How We Got Here: the Debate I

This will be a rather lengthy piece. It is my intention here to examine the historical underpinnings of what is happening today in the fight between the Right and everyone else. This will be part one of a two-part essay. Bear with me, it all does lead somewhere. The talking heads have been bloviating for decades now about the function of government vis a vis a so-called Welfare State. The Right claims that having the government “take care of” people is a violation of the American tradition of independence and self-reliance and will sap our resources, both fiscal and moral. The Left has argued that such government programs are there to protect people who have few resources from the depredations of the wealthy and an economy that fluctuates as a normal element of its functioning and that it is the responsibility of the better-off to aid those who are left without recourse in such a system. That’s the basics of the debate. The Right says no, people should look out for themselves. The Left says many people can’t and it isn’t right to let them starve in the streets. The Right says it has no desire to see anyone starve in the streets but rejects the idea that others are responsible for the perhaps bad choices of individuals who have been unable to take advantage of an open system. The Left counters by pointing out the system is not as open as the Right believes and built in to its workings is the inevitability that a certain number of people simply won’t be able to participate. Even if the Right then agrees, they assert that it is not the job of the State, using tax payer money, to off-set this imbalance. The Left says it is if people vote for it and even if they don’t there’s a moral imperative involved. The Right counters that the State is not the instrument for pursuing moral imperatives. Well. Let me be up front here—I think the Right has it wrong. They base their philosophy, if that’s what it is, on an idea of equality that is unsupportable. In the narrowest sense, they argue that our system is open to the extent that everyone has an equal shot at some measure of success and if they fail it is either because they were lazy, foolish, or unlucky. The government can functionally do nothing about any of that. The argument falls apart on its face. Equality in this country is a principle concerning representation before the State. The State in this sense is the community as a whole, both public and private. The ideas that we are not born to a Station in life which determines at the outset how far an individual might go through his or her own efforts. It was never intended as an assessment of talent or a measure of will or a guarantee of achievement. It is only a promise of access. Because people are not equal as individuals. They aren’t and there’s not much point in arguing about it. Intelligence, physical attributes, proclivities, all these things vary widely throughout any population group and to argue that, if somehow we could take away all social obstacles, everyone would be exactly the same is absurd. The Right seems to argue that because this is true, the rest of us have no responsibility for the fundamentally unequal achievements of any one, or group of, individual. They discount social obstacles. Not completely, because when an individual rises above a certain level, reaches the precincts of success, and has done so from straitened beginnings, many on the Right like to point to that individual as an exemplar of succeeding in spite of the circumstances of his or her life. So there is a tacit recognition that social conditions matter, but only as an ennobling aspect to a Horatio Alger story. The question really is why those conditions keep so many others down, but that, as much as the successful individual’s achievement is credited to personal qualities, is a matter of personal failure, not attributable to anyone else. Which seems to make success and failure a matter of choice. Exclusively. Ergo, the tax payer, through the medium of the State, has no responsibility for such failures. This can only be true if the assertion of equality is true as an innate quality. [More . . . ]

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We Are Not Parts

I’ll admit up front that I’m shooting from the hip here. There are many aspects to what is happening in Wisconsin right now with parallels to several past instances in the country in the fight over workers’ rights, unions, and moneyed interests, but I frankly don’t have the time to research them all right now and get something up before it all comes to a head. Isn’t it interesting, though, that we are collectively cheering what is happening in the Middle East right now and something similar is happening right here and people don’t seem to be paying attention to what’s at stake? I grant you, it’s a stretch. But on principles, not so much. We’re talking about who has the right to speak to power and over what. The protesters in Madison aren’t having their internet access and phone service pulled and it’s doubtful the military will be called in, but on the other hand the Wisconsin state police are being asked to go get the now-labeled Wisconsin 14 and bring them back to the state capitol to vote on something that is clearly a stripping of the right of petition and assembly. So this can become very quickly a constitutional issue and that’s scary, because right now the Supreme Court has been decidedly against workers’ rights. Governor Scott is at least being clear. I’ll give him credit, he’s not ducking questions about what he’s trying to do. Wisconsin, like many states, has a budget crisis. He’s already gotten concessions from the unions, a lot of money. The unions have not balked at doing their civic duty in terms of agreeing to pay cuts, freezes on raises, and some concessions on benefits to help the state meet its budgetary responsibilities. But he’s going further and asking that all these unions be stripped of their collective bargaining abilities in order to make sure they never again demand something from the state that the legislature or the governor believes they don’t deserve. In other words, Governor Scott doesn’t ever want to have to sit down and ask them for concessions ever again—he wants to be able to just take what he wants. [More . . . ]

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Avoid These Topics to Help End Civilization

Courtesy of WikiMedia There are four subjects the polite American avoids discussing in public: Politics, Religion, Sex, and Money. The ostensible reason for this taboo is to avoid offending anyone. But here I argue that this over-correctness is a causative factor in the decline of a civilization. Let's do money, first. As far as I know, this is a particularly American obsession. My European parents had to learn not to talk about money when they came to this country. Other places, the question, "So, how much do you make?" is as normal as "Are you married?" But in the U.S.A, we maintain a fiction of a classless society. We ask the same question only obliquely: "Where did you go to school?" is a good indicator of family income and social position. It is to the advantage of the landed class employers that their serfs employees not compare incomes, as well. By not allowing people to honestly gauge their economic value, they stay insecure. And insecurity leads to all manners of submissive behaviors, shoring up the security of the ruling classes, both secular and religious. Sex is a more generally repressed topic. There is no stronger drive, yet we must never directly say what we feel about it. Western churches even teach that one should deny and ignore the strongest drives within ourselves, leading to all sorts of perverse (read as counter-social) behaviors. To discuss it in public would allow people to see how normal their lusts really are, removing a major source of insecurity. Minor curiosities would not blossom into obsessions and perversions. Such openness would reduce the influence of those very organizations that profit from its repression, like churches and (other) marketing firms, whose urgent short-term goals are only occasionally and accidentally in line with continuing our civilization. Religion is a big one. People wear "subtle" symbols to let others of the same brand know they can be approached on the subject. The third eye, a cross or fish, a Koranic verse, and a star are some of the more obvious "secret" symbols. But it is a major faux pas to overtly declaim about your own faith to someone who may not agree. Unless, of course, the purpose is to stir controversy or solicit, two disreputable (completely human) drives. Again, by not knowing when and to whom you may come out,one feels insecure. This gives the leaders the upper hand. Especially when they strive to sow divisiveness, as in malignant fundamentalist sects. Finally, politics. This is the least stringent of the social prohibitions. I think this is in part because the churches and marketing firms rule the field, anyway. In our land, there are basically two sides: The established American parties, and those who can barely tell them apart. The parties do have differences. One wants to conserve our resources, reduce capitalist predation, and protect the underclass in hopes of a better tomorrow, and the other wants government to protect the minorities (specifically the rich, the unborn, and corporations) and let God (or the invisible hand) sort out the others until the imminent judgment day. So it occurred to me that hiding from these basic topics destabilizes civilization. Social groups balkanize into small, trusted segments that define themselves by their perceived differences. Each of the 30,000 Christian sects publicly claim the sum of all members of all denominations as supporting them, yet privately know that most of the 30,000 others are wrong and hell-bound. We have been divided, and conquered. If the people knew where they stood, and knew where the leaders stood, we would have actual checks and balances as were envisioned by our founders. Without such things, our nation may well founder.

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The United Nations comments on Wikileaks

On December 21, 2010, Frank LaRue (the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression) and Catalina Botero (the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression) have issued a Joint Statement on Wikileaks. This statement is carefully crafted and right on the mark. It will piss off American conservatives who still care one whit about freedom of speech issues because it is written in the spirit of the First Amendment. It was written "in light of ongoing developments related to the release of diplomatic cables by the organization Wikileaks. The Statement recognizes the critical importance of the free flow of information for the preservation of democratic societies. It advocates that a stiff burden of proof should be on those who attempt to stifle any form of speech with claims of national security. It recognizes the important work done by journalists and whistle-blowers. It condemns the following:

- Politically motivated legal cases brought against journalists and independent media,

- The blocking of websites and web domains on political grounds and

- Calls by public officials for illegitimate retributive action.

The only fault I find with the statement is that the issuing organizations have protected it with traditional copyright. that is so 20th Century. Something of this importance and magnitude should have been been issued accordance with Creative Commons or with "no rights reserved" to reach the broadest possible audience. Here are the first two articles of the Statement:

1. The right to access information held by public authorities is a fundamental human right subject to a strict regime of exceptions. The right to access to information protects the right of every person to access public information and to know what governments are doing on their behalf. It is a right that has received particular attention from the international community, given its importance to the consolidation, functioning and preservation of democratic regimes. Without the protection of this right, it is impossible for citizens to know the truth, demand accountability and fully exercise their right to political participation. National authorities should take active steps to ensure the principle of maximum transparency, address the culture of secrecy that still prevails in many countries and increase the amount of information subject to routine disclosure.

2. At the same time, the right of access to information should be subject to a narrowly tailored system of exceptions to protect overriding public and private interests such as national security and the rights and security of other persons. Secrecy laws should define national security precisely and indicate clearly the criteria which should be used in determining whether or not information can be declared secret. Exceptions to access to information on national security or other grounds should apply only where there is a risk of substantial harm to the protected interest and where that harm is greater than the overall public interest in having access to the information. In accordance with international standards, information regarding human rights violations should not be considered secret or classified.

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More than writing

Several years ago, my neighbor Tony and I were talking about a social issue. Tony is a good thoughtful man, and the conversation turned rather intense. In the middle of the conversation, I blurted out something like "I'm really concerned about that issue." Tony shot back," No, you are not concerned. If you were, you be doing something about it." He caught me flat-footed, and his words have haunted me ever since. I think Tony was right. If we care about something, we should be doing something about it, or at least trying to do something about it. Further, blogging about a problem is quite often not doing too terribly much about that problem. I'm don't mean to disparage writing, because I very much think that written information can change the world by helping people understand it better. But writing about things is a method that too often shows its limits, especially when it turns into ranting. And an especially annoying kind of ranting is when one rants to others who are already sympathetic to the cause. And the worst kind of writing is ranting to sympathetic audiences in ways that are mostly calculated to show off how much one knows or to try to draw attention an ostentatious writing style. So here's my resolution for 2011. Here's to doing more than merely writing, but actually trying to change the world in physical ways. And to the extent that I choose to write, here's to writing in a straight-forward way to audiences that are not quite sympathetic. And here's to writing that aims to get people out of their seats and into the streets. Here's to stepping out from behind my computer more than I have before, and trying to make a tangible difference. I will continue to take my writing seriously next year. I have lots of ideas bubbling in my head, and many of these are ideas inspired by cognitive science ideas that bear upon the fact that human animals so often live dysfunctionally. I will try to keep my concerns in stride better than I have in the past, because being too serious is not effective, and good humor can serve as a sharp blade that often slices through close-mindedness. Here's to the upcoming year, during which I will work harder to make my blogging process more connected and more relevant to the real life concerns I articulate.

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