The Disenfranchised Curmudgeon

transit of mercury

2006-10-13T16:31:00.000-05:00

A rare astronomical event is coming your way on November 8th: the transit of Mercury. Observers will see a small black disk “transiting” the face of the Sun as the planet Mercury comes between Earth and Sol in such a way for it to be visible here in North America. Happily, my Son’s telescope and I will be at his school for some hands-on education during the transit. Nothing edifies an old Curmudgeon like spending an afternoon with a class of seven year olds.

Unfortunately, I will be in need of edification on this day after our national apostasy.

Apostasy will be exactly the right word in the eyes of Republicans as they witness American voters turning away from the true faith of conservatism. “Revival” will probably seem more fitting if you are a Democrat.

You see, one jihadist’s sanctification is another’s abomination in American political theology.

But the apostasy to which I refer is the anti-democratic election process we engage in under the guise of republican democracy. Vote for anyone you want, damn near everyone tells me, so long as they are a Republican or Democrat. Republicans seem uncannily certain that Democrats are going to Hell and Democrats share the same heartfelt moral contempt for the GOP. Both would agree on the fate of those that disparage the two-party system: there is a special level of Hell just for us.

I shall not, however, be dissuaded from regaling you with my disenfranchised observations while I await my fate in the hereafter. And given that we are getting down to election time, I will hazard a few prognostications and some prospective aftermath analysis.

I am not in rare company when I predict the GOP’s ouster from power on November 7th. Depending on who you choose to listen to, 350 to 390 seats in the House of Representative are considered “safe”. Decades of rapacious Gerrymandering have reduced things to where as few as twenty seats out of 435 are considered serious contests. But the current margin of GOP House control is so thin that the balance of power may still swing on those twenty or so Congressional districts.

As luck would have it for the Democrats this time around, the Democratic seats up this election tend to be the safer seats and the Republican seats less so. A six seat shift will be required for control of the Senate to go blue and something like ten of the thirty-three seats are considered seriously contested. My sense is the national rage against the war in Iraq is going to deliver the Senate chamber keys to party of Jefferson though by a narrower margin than in the House.

Analyzing congressional elections through the lens of national issues has historically lacked utility, but Tip O’Neil’s admonition that all politics is local seems quaint to me now. Certainly there are still times and specific races where local factors are more important than national ones, but in recent years there have been more Congressional elections that were national in character than not. In the wake of 9-11 and the Iraq Occupation, national issues are at the forefront as seldom before.

It was the national focus that brought out the Moral Majority in record numbers two years ago to thwart the putative leftist attack on families. In spite of this incredible energy generated in the right-wing base last election, the result was an even thinner margin of control in Congress as war weariness was already beginning to set in. This election, there is no lightening-rod issue at the forefront to energize the right, but for the left it will be the body count. It doesn’t take an astrophysicist to grasp the polling data. The GOP base has cooled off and the Democrats sense their opportunity.

And I’m talking now about 2008.

You see, this election is 1966 all over again. In 1966 mid-term elections, the GOP made big gains in Congress in what was an easily recognizable harbinger of the 1968 GOP Presidential campaign success. Wars that lose their purpose inevitably have bigger effects than jokes about “Mission Accomplished” banners. While it would be a mistake to push the 1966 to 2006 analogy too far, the same voter nerves have been rubbed raw and the result will be a changing of the guard.

The good news is that I can look forward to enjoying two years of return to glorious dead-lock. You remember what that was like do you not? Stalemate with the Executive and Legislative branches in the hands of different parties was a (relatively) beautiful thing. It was more beautiful than I even realized back then. Extremist agendas, be they from the left or right, while often noisy, in retrospect they did not get nearly as much traction.

The bad news is that the 1966 election was followed by 1968 just as surely as 2006 will be followed by 2008. As was the case back then, the body bags will continue to accumulate and voters will be looking for change.

Leave it to Shurb to screw up the opportunity for a golden age of glorious stalemate: the GOP has botched things so severely that we are about to find the government entirely in the hands of the Democrats in two years.

Even this I would calculate to be good news for me personally: cynical punditry should be at its zenith. Surely I’ll soon be picked up by a national syndicator because opportunities like his only happen once in a life time. If you think the Arkansas mafia was fun the first time, just wait till they apply the lessons learned at the knee of Rove and company. Can you imagine the excitement in their camp? Now their elitist ways are legal thanks to the GOP.

Whether we like it or not, we should start practicing our salutations now because “Madame President” does not yet flow readily from the tongue.

Yes indeed, I’m looking forward to November 8th and my time with the seven and eight-year olds. Thanks to the kids, I will have less time to contemplate the rigor-mortis that will then be setting in on those experiencing sudden political death. It will get my mind off of the tragic American political mess and on bigger things. On youngsters who offer hope rather than adults who sold theirs to the highest bidder. On the inevitable triumph of Good.

Perhaps it is no accident that Mercury is making his show on the heels of the day of death and apostasy. One of Mercury’s lesser celebrated services to man was to act as an escort to see the newly dead from Earth to the Underworld. Depending on whether you root for Team Blue team or Team Red, you may have differing opinions on whether the departed Titans should properly be escorted to the Elysian Fields.

Me?

My bet is down on justice: a speedy transit to Tartarus.

ring of fire

2006-07-04T10:53:00.000-05:00

I am not sure whether I fell in to the ring of fire or whether I jumped. Supporting the GOP was for me, like most people, a conscious choice but after a while, I discovered that like love, politics too burns.

In my defense, I was never fully comfortable with the GOP. I supported them by pulling the straight party levers (back when it really was a lever) because I was overwhelmingly concerned with fiscal policy, national defense and abortion. As a teenager and young adult, it was easy to make the error of assuming politicians actually mean what they say, so I beg the forgiveness of the Almighty and my gentle readers for the transgressions of my youth.

I remember my mid-life political epiphany with clarity though it came about not in an instantaneous flash of light but over a period of a few months in 1996. Having already had all I could stomach studying asset forfeiture, flag burning, sacramental peyote and other significant civil liberties affronts, the extraordinary hypocrisy of the budget battles sealed it: I had become a full blown political heretic. After dabbling with the Libertarian Party for a few years and eventually abandoning that institutionally defective and philosophically incomplete camp, I found the path of political redemption by dropping out of the existing political process altogether and dedicating myself to using the power of the pen to try to shake whatever small circle of people I can out of the two-party stupor which plagues our land.

I am reminded of all of this because of reading the recent Supreme Court ruling in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. It is an interesting read to say the very least.

Interesting because of its overt political nature. The political thrust and parry drip from the white space between the words of putatively sober jurisprudential exegesis. Stevens and Scalia were at their result oriented best reducing the opportunity for righting egregious wrongs and propounding great ideas into a base game of political sport.

Stevens and Scalia are no Hand and Holmes.

The decay of our Federal Judiciary is emblematic of the larger trend of politicization of our nation. Stevens and Scalia are both extremely intelligent men who are fully capable of propounding great ideas in articulate and reasoned analysis. Instead, they give us eisegetical crap.

As a nation we have come to accept this hyper-politicization of everything as something normal and wholesome. When the blue team scores, the crowd roars its approval while the red team clings to hopes of a good free agency period between elections. It is all about victory and defeat.

This politicization affects big stuff that is easy to identify, but you can even see its subtle affects in the smaller things as well.

Perhaps space exploration is not a small thing, but it provides an immediate and useful example of how deeply political we have become. As I write, we are awaiting the Space Shuttle return to flight launch and there is considerable angst over the future of the various NASA programs. If you are not keeping up, it boils down to this: if the flight is successful, then the Shuttle will continue flights for the next four years to complete the International Space Station (ISS). Another failure will likely permanently ground the Shuttle fleet and the ISS will never achieve any stage of construction remotely similar to finished.

Whether Space Exploration is a worthy goal or not is a separate and interesting debate which I am happy to have. But we have gone forward in this direction and having made that decision, we should be proceeding based on scientific merit and rational objectives. Instead the go/no-go decision is being influenced by budget cycles and political spin. The growing corollary national disease of extreme risk aversion plays into the politics of the Space Shuttle, but I’m going to exercise some discipline and avoid venturing further down that tangent.

Truly, it must be incredibly disappointing to career scientists and engineers at NASA to be at the mercy of the spin cycle. But no more disappointing than this political reality is to thousands of our best and brightest who pursue noble causes such as medical research only to find out that getting funding is also a political process. No more disappointing than realization that meritorious science is less important than spending on the political disease du jour.

No more disappointing than figuring out that this is what we have become as a nation.

As we play the two-party game, the federal budget grows and grows. Vote producing procurement programs move forward while things that matter are not even discussed much less addressed. As we fall down, down, down into the political ring of fire, more and more people are getting burned.

I, for one, refuse to stoke the flames.

thinking inside the box

2006-05-31T11:29:00.000-05:00

It is not often that politicians are candid about their motivations and intentions. Yet there it was with John Conyers writing recently in the Washington Post regarding the potential for impeachment proceedings should the reigns of power change hands in the next election:

It was House Republicans who took power in 1995 with immediate plans to undermine President Bill Clinton by any means necessary, and they did so in the most autocratic, partisan and destructive ways imaginable. If there is any lesson from those "revolutionaries," it is that partisan vendettas ultimately provoke a public backlash and are never viewed as legitimate.

It was close to complete candor, but let me translate this into plain English for you: “We would impeach the guy faster than a Congresscritter accepts a bribe, but we are afraid of losing our seats from voter backlash”.

Honest yes, but utterly contemptible.

Conyers himself described the charges of malfeasance against the administration as, “grave, serious, well known, and based on reliable media reports and the accounts of former administration officials.” He then goes on to describe the problems of proof, exacerbated by administration stone-walling, that prevent a conclusive determination on the presence of impeachable conduct.

Back in 1974, that was called obstruction of justice.

I can not seem to find the public outrage over obstruction of justice being tolerated by Congress under the explicit rationale that there might be a political backlash. I’m sure the outrage is lying around here somewhere—probably hiding under a pile of weapons of mass destruction.

It will not surprise my readers that I think that 43 crossed the line of impeachability long ago. If you are one of those poor souls who think the Democrats or Republicans will save us, however, it should shock you to learn that impeachment is no longer even an option. Where ever you may come down on the issues, this should torque you. Time after time politics trumps the rule of law yet there is no rage against the political machine.

And it is a political machine: the spirit of Tammany Hall is alive and well. Alive like some twisted vision of Mary Shelly crafted from the head of an elephant and ass of a donkey.

I wish Shelly were alive today to animate the American voters with a bolt of reality.

Whatever my wishes for a great awakening, the American voters continue their oblivious ways and seem poised to reactively return the Ass to the head of our political institutions. If you have been paying attention for the last several decades, you can go ahead and write the speeches now. The GOP urging us to stay the course with ads conjuring phantoms of terroristic demons that only they can be trusted to protect us against. While the Democrats will be urging a return to honest leadership and demonizing those who would send our children to war and poison our Earth to purposely make their lives miserable if they survive.

After all the fine speeches, the Democrats will win. This is the American way after a scandal such as is the current administration. And that of course means for the first time we will be saying “Madame President”.

The sad thing is that many of the hordes of people voting for Hilary will be doing so in a sincere effort to return our government to some semblance of respectability. It is sadder still that we have had a presidential administration so thoroughly obnoxious and incompetent that it makes Hilary look good in comparison. To borrow a phrase from a friend of mine, it is bone crushingly depressing that our choices will be limited to the candidates of Two-party Hall.

Not that I believe Two-party Hall exists as a simple hierarchical power structure. There is no Boss Tweed running the operation. No David Rockefeller behind the curtain. But the mutual self-interests of the power blocks within Two-party Hall operate to protect the family with almost as much loyalty as the machines of old.

Perhaps this is what they meant by “family values”.

Ruminate for a while on the reality of that which lies ahead as We the People turn away from a “culture of corruption” is the likelihood of returning the Clinton family to the White House. Consider their return to power in a world where lying to the American people, insider corporate dealing, unrepentant torture of prisoners, and obstruction of justice are charges too weak to justify impeachment proceedings. The rule of law has become of joke and we have no one to blame but ourselves.

But this joke is no laughing matter. We consistently let politicians off the hook as long as they stoically maintain their walls of plausible deniability. It is hard to laugh at the reelection of the President in the face of the horrible revelations from Abu Ghraib because people are willing to give him a pass on knowing the facts. We failed to remove his predecessor for lying under oath because the economy is good and the majority of Americans did not want to rock that boat. The litany of imperial tendencies could go on ad nauseum.

The problem with failing to take care that we remain a nation of laws is much larger than the political maneuvering of the current election cycle. James Madison articulated it well in the Federalist Papers when he wrote:

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

Does an executive branch that claims unilateral rights to take us to war, make decisions on searches without judicial assent, and abrogate ratified treaties sound like tyranny to anyone besides me? Do the rumblings about executive privilege make any of you queasy?

What we're dealing with here is a complete lack of respect for the law.

Unfortunately, developing an understanding of the legal implications in the broader populace is probably impossible at this point. Historically, Americans have relied on its opposition leaders to at least point out Constitutional abuses and corrupt practices, but where are the senior statesmen calling Conyers on the carpet for his outrage?

Obviously, these “statesmen” are busy protecting their own position and pecuniary interest rather than seeing to the long term health and viability of These United States. Ultimately, politicians who share the guilt for the destruction of our legal institutions can not be expected to hold their peers accountable. Only an awakening of the power of We the People can change our course and avert destruction.

I think if I were a betting man, I would bet with the power elite that lazy Americans will continue to take it all in stride, so long as their Tivo and porn surfing are not interfered with. However improbable significant social backlash may be our political elite would do well to heed a proverb that I recently heard: "At the end of the game the king and the pawn go back in the same box."

King or Pawn, thinking about one’s future in a box would be a very good thing right now.

ugly unamericans

2006-05-04T08:33:00.000-05:00

I’m pretty sure that my lawn man, Miguel, is a legal immigrant. I’ve never checked papers on him but he tells me that he makes regular trips to and from Mexico. As far as I know, that does not involve a covert middle of the night swim.

On the other hand, I’m not so sure about Miguel’s hired hands. The faces change periodically and when I speak English to them, they usually smile politely and nod toward Miguel who speaks reasonably functional English. I’m guessing that the papers are not necessarily in order on these people and I’m very glad it is not my job to verify that.

I’m not so glad that it soon will be.

In the world as it is about to be, if you do not make it your business to check papers, you will be in jeopardy of becoming an involuntary guest of the federal penal system. I don’t know how risk averse you are, but these new laws will probably have me doing my own lawn again for the first time in many years: the old reliable neighborhood teenager just isn’t available anymore.

I know this from experience. Last fall some teenagers came to my door looking for some leaf clean-up work. I thought it would be good to support the industry of American youth even if it was at Miguel’s expense, so I agreed. They started on the job and since I had to leave, I paid them before they had finished and paid more than they asked for in their inexperienced low job bid. When I returned, the job was about half done and I never saw the budding entrepreneurs again.

Miguel handled the rest of the job.

Immigrants have been handling the jobs that second and third generation Americans would not throughout our history. One of the amazingly stupid things is to consider that we had to have a whole civil war over the forced labor of Africans in the cotton and tobacco fields when “free” labor was readily available were we not too stupid to pursue it. Even before slavery ended, Chinese immigrants were famously tending to the construction of railroads and other laborious jobs on the Western frontier. Irish and German coal miners too are a part of our fabric of unconscious social memories.

I say unconscious because individuals fully aware of the centrality of immigration to the success of our nation would not exhibit the mass stupidity that is rampant. You have seen them on the news too. I heard a seventy year-old lady on the radio who pulled no punches. “I hate illegal immigrants”, she said with a vicious edge. Increasingly they have the sensibility to include “illegal” in front of the word immigrant lest their bigotry show too clearly.

This misdirected anger is very odd because unless you are one hundred percent indigenous American, you too are an immigrant of sorts. It is rather trite to say that immigrants built this country, but as is necessarily the case, trite things became so because of their truth.

We love to think of our modern selves as more enlightened than the bad old days, but illegal immigration is the source of the worst de facto racial exploitation since the Emancipation Proclamation. What makes it so bad isn’t the actual condition of the illegal aliens. There is little doubt that the immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th Century were materially far worse off than the Hispanic immigrants of today. What is so horrible is the intentional complicity of our government in creating a black market in Hispanic labor to bolster our economic health.

Intentional may seem a strong accusation, but the facts compel that conclusion. The notion that we can not effectively control our borders is simply absurd. Examples are easy to come by, but surely none is more relevant than that of the state of security in the post-occupation Iraqi oil fields. And the Soviet Union was famously able to effectively seal borders long before the advent of modern electronic hardware.

To think our present situation to be involuntary is delusional.

Perhaps it is just voluntary ignorance. The facts are there in plain sight such as when it seems just yesterday we had multiple mini-scandals of would-be federal Cabinet appointees that knowingly employed illegals for domestic services. The rich and powerful are clearly benefiting from the existence of the black market in a very personal and direct way. It is no great leap to realize that these same people understand the value of illegal immigrant labor to their key campaign contributors in business.

Nothing new here: just follow the money.

I’d also urge you to follow your instincts in evaluating the moral depravity of people who have for decades turned a blind eye to illegal immigration only to turn around and suggest that illegal immigrants be demonized as felons for nothing more than a political side-show. The very people who have profited most from the presence of illegal aliens are using them a second time for crass political advantage.

Much has been said about the fact that these people are here illegally and have it coming. I simply can not stomach that simple minded rationalization of fundamentally bigoted attitudes. I would ask you to put yourself in the shoes of a Mexican laborer with a family to feed and support. For decades, Estados Unidos has ineffectively guarded its borders and unaggressively pursued illegal residents who want nothing more than to earn some money to send home.

The only thing missing is a formal invitation.

The real question is how do we fairly and compassionately fix a broken system? The answer is certainly not to round up the illegals and deport them for their felonious ways.

The honest and effective solution is to allow an appropriate level of legal immigration from Latin America, but increasing these levels is untenable until we stanch the flow (and exploitation) of undocumented people. The avarice of our ruling class is further exhibited by the undeniable double standard that exists between expanding the H1B visa program for skilled workers while creating an underclass willing to do the dirty work. Instead of asking the world to send us their huddled masses, we invite those having the key skills powerful corporations are seeking and those who are willing to sneak in illegally and work for substandard wages.

This all gives a whole new dimension to Ugly Americans.

I hate to make the economic argument when the moral one is so strong, but perhaps Ugly Americans might respond to such an appeal: sadly, it is the only one that works for many. So I ask, have you given any thought to who is going to be paying the taxes for your Social Security and Medicare support in a few decades? Declining birth rates among European descent Americans tell you that it won’t be our own kids. Have you given any thought to where the labor will come from to continue to grow the American Economic machine? Rising productivity will only take us so far.

Like every important issue of our time, factual analysis and deductive reasoning seldom visit the hyper-politicized forums of inquiry. Time after time we allow political agendas to pervert our national discourse. A return to genuine skeptical inquiry is no more likely on this critical matter than any other.

It is doubly sad that this is so on something so fundamentally American and formerly at the forefront of our social consciousness.

That is decidedly un-American.

And ugly.

livin' la vida mocha

2006-04-18T09:09:00.000-05:00

That professional football is a business I know all too well. Since the day of the unceremonious firing of the honorable Tom Landry, I have been painfully conscious of it. That singular event muted my rooting enthusiasm permanently, but still I clung to my team.

Eventually, and much like in earlier years, a new crop of Good Guys helped me not to notice the occasional rotten coach or player. You see, I still want to root for the guys in the white hats even if in the real world, perfect heroes are not to be found. The Cowboys were just good enough for my willful disbelief to be sustained.

So imagine my horror when MY football team signed the infamous and odious Terrell Owens.

The day after the Owens signing I saw some idiot wearing a Cowboy’s jersey with his name and number on it. At that moment, I though about how quickly attitudes can change when Character Doesn’t Matter anymore. The new mantra has become “whatever helps my team win is good.”

This fundamental shift in what people look for in their sports heroes set me thinking about all kinds of things. Things like who we, the American people, have become. And the more I contemplated our corporate identity, the more it seemed that Americans have changed over the last four decades in fundamental and profound ways.

Whether Americans or I have changed or not, it is my first responsibility to keep my own house in order. When I stop and reflect, I know that my inability to root for the Cowboys this year is truly inconsequential to my life outside of spoiling a few Sunday afternoons. Afternoons should be more profitably spent anyway.

So in my small quest for self-improvement, I quickly noticed that I needed to find more time for prayer. Since I started a new job some weeks ago, the miles involved in that change caused me to lose access to the Church sanctuary I used regularly during the week. I knew that I was overdue to fix the situation.

To my dismay, looking for a place to pray on a day that is not Sunday has made me feel like TO looking for a football team willing to take him. The difficulty has been shocking. I do not begrudge Churches their locked doors even if I find the realities of good stewardship unfortunate. In fact, my old place of respite was always locked and a very nice lady was always there to let me in when I knocked. But Church after Church was the same experience: locked doors and groundskeepers staring at the strange fool who wanted in the Sunday Place.

I went to a LOT of Churches.

At three of them, at least I actually got to see a kind friendly face. The friendly looks seemed to give way to confusion when I asked if I could use the sanctuary or other chapel for prayer, but each did offer places to pray. The one offering that wasn’t a couch in a hallway was a brightly lit glass walled sitting room next to the entrance of a busy day care facility. Sadly, all three of these churches had nice big sanctuaries sitting dark and lifeless.

There was a fourth Church I snuck into. My intention was not to sneak but there wasn’t a soul around to ask permission of. Perhaps this would be a good place I thought as I entered and sat in a pew. I could not help but notice how beautiful the place was. It was so magnificent, perfect and unused as to feel sterile, almost surreal.

As I prayed silently, two older gentleman entered as well. They were talking loudly and examining the magnificent architecture seemingly oblivious to my presence initially. When I noticed their repeated inhospitable glances my direction as they loudly toured the facility, I did as they wished and left as quietly as I had entered. I skipped my usual practice of dropping a small offering on the way out: it was better to let others pay to polish this edifice of excess.

Slowly then it has dawned on me that even here in the Bible Belt the ancient tradition of going to a holy place for quiet contemplation and prayer is essentially dead. Our Churches have become Sunday Places. Not a place for life, but a place for a weekly fill-up. The signs outside our theaters invite us eagerly to the Sunday matinee.

I have to admit, I am jealous of those who can make it on a single fill-up for the entire week. My mileage is not nearly so good.

Perhaps I get poor mileage because of the time I spend in the drive through lines at Starbucks. After all, when I want a mocha, I want it quick. Unfortunately, I increasingly find that when Starbucks is not quick, my anger often is. My defense is that it is all a part of my conditioning as a modern. If a website does not appear in a couple of seconds, the back button takes me quickly to Google where I try the next link on the list. For better or worse, we are all living at the speed of the Internet.

One’s tank can get drawn down pretty quickly in Internet paced plastic America.

Americans have become so comfortable with plastic things that we are remaking our notions of even our most fundamental values with the stuff. A prominent nominally Christian evangelist starts their slick television production with the theme, “This is Your Day”. It is no longer God’s day apparently: the world revolves around me.

I can see now that the future really was plastics.

Truly, both the Owens signing and Sunday Places fit our plastic lives perfectly. If MY Cowboys are to win at internet speed, then how they go about it is of little consequence. If I am to be sanctified, then I need to get it done efficiently in the time allotted on my Outlook calendar for Sunday. I want what I want, when I want it.

The greatest concern of franchise owners and ministers is that back button and the cornucopia of choices.

We are so fortunate in America because our Horns are truly full of Plenty. I would not trade life here in the land of Milk Duds and Honey Buns for that available elsewhere—at least not yet. But when I look a little harder and see that the horn is made of polycarbonate fiber and the fruit is enhanced with genetically modified high-fructose corn syrup, I can not help but wonder if life at the speed of electrons leaves too much of the past behind too quickly.

But then, what do I know. I still pop my popcorn in a pan on the stove top when the world has long moved on to microwave packets. I am a true Curmudgeon, I suppose, finding pan-popped more satisfying because it tastes better. More satisfying like football with respectable players. Like prayer on a weekday when I just need it.

Really, is it any wonder at all that microwave politicians leave most of us feeling empty?

it’s a long, long way to tucumcari

2006-03-21T16:26:00.000-06:00

Time to beat the dead horse again. And frankly, if Iraq were a horse, that glue pot would have been used up long ago.

But here we are nearly three years after the Mission Accomplished photo-op, and still there is no end in sight. Not that this is at all surprising to informed observers. Way back then when I used the word “decades” to describe what it would take to change Iraq, I was treated as something akin to Benedict Arnold. Three years and hundreds of billions of dollars later, I have seen nothing to change my opinion on what is required to fundamentally alter the social calculus Over There.

Then again, when I suggest that it will take decades, I am assuming we are talking about competent governance of Iraq. That is looking like an unjustified assumption as well.

Yet Iraq-nam has worked out so well, it looks like serious consideration is being given to liberating Iran too. You should not buy the liberation thing this time either. Perhaps it could be adequately explained by jealousy on the part of Emperor W who wants to plant the American flag on more Arab soil than did Britannia at her apex. Covetousness can be such an ugly thing you know.

Unlike many Americans, Rule Uncle Sam simply doesn’t work for me.

The irony here is that I will probably end up opposing the impending intervention in Iran when in fact I have been and remain a strong advocate of containing the Iranian nuclear threat. Unlike the case in Iraq, the Iranian nuclear infrastructure is real and of ominous portent. The West must act, and ideally act in a unified fashion.

But what I can not support is continued ham-handed and unilateral actions under false pretenses. Let us name these coming military actions plainly for what they are-legitimate defensive moves against hostile threats and behave in accordance with honest agendas. The bad news is that we haven’t seen a shred of honesty out of the imperial court since…well, I’m sure there was something they were honest about.

The good news is that limited military action is likely to be effective against the Iranian nuclear infrastructure. The facilities that process uranium hexafluoride are relatively large and immobile. This is perhaps a tailor made opportunity for the military to unveil their “rods from god” system that does not exist. Wink.

An Iraq style invasion of Iran is simply unthinkable now as our reach has already well exceeded our grasp. The panic on world oil markets alone could bring down Western civilization. Something more narrow in time and scope is in order. To pull it off politically, action must be sudden and swift. Done well, such an action could in fact be stabilizing.

The larger problem here is that it is hard to find a soul in this world outside of the American Republican Party Faithful that trust our President to lead such an endeavor. The price of squandering our legacy of international good-will is going to be paid sooner rather than later I fear. We may in fact be in a position where unilateral action is the only viable action because of our recent forfeit of leadership ability.

And if we do not act, be even more afraid of unilateral action by Israel.

Whatever the facts may be or what is actually in the best interests of Americans and the World in general, we do know one thing for certain: this administration will pursue that which is in the best interests of the Republican party first and the rest only if it fits the party agenda. The administration is keeping up the misinformation campaign and doing so with increasing enthusiasm. War is Peace they tell us. Undoubtedly the focus groups are telling them that patriotic platitudes continue to sell well.

Thus the drums of war continue to beat loudly. The martial rhetoric and hubris are getting more deeply infused in our social consciousness with each passing day. Truly, we have become the heirs of Britannia in all the wrong ways. As this mindset deepens, I fear our culture will end up more like Sparta than the Shining City on the Hill and our legacy more like that of Alexander the Great than the America which liberated the world from the yoke of fascism.

We would do well to remember that we indeed follow in Alexander’s footsteps in undertaking to conquer Persia. Unlike Alexander, there is little doubt that militarily, we can do so. With a little luck, perhaps Emperor W’s name will not be cursed in Persia two-thousand years hence as is Alexander’s to this day.

But, I doubt it.

galilean contemplation

2006-01-24T15:20:00.000-06:00

My Son’s Christmas present has given me a new perspective on the Universe.

Literally.

Looming over his “library” now is a rather substantial telescope that was the only present on his Christmas list. Dad, of course, is learning a bit of astronomy now too since at his age substantial assistance is to be expected.

Doing astronomy you spend a lot of time in quiet dark places. Just the kind of places that bring on a pensive mood whether you want it to or not.

Try some time to avoid thinking while gazing at the heavens. The wonders of the Universe that lie behind those little pinpoints of light will set in motion the mental wheels of even the most mentally rusted American Idol fan. The big questions are inescapable out under the stars.

One haunting quandary for me is the whole disenfranchised state in which I find myself. It seems like at least once a week I hear a remark somewhere to the effect “if you do not vote, then you do not have a right to complain”. And like a Raven tapping at the door of my cranial chamber, there is that omnipresent deep voice that subconsciously insists that voting is a patriotic duty.

I continue to stand by my right to complain: it is not my fault that there are no candidates for which my conscience will allow me to vote. At a minimum I have a right to complain about that. Since my disagreements are rooted in substantive issues, I do not think abstention fairly takes me out of the substantive discussion either.

But then, of course, there is the Louisiana Defense.

In 1991, Louisianans had a choice in front of them for Governor that is hard to forget: Edwin Edwards, on his comeback from a corruption indictment (actual prison time only came later), and David Duke, a neo-Nazi and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. It is hard to blame the fine citizens of that State who stayed home on election day rather than forcing a choice between a lizard and wizard.

I too will continue to choose none of the above.

It is significant to my view that I find both of the major American parties equally obnoxious on the issues I care most about: Human Rights, abortion and fiscal responsibility. On the issues alone it is impossible to find someone to vote for that is even somewhat consistent with myself on the critical things.

But my disenfranchisement is much deeper than mere disagreement on the issues.

The rotten core of the problem is that both parties are working against the best interests of the American people. A vote for either of the two major parties is a vote for more power consolidation, more sound bites, and more guests at the Congressional Country Club. In short, voting the majors is voting to continue the course of self-destruction. If I were ever convinced that either a Democrat or a Republican candidate was a real Mr. Smith, I could probably hold my nose on the issues and vote.

And self-destruction is exactly what is occurring. Consider, if you have the courage, the last quarter century of headlines.

Robert Bork. Jim Wright. Iran-Contra. Republican traitors in budget wars. Gingrich quits. White-watergate. Perjury skates. Democrats for the war. Body bags in Babylon. I can’t take it anymore.

I didn’t start this fire. And truly, the full list would be so long that Billy Joel could produce another hit single.

This is just the public corruption side of the analysis. If you look at the substance, it is a hard case to make by those who support the major parties that their loyalty has produced any results. They will make that argument, again and again, but I suggest you consider the facts as they are and not as you wish them to be. Decades of Democratic dominance yielded scant progress on key issues at best. Over two decades of Republican dominance have yielded perhaps even less for their base. Has anyone checked the deficit lately?

What we have instead of substantive progress is an increasing accumulation of power in the hands of fewer and fewer people. When it was Democrats grabbing power, the Republicans wailed. And now, of course, the names are changed but the crimes against Liberty are the same.

Reflection is always a good thing. In the end, I remain unrepentant for refusing to vote for those who are running our formerly great nation further into the ground. I have admitted my not voting really stands for nothing in the greater scope of things, but then my conscience is perhaps a bit less troubled as the wheels are coming off of America.

To ease my conscience further, my goal remains to trouble partisan hearts without mercy. Eventually facts make a difference. Just like with Galileo.

Where was I? Darn. Mars moved totally out of view.

surgical strike: my mother the jellyfish

2006-01-12T10:31:00.000-06:00

I am hesitant to make a post on the subject of bioethics yet again. Another universal yawn induction no doubt. Truly, this is no more shocking than earlier links I have posted, but I get a sense that the pace of genetic tinkering is picking up exponentially. There are literally scores of chances over the last several months I could have posted something along these lines.

In light of the ethical freight train which is undeniably headed our way, it stupefies me that there is such an ominous silence from all corners outside the intelligentsia. The rare news report will contain a few scant but shocking details, an obligatory sound bite from some half-wit talking about “playing God”, and a scientist explaining how essential the development is for the good of mankind.

The details change but the basic script is reliably followed.

I’m a babbling fool for bringing it up again, but I have to ask the question again: how much human DNA does it take before Shelley’s beast is sufficiently human to deserve those same protections? It is a pressing question whose answer has the power to tear apart the fabric of our society. The truth is that neither the humanist/materialist or the theistic/ID gangs have grappled with the issues adequately. Soon, the present opportunity will pass and we will be forced to react instead of taking a measured and sensible approach.

My modest proposal is a simple rule: any human DNA, expressed or otherwise, should give rise to Constitutional protection. This is the only way to potentially keep a lid on things. The only way to keep our few remaining vestiges of human rights law from crumbling under the onslaught of political nonsense which these developments will give life.

Furthermore…

…ah, never mind. I can already hear the snoring.

bridgehead over troubled waters

2006-01-06T13:52:00.000-06:00

Almost exactly a year after having written my post entitled premature iraqification discussions of troop withdrawal are again a hot topic. At that time I was seriously concerned about the possibility that the administration would perform some sort of cut and run under political duress.

Thankfully my concern was unfounded. But now it is a new year and time to examine the situation and to see why the withdrawal did not happen and will not happen any time soon.

I will not waste your time with the official version of why we remain. You can read that in any newspaper. And the opposition position is equally artificial, disingenuous and available.

Rather what I would like to consider is the facts.

First, as an aside, let me point out that I am not saying that this administration will not pull some troops out and call it a withdrawal or “draw down”. After all, this is the crew that boldly declared Mission Accomplished some two and a half years ago. No matter what actual course we take there is little of which I am so certain as the ultimate declaration of victory by this President and those of his party which will attempt to assume his mantle.

But the facts continue to be rather stubborn. American deaths continue to mount and the grim reaper’s roll call will continue as long as we are present there. Islam is fundamentally hostile to foreign rule and nothing is going to change this in a time frame measured in anything smaller than decades. Because of the mounting political pressure, some kind of withdrawal is inevitable before the next election, and the question is only what form and shape it will take.

If you think that complete withdrawal is a possibility, forget about it. The reason we will never entirely leave Iraq is buried in our real purpose for being there in the first place.

Iran.

It has been clear at least since the end of Gulf War One that the real threat to world peace in the Middle East was not an emasculated Iraqi regime, but the Islamic Revolution. Recent headlines highlight the problems which a powerful Islamic State can cause. Of course, Iran is not the only threat, just the biggest and the one with the greatest chance of striving toward a greater Islamic State.

Iraq II is not about terrorism and never was. There is little doubt remaining in this Curmudgeon’s mind that the major reason for occupying Iraq was to create a permanent Western bridgehead at the center of this volatile region.

That bridgehead until recently had been Saudi Arabia. But events there have rendered our reliable forward logistics area problematic in the future. Hostility to the House of Saud continues to grow as does the world’s appetite for their oil. And Diego Garcia is too small and too remote to facilitate a significant modern military embarkation.

I can not even say that such a base of forward operations are undesirable. Whether we like it or not, the modern world runs on oil. If the oil stops flowing, modern civilization grinds to a halt. Or ceases altogether as a result of the social disorder a closed spigot would spawn. However obnoxious you may find the idea, the West must be prepared to keep the spigot open and to do so by force if necessary.

Forward bases in the less occupied regions of Western Iraq are just the ticket.

It is not a bad motive to want to insure the continued existence of modern civilization. Truly that which renders all of this so incredibly obnoxious is all the deception. Since we have gotten in the bullying business in extreme form already, perhaps it is time for a little honesty? Perhaps we should draw a perimeter of some size on a map of western Iraq and add a Fifty-first star to our flag? I doubt that Americans would get killed in any greater numbers.

John Adams should certainly consider his copious work on the topic of Factions vindicated by the present mess. It was during the Clinton reign that the methodology of all campaign all the time was first made overt. Those in charge of this formerly great nation continue to operate in continual campaign mode and the bridgehead must continue to be made politically palpable.

So I suspect that the current campaign slogans about a drawdown are nothing more than trial balloons just as was the case a year ago. Just another probing by the political savvy to determine the exact contours of what will sell to the masses of functionally illiterate people known as the American public.

But cheer up: an election is coming. The choice will be clear for the “informed” voter exercising their “responsibility” to go vote. We will again have our chance throw the bums out. A chance for redemption through regime change.

And you KNOW the party that brought you Vietnam can turn this thing completely around.

living in the eye of the storm

2005-09-06T12:15:00.000-05:00

An old elementary school joke familiar to all is distressingly relevant to the tragic events unfolding in New Orleans. This schoolyard classic involves a vocabulary quiz, a revolving door and what was called a “fat woman” in a less politically correct time. The punch line was something to the affect that the door nearly dis-assed-her.

Sadly, that is probably the most thought most Americans have ever given to disaster planning.

Some of us are thinking about it. Big Business has been very active in what is known as business continuation planning for several decades. As a result of legislation imposing personal liability on Directors and Executives for failure to plan adequately and insurance premium rate pressure from property insurance underwriters, business has had little choice but to get serious about the future even in spite of the quarterly earnings focus. The 9/11 attack should have woke the rest of us up to the perils of catastrophic disasters and invoked a vigorous preparedness response.

What we got instead was a new ineffective bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security.

The failure of this Presidential administration to achieve any kind of readiness over the past four years could not be plainer than it is in the wake of Katrina. There has, of course, been copious coverage on the slow and poor emergency response from FEMA and other organizations charged to answer national distress calls. This is certainly an important topic and deserves substantial attention. There is a lot of information to digest there and I’m sure plenty of relevant stories yet to be told both of heroism in the face of inadequate resources and the incompetence which helped produce the situation. Steadfastly focused by the media on these juicy stories, the American people will as usual miss the greater significance of what is playing out before their eyes.

Missed entirely will be the big picture: the breakdown in social order that occurred when civilization ceased to exist. While the lurid facts of rape, robbery and irrational violence have made headlines, the broader implications deserve serious consideration.

Consider if you will the misfeasance of the government in allowing four years to pass without any serious effort to educate American citizens on how to react in disaster situations. Four years of rhetorical frothing without any apparent attempt to actually plan for the aftermath of an event of this scale.

I suppose that if this administration could not foresee the social breakdown caused by its military invasion of Iraq, it should not surprise us that they could not foresee that natural disasters could have the same effect here at home.

Immediately after 9/11, I remember discussions with a lot of people concerning what would happen if we have another 9/11 scale event. The number one concern in the minds of everybody I talked to was the prospect of civil unrest. The possibility of the total collapse of society around us is very real and this above all else should be what terrifies us about Katrina. Though the problem is both obvious and real, this administration has produced much noise and little else.

I for one am not so naïve as to attribute this mess to unforseeability. While the specific scenario that has permanently changed the face of the Crescent City was perhaps hard to detail, the risk of living below sea level on the Gulf of Mexico was well understood. When The Big One finally hits California we will probably call it unforeseeable no matter what the facts might say to the contrary.

I suppose that if you are one who can not foresee the inevitable large scale disasters of varying scope and nature, then perhaps you are also inclined to give the administration the benefit of the doubt on this one. I view recent history and history generally as teaching that mankind will continue to endure a succession of large scale disasters.

In my short span on this globe, we have had the New York City blackout, the Arab Oil Embargo, Hurricane Andrew, Mississippi River flooding, the San Francisco earth quake and 9/11. What these disasters are cumulatively showing us is that our social cohesion is at an all time low. And even were it not, anyone who has seen Deliverance can tell you that bad things can happen even in America when one is sufficiently removed from civilization. Or in the case of Katrina, when civilization ceases to exist.

Armed with ordinary schoolhouse knowledge, there is simply no excuse for not being better prepared. We live in an era that is truly on the edge in a more real way than at any time since the Great Depression. Thinking about a nuclear device detonated in Houston Harbor should give you serious pause as to the viability of America in the aftermath. Just follow the pipelines and see how quickly our world of material excess could go dark.

And this is just one scary scenario out of a multitude.

Viewed soberly it is clear that there is no substantive difference between what has happened in New Orleans as a result of Katrina and what would might have happened there in the event of a dirty bomb attack. Katrina has exposed how vulnerable America remains.

Unfortunately, this is no schoolyard and the joke is on you and me.

surgical strike: roe v. wade overturns self

2005-08-12T15:45:00.000-05:00

By using past progressive tense, perhaps I am getting a bit ahead of the state of the art in artificial wombs. But then, if you doubt man-made wombs will be a reality in the not so distant future, you really need to read this story out of Popular Science.

There is a lot of grist for discussion in there.

If you have read Roe v. Wade, the implications of an artificial womb should be obvious. Science appears poised to send this jurisprudential non-sense the way of Plessy v. Ferguson.

The Curmudgeon’s Digest version is that Roe linked the government’s constitutional limits to the “viability” of the baby whose life a mother seeks to terminate. When the inevitable day comes that artificial wombs are a reality, Roe itself will no longer be viable on its own reasoning. Or at least not viable in the sense of “protecting” a women’s access to abortion.

So whether you want to limit abortion or make it freely accessible, it will all come back to the definition of life. Unfortunately, the abortion rights advocates do not embrace this essential discussion. Heck, based on my sampling here at the Disenfranchised Curmudgeon, nobody really likes to talk about it but me.

Since talking to myself is an ordinary thing in my world, I shall not be dissuaded.

That failure is not an option will certainly not impede America’s avarice for ignoring difficult questions. Why should this issue be any different than education, budget deficits or illegal immigration? Why should I expect that Americans give it the same attention that we give steroids in baseball or Brad Pitt’s latest conquest?

If it is important, we simply do not deal with it.

But then I like to think that the readership here is well above average and willing to tackle hard questions. So there it is again: what is life? Or even a better question: what is a definition of life that will be a working solution for our pluralistic society. We don’t have to answer this. But if we don’t, we’ll have to take what the politicians give us.

And that possibility is frightens me more than even the Patriot Act.

war of the worlds

2005-07-28T12:44:00.000-05:00

It is that season again. A Supreme Court nomination is again our nation’s political focus. There is no question that this has become a sham political debate and not a quest for a sound jurist.

It would be naïve to suggest that politics in the judiciary is a new phenomenon in our land. Marbury v. Madison itself was about the seedy intersection of politics and blind justice. What I am decrying is that the process has been emptied of all content whatsoever.

The divisiveness over Roe v. Wade has much to do with this, but this is itself merely part of a larger trend. A trend toward high stakes political gamesmanship at the expense of We the People. A trend away from the substantive decision-making and toward the blood sport of politics.

The Roe debate itself is minor in the context of the overall tragedy which is the extreme politicization of the American mind.

It is with some mirth that I observe all the casual conversations around the water cooler where the phrases “judicial activism” and “strict construction” are bandied about with cavalier certainty. But I derive no similar humor from the lawyer-politicians who consciously perpetuate the existence of these mythical jurisprudential antipodes. The shameless lying coming from both sides of the aisle should disgust any informed observer.

“Lying” will probably seem too harsh a word to many. But frankly if you make it through law school and still have an honest belief that this political terminology is of utility in the substantive discussion, then you are too stupid to deserve the degree. Sadly, I do not think that most of the CongressCritters are in fact stupid. They just play stupid on TV.

The truth you seldom hear is that this quasi-legal language exists solely as proxies for underlying political positions.

The funny thing is that many of the same people who carp the loudest about these issues are the same ones you will later hear lamenting the poor jurisprudence coming from our courts. As the ancient wisdom would tell us, we will reap what we have sown. Sow political seeds and what you get is political fruit. And political fruit is almost never good law.

Personally, I lay much of the blame at the feet of the Traynor and Warren courts. These “great” jurists and their brethren made it fashionable for courts to get into the business of making law. Brown v. The Board of Education led to the popular error that the courts are competent to be agents of social change. And have no doubt, “error” is exactly correct: as monumental as was Brown it is highly arguable whether the court ordered busing produced the social benefit many assume flowed strictly from that aspect of the decision.

My just saying something negative about Brown will undoubtedly prompt some ugly emails.

But I have a dream of sound jurisprudence that anchors our human rights in natural law rather than subjecting them to the whims of an inherently political legislature or their conscripts in the judiciary. Contrary to the myths you hear nightly on the news, returning the courts to their limited Constitutional function would not dictate any particular political outcome. Social Justice is possible without tearing our legal institutions apart. Liberty can be protected without shredding our Constitution.

But judging by the empty rhetoric I hear daily, my vision is destined to remain nothing more than it is: an abandoned dream.

jacksonian democracy

2005-06-14T15:13:00.000-05:00

Lost amidst the Michael Jackson trial headlines was news that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in closed session last week approved legislation to reauthorize and expand the Patriot Act. The level of citizen concern over reauthorization compared to interest in the Thriller acquittal is almost as disconcerting as the proposed legislation.

News stories on reauthorization are sadly scant. If you are one of those whose legal curiosity extends beyond local criminal matters and into the erosion of our civil rights legacy, perhaps you will find this resource helpful in locating a few of the limited stories on the subject.

It is very tempting to rehash the old arguments against the wisdom of the original Patriot Act. Tempting because the arguments are incredibly strong and nearly irrefutable to those that practice the arcane and nearly lost art of deductive reasoning. But the irresistible morsel of the moment for me is the opportunity for an I-told-you-so.

The last time around the patriotic block there was some discussion of what lawyers refer to as a “slippery slope”. Slippery Slopes abound in legal tomes and it is perhaps unfortunate that such an important idea is encapsulated in such ordinary and seemingly familiar language.

Perhaps if there were a grand term such as “res ipsa loquitur” to describe the process by which certain detrimental changes in the law gather momentum and sometimes crush the spirit of the well-meaning originators, then we would not garner as much flippant ridicule. While the term may be inappropriately ordinary, the phenomenon in this case is as real and present as it was predictable.

What is telling now is the total absence of discussion of whether the original Patriot Act was constitutionally permissible. It appears that to the extent that the reauthorization debate gets visibility, the reauthorization discussion is going to center around making the act permanent and the expansion of the powers granted.

We have slid down this slope in an entirely foreseeable fashion.

It is hard to know with certainty whether the present intention of the politicians is simply another naked power grab or clever political posturing to attempt to move the center of the debate farther toward the totalitarian end of the scale. Perhaps it is some of both. Either way, the essential Constitutional questions have been taken off the table.

The despair is almost enough to send me to the tabloid rack to get the latest on Michael Jackson too.

The powers that are sought in Patriot Redux truly are as seedy as the most lurid tabloid. The FBI’s desire for these powers is conveniently packaged as necessary for fighting terrorism. But in truth, the FBI has long desired the power to issue administrative warrants to circumvent the need for judicial review for what we would have referred to as 4th Amendment searches in days of antiquity.

By playing the terrorism fear card, Hoover’s boys will undoubtedly get their wish.

The argument usually goes something like “the government needs this power because it is too burdensome to go to a court to obtain a warrant”. Warrants, so they claim, consume too much time and energy for effective law enforcement. The problem with this argument is that it can be used to justify almost any form of civil rights infringement you can imagine. All of our Constitutional protections are burdensome on the government. There are more than a few prosecutors that would love to dispense with a trial because of the undue burden.

But, there is little doubt that there are some situations where it is difficult to obtain a warrant in a useful time frame. Truly, I do wish to help out law enforcement by addressing the genuine requirements of a tough job.

The answer, however, is not to eviscerate our civil liberties, but to make the warrants easier to obtain. It is little known by the general public, but the law has long allowed emergency warrants to be issued by a judge over the phone. That the fact of this real and potential flexibility is never a part of the discussion should give all of us insight into the insidious disinformation campaign that is being waged against our Liberty.

Of course, you will never hear the simple idea of hiring more judges and making minor tweaks in the law. The politicians have an agenda and it has nothing to do with protecting you and me. Does anyone seriously doubt which choice the American people would make if actually given the opportunity? Would anyone assert that the better choice is surrendering to the government the right to molest our privacy without cause rather than incurring the expense of hiring a few hundred more judges to guarantee ready access to an independent deliberative body?

An adequately informed public would render the very question rhetorical.

Our faint hope is that it appears to be more fashionable these days to oppose the President than during the previous legislative rubber-stamping extravaganza. Perhaps the Democrats will smell electoral blood in the water and actually mount an opposition to reauthorization.

But given the tepid response of the American people to reauthorization, I will be surprised if legislative opposition goes beyond trying to prevent the expansion of the Patriot Act Powers. Other issues appear more electorally profitable. The politicians totally get it: Americans do not care about civil liberties as long as the government manages to present the illusion of relative Safety. A moment of national reflection on the wisdom of surrendering six centuries of accumulated personal sovereignty does not seem likely.

Have no doubt: this is one time when we will definitely get what we asked for.

Michael, whatever you do, please don’t move Neverland to Africa: at times like these I really need the distraction.

chimerical reactions

2005-05-03T12:54:00.000-05:00

If the Terri Schiavo imbroglio did nothing else it should at least convince people that bioethics is not so abstract and distant after all. While the subject is deservedly associated with academic ivory towers, it is still amazing to me how little concern there is over the looming ethical train-wreck. From experience, I know with certainty that mentioning bioethics is the surest way to drive a house (or blog) guest to call it an early night.

I suppose that I must hazard that risk one more time.

This is a hazard worth bearing because science is moving us very far and very fast. If you are a regular reader and followed the links in my post entitled i, heretic, you probably already have an inkling of the profound issues being raised by current and imminent biological research. If you have not personally delved into bioethics or the very latest on what is happening in biology, you owe it to your kids to do so now.

Science fiction stories have nothing on the current experimental projects that can be found on our nation’s lab benches.

If you doubt the urgency of my plea, here is a short AP news story that might get your attention. While it is a continuing challenge to write about this stuff without striking a hyperbolic tone, frankly, if you can pass over the patent application for a humanzee with a wave of your hand, perhaps you have spent a bit too much time Tivoing sitcoms.

Though it may be offensive to our mass media induced instinct to classify and simply, some problems just will not succumb to that effort. I wish I could tell you that I can offer an easy solution to these pressing issues.

I certainly think that the definition of life that I have previously offered rooting humanness and life in the human genome is a starting place, but surely no more than that. Even if we have a sudden infusion of caution and prudence in such matters and pause this kind of research until our ethics, law and society catch up, there will still be those creations that get made by those unscrupulous souls that will inevitably place themselves above or beyond the law.

It would be comforting if I believed that our legal system is fundamentally robust and able to adapt easily to new developments. But the inadequacy of our law to deal with the issues was profoundly demonstrated by the fact that the humanzee patent application was denied on the basis of constitutional prohibitions against slavery. Yes, slavery. It is somewhat chilling that our legal system’s first response was to protect new life forms with the same tools as they would a human being.

The social and intellectual carnage that will be caused when an illegally created humanzee, or some other being resulting from a chimera project yet to be named, falls ill and seeks a human organ transplant makes me shudder in fear.

But there is little doubt that we will choose to continue to ignore our legal predicament regarding a definition of life though the price we will pay for the convenience of procrastination is clear enough. One only has to consider the Terri Schiavo circus to appreciate where we are headed if we fail to act proactively.

Honestly friends, do we really want that cast of characters haunting our lives indefinitely?

I didn’t think so.

But regardless of what thoughtful Americans might desire, I would recommend your girding your mind. Avoiding the national haunt would require leadership and will. Those who pass for leaders in America today are unfortunately politicians first and have much to gain by letting mere disagreements fester into crises. Until we are sufficiently aroused to collectively call bull-feathers on the usual suspects, we will continue to get what we voted for: a slick and well produced reality show.

This time the reality show affects the world in which our children will live in fundamentally different ways than we have never before even imagined.

the ‘n’ word

2005-04-19T16:01:00.000-05:00

Today’s Times editorial page is calling for the creation of a meaningful energy strategy and I wholeheartedly endorse that broad proposition. While we can argue long and hard on the details, I think it is well past time for serious measures.

If America has an Achilles heal, then it is her rapacious energy appetite. Those of us who lived though the Arab Oil Embargo should understand the peril of dependency on foreign sources of oil. And certainly if one cares about the world we leave our children, we should be concerned about long term reliance on oil whatever its source. One can only hope that the current run up in gasoline prices will get a few people’s attention.

It should: these price increases have come even without any serious interruption to crude supply.

While I am concerned about the environment, it is the national security aspect of the crude supply that screams out for government action with the loudest voice. We have reached a place where extreme political unrest in places like Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Mexico could throw the world economy into a devastating abyss.

These places are not exactly epitomes of institutional stability. It is time for Americans to demand better than this.

It would not be so irresponsible on the part of our “leaders” if it were not for the fact that alternatives are available. None of them are as cost effective in the short run, but here is an example of where the market simply does not work. The probability discounted future cost of a breakdown in oil supplies is scarcely factored into any balance sheet in the World, though that will start to change as insurance premiums rise further with the increasing probability of realizing some of these risks. The problem with the insurance cost feedback loop is it is too slow for the purposes of national defense: the time to act was thirty years ago. Any further delay is simply compounding foolishness.

What we need now and not thirty more years hence is a multi-pronged attack that approaches various alternative energy sources in a serious way. In the short run this means exploring efficient use of our abundant natural gas reserves, conservation measures such as an improved automobiles, and revisiting nuclear power.

There, I said it. I used the “n” word.

I am not suggesting that nuclear power is some cure-all, but rather that it could be an important part of a better future if we approached the topic as rational beings rather than emotional ones. I suppose that is probably a bit of a stretch goal for this politicized society in which we live.

We desperately need to be pouring money into more research on alternative fuels. There have been exciting developments in the last five years in the areas of photovoltaics and biomass to name but a couple. The fascinating thing about many of these more futuristic possibilities is that in addition to the supply potential, the energy sources are much more decentralized. This is fascinating because decentralization will bring infinitely greater energy security than is imaginable with the more conventional large-scale energy sources destined to dominate the next quarter century.

What a great legacy we could we leave our children by bequeathing energy security.

Undoubtedly calls for a serious energy policy will go unheeded due to the lack of public demand and the vested antagonistic interests of those who hold the reins of power. If the seventies did not shock people into reality, I doubt the present situation will either. We know with disturbing certainty the alternative: the coming military budgets will be gruesome thing to behold.

Almost as gruesome as the imperialist acts that our greed and intellectual sloth will compel us into.

focus on the tautology

2005-04-11T16:42:00.000-05:00

First, let me candidly admit what a valuable resource Focus on the Family and Dr. James Dobson has been to my family. I remember well the films shown at my Church back when Dr. Dobson was relatively unknown and I was a young adult with a great need for Dr. Dobson’s wisdom. Since then, I have purchased and read a number of Dr. Dobson’s books, and my Son’s video library has a generous selection of the wonderful Adventures in Odyssey videos that Focus on the Family produces. I am grateful and will continue to be grateful for the professional wisdom Dr. Dobson has shared.

This gratitude, however, does not extend to the ever-increasing political activities of Dr. Dobson and the Focus on the Family organizations.

In the Focus on the Family Action April newsletter, Dr. Dobson wrote an article entitled Life, Death and Judicial Tyranny extolling the perils of the judiciary and calling the faithful to action with respect to the administration’s effort to get its judicial nominees confirmed in the senate. In his view, the Terri Schiavo imbroglio was solid evidence of an Imperial Court imposing its will on a Moral Majority and the way to set things right is by getting more right minded jurists to the bench.

It seems to me that the greater imperialistic risk of that episode came from a Federal Government intervening in a matter that was well adjudicated in Florida Courts. And while I am concerned with the make-up of the jurists on the Federal bench, I have trouble imagining how Dobson’s purposefully expanding upon the politicization of judicial nomination process can be calculated to improve the jurisprudential temperament of the courts. But the most disturbing thing Dobson wrote does not clearly tie to a specific public issue, but rather involves an extraordinarily misleading and erroneous "analysis" of the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison .

In Dobson’s view, Marbury v. Madison is the root of all evil. Indeed, Dobson’s pièce de résistance in that newsletter was the argument that the founders never intended judicial review as a Constitutional power. Disingenuously he effusively quoted Thomas Jefferson’s remarks that possession by the courts of such a power would lead to oligarchy. His clear implication that this was the position of all the founders is clearly not so.

As you can imagine, there has been much ink spilt in the last two centuries on this very point, however absent from Dobson’s argument is even the scarcest hint of an objective inquiry into the arguments for and against judicial review. But then, I would not expect such a thoughtful analysis from someone who is so blinded by a political agenda that they omit from their diatribe the essential fact that when Jefferson was writing in criticism of judicial review, he was opining from the losing end of a political struggle.

And perhaps it might be worth noting that the man that opposed the Constitution with greater vigor than any of the other anti-ratification voices might not necessarily be the best citation on a point of Constitutional law in the first place. It seems worth at least a mention that in Federalist Paper number 78, Alexander Hamilton, one of the staunchest advocates of the new Federal Constitution, put forth a vigorous argument in favor of judicial review as being essential for the protection of the individual’s rights. Whatever happened in Marbury it is clear that Justice Marshall was not simply creating the doctrine of judicial review out of whole cloth as Dobson is suggesting.

Sadly, in the political realm, omitting inconvenient facts and demagoging on those found more useful has become the norm.

But in the process of demagoging this issue, Dobson has seldom been more out of his element. That he self-righteously calls on the name of Jefferson, a somewhat dubious source for Original Meanings, evidences a radical contempt for his listeners ability, or more likely willingness, to investigate the evidence for themselves.

If you have sympathy for Dobson’s view, I would urge a personal examination. Judicial review at one time troubled me too because on its face it smacks of judicial over-reaching. I am a big believer in courts deciding the cases before them and going no further than necessary to discharge their duty. But after some study I came to the understanding that judicial review is in fact a logical extension of a court’s inherent authority to apply law to facts. A logical extension of the founder’s desires to put the Constitution and the Courts above the political process in an endeavor to preserve the blessings of liberty for posterity.

Federalist No. 78 is actually quite compelling on this point.

Digging into the matter, you will discover that no matter where you come out on judicial review, there are a lot of tough questions you have to answer to get a clear understanding of how this should in fact work. Who would you choose to be the final arbiter of Constitutionality? And what sources are the arbiter to consider in determining Constitutionality? I for one do not consider it wise to submit our human rights to the Legislature or Executive for arbitration but those of you who believe in the virtue of the majority may feel otherwise. And anyone who tells you that constitutional interpretation is as simple as applying “strict construction” is either blowing political smoke or has not seriously studied the issue.

It is clear that Dobson does not expect to be questioned by his followers with any intellectual rigor.

As you might imagine, I have only just touched on the most abrasive of Dobson’s misleading arguments. The genuinely disturbing thing is that so few of my brothers and sisters in Christ will question the word of Dobson and I have no doubt that the bumper-sticker phrase “Judicial Imperialism” will be on the lips of many evangelicals for many weeks to come.

Fortunately for Americans, we still cling to the tatters of a body of law that knows no equal in history. Time will tell whether this audacious power grab by the majoritarian wolves, cloaked as Christian sheep, will run its course before the last vestiges of Liberty are wrested from We the People. Sadly I fear that in an age when politicians like Dobson get so much traction, perhaps we do deserve what we are getting.

Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.

surgical strike: to provide for the common defense

2005-04-05T12:22:00.000-05:00

I have been opining for some time that Homeland Defense is pretty much a joke in light of the lackadaisical attitude this administration takes toward border security. Not to mention container shipments at ports of entry. It is truly ridiculous that the US military cordons off entire nations while our home borders are said to be just too long to be protected.

Not that I am trivializing the magnitude of the task. I’m sure it is extraordinarily difficult and would require substantial resources to have something that approaches a secure border.

But in the context of the threats that have emerged in the last several years, I have trouble imagining what security issue could be more pressing. And while a few years back I had some sympathy with the notion that our borders were too long to be adequately protected, the progress of technology is making that argument increasingly hollow.

Undoubtedly I have little in common with the self-proclaimed Minutemen who have undertaken the task of defending our borders. If the accusations of vigilantism, bigotry or old-fashioned fascism turn out to be true, then I have even less in common with them than I already imagine. But still, I have to stand amazed that they are already having an impact.

According to the Associated Press, the Administration has finally today come out with plans to strengthen border protection. I can only expect that this will be one of a number of announcements that will be forthcoming in an effort to mitigate the damage to reputation being done by the Minutemen’s presence. I can only hope that unlike in other areas of political activity that perhaps this time there will be some substantive action. Action a bit quicker than the year 2008 would be nice too.

In the mean time, while I await the Government’s taking up of its constitutionally mandated task to provide for our defense, I will remain skeptical of claims of both virtue and depravity on the part of the Minutemen until the actual facts are in.

If the best does turn out to be true of them, however improbable that may be, then they deserve medals. But it would appear that even if the worst is true of them, they have performed for us a service for which we can all be thankful.

i, heretic

2005-03-23T16:26:00.000-06:00

Terri Schiavo's impending death should give each of us pause no matter where we come down on the issue of her continued access to food. That I am on the side of life for Terri will come as no to surprise to those of you familiar with me. That I am mortified by the desecration of the rule of law by those who in a general sense agree with me will be probably less surprising to you still.

In a New York Times op-ed today, Charles Fried characterized the superficial problem well when he expressed dismay at the Republican’s situational contempt for the rule of law in light of their traditional patronage of that worthy cause. Whether the Republicans ever had a drop of sincerity in their support for the rule of law is hard to say, but it should be clear now that their purported high regard of America as a nation of laws is ultimately subservient to their political agenda. Unfortunately, a lack of fidelity to one’s stated High Ideals is nothing new for our political class regardless of which side of the isle on which they stand.

I seldom get more nauseous than when a Democrat or Republican is accusing other politicians of hypocrisy thereby achieving the epistemological marvel of hypocritical hypocrisy.

But my nausea today stems more from a profound discouragement that we as a society will ever be able to tackle complex ethical problems in a useful manner. We have become so dysfunctional that as a nation that we are not only unamazed at the politicization of a politically neutral moral issue, but we also unrepentantly accept this state of affairs as the norm. Our continuing voluntary acquiescence to content free dialog has brought us to this point where it is highly probable that we will come through the long and arduous “discussion” concerning Terri Schiavo and arrive at the other side with no more understanding or consensus than when we first considered the issues.

While I share the distress of many Americans over the need to find a socially useful definition of life, my greater terror comes from recognizing that the issues presented by the Schiavo case are of great simplicity when compared to profound bioethical questions that lie just over the horizon of popular consciousness. A society that cannot corporately determine that which is Life when dealing with familiar things such as the human genome will surely be dashed to philosophical pieces by the radical technologies which will explode upon us long before this writer reaches his actuarial expectation of the hereafter.

And make no mistake about it, what lays ahead is perhaps more daunting than what any of us can imagine. Will the mice with quasi-human brains that they claim are presently not allowed to fully develop be deemed worthy of any kind of human rights protection? What are we to do with other chimeras yet to be born? And fasten your seat-belts bio-sports fans because mere genetic tinkering of this kind is child’s play compared to efforts to use the building blocks of life to create fundamentally new biologies.

Hyperbole is scarcely even possible in these matters.

What is happening due to our collective inability to intelligently arrive at a conclusion on any issue that presents an ethical conflict is that we are abandoning some of our most important decisions to the political elite. Being dependable politicians, they of course pursue political advantage rather than leading constructive ethical debate. It is the ultimate in naiveté to be shocked by this.

The real shock is that we are missing here a great opportunity to set the law on the reasonable path of a presumption for the continuation of life. Certainly other positions are possible and should be discussed, but it seems likely that most Americans would favor a presumption of life in the absence of a prior clear expression to the contrary by the one who is no longer able to speak for themselves. Instead, we ogle the facts before us, stamp our feet in righteous anger and carefully avoid the uniquely American heresy of substantive dialog.

The politicians will have the last “laugh”, I suppose, because when the petition for injunctive relief to support the human rights of something akin to a pig-human chimera that can be shown to possess a brain with a human structure and chemistry, America will habitually turn to them to be told what to think. And what we must think will then of course depend on the red-blue topography of the upcoming election.

When bioethics questions come up, I often think about the line uttered by the Jeff Goldblum character from the movie Jurassic Park where he admonishes that “life will find a way”. As we set a course for tinkering with life in ways grander still than even what was depicted in that movie, it is a frightening thing to know that we proceed not only without a navigator, but without a rudder as well.

surgical strike: asphalt aspirations

2005-03-15T12:56:00.000-06:00

I always take note when education topics manage to bubble up to national media: it does not happen that often. Imagine my surprise with not only the presence, but also the content of a New York Time op-ed contributor piece today entitled Failing the Wrong Grades. Diane Ravitch therein points out some shortcomings in current well-intentioned efforts to improve public High Schools and lays much of the blame for the current state of affairs at the feet of the lower schools.

Those of you who have read here for a while will recognize one of my proposals from a while back in my piece entitled beginning at the middle. I have argued for many years that High School in its present form makes no sense and that we should transform it into a more flexible program that assists both college bound and trade bound students.

My hunch is that Ravitch’s op-ed and the book she is promoting therein will get less attention than the Alvin and the Chipmunks revival tour. Unlike the rest of the World, Americans do not care about quality education.

The general public’s lack of concern about the education of the next generation will undoubtedly puzzle me to the day I die. It just seems to me that even if I did not possess a quality education that I would still want that opportunity for my children and the children of society as a whole. What this reinforces is the truth of my claims that the selfishness permeating our whole society is truly pervasive and not just a matter of rhetorical excess on my part.

Education is relatively expensive as public works go and it is obvious that as a society we have decided that gravel roads will suffice because of the expense of asphalt. And I do not use the word “expense” to just mean financial capital, but to also include the personal cost extracted by dedication and concern. Education is indeed not one of the areas where I think the problem is primarily one of funding, but one of an even scarcer resource: genuine commitment to excellence.

While this sad state of affairs could cause one to lose hope and abandon the discussion, I am in no way more curmudgeonly than in my stubbornness, so you can expect these rants to reoccur.

‘roid rage

2005-03-09T17:42:00.000-06:00

If you are not a sports fan, you might be unaware of the controversy over steroids that has surrounded major-league baseball for many months. Leaked grand jury testimony from a criminal investigation and the usual informed whispers have fueled the pervasive sports punditry up until now. Enter stage Right the United States House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform who announced that they will be holding hearings investigating steroid abuse in the big leagues.

When asking himself the pre-emptive question of why the need for Congressional hearings, chairman of the committee, Tom Davis, evoked several of the standard Vote For Me symbols wishing to shine a light in the darkness and of course protect our children. As sad as that sop was, he went on to add, “We can help kids understand that steroids aren’t cool.” I wish the committee well in that endeavor because I think that convincing teenage boys that a muscular physique is “uncool” is a grand undertaking indeed.

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that perhaps this might not be the best use of the time of our Congressmen?

Laying aside these silly nits, there is a real problem that does need addressed. Steroids are a dangerous thing and like other illegal drugs, they are making their way into the hands of children far to young for society to have any expectation of a reasonable risk/reward analysis on their part. I certainly agree that a program of communication to young people is desirable and justified, but I can not help but wonder if this is not a more appropriate matter for the Surgeon General than the Committee on Government Reform. It sounds like the Reform Committee is overdue a bit of self-examination.

Of course we all know that the truth is that like most of what poses as legitimate legislative activity in the hallowed halls of congress lately, these hearings are intended primarily to be attention getters for the politicians. In elementary school, we called it mugging for the camera. When describing the behavior of our Congressmen, we should just call it embarrassing.

A while back, in an attempt at making some suggestions that could help with the embarrassment that is called our public school system, I called for the removal of sports from our schools in order to help the institution focus on the actual objective of educating. Perhaps the same treatment is in order for our nation as a whole. It is hard to believe that Congress can be this distracted when as a nation we face challenges the magnitude of international terrorism, nuclear missiles in the hands of depots, and an impending meltdown of our health care system. I’m sorry, but as much as I love watching sports, I find the possibility of the end of Western civilization a more compelling topic.

We should be telling Congress to collect autographs on their own time because they have work to do.

But we love our diversions and really, it is hard these days to tell political discourse from sport anyway. The testimony of some of the biggest names in sports before the Congress will undoubtedly attract the approving attention of Americans who care more about who did what to whom than the substantive health concerns. We will be treated to seeing Davis and Henry Waxman preening before the cameras all the while knowing that their media show will not produce anything more than the ongoing criminal investigation is calculated to determine.

And while we are distracted, terrorists will have more time to exploit our exposed borders, North Korea will move a bit closer toward another nuclear tipped missile, and we will waste yet more precious resources into the entropy of an irrational health care system. Perhaps it is naïve to expect more of our leaders and our citizens than this, but one can always hope. Hope that the façade of genuine concern crumbles off of the Capitol Building. Hope that some of those watching The Show will notice that nothing is actually happening.

On the other hand, maybe not.

Play ball!

surgical strike: modern mendacity

2005-03-03T14:17:00.000-06:00

It is encouraging to think that there is a burgeoning democratic reform movement afoot in Islam. That is the hopeful message of Thomas Friedman’s latest piece entitled Brave, Young and Muslim.

It is amazing to me that so many Americans do not seem to have even the slightest understanding of Islam and its history. More amazing still that so many Americans do not have any better understanding of their own history. I think if one looks thoughtfully at the progress of Western Civilization, you can see much of where we have been in what Islam is today.

It is easy to forget that our not so distant past harbored a lot of stuff that we do not comfortably claim as our own history. It was in the West after all that Galileo was jailed for nothing more than telling what he saw in his telescope. It was in the West that Albert Einstein had to flee his home for no other reason than being born of those descendants of Abraham that the Nazis chose as the objects of their hatred. And within the life times of much of the Disenfranchised Curmudgeon community we have seen even here in The Land of the Free a time when there were still separate drinking fountains for those born with unacceptable skin pigmentation.

The point is that the West had to have its Renaissance, Enlightenment and religious reformations along its hard climb to modernity. And the birth of Liberty came only at the ends of gun barrels and many centuries of slowly wresting power from the Monarchs. That we collectively undertook and survived those transforming movements is certainly to our credit.

But the attitude that is often heard that Islam is unsuitable for various institutions of modernity is certainly not to our credit. These attitudes are borne of a cultural arrogance that equals that of radical Muslim fundamentals. It is my firm belief that given time Islam will reform as has the other great religions of the World and that perhaps along the way an element or two of modern thought will be found rightfully worthy of their rejection.

I do not necessarily share Friedman’s belief that the time is now, but I certainly share his hope. After all, if the time is not now then we may have a few long centuries in front of us.

yes again, again

2005-02-23T17:07:00.000-06:00

We often hear the lament “never again” repeated, but sadly, it appears that what people actually mean is “never again in the West”.

Since genocide was defined in international law after the Second World War, there have been five genocidal campaigns of which I am aware: Cambodia, Rwanda, Burundi, Bosnia and now Sudan. And in only one of those five, Bosnia, has the West made a concerted effort stop the horror. I do not want to believe that the lack of Western intervention in the other four tragedies is rooted in racism, but reluctantly I have to conclude that there must be some subconscious racism involved.

I do believe it is subconscious because in most corners of the Western world, institutionalized racism has been largely eradicated. Certainly racism lives in the smaller hearts and smallest minds which comprise Western Civilization, but for the most part we have grown past the point were bigotry is accepted as normal within the bounds of the broader society.

But when one takes a closer look at the mass behavior of the West, I cannot exclude racism as a factor in society’s moral reckoning. Each of the five instances of genocide over the last half century were unspeakably horrible. Each of these blood drenched catastrophes implicitly demanded action by the West, but the one time we intervened in a significant way was when the victim’s faces were similar to our own.

I hope I am wrong about this, but I fear that I am not. I fear it in part because I too must search my own soul because of my own failure to speak out or act.

In a weak attempt to right old transgressions, I have taken the time to write my elected representatives to encourage action on the genocide presently taking place in Darfur. I hope you will consider taking the time as well. I admit that this action on my part is out of sync with my general proposition that the elected representatives do not care what you or I actually think. I have not changed my mind on that point, but I feel that in the face of this much death and destruction, I must say something: this blog entry and my undoubtedly futile missives to elected Federal officials are that something.

The situation in Darfur does deserve your and my attention. I have consciously chosen not to write on this subject previously because I am keenly aware that it is improbable we will act and people get more than a little bit weary of reading impassioned pleas for humanitarian causes with little hope of resolution. My attitude changed last night while watching Charlie Rose interviewing the creators of a new movie on the decline of Hitler. The phrase “never again” has pinged my brain incessantly since. You and I know that we should not have let this happen, but we have failed again.

If you want some motivation, a great starting place is Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed entitled The Secret Genocide Archive. A slight warning is in order as there are pictures there that might be disturbing to some though certainly not extreme by the standards of what is happening in Sudan. The short version is that while it is impossible to know the death toll, a plausible number would be on the order of 200,000 and rising. Unlike the merciful Christmas Tsunami, these oppressors torture and rape their victims before killing them.

Tragically, we have not even taken simple steps such as freezing assets in order to put pressure on these evil people.

I hope the attention some are attempting to bring to what is happening in Darfur makes a difference. We will never know how many lives might have been spared had the Allies acted after Kristallnacht rather than shamefully turning its head and letting events take their course. In Rwanda, scarcely even a decade ago, 800,000 people died when we remained silent. I’d rather not find out how many more African Sudanese will loose their lives if we choose to look the other way this time.

It would be nice to believe that our reason for inaction thus far is something relatively benign like ignorance and sloth. But while we deny our racism at an institutional level, it is perhaps still a diffuse element of our national policy. Witness the reaction in my corner of the West, America, to people of Arab descent in the post 9-11 era. The hostility toward Arab Americans stunned even me because Muslim fundamentalism knows no ethnic boundaries. It is hard not to be reminded that during the Second World War, here in the Land of the Free we locked up Japanese-Americans, but not those of German descent.

Racism is often cast about glibly in our culture and I do not suggest it as a contributing cause cavalierly. After all, 200,000 Muslims were killed in Bosnia so acting on a catastrophe of that magnitude which is in relatively close proximity for Europeans is understandable. While making an unqualified accusation of racism is not justified, the facts are still hard to ignore: In Africa we have had far more death and suffering, yet we do nothing.

If anyone wants to make the case for inaction, I’d love to have it explained to me.

homeland offense

2005-02-16T15:00:00.000-06:00

Americans realized long before its repeal in December, 1933 that Prohibition had created new and far more dangerous problems than it could have ever been calculated to solve. As the few remaining Americans of the era of speakeasies would tell you, the impact on America was overwhelmingly negative. The affects of Prohibition were bad not simply because of the gangland violence but because of the artificial dichotomy that was created wherein otherwise “good citizens” were routinely flouting the law.

It was a hard lesson in governance, but America learned and moved on.

Or at least, America had moved on until enough time had past that the lessons could be largely forgotten. It is truly amazing to read the Prohibition era stories and see how thoroughly relevant they still seem. The story of the young man determined to end the rum running on the road in front of his house, thwarted by a wise father who took his gun and admonished him to stay out of other people’s business, sounds eerily similar to the stories I hear from the inner city. Not similar in detail obviously: that was a simpler and much different era. Rather, I speak of the similarity of how prohibition set in motion powerful forces with which ordinary people dare not trifle. The similarity of parents who wish to keep their children away both from danger and the dangerous. If you just stay out of the way it seems, the dangerous will most likely leave you alone.

But the dangerous do affect each of us whether we try to stay out of the way or not. The War on Drugs has extracted a price that while hard to precisely total in dollars, is much easier to discern in intangible ways. It can be measured in resources diverted from homeland defense, lives wasted in jail cells, insecurity while simply going to your car at the grocery store, and liberties squandered due to the tactical and strategic exigencies of a phony war.

One may not be able to hang a price tag on these things, but the price is dear none the less.

According to information from the White House, about half of all prisoners in US jails are incarcerated because of the War on Drugs. You have to dig to sort all of that out, but it is worth your time if you doubt the number. Using the White House data, by my rough calculations approximately $18 billion is spent each year to keep these prisoners behind bars. Compare this to the President’s 2005 budget figure for the Department of Homeland Defense of $34 billion (which interestingly includes $6 billion for the Coast Guard, one of the prime players in drug interdiction). I’ll leave it for a person with time to spare to come up with a more thorough accounting, but it is clear that once you add in other expenses, which include a vast array of law enforcement activity from Federal down to local entities and large expenditures in other branches of the military who have been partially co-opted, that we are spending at least as much on the War on Drugs as we are on Homeland Defense.

Eventually we may all be seeking illicit drugs to help us cope with our muddled national priorities.

In my mind, however, the ridiculous expense in financial and human capital of the War on Drugs is not itself a sound argument for the legalization of controlled substances. There are some things that must be illegal if society is to function and what the content of the law is should not be determined simply by what yields a net profit. The exorbitant cost instead should give urgency to the need to commit to drug legalization not because it is a pragmatic good, but because it is the right thing to do.

While legalization is, I am convinced, the morally and legally correct choice, if I am to be totally honest, I must tell you that I truly hate illicit drugs. My personal opposition is, in part, because of moral obligations imposed by my faith, and in part out of my ordinary human fallacy of fearing being out of control. Alcohol, in my view, however, is like liberalism and conservativism: it is OK if consumed in moderation. For me personally, the difference between the two is that moderate alcohol consumption does not lead to inebriation.

But I understand well that others disagree with me on the acceptability of alcohol consumption: the “intellectual” heirs of Billy Sunday are the stock from which I was raised. I know that there are those who would gleefully rob me of my right to enjoy my pint of stout and this is why the principals of Natural Rights are so crucial to building a free society.

When one is certain that they have a clear understanding that particular behaviors are destructive, it is only natural to want to intercede on behalf of the unwitting. But, unlike the majority of Americans, I really do believe in Liberty. As I have said before, I stand for human rights without regard to one’s personal viability, color of skin, religious creed, level of intelligence or unrepentant sinfulness. Free people must have the liberty to make choices that you or I might deem unwise or immoral.

The temperance tyrants sometimes argue back that it is not about controlling the behavior of others, it is about the cost to society of addiction and dangerous behavior under the influence. But I follow the facts where they lead me and not where I wish them to lead, and the obvious fact is that forty years of the War on Drugs has done absolutely nothing to curtail their use or reduce the impact of addictive behavior on society. The reality is that we currently have locked up over 3% of adults and by my conservative estimate annually spend the equivalent of the Gross Domestic Product of Paraguay and yet the cost of drugs continues to decline and the use of drugs is unabated.

The greatest expense borne by Americans in the prosecution of the drug war is the cost in human life and livelihood. Lives which are squandered by poor kids muling or dealing to try to make it in the world no matter what the cost of living in the shadows. Lives of non-combatants who are caught in the real and virtual cross-fire. Livelihood which is squandered by the rising tide of property crimes committed by addicted people seeking money for their next high. Then there is what is perhaps the largest line item on the expense ledger: the lost opportunity to deal with real and pressing issues.

All of this insanity is juxtaposed on the established fact that treatment has been proven far more effective than incarceration. Even the Drug War champions in the White House admit this. It is time to act on reason and end the insanity which is the War on Drugs. Time to give Freedom a chance here in the Home of the Brave.

It is way past time to put a priority on mending broken lives rather than building more jails.

call of the wild

2005-01-31T17:28:00.000-06:00

It is hard to imagine anything much more alien to this Curmudgeon than the thought of visiting a brothel. In fact, it probably shocks many who know me when they discover that I am a long time advocate of legalized prostitution. Some of you probably thought I did not even know how to spell “brothel”. Those of you who have hung out here for a while, however, may remember my posting on the hypocrisy of California regulating the porn industry a while back.

Upsetting though it may be to the hard core Christian Political Right, I think the day of widespread legalized prostitution is upon us. An interesting story in the Economist set me to thinking on this subject today. Apparently, some entrepreneurs are dreaming big and the fight for branding is already on.

I’m not a betting man, but I’d lay good money down on a wager that some form of BootyWorld Theme Park will open in the United States before a viable Space Station.

Whatever personal distaste I may have for the oldest profession, there is little doubt that in a free society such behavior should be permitted between consenting adults. Like cigarette smoking, over indulgence in French Fries and riding a motorcycle without a helmet, people should be free to engage in behavior that may not be in their best interests without regard to the peril to their mind, body or soul.

But even if you disagree with me that this is a desirable direction for our legal system, note its inevitability. Just like casino gambling and distilled beverages, it will be a part of our lives and sooner rather than later. If you doubt me, read the Economist article and pay close attention to the expected impact the sex industry can have on a rural county. Think about the promotional programs used to sell lottery legislation and you can see easily how the same ads work for advocating the legalization of any of a number of previously forbidden fruit.

One thing life has taught me is that if you want to predict what happens next in America, follow the money.

impressionist pantings

2005-01-26T16:35:00.000-06:00

If one stands closely to a Pissaro or Monet, it is often difficult to discern whether one is looking at a water lily, bridge or parasol. The individual brush strokes are bold and coarse; the subject resolves more clearly as one moves farther away. Up until the impressionist school changed Western art forever, realism was the order of the day.

The Bush administration foreign policy is radical in much the same way as was impressionism.

Looking at the brush strokes of the administration’s foreign policy endeavors, it is impossible to grasp the whole. It is often tempting to consider the elements independently and assess hubris or incompetence as being representative. But statements by this administration have trickled out over the last few days that are giving us more perspective and we can more confidently conclude what has been and continues to be the subject of 43’s magnum opus.

Unlike approaching a Van Gogh, however, let us first consider some of the details. Anyone who today doubts that Syria and Iran are directly in the crosshairs of the Bush doctrine scope were not paying close attention during the prelude to the war in Iraq. The casually dropped comments by senior officials and leaked words of senior advisors are more than just a little bit reminiscent of the early rumblings about Iraq. The tempo of events is already picking up speed.

If you care to listen, recent history is speaking to us and to the world with a roar that is as deafening as the administration’s feigned concern is shrill. In the media you can already hear the daily breathless panting of the officially distressed .

There is one significant difference: this time there are real weapons of mass destruction.

To point it out may in part be to say “I told you so”, but that it did not have to be this way is still so. The rapidly growing threat of Iran and North Korea were news well before we invaded Iraq. This Curmudgeon was advocating then the need for an aggressive policy to contain these real risks. Instead, we tilted at windmills while the real “giants” went unopposed in any meaningful way. Indeed, there is little doubt that the contrast of the alarmingly speedy regime change in Iraq with the more circumspect treatment of North Korea, which at that time already possessed nuclear weapons, gave new urgency to the need for WMDs for the very despots 43 would seek to depose. Like other humans, despots are rational actors.

Here on the other side of the chasm which is the Bush Doctrine, our options to deal with despots are increasingly limited. In the immediate post 9-11 groundswell of support, it might well have been possible to garner Western support for and perhaps even assistance in mounting targeted military strikes aimed at weapons of mass destruction infrastructure. What a shame that we forfeited the tactical advantage in favor of an attempt at strategic hegemony: given the capabilities of modern weapons and delivery systems there will often be little to gain militarily by taking and holding territory when weapons of mass destruction are at issue.

The great irony here is that preemption in the cause of nuclear and biological weapon containment can be easily defended. Indeed, I have done so in the past when I proposed a legal framework based on the International Law doctrine of Universal Jurisdiction as support for asserting United States jurisdiction over certain criminals in foreign territories. It is clear that it is the whole nation building and cultural export agenda of this presidential administration which calls our sensibilities into question. A botched invasion plan that left Iraqi lives shattered and Iraqi oil wells in production calls our motives into question as well.

But All the President’s Men do not seem to be questioning anything regarding the pursuit of the neo-con vision of a New World Order and it is looking increasingly unlikely that work on rebuilding old bridges will begin before the demolition of yet others. I fear that 43 will be entirely comfortable assembling another “coalition of the willing” which next time will likely consist of the United States and the Grand Duchy of Outer Kumquat.

The apparent lack of concern over the disintegration of the Western Alliance is clear evidence of a desire by the neo-cons for the United States to trod a new path and to do so essentially alone. I suspect 43’s upcoming trip to Europe will unveil a few more bold brushstrokes as a weak attempt is made to reassert American leadership in the face of the growing power of the European Union.

My sense, however, is that Europe is now set on a new path and understands that its’ future interests will often diverge from those of the United States. They understand that American leadership is not painting the natural scenes of the impressionists, but rather the egocentric themes of the expressionist school. Expressions of introspection rather than impressions of observation. Expressions of empire; not impressions of commonwealth.

The bold brush strokes thus have become more coherent and the imperious motives can be seen to unify the whole. Europe sees clearly that this “great work” is in fact a self-portrait.

One can only hope that old-fashioned realism will creep back into the technical repertoire of the foreign policy artists in the White House. One can hope that these students of the great masters will step back from their dabbling in radical expressions because while radical thought is to be lauded in the arts, it is to be mightily feared in the affairs of nations.

In this arena, where lives and livelihood hang in the balance, radical thought is the stuff of Armageddon.

american coliseum

2005-01-18T08:44:00.000-06:00

I stumbled across an interesting op-ed in the New York Times today that provides some scientific support for my earlier blog posting entitled what it was.

In Joshua Friedman’s piece, This Is Your Brain on Politics, an analysis of brain activity is presented based on MRI observations of partisan Democrats and Republicans while watching political ads. He concludes:

This [research] suggests that the passions swirling through elections are not driven by a deep commitment to issues. We are not fighting over the future of the country; we are fighting for our team, like Red Sox and Yankee fans arguing over which club has the better catcher. Both in an election and in baseball, all that really matters is who wears the team uniform.

While this conclusion is essentially the thesis of my blog, what it was, I hesitate to jump on Friedman’s bandwagon because I do not agree that our being and thought can be reduced to nothing more than neurology and brain chemistry. Still, it is kind of interesting that some objective scientific evidence supports what I have been saying for a few years.

I think the evidence of politics as an American spectator sport continues to grow. Witness the reactions to the Presidential election and you see prototypical fan type of reactions. What a shame it is that we treat it as a game, when the stakes are far higher than laying claim to a championship trophy or bragging rights for the coming year.

premature iraqification

2005-01-14T15:17:00.000-06:00

The psychological pull-out has already begun even if the troops haven’t started packing their bags yet. That the withdrawal is well underway can be heard clearly if you pay close attention. Yesterday, Colin Powell’s remark that American troops would start returning home this year is no off the cuff trial balloon floating-Powell is nothing if not deliberate.

Was it not just the other day we were hearing that we needed more troops to do the job? Clearly a major change in policy is in the works and this is just the first noise we are going to hear about letting the Iraqis clean up the mess themselves. All the fine words about long-term commitment will not be retracted because to do so would be to admit error and we certainly can have none of that. The premature withdrawal will instead be explained in terms of fulfilling the plan for the incremental hand-over in power that was in place all along.

What constitutes premature depends, I suppose, on perspective. From the vantage point of before the commencement of the invasion, I doubt there were too many sober minded individuals making the case that we would be in and out of Iraq in less than three years. I think most informed Americans, certainly myself, anticipated that we would be in Iraq for an extremely long haul.

The possibility that we might pull out of Iraq more quickly than the space shuttle fleet could be returned to service really never occurred to this Curmudgeon.

There are many little hints that this administration’s ability to keep up the fiction that everything is great in Iraq is straining to the breaking point. The recent revelations of the poor state of the National Guard, the Pentagon beginning an open-ended review of Iraq policy, continual rumblings over postponing elections, and, of course, the continual march of death across our television screens, all combine to give us a sense that finally some Americans are actually daring to speak of the Emperor’s fine birthday suit.

Truthfully, holding slipshod elections and packing our bags for a hasty exit may be the best we can hope for now. Don’t misunderstand me: I am all for staying the course and making sacrifices. I have been consistent and even vitriolic on that very obligation. At some point, however, you have to assess whether our continued presence in Iraq is in the best interests of the Iraqi people and the deepening spiral into civil war that we are seeing play out suggests that perhaps a democratically elected government might have a better shot if they weren’t strapped to a giant target labeled “Made in USA”.

One can hardly blame the Iraqis if they are left with impression that the government-to-be was manufactured by the United States when, by the Presidential Administration’s own words, they say exactly that. Judge for yourself based on this excerpt from the New York Times:

Powell has said it is imperative for the elections to go forward as planned to give more credence to the concept that insurgents are fighting an Iraqi government rather than an American occupation force.

If you were like me, you had to read that twice. What we, through our elected representatives, are saying is that what needs to change is the anti-democratic militia’s “concept” of who they are fighting.

Does anyone in Washington have a “concept” of what they are doing?

In fairness to Powell, those are not his words, but this is the type of stuff you hear constantly out of this Administration. Maybe changing concepts is how you create those new realities of which they are so fond. Unfortunately, the anti-democratic militias in Iraq have a pretty clear agenda and pretty well-defined Reality. Until we choose to begin acting in some version of reality that bears some relationship to Reality, we should resign ourselves to ineffectualness.

We the People may love to be deceived by our home-made self-image, but the people of the Middle-east are shockingly reality based.

Leaving Iraq now is certainly premature. Even beginning the process to leave Iraq now is premature when infrastructure work is nowhere near completion. That we are starting down that road is undeniable. It is time for all Americans to pray for mercy on ourselves because after all of the lies, poor planning and hyperbolic rhetoric, leaving may be the only option. And time also to pray for mercy on the Iraqi people, because after all of the lies, poor planning and hyperbolic rhetoric, our leaving may be the only option.

the post-modern presidency

2005-01-07T16:31:00.000-06:00

That this presidential administration would illegally pay a talk-show host to favorably opine on administration policy is most unsurprising. Unsurprising that is if you have paid attention to how smoothly this crew operates.

I am not necessarily referring to this administration’s willingness to flout the law, though that too is unsurprising. Indeed, the lack of regard for the rule of law by this administration and its recent predecessors is so well established that to discuss this would be fatuous and crushingly boring. Rather I speak of the blatant media manipulation which has long ceased to surprise those of us who see past the facade of moral righteousness and into the post-modern world view that undergirds this Presidential administration’s every act and utterance.

If you haven’t read the details of Propaganda-gate, they are as simple as they are obnoxious to democratic sensibilities. In order to secure frequent positive comment on the President’s “No Child Left Behind” program, the Department of Education paid conservative talk-show host Armstrong Williams nearly a quarter of a million dollars. Apparently, this taxpayer funded propaganda was part of a larger “package” of deals that are similar to those which the administration has made in the past.

So far, public criticism of this outrage has been muted at best. Imagine, if you will, the public outcry that would’ve been heard if the Clinton Education Department had made similar deals to promote “Goals 2000”.

I wince just thinking about it.

But we should be outraged on several levels. Outraged because of the misuse of funds. Outraged by the lack of outrage over the misuse of funds. Doubly outraged at the crass manipulation that has become the standard mode of conduct.

Outraged, but not surprised.

Ron Suskind’s now famous article, Without a Doubt did much to put this type of administration behavior in perspective. I would encourage anyone who has not read the entire article to do so, but I’d like to quote at length the portion which is most relevant to this discussion:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

These senior adviser remarks are penetrating because they go so far in explaining so much that would otherwise be perplexing. For example, the administration was not ignoring the reality of the inevitable internal turmoil in Iraq, rather they were creating a new reality. Those of us who decry that 43 ignored simple and obvious facts were just missing the entire point: facts did not matter. I have quoted 43 before thinking he was just being typically stupid, but now I have to wonder about whether he didn’t in fact mean exactly what he said: “Look, I don't care about the numbers. I know the facts.”

Until reading the Suskind article, I for one did not have an adequate appreciation of how thoroughly post-modern is this administration.

The path to the post-modern presidency was first described over four decades ago by an intellectual who was decidedly not a post-modern. In his famous book, The Image, Daniel Boorstin was prophetic in his analysis of media trends and its impact on American culture. I am in the process of reading that book again, and what is so striking to me is that is sounds as if it was written in 2001-not 1961. Anyone who wants to understand media and the political process owes it to themselves to get this book.

That Boorstin was a political conservative and unapologetically patriotic intellectual did not prevent him from describing the American born post-modern construct of the pseudo-event with such clarity as to win acclaim from individuals of every political stripe. Boorstin’s key insights were that real events were being replaced by media manufactured pseudo-events, such as made for television debates, and that real heroes were being replaced by an ersatz variety that we dub “celebrities”. In his view, this new manufactured reality insulates media consumers from real experience and knowledge.

The insight of Boorstin can be seen more clearly than ever in the adept use of the media by this administration to manufacture a reality in which they can thrive and prosper. What is most disturbing is that this is not a new thing, but an accelerating trend. Boorstin described a world where Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy adeptly maneuvered through the media maze in order to generate an image that generates votes. What we saw subsequently in the Reagan and Clinton administrations was a new adroitness that allowed them to more directly generate opinion and free themselves from inconvenient things like facts and legal limits. What I fear is that what we are seeing is an administration which is pushing us even further away from policy discussion and into the realm of propaganda.

Friends, this is a big deal.

However big this story should be, I have little doubt that the story will have very little “legs”. In the rush to find a new an more exciting story, this travesty will be buried under a pile of more lurid and tantalizing headlines. With the Iraqi election coming up soon, this story sadly does not stand a chance. There is no doubt that the politicians and media will be rewarded by a willing constituency that is content being fed that which they crave.

Lost on most Americans will be the observation that our post-modern President has put into service a philosophy that is more properly termed an anti-philosophy because of its contempt for reality. The great irony here is that so many of 43’s well meaning supporters deride moral relativism as the great heresy of our age while their man is busily at work manufacturing a suitable reality for their consumption.

As reprehensible as all of this hypocrisy may be, the greater concern must still be the trend. The stage has been set where propaganda will likely get the seal of approval by the American people. If this administration and the one before it has taught us nothing else, we know that Presidents learn from the political successes of their predecessors. And if, as is likely, the propaganda thing gets added to the essential toolkit of the executive branch, the next administration will be unconstrained in ways we have scarcely imagined as possible in America.

While I share the fear of what the next four years will bring, that which truly terrifies is that which comes next.

tsunami on my mind

2004-12-31T14:02:00.000-06:00

Like most citizens of the world, I find myself in this festive time of the year genuinely grief-stricken over the tragedy that has befell so many people who found themselves in the path of the Christmas Tsunami. That America must help in a tragedy of this magnitude is self-evident. I would like to add my call to those many others who have humbly plead for your contribution for the benefit of survivors.

Amazingly, however, there has been some argument over the nature and degree of assistance we should provide for tsunami relief and that argument has spawned in the messageboards an important debate on what are our obligations as global citizens. Ever the critic of modern American society, this Curmudgeon unsurprisingly weighed in to advocate the moral obligation for the extraordinarily wealthy to help the extraordinarily poor, and to lament the woeful American contributions of the past. To make a very long story short, using rough numbers I calculated that by dedicating modest resources-one percent of our GDP-to global poverty, we would be able to spend approximately $1,000 per reachable hungry person in the World.

One thousand dollars is a lot of assistance for people on the brink of death from starvation.

Sadly, most Americans assume we are doing far more than what we are. If asked how much assistance we are giving, I’m guessing most Americans would pick a figure well in excess of the one-tenth of one percent we actually give. And that one-tenth of one percent includes a lot of aid that properly would not be considered “aid” by most people.

What prompts my surplus written rage today is not this woeful state of affairs: I’ve been fulminating over that for quite some time. What stirred me up this time was a New York Post commentary by John Podhoretz entitled It's About The Tragedy - Not More Bush-Bashing. Podhoretz therein chides those who have been critical of this Administration’s response and America’s historical lack of generosity for not having a proper respect for the dead. A proper respect for the dead, in Mr. Poderhoretz’s opinion, would have been to wait at least a week before “making use of the tsunami to complain about U.S. government spending on ‘development aid’”.

The American people’s gallingly short attention span does not give us that luxury.

Podhoretz, being a newspaper man, should know as well as anyone about the American people’s eagerness to always move on to a new and more exciting topic. As I write, the tsunami stories are already slipping in the headlines. Increasing body counts are becoming just more old stale news much like the reporting of American and Iraqi deaths in occupied Iraq. Tragic calamities such as this are about the only time you can get the attention of We the People.

The window of opportunity is exceedingly short: the NFL play-offs loom large.

That American “generosity” sits at about one-tenth of our GDP should have been a big story long before now. Those of us who have tried to raise the point in the past have generally been laughed off the stage and more often then not called ugly names. Forgive us then for trafficking in the misery of so many people: we have just gotten a little desperate to be heard.

ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION NOW?

a pause to remember

2004-12-07T13:27:00.000-06:00

I sense that the infamy of this commemorative date isn’t quite what it used to be. Nothing heals old psychic wounds quite like plasma screens and hemorrhaging terrorist inflicted wounds delivered live on national television.

Still, many of us will pause and consider the 2,390 men who lost their lives on the day that Yamamoto awoke the sleeping giant. Time will determine whether 9-11, which claimed an even greater number of unsuspecting American lives, will be commemorated as a seminal event on the order of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Lately, I have begun to believe that perhaps it will.

Pearl Harbor is rightfully considered the essential event that lead to the World dominance of the United States in the second half of the Twentieth Century. In our cultural consciousness, the attack stands as a closing bracket on the Great Depression and an opening bracket for a period of new greatness. And make no mistake, our internal self-image was one of not simply greatness in size and power, but also one of greatness in purpose and spirit.

It has been suggested to me that perhaps Americans do themselves a disservice by over-glorifying “The Greatest Generation”. And while there certainly is a point to taking a cold hard look at our past lest we repeat the lessons learned, such as those of Manzanar, I reject that we overdo this veneration of our ancestors because it is important to remember that there are causes greater than our individual selves. There is no doubt that the people of that time were just ordinary people, more or less like you or me, doing their best in extraordinary circumstances. The label of greatness was not conferred, but rather earned when these ordinary people answered the call to a higher purpose.

Like many, I suppose, I found my fellow American’s response to 9-11 initially encouraging. Just maybe, I let myself wax optimistically, this tragedy, like Pearl Harbor, will lead to a rebirth of American spirit and a rededication of individuals to those great ideals for which it is worth suffering and dying. The heart warming response of Americans in the initial aftermath was indeed a beautiful thing. Sadly, and far too quickly, my naiveté was eventually squashed by the venom I saw hurled toward Arab people.

Perhaps Manzanar was not after all a lesson learned, but rather a harbinger for our time.

Part of the pride in being American has always been, or at least for the last century, a sense of a national desire to behave well as a world citizen. While we often execute poorly, the intentions have been noble and generally defensible. And we knew what we stood for with clarity: freedom rooted in a proper appreciation of human rights. And when it comes to certain uncivilized things, well, America just doesn’t do things like that.

But with the revelations of Abu Ghraib, many of us have been forced to reconsider our internal image of America. Molly Ivins wrote recently about American torture and expressed the angst this Curmudgeon feels extremely well. The revelations regarding the treatment at Guantanamo Bay brought Molly to a new level of rage wherein she pleaded forcefully:

What are you going to do about this?

It's your country, your money, your government. You own it; you run it; you are the board of directors. They are doing this in your name. The people we elect to public office do what you want them to do. Perhaps you should get in touch with them.

I would certainly encourage you to write your Congress Critters regarding this matter, though I am doubtful of the result. Doubtful because the elected elite do not seem to listen very much to any voice that doesn’t threaten their next re-election bid. And of course, we have recently been “in touch with them”—its called an election.

You see, the last election was well after the torture revelations. Well after we had all read that this administration considers human rights “quaint”. Months had passed since we found out that Rumsfeld was aware of what was going on and that regardless, our President was standing by his Secretary of Defense.

Yes, we are the board of directors and the board spoke pretty clearly to the Executive officers when we returned the President and almost the entire Congress to office. The ballots were not yet all counted when they reported back to the board of directors, “mandate accepted”.

Yup. I do think that terrorists have set us on a path as radically different from the one previously trod as was the new road onto which Yamamoto nudged us Sixty-three years ago.

It is a good thing for us to pause and remember the attack on Pearl Harbor. To remember a time when Causes were bigger than Ourselves. A time when they were the ones that flouted the Geneva Convention and held human rights in contempt. A time when we were the ones that coveted freedom not just for ourselves and our posterity, but also for all people no matter their nationality, race or creed.

Now hold that thought.

Keep holding: the next election is two years away.

a few of my favorite things

2004-11-23T16:19:00.000-06:00

No writer’s pen has ever been more wholly inadequate for its task than is my own in attempting the endeavor before me. To try and capture the tender thanksgiving sentiments of my heart in prose is indeed to court certain failure. Yet in the spirit of the season I will attempt to do so and since listing all that for which I am thankful would take far more time than that which I have to give, I will instead undertake a more modest goal and simply tell you about just a few of my favorite things.

At the top of my list is the big fat stuffed turkey that will sit astride the table of my Thanksgiving Day feast. The privilege of living at a time and place where this type of feast is a regularity is extraordinary in the extreme. We live in a land that is truly blessed with an abundance of food unlike the world has ever known in its history. Amid this abundance, and especially at this time of the year, I try to remember often the story told to me by a Chinese expatriate co-worker several years ago. She related how as a teenager, she had been so proud to work and save for a whole year and when the holidays came, she was able to take her entire savings and with it purchase a single chicken for a special family gustatory treat.

I can vividly recall that story in part because she had a wonderful sense of timing for telling it. Just after her words had absorbed in, and I was beginning to think about what an incredible tale of deprivation it was, she added in a soft voice, tinged with more than a little pain, “My family was the only family in the village that had meat for that holiday.” I was not alone in that room with her that day, but based on the silence of my fellow privileged Americans, one might have thought the room empty.

Remembering the one chicken village makes those left-over turkey sandwiches seem far less oppressive.

Good health would also obviously be at the top of any sensible list of personal bounty. I do not speak merely of being free from illness as is so often what is meant when we Americans speak of good health. Beyond that personal good fortune, I’m grateful for the relative good health we enjoy as a nation as a product of good nutrition and modern healthcare. I am ashamed to admit that I do not spend nearly enough time ruminating on the blessing of living in a place and time where a slight infection is no longer a flirtation with the grim reaper.

When thinking of health, it is hard to speak of the matter and not start first with nutrition. A little Google research is illuminating because you quickly find that there are so many people in the world that are hungry that it difficult to treat healthcare as an independent topic. One credible report stated that of the 6.3 billion people in this world, 1.2 billion live below the international poverty level. Note the adjective “international” because the standard of poverty world wide is measured much differently than is poverty here in the United States. I will spare you the detailed definition, but all you really need to know is that the terms “minimum caloric intake” and “sanitary facilities” are involved.

Honestly, I am not one to self-flagellate over our material wealth here in the United States. While I think we need to do more to help the needy both at home and abroad, I realize that it is not within our power to quickly fix the political and social messes that exist in the world. And it is important to remember also that our gain is not necessarily another’s loss—economics is not a zero-sum game.

But I do think it is important to put our thankfulness in context if we are to have anything that approaches real Gratitude. And only by putting our wealth in perspective can we also open the door for those opportunities where we might be able to assist and not simply wash our hands of the problems by leaving it up to God and economic caprice.

I am thankful too for the social and legal institutions that were bequeathed by our forefathers to its posterity and that are responsible, in good measure, for our extraordinary wealth. The twin pillars of Capitalism and Democratic Republicanism are principals worthy of tempered reverence at this reflective time. While this Curmudgeon does not view either of these philosophical pillars as perfect ideals and though I write critically of the problems in our institutions and society, I stand along side those patriotic Americans who appreciate the fact that far more is right about America than is wrong. Dissent, you see, is not necessarily inconsistent with gratitude.

In these troubled times, dissent is often the very hallmark of a thankful heart.

The right to dissent itself is perhaps one of our most celebrated blessings, and of course, without it, you would not be reading these words. The legacy of Free Speech is perhaps the bedrock on which all of our other blessings rest because it is hard to imagine efficient markets and democratic elections without that fundamental as a precedent. It is no accident that the First Amendment was first.

I will spend time on my knees Thursday thanking God for a land in which human rights actually have some meaning. It is simply impossible to be sufficiently grateful for the fortune of being born in a place where dissent has generally been regarded as an essential tool of progress. I think far too often people who have been free their whole lives forget how tenuous freedom and prosperity are in this world and this is why I am always eager to defend the basic ideas on which our society has been built.

I am also most certainly thankful for you, the gentle and faithful readers of these polemics, for you have sustained my hope for America during a time when the light of the shining city has been all but extinguished. It is with a thankful pen that I always take up the task of opining here at the Disenfranchised Curmudgeon. The passion that I hope I consistently show for civil liberties and the rule of law is rooted in thanksgiving and in a sincere desire to see our looming demise averted for the sake of our own posterity.

You need look no farther than our own backyard to realize that things could have been, and may yet well be, very different for the United States. Haiti, in spite of its substantial commercial head start on the rest of the Western Hemisphere, is an impoverished mess. According to the World Bank, eighty percent of Haitians live in poverty. In the Haitian story you can see clearly the connection between health and hunger: their life expectancy is a mere fifty-seven years.

There, but for the grace of God, go We.

And a bad situation there is getting worse—their feeble economy is actually shrinking rapidly as the population grows steadily. A good friend of mine would be in Haiti right now if it were not for the political instability that accounts for some of the recent heartache of that troubled land. He was to be on a mission trip that was to take a good size group of Christian workers over to help with building schools, repairing homes and assisting churches. A week before the scheduled trip, the local minister called and with a heavy heart asked them not to come: the situation was so dangerous that the work could not be done.

I think there will be more than a few villages in Haiti without a chicken this holiday season.

Alas, when I consider the needs of our Haitian neighbors, my pen does inevitably fail for want of adequate words to express my gratitude for being born the land of milkshakes and honey buns. As we come together to celebrate the Thanksgiving feast of 1621, let us not forget those of the world that do not join us in our festivities. Let us remember those whose condition shares far more with the famine of Plimoth Plantation’s previous winter when half of their number died than it does with the subsequent harvest of plenty.

Join me this Thanksgiving Day, if you will, and pray that at least some among the number of the huddled masses be able next year to give thanks for more than just the stronger soul produced by the adversity with which they daily live. Pray that our own hearts begin again to feel our burden, and that next year some of these poorest villages of our world might also partake of our feast with at least the luxury of a few holiday chickens.

And perhaps, just perhaps, maybe then we Americans will begin to cease being merely wealthy, and rather become more worthy of both our bounty and burden.

something wicked this way comes

2004-11-15T13:39:00.000-06:00

The Attorney General’s remarks last week are a fitting departing flourish, if indeed he is done flourishing, for the man who labeled dissenters such as myself as traitors. The timing of the remarks, coming after the administration’s rather outrageous claim of a mandate to pursue its narrow partisan agenda, is certainly no accident. My sense is that the Shrub Cabal senses blood in the water and it is eager to kill off its prey quickly before perceived election momentum fades and mid-term election preoccupation begins.

In the immediate aftermath of this election, which was obviously a landslide in the altered reality of this administration, the tone is already increasingly patrician and condescending. You can hear the rhetorical finger-wags often in the Attorney General’s remarks, such as when he said:

The danger I see here is that intrusive judicial oversight and second-guessing of presidential determinations in these critical areas can put at risk the very security of our nation in a time of war.

But the record of this administration makes it hard to imagine what exactly this gang might consider to not be a “critical area”. I sense no limits whatsoever on the subject matter that the administration is willing to claim as its patriotic domain. Apparently, if Karl Rove says it, then it’s so.

Truly, there is nothing genuinely new in these recent remarks. At every turn we have heard the administration’s whines about having to do their jobs within the quaint limits of the Constitution—which they only incidentally swore to uphold and defend. In the face of such egregious over-reaching for executive power, the calls for restraint by the dissent have been muted at best. Neo-cons can take great comfort in knowing that at the present rate of civil liberty legislative annulment, they will not need to whine for long: soon there will be precious little of the Constitution remaining to defend.

The context of the Attorney General’s remarks are instructive if you are not aware. The nation’s Top Attorney was obviously distressed by a recent US District Court ruling that halted the military trial of a man accused of being Osama Bin Laden’s driver and who is one among many that the administration has argued is not subject to the rules of the Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention is of course famous as an effort between civilized nations to attempt to bring some protection to the human rights of prisoners of war.

And the Geneva Convention is of course equally famous for being ignored by administrations headed by Hitler, Stalin, Tojo and now Bush.

The administration has of course articulated a legal defense to repudiating the Geneva Convention—this administration, like its predecessor, is very good at legal defenses. That Al Queda is not a “state” and does not play fair seems to be about as far as the administration’s argument goes however. Depressingly lost on these self-styled patriots is the perspective that I think most of us learned as children. A patriotic perspective that taught that America is better than such practices and did the right thing even when it wasn’t fair. A perspective that understood that legal defenses to moral offenses are not very compelling whether in the Courts of Nürnberg or the Courts of Public Opinion.

Fortunately our Attorney General has announced his resignation; unfortunately the nominee for his replacement has been named as well: Alberto Gonzales. The same Alberto Gonzales that advised that the Geneva Convention was “quaint” and that by repudiating the Geneva Convention, the administration would have a defense against future accusations of war crimes. The same Alberto Gonzales that vigorously advocated a line of thought that lead to the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal.

I think the nickname “Sleazy Gonzales” will fit pretty well.

It is always dangerous to think things can’t get any worse. Certainly, in the case of our current Attorney General one might be tempted to think so, but Gonzales may well force some to rethink that conclusion.

But, there is little need to rethink your conclusion on the present Attorney General because he has remained regrettably consistent throughout his tenure. He further admonished us last week to get a firmer understanding of how our legal system works when he said:

Courts are not equipped to execute the law. They are not accountable to the people.

I must assume that since our Top Lawyer went to law school, he was offering this as instruction to the unwashed masses and not as an expression of a recently acquired personal understanding. It is, after all, fundamental to our system of government that the courts be a check on the power of the legislature and executive that is only accountable to the law itself. This is yet another instance where an administration official floats out statements that are objectively true, but which are intended to imply various meanings which are manifestly false. In this case, the implication is that the courts not being directly accountable to the people is somehow bad for America.

The obvious and unnerving irony of these remarks is that the Attorney General seems to feel that checks and balances are only required on the powers of the legislature and judiciary. This can be seen in the fact that any attempt to question the administration, or to check its abuses of power, is met with accusations of duplicity or ignorance. More unnerving still is the unwillingness of the media and political opposition to call the twisted rhetoric of this administration exactly that.

Technically, I suppose, the courts are not accountable to the people. But then again, to the extent that the past election was a referendum on the anti-American agenda of this administration, apparently neither is the Attorney general.

the tell-tale heart

2004-11-09T13:57:00.000-06:00

I am entering dangerous territory.

The time has come for this Curmudgeon to test the waters of the third rail of American friendship: Abortion. There is little that divides Americans with a passion the equal of that held for this topic. I proceed with more than a little trepidation, because I can foresee the possibility of posts going back and forth with some rather ugly epithets. This fear has kept me from this topic thus far, but it is my hope to bring a little sobriety and decorum to the discussion. May God grant us all the wisdom and forbearance to make it so.

Now, if you bother to ask me, you will find out that I am very concerned about a woman’s right to choose what to do with her own body. Heck, I even care about men’s bodies too. I am a civil libertarian to my very core but you might not know this if you listen solely to what those that support abortion ‘rights’ say about those of us who are opposed. We are not a monolithic whole.

What genuinely keeps this civil libertarian awake at night is the tragic reality that outside of Christian circles, there seems to be little concern on this issue for anything other than a woman’s right to choose. No apparent concern about what must be the possibility, even in the minds of even the most ardent abortion rights proponent, that lives are being ended by abortion procedures. And there is a reciprocal lack of sympathy from within the Christian community for the honest quest for what seems to many to be a simple and straightforward Liberty to decide one’s own fate.

This lamentable gap in mutual understanding on the issue is evident in the very words by which the belligerents choose to label themselves. The rhetorical chasm that separate the “Pro-Life” and “Pro-Choice” factions really needs no further elaboration beyond stating those labels. If IT is Life, then IT has the basic human right to life; if IT is not life, then IT is but tissue that would be clearly within a women’s right to make decisions regarding.

Aye, there’s the rub: defining life.

In ancient English common law, life legally began at the first breath. It could be properly argued that this was a sensible view for the law of the day. The law endeavors to be nothing if not pragmatic and the complications of a then common place still-born birth could, in that age of hereditary rights, be of staggering proportion.

But “modern” medicine is on the march and the ancient bright line defining Life does not seem so bright and narrow in a day when a fetus is potentially viable as early as the twentieth week of pregnancy. Many, including myself, question whether the viability test offers a reasonable and logically defensible check on uninhibited abortion practice. The obvious point is that we have seen the viability threshold retreat from birth at the time of the Norman Conquest, to twenty-eight weeks at the time of Roe v. Wade, to twenty weeks today. The viability threshold is destined to retreat further and further until viability occurs at the time of conception.

Clearly, we should hope for a definition of Life that does not vary with the available technology.

It is easy to see that viability as a test was never very viable to begin with even were it not for its relativistic nature. It has been pointed out by countless others that a newborn baby isn’t viable without the constant care of a parent and many elderly and handicapped are no better able to care for themselves than a twenty-eight week old fetus. Viability only makes sense as a legal test, not a moral test.

But of course, we can’t legislate morals, can we?

The intriguing thing to me has been for some time that there is a logical definition of life that does not rely on esoteric argument, uncertain science or the Word of God. A molecular biologist I know would tell you that in biological terms, life logically begins at conception-the completed genome, in their view, defines our human being in scientific terms. Science thus provides an obvious and reasonable bright line that gets discounted, I am convinced, because it also happens to map perfectly to the line set out in the Bible.

That standing for conception as the beginning of Life is consistently reduced in popular discourse to being solely a “religious belief” is nearly enough to make my head explode.

As heart wrenching as the arbitrary viability test is to me, more wrenching still is the plain truth that we can not even as a society agree that some abortion practices clearly are on the wrong side of any reasonable Life definition. That we as a society tolerate late term abortions-abortions well after the hypothetical point of viability-is enough to make this Curmudgeon cry often and profusely.

This whole matter hits closer to home for me in the last year: try telling my friends, whose beautiful little girl I was able to hold in my arms, all one pound of her, six weeks before she was “supposed” to be born, that a 38 week gestation does not produce a human being. I suspect that Miss Parker will not agree with the radical pro-abortion camp either when she gets a bit older.

But when the tears dry and I reflect on our situation, I ask myself what are we to do? A society which evidently supports a return to the ancient definition of Life is not likely soon to adopt the definition which in my view science and reason compels. And there is a corollary question that haunts me: why is it primarily the Christian community that is sensitive to this particular issue?

The reason this corollary is haunting to me is a product of very recent history. It is not so odd that the issue of abortion is closely tied to the Christian Church-Christians have long been at the forefront of human rights. The best and most obvious example is the Abolition movement of the nineteenth century which was most unsurprisingly a phenomenon of the Christian Church. I would expect that Christians, based on the historical record, would be the first of our society to point out a profound social ill such as this.

But we live in a often self-contradictory world and the juxtaposition of the Christian Right’s outlook on the human rights of the unborn with that of their outlook on the human rights of homosexuals and resident aliens can not be passed over without scrutiny.

I, for one, stand for human rights without regard to one’s personal viability, color of skin, religious creed, level of intelligence or unrepentant sinfulness. It is clear to this Curmudgeon that the disease that infects us is not intellectual per se, though as I’ve written, a lack of critical thinking skills in our citizenry exacerbates the problem. The primary disease affecting us is selfishness. We want people to have rights as long as they agree with us. We want babies to be human when it is convenient for the mother and society. We want quality education as long as it doesn’t cost too much, run afoul of other parts of our political ideology or interfere with having a first class football program.

“I want what I want, when I want it.”

My five year old said that, but it is virtually a slogan for our me-centric society. And when I look coldly and objectively at America, I do not see much reason to hope for better. America has slid very far, very fast and nobody is reaching for the brake. Worse yet, those of us who suggest the brake be thrown are labeled wackos by our friends and traitors by the Attorney General.

I am inevitably drawn back to my recent theme of the Christian’s proper role in politics by what can only be described as my rather bleak assessment of social trends: they say you can’t legislate morality, but “they” are wrong. We can certainly encapsulate morality into legislation: just ask the citizens of the states who passed the anti-gay marriage amendments.

Those of you who count themselves as one among a Moral Majority can legislate volume after volume and fulfill all of your statutory desires. A Majority can apparently do as it pleases in the Brave New America. But the conundrum faced by a Moral Majority is that a stack of laws that would fill the expanse of the US Code and Federal Register are of no avail if the larger society does not subscribe to values reflected therein.

In quiet moments, after you are spent from striving against widespread adversity to moral legislation, realize that until you change the hearts of men, you haven’t created a better society. Realize that rather than a moral society, you have created a society of the cowed and criminal.

And when you get to that truth, it becomes time to put down the red, white and blue campaign signs and pick up a Bible. And this time, rather than thumping the cover of the Good Book, open it and read it. There are hearts that need to be changed. There is Truth that Christians are commissioned to share.

And realize then that the hearts that perhaps need to be changed first, beat inside our own chests.

mourning in america

2004-11-03T16:52:00.000-06:00

I’ve been in a great mood thus far today. The election is over and maybe there will again be something substantively interesting for this Curmudgeon to blog over. It has been a hard couple of weeks for the de facto disenfranchised because all anybody has wanted to talk about is the election.

For the record, I was way off on my election prediction: I expected a Shrub victory at quite a bit larger of a margin than what he achieved. I based my prediction on the exploitation of fear by the GOP and apparently that was broadly the case, though it would appear that the fear of homosexuality was at least as great as that of the terrorists.

Nope. I didn’t see that coming.

But as the hours go by and my the energy fades from my personal jubilation at the nation finally choosing its preppy potentate of choice, I do sense that mourning is probably in order. As I survey the message boards, I detect unmasked triumphal ecstasy on the part of the 43 apologists and extreme bellicosity on the part of the Kerry crowd. These feelings are unlikely to be buried by today’s calls for healing.

I did see one news story that directly stated the obvious truth: this election was fantastic for incumbents. Very few of the incumbents were turned out though of course there was the notable firing of Daschle. I would like to think that the re-election of incumbents was notably high for good and honorable reasons. It would be comforting to believe that these politicians are doing a great job and that the voters were confident in casting their votes, but of course that is not at all what happened.

The problem is there are no real choices in elections for most Americans. We have for the most part neatly divided into two camps, and Cowboys do not vote for Indians. The actual number of swing voters is small and shrinking. So we repeat this cycle over and over, casting our vote for our party man and ensuring that the same old politicians get returned to office year after year.

Instead of calling it Election Day, they should call it Ground Hog Day.

Third party voting appears to have been virtually non-existent this election and that saddens me far more than returning the Shrub who would be King to office. While I firmly believe that the damage that will be done over the next four years may well be permanent and unrepairable, it would nice to have a little hope that people might actually wake up to voting for change rather than the lesser evil.

If you want to really get down about things, realize that a lot of the voters subjectively were voting for change.

But a gadfly such as myself needs much to complain about and I have been assured by this election of a cornucopia of good material-or at least that might be my attitude if I didn’t actually care about America. Rather, what begins today for me is a renewed quest to make a difference in our society and my vehicle for this endeavor is this blog for now.

And in regards to the Disenfranchised Curmudgeon, I would ask for your prayers. For those of you who castigate me as a Liberal, I would ask that you pray for my greater wisdom in expressing my steadfast confidence in our traditional values of personal freedom. For those of you who condemn my imputed Conservatism, I would ask that you pray for a strengthening of my compassion so that I might more effectively advocate for those in our society that are the most needy. And lastly, for those of you who understand that I do not fit into these political moulds and find some form of common cause with me, please pray that my readership can grow and that together, we can have some small part in changing America for the better.
Please hurry. Tempus fugit.

don’t worry, vote preppy

2004-10-18T10:49:00.000-05:00

Americans will be going to the polls in a fortnight to chose which modern American aristocrat they wish to reign over them for the next four years. As you might easily guess, I will not be joining those of you who choose to participate.

I wrestled with that decision considerably and the abstention is not something I do whimsically or even happily. If you have read the earlier discussions here regarding this matter, you know that I have been properly chastised and hopefully sufficiently penitent for my dereliction of civic duty. My political angst is real and painful.

DavidR quite correctly pointed out that my choice not to vote stands for nothing. And I do agree with him on that point. But, I still just do not have the stomach to vote for any of the options that are available. I am weak-I know this. Though I will not be joining you at the polls, I would like to share my prediction on the outcome. And of course, I’d like to invite my readers to share their predictions as well.

Nothing has happened which has changed my opinion that Shrub will be re-elected. As I read the chicken bones, I do not see a landslide in the works, but I do think it will be a more solid victory than the last time.

My rationale for anticipating re-election continues to be the GOP’s extraordinary success in feeding and exploiting the fears of the American people. While it is true that there is a motivated contingent of Shrub haters out there, hatred does not even come close to fear as a motivator. I anticipate that the Religious Right and other John Wayne fans will be out in numbers that are unprecedented. The anti-Shrub crowd has nothing in its arsenal comparable to patriotically clad religiosity that Shrub uses to marshal the minions of the Religious Right.

You have to see this phenomenon on the inside to understand what I’m talking about. Its scary.

But if that is the bad news, the good news is that I do not think Shrub’s coattails will be long and we could see a Democratically controlled Congress. This could bring back the “bad” old days of “deadlock” so at least that possibility brings me some cheer. The only thing that disturbs me more than failing to achieve radical reform, is continuing on the path we are on. Political deadlock at least throws an obstacle in the way of the ruling class.

I am still wrestling with what I should do over the next two or three years to change my Disenfranchised status. Alas, it seems that other than casting a vote for the lesser of the evils that I will have no more choice then than I do now. Perhaps I should make an attempt to get my name written in on a few Texas ballots as a protest vote?

One thing is clear to me now: I would like to grow the readership of the Disenfranchised Curmudgeon. Originally, this was not a goal of mine but arguments here and elsewhere have convinced me that it is a small contribution I can make to attempt for a better America. Certainly no smaller of a contribution than casting a vote in the upcoming election. Any suggestions on how to broaden my circulation would be appreciated assuming you think I have something worthy to offer.

So there you have it: my predictions and predicament. I’m happy for those of you who feel that one of these two preppies represent less of a problematic vote than the other. Thrilled for those few of you who are actually pleased with your candidate in a positive way.

I’m genuinely jealous of that.

beginning at the middle

2004-10-11T16:53:00.000-05:00

As I sit down to organize my thoughts about the best approach to fixing our public education system, I feel a bit like policy makers must have felt in pursuing a fix of US equity markets after the crash of 1929. Events have demonstrated with devastating clarity that the system is broke and no serious person with any knowledge of the situation denies that repair are in order, but the task is so daunting that it is hard to know where to begin.

So, lets begin toward the end: High School.

High School in America is a joke for most children. Academic standards are ridiculously low and distractions are ridiculously high. I think more than any other phase of childhood education, this is where the most radical change will be necessary. Or at least radical in the sense of changing our collective notion of what High School is all about.

The problem of where to begin thus pops up immediately because the first change I would make in High School is to reintroduce the 8th Grade diploma. Bear with me: I have to start somewhere. For the purpose of discussion, I’m assuming some fixing has gone on at early grade levels because a functional illiterate who holds an 8th Grade diploma is no better off than a functional illiterate holding a 12th Grade diploma. My idea in this regard is that by 8th grade graduation, surely it is reasonable to expect that a pupil will have adequately covered the three Rs.

Creating this bright line distinction and enforcing that the diploma actually means something would free the High School years for something more useful. Anyone who has been to High School in the last forty years understands that are kids who are going to college and those who are not-High School should reflect that reality. Kids who are college bound should get a real college-prep school where things like Calculus, Greek and written examination are the norm and not just reserved for those that track high based on the tests. Similarly, kids who choose vocational programs should get the real deal: actually learning how to be an electrician and how to get a job.

And before I go further, comment posts regarding how great their High School’s Advanced Placement programs were will be summarily deleted: I’m talking about the real world, not the privileged suburbanite wonderland that most of this Curmudgeon’s friends went to school in and send their kids to as adults. OK, not really. I still have an open posting policy, but I will ignore such dribble.

Here is the great news in my proposed scheme: because the 8th Grade education means that the basic skills have been acquired, switching between College Prep and Vocational programs is greatly simplified. Certainly remedial work would be necessary going either direction, but the artificial wall that says, “since you scored low on an exam in fourth grade, there is no way you are getting into Calculus” can be done away with forever. And as a bonus, the High School drop out would find themselves looking for work yet possessing skills that would actually make them useful to potential employers. I’ll bet we can get Wal-Mart to pay for some of this just because of the tremendous off-set they would get from not having to perform so much remedial education.

This transition would be tough, but worth it. And though I like these ideas, I think they still come up short in addressing some of the underlying social problems.

Which, of course, leads me to other radical ideas.

Eliminating sports from public education really shouldn’t seem all that radical. But it is clear that we must do this if we are to get serious. Lets face it, the transition period alone will be so difficult that the kids must be freed from distraction. There is nothing at all radical about suggesting that our kids focus on academics. Sports is the 800 pound gorilla that dominates on our public school campuses and it is time to cage the beast.

If you are distressed by this possibility, I would ask you examine closely why it is so bothersome to you. Then weigh that against the inadequate education of generations of kids and see how the scales do not balance.

It isn’t that I think Physical activity is unimportant for kids, because I certainly see the utility. And I definitely would not abandon Physical Education for younger kids as the serotonin regulation is itself invaluable to a good academic atmosphere. The problem is the culture we create around athletics in the older grades that is damaging to the athletes and to the students. And frankly, it just isn’t as important as an education.

Hey, if you kid is the next Tony Mandarich, send him to an after school program for the physically gifted. There simply is no more time to waste on half-measures and idealistic bull-feathers.

And if you think this simple plan is radical, just wait till you hear what I want to do to elementary schools.

damn the estúpidos, full speed ahead

2004-09-21T14:24:00.000-05:00

I have always found the United Negro College Fund’s famous slogan, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste”, intriguing for several reasons, not the least of which is that on the surface, it appears to state an axiom. But the UNCF has it right on a deeper level too because what indeed is happening throughout American society is a waste of mental capacity on a scale that defies the use of ordinary adjectives. “Tragic” just does not do the subject justice.

It is tempting to use this space to document the tragic magnitude of our growing stupidity, but today that is not my purpose. Experts of every political persuasion have weighed in to help quantify the situation and their conclusions as to the state of things are not pretty no matter what agenda they might ultimately espouse. I will let you dig those details out if it interests you. The more important question is to ask what then shall we do?

There are a lot of proposed answers to this fundamental query, but a few ideas stand out to me as worthy of consideration. In all seriousness I must add, however, that just about anything different than what we are doing now could (and perhaps should) be tried as it is hard to imagine what it could possibly hurt. In future blog entries, assuming there is continuing reader interest in the subject of education, I may delve into any of a number of school reforms that I would like to consider, but for today I would like to discuss one of my old favorites, school vouchers.

A great deal of discussion in recent years has focused on vouchers though there has actually been very little actual implementation of voucher programs. A not too old Brookings Institution Forum on this subject can be read here if you want some decent objective background on vouchers.

I have supported vouchers since my Junior year in High School when I read Milton Friedman’s popular book, “Free to Choose”. Friedman’s work was sufficiently inspiring to me that I wrote my Senior Thesis on the subject and was lucky enough to escape my English teacher’s wrath with a decent grade. The Free Market seemed to me then to be just the fix for what was broken in public education.

I have changed a bit since then.

I still support vouchers but my rationale has shifted. In my concept of an ideal world, education would be universal, free and of the highest quality. Sadly, I have given up hope that the current scheme can be expected to attain even a mediocre quality, much less something better. I understand clearly that vouchers are not likely to be comprehensive solutions to the problems that confront education and which reach far beyond the schools to society as a whole. What remains of my idealistic notions, however, is the realization that vouchers do offer near-term hope for the most needy among us.

I have listened to the idealists tell me how disastrous an idea vouchers are for a quarter century. In those twenty-five years of glorious rhetoric and fine speeches education has changed little yet still the politicians still tell us that we must patiently fix what we have. From the “Education President” (Reagan) down to Shrub’s “No Child Left Behind” program, every Presidential candidate and administration has touted its educational agenda often and loudly. Clinton was especially eloquent on the subject.

Listen closely.

That great sucking sound is the rushing of political hot air into children’s minds displacing the intellectual promise that once dwelled there.

At this time of my life I no longer trust the free market with the reckless abandon of my youth. I would prefer certain things, such as education, were not dictated by the market, though perhaps at times this is the best we can do. While vouchers may be a less than ideal solution, they are not in any way a choice of a lesser evil-they are a good choice. Proof of their desirability can be found in the overwhelming support shown for vouchers and charter schools among the poorest Americans. Parents are crying out for help.

Even if you are philosophically opposed to vouchers and market forces as a permanent solution, you need to examine the long term consequences of inaction and immediate benefits of giving it a try as an interim solution. Clearly, the current public system is not going to reform any time soon.

Every year that passes condemns more minds to terrible waste. It is time to quit deluding ourselves.

In order to be clear on what I am advocating, I would like to briefly describe what a voucher is and how they benefit students in both public and private schools. Vouchers are certificates issued by the government to allow parents to pay for their children to go to a school of their choice using money that would ordinarily be used to educate their child in the public school. In most voucher proposals, the voucher amount is a fraction of the annual per student expenditure for public school.

I’ll use some rough round numbers to illustrate how this would work. The national average expenditure per student per year is in the area of $8,000. The government would issue a voucher at a statutory percentage in the area of 75% resulting in a voucher amount of around $6,000. The parent would then be able to use that $6,000 for tuition payment to accredited schools. Studies have show that high percentage vouchers (60 to 80 percent) would be large enough in most areas to cover tuition at existing private schools.

There are two benefits to the voucher scheme that are not immediately obvious. The first is that new educational opportunities would emerge that target parents and students that have now have $6,000 to spend as an education consumer. The second, and perhaps most important benefit is that the public schools end up relatively better off in terms of the financial resources available per student because for every student that leaves, they leave behind $2,000 give or take depending on the exact implementation.

Typical of our dumbed down society, we never hear of these benefits because they are harder to understand than the critical sounds bites of “only the difficult students will remain” and “poor kids won’t be able to benefit”. The truth is that poor parents are the ones clamoring for the hope of vouchers and parents of low performers should be, though often their parents are part of the stupid cycle themselves.

This is not to say that the voucher criticisms are without merit. These criticisms should be fully aired in our public discourse.

Indeed, I share the same concerns. It will be difficult for poor kids to get transportation to the school of their parents choice and there probably will be a greater exodus of high performing students than low performing ones. But there are ways of addressing transportation issues if we can get it out on the table. And frankly, given the extensive tracking that is already going on in the classroom, the best students do not mix much with the low performers in any school as it is now. Unlike the status quo there is hope for those “left behind”: additional financial resources available due to vouchers can be used to increase the teacher-to-student ratio finally giving the low performing students the extra attention they need and deserve.

If you can not tell from my passionate tone, I could discuss this forever and produce a blog entry that would make for an even more effective insomnia solution than my typical offerings, so I will restrain myself. But let me return to where I started and suggest that regardless of the merits of the arguments and where we might determine to head as a long-term solution, vouchers have sufficient merit to compel their implementation NOW.

Vouchers may be flawed and imperfect, but the critics have been empty handed for the last four decades. Further patience will breed more stupidity; more dysfunctional youth; more decay in our weakened social fabric. It is time to act decisively.

Philosophical debates are wonderful. In general, I’m a chief instigator when it comes to this kind of careful deliberation, but America is drowning in stupidity before our eyes. Let us deliberate long and vigorously on this most crucial of subjects yet not forget to throw a few life preservers to the drowning.

Maybe this will buy us some time to figure out how to build a seaworthy boat.

its the stupid, stupid

2004-09-10T10:52:00.000-05:00

When you are a schoolboy, you do not necessarily stop and think about the education you are receiving in any structured way. Like you, my gentle suffering blog readers, I learned to think critically as a part of the process of learning. This is a most normal and natural thing.

I did not give it a thought that is until my Sophomore year in High School when I began tutoring. What stunned me in my experiences as a tutor was the discovery that most of my students were actually extremely bright and though obviously intellectually capable, they amazingly, had never learned how to think deductively. This was stunning because I never gave much thought to such matters. Stunning because the lack of these basic intellectual tools substantially impaired my student’s abilities to comprehend anything that required more thought than simple memorization. Suddenly it was brought into clear focus for me how poorly our schools were serving the majority of it’s students.

This whole experience jarred me in a profound way.

So, from a very early time in my life, it has seemed blindingly obvious to me that there is little in this world of greater importance than the proper education of our youth. It did not take any special insight then or now to see that a citizenry that does not possess even the most fundamental tools for critical thought dooms its nation to ultimate failure. How is a citizen who must exert themselves strenuously in order to make the simplest of deductions, if they are capable of even that much thought, to be expected to cast an intelligent vote? How can they be expected to hold any but the most menial of jobs? They obviously can not and the social ramifications of the resulting mass stupidity are of empire destroying proportions.

Sadly, very few Americans are concerned about the state of American stupidity. A bit of Googling unearthed an interesting summary of polling information about the priorities of voters that can be found here. What is clear both from my personal experience and this data is that though education may be on the list of the concerns of Americans, it is down there among the list of “other” things that people worry about in addition to the “big” problems.

Education is not a problem. Education is the problem.

It may in fact be reasonable to question my assertion that education is the most critical problem facing our society. Issues such as Global Terrorism and the Healthcare System meltdown have a rightful place at the center of our attention. But the present state of American stupidity is such that it exacerbates the pressing issues that typically top priority lists and therefore education assumes a position of greater significance than the politically minded might suggest.

A superficial examination of current events demonstrates the centrality of the role of stupidity in our current affairs. An America whose citizens reasoned well would have better understood the Middle Eastern powder keg and taken action long before the fuse was lit. If We The People were equipped by our schools to think critically, we would understand that not proactively fixing our healthcare system is inviting disaster. Eschewing substantive analysis, the people instead passionately respond to the sound bites that invoke symbols such as Patriotism and Socialism.

The undeniable passion of the people’s response can sometimes be so overwhelming that you can almost lose sight of the fact that there is no real content buttressing the convictions.

The political elite have learned to play this game well. A stupid America consistently elects politicians with no concern about any future which might exist past the next election. Politicians do not need to concern themselves with the Future because stupid Americans do not hold them accountable in a serious analytical sense of accountability. Rather, the political elite only need to concern themselves as to how effectively they can “spin” the outcomes when experience demonstrates their sweeping rhetorical flourishes to be nothing more than salesmanship.

That the word “spin” has become so much a part of our language that I could have properly omitted the quotation marks in the previous sentence speaks volumes regarding our intellectual devolution.

It is clear then that ranking education among the other issues confronting our society is dangerous and short sighted. While it is true that the incremental cost of additional stupidity is low, when you take the longer view there is nothing so certain to produce our downfall than a poorly educated electorate.

This process of destruction is in full swing already-just look around you. Or better yet, watch the upcoming Presidential debates. It will be sobering if you understand that the presentations, which are only nominally debates, are packaged for the level of education which is actually out there in our formerly great nation.

Once you understand the state of stupidity in our land, it is better for your mental health if you avoid the next step of logical deduction. Better to not realize how irrelevant you have become to our political process.

Far better to not grasp that swaying the stupid people is all that matters.

evil in our midst

2004-08-05T12:35:00.000-05:00

It was said on September 12, 2001 that “everything changed” on 9-11. This Curmudgeon, for one, never ascribed to that notion. The only thing that really changed that day was the level of awareness of the American people as to the risks and challenges that lay ahead of us. The increased awareness is of course a good thing-unless the awareness turns into panic.

And panic we did over the knowledge that those who would attack The Home Of The Free are already here in our midst. The terrorism hysteria manifested itself in the atrocious piece of legislation known audaciously as “The Patriot Act”.

Never in our history since the Alien and Sedition Acts have we been quite so cavalier in our attitude toward the Constitution. Certainly we have had other Chief Executives that bent and fractured their oath to defend the Constitution, but what stood out during the Patriot Act rubber stamping extravaganza was the Silence of the opposition. That Congress put up no fight whatsoever against warrantless searches and indefinite detention of suspects without charges is unconscionable.

I have been a strident critic of the Executive and Legislative branches of our government which rushed to grab power and placate fears with no regard to our Constitution and legacy of Human Rights, but it is an interesting question of whether the harm done by the Patriot Act is permanent or something more transient. It will be decades before we know the answer to this question, but I for one will be surprised if the damage done by allowing Congress to expand its powers in such a grandiose fashion disappears into the legislative sunset. My hunch is that the legal briefs have already been written that rely on the historical and legal precedent that Congress may use emergency powers to re-write our fundamental Constitutional protections in whatever manner they see fit. And of course if the Congress can do it in an emergency, then really “We the People” have not retained that inalienable right after all.

But I wish to lay aside the matter of whether the undoable can be undone and for a naively optimistic moment assume that reason and sound jurisprudence will return to our public discussion. It has been suggested to me that our time would be well spent to debate as a nation exactly where we will head and what we will tolerate when the “next 9-11” inevitably hits. I too think that would be wise, so here is my short contribution to the debate.

Technology is steadily eliminating what little privacy we have and in my view, we must resist all attempts to relax the proscriptions against government intrusion into our lives. Of course that piece of rhetoric, left to stand on its own, neatly side-steps the question of how permissible and impermissible intrusion might be defined, but I wish to pause on this basic point just the same.

Pause to simply point out the simple truth that Government, unfettered by Constitutional strictures, tends to accumulate power and to oppress its citizens. History is rife with examples of this axiom and our founders sought to protect its posterity from this fundamental tendency toward the accumulation of power. Our socio-legal system consists of a fine balance between the needs of the individual and those of the larger society. What is unique in our Republic is that we recognize the legal supremacy of individual liberties as a counterweight to the excesses of a government nominally pursuing the “general welfare”. This bit of genius is a big part of what has made America different and we should not abandon these fundamental precepts lightly.

But, on to specifics. What should be permissible police investigation in a nation that also recognizes extraordinary threats that are internal? My answer is simple: anything with a warrant. Anything where an officer of the law can make the case for “Probable Cause” to an independent judicial body. I for one do not buy the argument advanced by the hysteria generating political class that warrants are too burdensome. This simply does not pass the smell test. No matter how many times the Attorney General might repeat this lie, it will not make it true.

It is well established in our jurisprudence that warrants may be obtained under exigent circumstance through a phone call to a judge. I am not being novel or unrealistic when I suggest that this method for obtaining warrants can and should be expanded to assist in the fight against terrorism. Far better to add enough judges to the bench to make them accessible than to throw out the Fourth Amendment in a fevered rage. Frankly, this is so obvious and reasonable that I am stunned that we seldom hear it advanced. So much for our “leaders” who claim to care about civil liberties and who are sworn to defend the Constitution.

We hear much of data mining as well and it is suggested by some that data mining is new and distinct from sifting other forms of information. My Grandma had a technical term for that type of assertion: hogwash. Data is nothing but facts reduced to digital representation. It is a logical fallacy to suggest somehow a fact on a piece of paper in someone’s possession is ontologically different because it has been digitally recorded and is easily obtained. The key is in “easily obtained”. The desire for unfettered data mining is driven by the reality that it is easier than real police work.

I am not suggesting that data mining will not work. On the contrary, I understand that it can be a very effective tool for fighting all sorts of crimes. The problem I have with it is the cost to our liberties. This is a classic “slippery slope” from which there is no climbing back up. Can anyone doubt that once this “data” is accumulated that it will not be preserved forever no matter how unwise we might deem it to be in retrospect?

But only by looking at this from a philosophical perspective does this become truly terrifying. If we allow unfettered data mining, gone are the protections afforded us by the legal requirement of “reasonable suspicion”. Instead, we have entered a new and fundamentally different world where no suspicion whatsoever is required to investigate your purchases, education, or reading habits.

And if you believe the Attorney General’s statements to the effect of, “well, we just won’t use these powers in that way”, then you need to see your doctor about adjusting your Prozac prescription.

It doesn’t sadden me so much that there are few people who view such governmental over-reaching with outrage. What really depresses me is that there are precious few who even recognize that there are issues here worthy of discussion. These are matters that would have put previous generations in a complete uproar, but contemporary America is just rolling over and accepting it without real discussion.

Such is the end result of the dumbing down process our country has undergone over the last few decades. We are dumbed down to the point that a surprising number of Americans actually think that Shrub is a bright and honest guy.

There is indeed evil in our midst and something must be done. Determining that something to do gets difficult though when one understands that the evil is not alien to our society after all.

Exceedingly difficult when the evil turns out to be us.

what it was

2004-07-29T16:58:00.000-05:00

My last blog post discussing leadership clearly missed the mark with most of the Disenfranchised Curmudgeon readers, so let me take a moment to discuss leadership and where I see that it is lacking.

Over the course of my life, the United States has faced a number of pressing challenges. An arguable list, presented in no particular order, of the most pressing would include: Poverty, Healthcare, Education, the Federal Debt, Terrorism and of course, the Cold War. That is one down, with five to go, which is pretty pathetic when we have heard so much about these problems from our leaders for the last four decades.

I do not mean to suggest in any way that there are available magical fixes because clearly, each of these items are substantial. What is amazing is that with all of the talk, very little has changed with regard to these five pressing issues. Stop and reflect if you will on the rhetoric you have heard-there has been a lot of it. Yet year after year, nothing changes and for the most part, exclusive of some short term Clinton era progress on the Federal Debt, things are pretty much unchanged from where we were thirty years ago.

But of course there is that sixth item: the Cold War.

While often we credit Reagan with winning the Cold War, I think that is somewhat misplaced. Reagan’s focus on this issue and his moving speeches make this a natural thing to attribute to him. I think if one is honest, however, credit is much more diffuse and belongs to the entire march of the Federal government from Truman down to Reagan including the Congress and bureaucrats who supported them. Our leaders were constant in recognizing the threat of communism and while specific policies along the way may have been misconceived, the big idea still held our focus.

The truth is that fighting the Cold War is the only thing I can think of in my lifetime that has been largely outside the realm of politics. I am not conveniently forgetting McCarthyism, Vietnam or any of the other splinter controversies that arose which clearly had political dimensions either. I’m making the point that the big idea, that Communism was dangerous to freedom and must be countered, was something with which few Americans disagreed.

Many people now argue, and to some extent I agree, that the failure of the Soviet block was more a matter of inevitability than of the West’s resolute stance. I think that is an interesting discussion, but not the one I’m seeking at the moment. My interest is rather in the singular focus we had as a nation on the Cold War and the question I ask is why can’t we have that focus on the other five issues of our time? Or at least one or two of those issues?

The truth is that we now have a fundamentally different and more self interested political elite that only cares about the issues as political tools. There has always been politics and back room deals in America and I certainly don’t mean to paint a pristine picture of our past. But it is true that in the past our leaders did often actually arise to challenges that confronted us in meaningful non-partisan ways.

But this is not our America today.

I was a political junkie much of my life. I remember the day it started clearly. I was young and Nixon was on TV resigning as President. I was too young to understand, but knew that my Parents were big Nixon supporters and that it was all a big deal. I actually watched much of the Watergate hearings even though it was way beyond my ability to understand-clearly I was a strange kid. And I did not miss much until about 1995.

By 1995 I had been watching the political back and forth for over twenty years. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the Clinton era budget wars. I cast my vote for the GOP for many years largely because of my perception of the GOP as being the fiscal conservatives. Guess what? Nothing changed! It left me wondering what had I been watching all of these years if it was not meaningful policy discussion?

Finally this bumpkin got it: What it was, was political football.

Football is exactly the right description too. The object is to win points by scoring on your opponent. The best way to score, is beat the opponent into submission. Nothing matters but that your team wins and even a little stickum and steroids doesn’t bother the fans that much if it is to their team’s advantage. Now I really enjoy seeing this played out on a real gridiron, but not in policy debate.

What we need is someone who can rise above all of this political noise and get to the business of solving problems. But this will never happen from the two major parties because the object for them is to win the game. Solving problems will inevitably involve compromise on the part of most Americans and it will take real leadership to both arrive at and sell compromise.

So I ask the ether, who we should turn to? I ask this important question seriously because I do not see that person anywhere I turn.

Ultimately, responsibility for all of this falls on We The People. We elect these vermin. Place the blame on us. All too often as individuals we fall into the trap of blaming the other political party, but my Grandma had it right those many years ago: “Its them Fat Cats”.

Given the track record of the past forty years, if you vote for a Democrat or a Republican, I simply think expecting substantial change is at the very least unreasonable. And I would suggest that perhaps if you are content to cast a vote for one of these two options, perhaps a part of the problem is you.

I am not suggesting that by not voting that this Curmudgeon is somehow not a part of the problem either. Many of you have pointed this out to me through private email and the blog. So please know that I harbor substantial guilt over the matter and hence my obsession with the subject of where to turn in this time of crisis. I may not know what the answer is, but I know at least two items on this multiple choice quiz which are no answer at all.

outside the box

2004-07-19T13:15:00.000-05:00

The headlines read “Nader campaign could hurt Kerry in Minnesota”. Over the last few months, there have been numerous stories about how Nader is hurting Kerry’s bid for the Presidency in states that are hotly contested. I’ve read stories about Blue v. Red States and Blue v. Red states of mind, analysis of how Nader affects swing voters, and diatribes urging that a vote for Nader is a vote for 43’s reelection.

What seems to me to be missing is a discussion of issues.

An issue free election is nothing new for Americans. I think we have come to expect it, if not favor it. As I said in an earlier post, we have come to enjoy the sport of politics more than the object: sound policy. Oh, we get superficial policy discussions. The kind of discussions that usually start and end with a version of Vote For Me because I support Puppy Dogs. We will get plenty of platitudes and very little rationale.

And the truth is, the rationale has ceased to matter for the political class. They have mastered a language that suits their purposes by helping them avoid accountability for ever having a genuine thought or passion.

Substance is never more filtered out of our information superhighway than it is in media coverage of third party candidates. I do not remember the last time I saw a story that actually discussed any of the Third Party or independent candidates positions on the issues, though truthfully, I haven’t looked that hard. But then, that is part of the point-the information that is most readily available to the majority of Americans discusses politics, not issues.

The sad truth is that we would all be better off if we spent a little time listening to the other voices out there. I am not a Green by any stretch of the imagination, but they have some ideas worth hearing, as do the Libertarians, Reformers and Progressives (surely there is a party out there somewhere touting that tried and true label). We are in such a collective hurry to cast aside candidates that are perceived as not viable, that we throw the issues baby out with the political bathwater.

What we need desperately is a viable third voice in our national conversation.

Ross Perot’s candidacy illustrated that our present deadlock might be breakable. The problem with the Reform party was not its platform, but rather its Favorite Sons (Perot and Ventura). Still, Perot demonstrated that stars get attention in our culture. It is a sad comment in our society that star-power is a prerequisite, but if we are going to get a reform minded candidate, it will not come from the two major parties and the campaign finance situation dictates that such a candidate would need instant recognition to have any hope of success. What we need is a star with their mental faculties reasonably in tact and who actually cares where we are headed as a nation.

I have no particular person in mind when I make this suggestion, though I would like to give a short list for the purpose of creating discussion and stimulating thought. This list is not a list of people I am advocating, but rather some that might seem plausible in the general sense of being discussed as representative of a class of individuals. I have no idea as to whether any of these would in fact exhibit The Right Stuff.

1) Bill Gates
2) Roger Staubach
3) Ron Howard
4) Jane Pauley
5) Charles Barkley
6) Ellen DeGeneres
7) Dennis Miller
8) Dr. Phil (McGraw)
9) John McCain (as an independent)

So there is some names thrown out for your consideration. Any thoughts? Anybody you think should be on the list (this Curmudgeon excepted, of course).

What is clear above all else to me is that the choices we face in the voting booth are really not choices at all. Our votes seem to seldom rise above the level of a vote against a person or issue, or a choice of the lesser of evils. It is my prayer that there is some genuine American out there with the resources and desire to change our destiny before we are completely lost.

If you are out there, please hurry. Time is short.

gut check

2004-06-22T09:48:00.000-05:00

Foreword

I found this old message board post that I wrote about nine years ago and thought I might share it and some additional thoughts here. Because it was originally a response to another post on that board, it will require a short introduction.

I was responding to a person known as Kirk who was a notorious anti-American extremist. He had often made great noise about how little credit America deserves for freedom in the world and as you will guess reading my post, his central claim in the specific post that roused my ire was that America has no “guts”. Some of my choice of emphasis may appear odd in here but I was partially responding to some other specific assertions about various American involvements and motivations. Why he incensed me more than usual on that particular day I do not remember.

Here is what I said then for your consideration. An Afterword will follow as well.

I’m not really sure what GUTS are, but, I will take a stab at explaining how America has them.

In the 17th Century, people seeking the freedom to practice their religion left Europe to settle a new and unknown continent. They gave up the security of the known and braved a treacherous sea journey to travel to a wild and inhospitable place called America. The first settlements were abysmal failures-but still they came. These first patriots starved and they worked and then they starved some more. They were killed by the indigenous people and isolated from civilization- but they stayed to pursue the idea of Freedom. Maybe that is GUTS?

In 1769, most people would have sneered at the thought of colonial secession from the British Empire. It was unthinkable. But, by 1775 attitudes had changed and their emerged a consensus among American leadership that something must be done or the Freedom which they had enjoyed might be permanently snatched away. They stood up to one of the world’s great powers and risked everything in the cause of Freedom. The soldiers of the Continental Army were volunteers who followed Washington though they were starving, unclothed and engaged in what appeared to be a hopeless battle, all in the cause of Freedom. Maybe that is GUTS?

Soon after their revolution, America again faced a crisis. The economy was in a shambles and the Union was in name only. The leadership again met to set things straight and they proposed a new Constitution that would protect Freedom for all time. They did this in spite of the fact that all evidence would lead one to believe that a Union of this sort was not possible. Every delegate to the Constitutional Convention had more to lose than to gain by this stronger Union. After all, they were the leadership of their own States and what they proposed was to give up much of their power. Rather than continue the proven path of State independence and luxuriate in their own personal ascendancy to power, they chose the less likely course of Union. This they did in the cause of Freedom. Maybe that is GUTS?

Soon this new Nation’s legitimacy was challenged by the Barbary pirates and again Great Britain. Rather than pay tribute to foreign despots as were many of the "great" nations, America took the war to the shores of Tripoli and won international respect for the cause of Freedom. Soon, rather than submit to the conscription of its citizens into the Royal Navy, America again fought Britain and after great suffering were victorious. This victory was won in spite of long odds and early devastating defeats. The new nation fought on in the name of Freedom and prevailed. Maybe that is GUTS?

By the middle of the 19th century, the young nation was torn asunder by the astonishing lack of freedom of black Americans. America fought herself in a great internal battle that would determine what Freedom meant to its citizens. The war went on for years because her leadership insisted that the American States would stay united and her people, all her people this time, would be Free. This struggle for Freedom continued in spite of the temptation to end the struggle. After all, what threat could a new Southern nation be to the industrial North? Politically, Lincoln had every thing to gain by ending the war but America fought on in the name of Freedom. Maybe that is GUTS?

When Germany sank the Lusitania and sparked direct American involvement in W.W.I, many American were already overseas serving in French and English uniforms. It was tempting for America to sit out this war completely. After all, the war was principally a stalemate and there was little threat to the Freedom enjoyed on American soil. America could of easily ignored the loss of a few ships and allowed Britain and France to continue the fight on their own, but, what is Freedom worth if foreign powers can attack our citizens with impunity? America went to war again in the cause of freedom and her sons died a death just as real the sons of France and England. This sacrifice was not viewed as vain because we shed our blood for the idea of Freedom. Maybe that is GUTS?

When World War Two came to American shores in 1941, the American industrial machine was already producing much of the armaments being used by the Allied nations in defense of Freedom. Americans again shed blood in the cause of Freedom when her youth went ashore in Normandy rather than Honshu. The physical threat to America in the 1940s was the one from the West not the East, but, America knew that a Europe liberated by the Red Army would not enjoy Liberty even if the yoke of Nazism was throw off with American supplied weapons. America chose to engage Hitler before Tojo because of Freedom and American blood spilled in pools that were just as red as the pools of blood that the English sons died in. At the end of this terrible war, America used the Atomic Bomb in a terrible display that brought a quick end to the bloody conflict and for the first time democracy to Japan. America was winning the Pacific war long before 1945, and the A-bomb was not the only way to defeat the Empire of Japan. Had that bomb not been dropped, the sons of England, France, Australia, Canada and many other great nations would have died along side Americans because this would have been required to advance the cause of Freedom. Maybe that is GUTS.

Kirk, you may find me to be "unduly proud" but I have no shame in extolling the virtues of my country. I take nothing away from other nations when I waive an American flag. Your implicit assertion that the American contribution to the cause of freedom is so minimal that it should be ridiculed is an assertion that I find offensive. The irony of your disdain for America is that if brave patriots had not made the sacrifices I described in detail, you would probably be brushing up on your German or Russian today rather than posting to the internet. If your ideas were not so pathetic, you would be funny.

America is far from perfect but, as always, we are striving to be better. Do not doubt our willingness to sacrifice for a noble cause; we have proven that in sacrifices of the past. We will stand aside the nations of the world who also love freedom and with them continue to defend that which we hold dear. Soon, the whole world will enjoy the Freedom which we are privileged to know, and, God willing, the Dream which is America, will become the Reality of the World.

Afterword

Please don’t send me emails castigating (or praising) me for my turn toward super-nationalism-I wrote this almost ten years ago. Even then my rhetoric went further than did my actual heart on the matter. Still, I would only change my tone today: the substance of what I said, I still stand by. I had no thought of making a balanced presentation when I wrote that and I don’t regret failing to make a more subtle analysis of the reluctance of America to enter both of the great twentieth century world conflicts.

Even in the short years since I wrote that, however, America, or perhaps more accurately American Idealism, has eroded considerably. Frankly, I do not think that today I could muster the enthusiasm to respond to Kirk that I had then. I am posting this in part to perhaps establish my credentials with you as a reformed super-patriot. Perhaps in part also to just be a bit more transparent to those of you who take the time to read these words.

I am well aware that often I come down pretty hard on America and my fellow Americans. I would submit that this is in part because of the road that I have traveled to get here. I’m a bit like an addict: nobody hates drugs like a recovering drug addict. Perhaps my path less traveled might help someone else in their struggle to overcome their own addiction to super-nationalism.

Rest assured that it is my sincere hope and prayer that America recovers its lost senses- the world needs us to regain our composure. I may not feel as present tense patriotic as I did when I wrote the earlier message board post, but that void has been replaced in my heart not by disloyalty or loathing, but by melancholy. I now fear that the Dream which is America will not only fail to be the Reality of the World, but also that it has already tragically failed to continue to be the dream of even Americans.

rebuilding esteem

2004-06-17T14:51:00.000-05:00

Only the most closed minded American neocon would be unwilling to admit now that America’s prestige in the world has sunk to an all time low. I suspect that situation will not last: it will sink lower still. As the revelations of misdeeds by 43’s deputies continue, our national esteem may end up in worse shape than the self-esteem of an Abu Ghraib prisoner.

There are a number of obvious things we must do to help repair our esteem beyond simply cleaning up the mess we have made of Iraq. Finishing the job in Afghanistan comes to mind. But after our martial tone and retaliatory timbre of the post 9-11 era, none of these obvious deeds has the air of the altruistic nature with which we Americans love to credit ourselves.

What we need here is a fresh idea.

My modest proposal should be obvious as well: to make a serious national effort to help address hunger and illness in the poorest nations of the world. It should be obvious, but we never talk about it in terms of national priority.

Not that I think Americans are hard hearted. Our charitable impulse is appreciated world wide by those that are reached by the numerous relief organizations whose funds are derived from American largess. We are not unique in this regard-the other wealthy nations of the world do much charitable work too, but I am suggesting that we Americans do something more aggressive than what has been seen thus far in this mortal coil.

And while I am partially making this suggestion as something that would serve as a form of penance, there are other sound reasons we should take the lead. Or at least one compelling reason: our unparalleled national wealth. Regardless of this Curmudgeon’s weak bank account, it is hard to ignore that collectively we are extraordinarily wealthy.

The extent of American wealth really hit home in a fresh way with a new statistic that I heard on the Nightly Business Report a day or two ago: if Wal-Mart were an independent nation, it would have the eighteenth largest economy in the world. And some of the countries lower on the list than Wal-Mart would just stun you. This list is a few years old, but it will give you some idea.

While what we do already as individual Americans to help relieve the poor is substantial, I am suggesting a new focus. A national priority to wield this wealth in a way that is only calculated to directly benefit the poor of this world who need our assistance so badly. This type of focus and priority can only come through direct government action and what better time than now for our government to act?

The terrifying part of what I am suggesting is my knowledge of how grossly distorted such an effort would probably become under our pathetic hyper-political ruling class’s “leadership”. I can already see “World War on Poverty” slogans and “Mission Accomplished” banners on the sides of aircraft carriers. I fear that Somalia-style bumbling may be the best we can do.

But, I am casting those fears aside for the moment and asking, “what if we try?”

There certainly is more than a bit of self-interest in the effort-indeed that was my whole premise. But this idea is big enough to in the long run overwhelm the small mindedness that might encourage such an undertaking on the basis of America First.

I’m getting excited just sitting here writing this. Imagine if we were all excited. The potential of the world changing impact there would be if a significant percentage of our GDP were diverted to simple, obvious, compassionate outreach staggers the imagination.

Don’t worry, I haven’t gone off into the idealistic deep-end just yet. There are huge practical obstacles to overcoming starvation and treatable illness in this world, and frankly, I don’t have a plan or the expertise to develop one. Somalia itself shows that we can’t just hold hands, sing “Imagine” in unison and fix much of what is wrong. Rather than rushing headlong into unwise efforts, we should take our time and get it right. Perhaps someone with experience like Bill Gates could head a commission which could develop a useful and worthwhile national plan.

Just because the task would be difficult, there is still no excuse for not trying. There are many parts of the world where we can make a difference and sitting on our incredible wealth is no longer an option for America. 43 likes to tout his Christian values at every turn and I have often called him out for not practicing what he purports to believe. Here is a chance for him, and indeed all of us to demonstrate we are different as we claim to be.

The outrage over Abu Ghraib and other human rights abuses by Americans of late will not die quickly, nor should they. An unprecedented humanitarian effort as I have described will not change that, but it would create an environment where those abuses would no longer loom as huge as they might otherwise.

And that is something that even the neocons should find appealing.

remembering the great communicator

2004-06-06T17:39:00.001-05:00

On June 6, 1984, Ronald Reagan gave one of his most famous speeches at the 40th Anniversary celebration of the D-day invasion of Normandy, France. President Reagan’s passing yesterday, but a day short of the 60th anniversary of that hallowed event, has naturally lead to testimonials that remember that day and his words from almost precisely twenty years previously.

I recall listening to that speech in 1984. I was a much younger man, not yet a curmudgeon, and happily enfranchised-confidently pulling that lever to cast my vote for Reagan. This was before Iran-Contra had clouded the Reagan Presidency, and I was unwavering in my support. While the years have conspired to erode my belief in some of the philosophical positions that Reagan personified, my love of his optimism and unique leadership remains undimmed.

I would suggest that it would take a hard heart, to not be at least somewhat inspired by one of our nation’s most heart-felt optimists. Reagan was often deemed but a “great actor” by those in political opposition, but I have felt all along that those of that opinion had it all wrong: Reagan derived his strength and ability to lead from his sincerity. I have no doubt that who ever wrote these words, they were uttered by Reagan with no hesitancy or disengenuity:

[T]he dead of battle have spoken more eloquently for themselves than any of the living ever could. But we can only honor them by rededicating ourselves to the cause for which they gave a last full measure of devotion....Today we do rededicate ourselves to that cause. And at this place of honor, we're humbled by the realization of how much so many gave to the cause of freedom and to their fellow man.

Honor. Freedom. Fellow Man. These are Ideas that stir men’s souls.

As I write, I have tears in my eyes as I know many of you do as well. Whatever policy errors and political misdeeds which may have occurred on President Reagan’s watch, he spoke eloquently, sincerely and reverentially about our Ideals and reached my heart strings in a way that will live with me forever.

Tears may seem unusual for someone who dislikes politicians as much as I. But, for any of you perhaps too young to remember, the year 1984 was a much different time than 2004. The malaise of Vietnam, Watergate, and the Carter administration were still fresh in mind. Reagan changed all of that.

It seemed then, as it does in retrospect, that this was the man who had single-mindedly willed America to a rebirth of spirit. As I have heard in the voluminous testimonials in the last 24 hours, even Reagan’s most ardent political opponents understand the unique service that the Gipper provided in helping rekindle the embers of our dying Republic.

What a pity that President Reagan’s political heirs have forgotten the substance of his words uttered merely two decades ago at Pointe du Hoc Memorial:

From a terrible war we learned that unity made us invincible; now, in peace, that same unity makes us secure. We sought to bring all freedom-loving nations together in a community dedicated to the defense and preservation of our sacred values. Our alliance, forged in the crucible of war, tempered and shaped by the realities of the postwar world, has succeeded. In Europe, the threat has been contained, the peace has been kept.

You see, my tears are not for a lost man, but for a lost America. In the last twenty years we have traveled the road from Unity to Unilateralism; from Leadership to Domination; from Ideals to Ideology. The lost ground in that time is not to be underestimated. It is as if the positive energy generated by Reagan’s idealism has wasted into the ether and we are left with the crumbs of a incomplete ideology, hollowed out by the rasp of factionalism.

Reagan of course does not deserve sole credit for the reinvigoration of America any more than our current President deserves sole responsibility for leading us into the abyss of political triumphialism. Both men stand as symbols of the larger trends of which they were a part.

Forgive my tainting of an epitaph with political observation. It is just very hard to avoid today because as I drove my car, I was treated to right-wing talk shows that could seemingly not resist doing the same. In their view, it was impossible during this election year to miss the profundity of Reagan’s death at this time; of the similarity of choice during the 1980 presidential campaign with that of 2004: the Reagan optimism contrasted with the Carter morosity; Bush contrasted with Kerry.

While the current President occupies the same political space as did Reagan, he lacks several essential ingredients to fill those shoes, not the least of which is sincerity of heart. Several of the remembrances of Reagan which I have heard echoed the sentiment that one of the most striking things about him was that he was so comfortable being himself.

That comfort was never so evident as it was at times of national grief. While every President since Mr. Reagan has uttered beautiful words and rhetorically appealed to our Higher Ideals, none could have moved us in the way that Reagan did. None could have closed a speech as did Reagan after the Challenger Disaster without an intellectual flinch from the listener:

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."

Whether you agreed with Mr. Reagan, or disagreed, there is little doubt that he was a genuine article.

I miss that.

real men of genius

2004-05-27T11:44:00.000-05:00

To Americans the principal that a fair and just society must be under girded by a system of laws that separates the power of the state from that of religious institution seems entirely self-evident. That it has not always been so is easily forgotten or unconsciously discounted. That religious practice, or less commonly an abhorrence thereof, is central to the hearts of men should not be overlooked in one’s examination of history.

The secularist crowd often underestimates the religious passion of the founders. But an honest read of history show them to be a deeply religious group that was blessed with the insight to see farther than most realized then or even now. For revisionists to try to separate these men from their personal religious practices is an insult to their intelligence and practical wisdom.

Europe is presently struggling with this issue that for the United States was largely settled over two hundred years ago at the State House in Philadelphia. So many years later it is astounding how truly brilliant the document demonstrates itself to be that is our Constitution. That the Constitutional Convention would create a document that did not even mention God or Providence is truly a testament to their foresight in what it takes to create a government that respects individuals.

America stands in a great contrast to the rest of the world in this peculiar aspect. While as individuals we have a deep tradition of Christian faith, we have developed a co-existent faith in the importance of maintaining distinct and mutually autonomous civil and religious institutions. While the debate in Europe is certainly not one that threatens religious liberty, it is quite a contrast with America where even the slightest hint of religious practice are being expunged from our public fora.

It might be fairly asked whether our national obsession with the separation of church and state is a healthy one. It should come as no surprise that I do not find this trend to be so much a product of heart-felt belief as it is an expression of a natural tension rooted in the wide spread disgust with those in the religious right who by their public acts seem committed to imposing their views on society, and those in the secular left who by their acts seem committed to wiping religious practice from the face of society.

I think if we are honest with ourselves, “In God We Trust” emblazoned on our currency is not often given much thought by people on either side of the debate other than that thought generated by the debate itself.

I have no difficulty with removing religious symbols from our civil institutions per se. Rather, it is a matter of small consequence compared to the serious problems that lay directly in front of us as a Nation. Similarly, I have no problem with continuing historical traditions that have roots in religious practice as long as those traditions are contained to that context. While adopting the secularist position is appealing to me being a true believer in the rule of law, I think it is insane to even attempt total expungement of religious heritage.

Insane because the roots are too deep.

Europe will undoubtedly find its way through the complexity of creating a secular Union. Like America, where we are still burnishing off the rough edges, it will be a long but worthwhile process. It is my sincere prayer that God will bless them with a document that is as inspired as what our founders bequeathed to their posterity.

bulwark abuse

2004-05-22T12:39:00.000-05:00

I have hesitated to add my two cents on the matter of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse simply because there is little to say on it that doesn’t strike me as obvious. However, on a matter of such extraordinary impact, I would be remiss to not at least record a few observations.

It disheartens me to hear many Americans be dismissive of the torture of prisoners. The argument we have heard can be abbreviated to something like, “well, we aren’t as bad as Saddam”-which sounds to me not significantly different from the old fashioned, “the ends justify the means”.

I am in the midst of reading the excellent David McCullough biography of John Adams, and the famous words of Adams to the effect that United States is a nation of laws, not of men, was more haunting to me now than when I had read them some years ago. Haunting because of the extraordinary willingness lately of Americans to ignore the rule of law.

This goes much deeper than the stupidity of this administration’s repudiation of the Geneva Convention: in the last two decades we have collectively looked the other way on numerous occasions to avoid stumbling over the rule of law. The most notable, and I think foreshadowing, of the various incidents of America Shrugging are the Iran-Contra affair and Presidential perjury impeachment trial. I was literally laughed at back then when I said we are setting precedent for all kinds of bad government behavior when we ignore such serious extralegal government activity.

I wonder who is laughing now.

The respect for individual sovereignty and the rule of law have been the bulwark of ideas that has helped make the United States the most successful nation in the history of the world. If we lose that, we have lost everything.

The fact of the prisoner abuse in Iraq is horrible. It is inexcusable that the responsible parties where not called to account immediately and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Sadly, even those in agreement with me on this point generally are making the argument based on notions of realpolitik, not on what is right. Of course based on pragmatic concerns alone we should be enormously upset, but where is the outrage? I for one wish for louder expressions that this kind of behavior is not what we are about as a people.

But then, as I have said recently, I’m not sure what we are about as a people anymore.

With all of the concern I have over the acts of abuse, and the lack of a credible response from the current administration, it isn’t even my most serious concern that arises from this crisis. The words of Donald Rumsfeld in his testimony before Congress should send shivers up the spine of every living American, and most dead ones as well:

We're functioning with peacetime constraints, with legal requirements, in a wartime situation in the Information Age, where people are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise.

In Rumsfeld’s world, the most upsetting thing is that you and I found out about it; that the veil of secrecy was not an iron curtain, but rendered a sieve by modern technology. This guy is one of the ones in charge people, not some blogger delivering glib commentary. While his remarks did stir up a dust devil of anger, I should think there would be a real fury of calls for his resignation.

Instead, Rumsfeld’s boss gives him a pat on the butt and like so many serious issues of our day, people get bored and soon the passions subside. And of course the press will soon follow suit too because the pictures of naked prisoners sell more copy than do the details of a government run amok. After all, its just one more lie. Just one more little secret extralegal government activity. A little torture for a good cause.

Anyone still laughing?

shouting down the world

2004-05-18T15:45:00.000-05:00

Those of you upset with the happenings in Massachusetts need to take a deep breath and stay calm: state sanctioned marriage of same-sex couples is undoubtedly here to stay. Conservatives may protest as long as they choose, but society, whether to its ill or its fortune, has already moved on from that discussion. Certainly the futile fight will continue on in a world where the Flat Earth Society still gets some traction.

Most would probably read my first paragraph as a tacit statement of support for gay marriage, but one would be incorrect: state sanctioning of any marriage is obnoxious.

I held this viewpoint long before the gay rights aspect of the matter became an issue. When my fiancée, who is now my wife of twenty years, and I went to get our marriage license I was truly incensed by the intrusion of the government into my life. We took the religious aspect of the marriage covenant very seriously: who was the government to have any say in a private matter?

Which brings us of course to the definition of marriage.

My definition of marriage comes from the Christian Bible and no other source. The interpretation of scripture is clear in my view, but there are is a whole non-Christian world out there as well as overtly Christian churches that take a different view. I exercise my freedom to practice my religion, in part, by attending a church which does not sanction same-sex marriage and I will not be attending churches which take a contrary view. I suspect same-sex couples will not be attending my church either.

We have long blurred the lines of marriage as a religious institution and a civil institution and it would’ve been wise for us to use this debate to end the muddy thinking that has led us to this argument. We need to sever the legal tie between the legal institution and the religious practice by creating a civil union with all of the same legal rights and privileges that marriage enjoys today. Marriage should be optional.

But the state sanctioned same-sex marriage juggernaught will not be denied and I’m afraid, fuzzy concept or not, it is here to stay.

As will be the whining by the religious right no doubt. The missed opportunity for the Christian community to reach out to the gay community is astounding. How much further would the cause of Christ be served if the substantial energies being dedicated to the “defense of marriage” were rather put into the service of AIDS victims? Rather than offering humble service to our fellow man, instead, the right is trying to shout the world down. I must have missed the Sunday School lesson about how that fits into the Golden Rule.

The actions of my brethren are enough to make my head spin.

value of the dollar

2004-05-05T15:26:00.000-05:00

It is incredible how much being a Dad changes one’s outlook on the world. People told me when my wife was pregnant that “everything changes” and I assumed they were talking just about priorities and day to day lifestyle. Little did I realize that it would change me in profound and fundamental ways.

I think about the future far more now than I did pre-Fatherhood. And I’m not talking about retirement planning, but rather the big sweep of history: the world which we will leave to our offspring and in turn, they will leave to theirs.

These matters are weighing heavy today because of the thought provoking op-ed written by William Broyels, Jr. entitled A War for Us, Fought by Them. You should definitely read that piece if you haven’t already. Broyels ends with a call to reinstate the draft, and while I do not agree with his ultimate conclusion, his argument is very persuasive.

The startling fact in that op-ed was the that only one of 535 members of Congress has a child actively engaged in military operations in the Middle East. On reflection, I’m not shocked by this, but still, it is an amazing statistic that reflects how the power elite in our country are manipulating circumstances to their benefit. Broyels envisions a solution through an objective, no deferment draft that will force the children of privilege into the ranks of the military and thereby approximate the wealthy’s participation in conflicts of our past.

The central problem with Broyel’s argument is that he believes that a Congress which consistently and systematically forfeits its power to decide whether to go to war would make more sober decisions if they were personally vested in the matter. I wish I shared at least that optimism. I for one have lost faith that our current legislators can ever be trusted to do the right thing if it means that some of their number could have their tenure jeopardized by a tough vote.

I am betting that Shrub would have towed a Swift boat by canoe all the way to Hanoi if that were necessary to present the right image of the Bush family to the public. The elite often sacrifice their own to maintain their station and their kids tend to tow the line for the family because that is the course of their own access to wealth and power. Sadly, Broyel’s version of the draft would only affect the vote of those occasional legislators who put the needs of our country over retaining their positions of power and prestige. The drums beat loudly these days and now there is a strong possibility of a draft for whatever real or imagined rationale.

When you have a young son, the drums get your undivided attention.

I have always imagined that I would teach my son the same lessons my Father taught me about country, duty and honor. As a young man, I believed in America as the leader of the free world. Having been steeped in the history of our sacrifices in the War to End All Wars and World War II, if called I would have risked life and limb to advance the cause of freedom in this world. This Cause was greater than myself and therefore worthy of my last full measure.

I remember well when the selective service registration was resumed during the early days of the Reagan administration. I had a little lump in my throat as I dropped off the card knowing of the tumult in the Middle East, but I knew without a doubt that if called, I would go. Twenty-four years and a few questionable foreign ventures later, I’m not so sure I’d encourage my son to analyze duty in the same way, and this realization aggravates a deep angst inside myself.

America’s leadership is obviously bent on flexing its muscle to peruse an agenda that is ostensibly American, but is in fact primarily about consolidating power. This radical change of course in policy and behavior is decidedly un-American. Our former allies understand the enormity of the shift and thus have given us their ire rather than their support for a new world order.

Inwardly too we are coming apart. Sound politics now rules over sound policy. Sound bites rule over sound logic. And in a horrible symbol of how far we have slid, in a collective panic we have rushed to shred our Charters of Freedom and throw our human rights legacy into the trash can following the attacks on September 11th. We have arrived at a new and different reality where one is hard pressed to find what clear values America still stands for other than, perhaps, the value of the dollar.

Clearly, our most vicious preemptive strike has been against the State of Reason.

The nobility or ignobility of a war does not impact the honor of the service of those who have given their all in military service. I have the utmost respect for our soldiers in Iraq. They serve in my name and their oath is to protect me-for that I am forever indebted to them. It is not inconsistent to assert that I strongly object to how this Administration is squandering our youth in a war waged on false pretenses.

My Son will be draft eligible in thirteen years which is a long time. Time enough for me to hope that America can get itself turned around. But that hope is increasingly a thin reed and I must contemplate the reality of the world as it will be then. Clearly this administration is going to leave things in a mess for some time to come, so there is a greater probability than some realize that my Son might be conscripted to serve.

Serving and dying for a big cause is much different than what we are asking our Sons and Daughters to do now. While it would be a personal tragedy of the greatest proportions, I could eventually deal with a Son who died in the cause of freedom. One can make sense of that. But could I make sense out of his death in defense of the right of Congressmen to use the Congressional country club and Plutocrats to have a villa in Vail? That is a different calculus altogether. Torn between honest patriotism and a more realistic view of our current national direction, I honestly do not know what I would tell an eighteen year old son if he were drafted today. Fortunately, I have over a decade before I might be asked, “what would you do Dad?”

I pray we make good use of that time, because right now, I am terrified of my answer to that question.

double entendre or not, this sucks

2004-04-21T10:54:00.000-05:00

We can all rest easier now that the government is finally getting serious about workplace safety in an industry whose workers have been woefully neglected up until now. Thanks to Cal/OSHA, the State of California’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, porn stars will now be required to use condoms on the job. If you have interest, you can get more details in this LA Times story.

In a similar fashion to nearly all work place safety initiatives down through history, the affected manufactures are voicing concerns about the detrimental effects that the regulation will have on their business. The unfortunate truth is that because of the nature of their business, their voices will be rejected out of hand without regard to the content of their arguments. Like so many other matter of policy in modern America, this regulation is unlikely to be implemented in a purely rational fashion.

This is not to say that I am especially sympathetic to the folks at Kick Ass Pictures. Quite the contrary. And frankly, their reaction sounds like they believe that the condom regulation is the equivalent to asking Michelangelo to use a duller and therefore safer chisel.

Talk about nearly irresistible opportunities for double entendre.

But the same logic that compels protections in other industries does indeed naturally apply to other workers engaged in risky work without regard to the moral offense of many or even a majority of the population. Those that drag out the old legal doctrine of assumption of risk ignore that in every other industry the doctrine has been largely rejected or superceded. While there may be legitimate differences between porn manufacturing and other industries, those should be discussed and not dismissed because we might not approve of the business endeavor.

Any time a new regulatory regime is imposed, the legitimate interest of the businesses affected should be considered and balanced against the benefits expected to be derived. Perhaps the cost of the regulation will exceed its benefit, though that is not likely to be the case in this instance: People will line up to work for free for those condom inspector jobs.

Logically, it is also impossible to avoid the discussion of prostitution. There is little moral difference between prostitution and engaging in sex for money in front of a camera unless you consider that all of performers getting paid, rather than just the prostitutes, makes some sort of qualitative distinction. Oh, and there is that other distinction: prostitution is illegal.

The hypocrisy of the status quo is an amazing thing to behold.

A brief internet search for statistics on the number of people engaged in prostitution in the US did not yield anything sufficiently trustworthy to pass on, but I think it is clear to anyone who hasn’t been living in an Amish community their entire lives that there are considerably more people involved in the oldest profession than in the porn industry. According to the LA Times story, porn production employs 1,200 performers in California and I expect that there are far more prostitutes than that working on any given night in Los Angeles alone.

It is pathetically ironic that California is prepared to regulate an industry that pays people to engage in sex, yet rather than protecting the prostitute from these same risks chooses instead to incarcerate them in an expression of some sort of moral outrage.

Legalization of prostitution is as overdue as was the legalization of brewing and distillation at the end of the Hoover administration. It is time to grow up and confront reality rather than letting the layers of hypocrisy accumulate deeper still. More importantly, it is high time the compassionate among us, conservative or otherwise, rise to the defense of some of the most desperate members of our society.

no thanks for the memories

2004-04-14T12:29:00.000-05:00

According to a New York Times story, Bill Clinton’s memoirs are overdue to the publisher. Apparently the former President is a notorious procrastinator and I would prefer that he simply keep the procrastination up for at least the rest of my life. I simply have no energy for reliving the Clinton scandals and I suspect I am not alone in that regard.

The saddest thing though is not the rehashing of old prevarications, equivocations and miscalculations, but rather why this is current news: the effect on the 2004 Presidential campaign. I don’t know whether the thought that the electorate could be distracted by a memoir concerns me more than does the realization that we have arrived at a juncture where the public accepts that politics trumps substance.

It is tempting to blame the media for the trend toward extreme politicization, but surely that blame belongs most squarely on the American people themselves. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Clinton memoir is about historical events, albeit recent history. I’m just perplexed at how Mr. Clinton’s motivations and actions in the affair to remember could have any bearing on how one might vote in November. And surely we have put those lame discussions about character behind us by now through our apparent insistence on electing people, like the Education President, who have none.

The hard reality is that Americans enjoy the battle.

Politics has become just another arena sport that is brought to us in the grand coliseum which is our collective living rooms. We sit before the made for television burlesque show with fascination over who will draw blood next, or administer the fatal blow. The hooting and howling over Howard Dean’s candidacy meltdown had all of the dignity of an NBA Championship victory riot. And before you email me about how overreaching is my allusion of politics to blood sport, why don’t you first get Valerie Plame’s opinion?

I could easily put together a long list of evidence demonstrating the triumph of form over substance in American politics, but just listing all the stories on fundraiser proceeds would take more time than I care to give. The obvious question remains: how long are we going to put up with substance free campaigns? As long as the electorate continues to respond to sound bites and eschew serious thought on policy positions, we are doomed to a further descent into the political abyss and as I survey the world around me, I don’t see any indication of a trend toward a more informed electorate.

When Clinton’s memoir appears, it will be a big story no doubt. Despite my occasional yearning for those times when things were not quite so rotten, I for one will pass on the chance to relive a Presidency that in many ways only looks good when followed by an administration that took an accumulated legacy of political relativism and internalized it as core values.

Character certainly matters and what we have here folks is definitely a bunch of characters.

a firm grip on reality

2004-04-01T15:01:00.000-06:00

I had wanted to write something ironic or perhaps witty in honor of the holiday, however the headlines do not permit such trivialities.

What surprises me most about the murder and subsequent desecration of the bodies of four American civilians in Iraq, is that people are surprised. Don’t misunderstand me: I am as horrified as anyone. I am just not surprised.

I’m betting some of those young boys involved in the desecration had fathers, brothers and uncles killed by Americans over the course of two wars. How exactly did we expect them to feel about Americans? There are still a lot of Germans and Japanese that don’t care for us very much either, and I’m betting there are a bunch of people my age who aren’t too placid in their feelings toward Vietnamese people either. And these people are still acting in the heat of the moment.

My first reaction to the news reports that the incident could be pivotal for the November Presidential elections was a disgusted huff. After all, we have a moral obligation to be there and set things right at this point. But, as I reflect on it, perhaps that obviously real possibility that the election could be affected would be a just and fair outcome.

Fair because it displays in a particularly graphic way the cost of the lying and poor preparation for Shrub’s War for Daddy’s Honor. There has been much talk about the deception of the American people and based on what I’m hearing, there was more than a little deception going on within the administration with regard to the post-war planning. It seems justified that if you can’t plan it any better than this, you should be thrown out as a penalty for the botched attempt.

Of course my fear is losing track of the moral obligations to these people in a rush to pull out of Iraq. If we pull back now, we may as well paint a target on our backsides and line up for our punishment because it will be both deserved and directly forthcoming. Our hope going forward is to stand firm and let our deeds match our words for a change. Until we demonstrate the courage of our convictions to the Arab street over a sustained period of time, there is little hope of softening the animosity built up over decades of exploitation.

And speaking of courage, how about those “pixilated” images and the calls by the current administration for “responsible reporting”? Hey, I don’t like the images either, but we need to look and not grow faint. Collectively, we must understand the risks we are undertaking with ventures in war and nation building.

This is reality. Grisly, ugly, reality.

I was somewhat prescient when I said in my February 26, 2004 post entitled “passionate pondering”:

Apparently, we don’t like blood and gore unless it is in fictional accounts or computer games.

As I said then, we need to get over our squeamishness if we are to live up to our self-proclaimed status as the “Land of the Brave”. Our very aversion to the images fuels terrorism. Have no doubt that our imputed cowardice gives courage to our enemies. While we have put Vietnam behind ourselves and moved on in our uniquely American short-lived memory way, that episode is still current events for the rest of the world.

In short, my word for the American people is this: get a grip.

{sigh}

the manchurian electorate

2004-03-30T13:02:00.000-06:00

It is difficult to render an opinion regarding the nexus of politics and religion without offending someone, if not in my case offending nearly everyone. This President’s contemptible exploitation of the Christian Right, however, has left me no choice but to weigh in on the subject.

If you have not picked up on the fact that I have a real distaste for our President, you probably have not read the rest of my Blog. Just in case you missed it, let me state clearly that I truly loathe the man. What might surprise you if you are someone who doesn’t know me except through these epistles is that I am a devout Christian who in matters of Essential Christian Dogma-though certainly not politics-would align generally to those who purport to be Fundamentalist Christians. So this President is supposed to be my kind of guy, right?

Wrong.

Nothing could possibly illustrate more effectively why I do not think this guy is representative of Christianity as does the particular story that prompted this rant. When I read the Kerry quotations, my reaction was an enthusiastic "Amen brother John!" It is refreshing and almost exciting to me to hear someone talk about the difference between what our leadership says and what it actually does.

That Kerry’s remarks hit home is clear from the reprehensible response from the White House. I quote from the linked New York Times story:

President Bush's re-election campaign later released a statement criticizing Mr. Kerry's use of the verse about faith without works, saying it was ''beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse, and a sad exploitation of Scripture for a political attack.''

Nicolle Devenish, a Bush spokeswoman, said Mr. Kerry was ''walking a fine line'' by campaigning in a church, adding, ''I think that's a sacred thing.''

Ms. Devenish (interestingly, my spell checker suggested devilish as a substitution for devenish) is of course necessarily implying that her boss manages to walk that line in a sacred way. Frankly, this continual sanctimony from this administration puts this Curmudgeon in a serious lather. Shrub, I trust, has never stumped from a physical pulpit, though he has never stopped campaigning from a virtual one. And I’m not talking about the “bully pulpit” either. Joseph Goebbels could not have maneuvered these waters with more maleficence.

As Christians, we are commanded to not judge the hearts of others. This oft cited directive of our Lord is certainly clear, but so is it equally clear that we are affirmatively commanded to measure others based on their deeds-and that of course is the whole point of Kerry’s biblical citations. I would not purport to know Kerry’s heart in such matters either, but the circumstantial evidence is that Kerry has a firmer grip on Biblical Principals than does our Bible thumping Head of State.

So you tell me gentle reader, how do you weigh this particular political act of the current administration? What do you call it when a President who has touted his own faith continually and loudly has the goebbelsian audacity to criticize a political opponent for proffering highly relevant and insightful passages from the book that he purports to hold so dear?

Failure to acknowledge the hypocrisy here constitutes willful denial or perhaps something deeper still. While I hesitate to equate the state of mind of my Christian Brothers and Sisters who continue to support such an obvious hypocrite with that of brain washing, there is clearly some deep psychic chords that this Administration is adept at plucking. I am incredulous of the prolific bumper stickers I see suggesting that our President was hand picked by God or comparing him to King David.

Please.

Suddenly I have a new respect for Mr. Kerry. Seldom in recent years has a politician so artfully called out his opponent. Having set the trap, Shrub and Company could not resist the bait and their very rejoinder demonstrates with extraordinary clarity the truth of Mr. Kerry’s remarks.

While Kerry chose the words of Paul, I think Jesus put it better still:

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

(Matthew 7:15-16 KJV)

Waiting to pick a few grapes and figs from this Presidential garden is starting to feel like waiting for Godot.

march madness

2004-03-16T12:11:00.000-06:00

Over two hundred are dead and fifteen-hundred injured in the March 11 train bombings in Madrid. Events are still unfolding as I write, but it is sounding increasing like Al Queda was probably behind the bloodshed. Now 9-11 has its cousin, 3-11.

Now that is March Madness.

The most immediate fallout is the sudden change in Spanish politics wherein the socialist party was returned to power a mere three days after the tragic bombing. Much is being written about the Spanish people’s opposition to their country’s involvement in Iraq and how this might bode ill for Shrub’s chances in the Presidential election.

Of course, I wish nothing but ill for Shrub in his bid to continue his draconian regime, but I think all of this talk is premature. In part, it is premature because we need to be still grieving along with the people of Spain and not focusing on Presidential politics and the spin cycle. Also premature because so much can and will happen between now and November.

I’m still puzzling over all the reporting that assumes the bombings tilted the outcome of the election because of the socialist party’s pledge to bring Spanish troops home from Iraq. I must have more respect for the Spanish people than the world press because I just can not bring myself to believe that they think so provincially that this single bombing changed their outlook overnight. As this typical quote illustrates, apparently there are more than a few people who are just as sick of Shrub as I:

The Popular Party's loss marks the first time a government that backed the U.S.-led Iraq war has been voted out of office. A vast majority of Spaniards opposed the war. (Associated Press)

I think that quote is more accurate than the general musings of appeasement we are seeing tossed about. The truth is that most Spaniards opposed involvement in Iraq ab initio and the bombing served as a reminder and spur to the polls. If you have not seen the voter turnout numbers from Spain, you should go dig them out-if only we could muster that kind of passion here in The Home of the Brave.

My blogging has been primarily reactionary, and this post is no different. The stimulant for this particular rant was an op-ed by David Brooks asserting that the Madrid bombings are a “watershed event” that “will constrain American policy for years to come.” He is of the opinion that the Spanish vote is some of the aforementioned appeasement toward the forces of evil.

Mr. Brooks needs to remove the GOP colored glasses: the prescription is far too weak.

Outside of the myopic reactionary American right-wing universe, I do not think many view the Madrid bombings as a watershed: the watershed event was the turning of American foreign policy upside down to prosecute a war on Saddam Hussein under false pretenses. Our foreign policy will indeed be constrained for many years to come as countries formerly favorable or indifferent to American global leadership cast a continual skeptical gaze on every extra-territorial initiative of any consequence. How an obviously intelligent man like Mr. Brooks can look at the events in Spain so narrowly boggles this would be pundit’s admittedly limited imagination.

But Brooks is entirely correct that there is serious danger if Al Queda views the election results as success. Though I am skeptical of the characterization of the Spanish election as Iraq-Madrid bombing fallout, the day-after equity market plunge was clearly related. The potential for more significant terrorist activity in the context of an global economic downturn clearly worries the money men and given that Al Queda’s goal is nothing less than destruction of the Western World, timing is probably good for stirring up yet more trouble.

For this reason, there should be unusually vigorous reaching out by the American President for some form of informal understanding with the incoming government of Spain in an effort to present a strong front in the face of the challenges ahead. Anything less is to invite continued European animosity which truly serves nothing other than the interests of the forces of destruction.

Our President can be counted on to do no such thing in an election year where is determined to polish his image as the tough as nails Terrorist Terminator. True to his fundamental lack of principal, Shrub is destined to leave “Old Europe” to its fulminations and” We the People” to our just deserts.

unable to turn the other cheek

2004-03-10T14:26:00.000-06:00

There are a few things that I just have trouble forgiving. While I am not exactly cheering the medical difficulties of the Attorney General, I don’t exactly find myself brimming with sympathy either.

That some conservatives just don’t get how some of us can have such contempt for the man as is evidenced by the diatribe that inspired today’s Curmudgeon entry. Hopefully, I can shed some light.

You see, I don’t take being called a traitor lightly. I remember well listening to the AG’s speech on the radio and hearing that accusation hurled at me. I turned the radio off within a few moments of hearing this outrageous venom spewed:

[T]o those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty; my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists—for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil.

You see, the farcically named Patriot Act had already riled me up but until this moment, I viewed the law as merely a typical political reaction to the American public’s cry for action. Being accused of using tactics to aid terrorist because of harboring a reasonable viewpoint on civil liberties took my concern to a whole new level: Ashcroft was declaring a war on political dissent. The ensuing months did nothing to quell my fears that our government was asserting its power to ignore the limits imposed by the 4th Amendment.

But of course the “Real Patriots” know best.

According to the diatribe, We civil libertarians apparently are just ordinary ingrates. We do not realize our own “unmitigated insipidity and apathy” and “what this man and his department have done to protect [our] right to be free, safe and stupid.” The temptation here is to argue with this schlub on the merits, but it is more significant that this basic mantra is bought by so many well meaning people. I remember well having a discussion sometime during the Patriot Act rubber stamping extravaganza wherein somebody said to me, and I paraphrase, “well, you may not be interested in protecting yourself but I am, so stand back and let those who know what’s good for you take care of business.”

It is almost funny that people think I am that stupid. Really, I don’t drool profusely or watch Professional Wrestling. Honest.

Here is the point: I am quite capable of balancing the risk of my harm at the hands of terrorists and the risk of my harm at the hands of my own government. I may make that assessment differently than you do, but it doesn’t make me stupid or unpatriotic. It might seem shocking to you to know that many of us civil libertarians are in fact among the most patriotic people you can find. Our patriotism is rooted in those civil liberties that we purport to hold so dear and I don’t see near the passion coming from the conservative ideologues that I do from the libertarians.

In the unlikely event that I made some of you feel a tad guilty for labeling me a stupid traitor, please rest assured that your guilt is entirely unnecessary: I have in the past labeled you as stupid in your cavalier willingness to throw away the civil liberties bravely wrested from the Monarchs over the last six centuries. But at least I didn’t call you a traitor like the Attorney General called me.

One irony is that though I never supported Ashcroft’s boss, I was on Ashcroft’s side during the Senate confirmation imbroglio. I thought at the time that confirmation was being unreasonably withheld because based on his record, he seemed qualified even if he wouldn’t be my choice. The Senate’s job is to advise and consent-not to tell the President what viewpoints are acceptable for what jobs.

In retrospect, perhaps the good Senators knew a thing or two that I did not.

anyone but these two parties

2004-03-09T11:00:00.000-06:00

I am no stranger to hating a sitting President. My early political opinions formed when I was a child watching the Watergate hearings on the television. While I did not have a mature appreciation for the magnitude of the events unfolding before me, I knew that it was a pretty big deal and I was determined to get an understanding of it. And I knew without a doubt that my Grandmother blamed pretty much everything on “Nixon and them fat cats”.

Little did I know then that I would end up pretty much in agreement with Grandma.

By the time of the bumbling Carter administration I was an extremely aware teenager and I loathed the man. I was too young to appreciate that Jimmy was probably to be the only occupant of the Oval Office during my life time with even a shred of personal integrity. I remember clearly my personal angst over not being able to cast my vote for Reagan in 1980 because I was 26 days too young to vote.

My first awakening that I may have placed my Faith in the wrong party was the Iran-Contra affair. I had bought the party line on most of the issues, but the whole shadow government thing left my faith fairly shaken. It was a rapid downhill slide from there.

“Read my lips: no new taxes.”

“I didn’t have sex with that women – Monica Lewinski...” {insert finger wag here}

“Look, I don't care about the numbers. I know the facts.”

Hate is an ugly word, and deep down, I do not feel hate for these men as individuals. I do, however, hate most of what they have stood for and so I understand well the sentiment behind the Anyone But Shrub campaigners. And it is very tempting for even me to succumb to the apparent reasonableness of this line of thought.

The problem with the ABS view is that it is too short sighted.

I will confess that I am not positive that I will not vote for Kerry this fall. I do view Shrub & Co as the worst threat to American freedom extant. My quandary is whether President Kerry would be a sufficiently less of a threat to my freedom as to warrant my vote-and for the time being, my answer to that question remains a “No”.

The circumstantial evidence that Kerry is sold-out to the ruling class is pretty strong I think. His distinguished pedigree, personal wealth, Democratic Party roots and relative success at high levels inside the ruling class for many years are marks of the American Aristocracy that are hard to ignore. Certainly Kerry says the right things with some regularity, but how different do we really expect this blue-blood to be?

I realize from my stats that nobody reads these epistles, but I will ask the ether this question: in your heart, do you really expect great things from Kerry? Really? And if you aren’t answering yes, ask yourself if your dislike for Shrub is enough to hang your vote on.

People I know and respect are planning to vote against Shrub and by implication cast their vote for Kerry. In the mean time, I am keeping my fingers crossed that a legitimate third party or independent candidate will arrive that I can actually cast my vote for, rather than simply voting against Shrub.

Is it too much to ask that I be allowed to vote FOR something positive? I fear that perhaps it is.

passionate pondering

2004-02-26T16:40:00.000-06:00

The furor over Mel Gibson’s new movie, “The Passion of the Christ”, is amazing and intriguing. I am not so intrigued by the charges of anti-Semitism as I am the criticism of the movie for its violence.

Criticizing this film for its violence implicitly points out how visual media have distorted the modern perception of reality. Clearly, the torture and crucifixion of Jesus was an extremely violent affair. Those who should be condemned are Gibson’s artistic predecessors who have watered down reality in a play for box office success. Apparently, we don’t like blood and gore unless it is in fictional accounts or computer games.

The truth is that while fictional violence does de-sensitize us to violence, factual violence has the exact opposite effect.

The silver screen has done far more to romanticize war than any novel ever could. In generations past, the imagination did not have to stretch too far to envision the grizzly truth because it was so close to their common experience. An 19th century school child reading Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” experienced far more horror as the heroes charged to the guns than the horror felt by the 20th Century moviegoer watching Errol Flynn make that same charge. Mid-century patriotic John Wayne and Ronald Reagan flicks only served to further distance us from the reality of war. If Art imitates Life, then these are poor imitations indeed.

Slowly but surely Hollywood has made much needed progress in realism. It is hard to forget the sound of the bullets zipping through the water at Omaha Beach in “Saving Private Ryan”, or the horrible shock of the devastating weapons used during “Blackhawk Down.”. The realism of these films hopefully serves to educate individuals such as myself that no longer butcher their own stock for survival on the harsh realities that we purposefully push out of sight. At the risk of going a cliché (or two) too far, I would suggest out of sight is in fact out of mind in this case.

And our collective forgetfulness does affect important things. We have rushed forthwith into violent conflict numerous times in the last twenty years and I am convinced part of the reason is the antiseptic view of war given to us by film. It is nothing less than immoral for a people who do not understand the nature and quality of the individual acts that constitute war to charge its sons and daughters into the guns. Of course, it is equally immoral to turn our heads in horror and refuse the just war simply because of its horror, but I do not think that is the form of ignorance that presently afflicts We the People.

Which brings me to the graphic torture of Jesus.

Maureen Dowd, bless her hate filled little heart, wrote the column that got my dander up enough to get me to opine on the subject. Therein she derided the violence and what she viewed as anti-Semitism which is implied by the fact that the Romans are not around to hate anymore. Dowd, like so many of our hyper-ventilating politically correct crowd, conveniently ignore the fact that the death of Jesus has been used for over two-thousand years by that insipid lot who reduce the execution to its simplest elements in order to validate their pre-formed prejudices.

The brutality of the death of Jesus and our collective accountability for the need for a Christ is the central theme of Christianity. The only thing that has changed down through the centuries has been our sterilization of the visual imagery of that violent death.

This deliberate sterilization in the plastic arts is a far different thing than it is in modern cinema. The visual portrayal of events and history creates vivid mental images that supplant the self-generated images of our literary imaginations. If you doubt this, try re-reading “The Lord of the Rings” and avoid the visuals that Peter Jackson has given us. Jackson’s brilliant rendering obliterates pre-existing mental images thoroughly. This truth is what makes films such as Gibson’s so necessary.

The omnipresent audio-visual media has done more than enrich our esthetic intake: it has changed us in fundamental ways. Gore and violence is thankfully no longer a central part of our lives, so it is up to the Arts to bring it to us as a substitute for what once was common experience. Finally, Gibson has given us an account of an old story that is fitting for our times.

Hey Maureen, get a clue: you are supposed to be outraged.

beer slushies

2004-02-06T11:44:00.000-06:00

One of the great things about this time of year is that it is the season for my favorite beers. Living in Dallas limits what you can partake of when one goes out and about, but we still try.

We are educating Dallastonians one bartender at a time.

We hit one of our favorite restaurants, the Melting Pot, as a Chirstmas treat last week when we had a baby-sitter. They actually have Guinness in the pub drought cans and we love it with the cheddar cheese fondue appetizer. We arrived early and ended up seated at the bar waiting . So, I ordered Bass and added what has become my standard directive in Texas: “and we would like that in room temperature glasses.”

The nice young lady was all in a funk over this rather ordinary request as they apparently did not have any glasses that were not encrusted with a layer of frost. I resisted caving in out of pity. “Do you have any Dixie cups?”, I asked, adding, “I’d rather drink beer from a Dixie cup that ruin it with a frosted mug.”

Now any one not from the Southern United States probably does not fully appreciate the pain I was putting this poor gal through. People down here just don’t have any appreciation for beers that are not thin, insipid and so bad in flavor as to demand being served slushy style. The nice thing to do, that is the Christmas Spirit thing to do, was to say, “That’s OK, I’ll just wait on it to warm up.”

But when it comes to beer, nice just isn’t me.

I think I lost my charitable spirit once a couple of years ago in an Italian restaurant that we frequented in part because they served Bass (good beer with a decent meal is very hard to come by down here). On the last of many trips to this place, we were served beers that were literally frozen. Can’t pour it out of the bottle frozen.

I wasn’t too upset about the frozen Bass and in fact was rather amused because I had lamented previously that they serve they Bass too cold, but we knew could wait for the bottle to warm up some by the time dinner was served. I went back up to the dude who served the beers and told him I needed a couple more beers as the two they served me were frozen. With a straight face, he said, “What’s the problem.” I replied that freezing ruins the beer and that I would like a beer that had been properly kept at an appropriate temperature. “But they are better that way!”, he responded, practically shouting.

I settled for a refund on my beer.

So the poor gal at the Melting Pot was dealing with a deep bitterness: she had no clue what was hitting her. All worked out well. I gave her a short lesson on beer temperature and she offered to prepare some glasses for us so that when we ordered our Guinness from the table, the glasses would be ready.

One bartender down, a few hundred thousand to go.

the hardest working boob in showbiz

2004-02-06T11:34:00.000-06:00

I am in awe of the amount of attention being paid to Janet Jackson’s right breast. While I share in the public’s disapproval, I really think it is time to get a grip. Its not like overt sexuality hasn’t been a part of the Super Bowl for some time-and I’m not just referring to the player’s off the field exploits. Football has been tied to bikini clad beer girls almost as long as pin-ups have been mandatory in Texaco station repair shops.

Is it just me, or doesn’t it seem like we have real problems? Maybe I’m twisted, but JJ’s boob just isn’t on the same radar screen as unemployment, Iraq, the conflict in Israel/Palestine, or our corrupt ruling class. It seems pretty clear to me that our youth are corrupted in a far more serious way by observing the obscene political process than by a bare breast only seen by Tivo users.

But here we are with preening politicians feigning outrage over the obscenity, to whom I would put the obvious rhetorical question: Is the subject breast more obscene than your behavior?

a mercurial jeremiad

2004-01-01T14:54:00.003-06:00

Mercury is a focus of my life, or at least it has been for the last six months. My Son has had mild developmental issues his entire life that most people would call Attention Deficit Disorder or hyperactivity. Clinically, they call it Sensory Integration Dysfunction and I won’t bore you with the details. Imagine the alarm as a parent though, being told that your child has a disorder that is grouped with what they call Autism Spectrum Disorders.

All the calm words about how mild his symptoms were did not do much for me.

After a year’s worth of occupational and speech therapy which had been a great help, but not a total solution, at the urging of some other parents we finally went to see an Allergist who specializes in such things. Testing revealed that my Son had high levels of mercury. We were pretty skeptical of the mercury chelation regimen and the special diet, but after some extensive research, we took the plunge.

The near immediate results left us dumbfounded.

The great news is that my Son has made radical progress in recent months and we will soon have him in not just a normal program, but if we can find a place we can afford, a gifted program. (This is my blog so I can do a little parental bragging.)

Imagine my horror when I read a recent column by Molly Ivins describing an attempted rollback of mercury emission regulation. Molly says it as well as it can be said, so I won’t repeat how tremendously stupid this is. You can find a little more background here.

Of course I would not be as attuned to this matter if it were not for my son, but facts are still facts. I don’t want to state numbers without doing research, but there are a bunch of children irreparably harmed by mercury. Yet we worry more about naked butts on NYPD Blue.

Something is tremendously wrong with that.

I’m betting that if this were a Gore administration wanting to roll back pornography regulation, this would be the lead story for a least a couple of weeks. And the mantra would be “remember the children!”.

The government has recently published studies proclaiming thimerosal (the mercury containing preservative used in vaccines) as safe as well. And there is no doubt the experts are right: it probably isn’t a problem for the majority of kids. But that doesn’t do much for the children who, like my son, have immune systems that do not adequately deal with mercury.

The insidious part of this one is that there are tons of studies by credible experts that show that mercury levels are directly tied to autism and autism spectrum disorders, yet the government and industry continues to tell us that injecting mercury compounds into our kids is not a problem. And maybe it would be worth the risk if not for the simple fact that thimerosal-free vaccines are available. In fact, if I understand correctly, thimerosal containing vaccines have been partially outlawed at this point, but there are still many vaccines that contain thimerosal being administered by doctors. At the risk of over-reaching, I won’t hesitate to tell you that a parent armed with this information is an idiot to just accept even a small potential of mercury poisoning.

But then, you don’t get a choice about the mercury dumped by industry.

It isn’t much consolation to me to know that the children and grandchildren of the rich and powerful will be equally affected by the toxins in our world. I just can’t be as indifferent to the plight of children of the rich and powerful as they are to mine. I suppose I am weak in that way.

God help us all.

i’m dreaming of an orange christmas

2003-12-24T04:28:00.000-06:00

Level Orange Christmas that is. Are you alert now? I certainly am, especially since they told us that this is a “true orange” level alert this time. I guess the other alerts were really “level peach”.

I went out to http://www.ready.gov just to see if there was a flashing orange light with some detailed instruction on what part I should perform in the fight. What I found was a website that hasn’t changed much since they first created it. Static web pages usually don’t and that tells you what you need to know about Ready.gov.

This most recent alert gave us some useful and specific detail that will thwart even the most ambitious terrorists. According to CNN: “There are particular concerns about Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Nevada, a handful of other cities and two rural areas -- one in the East and one in the Southwest, officials said.” No doubt if I was a dairy farmer in New Mexico, I’d sharpen my pitch fork and stand a vigilant round the clock watch lest Bin Laden terrorize my milkers.

I’d be inclined to laugh at this stupidity if it were not so insidious. It is hard to know what is more tragic: the slight of hand that gets us to focus on the keystone federal cops and ignore the fact that the borders are still more porous than the US Tax Code, or the false sense of security that undoubtedly victimizes some people.

Or perhaps it is a bigger con game still? People frothing over REALLY ORANGE alerts are probably less likely to notice that the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan is deepening mess. Too cynical? Maybe, but I did a little informal website research as I wrote this post. CNN’s top three stories are related to domestic terrorism and the level orange alert. MSNBC: Two of the top three, with a side bar about Bin Laden. Fox News: both lead stories. At least the Times seemed a little more sane: one headline and another story link.

So much for the daily lead headlines about US deaths in Iraq.

I know a lot of people feel safer now that they are taking their shoes off in airports and the Presidential bunkers have been beefed up. No doubt some of the faux security has helped the economy begin its sluggish rebound. It just all feels very dirty and dishonest to me.

But that is about par for compassionate conservatism.

why i am no longer a libertarian

2003-12-22T16:57:00.000-06:00

Death uniquely focuses the mind. It is a philosophical starting place for me. This will be my second Christmas without my Mother-in-law. She died relatively young (60) and nothing says “shit happens” quite like a premature death.

Lately I’ve seen quite a build-up of shit that just happened.

The recent near universal rough times experienced by my friends and family have made a big impression. The economic number propaganda lies. Middle class unemployment and under-employment is rampant. Middle class savings are being crushed by rising medical expenses. While our “leaders” don’t want to call it a crisis, I don’t know what else you call it when so many hard-working Americans can’t afford good health care anymore. What ever the indicators say, the ones that count to real people are all down.

It was a hard lesson for a die-hard capitalist: unfettered capitalism stinks.

If I had not already learned this lesson, I am certain that the stampede of IT jobs to India would’ve convinced me. Nothing like something hitting your own pocket book to grab your attention. While hard work and grit are prerequisites to prosperity, it doesn’t always lead to riches or even middle class American bliss. Like Death and Illness, a lot of this stuff is just outside of our ability to control or even prepare for effectively.

Believe it or not, I’m just now figuring this stuff out. I’m a slow learner.

By temperament, I’m still a capitalist. Globalization is inevitable in my view, and we have to deal with those pressures sooner or later. But just like the situation with NAFTA, it seems like the resulting social turmoil doesn’t help anybody. OK maybe it helps the super rich and has the positive effect of raising the fortunes of other nations, but it doesn’t do much for the bottom 99 percent of Americans.

I worry as the gulf between the haves and have-nots widens. Ultimately the most dangerous group may turn out to be the used-to-haves. I sense a growing fundamental dissatisfaction and while I don’t think we are on the cusp of a violent outburst, I no longer discount it completely. At the rate we are gutting the middle class, I think we could see huge shifts in American attitudes in the very near term.

And I haven’t even touched on how the working poor are getting screwed.

My new political credo would make for an odd political animal: libertarian progressivism. All the capitalism we can stand and no more. I originally converted to libertarianism primarily out of disgust over the power elite and the resulting distrust of all things from inside the DC Beltway. I still don’t trust them, but as a friend of mine says, the government is the only shot most of us have for a break.

Our ruling elite is determined to give us a lot of capitalism, smug in their knowledge that we are all masters of our own destinies. Smug just like I was back-when.

That death thing can really get your attention.

updating the playbook

2003-12-19T14:01:00.000-06:00

I am getting old. I think the most surprising thing about the aging process for me has been how many of my philosophies of life have evolved. Though my core beliefs have not changed in any substantial way, my application of those beliefs to the world around me have changed substantially if not radically in some ways.

This season of the year, there are a lot of hands out. The kettle bearers are everywhere and I was once a veteran of scooting past those jingling bells without making eye contact.

Kettle avoidance is very similar to avoiding street beggars. You have the basic go route where you dash straight up the opposite sideline as fast as you can. There is the option play where you walk quickly past while focusing your attention downfield. And of course there is my favorite, the screen, where you drop back behind a wall of shoppers, themselves retreating back from the kettle and scoot straight out to the parking lot. Every so often you get sacked and have to toss a buck into the kettle. Or at least that was my old playbook.

It isn’t so much being old, as it is humbled by experience, but now I seldom pass a kettle or a beggar without giving something. I worry far less these days about being scammed by someone who will spend my alms on booze. That used to worry me a lot for some reason, but I don’t know if I even care about what this guy in a wheel chair does with the money I give to him every time I see him: he has no legs.

In this season of the celebration of the birth of Jesus, such deliberation over the worthiness of alms-seekers seems inappropriate anyway. Since Jesus didn’t do much picking and choosing, I don’t think I should either.

Besides, I’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for.

musings on howard dean

2003-12-18T14:37:00.000-06:00

By the close of September 2001, I had begun to put the shock of the 11th day of that month behind me. It occurred to me then, as it did to many Americans, that out of this tragedy we might be able to rebuild more than the mere structures of steel and glass: We might be able to rebuild the dream which once was America.

Our ruling class wasted no time in grounding my flight of fancy. While on September 12th, the attention of America was riveted to public matters with a breadth and depth which we had not seen in over a generation, the political class was hard at work transforming our national unity into political capital. And now, a mere two years post 9-11, I find myself as disenfranchised and disillusioned as I was on September 10th.

It may be naive optimism to suggest that the window of opportunity has not yet entirely passed. Indeed, there has been little to suggest to those of us paying attention that anything of substance will change as a result of recent trials. But the optimist in me continues to hope for the emergence of leadership with character.

Which brings me to what prompted me to start this blog on this particular day: the Howard Dean campaign.

You see I don’t vote. Or at least, not anymore: I once was a faithful red, white and blue blooded American who pulled the lever faithfully. I’m a little slow, but I finally figured out that our two parties, that hold themselves out as some sort of patriotic structure right up there with Congress and the National Football League, are corrupt beyond redemption.

Grassroots is good and that reason, along with the excitement of some friends, kept me curious about Howard Dean. I have been longing for someone of stature to arise to the occasion and transform American politics by taking it out of the hands our ruling parties. I certainly don’t agree with Dean on many, many things, but I wondered if maybe Dean would be the One. I was pretty much dismissing him at a practical level given he has hitched himself to the Democratic party, but I still had a little faint vestige of hope.

The hope was of course shattered by the endorsement of Dean’s candidacy by none other than Al Gore. Anyone other than me hear the sounds of the withering of the grass roots?

If you don’t hear it, just give it time. And do yourself a favor and read the recent Wired (12.01) story on the campaign. In there they quote Dean, "If I give a speech and the blog people don't like it, next time I change the speech."

Lovely. Another soulless politician.

Perhaps more telling was a statement in the story that though not attributed to the campaign, sounds about right for things as they stand in the USA: "But for today, the Internet remains the key engine of Dean's election bid and he has yet to merge his grassroots movement with the traditional Democratic power structure."

Maybe that sound isn’t the withering of the grass roots. Maybe it is a DNC weed whacker.