting them and containing such aggression.

Human beings have forever had ways of intimidating one another into thinking in ways that some among us approve, talking in ways that some approve, behaving in ways that we proscribe, and otherwise trying to limit freedom not to protect one another so much as to protect our cowardice that such freedom is the cause of all of our problems to deflect responsibility from all of the aggression, all of the force and repression, that we engage with one another, and with ourselves, as a means of protecting our cowardice and our emotional defenses meant to reinforce for ourselves that it is others and not ourselves who are responsible for the ugliness that we often have to offer one another in lieu of more genuine and honest reason and understanding.

But the nature of cowardice is that people are too afraid to acknowledge its presence. And to acknowledge their responsibility for it.

It is this cowardice that romanticizes and refuses to even consider the ineffectuality of leveraging our way to progress. It is this cowardice that so confuses the language of force and pressure that no action can be taken that cannot be characterized outside of its language, so fearful are we that we would wither in our vulnerability were we to consider a world that where less force was the standard for our progress and not perpetually more force.

Less force, less brutality, less warfare, less ugliness, more decency, more compassion, more freedom, more liberal and enlightened commitments have always been the standard for progress in liberal cultures, but even in illiberal cultures, in any empirical, meaningful, honest way.

But somehow we have twisted that logic in our fear and in our cowardice to face how this fear has animated our ugly behavior and the tragic consequences it has yielded.

And the saddest feature of all of this cowardice is the animating purpose of it all:

To avoid admitting that we might be wrong.

Can you imagine a more tragic and foolish reason for so many people to die or have lives destroyed?

To avoid admitting that we might be wrong.

Something so simple.

We are wrong on a million matters of ordinary life. We are wrong about what directions to take in an unfamiliar city. We are wrong about which ventures might meet with success. We are wrong about what teams might win games that we follow. We are wrong about which outfits might look attractive once we wear them. We are wrong about what efforts might fix our automobiles or our computers or any number of things we might be having problems with.

But, for some reason, with all of the clear and undeniable wrong opinions and choices that we experience in our daily lives, we cannot even conceive that we might be wrong on the most serious issues we face.

It certainly could not possibly be because we are never wrong. That is a literal impossibility.

And yet we so often behave as if that is the fact of the matter. When it could not possibly be.

And we do so, down deep, because of this cowardice. This cowardice that tells us that heat and not light is responsible for our successes. And someone or something else is responsible for our failures. And that we could not possibly be wrong on the most important and high stakes issues we face because to acknowledge such fallibility and uncertainty would be to acknowledge a fear that many of us cannot bear to admit that we live with: that we often really don't know how to address our most serious issues.

It is the humility of people like Karl Popper turned on its head. It is the arrogance of never admitting wrong thinking or wrong doing. And it is an arrogance and a cowardice that is more prevalent than not, really. Among all of us.

At one point in my life, I used to think that this was a cowardice that was most reserved for common people. People like my family. People with very little education or understanding of the world.

But with age and maturity, I have come to realize that it is an arrogance and cowardice that animates all levels of society. And it often animates more powerful circles in society more than other circles since this is where people have the most to lose from admitting their fallibility.

So we stay stuck in our cowardice. And we rationalize its presence. And it destroys more lives. And we stay stuck in the cowardice. And we rationalize its presence. And it destroys more lives. And we stay stuck in the cowardice. And we rationalize its presence. And it destroys more lives.

And on, and on, and on.

We turn to power, often, to solve problems in good faith. Our intentions often fail us. But we often come to those intentions in good faith.

But, too often, we turn to power to satiate our cowardice in the moment. But it is never satiated. Cowardice never is. But we turn to it again and again like a drug addict who never quite learns that the drug does not offer the comfort that they imagined that it might. And if turning to that drug destroys us in the process, then so be it, we rationalize. The drug of power could not possibly fail us like the soft, naive musings of reason.

Reason is for cowards. Understanding is for punks. Thinking and listening is for soft-hearted fools.

Power will satiate us and resolve our problems, this time.

It must. Because our fear of reason, but really our fear that we have been harboring all along - that we may be wrong, or worse, that we may not know the answers the problems we face - is one so compelling, because of our cowardice not because of some external force, that we cannot imagine facing it honestly.

This is the dilemma that we face today. And it will not go away until we face it. And we will remain mired in the same problems until we do.

And history will keep marching along right past all of those mistakes that we refuse to acknowledge or even consider in the process.

In the end, eventually, we want problems solved. And our desire for solutions and a path out of the unnecessary tragedy overwhelms our pride and our cowardice.

And then, and only then, will we find any genuine sense of security in the world.

Until then, we live with this cowardice. And all of the tragedy that is the fruit of its labor.

Step away from the stupid

Keith Olbermann sure does get on his high horse, don't he? I guess we all do.

Maybe we all need to step down from our saddles for a bit. Let's stop talking up all this assassination talk, what da'ya say? Some pyscho's going to see it as an opportunity and do something tragic. And that goes for Keith Olbermann as much as for Hillary Clinton.

Does anyone else giggle a little whenever Keith says, "Good night and good luck," at the end of each segment, these days?

This is why employing heat instead of light is such a stupid way to conduct liberal democratic politics. Because it generally solves little and creates more problems than it honestly or effectively addresses.

The last 8 years should be plenty evidence of that fact.

If we weren't all being so fuckin' stupid, that is. And kinda blind and utterly unable to acknowledge our own failures.

Darkness before the dawn, I think.

Why? Because we can't keep fuckin' up forever. Eventually we'll want to stop eating all the consequences.

We're morons, not hopeless.

Keith Olbermann. Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama. John McCain. George Will. E.J. Dionne. Andrew Sullivan. Michael Kinsley. Joe Nye. Francis Fukuyama.

And God knows I'm a fuckin' dipshit.

Whole fuckin' lot of us. A bunch of fuckin' morons.

Not hopeless. Not bad people. But there's plenty enough stupid to go around for everyone.

Power and its pursuit makes people stupid, I'm convinced.

Lord Acton had it half right. Power makes people stupid. And absolute power makes people really fuckin' stupid.

Wisdom for the ages.

In the meantime, as always, we have plenty of time to wisen up.

It's just a fuckin' shame that it always takes so long and so many people get hurt, in the meantime.

Let's not make this one of those times, what d'ya say?

In the meantime, let's ante up and step away from the stupid, why don't we?

Because God knows we've got quite the surplus as it is.

Bullshitting (or not) our children

I'm not even voting for Obama, at this point, and I know this is a good sign.

Lieberman's Step-Son: I'm Voting for Obama

Although I have to say that the more McCain's buddies in the press and the Senator himself open their mouths, the better President Obama sounds to me.

If he would say that he would stick with Iraq, I would swallow hard on his regressive economic policies and vote for the Senator from Illinois. God knows it would be nice to have a gay-friendly President for once.

One day, perhaps I can vote for a President who actually means it when he says that America should be a free country.

But, in the meantime, it's nice to see that the poseurs who behave otherwise can't fool the people who matter most:

Their children.

Joe Lieberman and other good people in the world need to take a long, hard look at why their children are not persuaded by their examples or their thoughts about politics and life. Because it says something about what too many people of Hillary Clinton's generation do not understand about how the world has changed and the directions in which it is moving that makes it very difficult to believe that people of this mindset can really lead anyone anywhere.

If John McCain would embrace gays and lesbians and not condescend them and if he would consider foreign policy options that are outside of his comfort zone and that of too many conservatives in Washington, it would be very difficult for me to vote against him.

But it is this disconnect that people like McCain and Clinton have with people of my generation and just people different from them and that they don't understand very well, generally, that is their biggest liability, right now.

And Barack Obama's capacity to understand and reach out does, indeed, make him a much more attractive candidate, all and all.

Perhaps conservatives will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in this election. Perhaps they deserve to.

Or perhaps they, too, can do better.

Perhaps we can all do better this election.

If we were going to do it, these are the two candidates who were most likely.

Here's to hoping for something better this campaign.

Weezer's Red Album

I can't think of a song that quite captures the attitude of this generation better.



I'mma do the things
That I wanna do
I ain't got a thing
To prove to you
I'll eat my candy
With the pork and beans
Excuse my manners
If I make a scene
I ain't gonna wear
The clothes that you like
I'm finally dandy
With the me inside
One look in the mirror
And I'm tickled pink
I don't give a hoot
About what you think

And, in addition to the failed international security policies he advocates, this is why Charles Krauthammer can fuck off.

It's nice to see Weezer with something more to say than how they'd like to live in Beverly Hills.

This is why I originally loved these boys.

Enjoy.

A little sanity in this time of paranoia

Court: Texas had no right to take polygamists' kids

We have have slowly but steadily been going fucking insane in this country over paranoia about child sexual abuse. And this case has been one of serious concern for me of just how much callousness we will rationalize in the name of that paranoia.

"The state never provided evidence that the children were in any immediate danger, the only grounds in Texas law for taking children from their parents without court approval, the appeals court said.

The state never provided evidence that teenage girls were being sexually abused, and never alleged any sexual or physical abuse against the other children, the court said.

It was not immediately clear whether the children scattered across foster facilities statewide might soon be reunited with parents.

Every child at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado was taken into state custody more than six weeks ago, after Child Protective Services officials argued that members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints pushed underage girls into marriage and sex and groomed boys to become adult perpetrators.

'The existence of the FLDS belief system as described by the department's witnesses, by itself, does not put children of FLDS parents in physical danger,' the court said in its ruling, overturning the order to keep the children by state District Judge Barbara Walther, a former family law attorney.

The appeals court also said the state was wrong to consider the entire ranch as an individual household and that any abuse claims could apply only to individual households."

And then, get this:

"The sect children were removed en masse during a raid that began April 3 after someone called a domestic abuse hot line claiming to be a pregnant abused teenage wife. The girl has not been found and authorities are investigating whether the calls were a hoax."

A hoax. 400 children taken from their parents. And now it all may have been a hoax.

This was all for the children, remember. And 400 children may have just been forcibly removed from their parents' care because of a hoax.

What the fuck is wrong with us? As with every regressive, repressive period that the world has ever witnessed, our fears have turned us to cowardice and paranoia, and to running roughshot over our neighbors to appease that cowardice.

Justice is constituted in individual cases, not allegations against an entire community and a presumption of guilt that tears children away from their parents 400 at a time.

What the fuck is wrong with us?

Concerns about sexual abuse, in this case, may have been warranted. Concerns about murder in every generation are warranted. That doesn't mean that we run all over people that we have suspicions of - for more reasons, in this case, than a concern about child sexual abuse, if we were honest with ourselves - and take their children away from them out of our self-righteous zeal.

We have gone off the bend, is the truth. Ever since 1999 and that pedophile priest scandal in the Catholic Church, we have lost our bearings, and lost faith in the heritage of liberal democratic thought, engagement, and presumptions that is the anchor for everything we take for granted in free societies.

We have become a nation of bullies and scolds. And then we bully and scold our children to not be the same. It's a fuckin' nuthouse, is what it is.

And then, like any dysfunctional family worth its salt, we all sit around and say, "This is how it has always been and this is how it will always be. Or this is how it has to be to keep us safe (or financially secure, or whatever excuse will do). And there's nothing I can do about it."

Except there is. We could own up. We could take responsibility for how out of control we have gotten in the name of being in control of our own repressed obsessions and, fruitlessly, in control of other people around us.

We could work up the courage to get honest about what a mess we have made of the world in the name of controlling it. In mental health, it's called a control issue. And the world has been going through and continues to go through one big collective control issue. And it has clear consequences for anyone not being defensive of our bullshit and how badly things have gone with our rationalizations of this repressive, regressive direction.

We are obsessed, is the truth. We are obsessed with this issue of children and sex. And this is but one illustration of the ugly direction that such an obsession creates. It's the repression that makes the obsession all the more powerful.

And this is one very important case to remind us of the virtues of liberty that we take lightly at our own risk.

If there are evidenced individual cases of genuine child sexual abuse among this sect, they should be investigated.

But bullying and scolding our way through such issues has clearly been counterproductive, to anyone not being defensive of such efforts.

These parents deserve an apology, is the truth. And for those who have been innocent of these charges and have had their children taken from them in the hopes of wrangling up child abusers, I am sorry and cannot imagine what a traumatic experience this might have been for you and your children. For those children who might be abused, among this group or in any situation, I am sorry for their pain, as well.

But we have got to grow up and stop letting our fears rather than our reason, understanding, and geuine compassion guide us.

There's a million excuses for why we've been such pricks during this period. None of them matter. We just need to stop being such pricks and stop pretending like being assholes to one another doesn't matter, when it so clearly fucks everything up.

We are all so wrapped up in our righteous indignation that we just can't give up the bullshit. And that is the problem with righteous indignation. It's inevitably wrapped up in bullshit. Because noone is right all the time. And people who think they are right all the time or that their friends are right all the time are the biggest bullshitters of all. Ask Stalin and Hitler.

We need to give up the bullshit, is the truth. And own up to what callous shitheads we have become in the name of ridding the world of callous shitheads. It's a fuckin' circus, is what it is.

And, every once in awhile, it is nice to get a little sanity amidst this circus of a regressive, repressive political period.

Good call by the Third Court of Appeals in Austin.

Perhaps a little sanity might do us some good.

Because God knows the insanity has worn on my last nerve.

Our heads catching up with our hearts

I have to say that I am immensely proud of the effort by Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, and the Bush Administration in handling what is an enormously complicated situation in addressing emergency humanitarian needs in Myanmar.

World faces limits to getting aid into Myanmar

"After initially agreeing to one flight on Monday, Myanmar's leaders have opened the door to daily flights by Marine and Air Force C-130 cargo planes. As of Saturday, the U.S. military had flown 21 C-130s loaded with about 500,000 pounds of aid into Yangon from their makeshift base in Utapao, Thailand.

Another four flights left Friday from the U.S. military's emergency headquarters at Utapao Air Base, in central Thailand.

'At this time, the needs are so immense, they are so large, that we're taking some risks to hope that we can get the assistance through to the ones who are most in need,' said USAID administrator Henrietta Fore. 'There is an enormous humanitarian urgency to this effort.'

Thai and Indian military missions also have been approved, and British, French and Australian warships were converging on the area.

Still, the U.N. and the international Red Cross say that between 1.6 and 2.5 million people are in urgent need of food, water and shelter. Only 270,000 have been reached so far by the aid groups.

Malloch-Brown estimated that 24 C-130 flights a day would be needed to meet the crisis — far higher than the current level. And, so far, U.S. requests to bring in helicopters, one of the few means of reaching the worst-hit regions, have been denied.

Myanmar's government has less than 40 helicopters, most old and in disrepair, and some 15 transport planes, primarily small jets unable to carry hundreds of tons of supplies.

The lack of motion is all the more visible because of the vast resources that are available to help.

Because of an annual exercise scheduled well before Cyclone Nargis hit, the U.S. has 11,000 troops in and around Thailand, and a Marine ship capable of conducting amphibious landings and long-range helicopter operations is just 30 miles off Myanmar's coast.

The French navy ship Le Mistral was waiting some 13 miles outside Myanmar's territorial waters, hoping to go in and unload its cargo of 1,000 tons of food — enough to feed 100,000 people for 15 days. The aid also includes shelters for 15,000 people.

France's U.N. Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert warned Friday that the government's refusal to allow aid to be delivered to people "could lead to a true crime against humanity.'

Frustrated by the inability to use such resources, dozens of U.S. congressmen signed off on a letter to President Bush asking that the United States join any international effort to intervene in Myanmar's stricken Irrawaddy Delta region by bypassing the junta's efforts to interfere with aid.

For the time being, the U.S. military will not send in aid without Myanmar's approval. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Timothy Keating, head of the U.S. forces in the Pacific, have publicly stated that coercive intervention is not on the plate.

'We're not going to do anything unilaterally,' said Lt. Col. Douglas Powell, a spokesman for the U.S. relief effort, dubbed Operation Caring Response.

'Our hope is that they will see we have the means and the capabilities,' he said. 'We need them to take the next step and allow us to do more.'

Aid organizations also expressed doubt that unauthorized air drops would be effective.

'At best aid air-drops can only be a partial solution, at worst they give the illusion that somehow we are addressing this ever worsening humanitarian crisis,' said Jane Cocking, a spokeswoman for the British aid group Oxfam. 'The biggest risk is that aid airdrops will be a distraction from what is really needed — a highly effective aid operation on the ground.'"

Working with the military junta in Burma is delivering in ways that operating by force never could. Americans are pressuring the junta in this situation, but is there anything where Americans or others don't pressure these days? After awhile, that makes that debate kind of moot because the variable can never be assessed fairly without alternatives, and my explanations still explain the situation better, I think. The junta does not want to be shown up by outsiders and is suspicious and does not want to allow outsiders in, but they know they and their people need the help. Working with them diplomatically is working much more effectively than coercing them or using unilateral or even multilateral force. A coalition of the willing could intervene without U.N. Security Council approval. But to do so, at this point, would be foolish.

The patient diplomacy that Robert Gates and administration officials have engaged in is very admirable and clearly much more effective than routes by force.

It also helps that everyone is on the same page with this emergency rather than squabbling and bickering between one another about who is to blame that nothing is being done. There is some agreement that Burma's military junta is to blame. But there is some realism, I think, that playing blame games doesn't get basic needs met for those who need them.

The question all of us need to be asking ourselves, right now, is "What rule made all of this possible?"

Is it international law? Is it our concern for being prosecuted for war crimes? Is it domestic laws about generosity and sharing the wealth? Is it the 10 commandments (though shalt not let thou neighbors go without emergency supplies after a cyclone)?

And if it isn't any of those things, what is it?

You know what it is?

It's our general good will. It's our decency. It's our consciences.

It's the fact that, despite all of our flaws, we are basically decent people.

And no rule could or does make that possible. It couldn't if we wanted to it to with all our hearts. It would always be our hearts that would make the difference.

It is long overdue that our heads catch up with that fact about our hearts. And stop taking our hearts and those who have big hearts for granted. And start appreciating those who care enough to make sure that such situations, like this one in Burma, get taken care of.

And I, for one, would like to thank Secretary Gates, President Bush, the entire Administration, the military folks who are transporting supplies, the people who offered up all of the things being offered to meet peoples' needs, the Thai government and those in Thailand offering up a launching pad for our operations, the French Government and all of those in France who are working to provide supplies, and all of the people around the world providing supplies and transport, the non-profit people on the ground in Burma providing help and reporting on this situation, the folks working in the United Nations to get some kind of movement on this issue, the people in Burma coordinating this effort, the journalists who have daily reported on this crisis, and everyone who has done their bit to make sure that these people, and the folks in China, and all such folks around the world, get taken care of.

Thank you. I appreciate all of your efforts.

Here's to our heads catching up, better, with the love in our hearts.

It's about goddamn time.

Who I respect

This is who I respect in politics, and in the world.

People willing, honestly, to take on their own, for their and our own good. People like John Ridley.

Obama's Struggle with Typical Liberal Hypocrisy

"From the beginning it's been fairly clear a big chunk of supposedly liberal America hasn't been ready for Barack Obama. Their unease obvious in the shock and awe of Joe Biden, and in Newsweek's inane, aloud wonderings of whether or not Obama was 'black enough.' 'Black enough' for the liberals being people of color in the Sharpton/Jackson mold; Old Schoolers devoutly wed to the regressive ideology of loud haranguing and low expectations. Obama -- early on in a Pound Cake-esque fashion urging people of color to do better and questioning race-based affirmative action -- was clearly not 'black enough' for the Liberal Plantation.

Any doubt that Obama was from the jump fighting not only for the presidency, but also against Lefty hypocrisy was shattered into a million pieces by Geraldine Ferraro's 'lucky' black man remark. Those pieces then again refined by Clinton's talk of 'hard-working Americans, white Americans.'

Clearly much of the liberal Left has long seen...oh, your average non-hard-working black, as nothing more than a piece of a loyal voting bloc. Keep us anesthetized, they feel, with promises of hand outs and government mollycoddling and we will mindlessly check the 'D' box on Election Day.

Conservatives are, of course, not a hair less bigoted in their hearts (nor are Independents or anyone else for that matter). But unlike Democrats, Republicans have found a way to play nicely with the ideologically aligned, regardless of the color of their skin.

That, perhaps, is part of the problem; Obama is more his own man than merely a Democratic tool. That he refused to put up a show, and then capitulate, makes him all the more frustrating to those on the Left used to their people of color playing by pre-prescribed rules.

In that regard it's too bad Obama's not an anti-war Republican. His 'Yes We Can' message of hope, his Morning in America redux, would have worked much better had it not be drowned out by the typical gloom and doom drum beat of the liberal machine."

This is how the bullies in both parties are going to be confronted. By thinking people in each party who say to the faithless and meanspirited in each party, "You are a fraud. You do not offer leadership. You offer cynicism. Which leads nowhere. And we will not be following."

We need more people thinking, writing, and leading like this.

Thanks, John, for joining the fold.

Think more, whine less

Wow. Peggy Noonan tells Republicans to buck up and put on their thinking caps.

Pity Party

"The Democrats aren't the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead. For all their fractious fighting, they're finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They're busy being born.

The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They're frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.

The headline Wednesday on Drudge, from Politico, said, "Republicans Stunned by Loss in Mississippi." It was about the eight-point drubbing the Democrat gave the Republican in the special House election. My first thought was: You have to be stupid to be stunned by that. Second thought: Most party leaders in Washington are stupid – detached, played out, stuck in the wisdom they learned when they were coming up, in '78 or '82 or '94. Whatever they learned then, they think pertains now. In politics especially, the first lesson sticks. For Richard Nixon, everything came back to Alger Hiss.

They are also – Hill leaders, lobbyists, party speakers – successful, well-connected, busy and rich. They never guessed, back in '86, how government would pay off! They didn't know they'd stay! They came to make a difference and wound up with their butts in the butter. But affluence detaches, and in time skews thinking. It gives you the illusion you're safe, and that everyone else is. A party can lose its gut this way.

Many are ambivalent, deep inside, about the decisions made the past seven years in the White House. But they've publicly supported it so long they think they . . . support it. They get confused. Late at night they toss and turn in the antique mahogany sleigh bed in the carpeted house in McLean and try to remember what it is they really do think, and what those thoughts imply.

And those are the bright ones. The rest are in Perpetual 1980: We have the country, the troops will rally in the fall.

'This was a real wakeup call for us,' someone named Robert M. Duncan, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the New York Times. This was after Mississippi. 'We can't let the Democrats take our issues.' And those issues would be? 'We can't let them pretend to be conservatives,' he continued. Why not? Republicans pretend to be conservative every day.

The Bush White House, faced with the series of losses from 2005 through '08, has long claimed the problem is Republicans on the Hill and running for office. They have scandals, bad personalities, don't stand for anything. That's why Republicans are losing: because they're losers...

...What happens to the Republicans in 2008 will likely be dictated by what didn't happen in 2005, and '06, and '07. The moment when the party could have broken, on principle, with the administration – over the thinking behind and the carrying out of the war, over immigration, spending and the size of government – has passed. What two years ago would have been honorable and wise will now look craven. They're stuck.

Mr. Bush has squandered the hard-built paternity of 40 years. But so has the party, and so have its leaders. If they had pushed away for serious reasons, they could have separated the party's fortunes from the president's. This would have left a painfully broken party, but they wouldn't be left with a ruined 'brand,' as they all say, speaking the language of marketing. And they speak that language because they are marketers, not thinkers. Not serious about policy. Not serious about ideas. And not serious about leadership, only followership."

What is really terrific about this column is that, unlike Andrew Sullivan's criticism of a conservative who looks like he is voting Democratic, Peggy Noonan is not abandoning the Republican party in this piece.

She is saying, as an insider, "Buck the fuck up, you fuckin' whiners. Put on your thinking caps, take conservative principles seriously, and rebuild your party."

This is much more encouraging to me, at some level, right now, to Andrew's cheering for Obama - as much as I think Andrew Sullivan is one if not the finest conservative journalists and thinkers in the business - because it anticipates what needs to be anticipated: the need for a strong and credible Republican opposition.

Liberals and Democrats, no matter Andrew's frustration with them, right now, are a long fucking shot from having all the answers. There are many, many, many places where Democrats have bad policy perscriptions.

But without a credible Republican opposition, right now, it becomes very difficult to block bad policy and to offer up better ideas.

And Peggy is preparing her party for the next leg in this journey.

Which should be important to all of us. Unless we are deluded with the notion that liberals really do have all answers they pretend to have.

They don't. And that's why Baron de Montesquieu argued, rightly, that we should have divided power to check the arrogance of those who have it.

Peggy Noonan is right. Republicans need to stop feeling sorry for themselves and start thinking their way out of their woes rather than trying to posture their way out.

Pretending to be tough is for pussies.

Real men and women think their way through the challenges they face. And they use force only when it is absolutely necessary, not to rationalize their cowardice.

And Peggy Noonan is basically telling all the poseurs in the Republican party, "Stop being such fuckin' pussies and start thinking about and taking seriously the principles that make this party great. Think more, pose less, you fuckin' losers."

It is a long overdue message for serious and honest thinkers who are tired of their pitifully less thoughtful brethren trying to bully their way through conversations that it hurts their heads to think their way through more seriously.

And fuck them for that.

Thanks, Peggy. It's good to know that honesty counts for something in this business.

The strange direction for the tax policy debate

Ever since the gas tax holiday idea floated by John McCain - an idea that will not resolve America's financial problems, but one that really can't hurt, either, and very well may help - the tax debate in Washington has taken a strange turn.

Steve Chapman's article, in Reason magazine of all places, demonstrates that strange turn.

Republicans and Tax Realities

"Sensible people might not mind the lost revenue if the change strengthened the economy. But chances are it does just the opposite, by encouraging taxpayers to jump through hoops to reduce their tax liability.

A low capital gains rate hinders the free market by inducing people (especially very wealthy ones) to find ways to take earnings as capital gains instead of ordinary income. In other words, it encourages them to do things that would not make economic sense otherwise. A modestly higher rate would discourage such wasteful avoidance.

Like all taxes, capital gains taxes are a burden. But given that the federal government spends nearly $3 trillion a year, taxes are a regrettable necessity. When we cut capital gains taxes, we have to raise other taxes to make up the loss. Or we have to borrow more money—which means raising taxes in the future.

Republicans may abhor the obligation of paying for the welfare state they helped preserve. But for the moment, the only real choice is between doing that job better and doing it worse."

What?

A capital gains tax rate gives people an incentive to pay the government less by offering a way for people to pay less tax and channel resources into capital gains - the basis for investments that grow the economy - rather than into discretionary income - where it is more likely to be spent rather than invested - and this undermines the market?

What exactly is Steve Chapman smoking that the folks over at Reason, rightly, advocate should be legalized?

The budget needs to get balanced. That is a priority. But it can be done in many ways. We could raise taxes. But doing so, generally, undermines economic growth both because it coerces money from other purposes and because one of those purposes, in particular, is the investment of those same limited resources into ventures that can expand those resources to become less limited and thus produce more long-term tax revenue.

It is perfectly conceivable that an enormously bloated Federal deficit and Federal budget could be cut in any number of ways and taxes can remain low or lowered, given a genuine commitment to a balanced budget and limited government instead the charade that is masquerading as such in this debate.

The truth is that those who are looking to raise taxes either do not want to make the budget cuts necessary or they have grown so cynical about all of the political maneuvering on such questions that they behave like such cuts cannot be made, rather than the truth, which is that legislators and constituents, often, do not want to make those cuts.

It's irrational that people would look to pork rather than building the economy, both for themselves and for others.

But Americans - Americans from all walks of life; not just those on welfare - have this irrational sense of entitlement to someone else creating financial opportunities for them rather than creating them in the market, themselves, which is the only place that sustainable and honest wealth can be built.

And it is that wealth that is the basis for both Federal revenues and paying off that enormously overbloated budget. It is also that market, and the democratic conversation around it, that offers the greatest hope in our efforts to offer the best quality services in our non-profit commitments, like health care.

Americans need to come to terms with a simple fact about the economy: the only and best way to create wealth, for profit-based endeavors, but also to more generously and effectively support decentralized, diverse, and better quality non-profit commitments, is through taxes low enough to support the most limited government we can safely and wisely to support.

We can fail to come to terms with that fact. But that failure has consequences too. And none of them are great consequences.

And none of our failure to come to terms with this fact of life makes America or democracy or anyone great.

Facing such facts of life and building a stronger and more liberal democracy makes America, the liberal democratic world, and everyone great.

It is our liberty that makes us strong. It is our liberty that makes us great. And any empirical and clear-headed comparison of liberal and illiberal cultures and the quality of lives of those who live there bears that out.

The question is can be that honest and clear-headed in our outlook.

I think we can.

And I think doing so is what makes liberal democracy great.

How free?

The Economist asks the question America needs to be asking itself.

Land of the free?

"'How Free?' also has some hard things to say about America's criminal-justice system. The incarceration rate exploded from 1.39 per 1,000 in 1980 to 7.5 in 2006, driven, among other things, by the war on drugs. America now has one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the world: 5.6m Americans, or one in every 37 adults, has spent time behind bars. Even though prison-building is one of the country's great growth industries, overcrowding is endemic, with federal prisons operating at 131% of capacity. America is also one of the few countries to ban felons and, in some states, ex-felons from voting. At any one time 4m Americans—one in every 50 adults—is disenfranchised because of past criminal convictions. This includes 1.4m blacks, or 14% of the black male population.

Freedom House's strictures are, if anything, too soft. America insists on criminalising victimless crimes such as prostitution. Last week Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the so-called DC Madam, committed suicide; the government had thrown the book at her, including racketeering and mail fraud, because it really wished to penalise the arranging of assignations between consenting adults. In her suicide note to her mother she wrote that she could not 'live the next six-to-eight years behind bars for what you and I have both come to regard as this 'modern-day lynching'.'

The American legal system also seems to have lost any sense of proportion. Christopher Ratte, a professor of archaeology, recently tried to buy his seven-year-old son a bottle of lemonade at a baseball game. He was handed a bottle of Mike's Hard Lemonade, an alcoholic drink, by mistake. Officials noticed the boy sipping the drink and immediately whisked him off to hospital. He was fine. But the family was condemned to legal hell: the police at first put the seven-year-old into a foster home and a judge ruled that he could go home only if his father moved out. It took several days of legal wrangling to reunite the family.

'How Free?' repeatedly argues, even as it dredges through the most depressing material, that the American system has proved admirably self-correcting. The response of civil-liberties advocates has been swift and dogged. The Supreme Court has forced the administration to extend the Geneva conventions to inmates in Guantánamo and other military prisons. Congress has reined in warrantless wiretapping. The press has repeatedly published leaked material.

This is perhaps a little optimistic—the courts have been slow and Congress half-hearted. But nevertheless the self-correction is now entering a higher gear. All the current presidential candidates, Democratic and Republican alike, have condemned torture and rendition and declared their desire to close Guantánamo. Freedom House's new publication will be an important contribution to this process of self-correction."

I must say that I have a really serious problem with the repressive, aggressive language being thrown about in efforts to defend liberty. It rationalizes such behavior, and it is such rationalizations that got us into this mess, in the first place. I'm tired of people rationalizing this bullshit. And I don't care in the name of what cause it is done.

We know better. We just don't want to own up for our role in this mess.

And that is the problem.

But it is good for reputable folks to be talking about the erosion of liberty openly and honestly.

Perhaps we can develop a more genuine commitment to freedom, rather than the fakery we've been engaged in up till now.

I, for one, would like liberty for real. And for an end to all the bullshit.

Speaking of stupid

I just want the readers of Thomas Friedman's column in today's International Herald Tribune to take a look at and reconcile these two passages.

The new Cold War

"When you have leverage, talk. When you don't have leverage, get some - by creating economic, diplomatic or military incentives and pressures that the other side finds too tempting or frightening to ignore. That is where the Bush team has been so incompetent vis-a-vis Iran."

Now, let's put aside the obvious - that the Bush Administration has already, repeatedly, and with much criticism from the likes of people like Thomas Friedman and me, threatened to attack or war with Iran, the most serious and deadly form of leverage possible - and let's just look at the internal logic of Mr. Friedman's thesis given this argument in the same piece:

"We Americans are not going to war with Iran, nor should we. But it is sad to see America and its Arab friends so weak they can't prevent one of the last corners of decency, pluralism and openness in the Arab world from being snuffed out by Iran and Syria. The only thing that gives me succor is the knowledge that anyone who has ever tried to dominate Lebanon alone - Maronites, Palestinians, Syrians, Israelis - has triggered a backlash and failed."

Mr. Friedman's distinction, apparently, is that anyone who has tried to dominate Lebanon alone triggered a backlash and failed.

If anyone tried to dominate Lebananon, the United States, or Iran with the help of others, on the other hand, everything would be hunky-dory.

Uh huh. Good luck with that one.

In the meantime, fuck liberal democracy. Liberty and genuine democratic engagement is for pussies. Dominance is for real men.

Like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Thomas Friedman, apparently.

Have fun rationalizing what pricks you are, assholes.

And, in the meantime, have fun trying to dominate Lebanon or Iran, until they do exactly what Iran is doing, now, which is get a bunch of friends to fuck you up, if need be.

Noone likes to be dominated. Noone.

And if you do it with me, wait until I get a bunch of friends to fuck you up, too.

Or just avoid you altogether.

I knew there was a reason I didn't read Thomas Friedman's columns anymore.

You gotta fight for your right

I've decided I believe in the right to be stupid.

Because God knows most people, and some, in particular, exercise that right regularly, as it is.

And thank God for that. I don't know what we'd do in this world with too many smart people.

Go soft, I imagine.

Here's to the hardcore dumbasses and dickheads who we all know really make the world a safe place for everyone else.

Thank goodness for them.

Because I'd hate to imagine how shitty this world would be if everyone was smart and compassionate.

What a fuckin' mess that would be.

Nothin' like the goddamn paradise that persists today.

You gotta hand it to morons and the meanspirited.

They're dumber and meaner than they look.

Politicians and Truth Serum

I don't agree with Robert Samuelson's Chris Matthews-inspired column (if you haven't watched Chris Matthews ask Terry McAulliffe how he would describe the Clinton campaign's chances, at this point, I highly recommend it) on every point in this piece. But I like the idea and the constructive criticism from many quarters, this election, that politicians are not honest enough.

If Candidates Took Truth Serum

"'Fellow Americans, I know you worry about the economy. So do I. But, frankly, if you elect me, I won't do much about it. It's a $14 trillion economy. Every three months, 7 million Americans change jobs. Presidents aren't powerful enough to steer this colossus. Sure, we can pass 'stimulus' programs, but if we overdo it -- as we did in the 1970s -- we will make the economy worse. Believe me, presidents would prevent recessions if they could.

'What we can do is preserve an economic climate that favors long-term growth. That means holding down the tax burden to maintain incentives for work and investments. We're already running a $400 billion or so deficit; some broad-based tax increases may be needed. This will disappoint conservatives, who think no one should pay taxes, and liberals, who think only the rich should pay them. But we must also cut spending, because, unless we do, the future tax increases will be crushing.

'Of necessity, spending cuts should focus on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. These programs are projected to grow from about 45 percent of the present budget to 70 percent over a couple of decades. Paying for that exclusively with taxes would be devastating for the economy and our children. Paying exclusively by cutting other programs would gut vital government services. I admit that raising eligibility ages for baby boomers and cutting some benefits are unfair. People should have received more warning. But our politicians have so dawdled that there's no warning time left.

'We've also dawdled on energy. No one likes $125-a-barrel oil. Last year, we paid an average price of $64 a barrel for imports. Some blame the oil companies, but the truth is that we're all to blame. Americans like cheap gasoline and big vehicles. Nothing was done to dampen consumption. Meanwhile, Congress restricted new oil and gas exploration on environmental grounds. So, demand rose and supply fell. In 1985, we imported 4 million barrels of oil a day; now that's 12 million.

''Energy independence' is a fraud. We simply use too much foreign oil. All we can do is limit our dependence by shifting to more-efficient vehicles and increasing domestic production. But these measures will take years and have only modest effects. The same is true of global warming. Without major technological breakthroughs, making big cuts in greenhouse gases will be impossible.

'Finally, let's discuss poverty. Everyone's against it, but hardly anyone admits that most of the increase in the past 15 years reflects immigration -- new immigrants or children of recent immigrants. Unless we stop poor people from coming across our Southern border, legally and illegally, we won't reduce poverty. Period. That doesn't mean we should try to expel the 12 million illegal immigrants already here -- an impossible and morally dubious task. Many families have been here for years; many have American children. We need a pragmatic accommodation: assimilate most people now here; shift future immigration to the highly skilled.

'Vote for me. I'll tell the truth.'

Of course, our hapless candidate would be dismissed as misinformed, offensive, possibly racist and, of course, unelectable. People say they value candor, but in practice they don't. Almost all our major national problems require patience: the capacity to take somewhat painful actions now to avoid greater future pain. In an ideal world, elections would help move public opinion toward such policies.

But that doesn't happen. Politics is mostly about immediate gratification -- about offering up convenient scapegoats and instant solutions for voters' complaints, even if the villains and promises are often false. We in the media bless this process by treating much of the self-serving rhetoric with undeserved seriousness. Is it any wonder that our genuine problems persist year after year and, in the end, foster public cynicism?"

It's a good question. It is the question democratic politics, actually.

And if there is any question I am looking to address - in addition to improving international and American security, which matter an awful lot to me, actually - this is the one.

We need more honest discussion. More importantly to me, we need more assumption of good faith between people who disagree. And we need better treatment of one another, in the meantime.

How we behave like this and call it good or call it leadership or call it wisdom or intelligence is completely beyond me, really.

We all need a little truth serum, is the truth.

But being more honest means having more real courage than most of us are willing to offer up. And the real question is are we willing to demonstrate that kind of courage in the face of our fears of a world that will forever be scary and uncertain. Because that is what courage entails. It does not entail our fears or the basis for our fears disappearing from existence.

Courage involves facing those fears honestly and being bigger than our fears might cower us into being.

A little honesty wouldn't hurt either, if we could show some courage and create some space for more honesty to take place.

But that will involve a commitment to more freedom, not less. When you scare people, they tend to get less honest. It's just a fact of leading by fear rather than by courage.

And getting more honest must involve a commitment to not confusing our fears or our dishonesty, and the repression and lack of freedom that make them so, with something better than they are.