We Right-of-Center Liberals

As reality has finally descended onto mainstream political discourse in America, the occasional continued chirpings of staunch Bush apologists has taken on more of an other-worldly, cornered-animal, delusional gloss than they had when mainstream attention gave them undeserved legitimacy. Surely it's only a matter of time until national policy will catch up with that reality. In the meantime, I will chuckle every time I see Democratic politicians referred to as "far-left liberals" or socialists.

There are many measures of conservatism and liberalism, but none of them have much relation to whether one acknowledges that our decision to occupy Iraq was the colossal error that most now realize it to have been. Pro-war Lieberman and newly anti-war Brownback should serve as testament to that.

But of all the measures used to measure ideology, the one most often employed is the extent to which one adheres to a market economy model vs. a centrally planned economy model. Some think capitalist vs. socialist, others command economy vs free enterprise, communist vs laissez-faire, but each is an expression of the same dichotomy, though there are many different flavors at each end and in the middle.

Most reasonable people today would acknowledge the problems associated with strict adherence to either extreme along this continuum, and in fact all western democracies have some form of mixed economy which combines elements from each. In these United States we have Social Security, Medicare, a nationalized Postal Service & defense, highly regulated utilities, a Federal Reserve, anti-trust laws, a minimum wage, and many other elements which distance us from a pure market economy, but market forces still remain the driving force for our economy as a whole. We have chosen a market economy with an overlay of some planned elements to keep in check some of the excesses associated with unreined free market capitalism, exposed in an earlier age by writers such as Charles Dickens and Upton Sinclair.

The really remarkable thing in America is the extent of agreement across more than 90% of the political spectrum with our choice of a market based mixed economy. From Dennis Kucinich to Orrin Hatch we are agreed on this. It is not surprising that even very conservative Americans who may think of themselves as pure free marketeers will concede that some aspects of central planning currently in place are desirable. It is somewhat more surprising given the excesses of corporatism evident today, that there aren't more who advocate moving to a planned model with market driven elements. But most of us recognize the dangers associated with ceding too much planning power to a central agency, and have witnessed from afar the far graver excesses of such central power when Stalin ruthlessly purged and punished dissent, or when Mao megalomaniacally exerted his power in the now defamed Cultural Revolution. Some democratically elected governments in Europe have enjoyed some measure of success with a more planned economy, but still I agree with most of my fellow Democrats that we are best served retaining a market based system, even as we advocate for more reasonable controls to counter corporate excess.

By definition, along this economic measure of left and right, a belief that we should retain a market based mixed economy, makes the vast majority of Democrats and liberals in America right of center. At the very least charges that we are far-left, fringe, or socialist are simply laughable. A democratic socialist perspective, far more common in Europe, ought to be a perfectly respectable one, and I think it sad that such views are routinely mocked or worse considered traitorous, in spite of my belief that America is better off retaining a market based model. The more purist views trotted out by the Heritage Foundation, Richard Viguerie, or Grover Norquist surely strike this observer as more extreme than those of a European style democratic socialist.

Ah well, I can live with that as long as America can continue the process of refinding her center, and begin to marginalize the divisive policies foisted upon us by the boardroom bought Republican leadership which at least no longer controls the agenda in Congress. Perhaps she can also find greater civility in political discourse as politicians on BOTH sides of the aisle respond to the disgust of the voters with the status quo and find language that can unite us, in spite of retained differences.

Can Obama Obliterate Limbaugh's Legacy?

It seems almost silly at this stage, 20 month before the next Presidential election, to be getting too excited or too committed to any particular candidate for that office. Already I posted my allegiance to Russ Feingold here the very day after the midterms, only to have him declare his intention NOT to run mere days later. By the time Congressman Dennis Kucinich, my choice in the primaries of 2004 declared his candidacy, I had decided to hold off and wait for a Democrat who not only shared most of my values, but also had a credible chance of being taken seriously.

And so it was in the midst of reading Obama's Audacity of Hope that I (& thousands of others) received this email from the Senator, announcing his intention to form a presidential exploratory committee, writing:

...challenging as they are, it's not the magnitude of our problems that concerns me the most. It's the smallness of our politics. America's faced big problems before. But today, our leaders in Washington seem incapable of working together in a practical, common sense way. Politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence, that we can't tackle the big problems that demand solutions.

In reading his book, it is apparent that Barack Obama more often takes a more moderate tack than what I might, but what I share with him is a passion about the pressing need for people, including politicians, to hone their ability to listen to conflicting perspectives and truly weigh what their adversaries are correct about, rather than derisively dismissing that adversary by association with some aspect of their belief or their affiliation with people or causes which the viewer finds either contemptible or ridiculous.

Mockery has always been around, and its use, whether in satire or a stand-up comedy routine, can lend new perspective, shaking sense into those who might otherwise too easily accept authority's explanation for the status quo. Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, though far too subtle in technique for today's standards, caricatured the Irish wealthy class' indifference to the poor in the 18th century. Jesus' General and Scrappleface capably carry the form with wry humor from two very different perspectives into the modern blogosphere.

But the extent to which modern politicking routinely leans on derision as the modus operandi for motivating its allies to action has poisoned political discourse in America. Even if Barack Obama doesn't win his party's nomination, having an eloquent voice directly challenge the "talking points" formulaic approach to winning by dividing might have a contagious effect on the race as a whole, as Americans yearn for a hopeful message, void of the scorn of the cultural wars.

Which brings me to Limbaugh's legacy. Wasn't it Rush that made an artform of holding up the orthodoxies of politically correct liberalism to ridicule? He was good at it too - and there were orthodoxies there that were laughable enough in their own right. Never mind that they did not represent the thinking of the majority of liberals - mockery worked. When a coworker by proximity introduced me to Limbaugh's tirades in the early nineties, I was struck by his then obsessive fixation with Sally Jessy Raphael as the exemplar of liberalism gone amok. Huh? I was a self-identified liberal, but I found Raphael's tawdry obsession with often morally skewed freaks distasteful at least, if not as repugnant as the antics of Springer or later Povich. Limbaugh successfully conflated liberalism with immorality in the minds of his faithful following, and aside from helping to spawn an ugly brand of lock-step conservatism, with orthodoxies at least as absurd as those he was so adept at exposing or fabricating among carefully selected liberals and academics, he also promoted derision as the chief tool for political discussion and argument.

Today, while my car was in the shop, the loaner car I drove was tuned to Limbaugh, whom I've pretty much avoided since getting more than my fill in 1992 & 93. While I occasionally tune into liberal talk radio today, I recognize what it borrows from Limbaugh's legacy. Today though, I took the opportunity to flip back and forth between Rush and Thom Hartmann. I might usually agree with the analysis of Hartmann, and often his conclusions, while rarely agreeing with Limbaugh, but both are skillfully pandering to many listeners' appetites for derision of their foes, and I won't mind a bit if both are marginalized by a central core of Americans hungry for more civility with a focus on possible solutions to our problems, rather than a mentality of winning at any cost.

That does not mean that everyone should be a centrist. No! No! No! America and the world will thrive best when thoughtful people from diverse perspectives are allowed to contribute their ideas and skills to our common destiny. Feingold on the left and Oklahoma's Tom Coburn on the right are more valuable to the Senate in my estimation than the more moderate, and arguably more powerful, Chuck Schumer is or Bill Frist was. The former are genuine representatives of their constituencies, not panderers to talking points and political expediency. Americans are sometimes surprised when seemingly huge political divides are bridged, like Orrin Hatch and Ted Kennedy coming together to promote legislation, but they shouldn't be. Obama understands this interplay, and has already had remarkable success at playing the political game while retaining a compelling voice for goodwill and the promotion of common values.

I'm also hungry for great oratory, and was too young to appreciate that of JFK. We've really not had a great orator for a President since JFK. Good speeches here and there from almost every President, including the current one, but a great orator - that would be a welcome change. Obama does not reflect my views perfectly, but in large measure where we differ, his electability is enhanced by that difference. I've read enough and seen enough to be convinced that America would benefit from his candidacy if not his presidency, and have accordingly already sent him that message in the form of a few dollars. Now is the time to do so if you agree, as his expected announcement is expected to come on February 10 (auspiciously my own 50th birthday).

So while the pundits legitimately may question Obama's foreign policy experience, let me leave by quoting this prescient passage from a speech that he gave to an anti-war crowd in 2002, before most of his expected Democratic opponents who happen to have been in the Senate voted to authorize Bush's blank check for taking war to Iraq:

That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power.... The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him. But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors...and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

We sure could have used some of THAT inexperience in the oval office in the Spring of 2003!

The Egalitarian Ideal

Is egalitarianism an unattainable, and thus naive, pointless abstraction, or is it a principle central to the American ideal? Politics always involves an interplay between philosophical abstractions and pragmatic concessions to reality. That is as it should be. We err terribly if a recognition of non-attainability leads to the abandonment of ideals.

In our personal lives, horizons are necessarily limited, and lofty goals often must be scaled back or altered in order to set new goals which are indeed attainable. Sadly for some, that means abandoning not only the unattainable goal, but also the worthy ideal which buttressed it. But for others it means balancing the ideals with realism, and achieving something that can make a difference, rather than overreaching and achieving nothing, or giving up and substituting lofty goals with cynical opportunistic ends.

Our nation's history serves as a testament to the worthiness of the egalitarian ideal, boldly written into our Declaration of Independence, but incrementally approached as two centuries saw the extension of the vote to non-land owners, then an end to slavery, then women's suffrage, and further progress in the mid-twentieth century in the rights of minorities. As Martin Luther King Jr, who participated in creating that progress noted in 1967, "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." Formalization of an ideal, such as that written into the Declaration of Independence can have a lasting influence in moving toward that ideal, however unattainable the ultimate manifestation of the ideal can be.

Of course, there will always be inequities. There is wisdom in the oft heard counsel that "life isn't fair" and we do well to recognize that early. But that does not mean that fairness should be thrown away as a value, nor does it justify mistreatment of our fellow human beings, just because absolute equality is unattainable. No matter how much someone may buy into the notion that making things fair is a hopeless proposition, it always seems they will still be acutely aware when they are not dealt a fair hand.

The egalitarian ideal has been held up by people of various political stripes throughout America's history, and adopted broadly in many parts of the world as a worthy goal. No philosophy or party has the market cornered on it, nor do I wish for that, but for much of the last century Democrats have been more consistent than Republicans in holding it up as central to the American dream, and it is largely due to that emphasis that my own identification has remained that of a Democrat throughout my adult life. My party's candidates stumble and fail frequently enough, but the egalitarian ideal remains an American ideal to which I hope the Democrats can hold fast as we approach the future.

And let us all, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and others alike, continue to hold ideals and vision as a beacon to guide our policy and politics as we grapple with the realities in our imperfect world.

Happy New Year!

Yunus: Poverty is a threat to Peace

The Nobel committee chose wisely this year when they awarded the Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus, whose Grameen Bank revolutionized credit and proved that poor women of Bangladesh were better credit risks than wealthy men in suits from New York. Yunus' acceptance speech last weekend, heard on Democracy Now, tells the story worth repeating:

"This year's prize gives the highest honor and dignity to the hundreds of millions of women all around the world who struggle every day to make a living and bring hope for better lives for their children. This is an historic moment for all of them. By giving us this prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has given important support to the proposition that peace is inextricably linked to poverty. Poverty is a threat to peace.

World's income distribution gives a very telling story. 94% of the world income goes to 40% of the world population, while 60% of people live only with 6% of the world income. Half of the world population lives on two dollars a day.

The millennium began with a great global dream. World leaders gathered at the United Nations in 2000 and adopted, among others, a historic goal to reduce poverty by half by 2015. Never in human history had such a bold goal been adopted by the entire world in one voice, one that specified time and size.

But then came September 11 and the Iraq war, and suddenly the world became derailed from the pursuit of this dream, with the attention of the world leaders shifting from the war on poverty to the war on terrorism. ’Til now, over $530 billion has been spent on the war in Iraq by the USA alone.

I believe terrorism cannot be won by the military action. Terrorism must be condemned in the strongest possible language. We must stand solidly against it and find all the means to end it. We must address the root cause of terrorism to end terrorism for all time to come. I believe that putting resources into improving the lives of the poor is a better strategy than spending it on guns.

Peace should be understood in a human way, in a broad social, political and economic way. Peace is threatened by unjust economic, social and political order, absence of democracy, environmental degradation and absence of human rights.

Poverty is the absence of all human rights. The frustrations, hostility and anger generated by abject poverty cannot sustain peace in any society. For building stable peace, we must find ways to provide opportunities for people to live decent lives. The creation of opportunities for the majority of the people -- the poor -- is at the heart of the work that we have dedicated ourselves during the past 30 years.

I became involved in the poverty issue, not as a policymaker or as a researcher. I became involved because poverty was all around me, and I could not turn away from it. In 1974, I found it difficult to teach elegant theories of economics in the university classroom, in the backdrop of a terrible famine that was raging in Bangladesh. Suddenly, I felt the emptiness of all those theories in the face of the crushing hunger and poverty.

I wanted to do something immediate to help people around me, even if it was just one human being, to get through another day with a little more ease. That brought me face to face with poor people’s struggle to find the tiniest amounts of money to support their efforts to eke out a living.

I was shocked to discover a woman in the village, borrowing less than a dollar from the money lender, on the condition that he would have the exclusive right to buy all she produces at the price that he decides. This, to me, was a way of recruiting slave labor.

I decided to make a list of the victims of the money lending in the village next door to our campus. When my list was complete, I had names of 42 victims, who borrowed a total amount of $27. I was shocked. I offered this $27 from my own pocket to get these victims out of the clutches of the money lenders.

The excitement that was created among the people by this action got me further involved in it. If I could make so many people so happy with such a tiny amount of money, why shouldn’t I do more of it? That’s what I have been trying to do ever since.

The first thing I did was try to persuade the bank located in the campus to lend money to the poor. But that didn’t work. They didn’t agree. The bank said that the poor are not creditworthy. After all my efforts for several months, when it failed, I offered to become a guarantor for the loans to the poor.

When I gave the loans, I was stunned by the result I got. The poor paid back their loans on time, every time. But still, I kept confronting difficulties in expanding the program through the existing banks. That was when I decided to create a separate bank for the poor. I finally succeeded in doing that in 1983. I named it Grameen Bank or Village Bank.

Today, Grameen Bank gives loans to nearly 7 million poor people -- 97% of them are women -- in 73,000 villages of Bangladesh. Grameen Bank gives collateral-free income-generating loans, housing loans, student loans and micro-enterprise loans to the poor families and offers them a host of attractive savings, pension funds and insurance products for its members.

Since it introduced them in 1984, housing loans have been used to construct 640,000 houses. The legal ownership of these houses belongs to the women themselves. We focused on women, because we found giving loans to women always brought more benefits to the family.

In a cumulative way, the bank has given out a loan totaling about $6 billion. Repayment rate, 99%. Grameen Bank routinely makes profit. Financially, it is self-reliant and has not taken donor money since 1995. Deposits and own resources of Grameen Bank today amount to 143% of all outstanding loans. According to Grameen Bank's internal survey, 58% of our borrowers have crossed the poverty line.

Grameen Bank was born as a tiny homegrown project run with the help of several of my students, all local girls and boys. Three of these students are still with me in Grameen Bank, after all these years, as its topmost executives. They are here today to receive this honor you gave us.

This idea, which began in Jobra, a small village in Bangladesh, has spread around the world. There are now Grameen-type programs in almost every country in the world.

The photo of the weaver comes from this 2002 article on Yunus and microcredit from Sustainable Times.

John Haynes Holmes & Harry Emerson Fosdick

Two forward thinking theologians active in the early part of the twentieth century have been brought to my attention recently. Harry Emerson Fosdick began his ministry in the Baptist tradition of my own upbringing, while John Holmes Haynes started his ministry in the Unitarian tradition which I have now adopted in its Unitarian Universalist incarnation. Both were outspoken liberals within their traditions, creating some uproar in their day, but also engendering a dedicated following of progressive religious thinkers.

Reading their brief biographies points up the extent to which we share the same battles simply in different garb as those of our forebears, and that those on both sides of these battles have their foibles as they do their inspiration. Anyone with insight into the lives of either of these two, or perhaps on any interaction between them is invited to comment here.

My Land, Your Land, Our Land

My home state of Washington must fend off an atrociously crafted property rights initiative, I-933, in next Tuesday's election. A recent poll suggests cause for great hope in both this race and the other initiatives in my state. If it proves true, I believe it will be the first time ever that I voted on the winning side of every initiative here.

Property rights measures often succeed by appealing to Americans' notions about property ownership and the American dream. "Property fairness" is the rallying cry of its supporters. My own predisposition is to be very distrustful of property rights movements, which are often motivated by greed and selfishness at the expense of the public good. That doesn't mean I cannot acknowledge instances where simplistically crafted regulations constrain reasonable uses of people's land creating justifiable resentment against government. But the answer doesn't lie in a simplistically crafted initiative voted on by the public at large, rather than having elected representatives hammer out the details to mitigate problems with existing regulation.

Even the Yakima Herald-Republic in conservative eastern Washington farm country was able to recognize the problems with an initiative approach to solving these complex issues:

About the most positive thing we can say about Initiative 933 is that it is a good example of why it's bad public policy to write complex state laws by initiative -- absent the give-and-take of debate and compromise in the legislative arena.

No doubt their predisposition on property rights differs considerably from mine, but even so we've come to the same conclusion.

The down side to having such strong predispositions is that I'm less inclined to become as fully informed as I might about issues where I'm more doubtful of my own stance. I reacted strongly against an online libertartian-right "voters guide" sent me by a libertarian leaning friend. While I am sufficiently informed to be quite certain that I-933 would make bad law, that certainty has hampered me from doing the background research to make that case to someone who doesn't share my predispositions.

Hence my follow up answer to her was couched in some uncertainty:

I don't pretend to be an expert, but my impression is that 933 proponents claim that the state, counties, and municipalities frequently write regulations which are in abridgement of the state constitution because they do devalue the property without compensation, and that their initiative simply enforces the constitution.

I believe some claims of devaluation are specious, some are correct, and some are debatable. For just about any issue one can find gray areas. In my opinion this initiative gives ammunition to any property owner whose personal interpretation of any post-1996 regulation leads him/her to believe there property has been devalued to sue for damages or to have the regulation overturned. Having encountered folks I deem as "property rights yahoos" in action before, that has me seeing red. Lots of these folks are motivated by greed and get their undies in a bunch at some perceived injustice when reasonable regulations spell out that there are certain uses prohibited of their land. Some may even seek compensation for potential profits they are being denied that they really didn't even intend to take advantage of.

If someone buys land at some point when regulations at the time of purchase allow them to build a residence and regulations change to disallow that, then I believe the current constitution should come into play to protect their interests, and they should either be allowed to build or be compensated for takings. Again, I'm not an expert, but I believe such cases don't require this initiative. While there may be cases where an owner has been unreasonably hurt by regulation, and deserves redress, this initiative is not the silver bullet for providing that redress. In spite of a few exceptions written into 933, its language adopts a far too broad approach which in the completely accurate words of the No campaign "goes too far, and costs too much."

I further acknowledged that there are some cases of eminent domain abuse, such as the Kelo decision, where I actually sided with the conservative justices. The public good argument didn't fly in that case for me - rather it seemed like a municipality caving to moneyed interests. Especially in an instance where the result of the decision is to force someone out of their own home so it can be developed into a condominium to be sold to wealthier people.

So I am not always kneejerk reactive against property rights, but an early fondness for William Faulkner and the Native American sensibility about the land and ownership do cause me to cast a wary eye toward those for whom property rights is their most burning issue. So while I won't be burning the paperwork that the bank has given me regarding my investment in a certain plot of land, I will always regard it with a certain bemused attitude toward the concept that human beings own little pieces of the earth's crust. Any piece of land is part of a system which takes precedence over anyone's putative ownership of that piece. An ownership system is fine as long as ownership obliges the owner to appropriate stewardship of their holding. The land after all will be around long after we depart.

Thanks to Land Use Watch from neighboring Oregon for the pointer to the recent encouraging poll.

It's a Big Time in America

That was Jim Hightower's catchphrase last night as he entertained, agitated, and communed with an activist rich community last night in Seattle's Town Hall.

Hightower never minces words in his indictment of the powers that be who misuse their wealth and power to separate themselves from the rest of us, but what secures my admiration of him is his unrelenting optimism in spite of his often dire analysis. He finds the underlying progressivism in the fabric of America, even among those who think of themselves as conservative. Of Republican mothers he comments, "Guess what? They don't want pesticides on their babies' food."

"We don't have to create a progressive movement, we just have to go out and collect it up!"

There were zingers aplenty.

America depends on its agitators to beat out the dirt.

The bigwigs are "gettin' so rich they could air condition hell, and I tell you what ..."

When the Bushites tell the poor about their number of jobs they created, one working poor woman respond "I know, I have 3 of them!" (Then Hightower went on the expose that myth noting that Bush has created the fewest jobs of any president since Hoover.)

He quoted fellow Texan Bill Moyers who has noted that "the delusional is no longer marginal."

He made fun of himself, noting that at an earlier point in his career he decided to "stop running for office, and start running his mouth."

But beyond the barbs, Hightower's optimism takes over. He told the faithful that "pursuit of egalitarianism is America's true path." He doesn't pretend that the road will be easy or that it will be short. He reminded us that suffragists Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton never lived to get the vote themselves. But what they wrought brought America one step closer to its egalitarian destiny. Hightower referred to the "prairie fires of rebellion across America" today - "It's a big time in America!" and he quoted the Chinese proverb, "Those who say it can't be done should not interrupt those who are doing it."

He talked about how lucky he is to be able to travel all over America and meet the people who are getting things done. He thanked the crowd - not for coming to hear him, but for being on the front lines of the fight to retain our democracy. He thanked the sponsors. He thanked the Seattle Peace Chorus who had warmed the crowd up with several rousing songs of hope. He took a moment to remember the recently passed Ann Richards, another rabble-rousing Texan who made a real difference in moving that state forward in an earlier decade. His words were a accompanied by a genuine warmth, a warmth that was felt by a number of us lucky enough to meet him before the main event. Jim Hightower is the real deal, not just a blabbermouth ideologue looking for attention. He understands that the struggle is not about ideology, it's about truth.

All of us are going to be wrong sometimes, and sometimes partial truths can lead well intentioned people to disastrous decisions. But other times it's pretty obvious what's going on, and if we're all too timid to say it the powerful will continue to run roughshod over us. Timidity is certainly not among Hightower's shortcomings. We can always count on the sharp-witted Texan to give it to us straight in his "Lowdown", regulary aired on many public radio stations. But if you ever get a chance to see him live, don't miss it. Hightower live is a helluva treat.

Bill Moyers: on Faith & Reason

Though I taped the whole series, I was delighted to find the complete transcripts on line just now, in easy to read & easy to print format:

1 - Salman Rushdie
2 - Mary Gordon and Colin McGinn
3 - Jeanette Winterson and Will Power
4 - Anne Provoost and David Grossman
5 - Richard Rodriguez and Sir John Houghton
6 - Margaret Atwood and Martin Amis
7 - Pema Chodron

Thank you Bill, for coming back to public television. America desperately needs your calm wisdom and openness. I couldn't blame you personally for leaving NOW after making it one of the finest investigative acts on television, but shortening the show to half and hour accentuated my disappointment. And I was aghast that an ideologue such as Kenneth Tomlinson could spend our tax dollars to try to "prove your liberal bias". You got it right when you fired back:

The more compelling our journalism, the angrier the radical right of the Republican Party gets. That's because the one thing they loathe more than liberals is the truth. And the quickest way to be damned by them as liberal is to tell the truth.

Hey, I know you won't do it, but I've long harbored the same wish that Molly Ivins recently expressed in an op-ed piece:

imagine, if seven or eight other Democratic candidates, all beautifully coiffed and triangulated and carefully coached to say nothing that will offend anyone, stand on stage with Bill Moyers in front of cameras for a national debate … what would happen? Bill Moyers would win, would walk away with it, just because he doesn’t triangulate or calculate or trim or try to straddle the issues. Bill Moyers doesn’t have to endorse a constitutional amendment against flag burning or whatever wedge issue du jour Republicans have come up with. He is not afraid of being called “unpatriotic.” And besides, he is a wise and a kind man who knows how to talk on TV.

I wonder how much mail Moyers has received since Ivins posted his P.O. Box at the end of her article. I think I should send some love his way. What a gentle soul.

Knowledge is Best Defense against Terrorism

In the days and weeks following 9/11, what always struck me as missing in the response was a clear message to the terrorists that they had used up that method of operation. Not because of new security measures at airports, but because the method was now common knowledge. What happened on the Flight 93 was proof, that given knowledge our citizens can be relied upon to react as necessary. UK Terrorist Plot

Terrorists depend on secrecy in their planning. If one week before 9/11 the plans for hijacking planes with box cutters & running them into buildings had been announced, and such warnings given regularly at all airports, then I dare say 1) the terrorists wouldn't have even tried it & 2) if they had other passengers would have fought them before they were ever able to get to the cockpit. Not that there might not have been lives lost, but the plot would have been foiled.

Just how surreptitiously could a person or persons carry out this new threat of mixing ingredients on planes.

Chertoff said the terrorists planned to bring various bomb components in a benign state aboard the planes and combine them once the planes were aloft to create and detonate explosive devices. Sources tell CBS News correspondent Jim Stewart that these chemical bombs would have been set with timers to go off simultaneously.

Must the government step in to protect us from ourselves and prohibit everyone and their grandma from taking shampoo in their carry-ons? Ironically these restrictions probably won't last - but they will create terrible inconvenience for millions of passengers at the very time when they are probably least necessary: right after everyone knows of the plan and terrorists would be least likely to follow through with it.

It seems now is a good time to remind ourselves of JFK's "Ask not" quote.

Opposition to Tyranny

Ideologues of all varieties often think of themselves as opposed to tyranny. And so they ascribe to opposing ideologies a tendency to produce tyranny. On this point they may be largely correct, while remaining blind to the tendencies of their own ideology to do the same.

Years ago I took on the mantle of liberal, and still I like it as well as any - though arguments can be made that progressive is the better label for the ideals I ascribe to. And so it was that "conservative" philosophy was what supposedly stood in opposition to my ideals, and indeed it has been rare that I could rightly be described as conservative. And yet I have often found individuals who self-label as conservative to be decent folk as genuinely committed to principles founded on moral behavior as many of my liberal colleagues who are quite genuinely committed to principles of equity and opportunity for all.

During my college years I still recall the excitement with which a friend extolled a new ism, which seemed to capture the piece of liberalism which was true and right, but without some of the naivete often ascribed to it. I listened, not fully convinced, to his description of libertarianism which in the late 70s was far less well known than it is today. Certainly the notion of individualistic freedom which was already engrained into me as an American was appealing. It seems that only a few days or weeks later, that the same friend came back disillusioned, describing these libertarians as nothing more than laissez-faire capitalists minus the puritanical authoritarianism of our caricature of traditional conservatives.

Reagan co-opted the economic piece of libertarianism and branded the Republican party with it, much to my dismay, but undeniably to the political advantage of Republicans who now tapped into a whole new constituency raised in a more permissive generation not likely to go back to the more restrictive brand of conservatism, but amenable to this new animal. But it is this economic libertarianism which I now find more pernicious than the stodgy old-fashioned conservatism, and more in opposition to my own ideals.

But there are pieces of truth in any way of thinking. What we should agree on is that tyranny must be avoided. Libertarians seek to avoid the tyranny of big government, liberals seek to avoid the tyranny of big business, conservatives the tyranny of permissiveness, et cetera. The ideals always feel principled, but the reality is that mundane concepts like checks and balances remain the best weapon against encroaching tyranny, and at any given time the greatest threat of tyranny lies in the hands of whomever it is that holds the most power. Jack Whelan, at After the Future writes:

in the world we live in the real threat of tyranny comes not from the political sector, but from the economic. For me the fundamental flaw in Libertarian thinking is its failure to recognize this. Tyranny derives from the abuse of power, and so it follows that the greatest threat to freedom comes from those who have the greatest concentrations of power. Look around you. Does that power lie in the hands of Liberal congressmen and professors? Of course not. It lies with those factions within American society which have enormous economic power. And the greatest threat to American democracy lies not in the power of big government if it serves the will of the broad electorate, but in the power of big government if it serves the will of those with enormous economic power.

The Libertarians fixation with freedom and economic prosperity seems to blind them to how their emphasis of them leads to problems with the distribution of power. They seem not to care at all about the dangers associated with the growing concentration of economic power in fewer and fewer hands. They seem not to realize how that concentration of power is the direct result of their hard work to pull back government power as a counterbalance to economic power. The kind of crony capitalism that we're seeing in Washington now is not caused by a failure of conservatives to live up to their ideals; it is the inevitable result of economic power moving into the territory from which good government has retreated. If the government won't stand as a counterbalance to economic power, it inevitably winds up being coopted by it. And then neither principled conservatives nor principled Liberals get what they want--they both have to deal with a big, bloated government serving the needs of big pharma, big oil, or the big companies that make their money from military spending.

He also points to an excellent article at Washington Monthly by Alan Wolfe "Why Conservatives Can't Govern"

Eager to salvage conservatism from the wreckage of conservative rule, right-wing pundits are furiously blaming right-wing politicians for failing to adhere to right-wing convictions. . . . A conservative president and an even more conservative Congress must be repudiated to enable genuine conservatism to survive. . . . [They say the Bush presidency failed] because Bush and his Republican allies in Congress borrowed big government and foreign-policy idealism from the left. . . . Of course, many of these dissidents extolled the president's conservative leadership when he was riding high in the polls. But the real flaw in their argument is akin to that of Trotskyites who, when confronted with the failures of communism in Cuba, China and the Soviet Union, would claim that real communism had never been tried. If leaders consistently depart in disastrous ways from their underlying political ideology, there comes a point where one has to stop just blaming the leaders and start questioning the ideology.

The brilliance of liberal democracy as conceived by our founding fathers was that it spoke to ideals but relied on the mundane instruments of checks and balances to keep new tyrannies at bay. If it needs any tweaking, that should be based on any new imbalances that may creep in. It's why I am often a broken record here concerned about corporate wealth and power, for surely that is the primary clear imbalance in our own country, and by extension to a large degree throughout the world, which of course has plenty of pockets of extreme tyranny of other descriptions which are also to be despised. One tyranny cannot justify itself simply by spending some of its energy in opposition to another tyranny. I suspect Osama bin Laden is genuinely appalled by Western profligacy even as he is blind to the horrific nature of his response to it. We should rightly oppose the tyranny of bin Laden or Saddam or Mugabe or Kim Jong Il, but we needn't therefore champion the growing disparity of power in our own country just because it can be manipulated in opposition to the former -- even if it had been done more competently.

Right now the most important thing we can do as Americans is to preserve our democratic institutions and insure that we retain pluralism and restore trust in our vote counting mechanism. We are certainly due for a correction - if that correction is made unavailable by corruption and tampering with our democratic processes it will be huge loss not only to America, but to the world at large as well.

Idolatry: the Symbol over the Referent

Shall we protect our nation and our freedoms, or is our flag more important?

Earlier this week, the Senate came within 1 vote of wasting the time of legislators the country over by advancing the "cause" of a Constitutional Amendment to ban the desecration of the flag. My thanks go out to the 34 Senators who saved us from this nonsense - and shame on the 66 (or most of them) who voted for it.

Mark Kleiman stated it succinctly:

The notion of writing a restriction on freedom of expression into the text of the Constitution ought to offend every patriot. To pledge allegiance to the Flag instead of "the Republic for which it stands" is the political equivalent of the sin of idolatry: confusing a symbol with its referent, to the extreme of elevating the symbol above the referent.

The Bill of Rights is as central to that Republic as anything could be: surely more central than the Flag. So to deface the Bill of Rights in order to defend the Flag is political idolatry at its worst.

Then he goes on to allow that while sullying our Constitution is an offense, a statute against flag burning, if found constitutional would not be so objectionable. I can't agree - it would offend me - but I do see his point, and do agree with him that if the aye votes on the amendment by a few swing state Democrats help them retain their seats, that is probably worth it. Really it's the Republicans that ought to know better and speak sense to the American public. Few have much backbone when it comes to confronting the deep-seated emotional illogic which consumes so many Americans around reverence for the flag.

Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Robert Bennett of Utah, and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky were the lone Republicans willing to defend the Constitution rather than pander to false patriotism. Mitch McConnell's statement shows that there is a way to frame such a vote, and still do the requisite pandering anyway. It also shows that this is not an ideologically tied position. McConnell and Bennett are not among the more moderate Republicans. In fact, I recall that in 1989 when the Supreme Court held that anti-flag burning statutes are unconstitutional, it was arch-conservative Scalia who cast the deciding vote.

So enjoy your Fourths, folks - wave your flags - attend your parades, but watch out for any demagogues who try to impugn the patriotism of any of the 34 who avoided idolatry this week.

Mission Rejected

Since my previous post about Lt Watada's refusal to deploy to Iraq, Amy Goodman on Democracy Now has been featuring soldiers' stories and the resistance to serve by those in the military who oppose this war.

She interviewed Peter Laufer, whose new book, Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq covers the subject broadly. I've long intended to do a bit of research on the topic of military war resisters, but found that information hard to find. Peter Laufer explained in the interview that hard numbers are really hard to come by, since most soldiers who refuse deployment or redeployment are keeping a low profile, and the military is not interested in highlighting the issue.

Those cases we do hear about, many of which are listed here, are really subjecting themselves to harsh scrutiny for the cause which they believe in. Many others simply go AWOL, but whether their reasons constitute a resistance to the Iraq war for cause is not clear.

One early resister was staff sergeant Camilo Mejia, who served in Iraq, and then applied for conscientious objector status after discovering first hand what the war was really about. Those who casually dismiss such examples as simply cowardly are unlikely to have read the words of some of these heroes or to have thought through the issues very thoroughly.

Camilo Mejia, from his statement upon receiving the "Courageous Resister Award", August 2004:

I am only a regular person that got tired of being afraid to follow his own conscience. For far too long I allowed others to direct my actions even when I knew that they were wrong....To those who have called me a coward I say that they are wrong, and that without knowing it, they are also right. They are wrong when they think that I left the war for fear of being killed. I admit that fear was there, but there was also the fear of killing innocent people, the fear of putting myself in a position where to survive means to kill, there was the fear of losing my soul in the process of saving my body, the fear of losing myself to my daughter, to the people who love me, to the man I used to be, the man I wanted to be. I was afraid of waking up one morning to realize my humanity had abandoned me.

Other resources:

Kevin Benderman defense committee

Psychoanalysts against the war

Sir, No Sir a film

The Thin Thin Line

For most of us, everyday choices present modest dilemmas in which we may choose between two sets of potential outcomes with variable good or bad results.

Military personnel, however, are faced with a duty to follow orders which may have grave consequences. Where is the line beyond which that duty to obey becomes a duty to refuse the order? Certainly there is such a line. No reasonable person would suggest blind duty to obey orders for instance to kill one's fellow soldiers. And yet the military would not work if all orders became optional, and soldiers could disobey any order they thought wrong. Perhaps this is all spelled out quite clearly in the military code, and yet it is hard to imagine there not being circumstances where a soldier might suspect (without being certain) that following an order constitutes a greater crime than disobedience. And then there are cases where one person's certainty counters that of another.

Lt. Ehren Watada has made a very difficult choice.

It is the duty, the obligation of every soldier, and specifically the officers, to evaluate the legality, the truth behind every order — including the order to go to war.

Detractors will point out that Watada enlisted in 2003 after the risk of being deployed to Iraq was quite clear. But since that time the illegality of that war has been made clear to many who did not see it before.
Watada has received substantial support from numerous organizations and individuals who are standing by him, and an online petition supporting his decision is being circulated.

Dan Kirkdorffer, of On the Road to 2008, has been closely following the Watada story here, here, and initially here.

I've long known I never had the right make up to be a soldier. To submit so thoroughly to the authority of others does not come easily when I'm so imbued with notions of independent thought and intellectual freedom. As abhorrent as I find war, I cannot deny the necessity for organizing militaries for the defense of nations, and can see the case for leaving the option of war open as a last resort. I understand the need for a command structure which demands rote loyalty in order for such an enterprise to work. But we must defend a soldier's right to question some orders, including some entire campaigns. Otherwise leaders have carte blanche to engage our troops to their own ends with impunity.

Earlier soldiers such as Kevin Benderman and Carl Webb have been drawing that line. Now a commissioned officer has joined them. America's conscience is being tested, and it will take more than just committed pacifists to bring us around to sanity. When our leaders take us into questionable military adventures, is it any wonder that our military is stretched too thin and morale is low? We risk not having a ready response when the cause is just at some point down the road.

Go here for a military blogger's perspective on this case.

National Humility

Once upon a time I dreamt that perhaps hundreds or thousands of people would regularly stop by here to soak in my pearls of wisdom, but there are advantages to relative anonymity. It's less of a big deal if I take extended breaks from writing (sorry though, to those of you who wish I would post more often), and I really don't need to worry so much about delivering messages that will backfire, and hence be used against the causes that I care about. I've also come to realize just how many excellent writers and thinkers there are out there, most of whom never get the lucky break to become widely read. It's wonderful that we have this vehicle for sharing ideas, and I'm pleased to see the current widespread outcry from disparate corners of the blogosphere to protect "net neutrality" from undue corporate control.

Recent revelations about the atrocities apparently committed by a few Marines in Haditha got me to thinking about the national humility we need to adopt, a subject which gets far too little attention precisely because any politician approaching it would fear a swift and strong backlash reaction and accusations of being unpatriotic. The mere fact that many such subjects become politically taboo damages our ability to have honest and open dialog, because politicians are constrained to finding popularly acceptable frames within which to make the case for whatever it is they are advocating.

It's quite acceptable for ministers to preach about humility as a virtue, and for individuals to seek an appropriate balance between positive self esteem and humble recognition of their own limitations. But to talk about the need for our nation to find such a comparable balance between marketing the ideas which have made us great and recognizing that we don't have every answer and often have much to learn from other cultures and other experiments in governance is a sure way to be dismissed by many as unpatriotic and unworthy of attention, if not traitorous.

Why can't we celebrate that which is wonderful about our traditions and simultaneously seek to improve on them and recognize our limitations without worrying about drawing such vitriolic scorn? In fact what is wonderful about our system of government is that it attempts to grant great freedom to the individual while providing checks and balances against any one group or portion of government gaining too much control. This brings me back to that wonderful quote by James Madison:

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

But people today confuse the greatness of our system with the goodness of our people. While growing up in a democratic context in which respect of our fellows is an inherent value can provide a template for decent behavior, at heart we are no more or less human than anyone else on the planet. In the stress of war, Americans are no different than anyone else, and some will tragically misbehave. Abu Ghraib and Haditha should be wake up calls for a little national humility. The justification of torture, or at least of inhumane and degrading treatment of suspects in custody is born of a misapprehension that Americans can be trusted, simply because they are Americans. If national humility were accepted as a desirable counterweight to our national pride, then we would likely avoid such hubris.

A Google search of "national humility" turns up a few interesting hits, but few American politicians since Lincoln who openly call for it. One exception I found extolling national humility was surprisingly Indiana Republican Senator Richard Lugar, who quotes former Democratic Senator William Fulbright who said:

Power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is particularly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God’s favor.

I also found a portion of a sermon which acknowledges a practical reason for not extending such a humility too far, but nonetheless to apply some national humility wisely:

We must be careful to extend the analogy of personal humility to national humility with great care, for in many respects the analogy does not hold. Governments have a responsibility to protect that individuals can set aside in a spirit of self-sacrifice. Nevertheless, the American government can conspicuously put others first by making sure that profits on oil, for instance, are fairly distributed in a country before the oil is taken out, and can make sure that poor nations in Africa have the most advantageous condition for the development of their agriculture in a world market.

Finally, I shall leave you with this article in Common Dreams by Thom Hartmann in which we see that Jefferson like Lincoln understood the need for a national humility. It suggests to me that the current taboo against acknowledging that we don't have every answer is stronger now than it was in the first century of our nation's existence. This article was written in advance of our last presidential election in which Hartmann asks whether we will choose the path of empire or the path of democracy. We made a grievous choice, as I've noted before, but it's not too late for humbler choices to follow. Let us recognize that representative democracy by its nature is both noble and humble.

Knowledge, Security, Privacy, & Trust

The NSA's newly revealed database of phone call records won't generate any outrage from me. I felt the wiretapping uncovered a few months ago was clearly illegal, and holding Congressional hearings on that was appropriate. But really my concern is not with the surveillance so much as with its potential misuse. If our government was composed of gods, it wouldn't really be troubling if every secret was known, but it is of course composed of human beings so requiring documented justification for surveillance is certainly reasonable. If the government has to be more open about its activities, that prevents it from abusing the privilege. When secrecy is rampant already, I don't buy the argument that eliminating oversight is necessary for security. Indeed security is damaged if insiders become compromised through bribery or self-interest, and that secrecy is used to protect those from whom it is supposed to protect us. The FISA solution made a lot of sense by providing oversight without wide knowledge, and so the Administration's bypassing of it requires more public oversight in spite of any perceived risk.

This newly revealed program which gives access to a database which can be queried if real terrorist numbers are discovered, sounds like a very defensible program in the right context, but Bush defenders should hardly be surprised that it arouses major suspicion in the context of a secretive administration which regularly flouts the law, misleads the public, and manipulates the press. Still I want to be careful about flying off the handle and declaring that the existence of this database is an outrage. It is not. Misuse of the database might range from somewhat unethical to truly outrageous, but the potential for it to be used only in the interest of security does exist, and I wouldn't want to deny the method forever and for all time simply based on my mistrust of Bush and his minions.

What I really want is a government I can trust. Imagine a program where every infant born or immigrant to our shores got DNA sequenced and that information was retained in a secure database for future medical decisions and law enforcement. That would frighten most libertarians and civil libertarians to the core, and with good reason. But ideally it would be a wonderful asset if guarding against its misuse were taken seriously, and we could feel assured that it would only be used appropriately. This would be great, not only for victims, but for the wrongly accused, where DNA evidence could exonerate them. And what a deterrent to crime when you know that any found DNA can pinpoint you to a scene or weapon. In the long run it would be worth developing the system to guard the system against misuse, in order to benefit from it. I'm not going to push for it any time real soon, however.

Having a searchable database which records billions of phone call records is pretty small potatoes on the Big Brother meter, certainly compared to my DNA suggestion above. Rather than going ape over its existence, I believe the appropriate response is to continue to demand accountability by the executive branch for how it uses any such program. There may be cases where approval of further surveillance needs to be done by a secret court such as FISA, but approval needs to come from independently created sources which shouldn't be too chummy with those making the requests, and there is a strong case to be made that FISA is not sufficiently independent. That the NSA bypassed the required step in the earlier revealed wiretapping, in spite of that, feeds the distrust that more and more Americans are feeling for the current crop of leaders.

Keeping Bitterness at Bay

If we choose hope we are making a commitment to stave off bitterness. We cannot always succeed, and even when we do, we should be careful not to condemn the bitterness of others in the same way that we must speak out against violence, greed, and injustice. Good people who give up are not the enemy. Indeed bitterness and cynicism are often the byproducts of a former idealism which collided headlong with terrible realities.

Here I choose to celebrate the possibility of a better world, the fulfillment to be had in the effort to bring it about, and the connections and friendships made along the journey. Recently I've been most inclined to shake my head in dismay at the news which is most reported on, and the apparent absence of a coordinated and hopeful uprising against the tide of corruption and greed which seems to be strangling our government and the corporate media from which most of us receive the news of the day. This dismay has unfortunately played a part in the absence of posts here, and for that I apologize - especially to those of you whose kind words have kept me from abandoning the project altogether.

It turns out that one doesn't have to hunt too hard, especially in this information age, to find seeds of hope in the fields of despair, and so I will endeavor to take up the task again, if not daily at least on a weekly basis. Now some on the left have taken pleasure from the continuing deterioration of Bush's popularity, and while I confess that the dismal poll numbers give me hope that a larger share of us are no longer fooled by the spin, mere dissatisfaction does not a movement make. We need positive messages for positive change.

When the immigration reform protests and marches took place, my initial reaction was why does this issue mobilize so many while similar efforts on behalf of peace or fairness to workers or poverty relief or saving our environment can't seem to get traction, when those causes have been so utterly betrayed by our government and our media. As much sympathy as I felt toward the very real human beings threatened with felony status for their honest efforts to improve their lives, and the likely trickle down ethnic discrimination against legal residents whose heritage groups them in the minds of the prejudiced with those who "steal our jobs", the complexity of immigration issues cuts both ways, and I longed for such activism on other fronts.

Paul Loeb writes compellingly on this issue and delivers a hopeful epilog to his analysis:

Immigration politics are complicated-- flooding this or any country with cheap labor can and will drive down wages, especially when unions are being busted and undocumented workers live in fear of deportation. If we don't create enough global justice so desperate people don't continue leaving their homes in search of a glimmer of hope, then all but the wealthiest will succumb to the worldwide race to the bottom. But as the signs at the march reminded us, we're all children of immigrants, except for the Native Americans. And those marching and chanting reminded those of us who are legal because our ancestors immigrated earlier on that even in the land of Microsoft, we are tied with the people who pick our crops, build our houses, clean our office buildings, tied in what King called "an inescapable network of mutuality...a single garment of destiny."
...
Why can't we have these kinds of marches to challenge the war or global warming, or all of Bush's arrogant reign? Anti-war marches were huge before Bush went into Iraq, since then far more disappointing, even as the polls steadily shift. Maybe it's because those more comfortable sit behind our computers too much and believe we can do all politics with the click of a mouse.. Maybe the issues feel abstract or intransigent. Unless you have a son or daughter over serving it doesn't hit home nearly as much as the raw callousness of Congressman Sensenbrenner's plan to make 12 million people instant felons, as well as anyone who gives them water or food, education or medical care. ...

Here the stakes were clear, immediate, and people turned out despite the risk of being deported, because if Sensenbrenner's bill had gone through, as might well have happened without these marches and outcries, then life would have gotten instantly far harsher and crueler. So for those of us who didn't march but claim to act for justice, we need to heed the lives of those these voices represent, and do what we can to ensure they are heard. We also need to link this issue of fundamental human dignity to all the threats that make it difficult for people to simply live and flourish on this earth. Maybe by finding their voice and courage, those who marched in America these past weeks can teach the rest of us how to come out of our own shadows and fears and join across our own divides.

I've come close to chiming in on other issues. When Rumsfeld came under increasing heat (Isn't it simply obvious that the whole lot of them should have long since resigned in shame?), when Bush changes his mouthpiece by replacing McClelland (Who really believes that a different spin has any positive effect on a failed policy), when mainstream news reports, most recently 60 Minutes, yet another voice corroborating the obviously established fact that the Administration chose intelligence to fit its policy to attack Iraq rather than the other way around (How is this an iota different than reporting that was readily available on-line before the last election?).

But discontent with the Bush administration is nothing new, and it was getting plenty of attention, even in the mainstream media. Piling on just adds to cynicism, and shouldn't this site be about providing a positive alternative?

And so it was that I was much heartened by David Brancaccio's interview last week with singer/activist Peter Gabriel. In spite of being involved with a project highlighting many of the worst cases of human abuse, mistreatment, and genocide, Gabriel remains committed to a brighter future which seeks to curb such atrocities. Brancaccio contrasted Gabriel's hope, with the bitterness which Kurt Vonnegut exhibited on a previous interview on NOW. I recalled my disappointment with that episode which I had been looking forward to at the time. Vonnegut, like Twain, who became very bitter in his later days, can be forgiven his bleak outlook given his years of keen observation, but his bleak vision for our future has its only utility in the possibility of waking up some to alarming trends. Twain and Vonnegut may be proved right in the long run - certainly it is easy to imagine a falling apart as has happened all too often in many human societies - but it is a practical matter that I continue to put my ideals first and believe in the possibilities while keeping that bitterness at bay.

We need each other's help in this effort. Again thank you to those whose kind words have helped me recently.

Widening Our Circles

In the sixties Paul Simon sardonically wrote and sang:

I have no need of friendship
friendship causes pain
Its laughter and its loving I disdain
...
I touch no one and no one touches me.

I am a rock, I am an island
And a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries.

Of course, no one is truly an island, yet there is no denying that widening our circles of friendship and love does invite more pain into our lives. This weekend, my own beloved community experienced the brutal shock of that truth as two were lost to senseless tragedy and two more injured and orphaned. We could shrink into our shells in a futile attempt to insulate ourselves from further pain, but no instead we reach out and invite even more. For it is within our beloved communities that we find healing, which is so much more important than the avoidance of pain. In faith we widen our circles even further. As one of those so tragically taken from us said two years ago:

We all have the power to create a positive life. When you look within and find the glimmerings of what brings you energy and joy, say yes to those inklings, even though you don’t know where that path will take you. Faith and trust are qualities we must all embrace if we are to hear our directions from God or our guiding spirit.

The wounds from two such positive lives ended far too soon will not heal quickly for the very many souls whom they have touched. But they will be best honored if, in time, we can say yes to those glimmerings, those inklings, to joy and to hope.

Goodbye Ken
Goodbye Kathy

Golden Medal; Golden Heart

Joey Cheek won a gold medal for the US in speed skating yesterday. But it was his announcement at a press conference that was truly golden:

Cheek announced that he would donate the $25,000 bonus the United States Olympic Committee gives to gold-medal winners to Right to Play, a charity organization founded by former Norwegian Olympic speedskating champion Johann Olav Koss to help disadvantaged children around the world.

"I have a pretty unique opportunity here, so I'm going to take advantage of it while I can," Cheek said at his post-race news conference. "I have been blessed by competing in the Olympics in speedskating. ... I always felt if I ever did something big like this, I wanted to be prepared to give something back."

Cheek chose to give his money specifically to help in Chad, where he said there are 60,000 children who have been displaced from their homes. [refugees from the violence in Darfur] I'll take his word for it, since this is something he has been researching. He met with Koss and looked into the financial structure of the organization to be sure it wasn't one of those charities with top-heavy administrative costs that eat up the donations.

"It's Right to Play" Cheek said. The organization's mission is "To improve the lives of children in the most disadvantaged areas of the world by using the power of sport and play for development, health and peace."

Half an hour before we heard from Cheek, 2002 gold medalist and Monday's 10th-place finisher Casey FitzRandolph said, "You've got certain guys that you root for, and Joey's one of them. I root for guys not because of what country they're from so much as what type of people they are."

But I also like this quote from the Yahoo account of the story:

"I don't know how I skated that fast," Cheek said. "At some level, it's empowering to think about someone other than yourself. It's right that I help some people get the chance that I have had.

"We athletes are superstitious, goofy people," Cheek said. "It's kind of absurd. I've trained my whole life for this but I am skating around in a skintight suit. It's a little ridiculous.

"I can take the time to sit up here and gush or I can do something worthwhile."

The humanitarian crisis in Darfur has claimed between 180,000 and 300,000 lives, and displaced more than two million people.

Cheek's role model is former Norwegian speedskater Johan-Olaf Koss, who made a similar contribution in 1994 when the program was called Olympic Aid.

"The things he has done for other people have been an inspiration for me," Cheek said. "It's my hope that I can assist some people and walk in his large shoes."

Cheek had the plan in mind after meeting with Right to Play leaders in the Olympic Village this week.

"I have been kind of plotting this in my head. I wanted to be prepared if the stars aligned," Cheek said. "They have got a great program and they have done a lot of good."

Cheek said he plans to visit Darfur in a couple of months and might petition the US State Department to allow more US funds for relief work.

Perhaps an athlete can partially restore America's good name which our leaders have been working so hard to throw away.

Brutal Truths & Bridges of Hope

Truth wears no labels.

Truth shows up in surprising places.

Truth cannot be cornered and packaged.

Of course, we all have our own truths, and we get comfortable with the set of truths we know; we hang out in certain crowds; we can't resist packaging the truth as we understand it; but we all get blindsided from time to time.

I suppose I take it as a point of pride that I repeatedly question my own assumptions. Why do I think that? How do I know that's true? What does that person with the opposite opinion know that I may not? It turns some people away. They think I'm wishy washy - a flip-flopper. But it hardly means that I don't have deep convictions.

One such conviction is that it is wrong to judge someone for a trait over which they have no control. Always. But it does not follow that someone who does so wrongly judge others is himself always wrong about everything. He may see a brutal truth to which I am blind. Still I'll more often look for truth among those who first demonstrate the most compassion. It just stands to reason that the odds are better there. But occasionally close examination will reveal them to be dead wrong - about some things.

So we need to confront the brutal truths which come from disparate perspectives. But hatred can sometimes come disguised as brutal truth, so healthy skepticism is necessary to accompany that willingness to listen to opinions which challenge our assumptions. But with no willingness to listen then all is reduced to argument and divisiveness will reign.

Hmm. I can imagine someone reading this as a lot of airy nothing. But humor me, and stick with it for just a little longer. Because I'm not just saying that we need the brutal truth tellers from all sides (and we do) - even as we need the listeners who will help filter out some of the accompanying nonsense and expose it as chaff. We need the doubters like me, and we need those who are really sure of their paths and will not waver - and sometimes I'm like that too. But we need something else.

We need the bridgers. Those who can show us the bridges of hope. The bridgers are my heroes. Bridgers are no strangers to the brutal truths - but they find brutal truths on both sides of the divides and can speak to groups of people who find it difficult to speak to each other.

Today I bought myself a birthday present. A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On 7 audio CDs. King was the consumate bridger. Such bridgers are rare, but there may be more of them than we sometimes imagine. Few attain the profile that King did in his too short life.

Can a wealthy, idolized rock star be a bridger? It doesn't seem likely. But then there's Bono. I've long liked U2's music, but then I like a lot of rock and roll. What I really like is what Bono has done with his celebrity. Thanks to Bob Wratz of BrightEyesDimView for pointing me to Bono's homily (free subscription required) at the National Prayer Breakfast one week ago. I want to excerpt some highlights, but it's hard - it works best as a whole. You know the old "read the whole thing" exhortation. But here's a little after he is talking about how churches came around to confront the AIDS epidemic after a slow start born of judgmentalism:

But in truth, I was wrong again. The church was slow but the church got busy on this the leprosy of our age.

Love was on the move.

Mercy was on the move.

God was on the move.

Moving people of all kinds to work with others they had never met, never would have cared to meet...conservative church groups hanging out with spokesmen for the gay community, all singing off the same hymn sheet on AIDS...soccer moms and quarterbacks...hip-hop stars and country stars. This is what happens when God gets on the move: crazy stuff happens!

Popes were seen wearing sunglasses!

Jesse Helms was seen with a ghetto blaster!

Crazy stuff. Evidence of the spirit.

It was breathtaking. Literally. It stopped the world in its tracks.

When churches started demonstrating on debt, governments listened - and acted. When churches starting organising, petitioning, and even - that most unholy of acts today, God forbid, lobbying...on AIDS and global health, governments listened - and acted.

I'm here today in all humility to say: you changed minds; you changed policy; you changed the world.

Look, whatever thoughts you have about God, who He is or if He exists, most will agree that if there is a God, He has a special place for the poor. In fact, the poor are where God lives.

Check Judaism. Check Islam. Check pretty much anyone.

I mean, God may well be with us in our mansions on the hill. I hope so. He may well be with us as in all manner of controversial stuff. Maybe, maybe not. But the one thing we can all agree, all faiths and ideologies, is that God is with the vulnerable and poor.

God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them. "If you remove the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom with become like midday and the Lord will continually guide you and satisfy your desire in scorched places."

It's not a coincidence that in the scriptures, poverty is mentioned more than 2,100 times. It's not an accident. That's a lot of air time, 2,100 mentions. (You know, the only time Christ is judgmental is on the subject of the poor.) 'As you have done it unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me' (Matthew 25:40). As I say, good news to the poor.

Here's some good news for the president. After 9/11 we were told America would have no time for the world's poor. America would be taken up with its own problems of safety. And it's true these are dangerous times, but America has not drawn the blinds and double-locked the doors.

In fact, you have doubled aid to Africa. You have tripled funding for global health. Mr. President, your emergency plan for AIDS relief and support for the Global Fund - you and Congress - have put 700,000 people onto life-saving anti-retroviral drugs and provided 8 million bed nets to protect children from malaria.

Outstanding human achievements. Counterintuitive. Historic. Be very, very proud.

But here's the bad news. From charity to justice, the good news is yet to come. There is much more to do. There's a gigantic chasm between the scale of the emergency and the scale of the response.

And finally, it's not about charity after all, is it? It's about justice.

Let me repeat that: It's not about charity, it's about justice.

And that's too bad.

Because you're good at charity. Americans, like the Irish, are good at it. We like to give, and we give a lot, even those who can't afford it.

But justice is a higher standard. Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice; it makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties, it doubts our concern, it questions our commitment.

Sixty-five hundred Africans are still dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease, for lack of drugs we can buy at any drug store. This is not about charity, this is about justice and equality.

Ok, it was more than a little - but wasn't it worth it? At the National Prayer Breakfast, with Bush and Congressional and religious leaders in attendance.

Caring About Africa

Africa is all too easily ignored by much of the world, especially the United States, and in particular Presidents in their State of the Union addresses.



One of my favorite resources on the web is O.T. Ford's Stewardship Project, which ignores no place. While I've occasionally disagreed with some particulars of his opinions, such as his willingness to accept Bush's Iraq war as better than simply leaving Saddam in power, I have nothing but the greatest respect for the thoroughness and seeming accuracy with which he portrays the Political Status of the States of the world, with respect to the extent to which they exhibit majority control by the people or not.

While certainly there is a wide range between the most oppressive states and the most liberal democratic states, I am inclined to accept Ford's quick categorization of most states into one realm or the other. He is not prone to the typical temptation of assigning status based on their claimed or putative ideology. Africa tends to be a continent where autocratic or oligarchic regimes are the norm, though there has been some encouraging movement of late in nations such as Nigeria, Liberia, Malawi, and Burundi. The reader of the map should be warned that significant oppression, especially of certain minorities, may linger in many of the "blue" nations, while some of the "orange" nations do show some movement toward liberalization. Overall the state of human rights remains awfully bleak across the continent.

I've never seen this type of information captured on a map before, so I have used Ford's analysis to create a first glimpse of Africa as it stands today. Eventually I am interested in furthering this analysis. For instance we might subdivide those nations where some regions are acting autonomously, or more finely designate the status of the states, or look at recent or historical trends. But until now, I've never even seen a snapshot.

[UPDATE: An excellent diary, What's the Matter with Africa, appeared today on DailyKos which is well worth the read. I added my map in the comments, since lots of maps were included in the diary and the comments.]