Will Norwegians give us another Lesson in Democracy?

Anders Breivik killed 77 people, mostly teenagers. All but eight of the victims were members of the Workers Youth League, an affiliate of the Norwegian Labor Party, at a summer camp. He was dressed in a police officers uniform and shot children as they came to him for protection and as they froze in fear before him. Why this slaughter, which at his trial he declared to be "necessary?" Because the Labor Party supported multiculturalism, which Breivik calls cultural Marxism and which he believes fostered Muslim dominance of Norway. He accuses the multiculturalists of being ideologues, when he was actually an ideologue in its final stages, i.e. that point at which human beings become merely objects.

Ideology this extreme has become a plague on this planet. In politics we get Timothy McVeigh and Anders Breivik. In religion it plants bombs in market places they know will kill people no matter what their beliefs because they have become objects. In the American military, soldiers murder civilians, including children, because they have been reduced to objects. The military is known for training that reduces human beings, called the enemy, to objects. They are "ragheads" etc. This makes killing easier for young people brought up to be civilized. Unfortunately this reducing those we oppose to objects is an all too frequent human response to conflict. It permeates society. It has become so bad in this country that people say they have found "closure" when the killer of their child is executed. They find peace in yet another death. We have sublimated revenge, for that is all the execution of killers amounts to, to the peace of closure.

Amid all the antagonism, killing and maiming that has gone on in the name of national interest, in a continuing cultural compression, the Norwegian people and their government have shone as a beacon for humanity. They rejected a cultural antagonism that killed their children, and responded not with vengeance, but by focusing on humanity and its needs.

As an instructive contrast, faced with the 9-11 terrorist attack the  American government immediately declared war, which the imperialists Cheney and Rumsfeld had long planned for. The American people, long accustomed to a military response to any kind of attack, ebulliently waved flags and sent their young people off to war. As a result hundreds of thousands have been killed and more than that maimed and the coffers of the United States drained and the lands of the Middle East trashed. So much for the eye-for-an-eye response that is this ten-year long "piece of cake."

As of this writing we do not know what the Breivik verdict will be. Hopefully, it will teach us another lesson in humanity. The people objected to an initial psychologist's finding that Breivik suffered from schizophrenia. A second psychologist found that Breivik was not schizoid at the time of his murders and is not so at the time of his trial. However, in the midst of Breivik'a barbarous testimony, including his desire to behead the Prime Minister,  40,000 Norwegians gathered in drenching rain to celibate multiculturalism and defy the Breivik and his followers in their attempt to insinuate vengeance into their society. As a beautiful testament to their appreciation for humanity and their determination to defeat Breivik and his ilk they sang Pete Seeger's Rainbow Race (See some of lyrics below.) It was a heartrending testimony to the best in human nature. A video of the event can be found on the Common Dreams web site. Norway has no death penalty and the maximum sentence is 24 years in prison. Will they give us yet another lesson in the sentencing of Anders Breivik?

To my mind, the Norwegian people and their government should be awarded the next Nobel Peace Prize. May we all learn from them.

Bob Newhard

Refrain from Pete Seeger's song Rainbow Race:

One blue sky above us
One ocean lapping all our shore
One earth so green and round
Who could ask for more
And because I love you
I'll give it one more try
To show my rainbow race
It's too soon to die.

Some folks want to be like an ostrich,
Bury their heads in the sand.
Some hope that plastic dreams
Can unclench all those greedy hands.
Some hope to take the easy way:
Poisons, bombs. They think we need 'em.
Don't you know you can't kill all the unbelievers?
There's no shortcut to freedom.

Go tell, go tell all the little children.
Tell all the mothers and fathers too.
Now's our last chance to learn to share
What's been given to me and you

Technology, Humanity, Destiny (Part 2)

In part one, we dealt primarily with Western civilization's suspicion of knowledge and its offspring technology, and the challenges technology poses to human beings both as individuals and as cultural participants. In this part 2, I want to focus on a less obvious impact of technology on humankind in its aggregates.

These are just as much a response to the impact of technology as are air pollution and global warming. The slums may be viewed as the flotsam and jetsam of technology washed up on the shores of the large cities of the world by the waves of technology-based innovation and the storms of economic and social dislocation they generate. It is technology that has permitted our species to witlessly and grossly outpace the planet's ability to support us. It has, in my judgment, made the slum the harbinger of mankind's future.

If you examine the economy of the slum, it becomes apparent that it is Adam Smith's version of capitalism writ large. This economy consists, in the main, of thousands of individual or very small entrepreneurs, each looking to extract survival from a small niche of demand from the poverty of the slum. These small enterprises range from selling a few quarts of soup made at home to providing a taxi service with your motorcycle. There is no economic infrastructure; no public education, mo healthcare, no old age pension. Insecurity runs very high. There is little organized, structured means of production; no factories or department stores, no supermarket grocery stores. Not only are there no government services, in many cities such as Rio de Janeiro the government is actively trying to destroy them.

An example of slum survival entrepreneurship is a woman in the slum of Lagos Nigeria who daily makes a pot of soup, puts it in about a 3 or 4 gallon wide-mouth thermos and carts it along with plastic bowls and plastic spoons to the median strip of the roadway and sells it to motorists who stop for a quick bowl of soup. Her current problem is that she can only sell in the afternoon because the police, who come only in the morning, will arrest her for impeding traffic. She has found her survival niche of demand, but it is threatened by society. Another example is a young man who came to the city from the radically impoverished rural area. He provides a motorcycle taxi service which is valued by customers as much faster than an automobile in the densely congested traffic. He began by working for another individual who had several motorcycles and split whatever revenue the young man generated. At the point of the interview he had saved enough money to buy his own motorcycle and retain all of the profit. He looks forward to a future of entrepreneurship in motorcycle taxis. That, however, is likely a chimera. The economy of a slum is a closed economy limited to the resources of the slum and reaching little beyond the GDP of the poor that comprise it. The only asset the slum has to offer the world outside of it is cheap labor. That demand, however, does not exist and is increasingly exacerbated world wide by robotization, computerized self-service in stores and other developing blessings of technology. The slum economy is an informal economy of on-the-spot bargaining between buyers and sellers of services and products.

This closed slum economy of the poor without resources can, and may well be, the economic future of much of humanity. At root, we have only one economy on this planet and we all live in it. It is based on limited and continually shrinking resources. It continues to move wealth from the many to the few. This trend, I suspect, portends a world primarily of major cities centered on the needs and desires of the few who have the wealth and surrounded by the slums of those who do not. Last year, for the first time in human history, more of the world's population lived in urban areas than in rural areas. This process is also denoted by the recurring phrase "disappearance of the middle class."

The city surrounded by its slums is the very picture of the feudal economy that resulted from the fall of the Roman Empire and that civilization. This was a world of castles of the wealthy surrounded by those who sought safety from the castle lord to whom they paid a portion of the crops they raised. They became serfs of the lord tied to his land. The basic difference between the feudal arrangement and the slums is that the slum dweller will probably remain physically free because he/she is not needed by the wealthy nor will protection be provided by the city.

A world in which the mass of mankind lives in slums surrounding major cites is a future in stark contrast to the return to the village proposed by some environmentalists. Given the overwhelming dominance of the capitalist system, I suspect the slum scenario is more likely. Indeed, the continuing effort to convince the American citizens that the small entrepreneur is the salvation of our economy, especially in creating jobs, is evidence that the powers that be may already be preparing the American psyche for a future not unlike that adumbrated here.

The slum-economy of limited resources is indicative of the future humanity faces as its excessive demands on the limited resources of the planet constrict economic activity. It is little understood by most humans that capitalism is based on a surplus. Capital is what is left over after immediate need is met. As this surplus diminishes, so does the viability of capitalism. Increasingly humans will be living in societies of reduced economic activity faced with all the problems and violence that accompanies such a social environment. The resources will not be available to provide for social security, health care, education, etc. unless humans learn to greatly reduce their population and their consumption and learn to control themselves. As it is, the rich continue to accumulate the wealth that should have been distributed to others. The necessities of the mass of humans are made hostage to the excesses of the few. Viewed from the perspective of our species' future, the behavior of the very wealthy is criminal. Ironically the small-time capitalism the slums have developed as a survival economy will be increasingly debilitated as the small surplus extant in the slum diminishes further.

For other views and more information on the significance of slums may I suggest:

Mike Davis' book Planet of the Slums. This is an excellent presentation of the significance of the slums in mankind's future. Davis even draws attention to the central role the slums have assumed in American military planning.

Robert Neuwirth's book Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World. Neuwirth lived in a large number of the world's slums and describes them and their culture in a very perceptive manner.

Stewart Brand of Whole Earth Catalog fame, has an interesting article titled How Slums Can Save the Planet. It can be found at file:///C:/Downlosd%20as%20of%203-4-06/Slums/How%20slums%20can%20save%20the%20planet%20by%20Steewart%20Brand.htm

Bob Newhard

Technology, Humanity, Destiny (Part 1)

There has always been a latent suspicion of knowledge, at least in Western culture. As early as the Genesis story the acquisition of the knowledge of good and evil was the source of all human ills on earth. It was not how they lived up to the point of that acquisition, for God obviously approved of what it had created. It was the knowledge that the way they were living was immoral, hence the fig leaf. But worse than their lifestyle, was the fact that they had partaken of their creator's knowledge. In this foundation story for Christian civilization knowledge is therefore evil.

Again, Faust has to sell his soul to the Devil in order to acquire knowledge, which human beings are not supposed to have.

When knowledge began to be applied to the physical world technology, which consists of that application, made real that erstwhile vague suspicion. The Luddites set about destroying the machines of technology as they saw them robbing them of jobs and the sustenance of life.

The threat of technology to not only human welfare, but to human self esteem took root early in the 19^th century. The story of John Henry the steel driving railroad hero competing with the new steam-driven machine portrayed a human who would not let a machine deprive him of his sense of self-worth based on his strength. In this age of mechanical technology the machine was competing with the human body.

Then came the bitter acceptance of defeat by the machine as Charlie Chaplin could not keep up with his relentless assembly line in Modern Times and was last seen enmeshed in the gears of the monster he serviced. In somewhat the same vein Fritz Lang's 1927 silent film Metropolis portrayed a dystopia ruled by an intellectual elite high in their towering skyscrapers controlling a regimented laboring class doomed to service the blast furnaces and factories of immense heartless machines.

In all of this rebellion against technology the underlying theme was the machine's competing with the human body and winning.

With the advent of the computer in the 20^th century the machine began to compete with the human brain. In the 1957 movie Desk Set the John Henry competition between human and machine breaks out in a corporate reference library. Spencer Tracy is demonstrating his new computer system designed to quickly answer reference questions. This corporate function has been traditionally performed by a small crew of highly skilled reference librarians. It is interesting to note that when it comes to brain-machine competition females replace male. In this early example of human-computer competition, humans win. By the early 1990's HAL, the computer antagonist of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, starts killing his masters, but is eliminated by the last surviving human on the spaceship who progressively disconnects HAL from the power and information it needs--a close call for the humans.

In an earlier column I mentioned Ray Kurzweil's book Singularity and its argument that artificial intelligence superior to human intelligence is on the near horizon of technological development and that the U. S. military is already wrestling with how much self control to give a combat robot.

In all the above comment on technology I do not mean to imply that it has provided no benefits. It obviously has. The inherent and generally disregarded fact is , however, that the very benefits, say the immensely extended life span, have generated our equally massive problems, e.g. overpopulation. We humans have not learned to control ourselves in our own interests. We have not learned the lesson of the Golden Mean or All Things in Moderation--maxims recommended as a primary virtue more than 2500 years ago by the philosophers of Greece and Rome. As Dennis Kucinich pled with Americans in the 2008 presidential election "Wake up America, Wake up!" so I would urge "Grow up World, Grow up!

In this part 1 my concern has been to trace human reaction to its cognitive brain from suspicion to backlash. In part 2, my next post, I will deal with some of the more subtle, but perhaps more fateful consequences of technology, especially the economic and social significance of continually diminishing resources.

Bob Newhard

Pale Blue Dot

The 20th century was the bloodiest, most destructive, century in human history. The first decade of the 21st century, fraught with death and destruction, does not bode well for humanity. It is abundantly clear that things cannot go on like this. It is also abundantly clear that existing institutions have not been effective in significantly reducing the level of violence. The United Nations, while of value, is not up to the job precisely because its components are nations each of which is still playing the balance of powers game. What is obviously needed is a united people of the world. This, I suggest, requires a paradigm shift in human socio-political attachment from the nation, tribe, and religion to the Earth itself. Further, this attachment must be rational and evidentiary as in science, so that adjudication among the people has a better chance at fairness.

This suggestion is different from the one-world community's focus on bringing the nations together to form a world society. It is also different from Earth First, which is concerned with our impact on our physical home, the environment, as important as that obviously is. This proposal is about conditioning human beings, as we do with good citizenship in our public schools, to see the Earth as our only home, as small, as fragile, as alone in the vastness of space and upon which we are utterly dependent. This awareness must be the mother's milk of childhood education and as pervasive in day to day human affairs as the weather. With this pervasive awareness, the conflict, death and suffering we visit on each other will be seen as the pure folly it is. For this to happen we need a concept and a symbol so powerful that it can overcome narrow allegiances and the emotional ties humans have to them. I believe the absolute loneliness of our pale blue dot in the vastness of space as Carl Sagan has described it, and the NASA photograph of that profound isolation, can serve this purpose. As Sagan wrote in his book Pale Blur Dot, "Apart from that, (the warmth ad light we receive from the sun) this small world is on its own."

Bob Newhard

E pluribus duo

I recently had occasion to consult Samuel P. Huntington's essay The Clash of Civilizations, which was initially a lecture delivered at the American Enterprise Institute and subsequently expanded into a book. The primary thesis of the essay is that following the end of the Cold War America's conflicts would no longer be over ideological differences, but over cultural, especially religious differences. Huntington names the various civilizations and in the book even provides a map of them. Knowing that Huntington's thesis was especially popular among conservatives, note where he first broached his thesis, I sought critical evaluations of the work. Fortunately, the magazine Foreign Affairs, which had published the original essay, had collected the responses to the essay and Huntington's rejoinder in a book titled The Clash of Civilization. The Debate. One of the critics of Huntington's thesis pointed out that it viewed civilizations as though they were clear cut, highly defined, "hard," objects like billiard balls, which repel each other upon contact. The author of this criticism suggested a more apt metaphor would be the sponge. In this author's view civilizations absorb much from each other, which, among other things, makes any analysis of civilizations and their relationships a somewhat murky enterprise. For example, you may have noticed that the mass protests in Egypt consisted of men predominantly reflecting Muslim culture, yet these men were mostly dressed in western style jeans, reflecting an acceptance of western culture.

I believe this apposition between Huntington's "hard" concept of civilizations and his critic's "softer" portrayal reflects a deeper political division among humans. Remembering that Huntington first gave voice to his thesis in a lecture to the conservative American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, we can assume The Clash of Civilizations reflects a conservative view of things as they are and as they will be. I suggest that it found favor among this group, in part, because of its prima facie clarity and its call to conflict as the resolving mechanism. In brief, it offered a simple, easy to grasp, explanation of what is going on at the global level. It also tapped into American cultural beliefs, making it an easy sell for politicians and the corporate media and providing cover for corporate expansionism. This has a good deal to do with the conservative preference for military, whether by act or threat, solutions over the tedious and uncertain diplomatic solutions. They have the shoot first and ask questions later mentality. Despite the warnings against invading Afghanistan and Iraq, which they declared to be a "cake walk," they went ahead and ten years later millions are dead and the invaded countries nearly demolished. The same initiative and its consequences occurred in Vietnam. There are real consequences to our conceptions. We should not treat them lightly, for in many respects they are the fathers of all wars. This desire for sharp distinctions plays out in conservative domestic policies, e.g. the standardized and rigorous testing of the No Child Left Behind approach to education, which has nearly destroyed meaningful education. Their social "solutions" in general do not take account of the variety of human conditions, capacities and responses to life. This tendency to over simplification in public policy is fodder for the greed of the wealthy and the bigotry of their religious supporters. As the philosopher Alfred Whitehead advised, "Seek simplicity, but distrust it." It should also be noted that simplicity functions well for propaganda purposes. It not only relieves people of the need to think, it also reinforces prejudice, taps the emotions of tradition, whether valid or not, and in general suborns a thoughtful approach to the world.

This conservative view of humanity can and has eventuated in dictatorship and the worst form of religious and cultural bigotry. Osama bin Laden was a firm believer in the clash of civilizations.

Progressives and people who place people first derive their views, tentative as they often are, from the needs and opinions of the many and do not, in general, have recourse to simple answers. They must consider opposing views and, as in the Occupy Wall Street movement, seek consensus. An interesting contrast is the organized precision and discipline of the annual World Economic Forum and the comparatively chaotic World Social Forum. This willingness to begin with the amorphous "people" can and has, in the extreme, led to mob rule, witness the French Revolution, the storming of the Bastille, and the wanton killing based on class membership that followed it. Daily it becomes clearer that in a world of murderous technology we must find a way to facilitate profound change without the violence that greed, fear and bigotry create. We can, for instance, pressure our government to seek cooperation with liberal elements within otherwise conservative regimes. Israel comes to mind. Why do we let the far right Likud define the Israel we will support? Why not the liberal element that want a two state solution to the Palestinian issue? We had no qualms about supporting the opponents of Gaddafi. Why not support the liberal opponents of the Likud who want a two-state solution to the Palestinian issue and decry the continuing expansion of Israel's borders and desire a secular state? Where was our support for the substantial component of the Egyptian revolution that wanted a secular state? We obviously have a major task in foreign policy. We can do better at promoting democracy and peace. As is so frequently the case, we progressives must construct an organized movement, as they did in the Progressivism of the turn of the last century. This constitutes both a morally commendable and a very difficult undertaking. We progressives have a profound need to offer mankind a coherent view of society as we conceive it and an organized path to that end. This path is subject to change as humanity better understands itself, but is always guided by eliciting what is best in human nature. It is a very tall order, but one of absolute necessity if civilization, not to mention our species, is to survive.

Bob Newhard

None Dare Call It Murder

The ridiculously light sentences received by the Haditha Marines, especially the three months of house arrest and the reduction in rank and pay received by the sergeant in charge, have outraged many in this country and in Iraq. One of the things I found peculiar was that, as far as I could determine, no one was prepared to call it murder. Most frequently it was called the killings, occasionally a massacre. For this type of event the word "killing" is almost a neutral term. We kill everything from insects to humans. We even kill time. The term "massacre" suggests killing indiscriminately. Some of these innocent people were killed at such close range they had powder burns from the gun that killed them. Some publications did say this represented "execution style" killing. Yet none were willing to call it murder. Why?

Aside from such legal niceties that "murder" might have a specific meaning, e.g. that murder consists of one person premeditatively killing another, I suggest that these light sentences are a consequence of the rampant militarism that has found a home in America. While the military has always been permitted to conduct its own trials of its members, the sentences of these soldiers have shown the ludicrousness of this exceptionalism. It may be said that military combat is so chaotic and the threat to life so high that civilians could not render an informed judgment. Hence these men would not face a jury of their peers. However, the same can be said of a police officer on a gang hit list or undercover DEA agents accused of wrongful killing, yet we try them in civilian courts. All of these light, to the point of absurdity, sentences reflect, in my view, the privileged position the military has come to occupy in current American culture.

To the above comparative observations there is the questionable process of sentencing. The military judge is an officer. Like other officers his situation and future are dependent upon the esteem he has in the eyes of his superiors. This fact puts significant pressure on the judge to conform to the wishes of these superiors. Can this explain the light sentences? It certainly would not hurt recruitment in a volunteer military. There is, in my judgment, a conflict of interest at work here. In other areas officers have been known to cover up, delay, or obfuscate crimes committed by others. Colin Powell and the My Lai massacre and the flat out lying in the Pat Tillman case come to mind. Should we expect less of these judge-officers?

Should the military be permitted to conduct its own trials? The practice appears to have arisen from the belief that military combat is so unique that only military personnel can be expected to render a fair verdict. Even more important, can a military judge, who is just another officer, be expected to impose a penalty that is not in concert with the views of superiors who have the power to influence his future? As I have indicated above, I think this is false. The fact that the military tends to deal lightly with the killing of innocent people so long as they are not American should give us great pause when we consider letting the military conduct its own trials. Further, we have used this separate legal system to try our enemies or presumed enemies, including, again, innocent people, e.g. Guantanamo and to permit torture.

That the military justice system has so obviously failed to serve the demands of justice and that it appears fraught with impediments to securing justice is bad enough. Given recent federal legislation, I suggest it now poses a direct threat to the American citizenry.

The 2012 Defense Authorization Act permits the military to indefinitely detain any U.S citizen at its own initiative. Presumably any further legal action would be conducted by a military tribunal as has been the case with Guantanamo detainees. In taking over a previously civil function the military continues to expand its role in the affairs of this country. There is a pathetic commentary to be found in the decline of American democracy when one notes that Egypt, new to democracy, has massive protests to get rid of military rule while the United States welcomes it. Fear, that highly emotional response to threat, real or fabricated, is the deadliest enemy of democracy. Democracy requires participative courage from its citizens or it perishes. In the end, a democracy must put its trust in the citizenry, not the military.

Bob Newhard

The Janus of Empire

January 24^th 2012 saw two hugely contrasting events that portray the sick, delusional militarism of this country.

One was President Obama's State of the Union speech in which his repeated effulgent praise of the military was strikingly noticeable. One line of that praise was "We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world." Respected?

The other was the final phase of the Hidatha massacre trials for the sergeant who ordered his men to shoot first and ask questions later as they burst into a dwelling and proceeded to kill children, one of whom was a toddler, women and men one of whom was a septuagenarian. Neither the sergeant nor his men, who pled that they were obeying their superior will serve any time in prison for their horrendous crime. The "superior order" defense did not work for the Nazi criminals in the Nuremberg Trials, but it does for American criminals. So much for the arrogance of empire. This was an act of vengeance pure and simple for an earlier roadside bomb that killed a member of the squad and wounded several others.

The glaring contrast between Obama's praise and the murders in Haditha reflects the profound rise of an uncritical militarism in this country.

After every war prior to World War II this country had disarmed. After World War II the military was not only kept intact, but began a life of increasing budgets. This nation was kept on a semi-wartime footing called the Cold War for forty-five years. Over two generations of Americans were raised under this continuing threat, including home bomb shelters and classroom drills in "duck and cover." When the Cold War finally ended there was no peace dividend. The military budget remained high while we went looking for other enemies that might justify this huge distorting expenditure for armaments. We attacked Panama because, it was said, its president was dealing in drugs. With the attack on the Twin Towers we finally had an enemy which, even though it was few in numbers, had no borders and was not a country. Nonetheless, we declared war on it. Even this was not enough to satisfy the lust for war. We attacked Iraq on the trumped up charge that it was preparing nuclear weapons to attack us. In all this long sad sequence Americans learned perpetual fear and their leaders learned to govern through that fear.

We are now in the process of militarizing our domestic law enforcement in flat contradiction to our Constitution. The passage of military technology through the Homeland Security Department to local police is now customary and the military has recently begun direct training exercises with local police in Los Angeles. We have again, in contradiction of our Constitution, given the military, per the National Defense Authorization Act, the right to detain any American citizen indefinitely without warrant or trial.

As all of this is in such sharp contrast to this nation's previous disposition toward the military, I sometimes wonder whether the American people were traumatized by the Cold War and the continuing threat it represented for so long a period that they became inured to the loss of freedom that threat imposes as people seek protection. Both Obama and G. W. Bush justified our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq as protecting us from terrorism. I submit that by our actions we have increased that threat by enhancing the recruitment power of the Taliban and other terrorist groups enormously and that we have spread a virulent anti-Americanism world wide. Contrary to Obama, we have not won respect. We have inculcated a widespread fear that has generated protests demanding that we leave Iraq and Afghanistan. I also suggest that fear and dislike of American influence was one element used by the Islamic Brotherhood to capture controlling power in Egypt and that we shall see increasing resistance to American influence in the Muslim world. Drone attacks generate fear, not respect and any respect paid to fear is always accompanied by hate. Democratically disposed groups in Egypt and Israel who could use our help can no longer seek it because we have so sullied our reputation by wanton aggression that these groups would experience backlash. The neocons laid out the plan for world domination. G. W. Bush and Barack Obama have carried it out. Now we reap the whirlwind.

If and until we get over this imperialism that identifies world domination with our national interest, things will only get worse and someone else will have to carry the banner of democracy, that is, if democracy is to survive. Recalling Dennis Kucinich's 2008 campaign plea "Wake up America," I strongly recommend Chalmers Johnson's book "The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic" to understand the connections between American imperialism, American militarism, and a failing American democracy. Chalmers notes that that as the Roman Empire grew larger and more complex the deliberative body, the Roman Senate, found that it could no long administer it. Eventually it passed its powers on to Octavian who became the first Emperor of Rome. In short, size matters if democracy is to function. There are significant similarities to this country's current state of affairs, as presidents engage in wars without consulting Congress and there has been a call for a "unitary" presidency. We are on the brink of losing our democracy. Does it really matter to this country's citizenry? Looking backward we see the consequences of empire for Rome. Looking at the present we are staring at the prospects for the future. Dennis Kucinich's call to America to "Wake up!" should be the loudest rallying cry of this election, especially for progressives.

Bob Newhard