Demablogue

Which Presidential Candidate has the Courage to Challenge the Military Budget?

No one should be surprised to hear candidate after candidate promising to "change the ways of Washington" should he or she be elected--political campaigns depend upon such promises, and upon the forgetfulness of a populace that hears such never-to-be-fulfilled promises every two years.  But very few of these candidates are willing to get all that specific about what they might or might not do once in office--if they did, there is the danger that they might be held accountable!  It is much easier for them to define change in flowery, touchy-feely, inspirational language, because the vague desire for "change" is practically universal.  But such campaigning is pure demagoguery--and pure Grade A Bullshit.

What are the ways of Washington that they say need changing?  All these candidates are willing to go this far: "domination by special interests."  But what special interests?  Looked at objectively, there is one clear answer that stands out from the rest: military and defense contractors.  The military officially consumes 40-odd percent of our national budget, but an additional 20% or so actually goes to the military indirectly through other defense contracts, bringing the total actual spending on military and defense to greater than 60% of our national budget--a total figure which is nearly equal to the military spending in the rest of the world combined.  So it should be clear what the biggest "special interest" in Washington is.

So tell me this: have you heard a single candidate say anything about cutting the military budget?  Many talk about spending more money on healthcare and education, many talk about eliminating our budget deficit and enormous national debt--but where could that money come from, if not from the military budget?  Having a budget is about making choices and setting priorities--a fact that seems obvious to everyone outside our political system.  And so we Americans have one simple, but very important, choice to make: Healthcare or War?  Eliminating the budget deficit or pouring more money into the military's coffers?  Funding programs that benefit the majority of American people, or funding those that benefit only a small, elite group--the military and defense contractors?  We can't have it both ways--because money doesn't grow on trees, and we're already more than 8 trillion in debt.

Such an important, fundamental choice about how we spend our money should be in the hands of the people--you might assume.  We live in a democracy, after all, and what kinds of choices are more important for us to make than fundamental budgetary ones?  But search far and wide across our political landscape, and you won't find any indication of that choice.  The only way that we the people can make choices about anything is through the officials we elect--that is, we only have the choices that are reflected in the differing positions of the various candidates running for office.  Especially given the contentiousness of our political climate, but mostly because we are supposed to be a democracy, we might expect a wide variety of choices to be available to us, through those various candidates.  There are maybe 10 or so candidates campaigning for the presidential election in 2008, so we should have 10 or so choices about which direction we want the country to head.  Do we?  Is there a single candidate offering us, by making it one of his or her chief issues, the choice to cut the military budget--if a majority of people felt they wanted to vote for that?  No.

So, despite the appearance of diversity among those campaigning for president--an African-American, A Woman, a Mormon, etc.--in fact there is very little substantial political diversity among them.  And none whatsoever on this one issue, which consumes 60% of our tax dollars.  The personal diversity is a deception masking an underlying political sameness, despite the rhetoric you may hear from  Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, et. al.  I doubt very much that American Policy would differ substantially under any of these candidates--whomever elected would merely serve as a figurehead for the military and corporate elites who have much greater influence over our country than the American people themselves.

It may appear that in this regard, politics has been much worse over the last 6 years--but as Howard Zinn points out in one of his chapters from "The People's History of the United States,"  there has been a "Bipartisan Consensus" since Carter and Before, that our Military Budget will not be touched.  On this issue that has consumed the majority of our tax dollars for three or four decades, there has been no political diversity whatsoever.  We can hardly single out George Bush for proposing an increase in the military budget, as he did last month, if every politician in both major political parties has gone along with that kind of policy for decades.

                             ~~~~~~~~~

Let me be clear about what I'm arguing for in this essay.  I'm not arguing that we should cut the military budget and spend the money  on social programs and reducing our national debt.  What I'm arguing is that such a choice must be available to the American People to make, if we wish to consider ourselves a great democracy.  I think that that is a conclusion that people of all political stripes ought to be able to agree on, even if the choices they would make or vote for would be radically different from each other.

My broader argument is that if we the people do not have budgetary choices, then we are not a democracy.  It is our money that 535 legislators and 1 executive are spending, and if they give it all to their croneys and political supporters then America is not much different from an Absolute Monarchy or Military Dictatorship (with revolving personnel)--despite the appearance of minor political choice (which personality we prefer in office--not which policy we prefer), to appease and deceive the public.  I believe that if we are ever going to really change Washington, we're going to have to change the ways that money is distributed and spent--from serious reforms of Lobbying and Campaign Finance, to some kind of public oversight over the national budget.    If it is our tax dollars, we should have some right to decide how it is to be spent.

Here's a crazy Idea: a national budget referendum, in which people get to vote on the rough percentage allocations within our budget for which programs.  Or an even crazier idea: on our tax returns we get to specify the percentage of our taxes that goes to each element of the budget.  So if I want 50% of my tax dollars to go to paying off the national debt, and 50% toward social programs, I can specify that--and if someone wants to give 75% of his tax dollars to the military, then he can do so.  Either way, the people have a hand in deciding the general shape of the budget, and congress's job is to allocate the money to specific programs within those already-publicly-determined broad constraints.

In the mean time, we can hope and dream that political candidates will eventually arise who have the courage to challenge the military establishment and its overblown budget--who have the democratic integrity to offer us that choice to vote upon, which should really be in our hands, not in the hands of "special interests."  I don't see anyone yet--to my eyes, those campaigning for president in 2008 are cowards, all.

We Are All Responsible

I’m not sure why, over the holiday season, I was thinking about end-of-the-world scenarios… but let me lead you, for a moment, through my train of thought.  Fundamentalist Christians think the world is going to end, that that end is coming soon, and that the “increase in sin” is bringing it faster.  When that religious fervor gets mixed with a political ideology, it allows politically right-wing Christians to blame the coming of the Apocalypse on Gays marrying, Feminism and the loss of “family values,” terrorism and the rise of “fanatical Islam,” and anything in general that smacks of liberalism, freedom of religion, freedom of sexuality or drug use.  They see their world crumbling around them—and it’s everybody else’s fault but theirs.

Now, if you’re progressively minded, or at least modestly aware of and respectful of knowledge that can be gained through observation (i.e. science), you probably are aware that the earth is going through some climate change, that a large consensus of experts believe that climate change is going to intensify (& possibly worsen), and that a fair proportion of the community of scientists actually believe that things have gotten so bad already, that we might be facing severe environmental collapse in the next few decades.  The progressively-minded are also aware of the large degree of war and violence in the world, and the fact that so many of those conflicts are actually about diminishing resources.  Human rights abuses are worsening in many places, and there is an increasing militarization of large states, as well as of some multinational corporations with interests around the world.  It is all very frightening, and in many cases it looks like civilization as we know it could collapse.  Combine this awareness with a political ideology, and it allows left-wing progressives to blame the coming of civilizational and environmental collapse on the right-wing corporate & war-mongering interests, on fundamentalist Christians who support the greed and racism of the political right, and on the comfortable middle of America (and/or all of the First World) that over-consumes, over-pollutes, and ignores the consequences of its actions.  The left-wing sees the world crumbling around them—and it’s everybody else’s fault but theirs.

Are you beginning to follow my point?  I’m not interested in denying that there are serious problems in the world, or that there is conflict.  I cannot make a judgement on whether the world is going to end or not, as I’m not even really sure what I’m going to do five minutes from now.  It is clear that the feeling that things are heading toward disaster is a common one in America—and in my experience in the Middle East, it is true there as well.  People have had such feelings many times in history—and of course, as we look back, the world never ended at any of those points.  Yet particular civilizations have collapsed, ways of life have been destroyed, whole races and cultures have been wiped out by others.  That feeling, that sense of impending doom, is really a psychological sense of what is going on now, the state of the world at present.  We, because of our psychology, tend to project those images into the future, we tend to come up with worst-case scenarios, in other words, humans are by nature paranoid.  Like language and breathing, it is part of the structure of our minds and bodies.  (We are designed to jump to conclusions, to make unwarranted assumptions about our immediate environment and social group, because these behaviors enable us to survive in situations where we need to make difficult decisions or avoid imminent dangers.)

So bad things are indeed happening in the world, no matter from what angle you look.  That paranoia about the world ending is at least partially based in the reality of conflict, tension, and destruction we see around us.  But it comes to a fever pitch when we consider the part those other than ourselves are doing, to contribute to the conflict and destruction in the world.  The feeling that “it’s their fault things are going so bad” leaves us feeling hopeless and despairing, because there’s nothing we can do about it—other than ranting and raving—since they are the ones actually causing the problem.

Many Americans think Arab and Muslim terrorists are the sources of violence & conflict in the world, that Islam is “less a religion than a fascist political ideology” (as a sampling of some of the ignorant nonsense people put up on the web.)  Many Muslims think that America, Israel, and “The West” in general, are the source of all the conflict in the world—they are, after all, the ones with the large militaries, invading and occupying the Middle East.  I know next to nothing about the Far East, and very little about Latin America and Africa, but I predict that if you look at many of the conflicts within those regions, as well as between those regions and perceived external enemies and rivals, you will find that you have multiple groups of people who believe that things are going badly, and that it is almost entirely the fault of the other party(s).

Let’s say you have two roommates who are having a conflict about which one of them is supposed to do the dishes.  Each one thinks it is the other one’s responsibility, each one thinks that they have already done more than their fair share, each one feels taken advantage of by the other.  And meanwhile, the dishes pile up in the sink, the resentment builds, and the cockroaches and ants come out to feed.  Now, we must admit that there is a real problem (dishes not done, cockroaches all over the kitchen, resentment and hurt feelings on all sides).  The question is, who is responsible?  Of course, if you are one of the roommates, you think it is the other one who is responsible.  But we, stepping outside the conflict can see that both of them are responsible.  If we allowed them to present their cases to us, we might lean toward one side or the other in assigning particular responsibility for some aspect of the problem—one of them doesn’t do the dishes right away after he eats, but does them at night or the next morning.  The other one goes in and obsessively cleans up the dirty dishes of the first roommate, without telling or asking, and gets in the habit of doing that and building up resentment.  Each of them is more responsible than the other for some particular aspect—however, and here’s my point, both of them are responsible overall for the existence of the conflict and the problematic results of the conflict.

Or think about dysfunctional family relationships.   Everybody has their own points of view, everybody thinks the other family members are acting selfishly or unfairly or unjustly, everybody feels that he or she is the victim.  It’s all true—they are all victims.  But they are also all responsible.  Sometimes that responsibility consists in not walking out when they should have—as in the case of a wife abused by her husband.  But even those who, on first glance, appear to be the most innocent, are still responsible in their own way for maintaining the conflict, and for the problems that result.  That’s not to say that one of the parties may be more responsible than others—like the abusive husband.  When we look at genocide and exploitation around the world, it’s clear that there is one party that bears much more responsibility than the other.  However, that does not absolve the other party entirely.  What happens when they turn around and oppress their former oppressors?  Or what if they did commit some minor offence, which their oppressors were able to exaggerate into an excuse to exterminate them?  Tribal or family feuds are of this variety—perpetuating themselves through the generations, with each side alternating in its role of victim and victimizer.

I want to encourage us to think in terms of a family, for a number of reasons.  One, we all share the same house—the earth.  And there’s nowhere to go to escape—the entire earth is colonized, settled, known, exploited, and part of several vast global networks—those of political entities, trade, and corporations.  We are all facing the same problems: pollution (which, from its point of production, gradually spreads over the whole earth), dwindling resources, overpopulation, armed conflict, poverty, etc.  No matter how much some of us may appear to be insulated against some of those problems, in fact that is a temporary illusion: these problems affect every single one of us.

A family that decides it wants to solve its problems recognizes, first, that they are stuck with each other.  Muslims, Christians, and Jews had all better recognize that the others are here to stay.  Right- and Left-wingers all over the world are going to have to realize that their opponents are here to stay.  I could go on.  Catholics and Protestants, Hutus and Tutsis, Ethnic Minorities and Racial Bigots.  America and the rest of the world. 

And to engage with each other, we must all recognize—no matter what side we are on, no matter the color of our skin, or the “content of our creed,” etc.—that we all bear a measure of responsibility for the conflict in the world today.  When one member of a family so hates another that he wishes him to be kicked out of the family—when one race believes the world would be better off without some other race—he (or that race) is refusing to accept responsibility—projecting and pinning it all on that other family member.  We must all accept that genocide and discrimination will never be solutions to the world’s problems.  We must all except that all sides should be given equal rights.

But these things, these declarations of human rights, etc., are what happen at the beginning of the therapy session, the conflict resolution, the discussion.  The real work is the acceptance of individual responsibility.  Rather than looking to the responsibility of the others, every party to conflict in the world today (and that means every single human being alive, and every single group of human beings) has to first (and primarily) recognize his or her own responsibility, and the responsibility of the group with which they self-identify.  Even if you believe that the responsibility of some other group is greater than the responsibility of your group (say, for example, you are a Native American, poor, living on a reservation—whose culture was destroyed and whose lands were taken long ago by the invading white man), it is your job, first, to look to your own responsibility.  And I don’t mean “historical responsibility.”  We cannot be responsible for the failings of our ancestors.  I mean: what are you doing now, to remain in conflict with the rest of the world.  What are you not doing now, to prevent conflict.  What principles are you not standing up for.  What beliefs are you violating in your daily activities.  In what ways are you a party to the fictional notion that some races or groups of people are inherently better than others—and therefore deserve dominance or superiority.

Yes, we must be allowed to air our grievances.  But in doing so, we must recognize that all sides have grievances.  Therefore, all sides should have an equal right to air grievances.

Yes, there are some immediate injustices that must be remedied—there are some great portions of blame and responsibility to be parceled out, to the worst of offenders.  But those worst offenders, are they not merely acting out (with the aid of armies, police, or guerrilla fighters) what everyone else feels?  That is part of the acceptance of responsibility.

Some are going to have to recognize that in order to move on to real solutions to global problems, they are going to have to swallow their pride, or their hatred, or their resentment.  In a family, the one who is most wronged has a choice: either leave the family altogether, or forgive the wrongs done against them.  Either hold the family together or destroy it.  In that choice is a great responsibility: and it is often the acceptance of responsibility by those most wronged that can enable others to accept their responsibility.  But we here on earth don’t even have that choice to leave—therefore, our responsibility is, paradoxically, greater: we can choose to hold our resentments and feelings of victimization—and as a result to sustain conflict indefinitely.  Or we can choose to forgive them, and work with those who have wronged us. 

Addressing global problems, and looking for global solutions, we must adhere to some basic ground rules: everyone’s grievances must be heard and addressed.  But no one group’s grievances or feelings of victimization can be allowed to trump another’s.  And the solution to the most difficult problems must be considered from all angles, all points of view, with all cards on the table, all potential solutions considered.  No group can be allowed to maintain some right that would prevent the implementation of global solutions.  All sides must accept responsibility for engaging in the process—which means that nobody can back out just because they don’t like the direction things are going (as America does consistently when it comes to any global discussion on any issue).

We must see each other as family members in conflict—rather than as implacable foes.  Nobody can be considered an enemy—all are family.  Our universal belief that we have enemies in other groups of human beings is the most basic responsibility of every single one of us to shed.  We must all accept the fact that if we don’t want the family to fall apart—the world, civilization, etc., to end—we are all going to have to sit at the same table to work it out, no matter how much we may initially hate the others across the table.

And if we fail or refuse to sit at the table, we are going to have to accept, on our shoulders, the responsibility for all of the violence, destruction, and hatred in the world.

Happy New Year!

Demagoguery and the Dangers of Oppositional Politics

An earlier version of this essay was to be called “Hugo Chavez and the Dangers of Anti-Imperialism,” but I don’t really want to single him out, because it’s clear that Chavez means well, despite his flair for the theatrical.  We swim in a sea of oppositional politics, and like fish in water, we have difficulty seeing its pervasiveness.  The American founding fathers didn’t bother to think much about the subject, probably because they felt that the democracy they envisioned would improve matters—and while it has done so in many respects, I believe that in some ways it has made demagoguery and oppositional politics worse.

Demagoguery—or the inflaming of the passions of the masses to achieve political goals—is probably as old as human social and political relations.  The public’s passion is the lifeblood of politicians and religious leaders; that passion generates an energy that seems to enable or stimulate great change—and anyone who has ever attended any political rally, protest march, rock concert, sports event, or religious gathering, can testify to the awesome power generated collectively by mobs and masses of people.  Politicians, preachers, dictators, popes, kings, and congressmen alike, all harness that dynamic energy, but usually for their own personal ambition.  The “change” they achieve is usually little more than to throw out the old, corrupt system, and replace it with another, with themselves at the top.  Thus politics has cycled for thousands of years.

The problem—the tragedy, really—is that it is much easier to inflame people against something rather than for something—and, to point out the obvious, it is always easier to find and attack the many problems in society, rather than to come up with creative solutions to them.  Even easier is to find a scapegoat to blame for those problems, and to direct the public’s anger, frustration, and energy at that scapegoat.  Given how easy it is to do so, is it any wonder that politicians become addicted to that shortcut to power, rather than taking the long, hard path of trying to get the public to understand the problems they face, and engage in the complex and difficult processes necessary to find solutions?  The tragedy of Hitler’s Germany is not that it represents something unique, but rather something universal!

Consider the success of demagogues versus thoughtful problem-solvers.  Does anybody remember the name Dennis Kucinich from the 2004 American presidential election?  I hear he’s going to run again, and I’m glad.  A thoughtful guy, who bothered to put together a platform based on real solutions to problems, and to propose ideas outside of the mainstream.  Who didn’t engage in negative politics.  He didn’t do too well, did he?  Probably the explanation many would give is that he lacked charisma—but what is political charisma other than demagoguery?  The tragedy is that we need some real change, and we say we want it, but we keep turning to the flashy, charismatic leaders who give us style over substance—like a woman who keeps being seduced by abusive men, and never goes out with the nice guys she wants to be “just friends” with.  Human culture is that woman, Dennis Kucinich is one of the “nice guys,” and I’m the exasperated girlfriend who can’t do anything about her best friend’s addiction to abusive relationships, no matter how much I point out to her that she’s stuck in a vicious circle.  I can shout myself blue in the face, but it won’t make a bit of difference until she (you; the world) wakes up to that realization herself.   

I have used the language of psychology and self-help books, because I believe that there are several aspects of this issue that can be stated in terms of addiction: politicians are addicted to the energy of a public galvanized against some enemy; people are addicted to mob energy as well as to the charisma of politicians; and because that energy is spent in just putting some other jerk into power rather than achieving any real change, people are constantly seeking to get that energy back—so some new demagogue comes along and capitalizes on it, and the cycle continues.  We’re addicted to false promises and easy solutions, because real solutions take too much work, too much honesty, and too much looking at ourselves in the mirror.  We reject any politician who might actually have a chance at engaging us in that work—and so any hopeful politician has to turn into a demagogue to achieve any real political success.  A number of years back, when I was young and naïve, a cynical older female friend gave me a brilliant analysis of men and women: she said that women in their twenties are shallow and prefer assholes over nice guys, so all the nice guys turn into assholes in order to get laid.  Then by the time women get to their thirties, they start to tire of being abused, and look for a nice guy—but there aren’t any left.  I would add: the men who start out nice but turn nasty, become too addicted to the success they get from being jerks, to be able to change back.  And the women who say they want a change are still too addicted to the thrill of charismatic abusers, to find the deeper, longer lasting (but slower developing!) joy that comes from a balanced relationship.  We, the human race, are still too addicted to the thrill of charismatic leaders; and our politicians are still too addicted to the quick power that comes from stirring up the public’s passions.

So it’s clear why demagoguery is pervasive: it works.  I was just browsing through Barnes & Noble today, and I gravitated toward the “current affairs” section, of course—and what did I see?  Books against this, books against that.  A lot of anti-Bush books.  And, on the other side, a lot of books describing how evil the Islamic world is, how the terrorists are setting up a whole network in America, how Arab society is hopelessly tribal and incapable of civil society (a myth that has been passed down through the ages in the west—read Edward Said's classic book Orientalism if you want a thorough analysis of how myths about the Middle-East and the Other have been passed down generation after generation, and accepted unquestioningly by new generations of “experts” on the Middle-East, who rarely know anything at all about the subject they discuss).  Fear-mongering, of course.  Evidence that demagoguery sells books about as well as sex sells automobiles and deodorant.

Demagoguery often works through the creation of some kind of enemy, a target toward which the public can direct their anger, frustration, rage, grief, desperation, whatever.  The problem, of course, is that the image of the enemy blocks out perception of the realities on the ground.  Arabs and Muslims are fully functional, normal human beings, with fully developed capacities for morality, rational thought, compassion, love, grief, etc.  They also have basic human needs like the rest of us, food, water, housing, safety, protection, and fundamental human rights.  The reality that some of them out there are suffering as a result of US or Israeli policy, and might have legitimate grievances, is completely masked by the image of them as being primarily terrorists, or incorrigibly tribal, or subject to an insane political ideology, or full of hate for the West, or for Freedom and Democracy, or whatever image conservative demagogues choose to put before the public eye.  But having an enemy to rage against is enormously effective for politicians, as we’ve seen in recent years—but that has been true throughout our history.

Another aspect of this issue is the fact that there are, of course, demagogues on both sides.  Bush & Co., Fox News, the New York Post, and the like, all rant and rave about the danger to American Civilization posed by Islamic Radicalism “Islamo-fascism.”  At the same time, Osama bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmedinajad, Saddam Hussein, and hundreds of Imams across the Middle East rant and rave about the dangers posed to Muslim and/or Arab Society by Western Imperialism, Zionism, Materialism, Military Occupation, etc.  Now, the enemies the Western Demagogues attack are precisely those figures who are attacking them—the Eastern Demagogues.  And vice-versa.  Fox News allows those radical muslim demagogues to represent all of muslim society, rather than revealing that they are a small segment of that society, and in no way reflect the totality of Eastern political thought.  Osama bin Laden allows Bush to represent all of Western society.  So it’s not that they hate us, or that they hate freedom—the truth is, they hate Bush & what he represents.  They hate an image of us they have been given.  The problem comes when they believe that all of Western society is totally monolithic, united behind Bush’s agenda, and they take their rage at that agend out on innocent bystanders.  We do the same thing in assuming that the Arab/Muslim world is totally monolithic, and therefore we can rack up as many civilian casualties as necessary to wipe out terrorism.

The Demagogues on both sides feed off each other; in fact the vast majority of people are innocent bystanders, and in some cases misled sheep, who basically just want to live normal lives.  It is the demagogues, on both sides, that give us this notion of a “Clash of Civilizations,” because it aids their political ambition.  It is the demagogues who create enemies for us, and those enemies are really just caricatures of the opposing demagogues.  If we realized that, we would recognize that WE (the ordinary people) HAVE NO REAL ENEMIES.

Demagoguery and American Democracy

One of the central problems of our American democracy is the personality politics and negative campaigning that are so much a part of our political life.  Chomsky gave an address in Boston last week in which he pointed out that American democracy is not really democratic compared to lots of countries in South America, where politics does a good job of substantatively addressing issues of concern to the populace (I believe that he was referring to recent elections in Bolivia, but don’t quote me).  As I pointed out in “The Anti-War Vote,” we never really had a referendum on the war in Iraq here in America, we had a vote in which many candidates who claimed to be against the war were elected.  But who’s to say that wasn’t an instance of more demagoguery on the Democratic side?  Just politics as usual, in order to win elections?  I think in many cases, that’s exactly what it was.  To me, the essential problem behind this aspect of American politics is the fact that we don’t vote on issues, we vote for people.   

The result of our people-centered politics is that politics is more personality-oriented than issues-oriented.  Politicians almost never give a detailed platform of what they will vote for or against.  Instead, they present themselves as people, as personalities, and they attack their opponents.  But there is rarely a substantive debate on issues, and even when there is, it usually isn’t the reason a candidate gets elected (otherwise there is no way Kerry would have lost to Bush in 2004).  So issues get lost, and we, the public, are not well served.  But what choice do we have?

Politics in America today encourages demagoguery: politicians emphasize their personalities more and more, and the aspect they emphasize is their willingness to “fight for us” against whatever corruption they are able to pin on the opposing party or candidate.  Is it any wonder negative campaigning works so well?  The only thing that will motivate people to go out to vote is the feeling that unless they do so, some unspeakable evil will take over their world.  Every Democratic candidate elected will only further the homosexual agenda of destroying the American family, which will ultimately lead to a land of sin and godlessness run by Muslims, with Palestinian suicide bombers as police.  Every Republican elected will support Bush’s Imperialist agenda.   The result is that neither party has to touch issues; as a result of that, the public is even less convinced of the effectiveness of our democracy, which, unfortunately, means that they are even more prey to demagoguery, as the only motivating force for participation.

The overall result: the increasing polarization of party politics.  Each party has been able to turn the other into a bogeyman.  And as has been pointed out lately, each side appeals more and more to the extremes to stir passions (although, I must admit, even though the republican party does a good job of appealing to far right, the democrats don’t actually appeal much to the left’s actual concerns and passions, they just appeal to anti-Bush, anti-Republican sentiment).  Thus is demagoguery institutionalized, because people have to get elected.  And since elections are held every two years, most of politicians’ time and energy is spent in demagoguery and partisan politics.

But that increasing polarization of party politics is the best ruse of all, because the Republicans and Democrats differ very little from each other in actual policy.  Anyone from left of the political spectrum will have to admit that both Democrats and Republicans are to the right of center (though not too far), and their policies on business, trade, the military, spending, etc. are very close.  Anyone to the far right also knows that the Republicans, though they talk a good show, very rarely actually implement successful right-wing policy.  The huge bluster surrounding politics hides the complete lack of diversity in our political representation.  Many voices and opinions aren’t represented in Washington (or the state capitals) at all—like any serious voice critical of Israel, any opinion that we have too high a military budget, etc.  Lots of Democratic politicians say they want Universal Healthcare—but I haven’t seen it seriously debated in congress.  The Republicans and Democrats represent each other using the extremes of the party, but in actual practice they are very narrow.  So this constant Republican-Democratic negative-campaigning battle is nothing more than a show to keep us distracted, while elites and lobbyists run the country.  True Democracy is the greatest victim here.

Let’s go back to question I asked above in regard to Kucinich, this time with regard to the Iraq Study Group.  A lot of thoughtful, hard work went into preparing a study that was a compromise.  But everyone has to score political points off of it.  My prediction: the whole thing will devolve into partisan politics, and nothing will get done, & we’ll still be mired in Iraq in 2009.  Despite the fact that it doesn’t call for immediate withdrawal, it still, in essence, calls for a definite withdrawal, and not an indefinite-open-ended presence.  People against the war should embrace these findings and push for their implementation—because getting out a year from now with some chance of stabilizing Iraq is better than 2-6 more years of “stay the course” vs. “cut and run” bickering that gets us nowhere, all the while we become more & more mired in the civil war.

My cynical side suspects that perhaps the Democrats secretly want this, so they still have Bush & the Iraq war to rail against, and they can win the presidential election in 2008.  Notice congressional democrats (like Hillary Clinton) saying, regarding a change in Iraq policy, “it’s all in the president’s hands.”  If so, it is cynical & disgusting.  In fact, congress has enough power that they could force the president’s hand, if they wanted to.  They could cut the Iraq War budget.  They could pass all kinds of laws and recommendations; they could debate the ISG recommendations seriously, along with other recommendations, instead of letting the “Decider” decide.  But perhaps they don’t want to.  A huge quagmire like Iraq is a giant opportunity for demagogues, and while real people suffer, politics goes on as usual.

Demagoguery and Genuine Popular Movements

Now let’s return to Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela.  I actually agree with what he stands for, with most of what he says.  Did you know that South America is actually trying to set up something akin to the European Union?  (I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t stumbled upon that recent speech by Chomsky.)  That Chavez is one of the major forces behind it?  That, continent-wide, former enemies are putting aside their differences in favor of economic cooperation and support for democracy?  Of course, the American press doesn’t even mention that, because America’s participation in the region’s politics has been so ugly (almost continual support for right-wing anti-democratic regimes over the last 50 or so years), and because it furthers our ends more to make sound-bytes out of Chavez’s speeches than to actually examine South American politics.

And therein lies the problem.  Even Jon Stewart, whom I normally admire, has been able to reduce Chavez to sound-bytes.  It’s funnier.  Who can forget Chavez calling Bush the Devil on the floor of the UN, saying “the podium still smells of sulfur?”  But did you listen to the rest of his speech?  It was excellent.  Yet even the anti-Bush media only picked out that one quote to replay, and make him look ridiculous.  In using such language, Chavez plays into the hands of demagogues on this side of the continental divide, and that is an illustration of what I referred to earlier—demagogues on both sides feed off each other.

What about Yasser Arafat?  Even worse, he used violence and terrorism as a tool, and those tools completely obscured the fact that he represented a just cause: the liberation of a people subject to brutal Israeli occupation and oppression.  It is so much easier to point to his use of terrorism, in order to obscure the injustices being committed by the other side.  He played right into the hands of the Israeli right-wing, and his decades-long feud with Ariel Sharon completely prevented any movement on substantive issues.

Communism is another excellent example: the basis of Karl Marx’s thought was a genuine concern for all people, a genuine desire to see economic, social, and political justice in the world.  His writings have inspired many over the last century and a half.  And many of his ideas are sound, though in many cases you’d never know it by looking at the historical implementation of them.  V. I. Lenin turned a genuine movement for change into another dictatorship of elites, and another imperial adventure.  And American Anti-Communist demagogues were able to use the threat of a Russian communist empire as an excuse to quash genuine popular movements all over the globe.  What was the Cold War but another standoff between demagogues on two opposing sides? 

The demagoguery of one side is the easiest target for the demagoguery of the other side.
Therefore, radicals who want real change will have to find another way to address the problems important to people.  No matter how much change they want, in engaging in oppositional politics it is inevitable that they will only maintain the status quo.  They will feed the endless cycle of violence and meaningless change.  To enact real change, we must change the way that problems are addressed—because the real source of most of the world’s problems is conflict among peoples.  War can never bring peace.  Instead of seeing those on other continents or belonging to other political parties and religions as enemies, we must see them as friends.  But our demagogues are able to point to their demagogues as evidence that those people are our enemies.

Seeing Through the Hype

We, the people, have a responsibility to recognize the demagoguery that is pervasive everywhere, if we wish to move forward in addressing the world’s real problems.  We should see through the demagogues who try to rally us against someone else: those who call us to violence, war, or just simply hatred or opposition.  Demagogues abound, whether they be pundits, professors, preachers, or politicians.  Anyone who calls us to oppose some other group, hate some other group, attack some other group, deny some other group their rights, is a demagogue.

And while we have a great responsibility in seeing through the demagoguery that is directed at us, there is an even greater challenge: recognizing the genuine people, and genuine concerns, behind the demagogues on the “other side.”  Once we recognize how easy it is to fall prey to demagoguery, how it is, in fact, nearly impossible to avoid in today’s world, how tempting it is for ambitious leaders to use it, we should recognize that the hatred directed at us (whoever we may be—Americans, Jews, Muslims, Whites, Blacks, Chinese, etc.) is an illusion masking something else.

My point is that we must be wise in recognizing that other people fall prey to the same traps we do, and therefore we must not blame or attack other peoples because their leaders are also demagogues.  Demagogues take advantage of real needs and grievances of the people, and while we should condemn the demagoguery (& terrorism) that their leaders use, we should seek to understand those genuine needs and grievances underlying the political demagoguery.

Bin Laden is a classic demagogue, stirring up real resentment in the Middle-East toward American foreign policy, American occupations, and the Israeli occupation.  But just because Bin Laden is bad doesn’t mean that the passions he fed off were themselves wrong.  If we ignore those needs, concerns, grievances, and just attack Bin Laden, then another demagogue will take his place.  The real way to eradicate terrorism (which is really only one variety of demagoguery), is to address the issues and grievances underlying it.  Then people will have no reason to turn to terrorists to solve their problems.

Yes, we must punish the men and women who are directly guilty—the instigators, the profiteers, the war criminals, the terrorists.  But whole peoples should never be punished for the sins of their leaders, even if they voted in or otherwise supported that sin.  They did so in part out of ignorance—though everyone knows in their hearts that all other people are equal to them, are just as human as they are (I have to believe it of all my fellow human beings, despite the fact that they act as though they didn’t).  Their ignorance came in believing that they would be safer if they pretended that some particular group was all bad; their ignorance in allowing the demagoguery of politicians, rabble rousers, fanatics, preachers, to temporarily blind them to the basic humanity of all people.

If we punished all people who were aroused by the sweet lies of hungry politician-jackals, everyone on earth would have to be killed.  Whom would such a punishment benefit?  If we are to be just to all people—which we must accept as a principle of international diplomacy—then we must equally give all peoples, instead of punishment, amnesty and pardon for their sins.  Which is to say, our goal should be the elimination of all ongoing human rights violations and the prevention of any future or potential human rights violations—rather than the punishment of past violations, other than punishment of those directly involved in planning & carrying out attacks, who are still living.  Certainly retribution against entire peoples must be eliminated from world justice.

We realize that humans are as they are: easily swayed by charisma and seduced by false promises of easy solutions to their problems.  All peoples all over the world are that way, and their acceptance of the lies of scape-goating blame-casting politicians and pundits (since time immemorial) should not be taken as a sign that they themselves are inherently evil.

(The clever will recognize yet another excuse to reference the Stanley Milgram psychological experiments done in the sixties: the discovery being that two thirds of people will submit others to pain if they are ordered to do so, even if they feel uncomfortable about it, even if they believe there is no reason for it.  Just the authority of the scientist conducting the experiment led experimental subjects to push the button supposedly subjecting the person behind the glass to a painful electric shock.  For those who don't know about these experiments, they are, to my mind, one of the five or ten most significant results in psychology over the last century.  See the wikipedia article here.  My point being: people are very susceptible to demagoguery.  That doesn't make them evil.  It makes demagoguery dangerous; and it means that it is of paramount importance that we recognize the human beings behind those trapped and fooled by demagoguery.)

To the Americans: most Muslims are decent human beings, and they don’t hate you, they don’t want to destroy you.  Don’t listen to their demagogues, and ignore the speeches of their demagogues quoted by your demagogues.  Underneath, they are human beings with the same rights and needs as you have.

To the Muslim world: Most Americans are decent human beings, and they don’t want to kill you.  Unfortunately, many of them are stupid and uneducated and easily believe what they see on Fox News.  They may think they hate you, but they only hate the image of you they have been fed (which, you must admit, is a despicable, hateful image).  They, out of ignorance, don’t realize that you are human beings just like them; if they did, they wouldn’t wish harm upon you.  Forgive them their ignorance, and recognize that they are decent people.  Don’t blame them for Bush—even those who voted for him (less than half of the country) did so out of ignorance and fear.  Don’t blame them for the Israeli genocide against Palestinians: most of them have been so brainwashed they don’t even know it is happening.  Don’t blame them for what you yourselves have also done—listening to your hateful imams and sowing violence and destruction.  Reach out to them with friendship, overcome your own fears of them, so that they will have reason to see past all the haze of demagoguery.

In place of Demagoguery, let’s have instead: Dialogue.

Five study questions about government

One of my central projects in this blog is the clarification of the role of government, generally. What is it we expect government to do for us? Is government behaving in a manner consistent with the principles of its founding? What are those principles, in essence?—and is the way that government is constituted the most effective one for realizing those principles? In the spirit of seeking for first principles, I present the following questions for your consideration.

1. Is the role of government to reduce violence and conflict within society, or to exacerbate violence and conflict within society?

We understand that violence is currently a part of human social interaction (without going to far as to say that “violence and war is an inherent part of human nature”—the subject of another essay). In order to protect themselves from violence, individuals form larger groups, which in turn end up bringing the violence to a new level: groups, cliques, tribes, mobs, mafias, etc. It would seem that human society has formed government in order to keep that inter-group violence in check. Now of course, in much of history and in much of the world, that violence ends up transferred to yet another level: that of wars between nations. My question here has to do with internal conflict and violence within society, within one society supposedly governed by one government.
Leaving aside the question of why government might have been founded in the first place, we can ask simply: knowing that different groups within a society would attack each other if allowed, should the government of the whole society encourage that conflict, or should it strive to reduce that wherever and whenever possible? Should it strive to compromise among the interests of different parties, or should it egg-on the different factions within society toward greater and greater conflict? Should it seek to polarize society, or should it seek to unite society?

 

     2.  Does government exist for the benefit of the people governed, or are the people      gathered together for the benefit of the government?

In ancient empires and kingdoms, from the European feudal system, to the Aztec empire, to the Ancient Roman empire, to thousands of small kingdoms across geography and history, government (the kings and nobles) took benefit from the governed (subjects, serfs, slaves, taxpayers). Government enriched itself at the expense of the people, and acted, in a way, just like a large mafia: offering “protection” (from other greedy kings, presumably) in exchange for a large share of agricultural production. Any disturbance of this system is severely punished, any failure to defer completely to the authority of the monarch resulted in death. In the European Enlightenment of the 18^th century the question was first examined thoroughly by political philosophers: is it possible to have a government that exists for the benefit of the people? A government that is subject to the people, rather than the other way around? In principle, the US constitution was an attempt to create such a government.

So my question here really is:

A. Do we still want a government subject to, and for the benefit of, the people?

B. If so, is our government, as currently constituted, operating thus?—or is it, in fact, acting contrary to that principle and seeking benefit for itself (in particular, private benefit for public leaders and their families, friends, and business connections) above that of the people?

3. Should government seek to promote the interests of particular groups within society, or should it seek the benefit of all equally?

By particular groups, I mean the obvious: races or ethnic groups, religious groups, economic classes, political groups, sexes, etc.—any of the ways that human beings try to distinguish themselves from each other. This question is not only the question of whether government should endorse one particular religion, or grant political power to certain races or classes more than others: it is also a question of whether government’s job is to enforce the will of the majority above all minorities, dissenters, etc.—or whether government should allow all voices to be heard and included in the process of governing. If the majority of people are Christian, should the country rule according to Christian principles? If the majority of people are women (51%), should women be ruling men? If the majority of people are white, should the interests of other races be denied?—and when, in 50 years, the majority of Americans are Hispanic, should only their interests dominate?
                    Viewed from another angle, this question could be posed thus:
                Should government seek to govern by principles that are acceptable to all, or should it govern by principles acceptable to the majority, but which harm minorities within society?
                I should add, this is not a question about specific legislation, per se—about which it would be impossible to reach a consensus—but a question about the backbone of government, the principles by which it governs. And by “principles acceptable to all” I don’t mean that everyone will automatically agree to them (especially because many people in society might disagree with any principle that doesn’t privilege their particular group)—but that, at least in the abstract, those governing principles can be reasonably demonstrated to be neutral regarding the differences among those governed, and not prejudiced toward any group.

4. Is it the government’s job to rule people, to dictate the specific details of people’s private lives? Or is its job to protect people—from each other, from the potentially harmful actions of others?

If a government’s job is to reduce violence, obviously it must, at the least, protect people from each other (of course, if that is not part of its job, then it needn’t protect anybody). But perhaps we also need government to lead us, guide us, tell us how to act. Or do we?
When it comes to the issue of individual freedom within a community, society, or nation, we must recognize that there are some things we might like to do which might infringe on the liberty, rights, or lives of others. Such as murder, theft, and rape—to take three things that obviously infringe on others, and which any society seeks (or should seek) to limit. What about things like drunk driving? Or child pornography? Again, it can be reasonably demonstrated that these things cause direct harm to others, and we should limit them.
But should government go further—in seeking to create order in society, or uniformity, should it regulate that whole slew of activities, which individuals might engage in, that cannot be shown to cause direct harm to others? Such as drinking alcohol in one’s own home, or having consensual sex with another adult, or engaging in certain religious or spiritual practices, or burning a national flag?
            The back and forth in our society about such issues over the course of centuries suggests that there is a lot of gray area on this issue. If we look at different cultures over the course of history, we will notice two things. One, every culture has had some kind of moral code to regulate the behavior of individuals within society. And two, many of those moral codes differ from each other in some significant respects, and some are downright incompatible with others (think of the commandment to “take no other gods before me”).
I believe, to the contrary, that There is no gray area on this issue!! What do I mean by this? Either the government chooses some moral code to run the country—and in doing so, enforces the moral prejudices of one particular group within society against others (see question 3). Or the government operates on the principle that actions that can be shown to harm others must be limited. There is no middle ground. Every issue falls into one of these two categories: either it can be demonstrably shown that engaging in a certain activity causes harm to other members of society, or, on the contrary, such an action cannot be shown to cause direct harm, but it goes against some specific moral code invented by some particular human society.
            So this question, in my mind, boils down to this: should the government operate on the principle of “no harm” (the one universal principle on which all moral codes agree, and, one supposes, the job of government in protecting its citizens), or should it endorse and enforce some particular moral code?
When I say that there is no gray area, I don’t mean that in the lives of individuals there is no moral gray area. To me, every single day is fraught with moral dilemma after dilemma. The question, then, is: should the government help me make those decisions? Or should it allow me to seek my own solutions? Is government a moral guide—or should it be morally neutral? All of these are simply different ways of phrasing the same question about government interference in our lives.
The one issue about which I will admit that there seems to be some gray area, is that of abortion. But in fact, the gray area is not about whether the government should protect individuals from harm, or enforce some particular moral code. The gray area is really about “What is the definition of a person?” (all persons being subject to government protection). But in fact, people have disagreed about this, over the course of millennia (almost all societies, at all times in history, have practiced some form of infanticide—whether that be the abandoning of babies by mothers too poor to care for them, or killing girl babies, or killing twins out of some kind of superstition). There is a real moral dilemma here, which biologists admit is also a biological dilemma—a dilemma about spending resources on a being incapable of fending for itself. All species will abandon babies, when not doing so would lead to the death or harm of the mother or of her other children, in whom the mother has already invested a great deal of time and resources.
So, in my mind, this question is in fact a very personal moral dilemma faced by every mother. And it is also an issue about which American society (and other modern societies) demonstrably has no agreement or consensus. Which means, in the end, that there is no gray area on the question I posed: Either the government chooses to enforce some moral definition, or it allows individuals to make that moral choice. Either the government allows individual moral freedom, or it chooses some particular code supported by some people, but not all.

5. What is the government’s role on the international stage?

Should the government seek to act as a negotiator on behalf of its people, or should it act as a belligerent entity, waging war in the name of its people? Should the government compromise with other national entities, or should it unilaterally act as it wishes? And should the government seek to influence the affairs or forms of government of other nations?
            Obviously this question depends in part on other ones: does the government have the military/economic power to do what it wants internationally? Is it strong enough to win a war against other countries? Is it in grave or imminent danger? One could argue that differing global circumstances should dictate different answers to my question five.
But this is dodging the question. When we elect a representative on our behalf, when we hire a lawyer to argue our case, or to negotiate a contract, we have the expectation that, no matter the external circumstances, this person will act in a certain way, will behave according to a set of agreed principles, etc. We would be furious if our contract lawyer started a brawl with the lawyer for the other party. We would be equally enraged and mystified if our congressional representative pulled out a gun in a session of congress and shot a member of the opposing party.
Now, on the international stage, we have no “world government” above all national governments—yet nonetheless, treaties, trade agreements, border issues, and all other manner of contracts and disputes are played out every day. Admitting that a government acts in the interest of its own people and not necessarily in the interest of others around the world (whether it should or not is another issue), is it in the interest of its own people that a government be an international bully or a negotiator? A lawyer hired by you acts in your interest, but he also obeys certain higher principles of conduct and negotiation and argument and ethics. Can and should we expect that the same principles of negotiation and ethics (agreement to be bound by contracts), which we seek to uphold within society, should be used by our government in external matters?
Acknowledging that other governments are corrupt and act belligerently and violate treaties all the time, should we therefore act the same, with the argument that if we don’t, they will destroy us? Or should we act ethically even when others do not, as a way of (hopefully) influencing other nations to act the same?
And a deeper question: is it possible to hold certain principles internally while violating others externally? What I mean is, if we believe that all people within a society deserve equal treatment under the law, and an equal voice in government affairs, is it possible to maintain that stance all the while denying a voice in our international affairs to those in the rest of the world? Of course, if our internal principle is that people of a certain class within society deserve more rights than others, it would be entirely consistent if on the international stage we acted the same: protecting our rights above those of others. That, in fact, is a pretty good way to describe American society over the last few hundred years (despite claims to the contrary—and the external hypocrisy is, by the way, consistent with the internal one)—as well as most countries the world over. The question is, is that what we want?—or could that be reasonably argued to be just?
This question is of course tied to my first question as well: is the government’s role to reduce or exacerbate violence? And is it in the people’s interest for the government to provoke or exacerbate international violence and war? Certainly it is in the interest of some elites within a country—especially corporations that profit from war and military contracts—to have international violence. But does it benefit the people as well—or does it, on the contrary, make them less safe? In terms of reducing violence in the world, would the government be better as a negotiator or as a combatant? And is it possible to foment violence elsewhere in the world without it spilling over—and washing back to our own shores?
What about certain issues that affect the entire world: such as environmental issues (global warming, pollution, etc.), population issues, and resource issues (energy, water, food, etc.)? Should the goal of our government be to find solutions in conjunction with other governments—and to compromise and agree to be bound by those compromises—or should our government act only in our (or their) “interest,” and attempt unilaterally to implement (or not implement) solutions? Is it, in fact, actually in our interest if the government compromises, or are we safe enough, resource-rich enough, environmentally-clean enough that we can afford to ignore the rest of the world, and we’re better off not compromising?

Well, since I’ve already prejudiced you enough with my questions, I don’t want to prejudice you any more with answers—at least not yet. I do believe that we have to consider these questions, though, rather than just assuming that our government is operating according to the principles it claims to, or the principles we would wish it to.  Most of my future essays will be considerations of these questions in more detail.

A Constitutional Amendment Banning torture, secret prisons, and extraordinary rendition

The first constitutional amendment I would like to propose for your consideration is an amendment banning torture, secret prisons, and extraordinary rendition. I present the text of it below, followed by an analysis of each of its sections.

Amendment XXVIII

Section 1. Amendments V, VI, and VIII shall be understood to apply to all persons, US citizens and non-citizens alike, in times of war as well as in times of peace.

Section 2. Neither the US government nor any branch of the Military or the Intelligence Services shall hold any person without trial or without access to a lawyer, under any circumstances whatsoever.

Section 3. Neither the US government nor any of its agencies shall hold any person, citizen or non-citizen, in any form of secret prison or detention center. Any prison operated by the US government or any of its agencies shall allow access by the media, lawyers, the Red Cross or any other medical agency, and any international watchdog agency wishing to verify the humane conditions therein. These agencies or persons must have access to individual prisoners for private interviews for the purposes of verifying the humane conditions of the prison.

Section 4. Torture of any kind, on any person, citizen or non-citizen, held by the US government or any of its agencies, is espressly forbidden. Torture shall be understood to mean the intentional infliction of any kind of pain or discomfort, physical, mental, or psychological, whether for the purposes of extracting information or not.

Section 5. The US government, or any of its agencies, may not transfer any prisoner, citizen or non-citizen, for any reason, to the custody of any other nation, agency, government or corporation that does not guarantee the same rights and protections specified in this amendment, or that has a verifiable record of torture or other human rights violations.

Section 6. Any prisoners currently held by the US government, or any of its agencies, in conditions prohibited by this amendment, shall be guaranteed trial or released within six months of the passage of this amendment.

Section 1 clarifies and strengthens the fifth, sixth, and eighth amendments to the constitution, part of the original “Bill of Rights”—and in fact, the remainder of this proposed amendment is merely an elaboration of that. A careful reader of these amendments will notice that they do not in any way limit the guarantee of these rights to US citizens. Amendment V starts with the phrase “No person shall be held…” amendment VI refers to “the accused,” and amendment VII is written entirely in the passive voice: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” I believe that the correct understanding of these amendments has less to do with the particular kinds of individuals protected by them (citizen or non-citizen, civilian or military) and more to do with the conduct of government itself—these amendments are limitations on the power of government to detain or punish any persons.

The exception specified in Amendment V “except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger” refers only to the previous clause—the guarantee of indictment by grand jury for “capital or infamous” crimes. This exception in times of war is not an exception to the right to a trial by jury, it is only an exception to the necessity of a grand jury indictment before such a trial. And in fact, amendment VI starts with the phrase “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial…”—all criminal prosecutions. Properly understood, the secret detention and/or torture of prisoners of war, terrorism suspects, or so-called “enemy combatants” is already unconstitutional—which I think is plain for any child to see. Yet our government has acted otherwise, so it becomes necessary to become even more specific.

(At the bottom of this essay, I have appended the full text of amendments V, VI, and VIII, courtesy of The Bill of Rights Institute, http://www.billofrightsinstitute.org, which also has texts and explanations of the Constitution and other related documents.)

Section 2 is I believe the most important part of this amendment. Under no circumstances may any person be held without trial or access to a lawyer. This is a guarantee that this fundamental right be protected in any circumstances—citizen or non-citizen, military or civilian, on US soil or in a foreign country. It is an affirmation of our basic principle of the rule of law. It is a guarantee that no person will be held indefinitely, in a kind of extra-legal limbo, without an investigation into the reasons he or she is being held.

In our society, the clearest, most effective way to establish the truth of anything is a trial by jury. A trial by necessity involves 1. investigation, 2. evidence, 3. the presentation of multiple sides to the issue, and 4. the consideration by multiple people (jury and judge) to determine the facts. Of course, trials are imperfect, and often wrong. But at least they involve a serious consideration of evidence by multiple people. Contrast this to the practice of obtaining information by torture. It has been well established recently that torture is one of the least effective ways to get the truth. Torture victims will say anything to stop the torture. There is no reasoned consideration of evidence involved. The information we usually want to get out of a prisoner—names of other collaborators, details of plans and plots—is even more crucial when it comes to terror suspects. We need the best information possible. And we have a method in our society for getting that information very effectively: it’s called plea-bargaining.

Plea-bargaining is very effective at getting information from accused persons. Rather than giving any random information to stop the pain of torture, the accused has time to consider his choices rationally, with the advice of his lawyer. And the state can evaluate whether that information is useful or not. The presence of an incentive—less punishment—can be very effective at getting information, because it gives the prisoner something to look forward to. Whereas when a prisoner is being tortured, he cannot think about the future—the torturer may kill him, even if he talks. The prisoner can only think about the present excruciating pain, and is in no position to weigh his options calmly and rationally. Plea-bargaining has been very effective at breaking up organized crime, and other kinds of crime rings. We should note the similarity between organized crime and organized terrorist networks, and realize that the same circumstances apply to individual members of those organizations: an individual, isolated and given a choice, will most likely choose to benefit himself. And the court has time to verify the truth of the information provided in a plea-bargain, because the fulfillment of the incentive (a reduction in prison time, or even being set free) waits until the other persons are tried.

If you think about it, having a trial is a benefit to the accusers as much as it is a benefit to the accused. We don’t want to have the wrong guy in our custody while the real criminal walks free. We need an effective way of establishing innocence or guilt, the more so as the crime is more dangerous. The practice of just rounding up hundreds of people, and then putting them in secret prisons, as the US government has been doing with “terror suspects,” is not so much cruel as it is stupid. We could be getting real information out of the people who really are terrorists, rather than holding innocent people for years on end without even access to lawyers. The fact that we would not tolerate such a practice on our own citizens (rounding up many people & putting them in prison), but we tolerate it when it comes to Muslims, Arabs, or Middle-Eastern-looking people, is a testament to our callousness and inhumanity as a nation, a testament to our racism and double-standards; but it is also a testament to our willingness to put aside the search for truth in favor of blind scapegoating. And such a practice will never give us the information we need to solve the problem of international terrorism.

Sections 3 and 4, against secret prisons and torture, present the other side of the coin. In effect, they are the same as the requirement for a fair, public, and speedy trial embodied in section 2 and amendments V and VI. However, in specifying them, we accomplish two additional things. First, we more firmly guarantee the basic human rights of prisoners. And second, we provide a clearer moral and ethical standard for the conduct of our nation. In these more desperate, polarized times, when most of the world sees America as an aggressor nation, a violator of human rights, and a hypocritically arrogant power that attacks other nations for the same things it practices, we need to re-affirm the principles embodied in our constitution and our founding as a nation. We need a new moral clarity, and we need to be specific about it. We need to do so for the sake of the soul of our nation, as well as for the sake of our public image and standing internationally.

Section 5 is simply a guarantee that we will not transfer persons to other countries that do our dirty work for us—a despicable practice, which is actually an endorsement of the human rights violations of those other countries. This section also gives an important detail: that we cannot transfer prisoners to nations who do not guarantee the same rights we do. This is different from saying that “we cannot transfer prisoners to other nations for the purposes of torture,” because such a statement could allow for moral equivocation—“we didn’t intend for them to torture him.” The statement in section 5 is a stronger one: namely that we cannot transfer a prisoner for any reason to an authority that does not guarantee the same rights we do. The side effect of this is that we encourage other nations to protect rights in the same way we do.

Section 6 is the “emancipation proclamation” for all prisoners currently held in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, held cruelly and illegally by our government. It is time we gave them access to lawyers, humane conditions, and trials—otherwise, we had better free them.

If you think we need to pass this amendment, please forward the text of it (& a link to the essay: http://demablogue.typepad.com/demablogue ) to everyone you know. Obviously, we cannot pass an amendment without congress or the state governments (See article V of the constitution). But a wide-spread public appeal for an anti-torture amendment could have influence on our representatives.

Below, see the text of Amendments V, VI, and VIII

Amendment V   

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI   

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Amendment VIII   

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

The "Anti-War" Vote

There has been quite a bit of talk in the weeks since the November 7 mid-term elections about how voters have sent a “clear message” to government—that message being, one supposes, that we want to get out of the war on Iraq. But was it a clear message? Many Democrats interpret the election “message” as a call to raise the minimum wage. I’m sure many voters felt that way. Some may interpret the message to mean that the voters are sick of corruption in Washington—and the Republicans have been particularly corrupt these last few years. In fact, there are any number of “messages” one could pull out of the election results, and the only really clear, justifiable one, is that voters are tired of Republican leadership in Washington, and wanted another option—the only other option being the Democrats.

Notice how quickly Republicans have shifted their rhetoric from (before the election) how necessary the war is and how we must stay the course, to (now, after the election) how difficult it will be to extricate ourselves from this prickly situation over there, which could crumble at any moment, especially if we leave. Make no mistake: they want us to stay in there. The reasons they give us may change, depending on elections or polls or media coverage or meta-media coverage (programs like “The Daily Show” & “The Colbert Report” are what I’m referring to by meta-media), but the fact that they want to be in there doesn’t seem to change. Despite having been beaten in recent elections, in what the media again and again refers to as a “resounding anti-war vote,” Republicans have been able to equivocate about whether we plan to leave Iraq.

Why have they been able to do so? For the simple reason that there has not actually been any vote against the war. There has been a vote for candidates claiming to oppose the war, or claiming to oppose the conduct of the war (but not necessarily the war itself), but no actual vote against the war. Now the ball is in the Republicans’ court—and they are doing an aggressive job of trying to persuade the newly-elected party of the necessity of continuing the war. They know it is that new congress who will vote—which is to say, they know that the real vote (and votes) haven’t been taken yet, and that therefore, they still have a chance of influencing the outcome. Because there has been no vote yet on the question “Stay in” vs. “Get out,” even if Republicans are willing to admit that the voters had something to say about the war, they can still claim that the voters opposed the conduct of the war, rather than the war itself.

Let me ask you this: how much faith do you have in the Democratic party actually ending the war in Iraq in the next two years? Do they not share some of the same lobbyists as the Republicans? Aren’t their campaigns paid for by some of the same corporations that have a vested interest in the continuation of this war? How many people, do you think, among your fellow citizens who want the war to end, have faith that the Democratic party can do it? Aren’t the Republicans counting on the moral weakness, the lack of spine in the Democratic party—to roll over on their backs when pushed—helping them to keep their pet project in Iraq? Some of the newly-elected Democrats certainly want us to end the war. But did anybody hear the Democratic party put out a decisive statement such as: “If we are elected to a majority of both houses, we will vote for a withdrawal from Iraq”?

A piece of history we’ve been reminded of lately: in 1968 the Republicans defeated the Democrats, and Nixon was elected president, on a platform of ending the Vietnam war. Did the Vietnam war end in 1969? In 1970? In 1971? In 1972, when Nixon sought re-election? No.

So, looking soberly at the situation, after a few weeks of hopeful excitement, we can say confidently: There has been NO anti-war vote. But there certainly needs to be one! We as a nation need to figure out clearly and finally, whether we want to be in there or not—and then act accordingly. If we decide we want to leave, then we should start cooking up the quickest and least expensive exit strategy. If we decide to stay, we should figure out how to convince a war-weary nation that re-instating the draft, in order to force other young men and women to die miserably in the desert, is a good idea. But dilly-dallying around, hemming and hawing, costs billions of dollars a day over there. Isn’t it expensive enough to run America, where the average citizen isn’t planting an IED on every other street in the National Capital—let alone Iraq on top of that, where they are? 

This decision should not be weighted by political capital from any other issues. (In fact, no issue should be decided by the political capital of another—but that’s a subject I’ll develop more carefully in another essay). What do I mean by this? The decision to end the war should not be discounted just because some of those who oppose the war also support gay marriage. Which is to say, perhaps many of the people in this country who oppose gay marriage also oppose the war in Iraq. Perhaps many people who support tax cuts for the wealthy also oppose the war in Iraq. But the electoral system does not allow us to make any of those decisions separately—we have to make all of those decisions lumped together, by accepting, as our only two choices, the rather vague platforms of the two parties.

Isn’t it cumbersome to try to change policy by having a vote for candidates (who may or may not vote for the changes they promised) every two years? Doesn’t it seem a little indirect? Wouldn’t it be better to have a clear picture of what the public actually wants? A referendum? Not having a referendum allows politicians to evade the issue, to make excuses and explanations. If there were a clear message, “Get Out of Iraq,” our politicians would be forced to find the quickest exit strategy. If we had a national referendum, voters who would rather outlaw abortion (and who prefer the clean-cut, moral-looking white male Republican candidate over the obviously-gay Black Female Muslim probably-burns-flags-in-her-spare-time Democratic candidate) can still vote against the war, if they want to.

Many states are able to have referenda on issues—just this last election, there were referenda banning gay marriage (some of which passed), referenda about raising the minimum wage (all of which passed), and referenda about voter “preferences” about leaving Iraq. But we had no national referendum on that issue—or any other. I suspect that if there had been, the margin against the war would have been much greater than the margin of victory was for the Democrats (for the reasons spelled out in the previous paragraph). Why don’t we have a national referendum? Why, in general, don’t we have national referenda on a wide range of issues? 

The historical reason, of course, is that the founding fathers didn’t actually trust the people to make important decisions like that. Their philosophy of government was Republican, rather than Democratic—and we had better not confuse that distinction with the one between our current similarly-named political parties!—both of which function in our Republican form of government. But I, for one, think the founding fathers were wrong on this point—although, to their credit, they were taking a big step from previous forms of government. The prevailing assumption among ruling elites was that the public needs to be guided, to be led. For our founding fathers to make the shift into some kind of middle ground was an important step. But the conduct of our government over the last six years indicates, I think, that we need to take another, further step. The people need tp be able to guide the government. The easiest way to do this, to start this (without all-out revolution) is to have national referenda on important issues—at the very least, every two years. Preferably every year. Even more preferably, 3 or 4 times a year, but of course we badly need to fix our voting and election system before we can handle that.

A referendum sends a clear message. And our government would have to be bound by that referendum. That would be a real anti-war vote, allowing for no equivocation—just the setting of a timetable, and the beginning of a withdrawal.

But we didn’t have that, and we are left only with a Democratic Party election victory. The decision is in their hands, it has not been made yet. Democrats need to be sent a clear message: that we want out, and we think they had better vote on it. That vote, which we thought and hoped we were taking, needs to be taken. Those who won electoral victories need to be reminded of their responsibility to represent the will of the people. Democrats need to be firm in pushing for what the nation really wants, despite the real difficulties of executing it (political, military, and financial). The first vote of the Democratic congress in January should be: “Do we go or do we stay?”—specifically, a resolution calling for an immediately-beginning withdrawal and the establishment of a committee to devise an exit strategy, which committee would be required to give recommendations within one month. This would be a fair vote, and it would clarify matters. Once the president understood the will of the people, as incompletely translated by an imperfect congress, he would have more firm guidelines for what to do.

We need to find a clear way to express whether or not we want to leave Iraq.  So write to your congresspeople to get them to propose a bill, vote, or resolution on getting out of Iraq, if you’re that kind of citizen. Or just rant and rave about it, like I do. 

But either way, don’t kid yourself that we’ll be getting out of Iraq without that vote.

Constitutional Reform and the Second Constitutional Convention

For how many years has there been talk in Congress of "Campaign-Finance Reform" legislation?  Does anyone out there reading this seriously believe that Congress is ever going to cut its own supply line?  Its umbilical cord?  Congress passing campaign finance reform is about as likely as the Mafia documenting all their earnings and expenses to the IRS.

We might say that the problem here is the essence of "Conflict of Interest"--in the strict legal sense as well as the general one.  We in the public have been naïve for too many years about our government's willingness to reform itself.  How many times have we elected candidates promising to "reform government," and how many times have they betrayed our trust by immediately jumping on the gravy train?

This conflict of interest is not a momentary corruption of a few individuals, it is a built-in institutional corruption, which has developed over the course of our democracy, and is the result of the heavy influence of Political Parties and Lobbyists in our governing.  It was perhaps not entirely anticipated by the framers of the constitution—who did not talk about political parties and lobbyists.  This fact alone warrants some kind of constitutional discussion.

This institutional corruption is one in which, in order to get elected to public office, a candidate has to sell his or her vote in advance, to the highest interested bidders (any candidate not selling his vote will not have sufficient campaign funds to be elected).  Therefore, there is no chance whatsoever that an assembly of 435 or 100 individuals all with promises and obligations to interested parties, is going to pass legislation insuring that those interested parties will no longer have influence over them.  You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.  This is what I mean by institutional corruption; and this is what, in our naïvety, we citizens have not been able to acknowledge for so long.  We honestly believe the promises of idealistic-sounding young candidates, and, to tell you the truth, I believe they are sincere in those promises.  They, too, are naïve, until their seduction by moneyed interests succeeds in bringing them their first taste of real political power.
So we cannot expect them to reform this systemic corruption.  Which means: this problem cannot be fixed through legislation.  If not thus, then how?  Constitutional reform is the only way I see.  A constitutional amendment on Campaign Finance Reform, ratified by the people (rather than the Congress—we must always remember that we have this option, since the Congress is no more going to pass a Campaign Finance Reform constitutional amendment than they would pass legislation to that effect), could reshape the political system.

                                                                                          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There is a deeper reason to seek constitutional reform rather than legislation on this issue.  The function of the constitution is to shape the government, and the function of legislation is to specify the details of laws that affect citizens and corporations.  The constitution is the law of government—it is the description of how government is constituted, how it runs, what its powers are and are not. 

By this standard, certain proposed amendments (such as the perennially proposed “Flag Burning” amendment) as well as certain past amendments (such as the “Prohibition” amendment) do not belong in the constitution: their proper domain is legislation.  These amendments have no bearing on the running of government—they are social issues.  They also became political issues—and for that reason especially they should have no place in the constitution.  One of the main philosophical thrusts of the constitution has to do with the way power is divided among different branches of government: the intended effect is the neutralization of political power for any particular group in society, in favor of a balanced government that does not disproportionately represent one group above others, and that limits and divides the powers of leaders in order to insure that no individual or interest becomes too powerful.

The issue of campaign-finance reform, on the other hand, belongs squarely in the constitution, and we need to deal with it on a constitutional level, not only to settle it once and for all, but also to bring institutional clarity to an area not fully covered by the founding fathers.  There are a number of other issues exacerbated by the last six years of political life in America, which might also deserve constitutional treatment—not least among them the issue of Presidential Powers.
In fact, I see at least six or seven separate issues, all of which might deserve constitutional amendments (more on what they are later).  What I am envisioning is some kind of “Bill of Reform”—a package of anywhere from five to fifteen amendments revising and updating all areas of governmental operations—a parallel to the “Bill of Rights” package of our first ten amendments.  Such a large-scale reform is of course possible in theory (and permitted by the constitution itself), but it would take quite a bit of effort to put together such a package, let alone ratify it.

Which is why I believe it is necessary for us to convene a new constitutional convention.  I am not the first one to say so.  Though I have thought about this for many months, Bill Maher, of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” proposed it publicly on his last show of the year, Friday Nov.  17.  He mentioned, in that context, the fact that Jefferson and the other Framers believed that it was necessary for us to frequently re-convene and revise the constitution, since they could not anticipate the changes that would happen in American society and government over the course of its history.  They expressed the fact that their constitution was an experiment, not meant to be set in stone.  They believed that it was the job of people to constantly question and reform their governing.   

                                                                                          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Therefore, in the spirit of Philidelphia, I hereby convene the second constitutional convention (actually, I am seconding the motion proposed by Mr. Bill Maher).  This convention will be very different than the first—which took place among a small select group of political elites.  In this convention, every citizen in America who chooses to will take part, through large-scale public discussion, and a gradual process of convening.  First, an acknowledgement that perhaps it is time to revise our constitution; Second, a discussion of the aspects of our governing that need reform, Third, a solidification into specific amendments and debate over the details of those amendments.  Fourth, a ratification process, involving by necessity the majority of the American populace. 

I honestly, idealistically, perhaps even naively, believe that this process can occur democratically—in the sense of allowing for the contributions and opinions of all interested Americans.  I believe that some kind of voting can occur at every step of the process.  If, for example, a website were set up, on which proposed amendments were posted for the public to view and comment upon, this website could also allow visitors to vote on every line or article of those proposed amendments.  Those visitor votes could serve to shape the final form of the amendments, insuring that in the ratification process, the public will be voting on something they have already approved in some form.

For now, it is a convention of one, but I imagine it is already, as I write this, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of “conventions of one” happening inside many imaginative citizens.  In a future essay, I will specify some of the amendments I have thought about.  But I don’t want to prejudice the discussion too soon: everyone who believes in the ideals of our democracy should be having this conversation with him or herself, preparing to convene with other like-minded citizens.  We can start through conversation and a sharing of ideas, and the convention will start to grow on its own, and take its own shape.

If you believe such a convention is desirable as well as possible, please forward this essay to anyone you think is interested.  Begin inviting your fellow citizens to your “convention of one,” and perhaps we can find each other, and perhaps we can even agree on some common ground.  What do you think needs reform?  What amendments do you believe might be useful to add to our constitution?  Please post your opinions as comments on this blog.

Who Will Stand Up For Jimmy Carter?

Let me start with a question: is it possible to criticize the Presidential administration of George W. Bush and still love America? Does criticizing American foreign policy mean that the critic hates all Americans and wants to see them killed? I think most reasonable people can see that not only is it possible to criticize America with love, but that it is necessary to criticize the American government in order to save it, when its policies are detrimental to its own people or those of the rest of the world.

Why then do reasonable people not see that criticizing Israeli policy is not Anti-Semitic?

Yet the reaction from the Democratic party, in the days before the recent election, to Former President Jimmy Carter’s new book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, shows that even the mainstream left in America is quick to deflect any substantive criticism of Israel—and cast it as extremist rather than address it. Here is the response of Nancy Pelosi, a few days before the election: “With all due respect to former President Carter, he does not speak for the Democratic Party on Israel,” she replied. “It is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression, and Democrats reject that allegation vigorously.”

Who, in the Democratic Party, or elsewhere, has the moral courage to recognize Jimmy Carter as an honest truth speaker—Honest Jimmy, our Honest Abe—as one of the voices of our conscience, our public, social, national conscience? Jimmy Carter is not a racist, nor an Anti-Semite. Who in the Democratic party is willing to admit, at least, that Jimmy Carter is not a Racist? Okay, then. If Jimmy Carter clearly does not speak from a position of racial hatred against anybody, then we must take seriously his opinions about what is going on in the world. Jimmy Carter was a President of the United States, involved in brokering peace deals in the Middle-East. Since his presidency, he has been involved in humanitarian work all over the globe. We can therefore expect that he possesses a great deal of knowledge and experience about many parts of the world—and he speaks from this position. A generous, humble man, who has seen much of the world, who loves that world, and who genuinely wants to see it improve. If I can imagine seeing into his heart at this moment, I think that he truly wants to feel that his legacy will be leaving the world a slightly better, happier, more peaceful place as a result of his little contribution to it. If Jimmy Carter, Honest, Humble Jimmy, feels the need to raise his voice about some issue, then he probably feels that it is a pretty important issue, especially if he raises his voice against a tidal wave of silence.  If he goes against the prevailing consensus, and risks his neck, his reputation, MAYBE EVEN HIS LIFE!!!, to speak out, —then perhaps we should listen to him!

What is Jimmy Carter saying? He is saying that Israel practices Apartheid. For many people in this country, this is a bitter pill to swallow. And I mean bitter! But for people who don’t want to look this statement in the face, what motive could you possibly ascribe to Jimmy Carter for saying it? That he is a raving Anti-Semite Nazi who wants nothing more than to see the Jewish People wiped out before he dies? That he is a Mel Gibson-esque closet Anti-Semite who made that statement while on a drunken spree? This is what I take to be the implication of statements made by Democrats like Nancy Pelosi (and I’m sure Hillary Clinton, if pressed)—that Jimmy Carter in no way represents the opinion of the Democratic Party.

But Jimmy Carter is the Voice of Conscience of the Democratic party (if not the whole country). He speaks for the Base of the Democratic party—that is, he speaks for the People. He speaks in their favor, as their Advocate. He speaks for our deepest held values. And Democrats treat him like he is a Goehring or a Gibson, some mad lunatic we mustn’t listen to, and whose opinions we must publicly denounce for fear of appearing to have been tainted by them in some way. Jimmy Carter is more like a Mother Theresa or an Abraham Lincoln than like a Mel Gibson, and what he says is much more like the truth, than what comes out of the average Democrat’s mouth. Jimmy Carter was not the first Democrat to speak up against President Bush (as he did so eloquently at the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr.’s successor in activism, Coretta Scott King, last year). But even there he was speaking against the tide, against the consensus in the Democratic party against speaking out about what is going on in the White House, in Iraq, in the media, in Guantanamo bay and in secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe, where human rights are being deprived, civil rights and protections are being taken away, and where an ever more powerful government uses its power to rule us by terror, and paralyze us from even speaking out about how unspeakably EVIL it is acting.

Based on its name, one would expect the “Democratic” party to be the voice of the people. The party whose mission it is to advocate for the rights of people, of all people equally. But the Democratic party advocates for the rights of elites, and doesn’t stand up when basic liberties, fundamental freedoms, are at stake.

I say that Jimmy Carter, in speaking out against President Bush before many democrats or other politicians did, spoke for the people. He spoke for the American people, who want their freedoms protected and their sons and daughters safe. He spoke for the Iraqi People, who deserve better than military occupation and civil war. He spoke for people of the whole world, who want a cessation of wars and violence, who want peaceful and just government, and who want to be able to put food on the table without having to resort to prostitution. He understands that the vast majority of violence in this world comes from above—from those on top and in power—and not from below; and that those in power use the violence of those below them for their own purposes.

Jimmy Carter knows that the moral responsibility for stopping wars rests with the most powerful. He knows that, even if weak countries, or tribes, or gangs, or mobs, start violence, then it is the government’s job to contain, rather than spread, that violence, to stand up against that violence in favor of peace for all people. If the United States is the most powerful government on earth, then the moral responsibility rests even more with it. So when that government starts, rather than contains, violence, Jimmy Carter knows that that government is acting irresponsibly with its power. In calling that government on its abuse of power, its abuse of the power we supposedly gave it to act in our interest, its perversion of the moral and democratic authority it claims to have, Jimmy Carter has spoken for the people, in the interest of the people.

When Jimmy Carter speaks out against George Bush, should we assume that he hates all Texans? Should we assume that he (a Baptist) hates all Christians? Should we assume that he would like to see all supporters of the Republican Party be put to death? Or should we assume, instead, that he wants to see all Americans governed by better men and women and better policies? I think we should assume the latter, that Jimmy Carter wants to protect our people, our constitution, and the ideals enshrined in our founding as a democratic nation. That he has a moral and ideological clarity on the human and civil rights deserved by all people. I’m sure he also believes that George Bush is entitled to those same basic rights and protections as are the rest of us; in other words, I’m sure that Jimmy Carter does not advocate the imprisonment & torture of George Bush at Guantanamo Bay.

Just as Jimmy Carter does not hate all Texans, he does not hate all Jews, just because he spoke out against Israeli government policy. We can legitimately criticize government policy, without that criticism implying racism against those governed. We can criticize Milosevic, without intending that ordinary Serbians be massacred. We can even criticize an ideology—communism, dictatorship, fascism—without intending that people ruled by such ideologies should be summarily executed. We can point out that one group is committing genocide or apartheid, without that pointing-out meaning that we believe the group practicing genocide should be wiped out. We did not seek to end apartheid in South Africa in order to install a new apartheid state where the white Afrikaners were ruled or enslaved by the Black native Africans.

Therefore, a criticism of Israeli government policy does not mean that the one who criticized is Anti-Semitic. Advocating for a change in that policy is not the same thing as advocating another holocaust of the remaining Jews on the planet. Yes, there may be some people who intend racial hatred when they criticize Israeli policy—just as I wouldn’t be surprised if some Albanians harbored racial hatred against the Serbians. But that doesn’t mean that it is not possible to criticize Israel without being Anti-Semitic. Eliminating the quadruple negative from that sentence: In fact, it is possible to criticize Israel while being Pro­-Semitic. Which is to say, it is possible to speak in the interest of the Jewish people while still criticizing Israeli policy, just as it is possible to speak in the interest of the American people while criticizing American government policy. In fact, if a government is behaving poorly enough, it is necessary to criticize it, in order to speak for the people.

This is what Jimmy Carter has done. He knows that in order for the Jewish and for the Palestinian Arab people to live peaceful, full lives, there must be justice and a protection of rights for all. ALL PEOPLE are entitled to a defense against aggression and violence. All people equally deserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now, if there is some violence or injustice, we must speak about it, search for it, analyze it, try it fairly in the court of public opinion, or in a court of law, before we can correct or punish it.

One of the subtle rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights, and in the American Ideal, is the right that any point of view, position, accusation, claim, or statement be 1) heard, 2) respected, 3) if necessary, investigated thoroughly and impartially. In the American Marketplace of Ideas, no expression from any citizen shall be suppressed, censored, or denied fair investigation. Even expression we find hateful—such as making racist statements—is legally permitted, even if it is not endorsed. Imagine if we lived in a society where accusations against you would lead to your immediate disappearance and execution! In order to protect all of our rights, we demand that a dispute be investigated before it is settled. We demand that a claim of criminal behavior be subject to the test that 1) the behavior is in fact criminal and 2) the accused was the perpetrator. We also demand that if there is some problem, and people contact authorities in order to inform them of what they know, the statements made by these people should at least be considered, and in some cases elaborated on or investigated. If someone claims that they witnessed criminal activity, police (and hence government) must take that claim seriously enough at least to check it out.

Therefore, before we solve any problem, we must speak about it. We must investigate and examine all of its aspects. We must be impartial, fair, and honest about what we uncover. And we must pursue any avenues that come up. We cannot just expect that the problem between the Israelis and Palestinians will just disappear, or that people will be able to solve the problem at the top level and just expect everyone to suddenly change their behavior, any more than we can force Iraq into being more democratic and peaceful by occupying it. We cannot expect that the CIA, or some secret government decision, not revealed to the public, will be able to solve the problems of the Middle-East. We cannot expect that applying more violence to the region will make things more peaceful. So, in order to solve the problem, we must discuss it openly, honestly, and fully. And we must do so in the spirit of advocating for the rights of both peoples. Yet again, this is what Jimmy Carter has been doing. Seeking a solution to that problem through the forum of open, public discussion.

Now, more and more people are coming out to try this, in our court of public opinion. I applaud Alan Dershowitz for his recent book The Case for Peace, in which he says, right from the start, that options for peace are on the table, and that the sensible middle ground should ignore extremists on both sides, and work towards implementing it. He presents a very reasonable case for solving the problem in a pragmatic, rather than ideological, way. However, Dershowitz has two blinders up which cloud his argument:

The first