Our government does not know how much has been lost in sub-prime mortgages, derivative instruments, and other bad debt. What is called for is a complete and independent audit of all the organizations being bailed out by taxpayer money. The independent auditors, appointed by the President or Congress, would examine the company’s accounts to judge their truth and correctness. They would scrutinize the amounts and sources of all their income, the amounts and purposes of all their expenses, the amounts and distribution of all their profits and losses. With this information, the government could realistically assess the damage to our economy and make realistic plans with realistic goals to alleviate the current crisis.
Instead of dealing with hard facts obtained by a rigorous audit, the Obama administration will work with information derived from a so-called "stress test", which is a computer program using economic models based on assumptions for the future. An economic model, according to the Dictionary for Business and Finance (John V. Terry, University of Arkansas Press, 2nd edition) is "The consideration of quantifiable factors which may be either variables or constants and the construction of relations among them that may be expressed in the form of an equation." That's business school language for, "If any activity can be measured, it can become part of an economic model."
Unfortunately, it is usually what cannot be measured that brings economic troubles: greed, arrogance, stupidity, political ambition—these cannot be measured, but they adversely affect our economy. Unforeseen and unpredictable events—hurricanes and tornadoes, droughts and floods—also directly affect jobs, industry, food production, and shipping, to name only a few economic activities.
To make things worse, the stress test will also include other predictive models created by the banks themselves. Those who survive the stress test—that is, those bankers who create models that show that their organization can survive—will receive government aid. Unfortunately, any MBA or graduate-school economics major can create an economic model that will show high profits and enormous growth in the future.
It is arrogance on the part of economists, bankers, brokers, and financial analysts that lead them to believe that they can predict economic activity through the use of models, and it was their economic models combined with greed, stupidity, as well as unforeseen and unpredictable events that put us into this mess.
Another reason for the need of a complete audit is the law prohibiting the regulation of derivatives, which are at the heart of the subprime mortgage crisis. The mortgages were bundled into single financial instruments, whose value was then divided further into other securities and sold to investors as security-swap or credit-swap agreements. The value of these agreements, also known as derivatives, were based on a model—another model!—of what the issuers thought the value would become.
Derivatives are not regulated by the SEC. In fact, the SEC is forbidden to regulate these chancy investments by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. It states in part, that " the Commission is prohibited from registering, or requiring, recommending, or suggesting, the registration … of any security-based swap agreement." Also the SEC is prohibited from making, interpreting or enforcing rules "… as prophylactic measures against fraud, manipulation, or insider trading with respect to any security-based swap agreement."
Another result of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. Glass-Steagall prohibited commercial banks from acting as investment banks. Commercial banks could lend money, but they could not underwrite any stock or security. With the repeal, commercial banks took ownership of investment companies and began offering investments as well as savings accounts.
Banks’ profits from their customers’ investments grew faster than those from their customers’ savings accounts. They were affected during the Reagan administration by banks and by law. First, banks began to require minimum balances, usually in the thousands of dollars. If a young worker tried to accumulate a nest egg via his savings account, but had less than three thousand dollars, his account was charged a service fee, very often an amount equal to the modest addition that worker could make to his account. Thus, workers stopped saving, and banks increased their profits by paying little or no interest on savings accounts.
Second, almost simultaneously, laws were passed so that banks offered IRAs to their customers and corporations, 401Ks to their employees. Both involved investing in stocks or money market accounts. Conspiracy theorists, mysteriously, have yet to pick up on this coincidence, but IRAs and 401Ks increased banks’ profits and helped Wall Street recover from a decline that had begun during the Carter administration. Workers’ savings became dependent on their employers’ payroll departments.
All this leads me to believe that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act must be repealed as soon as possible and the Glass-Steagall Act, or its modern equivalent, be re-enacted. Part of this legislation must be the creation of an Auditor General who can check a corporation’s books and enforce the law. To those who protest because they are committed to small government, I respond by protesting the financial services industry’s fradulent behavior makes this kind of law necessary.
How did the banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions get away with it for so long? Where did our money go? We may never know, because the financial services industry sponsored the re-election of almost all members of Congress, as well as the President and Vice President. See my blog about campaign finance "Of Time, Money, Elections and the Constitution," November 16, 2008. Few elected officials in Washington are pressing for a complete disclosure from their benefactors.
These benefactors have also helped the two men appointed by President Obama to oversee America’s economic recovery. Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner were involved in the very activities that put us into our current crisis. Frank Rich reported in The New York Times (12 April 2009) that Lawrence Summers had received over $5 million from D. E. Shaw, a hedge fund, and almost $3 million in speaking fees from Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and other such institutions which have gotten money from the taxpayer bailout. Summers also tried, and failed, to have a co-founder of another hedge fund, Taconic Capital Advisers, appointed to the job of running the TARP bailouts. This was clearly a conflict of interest, because while president of Harvard, Summers had done consulting work for Taconic.
The other man responsible for creating our economic chaos is Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner. Before President Obama appointed him Secretary of the Treasury, President Bush appointed Geithner President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. As such, he was responsible for the regulation of the largest bank holding companies in the USA. However, following standard operating procedure of the Bush administration, he did nothing. He sat in his posh office at the Fed and watched cash gush from the banks under his supervision. He watched assets dwindle, and then claimed in Congressional hearings that there was nothing he could have done. He even claimed that there had been too much regulation in many sectors of the financial services industry!
During his confirmation hearings, we learned that Geithner had not paid income taxes for several years. He apologized and paid the back taxes. The man chiefly responsible for re-invigorating our economy, the man with degrees in international economics and experience in domestic banking, did not have the financial acumen and legal awareness to pay his own taxes.
So, we have laws that encourage unethical behavior and fraud, and we have government officials who do not pay their taxes, accept money from the organizations they are supposed to regulate, and ignore what they cannot cover up.. This is a scenario that Lewis Carroll would have thought too implausible for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
For more on coverups, go to www.PBS.org and look at Bill Moyers’s interview of William Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
The Conservative Mind
As I examined what the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation profess on their websites, I learned that their first principles are almost always figures of speech rather than actions to be emulated.
Both the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation profess individual liberty; limited government; free and private enterprise; strong, vigilant, and effective national defense. And they both believe in traditional American values, political accountability, and open debate.
Conservatives used to profess small government, but since World War II, the federal government has increased in size, even under Republican administrations. So, their wish is for limited government, an abstraction that doesn’t tell us how we can limit government and still have strong, vigilant, national defense. As for individual liberty, national security, and political accountability. I will mention only in passing, Richard Nixon, who was never held accountable for the White House enemies list. Nor was he held accountable for his part in the Watergate break-in, which is a monument to failed conservative ideals of national security and individual liberty. Nixon was forced to resign, but he left office believing that whatever a President does is legal. He even kept his Presidential and Congressional pensions because his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him.
Citizens suffer the consequences any time a Conservative brings up "traditional American values." That phrase is now as meaningless as "the American dream." I regret to report that, when put into action, Traditional American Values means keeping various ethnic groups separate and conforming to the code of "Do as I say, not as I do," and "Do whatever you want; just don’t talk about it."
The Traditional American college alumnus holds an MBA and values his university’s football stadium more highly than its chemistry laboratory. A Traditional American values Walt Disney more than Henry James, and theme parks more than art museums. A Traditional American seeks the dominance of Christian evangelism and a material comfort level equal to Nero’s palace. A Traditional American takes his rights for granted, but becomes agitated when his opponents demand theirs.
The American Dream means simply, "Get rich, and don’t worry how."
During my reading on the Heritage Foundation’s website, I came across the summa of conservatism. It is Heritage Lecture #81, "The Origins of the Modern American Conservative Movement" (2003), by Lee Edwards, PhD, Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought in the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Dr. Edwards took as his text, The Conservative Mind (1953) by Russell Kirk, a book which Edwards credits as the origin of modern conservatism. Unfortunately, the most telling quality in Kirk’s ideas is his weakness for tropes instead of concrete deeds.
Edwards tells us, "The central idea of The Conservative Mind, upon which American conservatism is essentially based, is ordered liberty. It is a blending of the sometimes contending requirements of the community and the individual, of individual freedom and individual responsibility, of limited government and unlimited markets." More nouns but no active verbs, which shows that Conservatives are no longer vigorous activists; they are simply tiresome nags.
At the heart of conservative values are Russell Kirk’s six basic "canons" of conservatism. Unfortunately, the canons are all values, not actions. The Ten Commandments tell people specifically what they are NOT supposed to do, and the Constitution of the United States tells the governed and their governors what they may and may not do. Actions, not values.
I had expected to read something like the following: "Conservatives vote only for candidates who pledge to reduce the number of employees working for the federal government, and if they do not fulfill their pledge, conservatives complain to the officeholder in person. Or they send letters and e-mails, and phone his office until he complies or resigns." Instead, I found six limp creeds made up, as all creeds are, of abstractions and metaphors. They suggest, but do not illuminate. They are vague.
The following is the list of the six canons:
1. A divine intent, as well as personal conscience, rules society.
2. Traditional life is filled with variety and mystery while most radical systems are characterized by a narrowing uniformity.
3. Civilized society requires orders and classes.
4. Property and freedom are inseparably connected.
5. Man must control his will and his appetite, knowing that he is governed more by emotion than by reason.
6. Society must alter slowly.
These six canons would be frightening, if they could ever be put into practice. But they can’t, because they are all image and no substance. Kirk uses the terms "divine intent" and "personal conscience" as personifications of political agents. If divine intent and personal conscience ruled society instead of mankind, we would practice religious, ethnic, and racial prejudices and start religious wars. Some Americans try to put this canon into action by not only shunning Islamic people, but also torturing and killing them. Others find new nicknames for members of non-white, non-Christian races and creeds. The latest I heard from a woman who called them, "people of a different demographic."
No one has settled the question "What is ‘divine intent’?" No one can. It has been asked in a variety of ways, including George W. Bush’s query, "What would Jesus do?" To which there are a thousand answers. When one religious group believes their answer is better than another’s, society gets very ugly. Religious denominations become political action committees, and true believers of divine intent, in good conscience, bulldoze homes and houses of worship or fly airliners into skyscrapers.
We may be a society of people with consciences, but our varying attitudes, opinions, and beliefs make personal conscience an arbitrary, contradictory ruler. As a society, we may be aware of our consciences, but we must obey laws passed by a duly elected legislature and enforced by police who must obey the laws themselves.
In the second canon, "traditional life" and "variety and mystery" are oxymorons . People cling to traditions as a means of eliminating variety and mystery. Traditionalists prefer the known to the unknown. They seek that which is acceptable to their peers rather than what is satisfying to themselves alone. Traditionalists would rather have Hilary Rodham Clinton and Condaleeza Rice at home vacuuming their rugs or at church arranging flowers on the altar.. They would keep gays and lesbians from marrying, and they would have all public school children recite "The Lord’s Prayer" daily. Thus they ask "What would Jesus do?" instead of the more difficult question, "What should I do, and how can I do it?" Conservatives are Traditionalists, and theirs is the narrowing uniformity.
In the third canon about orders and classes, I guess Kirk means that the higher orders and upper classes, much in the manner of Plato’s guardians, control the lower orders and lower classes. In concrete terms for the 21st century, it means that Conservatives want to eliminate the minimum wage and labor unions. Conservatives believe that the guardians in the managerial class must keep workers on a tight leash, and the workers should accept their wages gratefully, regardless of the working conditions they labor in, regardless the size of their families, and regardless of their skills.
The upper class’s attitude toward the lower orders was shown when former first lady Barbara Bush visited a refugee center set up in Houston’s Astrodome after Hurricane Katrina. There she was, surrounded by people smelling terribly from the lack of showers and clean clothing, people weeping for lost homes and family members, people numbed by the inhumane treatment they had received from FEMA and their police department. Mrs. Bush surveyed her fellow citizens and said, "They never had it so good." Compassionate Conservatism, indeed. To Barbara Bush, these people were poor before the hurricane, and government aid was a step up for them.
Many Conservatives thought it was okay for the lower orders to huddle in an improvised shelter, but they were afraid that they would want to live in the Astrodome for the rest of their lives. That they would become dependent on using chemical toilets and community showers, not to mention standing for hours in line for food rations. That these people would love being separated from their families and their homes.
In the fifth canon, Kirk states that property and freedom are inseparable. In keeping with this canon, George W. Bush announced to his fellow citizens that America was an ownership society. Unfortunately, this is true, and those who own little, or who have recently lost much, are prisoners of the current economic downturn. Parents have lost their jobs and their homes through foreclosure, and they raise their children in cars, motel rooms or tent villages springing up in vacant lots. Similar camp sites along railroad tracks in the 1930s were called Hoovervilles. These new tent villages should be called Dubyavilles.
Conservatives have yet to admit their role in creating the current Depression. Instead they believe workers should have known that their factories would close with no notice, even though their employers did not. Conservatives also believe that these workers should have anticipated the fall in market values of their homes, even though bankers and real estate brokers did not.
The fifth canon, about controlling one’s appetites and will, is a cliché similar to "Enough is as good as a feast," "Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill," or "Where there’s a will, there’s a way." Hearing these old saws causes superficial men to nod seriously during business-club luncheons and forget all about them at dinner. Certainly self-control is the mark of a mature person, but in the past eight years Conservatives have shown much self indulgence and little if any self control. Imagine Roman Catholic priests controlling their will and appetite for children, Richard Cheney controlling his will and appetite for power, Rush Limbaugh controlling his will and appetite for illegal drugs.
I am glad to say the sixth canon about gradual social change was ignored by the Continental Congress of 1776. And by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi.
There is much lacking in these conservative canons. Nowhere did I find any mention of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick, and sheltering the homeless. Nor anything about learning the law and obeying it. That’s why we won’t find in any Conservative’s canon, "Actions speak louder than words."
Both the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation profess individual liberty; limited government; free and private enterprise; strong, vigilant, and effective national defense. And they both believe in traditional American values, political accountability, and open debate.
Conservatives used to profess small government, but since World War II, the federal government has increased in size, even under Republican administrations. So, their wish is for limited government, an abstraction that doesn’t tell us how we can limit government and still have strong, vigilant, national defense. As for individual liberty, national security, and political accountability. I will mention only in passing, Richard Nixon, who was never held accountable for the White House enemies list. Nor was he held accountable for his part in the Watergate break-in, which is a monument to failed conservative ideals of national security and individual liberty. Nixon was forced to resign, but he left office believing that whatever a President does is legal. He even kept his Presidential and Congressional pensions because his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him.
Citizens suffer the consequences any time a Conservative brings up "traditional American values." That phrase is now as meaningless as "the American dream." I regret to report that, when put into action, Traditional American Values means keeping various ethnic groups separate and conforming to the code of "Do as I say, not as I do," and "Do whatever you want; just don’t talk about it."
The Traditional American college alumnus holds an MBA and values his university’s football stadium more highly than its chemistry laboratory. A Traditional American values Walt Disney more than Henry James, and theme parks more than art museums. A Traditional American seeks the dominance of Christian evangelism and a material comfort level equal to Nero’s palace. A Traditional American takes his rights for granted, but becomes agitated when his opponents demand theirs.
The American Dream means simply, "Get rich, and don’t worry how."
During my reading on the Heritage Foundation’s website, I came across the summa of conservatism. It is Heritage Lecture #81, "The Origins of the Modern American Conservative Movement" (2003), by Lee Edwards, PhD, Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought in the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Dr. Edwards took as his text, The Conservative Mind (1953) by Russell Kirk, a book which Edwards credits as the origin of modern conservatism. Unfortunately, the most telling quality in Kirk’s ideas is his weakness for tropes instead of concrete deeds.
Edwards tells us, "The central idea of The Conservative Mind, upon which American conservatism is essentially based, is ordered liberty. It is a blending of the sometimes contending requirements of the community and the individual, of individual freedom and individual responsibility, of limited government and unlimited markets." More nouns but no active verbs, which shows that Conservatives are no longer vigorous activists; they are simply tiresome nags.
At the heart of conservative values are Russell Kirk’s six basic "canons" of conservatism. Unfortunately, the canons are all values, not actions. The Ten Commandments tell people specifically what they are NOT supposed to do, and the Constitution of the United States tells the governed and their governors what they may and may not do. Actions, not values.
I had expected to read something like the following: "Conservatives vote only for candidates who pledge to reduce the number of employees working for the federal government, and if they do not fulfill their pledge, conservatives complain to the officeholder in person. Or they send letters and e-mails, and phone his office until he complies or resigns." Instead, I found six limp creeds made up, as all creeds are, of abstractions and metaphors. They suggest, but do not illuminate. They are vague.
The following is the list of the six canons:
1. A divine intent, as well as personal conscience, rules society.
2. Traditional life is filled with variety and mystery while most radical systems are characterized by a narrowing uniformity.
3. Civilized society requires orders and classes.
4. Property and freedom are inseparably connected.
5. Man must control his will and his appetite, knowing that he is governed more by emotion than by reason.
6. Society must alter slowly.
These six canons would be frightening, if they could ever be put into practice. But they can’t, because they are all image and no substance. Kirk uses the terms "divine intent" and "personal conscience" as personifications of political agents. If divine intent and personal conscience ruled society instead of mankind, we would practice religious, ethnic, and racial prejudices and start religious wars. Some Americans try to put this canon into action by not only shunning Islamic people, but also torturing and killing them. Others find new nicknames for members of non-white, non-Christian races and creeds. The latest I heard from a woman who called them, "people of a different demographic."
No one has settled the question "What is ‘divine intent’?" No one can. It has been asked in a variety of ways, including George W. Bush’s query, "What would Jesus do?" To which there are a thousand answers. When one religious group believes their answer is better than another’s, society gets very ugly. Religious denominations become political action committees, and true believers of divine intent, in good conscience, bulldoze homes and houses of worship or fly airliners into skyscrapers.
We may be a society of people with consciences, but our varying attitudes, opinions, and beliefs make personal conscience an arbitrary, contradictory ruler. As a society, we may be aware of our consciences, but we must obey laws passed by a duly elected legislature and enforced by police who must obey the laws themselves.
In the second canon, "traditional life" and "variety and mystery" are oxymorons . People cling to traditions as a means of eliminating variety and mystery. Traditionalists prefer the known to the unknown. They seek that which is acceptable to their peers rather than what is satisfying to themselves alone. Traditionalists would rather have Hilary Rodham Clinton and Condaleeza Rice at home vacuuming their rugs or at church arranging flowers on the altar.. They would keep gays and lesbians from marrying, and they would have all public school children recite "The Lord’s Prayer" daily. Thus they ask "What would Jesus do?" instead of the more difficult question, "What should I do, and how can I do it?" Conservatives are Traditionalists, and theirs is the narrowing uniformity.
In the third canon about orders and classes, I guess Kirk means that the higher orders and upper classes, much in the manner of Plato’s guardians, control the lower orders and lower classes. In concrete terms for the 21st century, it means that Conservatives want to eliminate the minimum wage and labor unions. Conservatives believe that the guardians in the managerial class must keep workers on a tight leash, and the workers should accept their wages gratefully, regardless of the working conditions they labor in, regardless the size of their families, and regardless of their skills.
The upper class’s attitude toward the lower orders was shown when former first lady Barbara Bush visited a refugee center set up in Houston’s Astrodome after Hurricane Katrina. There she was, surrounded by people smelling terribly from the lack of showers and clean clothing, people weeping for lost homes and family members, people numbed by the inhumane treatment they had received from FEMA and their police department. Mrs. Bush surveyed her fellow citizens and said, "They never had it so good." Compassionate Conservatism, indeed. To Barbara Bush, these people were poor before the hurricane, and government aid was a step up for them.
Many Conservatives thought it was okay for the lower orders to huddle in an improvised shelter, but they were afraid that they would want to live in the Astrodome for the rest of their lives. That they would become dependent on using chemical toilets and community showers, not to mention standing for hours in line for food rations. That these people would love being separated from their families and their homes.
In the fifth canon, Kirk states that property and freedom are inseparable. In keeping with this canon, George W. Bush announced to his fellow citizens that America was an ownership society. Unfortunately, this is true, and those who own little, or who have recently lost much, are prisoners of the current economic downturn. Parents have lost their jobs and their homes through foreclosure, and they raise their children in cars, motel rooms or tent villages springing up in vacant lots. Similar camp sites along railroad tracks in the 1930s were called Hoovervilles. These new tent villages should be called Dubyavilles.
Conservatives have yet to admit their role in creating the current Depression. Instead they believe workers should have known that their factories would close with no notice, even though their employers did not. Conservatives also believe that these workers should have anticipated the fall in market values of their homes, even though bankers and real estate brokers did not.
The fifth canon, about controlling one’s appetites and will, is a cliché similar to "Enough is as good as a feast," "Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill," or "Where there’s a will, there’s a way." Hearing these old saws causes superficial men to nod seriously during business-club luncheons and forget all about them at dinner. Certainly self-control is the mark of a mature person, but in the past eight years Conservatives have shown much self indulgence and little if any self control. Imagine Roman Catholic priests controlling their will and appetite for children, Richard Cheney controlling his will and appetite for power, Rush Limbaugh controlling his will and appetite for illegal drugs.
I am glad to say the sixth canon about gradual social change was ignored by the Continental Congress of 1776. And by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi.
There is much lacking in these conservative canons. Nowhere did I find any mention of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick, and sheltering the homeless. Nor anything about learning the law and obeying it. That’s why we won’t find in any Conservative’s canon, "Actions speak louder than words."
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Principles and Their Consequences: The Cato Institute
Before I examine certain professed principles of Conservatism, I would like to add a post script to the previous blog, Embryonic Stem Cell Research. It is about the Roman Catholic Church, with whose faith I have no civic dispute. However, I do dispute their moral authority which they assume when they express the value of human life—the sacredness of young life, as they term it.
To me, the Roman Catholic Church in general, and the priesthood in particular, lost their moral authority when Catholic priests and bishops sexually abused children, while the Roman Catholic hierarchy not only covered up the abuse, but kept the guilty priests and bishops in positions of authority over children. Although I believe in forgiveness, I simply cannot accept any pronouncements from people who have not yet proven to me that they practice what they preach. Until they do, I will exercise my citizen’s right to ignore their hypocritical dicta.
The Church’s failing to protect the children under its care is only one example of Conservatives’ ignoring the gap between their professions of belief and the actions they take. A more recent example of this pragmatic gap was seen when Michael Steele, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, was recently interviewed by GQ (see GQ’s website). In the interview Steele remarked that abortion was an "individual choice" and gay-marriage decisions should rest with the states. However, at no time did Steele endorse gay marriage or abortion, and if you read the complete interview he comes across as a dyed-in-the-wool Conservative Republican. He declared himself to be "pro-life."
Nevertheless, Steele’s statements upset many party leaders. As reported by NPR, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, one of Steele's rivals for the RNC chair, told the conservative Web site, www.Townhall.com. on Thursday that Steele needs to "re-read the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and the 2008 GOP platform."
So, who is the real Conservative? What, in fact, do real Conservatives stand for? To get the answers, I visited three Conservative websites. This essay is about the highly respected Cato Institute*. This organization states its mission as follows: "The mission of the Cato Institute is to increase the understanding of public policies based on the principles of limited government, free markets, individual liberty, and peace."
The institute also says, " … ‘liberal’ may well be the perfect word in most of the world—the liberals in societies from China to Iran to South Africa to Argentina are supporters of human rights and free markets—but its meaning has clearly been corrupted by contemporary American liberals."
The Cato Institute believes that liberals in other lands are uncorrupted supporters of human rights and free markets, and it believes that if free market capitalism exists in a country, so do human rights. Unfortunately, for people in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), capitalism has never guaranteed human rights.
James A. Dorn, China specialist and vice president of academic affairs at the Cato Institute, agrees. Partly. In the institute’s Policy Analysis No. 553 (November 2, 2005), he wrote, "Although it is proper to criticize China for its human rights violations and its lack of a transparent legal system, we should not ignore the substantial progress China has made since it embarked on economic liberalization in 1978. … To avert the risk of conflict, the United States needs to treat China as a normal great power, not as an adversary; ensure that only those commercial transactions that genuinely threaten national security are blocked; and recognize that by increasing economic freedom we increase personal freedom. Our economic security, as well as China’s, will depend on sound free-market policies, not on destructive protectionism."
To the Cato Institute trade with PRC and free markets are more important than "… human rights, individual liberty and peace." PRC, which has been a member of the WTO since 2001, also believes in free markets, but not individual liberty and human rights. I am disappointed that Mr. Dorn ignores PRC’s prison systems. They are called Laogai and are filled with rapists, thieves, and corrupt politicians. However, this system includes the Laojiao, which is a form of administrative rather than judicial detention, where dissidents, petty criminals, and vagrants can be imprisoned for several years without a trial or any other legal proceedings. For more information on this system go to www.laogai.org.
Mr. Harry Wu, the Executive Director of the Laogai Research Foundation, testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission hearing on "The Memorandum of Understanding Between the United States and China Regarding Prison Labor Products" on June 19, 2008. He reported that, despite the US law forbidding the importation of products made by forced prison labor, many of those products have made their way into American markets. In fact 314 laojiao camps are listed by Dun and Bradstreet, the prestigious credit reporting company that gathers information on businesses throughout the world, enabling companies to check on one another before conducting transactions requiring one company to extend credit to the other. Mr. Wu also reported, "The 314 entries for Laogai camps found in the D&B databases represent 72 different products (specific) and/or product categories (broad)."
Laogai is translated to "reform through labor," and laojiao means "reeducation through labor." Together those names sound a frightening echo of Nazi Germany’s motto for their concentration camps, Arbeit macht Frei, or "Work makes you free." All this leads me, sadly, to conclude that it has been the Cato Institute, not contemporary Americans, that have corrupted the word "liberal."
The institute goes on to say, "The Jeffersonian philosophy that animates Cato's work has increasingly come to be called ‘libertarianism’ or ‘market liberalism.’ Many Conservatives, as well as conservative organizations, hold Thomas Jefferson as an exemplar of conservative values, even though many of his actions belied his professed beliefs. Historian Joseph J. Ellis, in American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (1996), described the problems Jefferson encountered when his philosophy in action actually seriously damaged the American economy. Ellis points out that Jefferson believed in fiscal austerity, so much that he tried to dry-dock or destroy America’s navy, which had been developed by his predecessor, John Adams. Unfortunately, that interfered with his need to protect American commercial ships which were being captured by British and French frigates. So, to get back at the Europeans, whom Jefferson saw as corrupt and belligerent, he got Congress to pass the Embargo Act of 1807. This closed all American ports to foreign trade and thus violated two of the Cato Institute’s principles. First, it removed the United States from the free market (emphasis mine). Second, as Ellis tell us, " … [it] required the federal government to exercise coercive powers to enforce the embargo, thereby contradicting the Jeffersonian principle of limited government" (Emphasis mine).
We should also remember that despite his expressed antagonism to the institution of slavery, Jefferson owned at one time more than 200 slaves, and at his death most of his slaves were sold off to pay for his estate’s enormous debts. During his lifetime he practiced the tradition of Southern plantation owners and fathered several children by slavewomen that he owned. This is the face of his writing "… the amalgamation of whites with blacks produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character, can innocently consent.". I know of no Liberal worthy of the name who agrees with Jefferson. I hope no Conservative does.
The Cato Institute also "… combines an appreciation for entrepreneurship, the market process, and lower taxes with strict respect for civil liberties and skepticism about the benefits of both the welfare state and foreign military adventurism." At this time America’s market process is an invalid, queasy with greed, crippled by immorality, and in extremis brought on by inaccurate prognoses of vigor and long life. Its corporations pay few if any taxes even when they file a return.
They are skeptical about the benefits of the welfare state, but they have not developed any serious opposition to the corporate welfare that may bring our free enterprise system off its knees. Yet, how free can our various enterprises be when businesses get income tax breaks for the losses their incomes suffer because their managers make bad business decisions and fail to detect changes in the marketplace? Where are the capitalist adventurers when they screw up? In their board rooms giving themselves congratulatory bonuses for leading their various enterprises to ruin.
So far I have found that Conservatives hold to their beliefs in the face of brute actuality. First principles are very important to them. More important than the consequences of the actions they take in the name of their beliefs.
I must point out that, although the Cato Institute’s mission statement about limited government and free markets can be argued with, its stand against foreign military adventurism stands up under examination. It has, as far as I can discover, never supported the invasion of Iraq. In fact it has held many conferences to find a way out for the US armed forces.
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* I will write about The American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation in my next blog.
To me, the Roman Catholic Church in general, and the priesthood in particular, lost their moral authority when Catholic priests and bishops sexually abused children, while the Roman Catholic hierarchy not only covered up the abuse, but kept the guilty priests and bishops in positions of authority over children. Although I believe in forgiveness, I simply cannot accept any pronouncements from people who have not yet proven to me that they practice what they preach. Until they do, I will exercise my citizen’s right to ignore their hypocritical dicta.
The Church’s failing to protect the children under its care is only one example of Conservatives’ ignoring the gap between their professions of belief and the actions they take. A more recent example of this pragmatic gap was seen when Michael Steele, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, was recently interviewed by GQ (see GQ’s website). In the interview Steele remarked that abortion was an "individual choice" and gay-marriage decisions should rest with the states. However, at no time did Steele endorse gay marriage or abortion, and if you read the complete interview he comes across as a dyed-in-the-wool Conservative Republican. He declared himself to be "pro-life."
Nevertheless, Steele’s statements upset many party leaders. As reported by NPR, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, one of Steele's rivals for the RNC chair, told the conservative Web site, www.Townhall.com. on Thursday that Steele needs to "re-read the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and the 2008 GOP platform."
So, who is the real Conservative? What, in fact, do real Conservatives stand for? To get the answers, I visited three Conservative websites. This essay is about the highly respected Cato Institute*. This organization states its mission as follows: "The mission of the Cato Institute is to increase the understanding of public policies based on the principles of limited government, free markets, individual liberty, and peace."
The institute also says, " … ‘liberal’ may well be the perfect word in most of the world—the liberals in societies from China to Iran to South Africa to Argentina are supporters of human rights and free markets—but its meaning has clearly been corrupted by contemporary American liberals."
The Cato Institute believes that liberals in other lands are uncorrupted supporters of human rights and free markets, and it believes that if free market capitalism exists in a country, so do human rights. Unfortunately, for people in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), capitalism has never guaranteed human rights.
James A. Dorn, China specialist and vice president of academic affairs at the Cato Institute, agrees. Partly. In the institute’s Policy Analysis No. 553 (November 2, 2005), he wrote, "Although it is proper to criticize China for its human rights violations and its lack of a transparent legal system, we should not ignore the substantial progress China has made since it embarked on economic liberalization in 1978. … To avert the risk of conflict, the United States needs to treat China as a normal great power, not as an adversary; ensure that only those commercial transactions that genuinely threaten national security are blocked; and recognize that by increasing economic freedom we increase personal freedom. Our economic security, as well as China’s, will depend on sound free-market policies, not on destructive protectionism."
To the Cato Institute trade with PRC and free markets are more important than "… human rights, individual liberty and peace." PRC, which has been a member of the WTO since 2001, also believes in free markets, but not individual liberty and human rights. I am disappointed that Mr. Dorn ignores PRC’s prison systems. They are called Laogai and are filled with rapists, thieves, and corrupt politicians. However, this system includes the Laojiao, which is a form of administrative rather than judicial detention, where dissidents, petty criminals, and vagrants can be imprisoned for several years without a trial or any other legal proceedings. For more information on this system go to www.laogai.org.
Mr. Harry Wu, the Executive Director of the Laogai Research Foundation, testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission hearing on "The Memorandum of Understanding Between the United States and China Regarding Prison Labor Products" on June 19, 2008. He reported that, despite the US law forbidding the importation of products made by forced prison labor, many of those products have made their way into American markets. In fact 314 laojiao camps are listed by Dun and Bradstreet, the prestigious credit reporting company that gathers information on businesses throughout the world, enabling companies to check on one another before conducting transactions requiring one company to extend credit to the other. Mr. Wu also reported, "The 314 entries for Laogai camps found in the D&B databases represent 72 different products (specific) and/or product categories (broad)."
Laogai is translated to "reform through labor," and laojiao means "reeducation through labor." Together those names sound a frightening echo of Nazi Germany’s motto for their concentration camps, Arbeit macht Frei, or "Work makes you free." All this leads me, sadly, to conclude that it has been the Cato Institute, not contemporary Americans, that have corrupted the word "liberal."
The institute goes on to say, "The Jeffersonian philosophy that animates Cato's work has increasingly come to be called ‘libertarianism’ or ‘market liberalism.’ Many Conservatives, as well as conservative organizations, hold Thomas Jefferson as an exemplar of conservative values, even though many of his actions belied his professed beliefs. Historian Joseph J. Ellis, in American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (1996), described the problems Jefferson encountered when his philosophy in action actually seriously damaged the American economy. Ellis points out that Jefferson believed in fiscal austerity, so much that he tried to dry-dock or destroy America’s navy, which had been developed by his predecessor, John Adams. Unfortunately, that interfered with his need to protect American commercial ships which were being captured by British and French frigates. So, to get back at the Europeans, whom Jefferson saw as corrupt and belligerent, he got Congress to pass the Embargo Act of 1807. This closed all American ports to foreign trade and thus violated two of the Cato Institute’s principles. First, it removed the United States from the free market (emphasis mine). Second, as Ellis tell us, " … [it] required the federal government to exercise coercive powers to enforce the embargo, thereby contradicting the Jeffersonian principle of limited government" (Emphasis mine).
We should also remember that despite his expressed antagonism to the institution of slavery, Jefferson owned at one time more than 200 slaves, and at his death most of his slaves were sold off to pay for his estate’s enormous debts. During his lifetime he practiced the tradition of Southern plantation owners and fathered several children by slavewomen that he owned. This is the face of his writing "… the amalgamation of whites with blacks produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character, can innocently consent.". I know of no Liberal worthy of the name who agrees with Jefferson. I hope no Conservative does.
The Cato Institute also "… combines an appreciation for entrepreneurship, the market process, and lower taxes with strict respect for civil liberties and skepticism about the benefits of both the welfare state and foreign military adventurism." At this time America’s market process is an invalid, queasy with greed, crippled by immorality, and in extremis brought on by inaccurate prognoses of vigor and long life. Its corporations pay few if any taxes even when they file a return.
They are skeptical about the benefits of the welfare state, but they have not developed any serious opposition to the corporate welfare that may bring our free enterprise system off its knees. Yet, how free can our various enterprises be when businesses get income tax breaks for the losses their incomes suffer because their managers make bad business decisions and fail to detect changes in the marketplace? Where are the capitalist adventurers when they screw up? In their board rooms giving themselves congratulatory bonuses for leading their various enterprises to ruin.
So far I have found that Conservatives hold to their beliefs in the face of brute actuality. First principles are very important to them. More important than the consequences of the actions they take in the name of their beliefs.
I must point out that, although the Cato Institute’s mission statement about limited government and free markets can be argued with, its stand against foreign military adventurism stands up under examination. It has, as far as I can discover, never supported the invasion of Iraq. In fact it has held many conferences to find a way out for the US armed forces.
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* I will write about The American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation in my next blog.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Conservatives have mounted another attack against common sense in government, science, and religion. They are against President Obama’s executive order releasing funds for stem cell research. Not content with failing to come up with solutions for problems in our economy, our health care system, and our foreign policy—problems that they themselves created—now they seek to eliminate important research involving, among other things, frozen embryos.
They claim that these frozen embryos are human beings, deserving protection from being destroyed in the cruel laboratories of Godless science. The National Right to Life Committee titled their response statement, Obama Order Opens Door to Widespread Killing of Embryonic Humans in Government-Funded Research. Spokesman Douglas Johnson said, "It is a sad day when the federal government will fund research that exploits living members of the human species as raw material for research."
Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. wrote in the Boston Pilot, a newspaper for Catholics, "taking the lives of young humans cannot be pronounced ethical simply because it might result in huge benefits to older, more powerful, or more wealthy humans."
The Republican Party Platform calls for a ban on human cloning and for a ban on the creation of or experimentation on human embryos for research purposes. U.S. Congressman Mike Pence, chairman of the House Republican Conference, said, in a press release, "The President has ordered pro-life taxpayers to foot the bill for promoting overseas abortions and for scientific research that destroys human embryos. Sadly, the President's action ignores the miracles found in adult stem cell research. Embryonic stem cell research has failed to provide a single treatment to a living patient. It's unfortunate President Obama has chosen to support the empty promises of embryonic stem cells despite the living hope available in adult stem cell research."
In a statement released by his office, Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said, "The president has rolled back important protections for innocent life, further dividing our nation at a time when we need greater unity to tackle the challenges before us. As we move forward, I am hopeful that the president will re-evaluate this and other controversial decisions that put government at odds with the sanctity of human life," Boehner said.
These citizens have a right to their attitudes, opinions, and beliefs, but examining their statements is the best way to reveal their weaknesses. To begin, let’s look at the respect that Conservatives say they have for the lives of the young.
Conservatives have never shown an unwillingness to exploit young, innocent life. For good or bad, Americans have been taking lives of young humans since the creation of the Republic. That process is called war. We also encouraged our young warriors to smoke by giving them free cigarettes, manufactured by companies run by Conservatives. MSN Encarta reports that during World War II (1939-1945), American physicians endorsed sending soldiers tobacco, and cigarettes were included in the field ration kits of U.S. armed forces personnel until 1975.
To Father Pacolczyk, I point out that older American citizens got very rich, not from exploiting embryos, but from sending living American children to coal mines, steel mills, and sweat shops, where thousands died. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire is only one example. Another is my late father-in-law, who, during the Depression, bribed his way into a job as a Chicago sandhog. He was too young for the job, but his age was no concern to the owners of the tunnel construction company. To them he was a laborer, an immigrant, and expendable. To Conservatives, young human life is sacred if it belongs to the children of the upper 1.5% of income earners. Or if it is an embryo. But once out of the womb and a poor, fully developed human, it is no longer sacred, and subject to scorn.
Republicans also hold human life sacred if it is a subject for political rhetoric that feeds citizens with misinformation. Many of us remember the case of Terry Schiavo, whose parents forced their son-in-law to keep her on life support even though her brain had ceased to function. We remember Senator Frist waxing eloquent about Mrs. Schiavo’s sacred life. And we remember that when Mrs. Schiavo finally died, her autopsy revealed that her brained had severely atrophied, and she could have never regained consciousness.
Now we have Representative Pence claiming that President Obama advocates "overseas abortions" which is hyperbole in the worst degree. Abortions are not really a part of stem cell research. Period. And while it is true that embryonic stem cell research has produced little of medical value, President Bush stopped the research before it could develop much at all. And it is pitiful that I have to remind Douglas Johnson of the National Right to life Committee that medical research and pharmaceutical companies exploit living members of the human species every day; that’s how medicines are tested.
Exceptions to the Republican Sacred-Life-Rule exist. They include the lives of servicemen or women, or American children with no health insurance, or children starving in Darfur, or children working in sweatshops abroad, making products for American retailers.
Like almost all Republicans, Congressman Mike Pence loves to protect taxpayers’ money, except for that $12 billion in cash lost in Iraq, still unaccounted for. During the time the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, not one hearing was held to find out what happened to all that cash. However, Republicans also like spending taxpayers money on such things as unbudgeted warfare, rendition of unindicted American citizens, Richard Nixon’s pension, and Congressional pay raises, among many others.
Although they mishandle the tax payer’s money, the Republicans’ characterization of the Democrats as the party of tax and spend is accurate. Democrats do indeed tax citizens and then spend the revenues for programs that benefit the entire country. Republicans like to spend revenues, too. Lots and lots of revenues. But Republicans get their revenues from borrowing from China, Saudi Arabia, and the European Union. So Republicans are the party of "Borrow and Spend." And they don’t give a damn how the debt is paid.
Representative Boehner chided President Obama for not caring about the unity we need to face the great challenges ahead of us. It is a strange idea of unity that has led Boehner to oppose every measure that President Obama has sent to Congress. Republicans want to appear that they are working for the benefit of the citizens of the United States of America, while they actually work very hard to keep the initiatives of President Obama from succeeding.
Only one man in the Republican Party has refused to pose as a unifier or call for reconciliation with Democrats. He is true to his convictions and honest enough to call for the failure of Liberals in general and the agenda of President Obama in particular. That one honest man is Rush Limbaugh, a recovering drug addict who calls for long jail sentences for such people. Except himself, of course.
Finally, Conservatives, against all common sense, declare that embryos are human beings with rights. Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Director of Education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, is the author of a column called Making Sense out of Bioethics that appears at the NCBC website (www.ncbcenter.org) and in various diocesan newspapers across the country. After earning a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Yale University, he did post-doctoral research at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. He subsequently studied in Rome where he did advanced studies in theology and in bioethics.
Father Pacholcyzk is a well educated man, who has every right to express his attitudes, opinions and beliefs, just as any other American citizen does. But what he states is Roman Catholic dogma, which differs from those of other Christian faiths, non-Christian faiths, and even agnostics and atheists. We see what happens when religions control what governments do, and we see the tragic consequences when religions clash. People die in wars, and schoolgirls are not allowed to leave a burning building because they do not have approved garments to wear in public. I have no desire to be killed for my beliefs, or the lack of them. I do not want to live in a theocracy. I seek a thoroughly secular, Constitutional government, free of all religious entanglements.
Let religion be the basis for individual belief and action, but not for legislation and governance.
Let the embryonic stem cell research begin.
They claim that these frozen embryos are human beings, deserving protection from being destroyed in the cruel laboratories of Godless science. The National Right to Life Committee titled their response statement, Obama Order Opens Door to Widespread Killing of Embryonic Humans in Government-Funded Research. Spokesman Douglas Johnson said, "It is a sad day when the federal government will fund research that exploits living members of the human species as raw material for research."
Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. wrote in the Boston Pilot, a newspaper for Catholics, "taking the lives of young humans cannot be pronounced ethical simply because it might result in huge benefits to older, more powerful, or more wealthy humans."
The Republican Party Platform calls for a ban on human cloning and for a ban on the creation of or experimentation on human embryos for research purposes. U.S. Congressman Mike Pence, chairman of the House Republican Conference, said, in a press release, "The President has ordered pro-life taxpayers to foot the bill for promoting overseas abortions and for scientific research that destroys human embryos. Sadly, the President's action ignores the miracles found in adult stem cell research. Embryonic stem cell research has failed to provide a single treatment to a living patient. It's unfortunate President Obama has chosen to support the empty promises of embryonic stem cells despite the living hope available in adult stem cell research."
In a statement released by his office, Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said, "The president has rolled back important protections for innocent life, further dividing our nation at a time when we need greater unity to tackle the challenges before us. As we move forward, I am hopeful that the president will re-evaluate this and other controversial decisions that put government at odds with the sanctity of human life," Boehner said.
These citizens have a right to their attitudes, opinions, and beliefs, but examining their statements is the best way to reveal their weaknesses. To begin, let’s look at the respect that Conservatives say they have for the lives of the young.
Conservatives have never shown an unwillingness to exploit young, innocent life. For good or bad, Americans have been taking lives of young humans since the creation of the Republic. That process is called war. We also encouraged our young warriors to smoke by giving them free cigarettes, manufactured by companies run by Conservatives. MSN Encarta reports that during World War II (1939-1945), American physicians endorsed sending soldiers tobacco, and cigarettes were included in the field ration kits of U.S. armed forces personnel until 1975.
To Father Pacolczyk, I point out that older American citizens got very rich, not from exploiting embryos, but from sending living American children to coal mines, steel mills, and sweat shops, where thousands died. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire is only one example. Another is my late father-in-law, who, during the Depression, bribed his way into a job as a Chicago sandhog. He was too young for the job, but his age was no concern to the owners of the tunnel construction company. To them he was a laborer, an immigrant, and expendable. To Conservatives, young human life is sacred if it belongs to the children of the upper 1.5% of income earners. Or if it is an embryo. But once out of the womb and a poor, fully developed human, it is no longer sacred, and subject to scorn.
Republicans also hold human life sacred if it is a subject for political rhetoric that feeds citizens with misinformation. Many of us remember the case of Terry Schiavo, whose parents forced their son-in-law to keep her on life support even though her brain had ceased to function. We remember Senator Frist waxing eloquent about Mrs. Schiavo’s sacred life. And we remember that when Mrs. Schiavo finally died, her autopsy revealed that her brained had severely atrophied, and she could have never regained consciousness.
Now we have Representative Pence claiming that President Obama advocates "overseas abortions" which is hyperbole in the worst degree. Abortions are not really a part of stem cell research. Period. And while it is true that embryonic stem cell research has produced little of medical value, President Bush stopped the research before it could develop much at all. And it is pitiful that I have to remind Douglas Johnson of the National Right to life Committee that medical research and pharmaceutical companies exploit living members of the human species every day; that’s how medicines are tested.
Exceptions to the Republican Sacred-Life-Rule exist. They include the lives of servicemen or women, or American children with no health insurance, or children starving in Darfur, or children working in sweatshops abroad, making products for American retailers.
Like almost all Republicans, Congressman Mike Pence loves to protect taxpayers’ money, except for that $12 billion in cash lost in Iraq, still unaccounted for. During the time the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, not one hearing was held to find out what happened to all that cash. However, Republicans also like spending taxpayers money on such things as unbudgeted warfare, rendition of unindicted American citizens, Richard Nixon’s pension, and Congressional pay raises, among many others.
Although they mishandle the tax payer’s money, the Republicans’ characterization of the Democrats as the party of tax and spend is accurate. Democrats do indeed tax citizens and then spend the revenues for programs that benefit the entire country. Republicans like to spend revenues, too. Lots and lots of revenues. But Republicans get their revenues from borrowing from China, Saudi Arabia, and the European Union. So Republicans are the party of "Borrow and Spend." And they don’t give a damn how the debt is paid.
Representative Boehner chided President Obama for not caring about the unity we need to face the great challenges ahead of us. It is a strange idea of unity that has led Boehner to oppose every measure that President Obama has sent to Congress. Republicans want to appear that they are working for the benefit of the citizens of the United States of America, while they actually work very hard to keep the initiatives of President Obama from succeeding.
Only one man in the Republican Party has refused to pose as a unifier or call for reconciliation with Democrats. He is true to his convictions and honest enough to call for the failure of Liberals in general and the agenda of President Obama in particular. That one honest man is Rush Limbaugh, a recovering drug addict who calls for long jail sentences for such people. Except himself, of course.
Finally, Conservatives, against all common sense, declare that embryos are human beings with rights. Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Director of Education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, is the author of a column called Making Sense out of Bioethics that appears at the NCBC website (www.ncbcenter.org) and in various diocesan newspapers across the country. After earning a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Yale University, he did post-doctoral research at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. He subsequently studied in Rome where he did advanced studies in theology and in bioethics.
Father Pacholcyzk is a well educated man, who has every right to express his attitudes, opinions and beliefs, just as any other American citizen does. But what he states is Roman Catholic dogma, which differs from those of other Christian faiths, non-Christian faiths, and even agnostics and atheists. We see what happens when religions control what governments do, and we see the tragic consequences when religions clash. People die in wars, and schoolgirls are not allowed to leave a burning building because they do not have approved garments to wear in public. I have no desire to be killed for my beliefs, or the lack of them. I do not want to live in a theocracy. I seek a thoroughly secular, Constitutional government, free of all religious entanglements.
Let religion be the basis for individual belief and action, but not for legislation and governance.
Let the embryonic stem cell research begin.
Monday, March 2, 2009
On the Collective Widsom of Conservatives
It must be duly noted that the only sensible thing conservatives have said in the last few weeks is their acknowledgement that Barack Obama is the first black President of the United States of America. Their collective wisdom comes from Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, who said that the New Deal was a flop. The right’s de facto leader, Rush Limbaugh, called Obama a Chicago thug and a cruel socialist. Congressman Ron Paul claimed, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that our financial crisis was brought on by too many government regulations and too much government oversight.
In the Republican response to President Obama’s speech to the Joint Session of Congress on February 24, 2009, Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana reached the acme of banality and innacuracy. He denounced the waste in the stimulus program, which, he said includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government. To the governor, it is wasteful to buy new automobiles for the FBI, the US Marshal’s Service, the Secret Service, the DEA, the Treasury Department, and the Departments of Agriculture, Transportation, and Defense. He also complained about "…$140 million for something called ‘volcano monitoring.’ " This conservative leader, whose state suffered from Hurricanes Katrina and Gustav, did not ask for a reduction in the US Weather Bureau’s budget, but decried a government program that would prevent another disaster caused by volcanic eruptions like that of Mt. Saint Helens, Washington. This is petty carping, not fiscal statesmanship, and the whole speech was rightfully scorned by all but the far right.
Nevertheless, Bobby Jindal is the darling of the Republican Party. He exemplifies the American Dream. Jindal is the son of immigrants, and he tried in his speech to compare his background with Obama’s. "My own parents came to this country from a distant land." However, this immigrant story is totally unlike that of Obama’s parents. The Jindals had come to America in 1971, but the governor’s father was a civil engineer, and his mother was a PhD candidate at Louisiana State University. His mother is now Director of Information Technology for the Louisiana Department of Labor.
Jindal, true to his Republican ideology, spoke the words that have been magic for Republican campaigns. He called for less government spending, not more. He said, "What it will do is grow the government, increase our taxes down the line, and saddle future generations with debt.. Who among us would ask our children for a loan, so we could spend money we do not have, on things we do not need?" He and his speech writers obviously had forgotten that future generations were already saddled with debt, including an unbudgeted $600 billion for the Iraq war, all created by the Republican tax cuts and by eight years of non-existent oversight by the Bush administration. It is more likely that he hoped that Americans would continue supporting bankrupt ideas.
Since January 20, 2009, Americans have waited in vain for intelligent commentary from conservative leaders. Somewhere there must be a conservative American who has some new ideas that will help the USA drag itself out of the quagmire of two wars, increasing unemployment, a decreasing Gross Domestic Product, stalled wages for workers and growing bonuses for executives, failing schools, crumbling highways, growing health care costs and declining quality of medical care, global warming and a ever growing dependence on coal and other carbon-based fuels. Is there a conservative with enough courage to stand up and say, "We conservatives let things go to hell, and here are some practical ideas that will help us reverse America’s descent into oblivion."
We moderates and liberals are waiting for those ideas. Until the time we hear from him or her, we’ll go with Obama's.
In the Republican response to President Obama’s speech to the Joint Session of Congress on February 24, 2009, Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana reached the acme of banality and innacuracy. He denounced the waste in the stimulus program, which, he said includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government. To the governor, it is wasteful to buy new automobiles for the FBI, the US Marshal’s Service, the Secret Service, the DEA, the Treasury Department, and the Departments of Agriculture, Transportation, and Defense. He also complained about "…$140 million for something called ‘volcano monitoring.’ " This conservative leader, whose state suffered from Hurricanes Katrina and Gustav, did not ask for a reduction in the US Weather Bureau’s budget, but decried a government program that would prevent another disaster caused by volcanic eruptions like that of Mt. Saint Helens, Washington. This is petty carping, not fiscal statesmanship, and the whole speech was rightfully scorned by all but the far right.
Nevertheless, Bobby Jindal is the darling of the Republican Party. He exemplifies the American Dream. Jindal is the son of immigrants, and he tried in his speech to compare his background with Obama’s. "My own parents came to this country from a distant land." However, this immigrant story is totally unlike that of Obama’s parents. The Jindals had come to America in 1971, but the governor’s father was a civil engineer, and his mother was a PhD candidate at Louisiana State University. His mother is now Director of Information Technology for the Louisiana Department of Labor.
Jindal, true to his Republican ideology, spoke the words that have been magic for Republican campaigns. He called for less government spending, not more. He said, "What it will do is grow the government, increase our taxes down the line, and saddle future generations with debt.. Who among us would ask our children for a loan, so we could spend money we do not have, on things we do not need?" He and his speech writers obviously had forgotten that future generations were already saddled with debt, including an unbudgeted $600 billion for the Iraq war, all created by the Republican tax cuts and by eight years of non-existent oversight by the Bush administration. It is more likely that he hoped that Americans would continue supporting bankrupt ideas.
Since January 20, 2009, Americans have waited in vain for intelligent commentary from conservative leaders. Somewhere there must be a conservative American who has some new ideas that will help the USA drag itself out of the quagmire of two wars, increasing unemployment, a decreasing Gross Domestic Product, stalled wages for workers and growing bonuses for executives, failing schools, crumbling highways, growing health care costs and declining quality of medical care, global warming and a ever growing dependence on coal and other carbon-based fuels. Is there a conservative with enough courage to stand up and say, "We conservatives let things go to hell, and here are some practical ideas that will help us reverse America’s descent into oblivion."
We moderates and liberals are waiting for those ideas. Until the time we hear from him or her, we’ll go with Obama's.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
The Culture We Deserve
I did not take a class from Jacques Barzun, nor have I ever met him. However, I have studied his works and the works that he wrote about, and both have affected my work as a teacher, occasional essayist, and citizen.
I first encountered Barzun almost thirty years ago as I prowled through the open stacks at the Brooklyn Public Library in search of some diverting, but substantive, summer reading. My eyes fell on The Energies of Art . That title intrigued me, so I flipped through a few pages to sample the writing of this (to me) unknown writer. In his introductory essay, "The Critic’s Task Today," he wrote: "Chaos in the world and art is in truth Criticism’s opportunity to shine. For chaos has causes; confusion has clues; history is not an impenetrable riddle, and if one can for a moment rise above the anxious fret of the personal, one will discover at least some namable sources of public dismay."
Then: "Who are we in the stream of time and Western thought? Supplying an answer to this question is the critic’s task today, and the best excuse for his existence. For my part, I am willing to be judged by this test for venturing to use up paper and print on ‘mere’ criticism."
I was surprised by the clarity of Barzun’s writing—surprised because the last few critical works I had read were jumbled mixtures of puns and quotations pompously declaring themselves deconstructions of texts. So I flipped to the last essay of the book, "William James and the Clue to Art," and found this:
A … way … of showing the relevance of James’s psychology to art is to sample its abundant evidence for the view that the mind is the original artist, who hardens into a geometrician only by special effort or dull routine. James’s radical new view itself resembles an artistic revolution in that, displacing from the foreground as ready-made all ideas and objects, it restores primacy to sensation and will. Objects are always clear, hard, unyielding things that remain ever themselves as they recur, whereas will and sensation fluctuate. The Jamesian mind is thus the innovator’s—bathed in sensation, individual, free, and confident of its power to shape the congenial material of its own perceptions.
In The Book of J, Harold Bloom wrote, "As we read any literary work, we necessarily create a fiction or metaphor of its author." In my fiction Jacques Barzun is my teacher, with whom I stroll through the Grove of Academe. He points out fads posing as breakthroughs and clichés disguised as tenets; he teaches me that the giving and the taking of meaning is not automatic; and he professes the virtue of clarity. Then he ushers me to the gate between the grove and agora and pushes me into the marketplace where, jostled by rivals and torn by critics I empirically test what I have learned.
Winded and sweaty, I return to the grove with the test results, and Barzun reminds me that the grove is as arduous as the agora, and that enlivened minds keep the gate between them open. He also introduces me to other teachers who can cool me off. Teachers such as Walter Bagehot, Samuel Butler, and William James, who all remind me of Bunyan’s great warning against "Knowledge not attended with doing.". And Lionel Trilling, with whom Barzun taught a colloquium of great books of the modern period at Columbia University. Their method—what Barzun calls a "methodless method"—defied classification. Trilling and Barzun dubbed it "cultural criticism," which Barzun describes in his essay, "The Imagination of the Real" (Art, Politics and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling, Basic Books, 1977).
[The method] arose from a lively sense of the force of circumstances, balanced by an equally strong sense of the free life that ideas lead when hatched. It seemed clear to us that in order to know what books and works of art, philosophies and movements of opinion intend, one must learn their antecedents and concomitants of whatever kind; and to know how ideas thrive and change, one must trace their consequences. …The effort was a work of the sturdiest imagination—the imagination which springs from fact and is hedged in by possibility, the literal imagination, the imagination of the real.
Those last five words hang over the gate as I return to the agora again, ready to converse with my fellow citizens.
About conversation and its concomitant, meditation, Barzun writes in "Culture High and Dry" (The Culture We Deserve, Weslayan University Press, 1989):
Culture in whatever form—art, thought, history, religion—is for meditation and conversation. Both are necessary sequels to the experience. Cultivation does not come automatically after exposure to the good things as health follows a dose of the right drug. If it did, orchestra players would be the most cultured people musically and copy editors the finest judges of literature. Nor does ‘reading up’ on art suffice unless it spurs meditation and conversation. Both are actions of the mind along the path of finesse. No one can imagine a systematic conversation. As for true meditation, it excludes nothing; its virtue is to comprehend—in both senses: to understand and to take in the fullest view. Both are actions of the mind-and-heart, and therefore charged with the strongest feelings. Indeed both interior monologue and spoken dialogue aim at discerning which feelings and to what degree of each belong to an idea or an image. That is how culture reshapes the personality: it develops the self by offering the vicarious experience and thought; it puts experience in order.
Culture is not a diversion for the idle or the passive, though many believe it to be. William James alerts us to this tendency in his essay, "The Social Value of the College Bred (1908):"
We of colleges must eradicate a curious notion which numbers of good people have about such ancient seats of learning as Harvard. To many ignorant outsiders, that name suggests little more than a kind of sterilized conceit and incapacity for being pleased. … In Edith Wyatt’s exquisite book of Chicago sketches called "Every One his Own Way" there is a couple who stand for culture in the sense of exclusiveness, Richard Elliot and his feminine counterpart—feeble caricatures of mankind, unable to know any good thing when they see it, incapable of enjoyment unless a printed label gives them leave. … Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations [and] it pounces unerringly on the human core.
We get the words culture and cultivated from Latin: to till, to plow a field. Preparing a plot of land for a crop is no more sweaty an activity than cultivating one’s mind. As tools for cultivation, James’s "sympathies and admirations" go well with Barzun’s "meditation and conversation," and together they open the gate of our imagination of the real, so we can put our experience in order.
My experience has shown that the grove, the agora, and the gate are real. Even in my retired state, my stroll with Barzun and his colleagues continues. Daily, I work to keep my experience in order by reading, meditation and conversation. As I seek the antecedents, concomitants and consequences in the apparent chaos of the world and art, I sometimes find a namable source of public dismay.
For example, I am dismayed by the current Republican Party leadership’s lack of any imagination of the real. They encounter no cultures different from their own. They embody my definition of a Conservative: a person who takes action on the belief that if something has not happened to him, it is not important or it hasn’t happened at all.
I doubt that many Congressional Conservatives have stood in unemployment lines because their factory has closed. Their educations and life-experiences have kept them in the grove of clubs and board rooms and away from the agora swarming with their fellow-citizens, many of them currently unemployed. Their culture—history, religion, art, thought—is one of exclusiveness and has made them, in James’s words, "feeble caricatures of mankind, unable to know any good thing when they see it, incapable of enjoyment unless a printed label gives them leave." That label tells them two things: First, money is the final value of all things. Second, those who disagree are evil.
This is why Conservatives who preach bipartisan effort in governance practice narrow, one-sided politics. Their legislative behavior, meditations in caucus rooms, and conversations on the floors of the House and Senate all reveal their beliefs: Unemployed people should stop complaining and get a job. Banks, securities traders, and real estate brokers should be allowed to do anything to make a profit. So should food and drug processors and manufacturers. The rule of law applies only to political opponents.
Recently the Republican National Committee elected a new Chairman, Michael Steele, who declared in his victory speech, "We're going to say to friend and foe alike, we want you to be a part of us. And to those of you who will obstruct, get ready to get knocked over."
These words are not destined to be engraved in the tablets of our republic alongside those of Lincoln, or even Theodore Roosevelt. This new leader of conservative America offers an iron hand in an iron glove to his political opponents. So Congressional Republicans are continuing their culture-war by obstructing the progress of the badly needed legislation to stimulate the US economy.
As for the Republicans’ foes, we will not join in the conservative march toward the deterioration of our economy. Nor the destruction of the culture we deserve.
I first encountered Barzun almost thirty years ago as I prowled through the open stacks at the Brooklyn Public Library in search of some diverting, but substantive, summer reading. My eyes fell on The Energies of Art . That title intrigued me, so I flipped through a few pages to sample the writing of this (to me) unknown writer. In his introductory essay, "The Critic’s Task Today," he wrote: "Chaos in the world and art is in truth Criticism’s opportunity to shine. For chaos has causes; confusion has clues; history is not an impenetrable riddle, and if one can for a moment rise above the anxious fret of the personal, one will discover at least some namable sources of public dismay."
Then: "Who are we in the stream of time and Western thought? Supplying an answer to this question is the critic’s task today, and the best excuse for his existence. For my part, I am willing to be judged by this test for venturing to use up paper and print on ‘mere’ criticism."
I was surprised by the clarity of Barzun’s writing—surprised because the last few critical works I had read were jumbled mixtures of puns and quotations pompously declaring themselves deconstructions of texts. So I flipped to the last essay of the book, "William James and the Clue to Art," and found this:
A … way … of showing the relevance of James’s psychology to art is to sample its abundant evidence for the view that the mind is the original artist, who hardens into a geometrician only by special effort or dull routine. James’s radical new view itself resembles an artistic revolution in that, displacing from the foreground as ready-made all ideas and objects, it restores primacy to sensation and will. Objects are always clear, hard, unyielding things that remain ever themselves as they recur, whereas will and sensation fluctuate. The Jamesian mind is thus the innovator’s—bathed in sensation, individual, free, and confident of its power to shape the congenial material of its own perceptions.
In The Book of J, Harold Bloom wrote, "As we read any literary work, we necessarily create a fiction or metaphor of its author." In my fiction Jacques Barzun is my teacher, with whom I stroll through the Grove of Academe. He points out fads posing as breakthroughs and clichés disguised as tenets; he teaches me that the giving and the taking of meaning is not automatic; and he professes the virtue of clarity. Then he ushers me to the gate between the grove and agora and pushes me into the marketplace where, jostled by rivals and torn by critics I empirically test what I have learned.
Winded and sweaty, I return to the grove with the test results, and Barzun reminds me that the grove is as arduous as the agora, and that enlivened minds keep the gate between them open. He also introduces me to other teachers who can cool me off. Teachers such as Walter Bagehot, Samuel Butler, and William James, who all remind me of Bunyan’s great warning against "Knowledge not attended with doing.". And Lionel Trilling, with whom Barzun taught a colloquium of great books of the modern period at Columbia University. Their method—what Barzun calls a "methodless method"—defied classification. Trilling and Barzun dubbed it "cultural criticism," which Barzun describes in his essay, "The Imagination of the Real" (Art, Politics and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling, Basic Books, 1977).
[The method] arose from a lively sense of the force of circumstances, balanced by an equally strong sense of the free life that ideas lead when hatched. It seemed clear to us that in order to know what books and works of art, philosophies and movements of opinion intend, one must learn their antecedents and concomitants of whatever kind; and to know how ideas thrive and change, one must trace their consequences. …The effort was a work of the sturdiest imagination—the imagination which springs from fact and is hedged in by possibility, the literal imagination, the imagination of the real.
Those last five words hang over the gate as I return to the agora again, ready to converse with my fellow citizens.
About conversation and its concomitant, meditation, Barzun writes in "Culture High and Dry" (The Culture We Deserve, Weslayan University Press, 1989):
Culture in whatever form—art, thought, history, religion—is for meditation and conversation. Both are necessary sequels to the experience. Cultivation does not come automatically after exposure to the good things as health follows a dose of the right drug. If it did, orchestra players would be the most cultured people musically and copy editors the finest judges of literature. Nor does ‘reading up’ on art suffice unless it spurs meditation and conversation. Both are actions of the mind along the path of finesse. No one can imagine a systematic conversation. As for true meditation, it excludes nothing; its virtue is to comprehend—in both senses: to understand and to take in the fullest view. Both are actions of the mind-and-heart, and therefore charged with the strongest feelings. Indeed both interior monologue and spoken dialogue aim at discerning which feelings and to what degree of each belong to an idea or an image. That is how culture reshapes the personality: it develops the self by offering the vicarious experience and thought; it puts experience in order.
Culture is not a diversion for the idle or the passive, though many believe it to be. William James alerts us to this tendency in his essay, "The Social Value of the College Bred (1908):"
We of colleges must eradicate a curious notion which numbers of good people have about such ancient seats of learning as Harvard. To many ignorant outsiders, that name suggests little more than a kind of sterilized conceit and incapacity for being pleased. … In Edith Wyatt’s exquisite book of Chicago sketches called "Every One his Own Way" there is a couple who stand for culture in the sense of exclusiveness, Richard Elliot and his feminine counterpart—feeble caricatures of mankind, unable to know any good thing when they see it, incapable of enjoyment unless a printed label gives them leave. … Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations [and] it pounces unerringly on the human core.
We get the words culture and cultivated from Latin: to till, to plow a field. Preparing a plot of land for a crop is no more sweaty an activity than cultivating one’s mind. As tools for cultivation, James’s "sympathies and admirations" go well with Barzun’s "meditation and conversation," and together they open the gate of our imagination of the real, so we can put our experience in order.
My experience has shown that the grove, the agora, and the gate are real. Even in my retired state, my stroll with Barzun and his colleagues continues. Daily, I work to keep my experience in order by reading, meditation and conversation. As I seek the antecedents, concomitants and consequences in the apparent chaos of the world and art, I sometimes find a namable source of public dismay.
For example, I am dismayed by the current Republican Party leadership’s lack of any imagination of the real. They encounter no cultures different from their own. They embody my definition of a Conservative: a person who takes action on the belief that if something has not happened to him, it is not important or it hasn’t happened at all.
I doubt that many Congressional Conservatives have stood in unemployment lines because their factory has closed. Their educations and life-experiences have kept them in the grove of clubs and board rooms and away from the agora swarming with their fellow-citizens, many of them currently unemployed. Their culture—history, religion, art, thought—is one of exclusiveness and has made them, in James’s words, "feeble caricatures of mankind, unable to know any good thing when they see it, incapable of enjoyment unless a printed label gives them leave." That label tells them two things: First, money is the final value of all things. Second, those who disagree are evil.
This is why Conservatives who preach bipartisan effort in governance practice narrow, one-sided politics. Their legislative behavior, meditations in caucus rooms, and conversations on the floors of the House and Senate all reveal their beliefs: Unemployed people should stop complaining and get a job. Banks, securities traders, and real estate brokers should be allowed to do anything to make a profit. So should food and drug processors and manufacturers. The rule of law applies only to political opponents.
Recently the Republican National Committee elected a new Chairman, Michael Steele, who declared in his victory speech, "We're going to say to friend and foe alike, we want you to be a part of us. And to those of you who will obstruct, get ready to get knocked over."
These words are not destined to be engraved in the tablets of our republic alongside those of Lincoln, or even Theodore Roosevelt. This new leader of conservative America offers an iron hand in an iron glove to his political opponents. So Congressional Republicans are continuing their culture-war by obstructing the progress of the badly needed legislation to stimulate the US economy.
As for the Republicans’ foes, we will not join in the conservative march toward the deterioration of our economy. Nor the destruction of the culture we deserve.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Open Letter to all Republican Officeholders
In the past few weeks I have heard too many of you Republican politicians refer to your party as the Party of Abraham Lincoln. Well, Abraham Lincoln is spinning in his tomb in Springfield, Illinois. Lincoln hated cant, obfuscation, and obstructionism, which is all you Republicans have offered American citizens since the last election.
Your effort to turn voters against the stimulus package, President Obama, and the Democrats isn’t working.. We voters remember that you Republicans destroyed the budget surplus accumulated by the last Democratic administration, and you increased the national debt. You also deregulated industries or chose to ignore your responsibilities as overseers of the national interest. In short, you created the mess we are in.
So you will soon learn that, on the floor of the Senate, your waving about the six-hundred page bill won’t work, nor will your shrill declarations against deficit spending and the burden of debt our grandchildren will have to shoulder. Despite your outdated arguments and posturing, it is clear that you are trying to block government action to put people back to work, prevent the needed re-organization and regulation of the banking and investment services industry, and inject capital into state and local governments so that they can begin desperately needed repairs of the infrastructure.
By the way, we also know your policies were responsible for the nearly trillion dollars (not yet accounted for in the National Debt) wasted on a war in Iraq, for al-Qaeda’s success, for torturing prisoners, and for the outing of CIA agents. But those are the subject of another letter.
In the next election, you who currently hold office may be re-elected, but only if you stop practicing the politics of the Bush administration and start working to solve the problems that you and your fellow members of the Republican Party created. Stop inflating small programs in the stimulus package into gigantic boondoggles. Stop referring to the stimulus program as just another spending program. Stop the tired rhetoric of right-wing, neo-Conservative obstructionism.
Start working to get us out of the mess that you put us into.
Your effort to turn voters against the stimulus package, President Obama, and the Democrats isn’t working.. We voters remember that you Republicans destroyed the budget surplus accumulated by the last Democratic administration, and you increased the national debt. You also deregulated industries or chose to ignore your responsibilities as overseers of the national interest. In short, you created the mess we are in.
So you will soon learn that, on the floor of the Senate, your waving about the six-hundred page bill won’t work, nor will your shrill declarations against deficit spending and the burden of debt our grandchildren will have to shoulder. Despite your outdated arguments and posturing, it is clear that you are trying to block government action to put people back to work, prevent the needed re-organization and regulation of the banking and investment services industry, and inject capital into state and local governments so that they can begin desperately needed repairs of the infrastructure.
By the way, we also know your policies were responsible for the nearly trillion dollars (not yet accounted for in the National Debt) wasted on a war in Iraq, for al-Qaeda’s success, for torturing prisoners, and for the outing of CIA agents. But those are the subject of another letter.
In the next election, you who currently hold office may be re-elected, but only if you stop practicing the politics of the Bush administration and start working to solve the problems that you and your fellow members of the Republican Party created. Stop inflating small programs in the stimulus package into gigantic boondoggles. Stop referring to the stimulus program as just another spending program. Stop the tired rhetoric of right-wing, neo-Conservative obstructionism.
Start working to get us out of the mess that you put us into.
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