Is the Enemy Human?

I just heard this song for the first time about five minutes ago. I will have to find out more about this artist.



I read a story in the latest issue of Newsweek (December 13, pgs. 31-32) that caused me to be a bit disappointed in myself. It raised the question of how common it was for Afghan insurgents to suffer from some degree of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. This article then proceeded to give some examples of specific Afghan insurgents who showed all of the signs. Strangely, this story caught me completely by surprise. Over the last few years, I have heard and read several stories about American soldiers suffering from PTSD. But for some reason, I never considered the possibility that the “bad guys” might suffer from the same problem.

So how do I explain my cluelessness? Whether I like it or not, it is actually pretty simple. I have apparently bought in to the common American public perception of our enemies in the “War on Terror.” Because our enemies are supposedly all a bunch of religious fanatics looking to die a glorious martyr’s death, these must be people who actually relish warfare. So if you follow this “logic,” then there is no reason why people would be traumatized by an experience that on some level they enjoy. By characterizing the enemy in this way, they essentially become a different breed of human. In fact, they are hardly viewed as human at all.

Dehumanizing an enemy is perfectly natural during war, particularly when fighting an enemy that uses such brutal and nasty tactics. Still, as a History teacher who has read tons of accounts of societies dehumanizing their enemies, I thought that I was more aware of this potential tendency in myself. Apparently, I am not as insightful as I had hoped. You would think that I could recognize that people are people. Regardless of ethnic, ideological, or cultural differences, all human brains react to extreme trauma in similar ways. And all of us, regardless of who may be the “good” or “bad” guy, are conditioned by surroundings and experiences that may cause us to dehumanize others.

This little post, believe it or not, is not designed to make a statement about the war in Afghanistan or about politics in general. I’m not trying to argue that we should somehow feel sorry for our enemies or seek to treat them for mental illness. But whatever your views on our current wars or on war in general, it is important to recognize the danger of dehumanizing an enemy. Portraying an enemy as a different type of creature, a sort of “superwarrior” with no regard for himself or for the lives or others, can lead to excessive pessimism and, possibly, unnecessarily prolonged fighting. After all, how can you defeat, outlast, or negotiate with people who love to fight so much? In addition, it can lead your society to justify acts of violence that might be counterproductive. If you view large numbers of civilian casualties - so-called “collateral damage” - as an acceptable cost of war, then you may create as many enemies as you destroy. It will, after all, give the dead civilians’ loved ones good reason to dehumanize the society whose military did the damage.

Facebook Dialogues (#2): Just How Divided Are We?

Here's a classic song from the 1960's about the social changes of the time. The video is a slide show of images from the Vietnam War.

Writing only comes to life when it finds readers. The most fascinating aspect of this whole blogging experiment is seeing the different ways that people respond to what I write. Every posting is an adventure, and when I read new comments, it’s like opening a package on Christmas day. Positive comments, of course, are always encouraging, but the more critical responses are often the most useful. Sure, I sometimes get a little frustrated and defensive when people either misunderstand what I was trying to say or simply disagree with me. But if I allow myself to “listen” to their comments, I sometimes see ways that my writing could improve, and I am forced to further develop and clarify my thinking.

New blog posts, in fact, have often been generated through dialogues I have had on Facebook, Hubpages, or on this blog. Occasionally, I “borrow” ideas from others and see where they lead. More often, however, in the course of either arguing or trying to clarify my position, new concepts, topics, or techniques for expressing my thoughts emerge. I used to feel that online discussions about controversial subjects were generally a waste of time. But as time passes, I realize just how productive these sometimes frustrating conversations can be.

One of these recent dialogues started a few days ago when I put a link to my last blog post – titled “Individual Responsibility” – on Facebook. Five or six Facebook friends would eventually get involved, and it was not long before the discussion drifted away from the main topic of the original blog post. We eventually had two separate discussions going, with one focused on religion and the other the seemingly intense divisions between political factions in the United States. I decided to include snippets from the political discussion that I had with one of my Facebook friends here. Too often, after all, some thoughtful discussion just disappears into the Facebook void.

Michael Ferguson is someone that I (virtually) met earlier this year. He is a blogger and an ambitious visionary who is starting a new media outlet called “Polymathica” (in which I hope to play some role). Here are links to The Polymathica Institute blog, the Polymathica Facebook page, and the Polymathica website. They are all worth checking out.

Michael:  Paul, you ask in your commentary, "So given this fact, why are there so many people who drift toward extreme views regarding individual responsibility?" Because, Paul, as I have told you before, America, and the West in general, is headed for a divorce. We are at the stage where the husband and wife have abandoned all pretext of reasonable discussion. They are simply flinging outrageously over stated invective at each other out of anger. They polarize beyond any point of reason. The other is no longer just wrong; they are stupid, moral reprobates and evil. Are the two sides overstating their case? You betcha. In both cases, they have a vision for their 'nation' and believe that the other side is trying to thwart them and take it down the path to ruination. In an effort to demonize the other side, they make themselves sound ridiculous. That is the current state of the marriage in America. As most of the world wise know, when it gets to this stage, there is no going back. The irretrievable breakdown in the marriage has already happened and the marriage is simply waiting for the two to get tired of the futile arguments.

Me: …..Fortunately, most people don't spend a lot of time thinking and talking about politics anyway. They have other, seemingly more important things to do. So maybe we should not make too much of the screaming and shouting between the small percentage of people who actually get riled up by political issues. Few Americans are likely to come to blows over this stuff.

Michael: Yeah, I'm sure that is how King George and Louis XVI the got themselves to sleep at night. I'm sure that people are far more complacent now than they were in the sixties. Riots, shootings, assassinations of major politicians and religious leaders….such things won't happen, couldn't happen. Nope, today we are too evolved to find ourselves in those situations again. Ahem....... Actually, Paul, as you may have guessed, I was there in the 60's. I saw it as it happened, more often than I would like, in person. Today is spookier.

Me: I'm not saying that people are more evolved. I'm saying that they are generally disengaged. We have two wars going on which few Americans can give any details about. We just had an economic disaster happen that few Americans have spent much time trying to understand. Most of the students that I see spend their time texting and tweeting, and it is not generally about politics. Times are tough, but the United States is still one of the wealthiest nations in history. (And as you have argued several times, we may soon be getting much wealthier.) Few Americans would even consider the possibility of taking up arms for some type of political cause. If anything, a situation like "Brave New World" seems more probable than violent conflict between different factions. Instead of "Soma," people have Iphones and Blackberries. And as long as enough people stay entertained and can get their hands on the latest materialistic necessities, they won't complain too much. If Americans have any real passion, it's shopping. Right now, a lot of people are just pissed off because they can't buy as much stuff. The only question is which political party they blame for their problems. I am starting to wonder if social networking and the information age in general make the conflicts seem worse. Only hardcore people spend any time debating political matters online. Since these tend to be passionate people, it can make the divisions seem even worse. Personally, I'm still not sure if the partisan divisions of today are all that unusual. We just have more mediums available to vent and to find people who feed the frustrations (Beck, Limbaugh, Olbermann, Maher, etc.)

Michael: I remember the race riots, the civil rights marches, the anti-war riots. My parents never saw them coming. It flabbergasted them. They were stunned and shocked by the assassinations of JFK, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. It wasn't that they were saddened. It was surreal to them. They lived in a cocoon of middle class America that simply missed the whole dynamic of cultural upheaval until it blasted into their lives through vivid news images. 30% or so of Americans support the Tea Party. That number is growing and will continue to grow. 6 percent of voters say they have attended a Tea Party meeting, rally or march. That is a huge number. You miss a lot, Paul. You are like my parents. You will wake up one day and be shocked by what has transpired….

Me: Michael, you may be right. I may be missing something. Then again, the Tea Party may become another footnote of history, just like many other political movements of various times. I suspect that if Republicans gain complete control of Congress and the Presidency again in 2012, the Tea Party will fade a bit. It's a movement that thrives on being out of power. As I have said before, governing is much harder than complaining about government. If America's problems magically fade away once Republicans gain control, there won't be so much reason to be angry. If, as I suspect, problems do not magically go away, Tea Party people, like Obama supporters at the moment, will become disillusioned. There may also be some parallels between today and the sixties. Of course, in the sixties, there was a war going on in which any young person could be drafted to go fight it. No one is considering a draft today, which is part of the reason why most young people don't care about Iraq and Afghanistan. Decades of segregation and white superiority were also being challenged, which brought about a predictable effort to resist change. I don't see any challenges to the social system today that quite match that one; although the Obama election has clearly struck some nerves. Also, you had a tremendous generation gap between parents who grew up with the Depression and World War II and their children who were raised in the greatest period of economic prosperity in American History (up to that time). We still have plenty of adolescent rebellion, but not on that scale. Also, there were so many people hitting college age by the mid-1960's due to the Baby Boom. I wonder how many young people today believe that they can change the world? As I said before, they are too busy texting to try.

A Preemptive Election Response

The Who's classic song about political "change," found on my favorite Who album.



I am going to take a risk and start writing this before the election results are in. Based on all of the polling data, along with the simple fact that the President’s party usually does poorly in mid-term elections, I am assuming that the Democrats had their asses handed to them today. The Democratic wave of 2008, an event that some saw as a sign of a long-term political shift in our country, has been short-lived. It seems to be 1994 all over again.

Personally, I believed from the moment of Obama’s election that reports regarding the death of the Republican Party were widely exaggerated. When Obama defeated McCain, and Democrats achieved huge victories in Congress, it was not a sign that the nation had gone liberal. Instead, it was a response to circumstances. Due to events such as Hurricane Katrina and the ongoing Iraq War, George Bush’s approval ratings had been plummeting for some time. Then, when the financial system imploded, public anger was focused even more intensely on him. Republicans, the perceived party of big business, took more heat for the crisis than Democrats, and Obama was swept to the presidency. After all, before the full scale of the financial meltdown was clear, McCain and Obama were running pretty closely. But after the cataclysmic events of September 2008, it was pretty much all over.

The irony, however, is that the same circumstances that brought Obama and the Democrats to power have seemingly done them in. The economy has stabilized, but growth is very slow, and the unemployment rate seems stuck at just below 10%. My sense is that a more significant reduction in unemployment would have made big policies such as the financial stimulus, bank bailouts, and health care reform easier for the public to swallow. Also, more significant economic growth would have made the costs of these programs and the current deficit somewhat less daunting.

So has Obama been done in by circumstances largely beyond his control, the same circumstances that got him the job in the first place? Or would different policies have had a more positive result, and is he deservedly being blamed for failing to stimulate growth and for overstepping his mandate? We will never know for sure. Either way, politicians tend to bear the brunt of the public’s anger. Anyone not in a coma knows that our current mess was largely the result of foolish decisions made by the financial sector and the general public. Of course, you can’t vote out the real estate brokers, financiers, and foolish borrowers who largely caused the mess. So we vent our anger at the ballot box, hoping that throwing the bums out (again) will have some positive effect.

In my mind, however, our problems are largely systemic. We still have an overgrown financial sector consisting of banks that are sometimes even bigger than when they were “too big to fail” a couple of years ago. (At least their enormous recent profits can give us some comfort.) We have campaigns that are even more heavily funded by big corporations and other special interests, due partly to the “Citizens United” Supreme Court decision. And we have politicians on both sides of the aisle who seem unwilling to ask the public to make significant sacrifices in terms of tax policies or government spending. Replacing the current “bums” with the previous “bums” is not, in itself, going to do much about these issues. For today, however, voting is all that we can do. So I better stop writing now, eat a quick lunch, and get to the polling place before work. If I am going to write commentaries on our political system, I better participate in whatever little way that I can. If nothing else, it can be a way to vent.

A Second Amendment Conspiracy Theory

This is one of the stranger songs from The Beatles' White Album.

A few weeks ago, I read an article on “HubPages” talking about the importance of Second Amendment rights. In this article, the writer argued that “power seekers” who want to keep guns out of the hands of individual citizens are manipulating “liberal pussies” that believe a gun-free society will be much safer. I wrote a brief comment explaining why I have no desire to have a gun, and he wrote a response that said, among other things, the following:

 “The establishment -- government, major and international corporations, media, government ‘clients’, etc. -- does not want an armed citizenry. At least two reasons:

1) They are aware of what happened in 1776+

2) They know that a helpless, dependent populace will lead to increasing their power, as that populace will bleat ‘save me’ to the establishment.”

So I decided to write a longer response with my own conspiracy theory.
Keep in mind, however, that I do not entirely believe in the following thesis. Like all conspiracy theories, it exaggerates the ability of the “establishment” to formulate and execute a grand, nefarious strategy to control the masses. In other words, it assumes that the “establishment” is some sort of a single entity, giving the “powers that be” much more credit than they deserve:

I understand both your desire to have a gun for self-defense and your disdain for gun laws that criminals, by definition, will find ways to get around. I also agree that the Second Amendment was largely created in order to prevent the national government from having a monopoly on gun ownership. Like all of the amendments in the Bill of Rights, it was created in order to set limitations on federal power and prevent the national government from abusing individual citizens. What confuses me, however, is your description of an alliance between “liberals” and “power seekers” in creating some sort of a liberal establishment. So I decided to spin my own conspiracy theory. I don’t know if it is entirely accurate, but like your interesting take on things, it may contain an element of truth.

You seem to think that gun-hating liberals represent a grave threat toward individual liberty in the United States. Now from what I can tell, the institutions that represent the greatest potential threat toward individual freedom are those in the security establishment: the military, defense contractors, police forces, and justice system of courts and jails. Officially, they have the function of protecting us. But in the name of security, they also have been given the power to fine, spy, imprison, physically coerce, and even kill. Ideally, these powers are used for the good of individual American citizens. The potential exists, however, for these institutions to become the oppressive central authorities feared by those who created the Bill of Rights.

Few would question the fact that these security establishment institutions tend to support and benefit from conservative political policies. Conservatives are often the ones, after all, pushing the hardest for defense spending, tough sentencing, tight security surveillance, and plenty of cops on the streets. One might counter, however, by saying that conservatives are also the ones who want to protect individual gun ownership. So if, as I claim, there is a conservative security establishment that could be a threat to personal liberty, then why do conservatives want individuals to have guns? Gun owning individuals, after all, are able to defend themselves from central government oppression.

There is a fundamental, practical problem with this line of reasoning. Militias just are not what they used to be. In the late 1700’s, militia groups might be able to resist the U.S. military if the need arose. Today, a battle between militia groups and the U.S. military would be a joke. First of all, few individual citizens are likely to take up arms against the United States. Loyalty and a sense of national identity are much stronger today than when our nation first began. But even if a significant number of people did rise up against central authority, they would not stand a chance. My money would be on the $700 billion dollar a year U.S. military to mop up any modern day “minutemen” in short order.

It is in the interest of the conservative security establishment, however, to let people play the part of “minutemen.” People can then maintain the delusion that they are able to defend themselves against central authority. Also, as an added benefit, conservatives can keep gun enthusiasts paranoid about those liberals who want to oppress them by confiscating guns and restricting future access to them. And in the meantime, the real potential threat to individual citizens can linger and possibly grow even stronger.

The Roman Republic lasted for hundreds of years. But then, once they grew into a massive empire, military leaders asserted control and established a dictatorship. Will this someday be our fate? I hope not. We would be wise, however, to heed the words of Dwight Eisenhower, a man who could hardly be called a member of the “liberal establishment”:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

I hope that Eisenhower was wrong. For if the future of our democracy is dependent on an ‘alert and knowledgeable citizenry,’ then we might have a serious problem. And all of those guns, which more than anything else provide a false sense of security to those who own them, may be one of many factors in maintaining the illusion that we are still living in a democracy.”

Can "Humanitarian Wars" be Won? (Revised)

Here's a classic Vietnam era anti-war song.

After reading the second comment listed below, and reconsidering my response to that comment, I decided to republish this post with a few revisions. (A future post will explain why.)

When it became clear that the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan were going to drag on for a while, the inevitable comparisons to Vietnam began. In some basic ways, however, the current wars bear little resemblance to Vietnam. The rugged terrains of Iraq and Afghanistan are nothing like the tropical rainforests of Vietnam. Insurgents in the current conflicts seem to have far less domestic and international support than the Vietcong once had, and they have not been organized as single, united forces. Also, the number of American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan combined are only 1/10 (so far) of those killed in Vietnam.

Still, there are some eerie similarities. Like in Vietnam, The United States has been fighting against enemies who can be very difficult to locate and properly identify. These insurgents, like the Vietcong, recognize that they cannot take on the United States military in a “conventional” war. So they infiltrate communities, blend in with the civilian population, and are content to harass American soldiers (and the population in general) with quick hit-and-run strikes and booby traps. They know that they do not have to win in a conventional sense. They also know that when Americans kill civilians, it plays into the insurgents’ hands. So all that they need to do is inflict enough casualties and drag these conflicts out long enough to convince the United States that the costs are too high. In other words, they have to do the same thing that the Vietcong was able to accomplish.

This is why some would say that continued U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are ultimately pointless. Like Vietnam, these conflicts cannot be won. Others, however, disagree. Part of the reason that our efforts in Vietnam failed, they would argue, was that the American public did not adequately support the efforts of the military. And this lack of support went beyond the efforts of the liberal media and of those anti-war hippies. The federal government, partly out of fear of public opinion, asked the military to fight this war with “one hand tied behind its back.” For fear of inflicting excessive civilian casualties, soldiers could not root out and destroy communists as aggressively as necessary. Also, due to concerns about possible domestic and international reactions, restrictions were placed on bombing targets, with the North Vietnamese capital of Hanoi being a particularly important “off-limits” potential site. If enough of the public had recognized that “war is hell,” but you must fight to win, then the results may have been different. To those who maintain this view that Vietnam was winnable, history may be repeating itself in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I agree with those who say that lack of public support was a big part of America’s failure in Vietnam. Anti-war protesters, in fact, would take this as a compliment. In theory, it is also possible that more aggressive action could have led to a different result.  This is assuming, of course, that over a half million troops, double the tonnage of explosives that were dropped in all of World War II, and the extensive use of chemical agents were just not enough. Still, there is an even more fundamental problem with this line of reasoning, a problem that also applies to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Vietnam, the United States’ basic justification for involvement was to stop the spread of communism. Part of this effort, like the Cold War in general, was to protect and promote American interests. (A world full of communist nations, after all, is bad for business.) However, the United States also claimed that defending South Vietnam from communism would make that country a better place. So there was a humanitarian component to this war, a component that can lead to big trouble. After all, the more damage that the United States did in South Vietnam, the harder it was to argue that these efforts were helping the people of that nation. In a sense, the United States, through its stated policy objective, doomed itself to failure. At some point, the infliction of excessive death and destruction would make it impossible to declare any legitimate victory.

In World War II, the United States was not fighting against Japanese and German soldiers in an effort to make those countries better places. The goal was to defeat their military forces and destroy their capacity to continue fighting. World War II was unimaginably horrific, but it was simpler strategically than a war like Vietnam. The United States could more easily identify the enemy’s military forces and felt that it was justified in targeting civilian populations and using all of the firepower at its disposal.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan resemble Vietnam much more than World War II. In both places, like in Vietnam, the United States initially used national security as the justification for fighting. Afghanistan had terrorist training camps that were harbored by the Taliban government, and Saddam Hussein (supposedly) had “weapons of mass destruction.” Over time, however, particularly in Iraq, the United States justified its efforts with humanitarian language: liberation, promoting democracy, etc. Now, like in Vietnam, the United States is trying to win wars while appearing to help people, fighting against insurgents who are difficult to distinguish from civilians. With such unrealistic stated goals, it may already be impossible to ever declare victory.

A Mosque Near Ground Zero? (The Message Sent by Protestors)

Here's a brief video about the controversy discussed in this post.

I have no conception of the suffering experienced by the friends and families of those who were murdered when the twin towers were destroyed. If I was in their position, the thought of a Muslim community center near Ground Zero might also strike a nerve. Still, I cannot help but give a simple and some would say insensitive analysis of the situation. By turning this into a major issue, the opponents of this construction project are sending a terrible and dangerous message to the Muslim world.

The “War on Terror” is supposed to be a battle against a behavior. It is not a war against a particular country, ethnicity, or religion. The behavior of the United States over the last nine years, however, has convinced many in the Muslim world that this is actually a war against Islam, the exact message promoted by Islamic extremist groups. Protests against this building project further create this impression. If Americans are angry about a mosque near Ground Zero, it indicates that they hold Muslims in general responsible for the September 11 attacks. So the only logical conclusion for Muslims is that many Americans actually consider themselves to be at war with Islam itself.

Some Americans who are angry about this project will deny this simple fact, and I admit that their motives for protesting against it may vary. Their various arguments and justifications, however, are irrelevant. The only thing that really matters is the perception that this controversy creates around the world. To limit the threat of terrorism, the only effective strategies are to find and neutralize current, potential terrorists and reduce the number of future terrorist recruits. Even more than the Cold War, this is at heart an ideological struggle. Potentially alienating hundreds of millions of Muslims and creating the impression that Americans are at war with Islam, therefore, is the most dangerous thing that can be done. Unfortunately, nine years into this “war,” many Americans still have much to learn. It’s bad enough that so many people still believe that conventional military operations are the best way to eliminate a non-military threat. But what is even more disheartening is that so many Americans have yet to even properly identify the enemy.

A Sample of a Debate on Facebook

Every now and then, I get caught up in a dialogue on Facebook regarding various political, religious, or philosophic issues. After a while, I always find myself wondering if all of the time and effort is worthwhile. It is unlikely, after all, that any of us involved are going to change our views. It’s basically an arguing contest, not a quest to gain knowledge from others. Also, more importantly, I am spending precious time and mental energy producing stuff that will disappear into the Facebook void instead of focusing on writing for my own blog. Still, these types of dialogues may have some value. At least all of us involved are getting some practice exploring, clarifying, and expressing our beliefs.

So to give an example of what I mean and to have something to show for my Facebook efforts, I have included, word for word, one of these recent dialogues. (Names of my “opponents” have been removed, however.) I will let you decide for yourselves if this was a worthwhile way to spend my time. This discussion started shortly after Proposition Eight - California’s ban on same sex marriage - was overturned by a federal judge. Some would argue that this decision by one man was in defiance of the will of the voters who passed it two years ago.

(Someone had just asked why it is that Christians focus so much on the “sin” of homosexual behavior. After all, Jesus never directly mentions it in the gospels.)

Person #1 (P1): Voters do want their votes counted so a judge shouldn't be doing this. And Jesus didn't dwell on it, true, but He did include it in Matt 15:19 as one evil, under sexual immorality. I don't think most Christians dwell on this subject, but shouldn't be passive either.

Me: In 1967, the Supreme Court struck down state bans on interracial marriage. If this issue, along with several other civil rights issues, was left to the voters of individual southern states, I can predict how some of them would have voted. Sometimes, courts must protect minorities from the "tyranny of the majority." If anyone cares, here is my take on gay marriage: "Gay Marriage: Why It's Fine With Me."

Person #2 (P2): In that case, I want to legalize POLYGAMY!! Just please dont tell my wife.

Me: Maybe polygamy should be legalized. Old Testament patriarchs like Abraham and Jacob had multiple wives. Plus, it's more honest than cheating on your spouse. If people want to impose their moral code through the law, adultery should be the practice that is outlawed. (And maybe we can go back to the good old days of Old Testament law when the guilty parties were stoned to death.)

P2: If you want to remove morality from the law, then what about drug use, sex with minors, prostitution, etc? Should we legalize all that too, or remove any laws banning it?

P1: If it's case of civil rights that it should be challenged in the constitution - whether state or federal, not by one single judge. The judicial system was set up to protect constitutional rights of all voters. Everyone didn't favor the healthcare reforms and the impact it will have - can we find a judge to repeal that?

Me: P1, I don't know what you mean by "challenged in the constitution." They are following the standard process of challenging the law. It's done through the judicial system. The same process will be followed for both gay marriage and challenges to the health care bill. Judges may ultimately repeal parts of the health care bill, and they may ultimately uphold the same sex marriage ban. The gay marriage decision will be appealed until it reaches the Supreme Court. Then nine judges (instead of one) will decide. (Judicial review has been firmly established for 200 years, so I don't see it going anywhere.) Keep in mind that there may be cases where you are in the minority but you feel that basic legal principles are on your side. I don't think that anyone believes that majority rule should always win out. There are countless cases throughout American history where the majority of people in a state or region supported laws and policies considered either ludicrous or blatantly unjust today. And P2, I'm not advocating for "removing morality from the law." Obviously, laws are often based on a moral foundation. If a behavior has a measurable, negative impact on others, it should be illegal. That's the principle that our legal system is founded upon. Gay marriage, like polygamy or interracial marriage previously, has no measurable negative impact on others. Therefore it should be allowed whether it offends certain people's morals or not. Sometimes a distinction must be made between personal moral codes and enforceable legal codes. If you refuse to recognize this obvious distinction, then this "discussion" is clearly a waste of time. (And I guess we will be on our way toward the 10 Commandments becoming a legal code.)

I've noticed in these Facebook "conversations" that no one ever directly addresses the questions that I raise. Political and religious topics - and this one gets into both - are usually pointless. At least this gives me a little writing practice.

P2: Paul (Me) - I always enjoy your comments because unlike other some of the other folks we debate, you always have good points and back it up with good reason.
Let me first address your points, so that your efforts dont just end up being writing ...practice haha!

"If a behavior has a measurable, negative impact on others, it should be illegal. That's the principle that our legal system is founded upon."
How do you define negative impact on others? For some people, finding out that your son is married to the same sex can be as equally or more painful than finding out that your son is hooked on illegal drugs or that he sleeps with prostitutes.

"Gay marriage, like polygamy or interracial marriage previously, has no measurable negative impact on others. Therefore it should be allowed whether it offends certain people's morals or not."
So should it be legal to set up a strip bar next door to your house because it does not hurt anyone, and only offends you?

In the end, I think everyone has a preference and everyone wants what's best for them and fits with their value system. And what goes and does not go depends on what the courts let pass or strike down. I do agree that the process of the judicial system was set up to ensure that laws do not conflict with our constitutional rights. The only problem is that many times, the judicial decisions are driven also by the political, religious, and personal views of the judges. This occurs on both sides of the political spectrum and is the reason why presidents usually pick judges who typically have made judicial decisions that align with the president's political view. Also, I'm sure there are political scientists on both sides of the spectrum who can argue the constitutionality of many laws.. If not, there would be no appeal.. So I believe the constitutionality of laws ultimately depend on which judges are in place at the time the law goes through the process.

Now for your final point :)
"Sometimes a distinction must be made between personal moral codes and enforceable legal codes. If you refuse to recognize this obvious distinction, then this "discussion" is clearly a waste of time."
I think all legal codes stem from some type of personal moral code. I think the reason why some fight for a ban on Gay Marriage vs premarital sex is the fact that Gay Marriage may be more easily enforced now than the other.
Let me know if I've missed any of your points and I'll try to address them too so you know your writing has not gone to waste :)))

P2: One last question: Should incest be banned? Like father/daughter marriages? Or how about incestial polygamy, where the entire family marries each other? According to your definition, it hurts no one when all parties are consenting and who cares if it offends anybody.. LOL!!

P1: Paul (Me) - What i meant is that it hasn't been determined yet if this is a civil rights issue. Not everyone agrees if it's comparable to anti-discrimination yet and the constituion has to be amended once that is determined. Up till this point..., marriage was always assumed to be man/woman, now we're talking about a new definition and different social rules that we haven't faced before.
Paul and P2 - You are both gave great points of view. P2, you could be a lawyer -ha ha. You can never take bias completely out of any social issue - that's just impossible. We live with the outcomes regardless of our personal beliefs.

Person 3 (P3): Can I marry my hermit crab Hermie?

Me: First, I have one important question. Is it cool if I use some of this dialogue for a future blog post? (I won't use your names.) I just don't want to waste all of this writing on Facebook alone. This question also goes for any other participators who might still be reading this stuff.

Thanks P2 for your detailed response. (It's refreshing.) There is no doubt that judges often have political agendas. It's unfortunate that courts have become so politicized, but it is, as you said, probably unavoidable. I'm not sure if the writers of the Constitution had "judicial review" in mind when they set up the judicial branch. It has evolved over time, and you could make a good case that it has made that branch of government too powerful. People only seem to get upset about it, however, when judges don't rule in their favor. I still hold to my statement about the distinction between personal moral codes and legal codes. Since we are not in a theocracy, the Bible cannot be used as a legal book. So all we can do to be fair to people with different beliefs is determine as best we can if a behavior infringes on other people's rights. In a country that claims to love freedom, we should have the freedom to engage in behaviors so long as they do not harm others. Anything else is an attempt to impose your personal beliefs on others. You compared allowing gay marriage to legalizing drug use, prostitution, and incest. Now I could go on for a while about drugs and prostitution. Our society is highly arbitrary in defining those terms. Alcohol and nicotine are legal, and all kinds of people have sex for economic reasons without breaking the law. I think that prostitution and drug use are banned due to some of the negative byproducts associated with them: disease, addiction, human trafficking, abuse, stealing to fund the habit, etc. I tend to think that laws involving drugs and prostitution should be liberalized a bit, but with some legal restrictions to limit some of these "side effects." Incest, however, is a different story. There are measurable negative effects, particularly potential birth defects in any children produced. I'm sure that many psychologists can also demonstrate the harm done when parents have sex with their kids. (I notice that no one has tried to deal with my interracial marriage argument, however.) And P3, I don't think that you can get Hermie to say "I do" or sign the certificate.

P3: use any dialogue you like for future blog posts. If Hermie cannot say "I do" or sign the certificate so that indirectly and unfairly disallow my right to marry Hermie simply because Hermie is physically unable to do the above actions? Isn't that discrimination based on "physical handicaps?"

Me: P2, I missed a couple of your arguments. Some people might be offended if their Christian daughter marries someone from another religion. Maybe we should ban that as well due to the harm it has done. Strip bars are legal. There are just regulations determining where they can be. (There are land use regulations for everything.) So no, I should not be allowed to stick one next door. (Or maybe you just want to ban strip clubs altogether.)

Me: P3, no. A marriage is a legal contract, and as far as I know, animals cannot enter into any legal contracts. So maybe we should ban all contracts due to discrimination (along with strip clubs, marriages that offend any parents, and every form of "sin" that we can imagine.)

Me: I have enough dialogue now. . . .

The Future of Energy

This Billy Joel song from the 1970's speculates about what may be going on in the United States in 2017.



I do not envy President Obama or anyone else who has ever held or will someday hold his job. As presidents go, he has been particularly unlucky, inheriting one hell of a mess. He has been in continual crisis mode from the day of his election, with multiple problems forcing him to do some serious multitasking: health care, recession, budget deficit, financial reform, two wars, financial reform, immigration, climate change, oil spill, and the list goes on. Confronting one problem – health care - can make another problem – budget deficit - worse, and any policies he supports are bound to anger interest groups or political factions who feel that these actions might harm them. The complexity of the problems and his limited control over legislation will cause him, like all presidents, to be judged by circumstances largely beyond his control. If the economy picks up significantly by 2012, he might get reelected. If it does not, then he is probably toast. Presidents, like all politicians, are judged by short-term results.

But if President Obama asked me (for some reason) to pick the most important issue of our time, I would answer with one word: energy. Our industrial and technological society, with its mechanized and increasingly computerized systems of production, communication, and transportation, relies completely on a steady supply of affordable energy. If the energy distribution system breaks down, we are all screwed. And if you look at my list of problems in the first paragraph, the question of whether or not we are able to keep producing and distributing affordable energy is relevant to just about every issue. So the choices that are made in this area, in my mind, are the key to humanity’s future.

A few days ago, I was listening to a podcast of the June 30 episode of “Fresh Air” on NPR. The guess was Michael Klare, a correspondent with “The Nation,” who has written extensively on the economics and politics of oil production. ( Here's a link) His basic argument was that the age of “easy oil” has ended, and we are now in the age of “tough oil.” If we are to continue with an economic system reliant on petroleum production, then a country like the United States has two options. First, we can turn to locations that still have oil that is relatively easy to access. The problem is that the known locations of “easy oil” are in places ruled by governments that the United States has considered, to say the least, “undesirable”: Venezuela, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, etc. This has caused the U.S. to either tolerate lousy governments (Nigeria, Saudi Arabia) or take actions to either undermine or topple them (Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, etc.). Many would argue, of course, that neither course of action has been particularly desirable.

A second course of action is politically more desirable in some ways but poses another significant problem. Large amounts of oil exist deep under the ocean, in the Arctic, or in rock known as shale. Some of this exists in the United States, in America-friendly places like Canada, or in ocean waters that are nearby or open. The problem is that the process of extracting this oil can be extremely expensive and/or dangerous due to geologic and/or geographic difficulties and hazards. The BP oil spill, of course, is the most publicized recent example of what can happen when operating in a difficult environment.

Now some would argue that as oil extraction technology improves, the costs and dangers of getting to this “tough oil” will gradually decrease. Who knows; they may be proven right. But others, including Michael Klare, would argue that it is time to begin a major push toward energy alternatives. In his mind, the dangers and potential environmental damage of getting to the tough oil are too high, and if the climate change people are right, then we need to start reducing our dependence on fossil fuels as soon as possible. But on what energy alternative(s) should we focus our investment: solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, lithium batteries, hydrogen fuel cells, or all of the above? At the moment, the available “alternative” energy technologies are not going to meet our present demands. In addition, energy companies have invested massive amounts of money into the current infrastructure of fossil fuel extraction and distribution. The decision to shift significantly toward investment in other alternatives would make all of that previous investment seem like a waste. So instead, they assure us that technological advances will help them to keep producing plenty of fossil fuels, and the threat of climate change, of course, is either fabricated or exaggerated.

Everyone can agree on one thing. Science and technology got us into this situation, but they are also the only hope for the future prosperity of our species. The only question is whether we will come up with improved methods for maintaining the status quo or innovative new technologies that are cost efficient, sustainable over the long run, and hopefully, a whole lot cleaner. When in doubt, the natural human tendency is to maintain the status quo. The present setup, with all of its problems, is often less scary than an uncertain future. For the moment, fossil fuels still seem to be the cheapest way to go. A radical shift toward a new energy future would probably involve major sacrifices in terms of economic growth and standard of living over the short-term. But if environmentalists and some economists are right, then we have already reached a point where the long-term costs of the status quo outweigh its benefits. Unfortunately, since politicians tend to think about the next election, and voters tend to want what is best for them right now, short-term benefits seem more important than “theoretical” long-term consequences. Just ask President Obama or anyone else who has ever done his job.

We Need Investment, not Speculation

This classic speaks for itself.

If you want to know someone’s political ideology, just ask him or her why we are in this economic mess. A conservative will be happy to complain about President Obama and his liberal, Democratic buddies. Because of these liberals, the economy is being held back by excessive taxes, regulations, and public debt. People are spooked both by the situation at the moment and by the future impact of health care reform, financial regulation, and a potential “cap and trade” energy policy. Consumers are afraid to spend, and private industry is nervous about investing in an unpredictable environment with a likely future of complicated, burdensome, government rules.

Those liberal Democrats, of course, tell a different story. They emphasize that President Obama inherited a mess left over by the previous administration that has no simple, quick fix. Years of lax regulation and shortsighted tax policies that favored the rich led to a financial implosion, massive public debt, and an average American consumer with limited purchasing power. Immediately upon entering office, the President was compelled to propose, create or inherit bank bailouts, a stimulus package, new financial regulations, and long overdue reforms of health care and energy policy. These drastic, necessary responses to a crisis have made it easy for Republicans to attack him as a promoter of big government. So for primarily political reasons, they say no to everything that he proposes. Clearly, it is unfair to blame a guy for not fixing an inherited problem when the opposition has done everything it can to block his proposed solutions.

There is something to be said for both of these perspectives. Personally, I am not very impressed by either party. Our nation clearly faces systemic political problems that cannot be blamed on any one party. Still, I also believe that we give either too much credit or blame to politicians for the economic health of the nation. To a large degree, the economy has a life of its own. Policies can matter, but political success is often a question of luck. You just hope that your political party is in charge when the economy is in an upswing and out of power during the bad times.

I am not an economist, but I am forced to discuss economic issues frequently during the course of my history classes. This has been particularly true during these last few, extraordinary years. I have tried as best I can to make sense out of this current situation, and from what I can gather, the recent financial crisis and lingering economic troubles are largely the result of the decisions of both private industry and of individual Americans. Banks and other financial institutions made a lot of bad loans, and many Americans were more than willing to take those loans to get into homes that they could in no way afford. Neither political party denies this obvious truth. Republicans, however, tend to blame the borrowers for being foolish enough to take on risky loans and the government for aggressively promoting home ownership. Democrats, on the other hand, blame financial institutions for “predatory lending” and the government for its poor regulation of banks and the real estate industry. Whatever the case, the behavior of the years preceding the crisis demonstrate a problem that runs deeper than some bad home loans.

For many years, some of the greatest minds – and many lesser ones - in America have been drawn to the financial sector. They have gone there to apply their considerable intelligence and technical expertise to two activities: speculation and financial engineering. Some have studied the stock market using complex mathematical and statistical models in an attempt to “buy low and sell high.” Others created complex financial products that they claimed could eliminate the risks from lending and investing. Pools of thousands of mortgages or other types of debt were compiled, and investors would theoretically get a consistent return from these “Mortgage Backed Securities” when borrowers made their payments. Since so many mortgages were lumped together, you could theoretically predict with some certainty how many borrowers were likely to default and therefore eliminate the risk. The problem was that the people originating the loans often did not care if the borrowers had any hope of paying. These brokers, after all, planned to quickly sell the loans to the institutions creating the pools. Home prices became inflated by all of the easy credit, housing speculation became increasingly common, the real estate industry became overgrown, and a false illusion of prosperity resulted from the “bubble,” leading people to spend beyond their actual means.

When many of these loans inevitably began to go bad, all sorts of banks and financial institutions were stuck with these financial instruments, and no one knew what they were worth because few understood them. This ultimately led to mass panic, the financial bailouts, a decline in home prices, and lingering economic hardship. Now I don’t know enough about trading in complex derivatives to give advice on what should be done in this area. My gut tells me that it should either be outlawed or heavily regulated, but what the hell do I know. I can say with some confidence, however, that there are probably more productive things that great minds can be doing than inventing complicated instruments or models for turning money into more money.

What if more money was invested into the creation of actual goods and services instead of pure speculation? What if great minds were focused on innovative products rather than revolutionary investment strategies? To my simplistic economic mind, it seems that our nation would be better off. We live in an increasingly competitive world, and the winning nations will not be the ones that have the best financial engineers who create short-term profits for their investors and themselves. Bankers play a vital role in our economy, but in the end, great innovators and entrepreneurs have played the most significant role in our nation’s prosperity. Americans either invented or played the dominant role in the development of the telephone, electric light, television, personal computer, internet, and countless other life-changing technologies that have produced massive wealth and job opportunities. So where will the next great innovations come from?

Right now, banks and many private companies are sitting on an enormous amount of money. Some of this is the result of improvements in efficiency, productivity, and efforts to scale back the quantity of goods and risky behavior from the inflated, “bubble” years. Consumers are also keeping their wallets shut somewhat due to fears about the uncertain future. In the end, productive investment from the private sector is the key to getting us out of the hole. The government is strapped, and it has historically shown little capacity to efficiently produce innovative goods and services that the public demands. If anything, politicians should be thinking of creative ideas for encouraging investment into the development of innovative products and ideas. When jobs in industries with long-term viability are created, then consumers will once again have money to spend. The trick is convincing banks and companies that it is time to start lending, investing, and expanding once again.

I recognize that the stock market and the real estate industry play vital roles in generating income, creating jobs, mobilizing capital, and improving our future prospects for retirement. It is unhealthy, however, to have an economy where too much investment goes into these potentially speculative activities. “Flipping” a house or selling stock transfers income; these actions do not produce wealth over the long haul. We need innovators who develop valuable goods and services and financial institutions that have the foresight to invest in them. Who will be the next Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, or Steve Jobs? God help us if minds like these innovators get too busy analyzing the market or creating the successor to the “Collateralized Debt Obligation.”

The Meaning of the Fourth of July

This song lays out what true Americans would like our country to be.

On July 2, 1776, representatives of thirteen British colonies in North America voted to break free from British rule and form a new nation. (Five more years of fighting against the British would follow.) Two days later, a document was officially drafted that attempted to explain the reasons for this action. The date written on this “Declaration of Independence” would ultimately become the officially celebrated birthday of The United States of America, a day that Americans generally (and “creatively”) refer to as The Fourth of July. The most quoted parts of the Declaration of Independence come from its opening two paragraphs, and they have become a significant part of our national creed:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

It sounds simple enough. Governments exist to protect individual rights – a radical idea at the time – and if a government fails to perform this function, then the people have a right to get rid of it. You can make a strong case, however, that the people of the United States have spent the last 234 years struggling to determine the exact meaning of these noble words. To some Americans today, the Fourth of July is a time to celebrate the greatness of the United States, a nation that is history’s greatest embodiment of a land where all people are guaranteed their basic rights. To others, the words in the Declaration would be the first of many examples of blatant American hypocrisy.

“All men are created equal.” At least the founding fathers were somewhat honest in only referring to men. After all, women in early American history had the legal and political rights of children. Still, the founders could have been more honest by saying, “all property-holding, white men are created equal.” Black slaves had no rights, Native Americans were viewed as obstacles to settlement that needed to be displaced, and in many states, people without property could not vote. This was hardly the embodiment of a democratic, freedom loving society where all were created equal.

Of course, concepts like “equality” and “rights” are vague and tricky to define. If you ask Americans today of various political persuasions how they define these words, you are likely to get a variety of answers. Does “equality” refer to the distribution of goods, or is it limited to equality of opportunity? Do all humans have a right to basic needs like a college education, health care coverage, and housing, or are these reserved to those who can afford them? I wonder how the founding fathers would have answered these questions. Given the fact that Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, was both a slaveholder and plantation owner, it is clear that his views on equality and human rights were not particularly radical. It is difficult to generalize, however. After all, the founders were a collection of opinionated individuals, not a single entity with one point of view.

In a sense, the American Revolution did not end when the British decided to stop fighting. Instead, the revolution has been an ongoing process. Displacing the British was only part one. When the British were gone, the truly difficult questions had to be answered. What system of government would this new nation have? What policies would it follow? Who would rule this new nation? On the surface, the answers seemed easy. We would have a government free from Britain that protected individual rights, and Americans would rule themselves. Americans, however, both then and now, have never agreed with one another on everything. We have always been a society divided by ethnicity, race, gender, age, social class, religion, and political ideology. These divisions that existed in colonial times did not magically disappear once the British were gone. Even during the Revolutionary War, Americans who fought for the patriot cause had various motivations for doing so, and they had different visions for this new nation’s future. The revolutionary concepts of freedom, liberty, and equality were defined in a wide variety of ways.

Too often, particularly on the Fourth of July, we Americans mythologize those first patriots who founded our nation. In comparison to those glorious people of the past, our country today can seem pretty lousy. But when you take a closer look at the past, you will see that they were not all that different from us. If anything, their society was much worse. Over the course of the last 234 years, our country has expanded voting rights, abolished slavery, established better work conditions, and improved its attitudes toward and treatment of ethnic minorities, women, children, homosexuals, and the disabled. There is obviously still a long way to go, but progress has clearly been made. Many people and events, of course, have played a role in these social changes, but the principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence have been a significant, consistent, revolutionary force.

The United States does not live up to its noble ideals. No nation ever does. So Americans should not simply rest on their laurels every Fourth of July and celebrate how great we are. Ideals should not be confused with reality. This does not mean, however, that we should all become cynical and depressed because our country falls so woefully short. The United States, in spite of all of its weaknesses and problems, has taken steps over the course of its history toward more closely realizing its creed. A recognition that revolutions never really end, and that progress is possible, should inspire all Americans to push our nation closer to those ideals that we claim to believe.

Oil Spills and Greece's Ills

Here's a classic environmentalist song by Joni Mitchell. (She wrote it, not the Counting Crows.)



At times like these, I am reminded of why I am neither a devoted liberal nor a staunch conservative. Two of the biggest stories of the last few weeks have been the oil spill off of the Gulf Coast and the debt crisis in Greece. And while I do not pretend to be a person who fully understands the causes of these crises, I do recognize that each political faction, if it plays its cards right, can use one of these events as ammunition for pushing its views.

Liberal environmentalists would seem to have things easy these days. In order to demonstrate just how dangerous offshore oil drilling, weak business regulations, and an economy dependent on fossil fuels can be, all that they have to do is point people to the TV screen. The sobering fact is that the worst may be yet to come. Oil is still gushing in from under the ocean, British Petroleum’s various strategies for containing the spill keep failing, and we don’t know exactly what the impact will be when, where, or if the oil slick reaches the shore. Personally, I do not have a lot of faith in BP’s ability to “fix” this problem. They have had a string of recent disasters that many attribute to their tendency to cut costs whenever possible. I also question their willingness to pay reparations to those who will ultimately be harmed by this catastrophe. A disaster like this cannot simply be measured in financial terms anyway, and the environmental damage in some cases may be irreversible.

President Obama has said in the past that our economy needs to wean itself off of fossil fuels. Conveniently enough, when the spill occurred, Congress was revisiting once again the energy reform bill that has been languishing in Washington. If he is the liberal that many claim him to be, then he should be jumping all over this opportunity. Unfortunately for him, this spill has mostly created problems. Shortly before the spill, he officially supported for the first time the expansion of offshore oil drilling. Needless to say, this was not the greatest timing in the world. It is also in his interest to minimize the extent of the disaster. He does not, after all, want this to be his version of Hurricane Katrina. The fact that this oil spill was the result of oil industry incompetence while the Katrina fiasco was a combination of natural disaster and government incompetence will not stop Obama’s opponents from trying to pin this thing on him. It’s an effective way for the “drill, baby, drill” people to divert attention away from their own culpability.

Finally, President Obama has some big political battles ahead in dealing with financial regulation, immigration reform, and the budget deficit. And as anyone not blinded by political ideology has realized, President Obama is first and foremost a pragmatist. He wants to get things done, and he is willing to make compromises with powerful interests to do so. (See his proposal for expanded oil drilling and the health care bill, among other things.) In this partisan political climate, does he want to take on the oil sector with all of its economic and political clout? Ultimately, it may be public opinion that is the most important factor. And if public reactions to past oil spills can be used as a guide, then we are unlikely to see major changes to prevent future environmental catastrophes and to lessen our continuing dependence on fossil fuels. We tend to have a short memory, and many Americans have accepted occasional environmental disasters as an inevitable part of producing and distributing a resource that makes our lifestyle possible.

Conservatives would be wise to divert public attention to Greece, a country that has become the poster child for inefficient, bloated, overstretched government. As Greece teetered toward bankruptcy, there was a fear that a financial panic could result that would be reminiscent of Lehman Brothers’ collapse a couple of years ago. Only in this case, the problem was public debt instead of stupid private banks. If Greece defaulted, investors would take a hit, and people might wonder which country would be the next to go: Portugal? Spain? Italy? Investors would then be afraid to loan money to these countries, which would drive interest rates up and might precipitate their collapse.

Greece, as part of the eurozone, could not attempt to solve its problems by cranking out more currency. Also, as part of the eurozone, Greece’s problem became Europe’s problem. If eurozone countries could no longer make good on debts valued in euros, what might the impact be on this multinational currency? Apparently, the European Union decided not to find out, so they put together a one trillion dollar package to bail out Greece and other debt-ridden nations. But will this be enough, and will countries with big deficits be able to implement painful budget cuts and tax increases without causing massive public unrest? Street protests in Greece indicate that citizens used to public sector jobs, benefits, and services might not take this lying down.

The lessons for the United States seem obvious. Our ratio of debt to GDP is not much better than that of Greece, and it is only going to get worse if we continue on the current track. Will the United States be teetering on the brink of bankruptcy in a few years? Are Americans ready to make the painful sacrifices necessary to get the budget mess in order? In the United States, the Federal Reserve has dealt with our recent financial crisis by pumping currency into the economy, but at some point, this type of policy will lead to inflation and higher interest rates. In my home state of California, the parallels to Greece seem particularly clear. As a state without its own currency, California is obligated to pay its bills. But as everyone in this country knows, California is an annual budgetary basket case. Conservatives would point to this bastion of liberalism as the ultimate example of what happens when you have a bloated, inefficient government that scares businesses away with high taxes and excessive regulations. The public sector, particularly when it is filled with employees receiving excessive salaries and benefits, cannot indefinitely be propped up by the private sector. Real economic growth comes from the private sector, not government handouts.

Of course, in California, as in Greece, some will argue that the problem is not a system of government provided services. Instead, we are in trouble because of the corrupt, incompetent people who currently run the system. If we could just get better politicians, then things would improve. Of course, you could also make the same type of argument for the recent oil spill. The problem is not our fossil fuel based economy. In any industry, there are going to be people who occasionally mess up. Banning all oil drilling, like gutting the public sector, would be going too far. Unfortunately, this type of thinking can divert attention away from systemic problems and keep people focused on defending their ideology and trying to win elections.

Ultimately, politics is all about spin. Both sides want to make sure that their version of events becomes the more widely accepted “truth.” And the most important part of this game is making sure that the majority focuses on the event or issue that most naturally supports your ideology. Environmentalists want us talking about oil spills, and conservatives want us focused on budget messes in Greece and California. If you want to get a good sense of the political pulse of Americans these days, listen closely to see which stories people choose to notice.

How to Cover 30 Years of History in 30 Minutes (or less)

Rarely do songs go as well with a blog post as this one does:




I am teaching a class this semester that covers all of United States History, from Columbus to Obama, in nine weeks (six hours per week). This is an unusual format for me. At the three other schools where I teach, the classes either cover Early American History (before 1877) or Modern American History (post-1877). Plus, classes usually last for sixteen weeks and meet for three hours per week. So students in this “unusual” format are expected to absorb 500 years of History in half of the normal time.

By cutting out some material and moving faster than I normally do, I have been able to get through all of this information when I have taught with this format in the past. I am always worried, however, that if I don’t pace myself properly, I could end up being forced to cover the last thirty years of American History in about a half an hour. So should that ever occur, here is how I might go about covering the years from 1980-2010 during those last precious minutes of class time:

“So in 1980, things were not looking too good for our country. Inflation was out of control, Americans were starting to buy lots of things from other countries (especially Japan), and things like the Iranian hostage crisis made us look weaker around the world. So many Americans turned to a conservative ex-actor named Ronald Reagan to be our savior. He had the right plan for the right time: to get government out of our lives – cut taxes, roll back regulations, cut expensive social programs - and to build up the military so that we could once again take on communists and other evildoers. After a couple of bad years, the economy started to turn around, and inflation was brought under control. As the economy grew, many Americans went back to our good old-fashioned heritage of materialism and individualism. Even some TV preachers used channels on a phenomenon called cable television to tell people that God would make his devoted followers rich. After all, what did years of that hippy, anti-materialist, liberal, secular, “peace and love” crap get us? We rediscovered what Americans always knew: that money makes you happy. There were some problems, however, that would come back to haunt us. The federal government was running big budget deficits, wealth was more concentrated toward the top, and the push toward deregulation may have eventually gone too far.

Then George W. Bush’s dad became president, and an amazing thing happened. The Soviet Union, and their puppet governments in Eastern Europe, collapsed. To the shock of almost everyone, the Cold War was over. This was fantastic, but there was one big problem: what would guide our foreign policy now? For forty-five years, U.S. actions were consistently guided by a desire to defeat communism. Without the big bad buy, what would be the plan? At first, Saddam Hussein stepped into the role of bad guy when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Here was a chance to use that big military that Reagan built up in the 1980’s, and in a matter of days, the Iraqi army was annihilated. Suddenly, Americans were waving flags again and celebrating a military victory. For many, this was a sign that the embarrassment of Vietnam was being put behind us. “Bush the first” seemed like a lock to win re-election.

But when the economy went bad for a while in the early 1990’s, and a quirky businessman named Ross Perot decided to run for president, the door was open for an unknown governor named Bill Clinton to become our next president. And conveniently for him, the economy took off on the longest ride of sustained economic growth in American history. Much of this was due to the increasing integration of the global economy, the growing sophistication of personal computers, and the expanding use of something called the internet (which Clinton’s Vice President had apparently “invented”). And as many Americans gorged themselves on all of this wealth and invested into new high-tech products and industries, politics was of limited interest. O.J., Monica, and Y2K kept us distracted, and it wasn’t like politicians were getting much done anyway. We had a Democratic President and a Republican Congress, and as the two parties became increasingly hostile, they seemed to spend more time talking about Clinton’s sex life than proposing effective policies. Things seemed to be going remarkably well anyway – the federal government actually ran a surplus for a while - so the lack of political achievements did not seem like a big problem. Also, our newfound status as the world’s only remaining superpower created a sense of safety from foreign threats.

But due to Clinton’s “sexual issues,” Al Gore’s lack of political charisma, a spoiler named Ralph Nader, our ridiculous system for choosing Presidents, and the beginnings of a mild recession triggered somewhat by the “dotcom bubble”, “Bush II” became president in one of the stranger elections in history. George W. Bush immediately began to push the Reagan agenda. Then, within a matter of months, the growing terrorist threat that most Americans had spent years ignoring and neglecting hit our country on 9/11. Suddenly, we had a big, scary enemy again, and as you are well aware, the “War on Terror” has been proceeding ever since. Most Americans were terrified and ready to “kick ass” for a while, but it did not take long for many people to become distracted once again by good old-fashioned materialism and the wonders of modern technology: cell phones, high speed internet, social networking, reality TV, “Tivo”, etc. They were also distracted by a new bubble in real estate that began to form after the previous internet bubble had burst. Housing prices rose rapidly, fueled largely by insane loans packaged together into strange, unregulated financial instruments that few understood. Then, toward the end of the Bush presidency, the financial system crashed and burned, and government came running to the rescue.

This collapse laid the groundwork for an amazing event: the election of the first non-white man to the presidency. Unfortunately for President Obama, he came into office at a time of several crises: conflict dragging on in Iraq and Afghanistan, economic recession, the rising cost of health care, and an intensifying level of partisan bitterness that can be traced back to the Clinton years. To a large degree, our nation is beginning to pay the price for past foolishness. Unsustainable spending on Medicare, Social Security, and Defense has caused ballooning budget deficits now that the economy has slowed down. Reckless borrowing and spending over the course of many years brought us to the brink of disaster, although the government, at a very high cost, has apparently managed to ward off a huge crisis. Has the time come where we have to face reality? Have we started to realize that our political and economic systems as they currently stand are unsustainable? Or will self-centered special interest groups and continued partisan bickering continue to hold back meaningful reform?

Every generation must ask itself how the people of the future will judge them. I have a feeling that the last 30 years will be remembered for a couple of things. First, it will be remembered as the beginning of a technological revolution comparable to the invention of agriculture or to the industrial revolution of the early nineteenth century. It is still too early to tell where this change will ultimately lead us. Second, it will be remembered as a period of reckless borrowing and spending – in both the private and public sectors - fueled by the belief that happiness comes from accumulating the stuff that every American has a God-given right to have. And as Americans were distracted by their desire for things, tough decisions have been put off by politicians (of both parties) who are afraid of telling American voters the truth: taxes must inevitably be raised, significant spending cuts on big budget programs must be made, the health care system must become more financially efficient, and we must begin the initially painful process of moving toward an economy that is not based on fossil fuels. In short, Americans must make sacrifices. These tough decisions have been put off for too long, and my grandkids might look at me someday and ask me what the hell we were thinking.”

Don't Confuse Punishment With Justice

There are a lot of great songs about people dealing with injustice. Here is one of my favorites. It's called "Blue Sky Mine" by Midnight Oil.



I am not a big fan of the name, “Justice Department.” The implication of this title is that our legal system – cops, courts, and jails – is in the business of carrying out justice. A better title, in my view, would be the “Punishment Department.” Too often, punishment is viewed as synonymous with justice. But as anyone who has ever had a loved one physically abused, raped, or murdered knows, the punishment of the guilty party, no matter how satisfying it may be, cannot undo the injustice. This simple truth, however, has not stopped many from confusing punishment with justice in both their religious beliefs and political ideologies.

Injustice is a big problem for anyone who believes that some sort of a just god or other benign spiritual force controls and regulates the world. Monotheistic belief systems such as Islam and Christianity deal with this problem by promising that a day of judgment is coming for both individuals when they die and for the world in general in some sort of a future apocalyptic event. Things may seem unfair now, but they will someday be made right. Buddhism and Hinduism, on the other hand, believe that spiritual forces will inevitably cause people to experience the consequences of their actions. If “justice” is not carried out in an individual’s current lifetime, then it will come at some point in his or her future lives. The goal is to eventually become enlightened enough to see that the world we experience is just an illusion. Then you can be free of apparent suffering and injustice, and you will break free from the cycle of birth and rebirth.

Christianity in particular equates justice with punishment in its core theological idea: Jesus had to come to earth and be crucified in order to satisfy God’s desire for justice. Jesus, by taking upon himself the wrath of God, made salvation possible for those who believe. So apparently, when believers are rewarded and unbelievers pay the price for their refusal to repent, all of the obvious injustices in the world will be wiped away. There is a big problem, however, with this notion of justice. Even if some future day of reward and punishment comes, the injustices of the past still occurred, and nothing can ever undo the damage. Even if God is somehow able to wipe away bad memories, the pain experienced at the time that the injustice occurred was very real.

So what is the point of this little theological discussion? Am I trying to argue that we should stop punishing people because it is impossible to bring about justice? On the contrary, I recognize that punishing criminals has some very important and valuable functions. Strong punishments can deter crime, get dangerous people off of the streets, and make people who have done horrible things suffer. They cannot, however, undo injustice. The only way, therefore, of creating a more just world is to prevent crime and injustice in the first place. And while the justice system plays an important role in preventing crime, it is vitally important for a society to broaden its concept of national security and to seek out creative ways of preventing the likelihood of injustice. A strong case can be made that effective regulations and investment into education, infrastructure, and technological innovation, among other things, might do as much (or more) to enhance our security as putting tons of cops on the streets or building lots of weapons and jails. These actions may, in some cases, even cost less money. It is shortsighted, therefore, to focus too exclusively on punishing criminals and blowing up bad guys. If the goals are security and justice, then you need to be more creative and proactive. Of course, if the goals are merely to punish people and get revenge, then you can content yourself with nothing but weapons, cops, and jails.

Some people have given up on the concept of a just world. The only hope, they say, is to wait for judgment day. To me, this is both the ultimate copout and the final bailout plan. Since the world is a complicated place with difficult problems, it’s comforting to believe that some divine being or force will ultimately make things right. We are then freed somewhat from taking responsibility and doing the hard work of creatively engaging the world. And what I find particularly disturbing is that some people seem to take comfort in the fact that a lot of people are going to pay a heavy price. It will then be the ultimate opportunity to say, “I told you so” to both the blatant sinners and to the stubborn unbelievers who picked the wrong belief system (and who might have made fun of “the faithful”).

Many people also think that God created human beings in his image. I tend to think that the reverse may be true. By creating an image of God as divine judge, we ended up with a being that deals with injustice as we do. In the end, when an individual has committed a crime, punishment is the best that we humans can do. If some divine being or force exists, I hope that he (or she, or it, or they) has a more creative and effective plan.