An ecologist studies the relationships between living organisms. But first he must understand the organism itself. To do this he studies its behavior patterns so that, among other things, he can determine whether those behaviors are good, bad or indifferent for his own species. Capitalism, I suggest, is in and of itself just one more of those wild beasts whose behavior patterns need to be identified and made widely known so that a democratic society can develop appropriate responses to its natural behaviors.
An initial observation will reveal that capitalism has no inherent restraints. It is a cannibal devouring its own kind as readily as other prey. It will consume resources with no regard for anything but its own appetite. Another initial observation will be that said appetite is insatiable. It will, left to its own devices, literally eat itself out of house and home. It is especially aggressive when civilization seeks to defend itself by fencing this wild beast in. It will, as Grover Norquist infamously said, drown an infant government in its bathtub.
Our ecologist of capitalism will discover additional behaviors of this wild thing. Number one perhaps is that it will seek to turn everything it captures into a profit making market and it is tenacious in this pursuit. It never stops from satiation. The occasion for this column was a recent report on how banks, having exhausted much of their traditional sources of profit are now turning to Baby Boomers and other senior citizens for the money they have squirreled away for the exigencies of old age. They are looking for ways to pry this money, which they regard as a disposable resource, loose for investment in more risky instruments than a savings account or a certificate of deposit.
It is important to understand the dimensions of this insatiability. It is the major source of the increasing triviality and shallowness of this society. In its search for markets capitalism will turn the most pressing needs of society, e.g. crime prevention, into a reality show so media corporations and advertisers can make money. It will make a video game out of the mass killing of warfare for the same purpose. In this process it will create distorting images of everything from people to history in order to more easily turn the individual's emotions into a key to unlock his purse. A Disney version of history comes to mind or Hollywood's battle of the Alamo. By this process it creates an empire of illusion, to use Chris Hedges' words, in which the emotional content of illusion trumps truth. It will change everything from clothing fashions to automobile fashions as frequently as consumers will part with their money and deliberately weaken both by planned obsolescence in order to preserve a market. It will stimulate envy and greed in order to create or enhance a market. Finally, it views government as its prime competitor and will do whatever it can to either control or destroy it, much as it would any other capitalist competitor. All these things, and vastly more, this wild beast will do if left to its own natural behaviors. It is so very obvious that this beast must be assiduously controlled lest it destroy our planet and us.
Capitalism, like any wild carnivore, has one virtue. It has energy. Human beings have a natural predilection for entropy. As a species that learned to grow things, we found the sowing of crops preferable to the risks of the hunt. We preferred to stay in one place rather than roam the unknown in search of prey. The vibrant self interest released by capitalism provides energy not unlike that which war generates and perhaps for the same basic reason. Energy, like fire, can be destructive or, if suitably controlled, can produce very useful products and services. We cannot allow ourselves to be dazzled by its occasional displays. We must be continuously cognizant of the danger it poses. We must not, as we advise small children, play with fire.
Until we as a nation begin to treat capitalism as science treats a natural organism, we will forever be its victims. Put conversely, as long as we regard capitalism ideologically, we will be its victims. A number of so-called "mixed economies" such as those of Scandinavia and much of Western Europe have, since World War II, understood this necessity. They have taken large steps to insure that capitalism serves society.
In the long run we know this planet cannot tolerate a human economy of compound growth. In the shorter term we know that capitalism's insatiable appetite will greatly, probably violently, exacerbate the competition for decreasing resources. In the immediate world we see it grossly corrupting democracies, fomenting wars and destroying the democratic process. We know we will have to develop a much better economic process if humanity is to survive.
It is high time this nation realized that the ideological approach to politics, social thinking, and most especially our economy is massively counter productive. These social functions must be based on the study of and well-being of humanity. To get people to understand this should be a major focus of the progressive agenda.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Greed is more than a personal fault.
Your mother, no doubt, impressed upon you that greed was bad and, not always to your liking, that sharing was good. What happened on the way to becoming an adult where, obviously, greed is rewarded and sharing is at best, propaganda as in President H. W. Bush's "thousand points of light" surrogate for tax supported public assistance? I suggest the difference is between the small world of the family and neighbors and a world of money cut loose from the ties of the world in which humans matter most.
Greed, as a social phenomenon, has become increasingly acceptable. We have had, for example, the clichés "Greed is good" and "He who dies with the most toys wins" bandied about. Why this metamorphosis? I suspect it is a consequence of maintaining a "free market" capitalist economy. When you have saturated a market based on need, as technology has with increasing efficiency done, it is imperative that some substitute for need be found lest an economy begin to collapse for want of markets. Rapidly moving from a market of need to a market of greed is a feature of a modern affluent society.
It is not hard to see this process in action in our society. Manufacturing used to be the major segment of this country's economy. It is now finance, otherwise known as debt. In my youth the bellwether of economic activity was the price of steel. It is now consumer confidence. This is due substantially to the uncontrolled, indeed encouraged, migration of jobs to places with cheap labor, a process Karl Marx delineated over a hundred years ago. As a result, we now have a consumer economy not a production economy. Either consume or go bust!
A consumer based market offers several advantages to business. A need-based market is relatively narrow, limited by what is required to maintain basic human requirements, which do not change that much. The only way to substantially expand this market is to breed more humans. A consumer based economy driven by human desire rather than need, is, obviously, as large and variable as the human imagination and greed can make it. This being the case those profiting from markets greatly value greed and will do what they can to make it culturally acceptable. Hence the need to create a constant greed stimulus using, for example, the feeling of inferiority if one does not keep up with the Joneses. Thus greed has become an economic imperative, modifying our culture in ways destructive of society and the environment. These ways may often be subtle but none the less effective. For example, it would be interesting to know how massively the values of this society have been trivialized by the culture of constant novelty this process has created.
Greed is thus a major factor in the economy that has been developed in this country. As such, greed has become destructive of our society by focusing more resources on the frivolous at the expense of the necessary; on the desires of the few in preference to the needs of the many. This syndrome, I might point out, was the immediate cause of the French Revolution.
The need to constantly develop and promote markets is, in my judgment, a root cause of our massive over consumption. It is relatively easy to see how rampant consumerism eventuates in a cultural acceptance of greed. This market-driven, hyper-consumerism has led to the enculturation of greed. We have an economic system whose masters would make greedheads of us all. In my judgment, the problem of acculturated greed indicates that we do not yet understand the perils of affluence. "Shop 'till you drop" is more ominous than one might think.
Bob Newhard
Greed, as a social phenomenon, has become increasingly acceptable. We have had, for example, the clichés "Greed is good" and "He who dies with the most toys wins" bandied about. Why this metamorphosis? I suspect it is a consequence of maintaining a "free market" capitalist economy. When you have saturated a market based on need, as technology has with increasing efficiency done, it is imperative that some substitute for need be found lest an economy begin to collapse for want of markets. Rapidly moving from a market of need to a market of greed is a feature of a modern affluent society.
It is not hard to see this process in action in our society. Manufacturing used to be the major segment of this country's economy. It is now finance, otherwise known as debt. In my youth the bellwether of economic activity was the price of steel. It is now consumer confidence. This is due substantially to the uncontrolled, indeed encouraged, migration of jobs to places with cheap labor, a process Karl Marx delineated over a hundred years ago. As a result, we now have a consumer economy not a production economy. Either consume or go bust!
A consumer based market offers several advantages to business. A need-based market is relatively narrow, limited by what is required to maintain basic human requirements, which do not change that much. The only way to substantially expand this market is to breed more humans. A consumer based economy driven by human desire rather than need, is, obviously, as large and variable as the human imagination and greed can make it. This being the case those profiting from markets greatly value greed and will do what they can to make it culturally acceptable. Hence the need to create a constant greed stimulus using, for example, the feeling of inferiority if one does not keep up with the Joneses. Thus greed has become an economic imperative, modifying our culture in ways destructive of society and the environment. These ways may often be subtle but none the less effective. For example, it would be interesting to know how massively the values of this society have been trivialized by the culture of constant novelty this process has created.
Greed is thus a major factor in the economy that has been developed in this country. As such, greed has become destructive of our society by focusing more resources on the frivolous at the expense of the necessary; on the desires of the few in preference to the needs of the many. This syndrome, I might point out, was the immediate cause of the French Revolution.
The need to constantly develop and promote markets is, in my judgment, a root cause of our massive over consumption. It is relatively easy to see how rampant consumerism eventuates in a cultural acceptance of greed. This market-driven, hyper-consumerism has led to the enculturation of greed. We have an economic system whose masters would make greedheads of us all. In my judgment, the problem of acculturated greed indicates that we do not yet understand the perils of affluence. "Shop 'till you drop" is more ominous than one might think.
Bob Newhard
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Why We Have Had and Why We are Doomed to Endless War
For those who may think that the military does not set national policy I submit as evidence to the contrary the endless war we have had and can expect to have.
It all began with the military's determination to eliminate the kind of citizen opposition to war that the Vietnam escapade produced. The solution was to convert a citizen draft army to a volunteer-based army. The military believed, rightly it seems, that the only substantial reason for the mass objection to the Vietnam War lay in all young men being eligible for military service. (Why the resistance to the draft was so vigorous in this war but not World War II apparently was not asked.)This, obviously, included the children of the middle and wealthy classes. The concern for the casualties, both American and Vietnamese, was distinctly secondary to that of keeping one's child out of harms way. The military believes that people will never permit a return to the draft and the endangerment of their children as long as we have a paid military to do the job.
With the removal of the only major restraint on the military, it follows from the above observation that there will be no end of war until there is a return to the draft or our economy collapses entirely from the economic burden of endless war. The likelihood of people voting to restore the draft is next to nil. Therefore endless war. We have got to the place where war is no longer an instrument of policy, but policy is an instrument for the pursuit of successful war. Military domination of the government budget, and, hence, military priorities will continue to be the national priorities. In short, the United States military has finessed the country into endless war and the populace is continually diverted from understanding this by a barrage of ingenuous sentiment about troop heroism and sacrifice by our corporate media. It is doubtful that even President Eisenhower in his farewell warning about the military-industrial complex could have seen how far this duopoly of destruction would go.
Lt. Col. Paul Yingling in his article The Founders’Wisdom, published in the Armed Forces Journal gives a quite detailed account of what we have lost and what we can expect by abandoning the draft. The article, which I highly recommend, can be found at http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2010/02/4384885/. Colonel Yingling, for example, points out that the decision to go to war is much easier to reach with our volunteer army. There is greatly diminished opposition because people, especially the middle and upper classes, no longer need fear that their children might have to go. Congress was freed from the intense citizen pressure of concerned parents and their children and has surrendered its Constitutionally mandated responsibility to declare war. Thus, immediately after 9/11 G. W. Bush could declare "This is war." The media did not point out that only Congress, not the President, can declare war. Bush may not have even known this. However, the voluntary military has obviously cut the executive branch of government loose from the oversight of Congress, which our Constitution-based separation of powers was intended to prevent. Without the draft, citizen opposition is not felt by Congress and Congress is free to regard the interests of the defense contractors who contributed to their campaigns. Thus the absence of a draft leads to a corruption of government and a fundamental abrogation of the Constitution.
It has been argued that the Founders did not envision the need for an immediate response to a threat to the nation. Yingling points out that the Founders drew a distinction between the Amy and the Navy. They viewed the Army as a small corps of regulars to be complemented by male civilians in time of need. This way their great fear of the threat a standing army posed to citizen freedom and well being could be avoided. The navy, on the other hand, was viewed as a continuously full-complemented armed service because of the continuing need to protect commerce and, not so incidentally, because it was stationed at sea and hence not among the citizens and their civilian affairs. The distinction between the two services was so significant that they are treated in separate articles of the Constitution. Today we see one manifestation of their concern, in the ease with which military practice and technology flow to Homeland Security and thence to local police. SWAT teams are versions of military assault teams turned loose in a civilian, often neighborhood, context.
Col. Yingling asserts that there probably is no more fundamental constraint on executive power in the Constitution's scheme of checks and balances, than the restriction of habeas corpus. The Constitution declares “the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” Yet, under the sway of the military we have cooked up devices such as imprisoning American citizens without trial on so-called foreign soil, as if the Founders had to spell out for children that habeus corpus applied to the treatment of American citizens by the American government no matter where that treatment is applied. In brief, we have gimmicked our way around our own constitution.
To sum up, the military has been empowered to defeat our basic American rights, to ruin our economy, to gain political sway over our legislature, and to insinuate itself into the everyday fabric of our society. As an example, our own local Californian now has a weekly military supplement, as though it was as common as the sports or business section. All this has been accomplished with the willing cooperation of our corporate-controlled all-pervasive media. Until the public realizes the extent to which this nation is controlled by its military and appreciates the immense threat to our democracy that it represents, we will not even see the beginning of a return to the fundamental values of a democratic society. The enormity of such a sea change in our national ethos is elaborated on by John Feffer in his article Gorbachev of the Pentagon?, which can be found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-feffer/gorbachev-of-the-pentagon_b_742180.html. Feffer compares the task of bringing the Americana military under control (he like Chalmers Johnson uses the term "dismantling,") to that of Gorbachev's successful effort to break up the Soviet Union. He describes the unique talents and knowledge that Gorbachev' brought to this monumental task and why it will take someone of his caliber to break the hold of the American military. More than one civilization has collapsed under the burden of its military. May we recover our founding concern for democracy before it is too late.
Bob Newhard
P.S. A rebuttal to Yingling's article by Curtis L. Gilroy, titled Defending the all-volunteer force, may be found at http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2010/04/4537015
Yingling's response to his critics, titled The All-Volunteer Force: The Debate, may be found at http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/07/the-allvolunteer-force-the-deb/
It all began with the military's determination to eliminate the kind of citizen opposition to war that the Vietnam escapade produced. The solution was to convert a citizen draft army to a volunteer-based army. The military believed, rightly it seems, that the only substantial reason for the mass objection to the Vietnam War lay in all young men being eligible for military service. (Why the resistance to the draft was so vigorous in this war but not World War II apparently was not asked.)This, obviously, included the children of the middle and wealthy classes. The concern for the casualties, both American and Vietnamese, was distinctly secondary to that of keeping one's child out of harms way. The military believes that people will never permit a return to the draft and the endangerment of their children as long as we have a paid military to do the job.
With the removal of the only major restraint on the military, it follows from the above observation that there will be no end of war until there is a return to the draft or our economy collapses entirely from the economic burden of endless war. The likelihood of people voting to restore the draft is next to nil. Therefore endless war. We have got to the place where war is no longer an instrument of policy, but policy is an instrument for the pursuit of successful war. Military domination of the government budget, and, hence, military priorities will continue to be the national priorities. In short, the United States military has finessed the country into endless war and the populace is continually diverted from understanding this by a barrage of ingenuous sentiment about troop heroism and sacrifice by our corporate media. It is doubtful that even President Eisenhower in his farewell warning about the military-industrial complex could have seen how far this duopoly of destruction would go.
Lt. Col. Paul Yingling in his article The Founders’Wisdom, published in the Armed Forces Journal gives a quite detailed account of what we have lost and what we can expect by abandoning the draft. The article, which I highly recommend, can be found at http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2010/02/4384885/. Colonel Yingling, for example, points out that the decision to go to war is much easier to reach with our volunteer army. There is greatly diminished opposition because people, especially the middle and upper classes, no longer need fear that their children might have to go. Congress was freed from the intense citizen pressure of concerned parents and their children and has surrendered its Constitutionally mandated responsibility to declare war. Thus, immediately after 9/11 G. W. Bush could declare "This is war." The media did not point out that only Congress, not the President, can declare war. Bush may not have even known this. However, the voluntary military has obviously cut the executive branch of government loose from the oversight of Congress, which our Constitution-based separation of powers was intended to prevent. Without the draft, citizen opposition is not felt by Congress and Congress is free to regard the interests of the defense contractors who contributed to their campaigns. Thus the absence of a draft leads to a corruption of government and a fundamental abrogation of the Constitution.
It has been argued that the Founders did not envision the need for an immediate response to a threat to the nation. Yingling points out that the Founders drew a distinction between the Amy and the Navy. They viewed the Army as a small corps of regulars to be complemented by male civilians in time of need. This way their great fear of the threat a standing army posed to citizen freedom and well being could be avoided. The navy, on the other hand, was viewed as a continuously full-complemented armed service because of the continuing need to protect commerce and, not so incidentally, because it was stationed at sea and hence not among the citizens and their civilian affairs. The distinction between the two services was so significant that they are treated in separate articles of the Constitution. Today we see one manifestation of their concern, in the ease with which military practice and technology flow to Homeland Security and thence to local police. SWAT teams are versions of military assault teams turned loose in a civilian, often neighborhood, context.
Col. Yingling asserts that there probably is no more fundamental constraint on executive power in the Constitution's scheme of checks and balances, than the restriction of habeas corpus. The Constitution declares “the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” Yet, under the sway of the military we have cooked up devices such as imprisoning American citizens without trial on so-called foreign soil, as if the Founders had to spell out for children that habeus corpus applied to the treatment of American citizens by the American government no matter where that treatment is applied. In brief, we have gimmicked our way around our own constitution.
To sum up, the military has been empowered to defeat our basic American rights, to ruin our economy, to gain political sway over our legislature, and to insinuate itself into the everyday fabric of our society. As an example, our own local Californian now has a weekly military supplement, as though it was as common as the sports or business section. All this has been accomplished with the willing cooperation of our corporate-controlled all-pervasive media. Until the public realizes the extent to which this nation is controlled by its military and appreciates the immense threat to our democracy that it represents, we will not even see the beginning of a return to the fundamental values of a democratic society. The enormity of such a sea change in our national ethos is elaborated on by John Feffer in his article Gorbachev of the Pentagon?, which can be found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-feffer/gorbachev-of-the-pentagon_b_742180.html. Feffer compares the task of bringing the Americana military under control (he like Chalmers Johnson uses the term "dismantling,") to that of Gorbachev's successful effort to break up the Soviet Union. He describes the unique talents and knowledge that Gorbachev' brought to this monumental task and why it will take someone of his caliber to break the hold of the American military. More than one civilization has collapsed under the burden of its military. May we recover our founding concern for democracy before it is too late.
Bob Newhard
P.S. A rebuttal to Yingling's article by Curtis L. Gilroy, titled Defending the all-volunteer force, may be found at http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2010/04/4537015
Yingling's response to his critics, titled The All-Volunteer Force: The Debate, may be found at http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/07/the-allvolunteer-force-the-deb/
Sunday, September 19, 2010
The Originists
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
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 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
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