"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves” observes Cassius in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and I would add “in our evolution.”
We humans in the course of our evolution acquired a brain that could abstract from its experiences and thereby create the ability to analyze and relate enmities that did not exist to our senses. Initially we did this in religion and worshiped our abstractions. Eventually, with science, we used this capacity to develop a profound prediction-capable use of abstractions, especially in mathematics. While all this was going on in or brains our emotions remained at their pre-intelligent level. Our emotions, e.g. fear, sex, distrust of the unfamiliar, etc., which functioned as our primal instruments of response, e.g. fight or flight, remained the same. We became an organism with a powerful, curious brain which began to develop understandings of the real world and develop a technology to extract from that natural world what we needed and desired. We have evolved so powerful a technology that we can destroy ourselves. We are now an organism that is bifurcated between a highly innovative, powerful, comprehending brain AND an emotional apparatus little different form that of our earliest ancestors. Our emotions, as decision makers, remain as potent as they did in early man. The result is that our brains have produced the capacity to destroy ourselves and our emotions are as capable of doing that as they were when men used spears and swords. I suggest that this fault line between the emotions and the intellect is the fundamental and perhaps irreducible source of our current dilemma. While our political and economic institutions are obviously in need of massive reform the major problem is the fault that lies within us.
Let me cite just a few random evidences of this fundamental human dichotomy by way of indicating its pervasiveness.
• People were appalled by the introduction of the machine gun into World War I. They saw it rightly as the introduction of the factory system into the slaughter of humans.
• We now routinely justify the killing of innocent children as collateral damage. A primary goal of the combatants in World War II was the destruction of human beings in order to weaken the will to fight. Infants and children, not soldiers, became the enemy because the brain’s technology made it possible.
• In the face of declining oil resources the United States produced the largest automobiles in its history, appealing thereby to dominance and safety at the expense of others.
• Amusement constitutes over 30% of the gross domestic product o the Unfired States. Human emotions have become the dominant consideration in promoting human consumption otherwise known as advertisement.
In each of these the brain’s technology produced the products the emotions desired. When our technology, powerful as it is, is placed at the service of our emotions, we know we are in trouble, especially when we are aware of the impending “Perfect Storm” of global warming, peak oil and the tyranny of corporations. Human emotions, which constitute the core of our values and patriotic and religious belief, simply are. They have no mechanism for adjudicating the values of other emotions. It takes the intellect to do that. As such the emotions are essentially arbitrary and they put an immense amount of human energy at the service of such arbitrariness. Additionally, because of this arbitrariness they are largely indifferent to, or even gleeful at, the results of the carnage they produce..
Knowing that emotion was the major decision maker long before we became humans and knowing that our brains are relative newcomers on the evolutionary scene and knowing that our brains are far more powerful in understanding and manipulating the natural world, the promotion of the intellect to the position of primary decider is, in my judgment, the single most important and difficult task we human’s face if we are to survive the ominous complexities of our immediate future.
Robert Newhard
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Accountability, Postmodernism and Barack Obama
For starters, let me ask you to read this recent exchange between Glen Greenwald and Cass Sunstein on Democracy Now. The exchange has to do with Obama’s support of the FISA bill despite his assertion that he would not support it. Sunstein is a Professor of Law at Harvard and a legal advisor to Obama. Greenwald is a well known writer on political issues and versed in Constitutional law.
AMY GOODMAN: I recently spoke to Democratic Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, who’s been a leading congressional voice against the Bush spy program. This is some of what he had to say.
SEN. RUSS FEINGOLD: The President takes the position that under Article II of the Constitution he can ignore the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. We believe that that’s absolutely wrong. I have pointed out that I think it is not only against the law, but I think it’s a pretty plain impeachable offense that the President created this program, and yet this immunity provision may have the effect not only of giving immunity to the telephone companies, but it may also allow the administration to block legal accountability for this crime, which I believe it is.
AMY GOODMAN: Cass Sunstein?
CASS SUNSTEIN: Well, there has been a big debate among law professors and within the Supreme Court about the President’s adherent authority to wiretap people. And while I agree with Senator Feingold that the President’s position is wrong and the Supreme Court has recently, indirectly at least, given a very strong signal that the Supreme Court itself has rejected the Bush position, the idea that it’s an impeachable offense to adopt an incorrect interpretation of the President’s power, that, I think, is too far-reaching. There are people in the Clinton administration who share Bush’s view with respect to foreign surveillance. There are past attorney generals who suggested that the Bush administration position is right. So, I do think the Bush administration is wrong—let’s be very clear on that—but the notion that it’s an impeachable offense seems to me to distort the notion of what an impeachable offense is. That’s high crimes and misdemeanors. And an incorrect, even a badly incorrect, interpretation of the law is not impeachable.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald?
GLENN GREENWALD: You know, I think this mentality that we’re hearing is really one of the principal reasons why our government has become so lawless and so distorted over the past thirty years. You know, if you go into any courtroom where there is a criminal on trial for any kind of a crime, they’ll have lawyers there who stand up and offer all sorts of legal and factual justifications or defenses for what they did. You know, going back all the way to the pardon of Nixon, you know, you have members of the political elite and law professors standing up and saying, “Oh, there’s good faith reasons not to impeach or to criminally prosecute.” And then you go to the Iran-Contra scandal, where the members of the Beltway class stood up and said the same things Professor Sunstein is saying: we need to look to the future, it’s important that we not criminalize policy debates. You know, you look at Lewis Libby being spared from prison.
And now you have an administration that—we have a law in this country that says it is a felony offense, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, to spy on Americans without the warrants required by law. We have a president who got caught doing that, who admits that he did that. And yet, you have people saying, “Well, there may be legal excuses as to why he did that.” Or you have a president who admits ordering, in the White House, planning with his top aides, interrogation policies that the International Red Cross says are categorically torture, which are also felony offenses in the United States. And you have people saying, “Well, we can’t criminalize policy disputes.”
And what this has really done is it’s created a two-tiered system of government, where government leaders know that they are free to break our laws, and they’ll have members of the pundit class and the political class and law professors standing up and saying, “Well, these are important intellectual issues that we need to grapple with, and it’s really not fair to put them inside of a courtroom or talk about prison.” And so, we’ve incentivized lawlessness in this country. I mean, the laws are clear that it’s criminal to do these things. The President has done them, and he—there’s no reason to treat him differently than any other citizen who breaks our laws.
I want to draw your attention to Sunstein’s statement “the idea that it’s an impeachable offense to adopt an incorrect interpretation of the President’s power, that, I think, is too far-reaching.” and Greenwald’s excellent and perceptive reply beginning with “You know, I think this mentality that we’re hearing is really one of the principal reasons why our government has become so lawless…." In response to Sunstein would it not be appropriate to point out that any president might construe his actions as interpretive and thereby render the accountability the Constitution requires of the president ineffective? The president, according to Sunstein, can act like a dictator (unitary president) so long as that is his interpretation of the Constitution without thereby committing a crime. However, the branch of government responsible for interpreting the constitution is the Supreme Court not the Executive.
But the reason I find this exchange significant is that the passage from the Constitution’s “high crimes and misdemeanors” to Sunstein;s “presidential interpretations” is that it is, in my judgment, a typical postmodernist reduction of clear statements to interpretations. Postmodernism holds that values, including the values upon which law is presumably based, are culturally defined and that therefore there can be no universal values which transcend cultures as such. This, of course, presents a problem when two cultures clash with deadly results, e.g.9/11. Is mankind incapable of reasonably calling this or the 800,000 Tutsi’s killed by Hutus in Rwanda a crime against humanity as such? If there are no human values transcending particular cultures world government becomes impossible.
One can surmise that Postmodernism arose out of reflections on World War II and the horrors that the reality of atomic warfare presented. There was a concern to provide a way to mitigate or avoid the cultural conflicts of a shrinking human world. If values could be reduced to cultural concerns then presumably we could avoid some of the worst conflicts by admitting the viability of all cultures within their own sphere of influence, But, as so often, the best laid plans of mice and men “gang oft agay.” Postmodernists have gone so far in this quest as to deny that science is anything more than Western folklore and no more valid outside the context of Western culture than that of Hindu cosmology outside of India. Thus while the initial motives may have been honorable the damage to human integrity has, in my opinion, been disastrous.
The reason that I bring Obama into this is that his legal training and academic career took place in universities in which postmodernism has had a significant impact. Harvard Law School, where Obama took his doctorate, and the University of Chicago Law School where he taught for twelve years both featured a form of postmodernism called Critical Theory or more specifically in Obama’s case Critical Race Theory. I realize that the political right has made much of these facts (See the article in USA Today by Jonah Goldberg, editor at large of National Review Online), but I want to consider this in a broader context. Will a postmodernist approach to foreign affairs for instance, allow Obama to be more understanding of the situation of those who oppose United States policies under his administration? I suggest that it may well do so for postmodernism paces a heavy emphasis on culture as definitive of human issues. Will, however, postmodernism lead Obama to temporize on accountability? Much has been made of the consequences of failing to hold G. W. Bush et. al. accountable. Should we not now be exploring Obama’s views on this matter? It has been said that Barack Obama has the ability to let people of very different persuasions project their views on him. Why does he yet remain an enigma to so many? He has contradicted himself repeatedly as most politicians must if they are to garner votes from a polyglot populace, but less has been made of this fact than with other politicians. It suggests Ronald Reagan’s Teflon presidency.An interesting experiment is to ask yourself “What would Obama do” in a number of different significant scenarios. I suspect you will find puzzlement, but be uncertain whether the puzzlement stems for uncertainty about Obama or uncertainty about the scenario. What, for instance, will Obama do about global warming? Will he take the large risks associated with telling the American people and the corporations that an economy based on growth is at odds with human survival or will he try to finesse the issue by a patchwork of corporation-inspired profit-driven proposals? In my judgement, progressives have to push Obama hard on fundamental issues until he makes his positions clear. Too much is at stake not to do this.
Bob Newhard
AMY GOODMAN: I recently spoke to Democratic Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, who’s been a leading congressional voice against the Bush spy program. This is some of what he had to say.
SEN. RUSS FEINGOLD: The President takes the position that under Article II of the Constitution he can ignore the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. We believe that that’s absolutely wrong. I have pointed out that I think it is not only against the law, but I think it’s a pretty plain impeachable offense that the President created this program, and yet this immunity provision may have the effect not only of giving immunity to the telephone companies, but it may also allow the administration to block legal accountability for this crime, which I believe it is.
AMY GOODMAN: Cass Sunstein?
CASS SUNSTEIN: Well, there has been a big debate among law professors and within the Supreme Court about the President’s adherent authority to wiretap people. And while I agree with Senator Feingold that the President’s position is wrong and the Supreme Court has recently, indirectly at least, given a very strong signal that the Supreme Court itself has rejected the Bush position, the idea that it’s an impeachable offense to adopt an incorrect interpretation of the President’s power, that, I think, is too far-reaching. There are people in the Clinton administration who share Bush’s view with respect to foreign surveillance. There are past attorney generals who suggested that the Bush administration position is right. So, I do think the Bush administration is wrong—let’s be very clear on that—but the notion that it’s an impeachable offense seems to me to distort the notion of what an impeachable offense is. That’s high crimes and misdemeanors. And an incorrect, even a badly incorrect, interpretation of the law is not impeachable.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald?
GLENN GREENWALD: You know, I think this mentality that we’re hearing is really one of the principal reasons why our government has become so lawless and so distorted over the past thirty years. You know, if you go into any courtroom where there is a criminal on trial for any kind of a crime, they’ll have lawyers there who stand up and offer all sorts of legal and factual justifications or defenses for what they did. You know, going back all the way to the pardon of Nixon, you know, you have members of the political elite and law professors standing up and saying, “Oh, there’s good faith reasons not to impeach or to criminally prosecute.” And then you go to the Iran-Contra scandal, where the members of the Beltway class stood up and said the same things Professor Sunstein is saying: we need to look to the future, it’s important that we not criminalize policy debates. You know, you look at Lewis Libby being spared from prison.
And now you have an administration that—we have a law in this country that says it is a felony offense, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, to spy on Americans without the warrants required by law. We have a president who got caught doing that, who admits that he did that. And yet, you have people saying, “Well, there may be legal excuses as to why he did that.” Or you have a president who admits ordering, in the White House, planning with his top aides, interrogation policies that the International Red Cross says are categorically torture, which are also felony offenses in the United States. And you have people saying, “Well, we can’t criminalize policy disputes.”
And what this has really done is it’s created a two-tiered system of government, where government leaders know that they are free to break our laws, and they’ll have members of the pundit class and the political class and law professors standing up and saying, “Well, these are important intellectual issues that we need to grapple with, and it’s really not fair to put them inside of a courtroom or talk about prison.” And so, we’ve incentivized lawlessness in this country. I mean, the laws are clear that it’s criminal to do these things. The President has done them, and he—there’s no reason to treat him differently than any other citizen who breaks our laws.
I want to draw your attention to Sunstein’s statement “the idea that it’s an impeachable offense to adopt an incorrect interpretation of the President’s power, that, I think, is too far-reaching.” and Greenwald’s excellent and perceptive reply beginning with “You know, I think this mentality that we’re hearing is really one of the principal reasons why our government has become so lawless…." In response to Sunstein would it not be appropriate to point out that any president might construe his actions as interpretive and thereby render the accountability the Constitution requires of the president ineffective? The president, according to Sunstein, can act like a dictator (unitary president) so long as that is his interpretation of the Constitution without thereby committing a crime. However, the branch of government responsible for interpreting the constitution is the Supreme Court not the Executive.
But the reason I find this exchange significant is that the passage from the Constitution’s “high crimes and misdemeanors” to Sunstein;s “presidential interpretations” is that it is, in my judgment, a typical postmodernist reduction of clear statements to interpretations. Postmodernism holds that values, including the values upon which law is presumably based, are culturally defined and that therefore there can be no universal values which transcend cultures as such. This, of course, presents a problem when two cultures clash with deadly results, e.g.9/11. Is mankind incapable of reasonably calling this or the 800,000 Tutsi’s killed by Hutus in Rwanda a crime against humanity as such? If there are no human values transcending particular cultures world government becomes impossible.
One can surmise that Postmodernism arose out of reflections on World War II and the horrors that the reality of atomic warfare presented. There was a concern to provide a way to mitigate or avoid the cultural conflicts of a shrinking human world. If values could be reduced to cultural concerns then presumably we could avoid some of the worst conflicts by admitting the viability of all cultures within their own sphere of influence, But, as so often, the best laid plans of mice and men “gang oft agay.” Postmodernists have gone so far in this quest as to deny that science is anything more than Western folklore and no more valid outside the context of Western culture than that of Hindu cosmology outside of India. Thus while the initial motives may have been honorable the damage to human integrity has, in my opinion, been disastrous.
The reason that I bring Obama into this is that his legal training and academic career took place in universities in which postmodernism has had a significant impact. Harvard Law School, where Obama took his doctorate, and the University of Chicago Law School where he taught for twelve years both featured a form of postmodernism called Critical Theory or more specifically in Obama’s case Critical Race Theory. I realize that the political right has made much of these facts (See the article in USA Today by Jonah Goldberg, editor at large of National Review Online), but I want to consider this in a broader context. Will a postmodernist approach to foreign affairs for instance, allow Obama to be more understanding of the situation of those who oppose United States policies under his administration? I suggest that it may well do so for postmodernism paces a heavy emphasis on culture as definitive of human issues. Will, however, postmodernism lead Obama to temporize on accountability? Much has been made of the consequences of failing to hold G. W. Bush et. al. accountable. Should we not now be exploring Obama’s views on this matter? It has been said that Barack Obama has the ability to let people of very different persuasions project their views on him. Why does he yet remain an enigma to so many? He has contradicted himself repeatedly as most politicians must if they are to garner votes from a polyglot populace, but less has been made of this fact than with other politicians. It suggests Ronald Reagan’s Teflon presidency.An interesting experiment is to ask yourself “What would Obama do” in a number of different significant scenarios. I suspect you will find puzzlement, but be uncertain whether the puzzlement stems for uncertainty about Obama or uncertainty about the scenario. What, for instance, will Obama do about global warming? Will he take the large risks associated with telling the American people and the corporations that an economy based on growth is at odds with human survival or will he try to finesse the issue by a patchwork of corporation-inspired profit-driven proposals? In my judgement, progressives have to push Obama hard on fundamental issues until he makes his positions clear. Too much is at stake not to do this.
Bob Newhard
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