Originist appears to be the in vogue term for Supreme Court justices who believe the Constitution should be interpreted according to the original intent of the members of the Constitutional Convention that created the document. Just how the intentions of a group of men in a meeting kept secret from the public, relying on the notes of members, well over two hundred years ago, using terminology no longer in use, with a vastly different experiential background is to be ascertained is a matter that has been given heightened concern by the Republican appointees to the current Court who have now confirmed that corporations are persons and can spend their vast wealth to support candidates of their choosing.
However, my concern is not to dwell on the dispute between Originists and what are now being called Living Constitutionalists, who argue that the Constitution was created to be modified as time and conditions change. Rather it is to note that the Original Intent interpretation is always preferred by conservatives and to explore one of the reasons I think this is so.
Interpreting the Constitution as closely as possible to the intent of men in circumstances substantially different from our own generates an increasing gap between the Constitution we live under and the circumstances we live in. In a large, technology-driven, multiethnic, society such as ours and in a world of transnational mega-corporations, rapidly moving information, not to mention movement of people and cultures, the Constitution is at risk of becoming an ancient artifact, venerated but of little use in dealing with the real world in the interests of "we the people." What, in other words, does free speech for a Rupert Murdoch mean other than the ability to drown out other speech with his Hannitys, O'Reillys and Becks. What does our right to vote mean when the Constitution is subverted by supporting the powerful corporations rather than protecting the electoral environment of the people. The veneration of the past that is a consequence of the Originist doctrine makes the Constitution almost a sacred document as incapable of meaningful change as was the Catholic Church when faced with the doctrine-challenging evidence of science and not inconceivably, with the same results.
Let us focus a little more on the corporation as a case in point. The corporation began as a device by which investors could avoid the full impact of corporate failure. Only the money invested in the corporation would be lost, not the rest of the investor's funds. While this diminution of personal risk freed up the flow of money, it also created a different class of people. An individual, even a partnership risked their total resources in case of failure. This form of business can be expected to breed more caution than the corporate enterprise, e.g. Enron. Initially the corporation also had the legal advantage of having a monopoly, as in the case of the East India Company, generally regarded as the first corporation. It was granted a charter by the English crown in return for a share of the profits. It was this monopolistic form of the corporation that Thomas Jefferson urged killing at its birth.
One question I ask is who benefits by the increasing gap between the Constitution and the circumstances it is used to govern. I think it is the corporations. As the gap increases there is an increasing amount of economic activity that is only marginally controlled at best simply because the Constitution makes no mention of it, at least as interpreted by the Originists. This lack of control means wealth and power gradually shift to the corporations, which become major power centers seeking to either wrest control by the state for their own purposes or to control the state by economic subversion of its electoral, legislative and administrative processes. This has become increasingly the case as corporations, unlike nations, have become global in their structure and access to resources.
The corporate power that has built upon this gap is sufficient not only to challenge the power of government, it is more flexible and devious in controlling the populace than the more rule-bound government and can infiltrate government via many channels, not the least of which are our representatives. In brief the Constitution needs either a major overhaul or replacement if it is to be of continuing use to our citizens. In my judgment the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not a bad place to begin. For example, article 24 states " Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality." Wouldn't that be a switch?
Bob Newhard
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Moral Values and Mankind's Survival
As I have noted previously, morality is a two edged sword.
On the one hand it may promote community harmony by way of common consent; on the other it may promote some of the worst violence when the morals of one society are opposed to those of another society. Obviously, the threat posed by radically differing moral systems, especially in a world of increasing lethality of weaponry, must be addressed if our species is to survive. This is the subject of a new book by Sam Harris (Previous books: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason; Letters to a Christian Nation) titled The Moral Landscape Thinking About Human Values in Universal Terms. The book is due out in early October this year.
At least since Socrates asked "What is the Good?" humans have been asking what moral values are. Are they derived from other sources, if so what sources? Many societies, having a deity to protect them against adversity derived their moral values from said deity as did the Hebrews when Moses descended from the mountain top with their god's commandments. With the Age of Reason humans began to think about other origins for moral values. Emmanuel Kant supposed they were derived from social necessity, e.g. The injunction against lying was necessary because no society could persist if everybody lied. However, many people continue to believe that morality is derived from their god. As such there is no way to challenge those values without impiety or worse. Hence Christians can require everyone in a society to observe their religious days and Muslims can deny females an education. This feature of moral judgments, namely, their absolute arbitrariness, makes them impervious to any other human needs. This is the basic reason that such values present considerable danger to a world of different moral systems, which is being increasingly forced to live closer to each other and more interdependently.
That this issue has immediate practical and major significance can be illustrated by the following. One of the most influential books of the last few years, especially in conservative circles, is Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order in which it is argued that with the end of the Cold War the origins of conflict shifted from ideological differences to cultural differences. Thus the basic issue in our invasion of Iraq is not oil, but an episode in a fundamental clash between East and West. In this clash Huntington urges America and Europe to stand firm, indeed assertively, in support of Western values, such as human rights, democracy, and capitalism, as though democracy and capitalism are inherently compatible. Can you imagine a planet torn by such conflicts, where every resource conflict becomes a cultural conflict and all this embroilment in the context of increasingly lethal modern weaponry? In all probability it would be the end of civilization, if not our species. An instance of this kind of shift from political to cultural alignments can be found, especially since the "coalition of the willing" has been so gravely depleted, in the media's increasing use of "West" and "Western" when referring to the troops of the United States and its remaining allies. It is now referring to our invasion of Afghanistan as a fight between the insurgents and the West. This change in terminology is insidious, morally reprehensible, and extremely dangerous. The corporate powers that be and their religious cohorts are willing to risk a global conflict between cultures to further their own narrow and pecuniary interests. This is but one episode in the malicious use of global cultural fault lines. A brief, but articulate favorable review of Huntington's book by retired United States diplomat Marc E. Nicholson may be found at http://www.amazon.com/Clash-Civilizations-Remaking-World-Order/product-reviews/0684844419/ref=undefinedhist_5?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addFiveStar
In his criticism of Huntington's book, William McNeill, the eminent historian emeritus from the University of Chicago, agrees with Huntington on the increasing importance of world cultures in international relations, but argues that this will result in greater tolerance of diversity as it generates increasing amounts of cultural sophistication. His critical essay may be found at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/jan/09/decline-of-the-west/?pagination=false. A very powerful argument for the necessity and reality of diversity by Edward Said can be found at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6705627964658699201#.
Another solution to this dilemma, promoted especially by liberal religionists, has been to identify the elements of the world's value systems and therefrom create a value system for mankind. Eclecticism in religion-founded value systems has never gotten very far perhaps because these common values, few though they be, are seldom as important to a religion and its cultural aura as are the specific practices of a religion.
Many people seem to think that Huntington's thesis and those of his critics like McNeill exhaust the possible responses to this critical dilemma for mankind. However, Sam Harris in his above referenced new book seeks a new moral value ethos. It would find its roots in the human condition as science reveals it. Why the human condition?, because it is that which is most common to all humanity. Why science?, because it has the disciplinary universality that a moral system for mankind requires and it is rooted in the only human enterprise based on reality as assessed by scrupulous and testable honesty. Harris is prepared to take on issues long avoided by both scientists and philosophers when he argues that there are moral facts just as there are natural facts. Sam, as a kind of preface to his book, offers answers to 12 major questions he expects to be lodged against his thesis. These may be found on the Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/the-moral-landscape-q-a-w_b_694305.html.
Thinking about how the world may organize (disorganize?) itself in the not too distant future can help articulate a progressive posture. This is much needed if we are to avoid the disaster attendant upon a nation motivated by conservative patriotic hoopla and the militarism which can so easily subvert American democracy. Here are three scenarios for the future, i.e. 1) cultural warfare, 2) increasing cultural diversity and mutual accommodation continually vulnerable to those who would exacerbate and exploit the sublimated differences, to wit Yugoslavia, 3) creation of a new value system based on science and human happiness; an example of which could be the increasing global environmental movement.
The ideological differences of the Cold War, in which there were only two primary protagonists, killed millions, maimed millions more and consumed enormous amounts of the world's resources. The enormity of a conflict between many cultures, (Huntington thinks primary conflicts will be between Western culture and the Confucian culture of China and between Western culture and Islam), makes World War II pale by comparison. Whatever the operating motif is, people will pour every difference into them. Civilizations are much bigger funnels than nations and we can expect every difference people have, e.g. resource competition, population growth, to be poured into these funnels of arbitrary cultural values with absolutely disastrous consequences for mankind. Huntington's thesis is being avidly adopted by the political right and used to galvanize resistance to everything foreign from Muslims to immigrants to the rising economic power of South America led by socialist governments. The opportunity to confuse, mislead and manipulate people in this mix of values, resources and power is enormous. Progressives can provide a nexus for keeping the public eye on the ball, namely the influence of corporations and the wealthy, and also provide the context for organizing citizen resistance to the process. Barbara Tuchman in her book The Guns of August points out that European socialists tried to stop World War I by calling a general strike in the opposing nations. It fell apart as party members followed their nationalist allegiances rather than their political allegiance. Hopefully we can make the tyranny, insidiousness and sheer power of corporate wealth clear so that people will finally see their commonality as a species in time to prevent the disaster which shall surely eventuate from the conservative Huntington scenario.
Bob Newhard
On the one hand it may promote community harmony by way of common consent; on the other it may promote some of the worst violence when the morals of one society are opposed to those of another society. Obviously, the threat posed by radically differing moral systems, especially in a world of increasing lethality of weaponry, must be addressed if our species is to survive. This is the subject of a new book by Sam Harris (Previous books: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason; Letters to a Christian Nation) titled The Moral Landscape Thinking About Human Values in Universal Terms. The book is due out in early October this year.
At least since Socrates asked "What is the Good?" humans have been asking what moral values are. Are they derived from other sources, if so what sources? Many societies, having a deity to protect them against adversity derived their moral values from said deity as did the Hebrews when Moses descended from the mountain top with their god's commandments. With the Age of Reason humans began to think about other origins for moral values. Emmanuel Kant supposed they were derived from social necessity, e.g. The injunction against lying was necessary because no society could persist if everybody lied. However, many people continue to believe that morality is derived from their god. As such there is no way to challenge those values without impiety or worse. Hence Christians can require everyone in a society to observe their religious days and Muslims can deny females an education. This feature of moral judgments, namely, their absolute arbitrariness, makes them impervious to any other human needs. This is the basic reason that such values present considerable danger to a world of different moral systems, which is being increasingly forced to live closer to each other and more interdependently.
That this issue has immediate practical and major significance can be illustrated by the following. One of the most influential books of the last few years, especially in conservative circles, is Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order in which it is argued that with the end of the Cold War the origins of conflict shifted from ideological differences to cultural differences. Thus the basic issue in our invasion of Iraq is not oil, but an episode in a fundamental clash between East and West. In this clash Huntington urges America and Europe to stand firm, indeed assertively, in support of Western values, such as human rights, democracy, and capitalism, as though democracy and capitalism are inherently compatible. Can you imagine a planet torn by such conflicts, where every resource conflict becomes a cultural conflict and all this embroilment in the context of increasingly lethal modern weaponry? In all probability it would be the end of civilization, if not our species. An instance of this kind of shift from political to cultural alignments can be found, especially since the "coalition of the willing" has been so gravely depleted, in the media's increasing use of "West" and "Western" when referring to the troops of the United States and its remaining allies. It is now referring to our invasion of Afghanistan as a fight between the insurgents and the West. This change in terminology is insidious, morally reprehensible, and extremely dangerous. The corporate powers that be and their religious cohorts are willing to risk a global conflict between cultures to further their own narrow and pecuniary interests. This is but one episode in the malicious use of global cultural fault lines. A brief, but articulate favorable review of Huntington's book by retired United States diplomat Marc E. Nicholson may be found at http://www.amazon.com/Clash-Civilizations-Remaking-World-Order/product-reviews/0684844419/ref=undefinedhist_5?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addFiveStar
In his criticism of Huntington's book, William McNeill, the eminent historian emeritus from the University of Chicago, agrees with Huntington on the increasing importance of world cultures in international relations, but argues that this will result in greater tolerance of diversity as it generates increasing amounts of cultural sophistication. His critical essay may be found at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/jan/09/decline-of-the-west/?pagination=false. A very powerful argument for the necessity and reality of diversity by Edward Said can be found at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6705627964658699201#.
Another solution to this dilemma, promoted especially by liberal religionists, has been to identify the elements of the world's value systems and therefrom create a value system for mankind. Eclecticism in religion-founded value systems has never gotten very far perhaps because these common values, few though they be, are seldom as important to a religion and its cultural aura as are the specific practices of a religion.
Many people seem to think that Huntington's thesis and those of his critics like McNeill exhaust the possible responses to this critical dilemma for mankind. However, Sam Harris in his above referenced new book seeks a new moral value ethos. It would find its roots in the human condition as science reveals it. Why the human condition?, because it is that which is most common to all humanity. Why science?, because it has the disciplinary universality that a moral system for mankind requires and it is rooted in the only human enterprise based on reality as assessed by scrupulous and testable honesty. Harris is prepared to take on issues long avoided by both scientists and philosophers when he argues that there are moral facts just as there are natural facts. Sam, as a kind of preface to his book, offers answers to 12 major questions he expects to be lodged against his thesis. These may be found on the Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/the-moral-landscape-q-a-w_b_694305.html.
Thinking about how the world may organize (disorganize?) itself in the not too distant future can help articulate a progressive posture. This is much needed if we are to avoid the disaster attendant upon a nation motivated by conservative patriotic hoopla and the militarism which can so easily subvert American democracy. Here are three scenarios for the future, i.e. 1) cultural warfare, 2) increasing cultural diversity and mutual accommodation continually vulnerable to those who would exacerbate and exploit the sublimated differences, to wit Yugoslavia, 3) creation of a new value system based on science and human happiness; an example of which could be the increasing global environmental movement.
The ideological differences of the Cold War, in which there were only two primary protagonists, killed millions, maimed millions more and consumed enormous amounts of the world's resources. The enormity of a conflict between many cultures, (Huntington thinks primary conflicts will be between Western culture and the Confucian culture of China and between Western culture and Islam), makes World War II pale by comparison. Whatever the operating motif is, people will pour every difference into them. Civilizations are much bigger funnels than nations and we can expect every difference people have, e.g. resource competition, population growth, to be poured into these funnels of arbitrary cultural values with absolutely disastrous consequences for mankind. Huntington's thesis is being avidly adopted by the political right and used to galvanize resistance to everything foreign from Muslims to immigrants to the rising economic power of South America led by socialist governments. The opportunity to confuse, mislead and manipulate people in this mix of values, resources and power is enormous. Progressives can provide a nexus for keeping the public eye on the ball, namely the influence of corporations and the wealthy, and also provide the context for organizing citizen resistance to the process. Barbara Tuchman in her book The Guns of August points out that European socialists tried to stop World War I by calling a general strike in the opposing nations. It fell apart as party members followed their nationalist allegiances rather than their political allegiance. Hopefully we can make the tyranny, insidiousness and sheer power of corporate wealth clear so that people will finally see their commonality as a species in time to prevent the disaster which shall surely eventuate from the conservative Huntington scenario.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Thinking about the Forgotten
I have been reading Blood on our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq by Nicolas J.S. Davies. Early in his account Davies draws attention to this country's criminal disregard for international law. He finds this doubly egregious because Article 6 of the United States Constitution specifically declares "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land;"
The burden of this portion of his book is that we, as a people and as a government, no longer pursue the rule of law in international issues. It was not always this way. At the end of World War II people were so impressed with the horrific loss that war incurred (62 to 78 million of which 40 to 52 million were civilians) that it was clear that national differences could no longer be addressed in this fashion and that a rule of law must exist among nations by which national conflicts could be arbitrated; hence the establishment of the United Nations, largely under the urging of Franklin Roosevelt who coined its name. This time, unlike the Senate's rejection of the League of Nations Treaty, the United Nations treaty easily passed the Senate with only two nay votes. This was recognition that the nation state was no longer to be regarded as the end-all of socio/political organization. For purposes of preventing war it was to be subservient to the rule of international law as administered by the United Nations. However, Roosevelt's successors soon reverted to the anarchy of nationalism, initially by trying to use the United Nations as a instrument of United States foreign policy. e.g. the Korean Conflict, which we refused to call a war, but rather a "Police Action." While it is the case that the newly minted United Nations was immediately presented with the unprecedented burden of two nuclear superpowers contesting for global domination, the United States, a prime mover in establishing the U.N. made little effort to support the U. N. in its role of peacekeeper. Indeed, as time wore on Americans began to regard the U.N. as an enemy, indeed many Conservatives urged our withdrawal from the organization. We withdrew our obligatory funding of the U.N. and denigrated it at every opportunity. All this without once recalling the monumental horrors it was designed to prevent. As a result we have had 65 years of continuous global conflict with millions more humans killed, maimed and deprived of a decent life. We have squandered the resources of this planet, condemned our posterity to the effects of global warming, diminishing water supplies, incipient food shortages and the chaos of a collection of nations armed to the teeth with an ever increasing capacity to kill, maim and destroy. One result of our self-perceived role as the world's "sole remaining superpower" was our embarking on a largely lawless journey in world affairs, e.g. the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and now threats to bomb Iran.
In my judgment what has to change is a mass perception of ourselves as humans living together on the only home we have, the earth. We must cease seeing the nation as the ultimate socio/political unit and ourselves primarily as citizens of a country. The nation must become an instrument through which we pledge our allegiance and efforts to our world. But how?
The global environmental movement has shown us that humans can seek solutions to global problems. As reflected in a recent article in WorldWatch magazine the environmental movement is beginning to realize that it will have to expand its vision and efforts to include economic issues if our ecological problems are resolved. This suggests to me that the need to address socio/political concerns will be seen as a prerequisite to accomplishing the ecological goals of environmentalists. The environment is shared by all humans and is therefore a fit vehicle to begin shifting the human mind-set from nation to world. Yet another task progressives could take the lead in.
Bob Newhard
The burden of this portion of his book is that we, as a people and as a government, no longer pursue the rule of law in international issues. It was not always this way. At the end of World War II people were so impressed with the horrific loss that war incurred (62 to 78 million of which 40 to 52 million were civilians) that it was clear that national differences could no longer be addressed in this fashion and that a rule of law must exist among nations by which national conflicts could be arbitrated; hence the establishment of the United Nations, largely under the urging of Franklin Roosevelt who coined its name. This time, unlike the Senate's rejection of the League of Nations Treaty, the United Nations treaty easily passed the Senate with only two nay votes. This was recognition that the nation state was no longer to be regarded as the end-all of socio/political organization. For purposes of preventing war it was to be subservient to the rule of international law as administered by the United Nations. However, Roosevelt's successors soon reverted to the anarchy of nationalism, initially by trying to use the United Nations as a instrument of United States foreign policy. e.g. the Korean Conflict, which we refused to call a war, but rather a "Police Action." While it is the case that the newly minted United Nations was immediately presented with the unprecedented burden of two nuclear superpowers contesting for global domination, the United States, a prime mover in establishing the U.N. made little effort to support the U. N. in its role of peacekeeper. Indeed, as time wore on Americans began to regard the U.N. as an enemy, indeed many Conservatives urged our withdrawal from the organization. We withdrew our obligatory funding of the U.N. and denigrated it at every opportunity. All this without once recalling the monumental horrors it was designed to prevent. As a result we have had 65 years of continuous global conflict with millions more humans killed, maimed and deprived of a decent life. We have squandered the resources of this planet, condemned our posterity to the effects of global warming, diminishing water supplies, incipient food shortages and the chaos of a collection of nations armed to the teeth with an ever increasing capacity to kill, maim and destroy. One result of our self-perceived role as the world's "sole remaining superpower" was our embarking on a largely lawless journey in world affairs, e.g. the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and now threats to bomb Iran.
In my judgment what has to change is a mass perception of ourselves as humans living together on the only home we have, the earth. We must cease seeing the nation as the ultimate socio/political unit and ourselves primarily as citizens of a country. The nation must become an instrument through which we pledge our allegiance and efforts to our world. But how?
The global environmental movement has shown us that humans can seek solutions to global problems. As reflected in a recent article in WorldWatch magazine the environmental movement is beginning to realize that it will have to expand its vision and efforts to include economic issues if our ecological problems are resolved. This suggests to me that the need to address socio/political concerns will be seen as a prerequisite to accomplishing the ecological goals of environmentalists. The environment is shared by all humans and is therefore a fit vehicle to begin shifting the human mind-set from nation to world. Yet another task progressives could take the lead in.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Democracy is Not Enough
One of the more interesting contrasts between the conservative political posture and that of progressives is that conservatives emphasize personal values, which are by their nature abstract. They stress morality which, when pressed for instances, amounts to little more than convention. They stress individuality no matter what the economic circumstances; they stress courage, e.g. Reagan's "walk tall", no matter how stupid the goal. Progressives stress equality and fairness, which are social virtues. We have a host of programs to achieve various aspects of these values, which we tend to stress more than the values themselves. The result is that conservatives make personal attributes the center of their political mantra. Progressives make society the center of theirs. The personal will always trump the social in the minds of the majority of people. This is a fundamental problem for progressives and is why progressives make headway mainly when society has fallen apart and its value is starkly reduced to personal terms.
In what follows I will try to articulate a way to begin bridging this gap by suggesting that progressives need to get personal and a way to do this without sacrificing the need for major social change.
As I read Thomas Jefferson, he not only tried to establish the basis for democracy, i.e. all men are created equal, but also the fundamental purpose of democracy, i.e. the optimization of the citizen's potential. I think this is why he laid such a heavy emphasis on education. I think Hilary Clinton had this in mind when she published her book It Takes a Village, a phrase taken from an African tribe that believes the group is fundamental to human beings. She was taken to task in the 1996 presidential election, by Bob Dole who countered that it takes a family to raise a child. Given the looseness and irresponsibility of political propaganda this dispute could go on endlessly and this is all the conservatives need to retain credibility and relevance. Get most people to identify with the personal or near personal, e.g. family, and they will relegate social justice to the back burner.
However, let us try to understand "individual" in a more developed fashion. Suppose we use Maslow's hierarchy of human needs to define the individual for political purposes. The conservative argues that human freedom is preeminent. What is done with that freedom is of less consequence. If it is used to deprive others of their freedom by producing an elite of wealth and hence power, that is ok. Nobody, in their view, ever promised anything resembling a level playing field. Hence the wealthy, whose wealth continually accrues more wealth, deserve to grasp and hold all the wealth they can. I submit this is nothing more than the law of the jungle. Republican's since the 19th century have advocated social Darwinism as the modus vivendi for our society. Corporate leaders are fond of regarding business competition as war and advocate The Art of War by Sun Tzu as a strategy manual for corporate competition.
Maslow, however, proposed and it has been widely accepted in sociological circles, that individuals are a bundle of needs. At the bottom of his needs hierarchy are survival needs, e.g. food. Near the top of the hierarchy are needs for self-esteem, achievement and the respect of others. At the top of the hierarchy are a collection of needs he calls "Self actualization" needs, e.g. morality, creativity, spontaneity. I suggest democracy can be viewed as an instrument for meeting this hierarchy of needs with the objective of producing citizens whose lives are optimized as they move from necessity to self optimization. The conservative view of democracy, at best, leaves human beings with the freedom of the jungle to be victimized by those who dominate the jungle. Hence we have the hopeless poor, the haggard job holder and the dominating rich. Some conservatives, when faced with the brutality of their sociopolitical philosophy, proclaim their advocacy of charity. Indeed Bush 1 advocated the charity of a "thousand points of light" to replace government aid programs. Conservatives do not aim at producing a society, but rather a continuous warfare of competing classes, with many people at Maslow's survival level, many more in jobs held mainly to avoid sinking to a survival level and a few with the resources to seek self optimization.
Looked at this way, progressivism is far more concerned for the individual than is conservatism. Progressivism, so understood, can bring far more of that overwhelming concern of libertarians, i.e. merit, to the surface than can a society ruled by the so-called meritorious.
I want to underscore the absolute barbarity that underlies the conservative view of society. Theirs is that of a collection of human beings seeking their own ends at the expense of others. Notably, these are the same people who have the unmitigated gall to call those who seek social justice advocates of class warfare. I suggest that progressives devote considerable energy to thinking out, articulating and pushing its concern for the civilized individual rather than the self-centered barbarism that issues from conservative ideology.
Bob Newhard
In what follows I will try to articulate a way to begin bridging this gap by suggesting that progressives need to get personal and a way to do this without sacrificing the need for major social change.
As I read Thomas Jefferson, he not only tried to establish the basis for democracy, i.e. all men are created equal, but also the fundamental purpose of democracy, i.e. the optimization of the citizen's potential. I think this is why he laid such a heavy emphasis on education. I think Hilary Clinton had this in mind when she published her book It Takes a Village, a phrase taken from an African tribe that believes the group is fundamental to human beings. She was taken to task in the 1996 presidential election, by Bob Dole who countered that it takes a family to raise a child. Given the looseness and irresponsibility of political propaganda this dispute could go on endlessly and this is all the conservatives need to retain credibility and relevance. Get most people to identify with the personal or near personal, e.g. family, and they will relegate social justice to the back burner.
However, let us try to understand "individual" in a more developed fashion. Suppose we use Maslow's hierarchy of human needs to define the individual for political purposes. The conservative argues that human freedom is preeminent. What is done with that freedom is of less consequence. If it is used to deprive others of their freedom by producing an elite of wealth and hence power, that is ok. Nobody, in their view, ever promised anything resembling a level playing field. Hence the wealthy, whose wealth continually accrues more wealth, deserve to grasp and hold all the wealth they can. I submit this is nothing more than the law of the jungle. Republican's since the 19th century have advocated social Darwinism as the modus vivendi for our society. Corporate leaders are fond of regarding business competition as war and advocate The Art of War by Sun Tzu as a strategy manual for corporate competition.
Maslow, however, proposed and it has been widely accepted in sociological circles, that individuals are a bundle of needs. At the bottom of his needs hierarchy are survival needs, e.g. food. Near the top of the hierarchy are needs for self-esteem, achievement and the respect of others. At the top of the hierarchy are a collection of needs he calls "Self actualization" needs, e.g. morality, creativity, spontaneity. I suggest democracy can be viewed as an instrument for meeting this hierarchy of needs with the objective of producing citizens whose lives are optimized as they move from necessity to self optimization. The conservative view of democracy, at best, leaves human beings with the freedom of the jungle to be victimized by those who dominate the jungle. Hence we have the hopeless poor, the haggard job holder and the dominating rich. Some conservatives, when faced with the brutality of their sociopolitical philosophy, proclaim their advocacy of charity. Indeed Bush 1 advocated the charity of a "thousand points of light" to replace government aid programs. Conservatives do not aim at producing a society, but rather a continuous warfare of competing classes, with many people at Maslow's survival level, many more in jobs held mainly to avoid sinking to a survival level and a few with the resources to seek self optimization.
Looked at this way, progressivism is far more concerned for the individual than is conservatism. Progressivism, so understood, can bring far more of that overwhelming concern of libertarians, i.e. merit, to the surface than can a society ruled by the so-called meritorious.
I want to underscore the absolute barbarity that underlies the conservative view of society. Theirs is that of a collection of human beings seeking their own ends at the expense of others. Notably, these are the same people who have the unmitigated gall to call those who seek social justice advocates of class warfare. I suggest that progressives devote considerable energy to thinking out, articulating and pushing its concern for the civilized individual rather than the self-centered barbarism that issues from conservative ideology.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Complexity and the Understanding of Our Times
I have written before on what I call "abstraction." I have remarked the human capacity to form general observations, e.g. that all of the same kind of thing have common properties, and then to treat those properties as independent elements for thought. As an example, the Egyptians knew the common properties of the right triangle. They used it to reallocate land to the appropriate owners after the annual flooding of the Nile. However it was a Greek, Pythagoras, who formulated the abstraction that in the right triangle the square of the long side (hypotenuse) equaled the sum of the squares of the other two sides.
Humans have applied this capacity in a variety of ways ranging from religion to science. In sociopolitical fields it is, for example, rampant in the fictions of law. In terms of our immediate situation it is what permitted the economic debacle which we are living through. Alan Greenspan, who was hired to watch over this process admitted he did not understand the process of securitizing mortgages, but idiotically and ideologically he assumed the "market" would control any such process: this meant he believed investors and sellers would understand even if he did not. The Indian government did not invest in these securities because, as they said, they did not understand them.
I have been reading recently of what I take to be another dimension of this human capability, namely, complexity. I have been reading The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter. We have had a number of works of late on societal collapse, perhaps because of concerns about our own future, that attribute such events to exhaustion of resources by disastrous agricultural practices or other processes or by overpopulation, war, climate shifts, etc. Tainter sees sociopolitical complexity as another reason for societal collapse. The underlying thesis is that primitive societies, e.g. hunter gatherers, direct all their resources to survival. As societies become more complex, i.e. functions other than hunting and gathering are adopted, such as social organization, religion, etc. they impose a greater energy demand upon the society. As long as the increased complexity pays off in added benefits everything works. However, when the burden of this continually increasing sociopolitical complexity outstrips the energy available to support it the society begins to decline at an increasing rate until a tipping point is reached and collapse takes place.
Using, as so many have in the past, the Roman Empire as a primary, although not the only, example of this process, Tainter asks why should the most dominant, powerful, empire of its time collapse, and in comparatively short order? It did not exhaust its immense and diverse resources. Rather it became so complex it was no longer governable. If you will recall, in this process of decline and disintegration the Empire had to be split into the Western and Eastern Roman Empires.
Let us look at some of the steps along the path to decline and collapse:
• The time came when the Roman army could no longer be supplied with manpower from Roman citizenry alone. "Barbarians" were recruited and could earn Roman citizenship and a retirement farm through military service. We did away with the draft after Vietnam and are now giving citizenship to those who serve in our volunteer (paid) military.
• The early success of Rome's military operations and the economic benefits it brought to Rome through loot, tribute and taxes sustained a vastly improved standard of living in Rome thereby addicting Romans to militarism.
• As complexity continued to rise with the increasing vastness of the empire the gains relative to the cost of this militarism began to decline. Eventually further expansion was halted and imperial policy shifted to maintenance of the Empire, especially against the increasing pressure of the barbarians.
• In defense of the Empire's perimeter the Romans began to recruit barbarians in their home areas rather than move them from one point to another as pressures required. This identity of soldiers and their home contributed to the rise of local power, which eventually contributed to the fragmentation of the Empire. Rome had been sensitive to this issue under the Republic, which forbade an army commander to bring his army any closer to Rome than the Rubicon river. As you know, Julius Caesar disregarded this rule and Rome became a despotic imperium as a result. Maxim: A standing army is a two edged sword. It inevitably breeds militarism and thereby distorts democracy's goals, it inevitably creates an elite focused on controlling that army's power, it devours resources with little societal benefit and it is not focused on human wellbeing. I admit that is a little long for a maxim, but the consequences of militarism, which our society increasingly suffers from cannot be overemphasized.
To continue with sociopolitical complexity; Tainter offers four concepts fundamental to understanding sociopolitical collapse
Four concepts discussed to this point can lead to an understanding of why complex societies collapse. These concepts are:
1. human societies are problem-solving organizations;
2. sociopolitical systems require energy for their maintenance;
3. increased complexity carries with it increased costs per capita; and
4. investment in sociopolitical complexity as a problem-solving response often reaches a point of declining marginal returns.
Let me see if I can illustrate some of this process using a fundamental sociopolitical component - communication. This activity is at its simplest when one human being we'll call "A", communicates with another we'll call "B", although, as a retired public librarian I know that his situation is anything but simple. Now bring a third human being "C" into this process. Not only do A and B have to figure out what the other is communicating, including all those variables such as intention, frame of reference, etc. they now have to figure out the same variables regarding C. Most importantly A and B now have to figure out how C's communication modifies that between them with regard to all the variables of human discourse. This is where the exponential increase in complexity begins. C of course is presented with this more complex problem for starters. It is easy to see how rapidly complexity with regard to this component of society can progress exponentially to criticality. This is not to say that complexity in itself is always the problem. We put men on the moon and built the Large Hadron Collider using complexity. We also created our current financial debacle, the near destruction of New Orleans and the Deepwaater Horizon oil well explosion relying on complexity. One of the major differences between these two results of communication complexity is the extent to which a passionate and determined effort to understand underlay these efforts, or did not. If understanding is the goal the resulting complexities, while not free from mistakes are decidedly less prone to them. Complexity of communication because it so rapidly increases the problems of communication is a refuge for scoundrels and can create monstrous results for mankind. Perhaps the most notable example is war. The G. W. Bush administration deliberately polluted society's communication complexity by lying about the motives of Saddam Hussein and by disguising their motive to control middle eastern oil and declaring that the enterprise would be a "cakewalk."
Another consequence of sociopolitical complexity and one that initially stimulated my interest in it, is complexity's effect on democracy. From what we have said above it is easy to see how rapidly the ordinary citizen of any sizable democracy can be and is aced out of the effective participation democracy presupposes. This is why I think it is extremely important for citizens to understand societal complexity, to demand the transparency necessary for that understanding, to receive training in how to deal with it, and to have the experience of evaluating with others a proposed course of social action. The latter is important because participation in such groups enhances the awareness of this complexity and can reveal methods for dealing with it. Not least of the benefits can be an improved understanding of when to trust complexity and to what degree and when not to trust it.
We have politicians promising "transparency" without, in my judgment, understanding the enormity of introducing transparency to any appreciable degree into the complexity of our enormous governmental environment. It is questionable whether in the long run this country, not to mention this state can maintain its current structure. Long ago the magazine The Futurist carried an article arguing that the North American continent would politically realign itself into economically similar "countries." The author suggested that economic identities would eventually outweigh the current political configurations. The common economic concerns of the Pacific Coast, Rocky Mountain, Great Plains and Eastern Seaboard would be the "countries" of the future. As he put it, the farmers of our Midwest have far more in common with the Canadian Prairie Provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba than they do with either seaboard of the North American continent. Among other things, commonality of interest goes a long way toward reducing the burden of sociopolitical complexity.
The length of this post may prompt readers to consider it an example of its subject.
Bob Newhard
Humans have applied this capacity in a variety of ways ranging from religion to science. In sociopolitical fields it is, for example, rampant in the fictions of law. In terms of our immediate situation it is what permitted the economic debacle which we are living through. Alan Greenspan, who was hired to watch over this process admitted he did not understand the process of securitizing mortgages, but idiotically and ideologically he assumed the "market" would control any such process: this meant he believed investors and sellers would understand even if he did not. The Indian government did not invest in these securities because, as they said, they did not understand them.
I have been reading recently of what I take to be another dimension of this human capability, namely, complexity. I have been reading The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter. We have had a number of works of late on societal collapse, perhaps because of concerns about our own future, that attribute such events to exhaustion of resources by disastrous agricultural practices or other processes or by overpopulation, war, climate shifts, etc. Tainter sees sociopolitical complexity as another reason for societal collapse. The underlying thesis is that primitive societies, e.g. hunter gatherers, direct all their resources to survival. As societies become more complex, i.e. functions other than hunting and gathering are adopted, such as social organization, religion, etc. they impose a greater energy demand upon the society. As long as the increased complexity pays off in added benefits everything works. However, when the burden of this continually increasing sociopolitical complexity outstrips the energy available to support it the society begins to decline at an increasing rate until a tipping point is reached and collapse takes place.
Using, as so many have in the past, the Roman Empire as a primary, although not the only, example of this process, Tainter asks why should the most dominant, powerful, empire of its time collapse, and in comparatively short order? It did not exhaust its immense and diverse resources. Rather it became so complex it was no longer governable. If you will recall, in this process of decline and disintegration the Empire had to be split into the Western and Eastern Roman Empires.
Let us look at some of the steps along the path to decline and collapse:
• The time came when the Roman army could no longer be supplied with manpower from Roman citizenry alone. "Barbarians" were recruited and could earn Roman citizenship and a retirement farm through military service. We did away with the draft after Vietnam and are now giving citizenship to those who serve in our volunteer (paid) military.
• The early success of Rome's military operations and the economic benefits it brought to Rome through loot, tribute and taxes sustained a vastly improved standard of living in Rome thereby addicting Romans to militarism.
• As complexity continued to rise with the increasing vastness of the empire the gains relative to the cost of this militarism began to decline. Eventually further expansion was halted and imperial policy shifted to maintenance of the Empire, especially against the increasing pressure of the barbarians.
• In defense of the Empire's perimeter the Romans began to recruit barbarians in their home areas rather than move them from one point to another as pressures required. This identity of soldiers and their home contributed to the rise of local power, which eventually contributed to the fragmentation of the Empire. Rome had been sensitive to this issue under the Republic, which forbade an army commander to bring his army any closer to Rome than the Rubicon river. As you know, Julius Caesar disregarded this rule and Rome became a despotic imperium as a result. Maxim: A standing army is a two edged sword. It inevitably breeds militarism and thereby distorts democracy's goals, it inevitably creates an elite focused on controlling that army's power, it devours resources with little societal benefit and it is not focused on human wellbeing. I admit that is a little long for a maxim, but the consequences of militarism, which our society increasingly suffers from cannot be overemphasized.
To continue with sociopolitical complexity; Tainter offers four concepts fundamental to understanding sociopolitical collapse
Four concepts discussed to this point can lead to an understanding of why complex societies collapse. These concepts are:
1. human societies are problem-solving organizations;
2. sociopolitical systems require energy for their maintenance;
3. increased complexity carries with it increased costs per capita; and
4. investment in sociopolitical complexity as a problem-solving response often reaches a point of declining marginal returns.
Let me see if I can illustrate some of this process using a fundamental sociopolitical component - communication. This activity is at its simplest when one human being we'll call "A", communicates with another we'll call "B", although, as a retired public librarian I know that his situation is anything but simple. Now bring a third human being "C" into this process. Not only do A and B have to figure out what the other is communicating, including all those variables such as intention, frame of reference, etc. they now have to figure out the same variables regarding C. Most importantly A and B now have to figure out how C's communication modifies that between them with regard to all the variables of human discourse. This is where the exponential increase in complexity begins. C of course is presented with this more complex problem for starters. It is easy to see how rapidly complexity with regard to this component of society can progress exponentially to criticality. This is not to say that complexity in itself is always the problem. We put men on the moon and built the Large Hadron Collider using complexity. We also created our current financial debacle, the near destruction of New Orleans and the Deepwaater Horizon oil well explosion relying on complexity. One of the major differences between these two results of communication complexity is the extent to which a passionate and determined effort to understand underlay these efforts, or did not. If understanding is the goal the resulting complexities, while not free from mistakes are decidedly less prone to them. Complexity of communication because it so rapidly increases the problems of communication is a refuge for scoundrels and can create monstrous results for mankind. Perhaps the most notable example is war. The G. W. Bush administration deliberately polluted society's communication complexity by lying about the motives of Saddam Hussein and by disguising their motive to control middle eastern oil and declaring that the enterprise would be a "cakewalk."
Another consequence of sociopolitical complexity and one that initially stimulated my interest in it, is complexity's effect on democracy. From what we have said above it is easy to see how rapidly the ordinary citizen of any sizable democracy can be and is aced out of the effective participation democracy presupposes. This is why I think it is extremely important for citizens to understand societal complexity, to demand the transparency necessary for that understanding, to receive training in how to deal with it, and to have the experience of evaluating with others a proposed course of social action. The latter is important because participation in such groups enhances the awareness of this complexity and can reveal methods for dealing with it. Not least of the benefits can be an improved understanding of when to trust complexity and to what degree and when not to trust it.
We have politicians promising "transparency" without, in my judgment, understanding the enormity of introducing transparency to any appreciable degree into the complexity of our enormous governmental environment. It is questionable whether in the long run this country, not to mention this state can maintain its current structure. Long ago the magazine The Futurist carried an article arguing that the North American continent would politically realign itself into economically similar "countries." The author suggested that economic identities would eventually outweigh the current political configurations. The common economic concerns of the Pacific Coast, Rocky Mountain, Great Plains and Eastern Seaboard would be the "countries" of the future. As he put it, the farmers of our Midwest have far more in common with the Canadian Prairie Provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba than they do with either seaboard of the North American continent. Among other things, commonality of interest goes a long way toward reducing the burden of sociopolitical complexity.
The length of this post may prompt readers to consider it an example of its subject.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, July 11, 2010
"Deficit" as a Code Word of the Wealthy
According to reports, the primary concern of the G 20 conference in Toronto was the level of global debt. Most of the proposals were for a new round of austerity to reduce this deficit. Many counties, e.g. Germany wanted to attack this problem before it gets any worse. Obama wanted to go slower so that his stimulus program, (Another word for borrowing on the international financial market.) would have more time to take effect.
The thing that struck me was that the only solution considered was reducing cost, i.e. austerity, not increasing revenue. Reducing costs affects the mass of the world's population. Increasing revenue, if done fairly, would affect the much fewer rich. It should be remembered that the G 20 confab represents the interests of the global moneyed class, not the majority of citizens of the attending countries. In effect, the G-20, by its austerity pitch betrays its money, not people, roots. The popular press would have us believe that it is dealing with the world economy and its necessities.
I went to the World Social Forum's web site to see if this needed focus on the wealthy was in evidence. As far as I can see it was not. There was an abundance of sentiment about bettering the lives of the poor, about the evils of global capitalism, but I could find no specific proposals on redistribution of wealth and mechanisms for achieving this. I have visited various progressive web sites such as Progressive Democrats of America (PDA). I could find no proposals for redistribution of the world's wealth and mechanism's for achieving it and for maintaining an equitable distribution. Yet it is clear that the current mechanism for wealth generation and ownership are central to the world's economic problems.
It is not that the policy and mechanisms are unknown. For example James Tobin, a now deceased professor of economics, proposed what has been called the Tobin Tax. This is a very small, less than 1%, tax on global currency speculation transactions. This market processes over $1.8 trillion dollars daily. Tobin was concerned with transferring wealth from the rich portions of this planet to the poorest. He estimated a transaction tax, analogous to a sales tax, on this market, a market primarily of the rich, would generate about 300 billion a year, which was about what the United Nations said was necessary to achieve their goal of stamping out the abject poverty experienced by billions of people and providing a basic education for children.
It is high time progressives made the redistribution of wealth a prominent, well-articulated, political objective. Far from being the basis of unfairness that the political Right likes to paint such an effort, it is the prerequisite for creating a reasonably fair, healthy, democratic society. Excessively concentrated wealth must be seen as a fundamental enemy of democracy and human well being.
Bob Newhard
The thing that struck me was that the only solution considered was reducing cost, i.e. austerity, not increasing revenue. Reducing costs affects the mass of the world's population. Increasing revenue, if done fairly, would affect the much fewer rich. It should be remembered that the G 20 confab represents the interests of the global moneyed class, not the majority of citizens of the attending countries. In effect, the G-20, by its austerity pitch betrays its money, not people, roots. The popular press would have us believe that it is dealing with the world economy and its necessities.
I went to the World Social Forum's web site to see if this needed focus on the wealthy was in evidence. As far as I can see it was not. There was an abundance of sentiment about bettering the lives of the poor, about the evils of global capitalism, but I could find no specific proposals on redistribution of wealth and mechanisms for achieving this. I have visited various progressive web sites such as Progressive Democrats of America (PDA). I could find no proposals for redistribution of the world's wealth and mechanism's for achieving it and for maintaining an equitable distribution. Yet it is clear that the current mechanism for wealth generation and ownership are central to the world's economic problems.
It is not that the policy and mechanisms are unknown. For example James Tobin, a now deceased professor of economics, proposed what has been called the Tobin Tax. This is a very small, less than 1%, tax on global currency speculation transactions. This market processes over $1.8 trillion dollars daily. Tobin was concerned with transferring wealth from the rich portions of this planet to the poorest. He estimated a transaction tax, analogous to a sales tax, on this market, a market primarily of the rich, would generate about 300 billion a year, which was about what the United Nations said was necessary to achieve their goal of stamping out the abject poverty experienced by billions of people and providing a basic education for children.
It is high time progressives made the redistribution of wealth a prominent, well-articulated, political objective. Far from being the basis of unfairness that the political Right likes to paint such an effort, it is the prerequisite for creating a reasonably fair, healthy, democratic society. Excessively concentrated wealth must be seen as a fundamental enemy of democracy and human well being.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Maturity
Recently my wife Eleanor and I attended the high school graduation celebration for one of our young relatives. This young lady graduated with honors. She wants to be a psychologist or a nurse and to my surprise, admires the young people of the 1960's, especially their protests against the Vietnam war and for civil rights. Dare one hope that hers is the generation that may bail this country out of its long nightmare of shallowness and militarism? But the most impressive thing about this youngster is that several years ago she lost her sister in an ATV crash with a train. She and her sister were very close. When offered rooms of their own they chose to continue sharing a room. For teenagers focused on establishing their individual identity this would seem to be a rarity. She came out of this traumatic loss with a concern not only to help others, but the understanding that society's welfare is central to this concern. To me this was a startling level of maturity in one so young. It would have been so easy, I am tempted to say natural, for her to have been embittered by a perceived unfairness in the traumatic loss she had experienced. I asked myself, in light of this display of maturity, how societies managed with their great traumas of which war is the preeminent one.
Until World War II the United States demonstrated a good deal of maturity in its response to war. While we were as guilty as most of using war, or threat of war, to get our way, nonetheless, after every war we demobilized and demilitarized. This demonstrated a degree of maturity as we repeatedly returned to a focus on civilian society at the end of each war.
Immediately after World War II we again demonstrated maturity when we established the Marshall Plan to help our erstwhile enemies recover after the war. Being as we had the only viable economy after the war this "generosity" also created jobs for returning soldiers, which helped avoid the bonus-march unrest following World War I. The Marshall Plan not only demonstrated maturity, but also that we were able to become a learning society as we recognized one of the sources of World War II in the depression-exacerbating reparations following World War I. However, all of this was lost as we failed to find some life-saving détente with the Russians. Both sides had humanity as a stated concern, for America it was liberty, for Russia the welfare of the proletariat. Had we fought as manfully for peace as we did for war we may have avoided the loss of millions of lives and massive human displacement and suffering that the so-called Cold War brought upon mankind. The bellicose Winston Churchill put an end to all hopes with his Iron Curtain speech.
Now we are again faced with a test of national maturity. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were uncalled for. After 9-11 we were not faced with a "war" as G. W. Bush and his ruling neocons declared. We had the opportunity to use the overwhelming sympathy and willingness to cooperate of most of the world. We could have created a cooperative police action to track down the perpetrators and subject them to a world tribunal as was done with other criminals such as Milosevic. This, however, did not suit the plans of the neocons to create a defacto empire out of the "sole remaining superpower." The smallness of mind, the gross failure to understand human resistance to occupation by foreigners, especially as it developed after World War II, completely escaped them as they converted foreign policy into military policy.
What would national maturity now require of us? Many urged, and many thought, Obama would pursue getting us out of the aggressive wars initiated by G. W. Bush. This time the maturity required some of the courage displayed by Roosevelt in opposing Wall Street (the financiers tried to organize a coup) or by Truman, who fired General MacArthur at the height of his poularity for insubordination. In Barak Obama it was not forthcoming and hence we have not displayed the maturity to remove our troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.
This time it is up to we the people to create a movement for national maturity. We have no Roosevelt or Truman or Marshall. Maybe we shall find one in a Congressman Grayson or Congressman Sestak. For now it is totally up to us. Nine years after a hubris-driven and murderous mistake was made, it is time for an exercise of the national maturity we have demonstrated before.
Bob Newhard
Until World War II the United States demonstrated a good deal of maturity in its response to war. While we were as guilty as most of using war, or threat of war, to get our way, nonetheless, after every war we demobilized and demilitarized. This demonstrated a degree of maturity as we repeatedly returned to a focus on civilian society at the end of each war.
Immediately after World War II we again demonstrated maturity when we established the Marshall Plan to help our erstwhile enemies recover after the war. Being as we had the only viable economy after the war this "generosity" also created jobs for returning soldiers, which helped avoid the bonus-march unrest following World War I. The Marshall Plan not only demonstrated maturity, but also that we were able to become a learning society as we recognized one of the sources of World War II in the depression-exacerbating reparations following World War I. However, all of this was lost as we failed to find some life-saving détente with the Russians. Both sides had humanity as a stated concern, for America it was liberty, for Russia the welfare of the proletariat. Had we fought as manfully for peace as we did for war we may have avoided the loss of millions of lives and massive human displacement and suffering that the so-called Cold War brought upon mankind. The bellicose Winston Churchill put an end to all hopes with his Iron Curtain speech.
Now we are again faced with a test of national maturity. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were uncalled for. After 9-11 we were not faced with a "war" as G. W. Bush and his ruling neocons declared. We had the opportunity to use the overwhelming sympathy and willingness to cooperate of most of the world. We could have created a cooperative police action to track down the perpetrators and subject them to a world tribunal as was done with other criminals such as Milosevic. This, however, did not suit the plans of the neocons to create a defacto empire out of the "sole remaining superpower." The smallness of mind, the gross failure to understand human resistance to occupation by foreigners, especially as it developed after World War II, completely escaped them as they converted foreign policy into military policy.
What would national maturity now require of us? Many urged, and many thought, Obama would pursue getting us out of the aggressive wars initiated by G. W. Bush. This time the maturity required some of the courage displayed by Roosevelt in opposing Wall Street (the financiers tried to organize a coup) or by Truman, who fired General MacArthur at the height of his poularity for insubordination. In Barak Obama it was not forthcoming and hence we have not displayed the maturity to remove our troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.
This time it is up to we the people to create a movement for national maturity. We have no Roosevelt or Truman or Marshall. Maybe we shall find one in a Congressman Grayson or Congressman Sestak. For now it is totally up to us. Nine years after a hubris-driven and murderous mistake was made, it is time for an exercise of the national maturity we have demonstrated before.
Bob Newhard
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