Outrages and Musings

Reflections of the End of the Iraq War

2011-12-15T09:17:00.000-05:00

The US war in Iraq is now officially over. It will go down in history as the greatest US foreign policy fiasco since the Vietnam War. In my lifetime I witnessed two lengthy and illegal wars of choice that the US blundered into. Both the Vietnam and the Iraq wars ended in ignominy and disaster, both for the US and for the countries that we went to war to "save".

Along with millions of other Americans, mainly on the political left, I opposed these wars. But the people who thought like me were ignored, vilified, called unpatriotic, and our concerns about the immorality and folly of these conflicts were discounted. On the other hand, those who ordered our young men and women into unnecessary combat were lionized and were never punished for their crimes, war crimes, in particular, the crime of aggression. In neither case were the main objectives for going to war accomplished. We failed miserably in both cases and these failures were bought at great cost in terms of treasure and lives.

The goal of the Vietnam war was to stop this country from becoming a socialist state and preventing a "domino effect" leading other Southeast Asian nations to fall into the Communist column. By the end of this stupid war, 58,000 Americans and an estimated 1.5 million Vietnamese died. The conflict set up the conditions for a genocide in neighboring Cambodia in which another 1.7 million Cambodians died. In the end, the People's Socialist Republic of Vietnam won the war, but like its traditional enemy and neighbor to the north, the People's Republic of China, it is now a socialist state in name only. Vietnam is "open for business" and is in no way a threat to global capitalism. The irony is that this probably would have happened anyway and the war that was fought to prevent Vietnam from going communist merely delayed the transition of that nation to a market economy. Had the US done nothing instead of waging a stupid costly war, we probably would have ended up with the same result, a Vietnam that is hospitable to US businesses.

In the case of Iraq the Bush administration invaded this country in order to rid it of weapons of mass destruction (which did not exist) which it was feared might fall into the hands of terrorists groups such as Al Qaeda (which had no ties with the Iraqi government). The real underlying motive for this war was to surround and contain Iran by establishing a set of permanent US military bases on Iraqi soil and securing their vast oil reserves for exploitation by US and British companies such as Exxon and BP. The Bush-Cheney cabal thought we needed more US military bases in the region to guard "our oil", particularly after Saudi Arabia dis-invited us because of concerns raised by Osama bin Laden (among others) about having infidel soldiers stationed on holy land.

But in the end none of these objectives were achieved. The new Shiite-led Iraqi government has stronger ties to Iran that the Sunni-led regime of Saddam Hussein ever did or would have had. This government has also decided that there will be no permanent US military bases on Iraqi soil and has dis-invited us from maintaining any military presence in their country. They did this mainly because of the US insistence that our soldiers be immune from Iraqi law. The US will not allow other countries punish its citizens for war crimes, such as occurred in Haditha in 2005 and Nisour Square in 2007, and we do not punish them either. American insistence on impunity is the reason why American troops are now leaving Iraq.

Meanwhile, the oil fields are still not producing up to their potential and the leases for future production have been sold off to China, Malaysia, Russia and other countries that opposed the US-led war in the first place. It is true that some oil leases have been sold to US and British companies, but who would suggest that this "benefit" was worth the price paid in lives and treasure. If the costs of this war, estimated at over 1 trillion dollars, were factored into the price of gasoline at the pump when we fill up our SUVs, we Americans would appreciate the real cost of our dependence on oil.

Some will point out that we did succeed in toppling Saddam's murderous regime and killing both him and his odious sons. One must, however, wonder whether this would not have happened in due course anyway without US and British meddling. The Arab spring revolutions that took the region by storm in 2011 swept away murderous authoritarian dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Other middle eastern family dictatorships, such as the Assad regime in Syria, are now under siege from their own people. Historical counterfactuals are impossible to prove, but isn't it hard to believe that had the US not invaded Iraq in 2003 and toppled Saddam, the Iraqi people themselves would not have risen up against him by 2011? The irony in this case is that it might well have been the case that the Iraqi's themselves would have won their freedom from an oppressive dictator had we not decided to do the job for them.

Iraq is now "democratic", but the US is now far weaker, militarily, politically, economically, and morally, than it was before this war was launched. We Americans are victims of self-inflicted wounds.

China and other nations often accuse the US of improperly meddling in other countries' internal affairs. This criticism is correct as it concerns America's record of waging foolish wars of choice by invading other nations to save them from some threat, real or imagined. Political leaders in the United States need to think long and hard about these lessons of history before launching more such foolish wars.

But curbing US military adventurism is not at all the same thing as arguing for US isolationism. The US must remain engaged in international affairs, but can do far more than it does currently to reshape the world to suit its interests and its values by dramatically increasing its humanitarian and development assistance, budget priorities that have been beggared by the gargantuan cost of maintaining our military dominance. We need to dramatically reduce the size of our bloated and wasteful military establishment. When people talk about shrinking the size of government to "starve the beast" I tend to agree with them if by the "beast" one means the Pentagon and the military industrial complex -- to this is one of the branches of government that does need to be starved and shrunken down to size.

But the question is, as it always has been, not whether our government is "too big" or "too small", but whether it is a good government. Like the overwhelming majority of Americans, I do not think our government has been all that good in either its foreign or domestic policies. To say this is not to be unpatriotic -- it is merely stating a truth that is obvious to all unbiased observers. This is why I always laugh to myself when people talk about exporting democracy to other nations. If our system of government is so great why are Congress's approval ratings so low?

The people in this country who think like me have been saying these things for more than fifty years. I have thought this way since I was twelve, in 1961. I am now 62 and have not changed my mind. Indeed the events of history I have witnessed in my lifetime have only strengthened my conviction and my willingness to speak my mind. Perhaps now, at the end of yet another stupid, immoral, and wasteful US military adventure, more people in this country will begin to listen and take action. No more (stupid) wars.

Occupy TCNJ Talk

2011-11-02T08:09:00.002-04:00

Last February we all viewed with amazement the popularuprisings in Tunisia and Egypt which quickly spread to other Middle Easternnations such as Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and Libya. The protesters were united bytheir common desire for human rights and democracy, putting an end toauthoritarian dictatorships that had held them down for decades, and in thehope that their children might enjoy a better future. Another important themeof these protests was economic inequality, unemployment, and the lack of hopeon the part of the young that economic conditions would enable them to prosper.The Arab spring represented the awakening of a social movement of citizens whowere tired of waiting for these political, social, and economic conditions tochange -- they decided to take matters into their own hands and force them tochange.

Now we see popular protests taking place here in America andaround the world. These protests are also led by young people and are also aresponse to injustice and inequality. The American autumn is an awakening of a populist movement which istired of waiting for a corrupt anddysfunctional political system to address the real problems of this country:unemployment and underemployment, the debt burdens of families and students,the lack of real opportunity for many, and the concentration of wealth andpolitical power among the 1% -- the rich men who rule the world -- theplutocrats who have taken control of the Republic and have deployed the resources of both theState and the Market to entrench their own wealth, privilege, and power.

In a poll conducted the The Hill nearly three-quarters ofthe respondents said that income inequality is a problem in the United States(The Huffington Post, 31 Oct 2011). The Congressional Budget Office recentlyreported that the income of the top 1% of the income distribution has increased243% from1979 to 2007, while that of the bottom 90% grew by only 5%. The top10% of Americans control two-thirds of the wealth, and the richest 400Americans control as much wealth as the bottom 50% of households, while at thesame time 46 million Americans, or 15.1%, live below the poverty line, and halfof those who do have jobs earn less than $27,000 a year. The most popular sloganof the Occupy Wall Street movement, “We are the 99%” is obviously a referenceto the fact that most of us are not among the super-rich. But it also expressesthe truth that we the people are also the democratic majority. If so, how didwe get to this place?

The answer is that in America, and much of the rest of theworld, we live in a plutocracy, that is, under a system of domination andexploitation in which the richest also control the levers of political power of the State. This combination and concentration of wealth and political power wesee among the plutocratic ruling classes in contemporary societies is not a newphenomenon; has been seen many times before in history.

In Athens of 594 BC, according to Plutarch, "thedisparity of fortune between the rich and poor had reached its height, so thatthe city seemed to be in a dangerous condition, and no other means for freeingit from disturbances…..seemed possible but despotic power" (The Life of Solon). Things began to gettense in Athens with the poor preparing to revolt and the rich preparingrepress them with force, but in this case, violent class warfare was avoided bythe election of Solon who eased the burden on all debtors by devaluing thecurrency; “he also reduced all personal debts and ended imprisonment for debt,cancelled arrears for taxes and mortgage interest, decreed that the sons ofthose who had died in Athens wars would be educated at government expense, andhe established a graduated income tax that made the rich pay twelve times thatrequired by the poor” (Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History 56). The poor complained that he did notdivide the land, and the rich whined that he had confiscated their property,but by redistributing wealth Solon averted a revolution and ushered in a GoldenAge.

Whenever the poor begin to complain about wealth and incomeinequality, the representatives of the rich ruling class accuse them ofengaging in “class warfare”. The progressive magazine The Nationrecently had a cover proclaiming that Wall Street invented class warfare. But,in fact, class struggle that sometimes erupts into class warfare is much olderthan that. If you want to know whatclass warfare is really like, reflect on how the historian Barbara Tuchmandescribed what happened in 1358 when the Jacqueries revolted against the lordsof the Oise Valley:

At one estate, the serfs sacked the manor house, killed the knight, and roasted him on a spit in front of his wife and kids. Then, after ten or twelve peasants violated the lady, with the children still watching, they forced her to eat the roasted flesh of her husband and then killed her. (A Distant Mirror)

Now that is class warfare! Anyone who has ever visited Versailles understandsimmediately that the main cause of the French Revolution was social injusticeand in particular the inequality and wealth and political power. But the French Jacobin’s Reign of Terror madeliberal use of the guillotine, and the revolution ended badly, ushering in theNapoleonic wars. Things went somewhat better on this side of the Atlantic; theAmerican Revolution succeeded in throwing off the yoke of the Britisharistocracy without lopping off a lot of aristocratic heads.

But, observing the French and American revolutions Karl Marxconcluded that their chief results was not greater wealth and income equality,but rather the transfer of wealth and political power from the aristocracy tothe bourgeoisie. Marx was among those who understood that these cycles in whichwealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a few, which produces a backlashof popular discontent and revolution, are recurring features of human history. Hemade it the basis of his theory of class struggle and saw the competitionbetween classes as the main driver of history. But Marx also thought that theclass struggle could be ended by a communist revolution leading to the finalvictory of the proletariat in which the ownership and control of the means ofproduction would be shared democratically among the workers themselves.

But things have not turned out that way (except perhaps in afew cooperative, employee owned enterprises such as Spain’s Mondragon). Instead,in the late twentieth century capitalism was triumphant. In the former Soviet Union, and in post MaoistChina, capitalism destroyed communism. In America, and much of the rest of theworld, capitalism is now destroying democracy. This is why we are nowexperiencing another cycle in which wealth and political power are increasinglyconcentrated in the hands of a few.

Unlike Marx, I do not believe that these historical cyclesof concentration and redistribution of wealth and political power can beeliminated entirely. But I do think they can be managed more rationally andpeacefully than in the past. I see these cyclic oscillations in terms ofsystems theory as features of a regulatory process that involves both positiveand negative feedback loops. Wealth and power in society tends to getconcentrated in the hands of a few because power can be self-reinforcing; the wealthierand more powerful some people become the more they are able to use theseadvantages to preserve and enhance their own power and privilege. Small andtemporary differences in power can thus be amplified over time into large andpermanent ones.

We have understood for a long time now that in order to compensatefor this tendency it is necessary for human societies to institute acompensatory negative feedback loop that works to equalize power and wealth insociety. In the modern era we learned to do this through democraticinstitutions that provide for equal basic rights and equality of opportunity,as well as through programs and agencies that provide all citizens a degree ofeconomic security. We have these institutions not only because of the requirementsof justice and fairness, although that is one important reason why they exist,but also because we know that greater economic and political equality isconducive to social peace and economic prosperity.

In a recent Op-Ed in the New York Times, Rutgers Universityeconomic historian James Livingston presented evidence that shows that privateinvestment is not in fact the thing that drives economic growth; rather it isconsumer spending and government spending (“It’s Consumer Spending, Stupid” October25, 2011). Between 1900 and 2000 real domestic product per capita grew morethan 600%, but during that same period, net business investment decreased by70%. Contrary to the “common sense” peddled by conservative economists and mostRepublicans, corporate profits are not the real source of prosperity. Theargument that we should cut corporate taxes to jumpstart economic growth isbull-pucky; it is a lie used by the plutocrats and their apologists to justifythe transfer of even more wealth from the poor and the middle classes intotheir own pockets. As a result of these kinds of lies and deception, the USAnow ranks 27^th among OECD countries in measures of basic socialjustice, just ahead of Chile, Mexico, and Turkey (Social Justice in the OECD: How Do Member States Compare?Bertelsmann Siftung, 2011).

So the question we face is how will this crisis of social injusticeand economic inequality be resolved? Will we elect wise leaders, who likemodern Solons will broker some kind of moderate plan of wealth redistributionwhich dilutes the power and privilege of our plutocrats, or will the rich menwho rule the country (and the world) use the police and military power of theState to repress popular discontent?

We saw these two approaches in the responses to the Arabspring uprisings earlier this year. Given what happened to Egyptian dictatorHosni Mubarak, who is now on trial, and also the fate of Libya's ColonelMuammar Gaddafi who is now resting in an unmarked grave, it looks likeTunisia's Ben-Ali was the smart one who got out while the getting was good. Onthe other hand, in Syria President Assad is deploying his military and secretpolice to kill protesters by the thousands and is getting away with it. Repression of popular dissent does work, butonly for a while. Once it is used on a large scale, the prospects for violentcivil war or revolution increase markedly, and history suggests that popularforces are usually ultimately victorious, but often at an enormous cost inhuman death and suffering.

Here in America we are already witnessing the potential forthe Occupy Protests to be violently repressed by the police, as recently happenedin Oakland California, Denver Colorado, Atlanta Georgia and elsewhere. On theother hand, in many cities, the local officials are following a more moderateand tolerant course of action, and in Nashville the ACLU has successfullydefended the first amendment rights of the protesters and forced the citycouncil to rescind a curfew law designed to remove the Occupy Nashville protestcamp.

Because of our first amendment freedoms, there is somereason for hope that here in America that the current crisis of inequality andsocial injustice will be resolved peacefully through political compromise andequitable wealth redistribution that will reduce the current vast inequalitiesof wealth and power that we now have in this country. But I think that the onlyrealistic hope for will be if we all, and especially young people likeyourselves, occupy the voting booth. Don't let your friends vote for fools anddemagogues. Don't buy into the economic dogmas and lies that many politiciansare peddling. Don't let the "moneypower" in American politics overwhelm the "people power." Letyour elected representatives know what you think, and why you are angry.

But, let me say, that I am really quite worried that thedeep corruption and dysfunction of the American political system will preventany meaningful compromise solution from emerging. Our political system isdeeply corrupted by the money power of the plutocrats, and the electoral systemis rigged in their favor. But, the longer we go on not addressing the realproblems affecting our nation, the more the popular pressure for radical changewill build. We the people are tired ofwaiting for Republicans and Democrats to get their acts together and governthis country responsibly. Many of us no longer believe that President Obama is theagent of change some people were hoping he would be. We no longer trust theSupreme Court to decide justly when so often they side with the plutocracy andthe corporations against the people.

The 2008 election popularized the slogan "We are thepeople we are waiting for." Let me suggest that the slogan for the 2012election should be, "We are the people. We are tired of waiting, and weare the 99%”.

9/11 and Human Rights

2011-09-10T09:48:00.003-04:00

On the morning of September 11, 2001 I was riding in a NJTransit train bound for Manhattan when my cell phone rang. It was my wife Sallycalling from Baltimore; she was watching CNN while getting dressed for work andsaw a breaking news alert saying that a plane had crashed into the North Towerof the World Trade Center at 8:46am. She urged me to get off the train and turnaround. But I had appointments that morning at the Amnesty International USAoffices to interview job candidates. Itold her it was probably just a small plane accident and not to worry. As thetrain pulled out of Newark NJ station I looked over my right shoulder and sawthe black smoke pouring from the crash site into the cerulean September sky andbegan to wonder whether I had made the right decision.

By the time I made my way from Pennsylvania Station to theAIUSA offices on 26^th street the second plane had crashed into theSouth Tower and everyone knew that this was no accident. The people who made itinto the office were huddled around television sets or staring out of thesouth-facing windows through which the burning towers were clearly visible. Iwas standing next to Curt Goering, Deputy Executive Director of AIUSA, lookingout of his office window when the South Tower began to collapse in an enormous cloudof dust and smoke. At that moment I had a visceral sensation in the pit of mystomach; I realized that I was witnessing an event in which thousands of peoplewere perishing. These eye-witness images are seared into my memory withdevastating intensity. It is the worst thing I have ever seen.

Several days later, on September 14, 2001 I participated ina hastily arranged faculty panel at The College of New Jersey, where I teachphilosophy. I titled my remarks “The Impending Moral Slide” and talked aboutthe risk that American policy makers would respond to this ghastly provocationwith a “war on terror” in which important moral and legal boundaries would be transgressed.I observed that officials in the Bush administration were already framing theseevents as “acts of war” rather than as “crimes against humanity” and werepreparing for a military response. I speculated that America might be led todisregard the UN Charter and unilaterally invade other states in order to huntand kill “terrorists”. I speculated that our government might engage in ethnicprofiling of Muslims, detain people without charges and trial, suspend habeascorpus, assassinate suspected terrorists, and engage in torture in order to respondto the threat of further devastating attacks. But I argued, perhaps naively,that a moral slide of this kind was neither necessary nor inevitable, and thatit was still possible to prevent the USA from sliding into this moral abyss.

We know now, of course, that my fears were well-founded; themoral slide that I warned about did indeed occur. The list of human rightsviolations, crimes, and abuses that can be laid at the feet of the Bushadministration is long and includes: the “disappearance” of suspectedterrorists into CIA-run secret prisons, the denial of the right of habeascorpus of detainees, the use of ‘enhanced’ interrogation methods, otherwiseknown as torture, such as water-boarding, by military interrogators and theCIA, the indefinite detention without charges or trials of suspectedterrorists at Guantánamo, the use of Predator drones to assassinate suspectedterrorists, the detention of an American citizen, Jose Padilla, without chargesor trial for more than three years, the irregular rendition of a Canadiancitizen, Maher Arar, to Syria where he was tortured, the torture of Khalid Al Masri in a secret CIA prison,ill-treatment and deaths of detainees held at Abu Gharaib prison in Iraq andBaghram airbase in Afghanistan, and the secret and illegal eavesdropping onAmerican citizens by the National Security Agency in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, among others.

Some of these human rights abuses have been the subject of high-levelspecial reports on U.S. human rights violations prepared by the charter-basedbodies of the United Nations. The Special Rapporteur for the Mission to theUnited States of America, Martin Scheinin, identified, "serious situationsof incompatibility between international human rights obligations and thecounter-terrorism law and practice of the United States. Such situationsinclude the prohibition against torture, or cruel, inhuman or degradingtreatment; the right to life; and the right to a fair trial." This reportand many others, both by agencies of the United Nations and by privatenongovernmental human rights organizations, both in the U.S. and abroad,provides compelling evidence that senior officials in the George W. Bushadministration conspired to systematically transgress international human rightsobligations, violated US federal law, and authorized the commission of warcrimes.

But this is neither the time nor the place to argue thiscase in detail. Instead I want to share with you the results of a conference Iparticipated in that was organized to address the question whether the moralback-sliding that occurred in the USA produced significant and lasting damageto the overall international human rights regime. In April 2008 I was invited to participate ina small conference at the University of Pittsburgh that addressed thisquestion. A group of distinguished human rights scholars both from NorthAmerica and Europe were invited to attend, and to present discussion papersdefending a view on this question. Following the conference the participantswere invited to revise their discussion papers for inclusion in a book. This isthat book: Human Rights in the 21^stCentury: Continuity and Change Since 9/11, edited by Michael Goodhart andAnja Mihr. I will begin by describing my own contribution and then discussthose of several of the other authors.

I titled my chapter “Why Human Rights Will Prevail in theWar on Terror” and in it I argued that while 9/11 and the reaction to it hadindeed produced a spate of serious human rights violations, that thecounter-terrorism and security policies of the Bush administration did notdelegitimize and undermine the global consensus about human rights, rather, thosepolicies were themselves de-legitimized because they violated human rights. Inthe end, what was seriously damaged was the credibility of America’s claim tobe a champion of human rights.

Allow me to clarify this claim. There is no doubt that thepast decade has been characterized by patterns of major human rightsviolations. The terrorist attacks that took place ten years ago were themselvesa crime against humanity – a systematic attack against a civilian population.The epidemic of subsequent suicide bombings in London, Madrid, Bali, Iraq,Afghanistan and elsewhere are also major human rights violations which havetaken the lives and maimed thousands of innocent people who were treated aspawns in a political game. So it is unquestionably true that terrorism has beena cause of human rights violations in the past decade. And it is also true thatgovernments have a responsibility to protect their citizens against these kindsof wanton crimes.

However, rather than responding to these violations in aproportionate and lawful fashion, one which affirmed human rights norms andvalues against those who would flout them, the Bush administration adoptedcounter-terrorism policies that flew in the face of globally accepted humanrights standards. The architects of these policies justified them by the same“ends justify the means” logic that terrorists use. As noted above, there is noquestion that these policies produced human rights violations and that thoseofficials of the government of the United States who authorized and carriedthem out have thus far escaped accountability for these crimes. What isquestionable, and open to serious debate, is whether this pattern of action andover-reaction has done serious and lasting damage to the human rights paradigmitself, that is, to the global consensus on human rights.

Although it turned out not to be possible to prevent Americanpolicy-makers from back-sliding on their human rights obligations, the“push-back” against Bush’s security and counter-terrorism policies from theglobal human rights movement, leading international human rights NGOs such asAmnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and domestic civil and humanrights NGOs such as the ACLU and Human Rights First, has been vigorous,sustained, and I think largely successful in discrediting, and in some cases,reversing these policies. The legalacademy, both in the United States and elsewhere has responded as well with hundredsof articles in law reviews and the more general scholarly literature condemningthe Bush administration’s anti-terrorism policies.

Self-correction also came from a series of important U.S.Supreme Court decisions which rebuked the Bush administration’s Guantanamodetention policies. In four important cases:Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004), Rasul v.Bush (2004), Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006),and Boumediene v. Bush (2008) thehigh court rejected the specious arguments put forward by Bush administrationlawyers such as David Addington, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and Alberto Gonzalez,that the inherent powers of the president as commander in chief of the armedforces places him above the law and justifies the suspension of habeas corpus,the violation of the Bill of Rights, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, andinternational human rights and humanitarian law s to which the United States is a party.

In addition, evidence from polling data that supported mycontention that by 2008 public opinion both domestically and abroad, had turnedsharply against the policies of the Bush administration, but continued to showstrong support for human rights. Publicopinion polls conducted in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and in theUnited States itself, demonstrate that global public opinion firmly rejectedthe policies of the Bush administration regarding human rights. For instance, a poll conducted by the BBC ofmore than 27,000 people in 25 countries found that a majority believe thattorture is not justified even if it is used to obtain information that couldsave innocent lives from terrorist attacks (World Public Opinion 2006b). Other polls found that two in three Americans say the United Statesshould change the way it treats detainees at Guantánamo Bay as prescribed bythe UN Commission on Human Rights (World Public Opinion 2008a: ;World PublicOpinion 2006a), and that asizable majority of Americas oppose the rendition of suspects to countries thatpractice torture and reject the argument that suspected terrorists should nothave the same due-process rights as U.S. citizens (World Public Opinion 2007b). Another pollconducted in 2006 showed that a large majority of Americans believe that theU.S. is viewed more negatively by people in other countries as a result of thepolicies of the Bush administration (World Public Opinion 2007c). The same poll found that 73% of Americans were somewhat or very worriedthat the U.S. might be losing the trust and friendship of people in other countries. This belief was confirmed by another poll in2007 that found that in 20 of 26 countries surveyed the most common view isthat America is having a mainly negative influence on the world.

These polling data, as well are other more recent studies,show that the norms embodied in the contemporary human rights paradigm have notbeen weakened or delegitimized by their being violated, even by one of the mostpowerful nations. Human rights,particularly civil and political rights, function as a shield against tyrannyand the abuse of power by governments. They are designed to thwart systematic or institutionalized oppressionby state authorities, and as such, the fact that they are violated or ignoreddoes not undermine their validity as moral and legal norms. Instead it highlights and reinforces theperception of why the effective protection of human rights is necessary and whythe selective application of human rights standards by states must be firmlyresisted , even, andperhaps especially, when the state that violates them is a “superpower.” The contemporary international human rightsparadigm has proven more robust and resilient than many people feared; in theconfrontation between the policies of the government of the United States ofAmerica and the contemporary human rights paradigm, the United States lost andhuman rights won.

Several of the other contributors shared my perspective.Jack Donnelly (University of Denver) argued that while the “war on terror”certainly harmed human rights, the global state of human rights has not changedfundamentally. At the international level of multilateral institutions there isno evidence of decline. Similarly, data on national human rights practices fromFreedom House and the Cingranelli-Richards human rights data project show someevidence of decline, particularly in freedom of expression, but it is “modest,uneven, and incomplete” (18). While bad things did happen because of the “waron terror”, Donnelly contends that “it has not been a human rights disaster.”

Michael Goodhart (University of Pittsburgh) who was one ofthe organizers of the conference and a co-editor of the book, argued that theback-sliding on human rights that took place during the Bush years representeda “reversion to form” of long-running theme in American politics – Americanexceptionalism. He traces this theme back to the Puritans who believed that (likethe Blues Brothers) the colonists were on a mission from God to create a model“city on a hill” that would be an example to other nations. He calls this view“Providential exceptionalism” and argues that it tends to produce foreignpolicies characterized by a “messianic engagement” with other countries,particularly when America feels itself threatened.

According to Goodhart, the period between the fall of theBerlin wall (11/9) and the fall of the twin towers (9/11), was a period ofsignificant expansion and consolidation of the international human rightsregime. During this period American policy, both under the first President Bushand President Clinton, became more pragmatic and more supportive of multilateralism.But the shock of the 9/11 attacks produced a sharp reversion to the stance of unilateralmessianic engagement that had dominated American foreign policy during most ofthe Cold War. He noted that, “the war on terror” had a clearly redemptive aimas articulated by the second president Bush, namely to rid the world of “evildoers”. He argued that this has been reversed again to some degree by presidentObama, who has stopped using the term “war on terror”, and reverted to a morepragmatic approach to foreign policy, but who has at the same time, continuedmany Bush-era counter-terrorism policies.

The general consensusof the conference, and the overall conclusion of the book, was that thecountries of Western Europe and Canada experienced much less back-sliding onhuman rights than the United States, and that the likely reason for this wasthe greater degree of the institutionalization and domestication of humanrights norms and values into the laws and cultures of these societies. Thedistinguished Dutch scholar, Peter Baehr (who passed away while this volume wasbeing prepared for print) argued that in light of its perceived vulnerabilityto Islamic terrorism, the Netherlands did enact several counter-terrorismpolicies that are on the face of it at odds with human rights. But that it didnot go nearly as far down this path as the United States. Similarly, Yan St.Pierre (Universite de Montreal) argued that as a “middle power” Canada can beused as a barometer to measure the impact of attitudes about the trade-offsbetween national security and human rights. He noted that Canada did enacttougher and more restrictive immigration and border control policies, largelydue to criticism from the USA, and also that the government demonstrated“complicity to torture and inaction towards human rights abuses” to an extentthat is not in keeping with Canada’s historical stance on human rights. But Canada’sregression was seen as “simply reflecting the stronger policy changes imposedby major powers” (199).

The overall assessment of the editors is that, importantexceptions notwithstanding, “the [human rights] regime has survived a majorshock intact” (266). Human rights remains the dominant global normative discourseand it has not been displaced by the new discourse on counter-terrorism andnational security that 9/11 spawned. States will always be tempted toback-slide on their human rights obligations when threatened, and the experienceof the past decade shows that the best way to prevent this from happening is tocreate “thicker layers of institutionalization” of human rights norms andvalues within the fabrics of national ethical cultures. That this process is continuing despite thesetbacks of the past decade is the silver-lining behind the dark cloud of fearthat obscured our hopes for a more just and peaceful world in the 21^stcentury following the horrifying attacks of September 11, 2001.

On Musement

2011-06-29T06:28:00.012-04:00

Spinoza's distinction between natura naturans and natura naturata (nature naturing and nature natured) refers to two aspects of God or Nature considered as the realm of both actuality and potentiality. Robert Corrington (1992) calls this view "ecstatic naturalism":

The most basic division affirmed by ecstatic naturalism is that between nature naturing (natura naturans) and nature natured (natura naturata). Nature naturing is here defined as the unlimited realm of potencies. The potencies are not yet possibilities because possibilities can only arise within and among actualities, that is, within the orders of the world (nature natured). Nature natured is the created orders of the world: that is, the manifest orders within which the human process finds itself....The difference between nature naturing and nature natured is the fundamental divide within nature itself. That is, this divide does not separate off nature from some alleged realm of the non- or super-natural but lives out of the heart of a self-transforming nature (209).

The border between these two realms of Nature is always in flux. As potencies become actualities through Nature's self-transfiguring evolutionary process, new orders of being create new potencies that in turn allow for still newer orders of being to emerge. The created world that is manifest to us is the living record of this evolutionary process of Nature's self-transformation and self-actualization.

Human intelligence participates in Nature's self-creative evolutionary process by means of a reasoning process originally described by Peirce as "interpretive musement." Musement is a species of abductive reasoning (reasoning that move from cases to general hypotheses that apply backwards to the case and others like it) in which the,

semiotic world of empirical knowledge becomes open to novel possibilities when musement works in its seemingly random fashion to let complex and different signs interact in ways that could not have been possible for the other more restricted forms of method. Interpretive musement opens up a free semiotic zone in which the self is actually brought into interaction with the depth structures of nature (212).

Musement mines novelty from the realm of potentiality and transmits it into the realm of actuality. Musement is the creative play of the spirit as it strives to make itself manifest. It is the source of the creative processes by which human imagination becomes reality.

Music, amusement, amusing, musical, museum, bemusement....In ancient Greek mythology the Muses are goddesses that inspire the creation of poetry, literature and art. They were regarded as the sources of knowledge that humans pass from one generation to the next. In modern usage, a muse (uncapitalized) is said the be the source of inspiration for artists and writers. Museums are shrines to the muses that inspired artists of the past to create form and meaning out of matter. Libraries are the shrines to the muses that inspired writers to create form and meaning out of ideas.

But there are other forms of human creativity, for instance, science and technology, in which the hidden potentialities of Nature can become manifest. Culture, considered in the largest sense, as all of the knowledge and information that can be passed from one human generation to the next, the sum of all memes, is itself an emergent order of Nature. Culture is natura naturata as it has been expressed through human action. But we also are continually creating culture; it is self-transfiguring like Nature itself. This is perhaps why we place such a high value on novelty in art and literature and science. We are always seeking the ecstatic experience of discovery.

I find these thoughts quite amusing.

Corrington, Robert S. (1992). "Ecstatic naturalism and the Transfiguration of the Good". In Randolph Crump Miller (Ed.) Empirical Theology: A Handbook. Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press, pp. 203-221.

After the Rapture

2011-05-22T04:10:00.006-04:00

The beginning of the end of the world did indeed occur yesterday May 21, 2011 just as Harold Camping had predicted. But not a single person was miraculously raised from earth into God's arms. This demonstrates once again that there are no righteous people and that the doctrine of salvation is a myth. Neither faith, nor good works, nor God's grace will save us from ourselves. We are the only ones who can do that. So what are we waiting for? You know we have limited time. None of us is getting out of this place alive. Let's get started.

Hannah Arendt's Intellectual Courage

2011-04-12T05:52:00.013-04:00

The trial of Adolf Eichmann began fifty years ago this week, on 11 April 1961. There is a huge secondary literature on the trial, of which Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem is certainly the most famous contribution.[1] Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil first appeared in a five part series published in the New Yorker magazine in February and March 1963. A revised and enlarged edition was published in 1963 by Viking Press which contained several technical corrections, some additional material concerning the German anti-Hitler conspiracy of July 20, 1944, and a Postscript dealing with the controversy that followed the original publication. I believe that this work should be a “core text”, particularly for courses and curricula dealing with the Holocaust and genocide studies. It’s value lies not only in the historical information it provides. Arendt’s book is important because of the controversy her analysis of Eichmann’s motivation provoked, and the intellectual courage she demonstrated in writing her book and responding to its critics.

SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Adolph Otto Eichmann (1906-1962) played an important role within the Third Reich in the implementation of the Final Solution for the “Jewish Problem”. As the head of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration he organized and managed the deportation and transport of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Germany and Austria to Eastern European ghettos where many became victims of the Einsatzgruppen. Following the Wansee Conference of 20 January 1942 (which Eichmann attended as recording secretary) he was given the job of Transportation Administrator of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, a position in which he arranged shipments of Jews to concentration camps where they were murdered on an industrial scale. At the end of the war he was captured by the U.S. army but escaped under a false identity. He fled to Argentina in 1950 using a fraudulent International Red Cross passport and worked at various jobs under the name Ricardo Klement. He was living in Buenos Aires with his wife and their four sons in 1960 when he was captured by Mossad agents and taken to stand trial in an Israeli court on fifteen criminal charges including war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was found guilty and executed by hanging.

As Arendt attended much of his 1961 trial, read transcripts, and listened to the testimony unfold, she came to be focused on the question of the character of Eichmann’s conscience (or apparent lack thereof). How could a “good German” who was raised on the Ten Commandment (Thou shalt not murder) send thousands of innocent people to their deaths? If Eichmann was indeed “evil” in what did his evil consist?

Arendt’s answer to this question was shocking: she argued that Eichmann was an “ordinary man” whose head was swimming with empty clichés that he called “winged words”. He was a family man and a careerist who wished only to conform himself to the requirements of “respectable society” as it was understood in Nazi Germany at the time:

Eichmann, in contrast to other elements in the Nazi movement, had always been overawed by “good society,” and the politeness he often showed to German-speaking Jewish functionaries was to a large extent the result of his recognition that he was dealing with people who were socially his superiors....What he fervently believed in up to the end was success, the chief standard of “good society” as he knew it. Typical was his last word on the subject of Hitler;...Hitler, he said “may have been wrong all down the line, but one thing is beyond dispute: the man was able to work his way up from lance corporal in the German Army to Fuhrer of a people of almost eighty million....His success alone proved to me that I should subordinate myself to this man.” His conscience was indeed set at rest when he saw the zeal and eagerness with which “good society” everywhere reacted as he did. He did not need to “close his ears to the voice of conscience,” as the judgment has it, not because he had none, but because his conscience spoke with a “respectable voice,” with the voice of respectable society around him. (Peter Baehr Ed, The Portable Hannah Arendt. 355)

In Arendt’s portrayal, Adolph Eichmann was far from being a “moral monster” that many thought he must have been -- his brand of evil was boring and ordinary -- it was banal.

Arendt’s description of Eichmann’s moral character, as well as her comments on the role of the Jewish Councils (the Judenrate) which had cooperated with the Nazi’s in sending their fellow Jews to their deaths, provoked a series of vicious attacks on her, mainly by American Jews. She was denounced by the Anti-Defamation League of the B.nai B’rith and labeled as “self-hating Jewess”:

For their part, critics claimed that the expression “banality of evil” seemed to exonerate Eichmann and blame the victims. Others accused her of bad taste, triviality, an insultingly harsh and ironical tone, a perverse unwillingness to understand the depth of the dilemmas facing the Jewish Councils, and of failing to show love for her own kind. A “lapse into uncomprehending arrogance” was how one scholar described the report eight years after Arendt’s death (in 1974?), and compared with some of the comments she had to endure during her lifetime this was putting it mildly. (Baehr, xxvi)

According to Peter Baehr, Arendt was “shocked and dismayed by the maelstrom her report had provoked.” Yet in the Postscript she wrote for the Viking edition she blandly observed:

Even before its publication, this book became both the center of a controversy and the object of an organized campaign. It is only natural that the campaign, conducted with all the well-known means of image-making and opinion-manipulation, got much more attention than the controversy, so that the latter was somehow swallowed up by and drowned in the artificial noise of the former. This became especially clear when a strange mixture of the two, in almost identical phraseology - as though the pieces written against the book (and more frequently against its author) came "out of a mimeographing machine" (Mary McCarthy) - was carried from America to England and then to Europe, where the book was not yet even available. And this was possible because the clamor centered on the "image" of a book which was never written, and touched upon subjects that often had not only not been mentioned by me but had never occurred to me before.

Arendt goes on to argue that the report does not attempt to address in any systematic manner the “larger questions” about the Holocaust, the German people, Jewish complicity, original sin, or other general matters, but was only about “the person of the defendant, a man of flesh and blood with an individual history, with an always unique set of qualities, peculiarities, behavior patterns, and circumstances.” She does admit that:

I also can well imagine that an authentic controversy might have arisen over the subtitle of the book; for when I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial. Eichmann was not lago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III "to prove a villain." Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all. And this diligence in itself was in no way criminal; he certainly would never have murdered his superior in order to inherit his post. He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing.

But then she says,

That such remoteness from reality and such thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together which, perhaps, are inherent in man – that was, in fact, the lesson one could learn in Jerusalem. But it was a lesson, neither an explanation of the phenomenon nor a theory about it.

*****************

What are we to make of this lesson today? Do we have any theory about it that can help us understand how men can behave so thoughtlessly? Recent research in moral psychology suggests a theory about the kind of “banal evil” that Eichmann represents. The work of moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt proposes that morality both “binds” and “blinds” us.[2] Haidt has described the pull of group cohesion on individual as a kind of force field, comparing it to the lines of a magnetic field. This force is what makes human social life possible -- it is the basis of group cohesion. Human beings, unlike other social animals, have the ability to build cohesive groups around beliefs and symbols, not just around kinship relations. We create group solidarity, and hence the basis for social cooperation among human individuals who are not related by kinship by anointing some object or belief as “sacred” or inviolable. The sacred object can be something like the Quaaba in Mecca, the image of the crucified Jesus, the flag, or the corporate logo. As individuals drawn into these force fields they are taught that success requires conformity to the belief system that characterizes the group. Deviation, disloyalty, or dissent is regarded as suspect and can lead to ostracism or worse. Those members of the group who dare to step across the line of what the group considered to be “acceptable thoughts” are quickly and violently rebuked for undermining group cohesion. Public disloyalty to the group’s ideology is a great sin -- blasphemers must be stoned, heretics burned at the stake, traitors much have their noses cut off, and dissident intellectuals must be shunned and discredited.

When mass societies are drawn into totalitarian ideologies such as fascism or communism, one has the potential to mobilize millions of humans to fight and die for their sacred symbols, or to kill millions of other humans in the name of their beliefs. What was shocking about Arendt’s insights into the origins of totalitarianism was that she realized that monstrous evil could come about simply through the normal functioning of the human moral sense. It was not an aberration that ordinary men like Eichmann could become mass murders; rather it was something to be expected because of the way the force field of social cohesion characteristically functions in human societies.

Arendt herself fell victim to this kind of attack because she asserted that the “really horrific discovery of totalitarian regimes has been that mass conformists ---”job holders and good family men” -- were much more pliant, dedicated, loyal, and abundant agents of extermination than the criminals, ‘fanatics, adventurers, sex maniacs, crackpots’ and social failures of the mob” (xliii). The greatest irony is that she herself was punished for disloyalty, for violating the taboos of the tribal group morality of Jewish intellectuals, for saying this.

Arendt is not the only intellectual whose ideas have been denounced because they deny some tenet of a tribal moral code. Haidt provides several examples of intellectuals who have met similar responses to their ideas.[3] Daniel Patrick Moynihan was vilified for having suggested that African-American culture might be one reason for the impoverishment of the black community. Lawrence Summer’s was hounded from the presidency of Harvard University after commenting in a speech that the reason there are no more women in science and mathematics might be due to a statistical observation that males are more likely than females to be on both the lower and the higher ends of the bell curves of intellectual achievement. Noam Chomsky, has met a similar fate after he signed a petition for the Holocaust denier Robert Fourissan. Chomsky denied that he was defending Holocaust denial; he saw himself as a defender of the principles of freedom of thought and opinion and argued that even ideas that he hates should be heard. Chomsky later wrote a short essay on the principle of freedom of speech that was included without his knowledge in a book by Faurisson. When he learned of this, Chomsky asked that it be removed. But he was nevertheless viciously attacked in a book by Werner Cohn, Partners in Hate: Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers (1995). In his usual matter of fact manner Chomsky has responded by saying, “It seems to me something of a scandal that it is even necessary to debate these issues two centuries after Voltaire defended the right of free expression for views he detested. It is a poor service to the memory of the victims of the holocaust to adopt a central doctrine of their murderers.”

In her book, Rude Democracy: Civility and Incivility in American Politics (Temple University Press, 2010) Susan Herbst argues that political discourse in America has become intensely partisan, uncivil, debased, and deceitful.[4] This is not a new phenomenon – American politics have always been nasty – but the cable news channels, the 24-hour news cycle, and the Internet have made the mass dissemination of toxic nonsense much easier. The Information Revolution has enabled a culture of mendacity to supplant reasoned and deliberative political discourse in the public arena. She notes that the early media theorists Robert Merton and Paul Lazarfeld predicted that radio and television would send us into a state of “narcotizing dysfunction” in which citizens would become cynically disengaged from strong political engagement But they could not imagine the extent to which we are now drowning in a sea “information” that is false, misleading, distorted, and deceptive.

So much of what passes for political discourse in the present media-saturated culture is really nothing more than the partisans of different tribal moral codes insisting on beliefs that members of their moral tribes believe in which members of other moral tribes deny. The discussion is not about truth; it is about loyalty to the tribal belief system. In order to be a member in good standing of the Republican party one must now believe that Obama is not an American citizen, that global warming is a hoax, and that the way to create jobs is to lower taxes for the rich and cut government spending. People invent elaborate rationalizations for continuing to be loyal to their tribal belief systems even though there abundant evidence that their beliefs are false. Like Eichmann they convince themselves that since all those important and successful people believe these things that they should too. Such is the power of the force fields that align people like mindless iron filings into conformity with the pattern of a group ideology.

Is there anything that can effectively counterbalance and thwart these tendencies towards enforcing mass intellectual conformity? Like many liberal college philosophy professors, I tend to believe that one can do so by teaching young people the arts of critical thinking and logical reasoning. Knowing about the rules of evidence, logical fallacies and rhetorical tricks, and taking part on reasoned debates about social, political, and ethical issues can allow young people to learn how to defend themselves against the daily tsunami of intellectual rubbish. But recent empirical research on learning outcomes among college graduates suggests most students show little if any improvement in their critical reasoning skills.[5]

Herbst argues that, “We cannot rely on standard, even if excellent, civics courses or Introduction to Political Science. We need to teach young people how to argue with vigor, intelligence, and panache.” This is what Arendt did in Eichmann in Jerusalem: she argued with vigor, intelligence, and panache that what happened in Nazi Germany can happen in any human society when the mass media are deployed in order to induce mass ideological conformity to a false tribal morality. That is why Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem ought to be required reading. But there is also the example of her own intellectual courage. Herbst writes that, “being a citizen of a democracy always demanded a sort of courage....the bravery it takes to express opinions and do so civilly.” The example of intellectual courage that Arendt provided in writing her report it is what today’s students should come to know and emulate. But they should also heed her warning about the potential for ordinary men to commit crimes against humanity by not thinking for themselves and simply going along with their tribal moral code. This timeless lesson is particularly timely right now.

Postscript (4/17/2011) I presented this short essay at the Seventeenth Annual Conference of the Association for Core Text and Courses, New Haven CT on Friday 4/15/2011 as part of a panel on the concept of evil. The comments and discussion brought out more sharply the contrast between Eichmann's moral character and Arendt's --the one being an intellectual conformist and the other a non-conformist, indeed, an iconoclast who was willing to take the risk of criticizing the ideas of the members of her own "tribe." This morning I found this short essay by Ralph Seliger "Hannah Arendt: From Iconocast to Icon" that makes a similar point.

[1] A new study of the trial by Deborah Lipstadt, The Eichmann Trial, has just been published. Some 400 hours of the entire trial are available in the English language on Youtube . For the trial transcripts, click here. There is also a film by Eyal Sivan, The Specialist. The two judgments, of the District Court of Jerusalemand the Supreme Court, are also available.

[2] Jonathan Haidt. “The Bright Future of Post-Partisan Social Psychology”. Delivered to the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, January 27, 2011. Available online: http://people.virginia.edu/~jdh6n/postpartisan.html. Visited 9 April 2011.

[3] Haidt himself commented that he went out on a limb in this talk, and declined to give any further examples from his own field of social psychology, saying it was “too risky” for him to do so. But he did go on to demonstrate that the ratio between social psychologists who describe themselves as politically liberal is 266 times greater than those who describe themselves as politically conservative, even though poll results consistently show that within the general population the ratio of liberals to conservatives is 1 to 2.

[4] Susan Herbst. “Rude Democracy in America: Can We Overcome it?” Phi Beta Kappa, Key Reporter, Spring 2011, pp. 8-9.

[5]Richard Arum, et. al., Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. (University of Chicago, 2011) studied 2322 college students at 24 colleges and universities over four years. They found that, “large numbers didn't learn the critical thinking, complex reasoning and written communication skills that are widely assumed to be at the core of a college education”. After four years 36% showed no significant improvement in higher order thinking skills. They did find, however, that, “Students who majored in the traditional liberal arts — including the social sciences, humanities, natural sciences and mathematics — showed significantly greater gains over time than other students in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing skills.” See Sara Rimer, The Hechinger Report. “Study: Many college students not Learning to think critically,” January 17, 2011.

The Responsibility to Protect

2011-03-22T14:06:00.009-04:00

At the conclusion of the UN Summit in September 2005, the Heads of State agreed to the following text concerning the responsibility to protect:

"The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VII and VIII of the Charter, to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In this context we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII , on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity."

UN Security Council resolution 1973, which authorized the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya, and also the use of all necessary means to protect the civilian population, was passed unanimously (albeit with five abstentions) under the authority of Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

Chapter VII, Article 42 of the UN Charter says: "Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security. Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and other operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the United Nations."

The UN Charter is a treaty and all members are bound by its provisions. The United States was founding member of the United Nations and the US Senate has ratified the UN Charter.

The US Constitution, Article Six says that: "treaties of the United States made according to it, [are] the supreme law of the land." This statement is found in the Supremacy Clause which created the Union by making the Constitution, Federal Statutes and Treaties, supreme over state laws. In other words, there is nothing more fundamental than this clause to the United States Constitution.

UN SC Res. 1973, which you can read here, authorizes Member States to take" all necessary measures to enforce compliance with the ban on flights".

So the involvement of the United States in this UN action undertaken for the purpose of human rights protection, is LEGAL under international law. The Korean War under President Harry Truman was also authorized in this way, as was the first Gulf War under President George H. W. Bush. The 2003 US invasion of Iraq under George W. Bush, was ILLEGAL under the terms of the UN Charter. It was also, therefore, ILLEGAL under the US Constitution, since the UN Charter binds all member states, and the US is a member state which has ratified the Charter, making it the "supreme law" of the land.

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 allows US presidents to commit US military forces to action without a formal declaration of war, but requires that he notify the Congress within 48 hours of committing US forces to action and requires that those forces shall not remain in action for more than 60 days without a congressional authorization of the use of force or a declaration of war. Incidentally, this resolution was vetoed by President Nixon, but his veto was overridden.

President Obama officially informed Congress that he had taken the actions that began on Friday March 19th, on Monday March 22nd. (see this ABC news report). So he was a little late, but he did comply with the requirements of the War Powers Act.

So the answer is, "yes" what President Obama did was legal under both international and US law. It was also the morally right thing to do. It will also, I believe, prove to be very much in the US's national interest to get on the right side of history in the making. It also, as a matter of fact, probably saved thousands of lives. Finally, it denied Gadhafi the opportunity to send the message to other tyrants that they can prevail through ruthless repression of popular dissent and protest.

So, for those of you who are concerned about this UN action, what is your problem? Would you rather have waited longer for him to act? Had he done so, on Monday we would be cleaning up after the bloodbath that Colonel Gadhafi had vowed he would create in Benghazi. Remember, he said last week, "There will be no mercy". This sounds to me like a statement of intent to commit war crimes or crimes against humanity. If he ever faces the ICC Tribunal, this statement can be used as evidence. Would you rather have prevented this humanitarian catastrophe or did what Clinton did in Rwanda and Bosnia, and sit idly by while tens of thousands were murdered?

The Stakes in Libya

2011-02-25T08:50:00.000-05:00

If Qadhafi succeeds in squashing this revolt though the use of massive force, it will send the wrong message to dictators and tyrants elsewhere. They will say: “In Egypt Mubarak did not use violence to hold on to power, and he is gone. In Libya, Qadhafi called in mercenaries and cracked down ruthlessly, and he survived.” What message will other dictators draw from this?

But it is better if the Libyan people succeed in liberating their country themselves, than if foreign governments, particularly those with economic interests in the country, were to send in their own troops to oust Qadhafi. But at what price in human life?

Federal Judge In D.C. Upholds Health Care Reform, Says Some Arguments 'Ignore Reality'

2011-02-23T06:20:00.004-05:00

This article explains the opinion of U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler in upholding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act:

Federal Judge In D.C. Upholds Health Care Reform, Says Some Arguments 'Ignore Reality'

The gist of the argument she relies on is when a person chooses not to purchase health insurance this is an "affirmative action" which has real consequences for interstate commerce which the Federal Government has the constitutional power to regulate. The main real consequence is that it drives up the cost of private health insurance because it forces those individuals and families who do buy it to pay higher costs in order to cover the cost of the "free riders" who use health care services but do not pay for them.

Where else does this "free rider" issue crop up? Well it arises in relation to union collective bargaining agreements as well. In a collective bargaining agreement a union negotiates for favorable terms and conditions of employment on behalf of all of the employees in a bargaining unit. The benefits gained through these negotiations are enjoyed by all employees. But in some states, legislatures have passed so-called "right to work" laws that stipulate that workers who benefit from union agreements cannot be required to pay an agency fee to the union to compensate it for acting on their behalves.

This AFL-CIO page provides a short primer on the reasons why it opposes "right to work" laws. The key point is that allowing bargaining unit members to not pay for benefits they derive from union representation is in fact unfair to the workers who join the union and pay dues. The real consequence of "right to work" is to allow some people the "right to be free riders."

This is one of the ideas that motivates Libertarians and Tea Party Populists: they argue that individuals should enjoy the right to be free riders, that they should not have to pay for benefits that they enjoy that result from public policies and other collective agreements. The more thoughtful proponents of this view say they would rather not enjoy the benefits in the first place, or pay for them themselves, which is one way of avoiding free riding. But the muddled mass of conservatives what to have it both ways -- they want to enjoy to benefits of collective agreements while avoiding the costs of paying for them.

Welfare liberals, on the other hand, want to have publicly negotiated shared social benefits, such as public education and public health care, and insist that in order for these programs to be fair and cost effective, the burden of paying for them must be shared equitably among all of those who benefit.

So why are Republicans, Libertarians, and Tea Party Populists against the unions in Wisconsin and elsewhere? Why are they opposing the affordable health care law? Why are the trying to defund public education? Public broadcasting? And virtually every other public program except those associated with the military industrial complex?

It is because they claim the right to be free riders. This is really the great irony: libertarians often say paying taxes is tantamount to slavery. But, in reality, it is the liberty to free ride that forces other people to pay to support the ones who want to ride for free. Free riding is really a form of economic exploitation that disguises itself as personal liberty.

Wisconsin Is a Battleground Against the Billionaire Kochs' Plan to Break Labor's Back

2011-02-20T08:33:00.005-05:00

Wisconsin Is a Battleground Against the Billionaire Kochs' Plan to Break Labor's Back | News & Politics | AlterNet

This article provide more direct evidence for the idea that the plutocracy is intent on destroying the last bastion of unionism in America -- public sector employees. Their strategy is to employ the politics of resentment to pit one segment of the middle class (read working class) against another, in this case, private sector employees most of who are not unionized against public sector employees where 1 in 3 are members of unions such as the AFT.

The propaganda talking point is to suggest that public sector employees who enjoy decent benefits they struggled to get over many decades of tough labor negotiations are somehow responsible for the fiscal problems many states are now facing. The real cause of the state deficits, of course, is the Great Recession, which public employees had no role in producing.

It was produced by greed, lax government regulation of the financial services industry, and the economic ideology known as "market fundamentalism". According to this winners-take-all mentality, there must be no part of the economy that is not subject to corporate rule. That is why the Republicans, who are an entirely owned and controlled subsidiary of Corporate America, are now attacking public sector unions, public broadcasting, public radio, and indeed any social formation that is not directly subservient to corporate control.

But truth has no bearing on this political strategy: it is driven by the idea that one can gain political support among private sector workers by making them resentful of the slightly better benefits that some public sector workers have. This is a classic "leveling-down" strategy of class warfare; the goal is to break public sector unions by convincing non-union workers that their plight is caused by there fellow workers, not by the corpocracy that runs America (and much of the rest of the world). If this campaign is successful it will mark the final triumph of the investing class over the working class and will ensure that income and wealth inequality will not be effectively challenged by the labor movement.

Here is how Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker expressed this divide and rule strategy:

“We can no longer live in a society where the public employees are the haves and taxpayers who foot the bills are the have-nots,” Mr. Walker, a Republican, said in a speech. “The bottom line is that we are going to look at every legal means we have to try to put that balance more on the side of taxpayers.”

This is utter rubbish. Government workers -- civil servants -- are taxpayers too. They are also voters: the latter is what rankles Governor Walker because as voters they did not support him in the election. So this is also political payback: if one wants to ensure that Republicans control even more of the state governments than they presently do, bust the labor unions which (usually) support the Democrats.

However, as the demonstrations in Wisconsin are showing, these union workers are not going down without a fight. Now is the time for solidarity, not only with the demonstrators in the Mideast, but also those in the Midwest.

How the middle class became the underclass - Feb. 16, 2011

2011-02-20T08:21:00.001-05:00

How the middle class became the underclass - Feb. 16, 2011

Heading towards class warfare? We have been engaged in class warfare, as this article demonstrates, for several decades. The plutocrats are winning. They have decreed that one can only refer to the struggle as "class warfare" when the middle class and the poor fight back.

Why Hopenhagen Turned into Nopenhagen

2009-12-17T13:15:00.011-05:00

While it is not over until it is over, on this the penultimate day of the most important international conference on global climate change in this decade, it seems pretty clear that it is going to end in failure. There will be no binding treaty. It is not clear there will even be an agreed framework for such a treaty. There is no agreement or targets or benchmarks. Maybe there will be some progress on REDD and on a fund to help vulnerable nations adapt to some of the predicted effects of global warming. But overall, the COP15 Climate Conference in Copenhagen will go down in history as a failure.

Why did this happen? Did it really have to turn out this way? I am sure there will be lots of post-mortems written in the coming days and weeks. Here is my first volley.

The US never joined the 1997 Kyoto Treaty that COP15 was supposed to come up with a new treaty to extend or replace. At the time the U.S. Congress was controlled by the Republican Party (the GOP -- Guardians of Profit). The nominally Democratic President, Bill Clinton, knew full well that getting this treaty ratified in the US Senate had about the same chances as a snowball in hell. So even with Al Gore as his Vice-President, he caved to Republican opposition and adopted a negotiating position that said that the US would not commit to binding carbon emission reductions until the developing countries also accepted them.

At the time, major developing economies such as China, India and Brazil, were refusing to do so because, they argued, most all of the CO2 in the atmosphere that was causing the problem was the result of historical emissions by the older industrialized countries. most notably the USA, which at the time accounted for roughly 25% of global emissions but had only 5% of the world's population. So there was an "After you Alfonse" type stalemate. The US would not agree to binding emission targets until the developing countries did, and they would not agree to reduce their emissions until the USA owned up to its responsibility.

But things began to change dramatically two years ago at the Bali climate conference when the US representative was heartily booed when she reiterated this tired old position that the Bush administration had stuck with. Moreover, China and other major developing industrial countries announced at Bali that they were now willing to commit themselves to carbon emission targets, removing one of the big obstacles to successfully negotiating a new treaty regime in Copenhagen this December.

So what happened? Well we got a new US President who says he is committed to the US doing its part to address the threat of global climate disruption. And now the US Congress is controlled by members of his own party in both the House and the Senate. Good opportunity right?

Wrong. The US moved the goal-posts. Now they are saying that they cannot commit to any binding agreement with robust emission reduction targets because they are not sure they can get any bill through the Senate unless Senators from coal-producing and oil-producing, and smoke stack industry states can be assured that China, and India and Brazil are not cheating on their claimed emission reductions and taking jobs away from American workers while continuing to pollute the atmosphere.

The developing nations have bristled at the suggestion that they cannot be trusted to keep their words, so we have another "After you Alfonse" type stalemate. This time the US will not say it can commit to binding emissions targets unless the developing nations first commit to a verification scheme of some sort. While the developing nations are saying, we already came halfway on our own, but what have you (the USA) done? Bupkiss.

The emissions targets suggested in the current House bill that form the basis of the current US negotiating position, are terribly weak. They are really only 4% below the internationally accepted 1990 baseline, and they are not even law yet and may never get to be law. The Europeans, the Japanese, and other developed countries, have stated that they will commit to 2020 reduction targets below the 1990 baseline of between 20-25%

Why is the US target so weak? Because, well, you see, we have this stupid procedural rule in the Senate that says that you need 60 senators to end debate on proposed legislation. If you cannot reach the 60 vote threshold you cannot end debate on the floor, and if you cannot end debate it you cannot vote on a bill and perhaps pass it.

That is why Sen. John Kerry went to Copenhagen this week to try to reassure COP15 delegates that the US Senate will pass a bill this spring with binding emissions targets, but only if the Chinese and other developing countries first agree to a verification scheme that they can use to convince recalcitrant and obstructionist Senators (read Republicans, a few conservadems, and of course our friend Joe Lieberman) from filibustering to block it in the Senate just as they have done with Health Care Insurance Reform this fall. So the Fate of the Earth comes down, again, to the dysfunctional US Senate and its stupid filibuster rule.

Or does it? According to the US Constitution, treaties must be ratified by two-thirds of the Senate, that is, by 66+1 Senators. In the United States, the term "treaty" has a different, more restricted legal sense than exists in international law. U.S. law distinguishes what it calls treaties from treaty executive agreements, congressional-executive agreements, and sole executive agreements. All four classes are equally treaties under international law; they are distinct only from the perspective of internal American law.

The distinctions are primarily concerning their method of ratification. Whereas treaties require advice and consent by two-thirds of the Senate, sole executive agreements may be executed by the President acting alone. Some treaties grant the President the authority to fill in the gaps with executive agreements, rather than additional treaties or protocols. Currently, most international agreements are executed by executive agreement rather than treaties at a rate of 10:1.

Despite the relative ease of executive agreements, the President still often chooses to pursue the formal treaty process over an executive agreement in order to gain congressional support on matters that require the Congress to pass implementing legislation or appropriate funds, and those agreements that impose long-term, complex legal obligations on the U.S.

So what are the chances that President Obama is going to use his power to make executive agreements to bind the US, even provisionally, to a binding treaty? Bupkiss. He needs political cover from the Congress. This is also the reason why he is not going to use the newly sanctioned power of the EPA to directly regulate greenhouse gasses as harmful pollutants. Doing so would bypass the Congress and expose him to merciless attacks from the GOP, threatening his prospects for re-election in 2012.

But in order to get Congressional cover (buy-in) he needs both the House and the Senate, and we already know what a cesspool of deceit and obstruction the Senate is these days. So, sadly, once again, the Fate of the Earth hangs on the existence of a stupid procedural rule of the Senate that prevents electoral majorities from passing legislation without the consent of 60 Senators before they can end debate.

To be fair, the failure of COP15 is not entirely due to US non-commitment. Our neighbor the the North, Oh Canada, with its current conservative government, has linked itself to the US position on reduction targets and binding agreements and is standing with the US in blocking a deal in Copenhagen. Canada is, in case you don't know, the #1 supplier of petroleum to the US market, far ahead of the Middle East. Canada also has the Athabasca oil sands (or tar sands) in Northern Alberta, which are really going to start paying off big time once we reach Peak Oil (perhaps we already have) and the price of petroleum starts to relentlessly rise as supply declines while demands increases.

Peak Oil is the real underlying driver of the "go slow" or "go not at all" approaches to an energy transition in this century. The oil producing states, and the major oil companies that hold long term leases, want to delay the transition to a carbon-neutral energy economy as long as they possibly can. It they don't they stand to lose something on the order of $100 trillion in revenues during the remainder of this century. Much of that money that would be left on the table if the world manages to accelerate the shift to carbon neutrality sooner rather than later by making green energy cheaper than dirty petroleum and other fossil fuels. The environmentalists, of course, are worried that if we prolong the end of the Oil Age we are risking cooking the planet and producing catastrophic changes in the climate that will take centuries to correct, if they can ever be corrected at all.

Hey, but what does catastrophic damage to the Earth, its people, and its living species, matter if the oil companies lose all those healthy profits in the process? The Bush administration made no bones about its non-energy policy being designed (in still secret meetings with oil company officials in Dick Cheney's office) to protect future oil company profits. At least Dubya was not a hypocrite.

But Obama campaigned on the slogans "Hope You Can Believe In" and "Yes We Can" Well those slogans are wearing pretty thin right now. If Obama is not willing to take any political risks to lead this country to a better place, then in three years people in his base will not be talking about "Hope" any more. They will be saying "Nope."

The Great Health Care Give-Away of 2009

2009-12-15T10:40:00.007-05:00

In an earlier blog post I explained why health care insurance reform without a robust public option is a huge government give-away to the private health insurance industry. But that is just what is coming out of the US Senate this week. Harry Reid has reportedly dumped both the public option and the idea that people 55-64 years of age should be able to buy into Medicare, in order appease Joe Lieberman (the Senator from Aetna), Ben Nelson (another recipient of insurance industry largesse) and other conservadems.

This is truly outrageous! What we are getting from the Sausage Factory that is the Senate is a bill that will require millions of Americans to purchase expensive private health insurance, many of whom will be subsidized by taxpayers dollars in order to do so, with absolutely no mechanism to prevent these corporations from using the proceeds to pad their profit margins. This is disgraceful.

Progressives need to learn a lesson from this. The reason why this happened is nicely summed up in an article by John Neffinger "Why We Lost Health Care." The US Senate is a dysfunctional and undemocratic institution.

Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean has now called upon democrats to "Kill the Senate Bill" and start over with the House of Representatives. Without a public option or a Medicare buy-in provision it is not real reform at all. It is just a huge corporate welfare bill for the private insurance industry.

The people need to rise up and demand better of their government.

Pascal's Wager and Climate Change (Revised)

2009-12-13T14:05:00.000-05:00

Current climate science suggests that the Earth's temperature has been steadily rising due to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced by our use of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas, and that the rate at which are pumping CO2 and other gases into the atmosphere exceeds the ability of the oceans and the plants to absorb them. If GHG emissions continue unabated then, scientists predict that the Earth's average temperature will continue to rise, and this may cause some potentially very serious climatic changes such as melting glaciers and icecaps, rise in sea levels, species displacement and extinction, spread of tropical diseases, refugee flows, droughts, floods, increasingly powerful cyclones, and so forth.

While there is a strong consensus among climate scientists that the theory of anthropocentric (human-induced) global warming is true with a high degree of certainty, a great many people still refuse to believe it. Some of these skeptics are suspicious of the explanation that humans burning fossil fuels is the cause of the warming trend and point out the existence of some studies that cast doubt on the consensus view (Alexander Cockburn claims the theory is a farce) . The recent release of "climate gate" emails from scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit suggesting that they had tailored some data to fit this theory fueled climate change skeptics and deniers. Recent Polls show that the percentage of Americans who believe in anthropogenic global warming has declined. Some climate skeptics believe that the whole story is a hoax concocted by a vast left-wing conspiracy. Many of these climate skeptics are also vehemently opposed to the world's nations taking any serious steps to reduce GHG emissions in order to mitigate the threats predicted to arise due to global warming by reducing the use of fossil fuels and moving rapidly to a carbon-neutral energy economy.

But the question about whether or not we should now take serious steps to reduce GHG emissions is a classic case of decision-making under uncertainty. The question whether we should believe or disbelieve in current climate science is analogous to Pascal's Wager, named for the mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) whose Pensées contained the following intriguing paragraph:

“God is, or He is not.” But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up... Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose... But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is... If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.

In this argument Pascal portrays the decision about whether to believe in God or not as a wager made under conditions of uncertainty. In modern decision theory the logic of his argument is represented by a decision matrix such as the following:

	God exists (G)	God does not exist (~G)
Believe God exists (B)	eternal heavenly bliss	-N (none)
Not Believe God exists (~B)	eternal damnation or (perhaps) purgatory	+N (none)

His argument suggests that if God exists, the reward for believing that God exists is very high, whereas the cost of not believing in God (if indeed He does exist) is very great --- eternal damnation. Therefore, it is a good bet to believe in God. If, on the other hand, it turns out that God does not exist, then the benefits as well as the costs are negligible (perhaps some Sunday mornings wasted going to Church), and perhaps, if God does not exist, we will never really know anyway whether our bet paid off.

Philosophers have found various reasons to object to this argument as providing a good basis for theism. But I leave these philosophical niceties aside, interested readers might want to consult the article on Pascal's Wager in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. My intention here is to suggest that there is a similar (and much better) argument to be made about the uncertainty of catastrophic climate change due to anthropogenic (human-induced) changes in the concentration of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the Earth' atmosphere.

There will be a big payoff if we believe in current climate science and take steps to reduce carbon emissions, and it turns out the theory was correct. And there will also be a big loss if we do not believe in current climate science, when it turns out that the theory was correct -- oops, we cooked the planet. Assuming that there is a greater than zero chance that current climate science is correct, then the rational wager would be to accept it and act so as to gain the best outcome and avoid the worst one, even if there remain some doubts about whether the current science is indeed correct. As a decision matrix this set of choices would be represented like this:

	Current Climate Science is correct (C)	Climate Science is not correct (~C)
We believe in climate science and act (B)	F1	F2
We do not believe in climate science and do not act (~B)	F3	F4

What are the relative values of F1...F4 in this payoff matrix? In order to make the answers more concrete suppose that you will be able to experience the planet Earth as it will exist 100 years from now. Perhaps you will still be alive because of miraculous new lifespan enhancing medical technologies. Or if you prefer a more supernatural possibility, suppose that you do die but will be reincarnated as one of your own great great grandchildren, or as another member of their generation.

Let's first examine the value of F3. If we do not believe in current climate science and act (~B) to mitigate its predicted catastrophic effects by rapidly transforming our energy economy so as to radically reduce GHG emissions, and it turns out that the current science is correct (C) in predicting catastrophic climate changes 100 years from now if we do not act, then you or your great great grandchildren will be very unhappy campers on Planet Earth. The payoff value of F3 (~B & C) is strongly negative. How would you feel about F3? Well probably a lot like an atheist who dies and meets St. Peter at the Pearly Gates --"Oops, I guess I was wrong, Gulp!"

What then is the value of F1? In this case, we decided to believe in current climate science and acted in order to mitigate its worst predicted effects, and it turned out that our current theories were indeed correct (B & C). The payoff for F1 is then very high indeed. F1 is analogous to the situation of the faithful religious believers who discover that the God they accepted does indeed exist, except that their reward is an earthly one, a planet whose climate is not greatly altered and disrupted by human activities.

So, just looking at these two values F1 and F3, we can say that F1 dominates F3, that is, that the expected utility of believing in climate change is far greater than the expected utility of not believing in it. Therefore, even with uncertainty about C, it is rational to bet that current climate science is correct and take steps now to significantly reduce our GHG emissions.

But we must also consider the costs and benefits of F2 and F4, the cases where current climate science is not correct. Suppose that in 100 years we learn that the climate science of the early 21st century was wrong in predicting catastrophic climatic changes due to anthropogenic GHG emissions (~C), but because people in the early 21st century believed in it (B) they spent a lot of money and effort on energy efficiency, electric cars, windmills, solar panels, and hydrogen fuels cells, and all that green stuff. How would you feel about that? I guess you would probably feel pretty okay about it; it would be kind of like learning that you had already been saved through God's grace, and it really didn't matter whether you went to church or not, even though you did. But your ancestors did make a big effort to "Go Green" for nothing, so let's say that F2 is marginally negative.

Now, finally, for F4 suppose that at the present we do nothing to prevent further increases in global temperature by altering our current fossil fuel energy economy (the so-called "business as usual" scenario), but that it turns out that current climate science is wrong, and nothing very bad happens. This is like finding one has a "Get into Heaven Free" card even though one lived a life of sin. One can imagine this would make one pretty happy. So let's say F4 is marginally positive.

Since F1 and F2 together still yield a strongly positive payoff, while F3 and F4 still yield a strongly negative one, it is still rational to bet that current climate science is correct and act on that belief.

Critics of this argument may want to quibble with my estimate of the cost of F2. Climate skeptics are likely to argue that the cost of mitigating global warming is going to be greater than marginally negative. We will have to make some real sacrifices in order to reduce our GHG emissions to safe levels by mid-century. Let's assume this is correct. Even so, it is worth it because the expected loss if we do nothing is too great. As the authors of a recent report on the economics of climate change argue, it is also possible to think of the choice we face as analogous to the decision to buy fire insurance:

The reason people buy fire insurance is not because they are certain that their house will burn down; rather it is because they cannot be sufficiently certain that it will not burn down. Likewise, the projections of dangerous climate risk if the world exceeds 350 ppm CO2 in the long run are not certainties; they are, on the contrary, necessarily uncertain. If the worst happens our grandchildren will inherit a degraded Earth that will not support anything like the life that we have enjoyed. On the other hand, if we prepare for the worst, but it does not happen, we will have invested more than, in perfect hindsight, was necessary in clean energy, conservation, and carbon-free technologies. How would we feel about discovering we had done too much about climate change, compared to discovering that we had done too little? (DeCario, S.J., Norgaard, R .B, Norman, C. S., and Sheeran, K.A. "The Economics of 350: The Benefits and Costs of Climate Stabilization." Economics for Equity and Environment. www.e3network.org. October 2009, p. 6.)

So how much is catastrophic climate change insurance going to cost? According to this study, which is based on a comparable analysis of several economic projections done both by business-sponsored groups, and nongovernmental and academic groups, it is estimated that climate insurance would cost between 1% and 3% of global GDP in order to reach the lowest carbon target currently being discussed, 350 ppm. As the authors of this report reckon:

Suppose the cost of climate protection turns out to be 2.5% of global GDP, toward the high end of the global scenarios just discussed. In an economy that is growing at 2.5% per year, a rate that is common for developed countries, spending 2.5% of GDP on climate protection each year would be equivalent to skipping one year's growth, and then resuming. Average incomes would take 29 years to double from today's level, compared to 28 in the absence of climate costs. In an economy experiencing 10 percent annual growth, as China has in many recent years, imposing a cost of 2.5% per year is equivalent to skipping 3 months of growth; if 10% growth is sustained, average incomes would reach twice the current level in 86 months, compared to 83 months in the absence of climate costs.

In fact, these authors argue that at the early stages of a climate mitigation program we might actually save money because we are reaping the benefits of greater energy efficiencies. But the bottom line conclusion derived from this study is that, "There are no reasonable studies that say that a 350 ppm stabilization target will destroy the economy; there are no studies that claim that it is desirable to wait before taking action on climate protection" If this is correct, then buying climate insurance is a good investment because we can easily afford it and with a relatively modest cost we can avert a disaster in the making.

On the other hand, if we disbelieve in current climate science and do nothing now to reduce our carbon emissions, then either we discover that we spent 1%-3% of global GDP converting to a carbon-neutral energy earlier than we had to, or we find that we overheated the Earth and our house burned down.

So you climate change skeptics and deniers out there, which risk would you rather take? Would you rather that we now take steps to prevent catastrophic climate change when we can easily afford climate insurance, or do you want to go on business as usual without spending anything on insurance and risk the catastrophic climate changes that current science is predicting? You must choose now. Choose wisely.

My Apology

2009-09-15T17:12:00.012-04:00

I have never killed anyone.
I have never stolen anything.
I have never been arrested.
I have never cheated on my wife.
I pay my taxes.
I don't covet other people's possessions.
I don't spread lies.
I don't use racial epithets.
I am productively employed.
I exercise regularly.
I eat fruits and vegetables.
I keep myself well-informed.
I never hit my children.
I donate to charities.
I recycle paper, cans and plastic.

I am sorry.
Being good is boring.

Please forgive me.

Joe Wilson's outburst

2009-09-13T11:12:00.004-04:00

Rep. Joe Wilson's (R -SC) shouting "You lie!" during President Obama's nationally televised speech to a joint session of Congress last week proved that Van Jones was right when he said the Republicans are assholes.

A health insurance mandate without the public option is a real loser

2009-09-10T06:06:00.006-04:00

In his speech last night President Obama for the first time made it clear that he will be insisting on a mandate for individuals and most companies to buy health insurance.

This is a huge boon for the private insurance companies who stand to gain millions of new members. However, if as proposed they will not be allowed to "cherry pick" subscribers or deny benefits for pre-existing conditions, then their bottom-lines will also take a hit.

The natural thing for them to do would be to pass on these additional costs to their members in the form of higher premiums, larger deductibles, fewer benefits or all three.

If there is no strong national nonprofit public health insurance plan they are competing with, this is just what they will do. The result will be a government mandated windfall for the private insurance companies, and higher (not lower) premiums for the insured.

With a public plan, however, they will be forced to offset the increased costs of "stable and secure" health insurance with real efficiencies and even, perhaps, by forgoing some profits and disappointing their Wall Street analysts.

This is why having a public health insurance option is so essential to the overall effectiveness of health insurance reform.

Wishing to secure insurance industry profits, some Repbulicans are now proposing that there be a waiting period before the public plan is introduced, and suggesting a trigger under which it would only be introduced after this period if the anticipated cost savings in health insurance do not materialize.

The idea of delaying implementation of a public option so the insurance companies can enjoy several more years of windfall profits is crap that ought to be firmly rejected. Those who favor this idea are counting on being able to demonstrate that the reforms enacted this year did not reduce costs (as they won't without a public option) and then arguing for their repeal hoping that this will give them an issue to regain control of the Congress several years down the line. In the meanwhile their allies in the private insurance business will be reaping the benefits. This is why stock in the major private insurers rose after Obama's speech.

Addendum (9/11/09) An interesting commentary by R J Eskow published this morning makes a similar argument while also explaining why health insurance company stocks went up the day after the President's speech.

Addendum (9/12/09) Jed Lewison has also noticed that a mandate without a robust public option is a gift to the private health insurance industry.

Addendum (9/13/09) David Sirota provides examples of other "triggers" that are legislative bullcrap.

What Ever Happened to Moral Hazard?

2009-08-23T12:09:00.011-04:00

The term "moral hazard" has a long history, but it was brought into prominence by economist Kenneth Arrow to describe situations in which governments step in to rescue private financial institutions from the consequences of their own risky or imprudent behavior. The term itself has an interesting etymology; hazard was originally a dice game, like craps, in which bettors would often wager (and lose) their fortunes, which, come to think of it, is really not that different than banks making disastrous bets on subprime mortgages, credit default swaps, toxic assets and the other forms of financial chicanery that caused the financial meltdown in September 2008 and let to a global recession that is still not over.

The word "moral" also did not necessarily have to do with ethical evaluation and accountability as it does today. According to Martha C. White, "moral hazard was an assessment of risk based on the situation. For instance, a log cabin was more susceptible to fire damage than a stone cottage. Over the years, though, “moral hazard” also came to mean a situation in which the insured became cavalier about due diligence on their end—leaving a cooking fire unattended in that log cabin, for instance—banking on restitution in the event of a disaster" [Martha C. White (2008) . What is a Moral Hazard? From Slate - The Big Money].

The basic idea of moral hazard as we use the term today is that people and institutions will be encouraged to take greater risks than they should or otherwise would if they believe that someone else will take responsibility for rescuing them if things turn out really badly. For instance, the government, an insurance company, or bleeding heart liberal do-gooders will step in to save people from the worst consequences of their own irresponsible behavior. If the government has a track record of stepping in to rescue banks that are "too big to fail" from the consequences of their own greed and poor judgment, this creates a moral hazard that encourages future risky behavior on the parts of bankers.

This outcome is particularly likely, many people believe, if those who were rescued in the past are not forced to accept any of the costs of their own bad behavior and, moreover, are rescued without agreeing to accept any new regulations that would prevent them from making similarly poor choices in the future. This sort of governmental response to a financial crisis rewards irresponsible behavior by privatizing the profits while socializing the costs. It is a perverse incentive that encourages irresponsibility.

This is just what the US government did last fall in response to Wall Street's bad bets and the collapse of credit markets. Many people, including myself, accepted the argument at the time that, although a massive government bailout could indeed create moral hazards, this risk was insignificant compared to the very real and immediate risk of a panic that would trigger an economic depression. In doing so I had assumed that eventually we would start addressing the risk of moral hazard and do something to re-regulate the financial industry in order to prevent the banks and insurance companies that were rescued from engaging in the very kinds of risky investments that got them, and all the rest of us, into this mess. Whatever happened to that?

What happened is that financial re-regulation got put on Obama's back burner and no one is talking about it any more. Now people are talking about a "government take-over" of health care insurance. The language of "take overs" is important, because the idea resonates with something a lot of people object to about the way the government has handled the financial crisis, the recession, the failures of GM and Chrysler, and yes, even the "Cash for Clunkers" program that is due to expire tomorrow.

In each of these cases it appears that government intervention undermines the value of personal responsibility. Steeped in the Protestant Ethic of self-reliance and independence, there are many American's whose sense of morality is offended when they think that the government, or indeed anyone else, is planning to "take over" matters that should properly be one's own business. Adults are supposed to take care of themselves and it is an affront to one's dignity to have the government involvement in what should be a matter of personal responsibility. The term "take over" also connotes loss of control, so the term delivers a double-whammy to people who fear that the government is trying to run their lives.

Obama and his advisors would do well to recognize this and to start re-framing the national debate over health insurance reform to highlight the need for greater personal responsibility in matters of health. They should hammer on this theme whenever they talk about the way health insurance works in this country. What we really have is "sick care" rather than health care. People with health insurance are not necessarily encouraged to stay healthy by, for instance, joining a gym, stopping smoking, losing weight, getting regular physicals, engaging in wellness programs, eating healthier foods, and so forth. Rather, they are paying for the assurance that that when they get sick or are injured someone will help them pay their medical bills.

The so-called "public option" (a terrible name) needs to be described as a low-cost form of health insurance that will create incentives for people to get primary medical care, engage in personal behaviors that encourage wellness and disease prevention, pay doctors and hospitals for keeping people healthy rather than treating them when they get sick, and employing the best evidence-based treatments available in a coordinated and efficient manner. It should be called something like "WellCare" or "Amerihealth" to give it the right vibes. Above all the pitch should emphasize that it is not a substitute for individuals taking personal responsibility for their own health. Rather it will operate so as to make it easier for folks to do so by creating positive incentives that will lead to better health outcomes and lower costs for everyone.

The outstanding success of the "Cash for Clunkers" program demonstrates that even proud and independent-minded Americans are not averse to accepting government help in doing what they should be doing for themselves anyway. "Sure," they will say, "I probably made a mistake when I bought that Ford Expedition ten years ago, never expecting that the price of gasoline would go over $4.00 a gallon." "But, I am damn happy to accept a government check for $4500 to trade it in for a Toyota Corolla. If the banks can get billions why can't I get a few thousand?" The moral hazard here, that people will continue to make stupid consumer decisions expecting that the government will bail them out, is not so serious, and most of us will just shrug our shoulders and accept the risk.

But what about the people who never bought an SUV in the first place, or who never smoked, who exercise regularly, eat fresh healthy food, invested their money prudently and cautiously, and generally accepted personal responsibility for taking good care of themselves? What are we getting? We are getting screwed. We did the right thing, after all, and accepted our personal responsibility and also some share of our social responsibilities. We could at least get a little credit, you know.

There is, in fact, no contradiction between accepting personal responsibility for caring for oneself, and also accepting a share of social responsibility for caring for others. Generally speaking, living a life of personal responsibility is an achievement for which individuals can be justly proud. Living such a life is also, generally speaking, a precondition for accepting one's social responsibilities, particularly those that involve caring for others. Accepting the burdens of parenthood and raising children is the primary way in which most adults express their social responsibility, their willingness to make sacrifices for the good of others. This is fine and good, and responsible parents should get a lot of credit.

Some individuals extend their social responsibility beyond the confines of their own family, and accept some responsibility for fixing some of the "big problems of society". Such people manifest a higher virtue by voluntarily "taking responsibility" for helping to "repair the world", but those who stop at personal responsibility and familial responsibility are not to be faulted on that account. These folks understand that by taking care of themselves and their loved ones, they are doing a good service to society by not having to ask anyone else for help in what should properly be their own responsibility.

These folks don't get enough credit; we should let them know that by caring well for themselves and their families they are fulfilling their primary social responsibilities. But, they might also need to be reminded that their are lots of folks who are not so fortunate, who for one reason or another, mostly not because of their own choices and actions, are unable to fully take care of themselves and for minor children who depend on them, and could use some help getting to a position of self-reliance. Framed in this way, most people will respond with compassion rather than with scorn or indifference. Particularly if one invokes the principle of reciprocity (popularly known as the Golden Rule) and proposes that they themselves should be entitled to similar help if ever they falter and cannot fully take care of themselves. We humans are wired for reciprocal altruism; we just have to figure out how to activate these responses when mutual aid is mediated by large governmental institutions.

If people take personal responsibility for themselves, and accept a fair share of their social responsibilities, they should be lauded and indeed rewarded for doing so. The problem, once again, is one of perverse incentives. We are embracing policies that discourage people from taking personal responsibility when we should be doing the opposite. The idea that our major institutions should be incentivizing and rewarding both personal and social responsibility is a winner both politically and morally.

So why don't more politicians get it?

Addendum 9/12/09: This New York Times story explains what happened to the idea of moral hazard in the financial industry. It morphed into I.B.G.

Death Squads, American Style

2009-08-21T08:42:00.006-04:00

The term 'death squad' entered the lexicon back in the 1980s when it was used to refer to gangs of off-duty military personnel who were hired by right-wing military dictatorships in countries such as Guatemala and El Salvador to kidnap and murder people they suspected of sympathizing with the Marxist guerrillas who were fighting the army in the mountains.

In a story published in the New York Times this week it has been revealed that in 2004 the CIA hired the private military contractor Blackwater to organize a program to locate and assassinate suspected Al Qaeda operatives. The program was top secret and Vice President Cheney allegedly specifically ordered that Congressional oversight committees not be informed of its existence.

It seems like there might still be more surprises in store for those of us who have been paying attention to Bush and Cheney's little shop of horrors. The list of human rights violations and abuses that can be laid at the feet of the Bush administration is long and includes: the “disappearance” of suspected terrorists into CIA-run secret prisons, the denial of the right of habeas corpus of detainees, the use of ‘enhanced’ interrogation methods, a.k.a. torture, such as water-boarding, sleep deprivation, and auditory stimulus overload by military interrogators and the CIA, the indefinite detention without charges or trials of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo, the construction of the concept of “unlawful enemy combatants”, the use of Predator drones to assassinate suspected terrorists, the detention of an American citizen, Jose Padilla, without charges or trial for more than three years, the irregular renditions of persons such as Maher Arar to countries such as Syria, Egypt and Yemen where they have been tortured, the torture of persons such as Khalid Al Masri in secret CIA prisons, ill-treatment and deaths of detainees held at Baghram airbase in Afghanistan, and the secret and illegal eavesdropping on American citizens by the National Security Agency in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, among others.

A number of these human rights abuses have been the subject of several high-level special reports on U.S. human rights violations prepared by the charter-based bodies of the United Nations. In the report dealing with respect for civil and political rights while conducting counter-terrorism, the Special Rapporteur for the Mission to the United States of America, Martin Scheinin, identified, "serious situations of incompatibility between international human rights obligations and the counter-terrorism law and practice of the United States. Such situations include the prohibition against torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; the right to life; and the right to a fair trial” (Scheinin 2007). He has also identified deficiencies in United States law and practice pertaining to "the principle of non-refoulement; the rendition of persons to places of secret detention; the definition of terrorism; non-discrimination; checks in the application of immigration laws; and the obtaining of private records of persons and the unlawful surveillance of persons, including a lack of sufficient balances in that context"(23).

It is now clear that senior officials of the government of the United States conspired to break the law, and that the Department of Justice was complicit in these crimes and their cover-up. The New York Times stated unequivocally that "some of the very highest officials of the land not only approved the abuse of prisoners, but participated in the detailed planning of harsh interrogations and helped create a legal structure to shield from justice those who followed orders," and this was done "with President Bush's clear knowledge and support"(20 April 2008). The President’s top national security advisors, Vice President Dick Cheney; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, held dozens of meetings in the White House Situation Room to organize and give legal cover to enhanced interrogation methods, including brutal methods of abuse that all civilized nations consider to be torture.

A report issued by the Senate Armed Services Committee on December 11, 2008, the day after the sixtieth anniversary of the passage of the Universal Declaration of human rights, concluded that, “the authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques by senior officials was both a direct cause of detainee abuse and conveyed the message that it was okay to mistreat and degrade detainees in U.S. custody,” saying also that, “The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of ‘a few bad apples’ acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees”.

These reports, and many others dealing with the human rights record of the Bush administration, demonstrate that there is ample reason to believe that senior officials of the George W. Bush administration, conspired to systematically violate human rights, broke U.S. laws, and authorized the commission of war crimes.

Yet calls for accountability for these crimes, even for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate them, have been pushed aside by the Obama administration again and again using the specious argument that it is better to look forward than back. But the only way we can hope for a American future in which these kinds of abuses will not be repeated is by fully investigating what happened during the Bush-Cheney administration and holding the architects of these policies accountable.

Rather than misinformed people screaming at their Congressmen about "death panels" that were never even contemplated, progressives should be screaming about the government-sponsored "death squads" that were authorized by the former administration. Where is the sense of moral outrage on the left? Why are progressives allowing themselves to be "slow-walked" into accepting the fact that the Obama adminstration is allowing political considerations to interfere with the investigation of these crimes and the administration of justice?

Addendum: August 31, 2009

We now learn that Blackwater was supposed to provide foreigners for surveillance and support for death squads so as to make sure there were no "American fingerprints" on these secret operations. Fortunately, the program never became operational and was downgraded and finally ended before anyone was assassinated.
See this report in the Huffington Post for details.

Big Lies

2009-08-13T05:48:00.009-04:00

If different months of the year reflect different personality types, then August must be the month for idiots and liars. All of the reasonable and responsible people are away on vacation so the field of play is left to the nutcases. This is particularly evident this August in the so-called debate (really what has become a shouting match) between the proponents and opponents of health care reform. The pity of it is that with all of the lies and disinformation that are being spread by opponents of health care reform, and the need by the supporters to constantly rebut them, ordinary people are being prevented from learning the facts and hearing about the real issues.

President Obama, who is an admirer of Abraham Lincoln, should recall that he once said that you can "Fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time. But you can't fool all of the people all of the time". Lincoln, however, failed to note that in a democratically-governed society all you need to do is to fool most of the people most of the time, and you can get what you want.

That is the strategy that the Republican Party (the GOP -- Guardians of Profit) and their allies in the health insurance industry seem to be counting on to derail Obama's health financing reform agenda. Their preferred tactic is known in the public opinion and propaganda industry as the "Big Lie". It is really very simple to use and usually works quite well.

All one needs to do is to invent a lie so preposterous that most people will think that no one would ever say such a thing if it wasn't true. It is important that the lie be something that induces fear in people and that it be made to seem that the supposed fearful thing is being kept secret. Then one gets a lot of important people to repeat the lie over and over again at every opportunity.

This is why one is hearing about "death panels" and FEMA concentration camps as elements of Obama's health care proposal, and why loyal Republican operatives can be relied upon to repeat these canards on every cable channel new show that will give them a pulpit from which to broadcast their propaganda talking points. When one "big lie" gets debunked they just invent another one and the beat goes on. But all the while the real issues are never discussed as the electorate is being whip-sawed between the conflicting emotions of fear and hope.

The biggest lie the opponents of reform are using these days is the claim that America has "the best health care system in the world." If this is true, then of course there is no reason to reform it and doing so is only likely to make it worse. But this is a outright lie as any objective assessment of the facts would reveal. The three basic criteria for judging national health care delivery systems are access, quality, and cost.

The U.S. health care system does not provide universal access, as for instance, does France or Britain; the health outcomes for the American people are worse that those of many countries, for instance, Canada or Denmark, and the cost per patient to deliver poor care to only a portion of the population is the highest in the developed world. By any objective assessment the U.S. health care system is one of the worst systems found in any rich country, but many people continue to solemnly repeat the claim that it is the best. They do so because the statement has a positive emotional valence to patriotic people, because believing it undermines the argument for reform, and because they know that if it they repeat it often enough with enough sincere feeling, a lot of people will believe it is true.

The political game this month is to see which side can nudge the poll numbers a few percentage points in one direction or another. Recent polls have shown opponents of reform slightly ahead. After the Congress returns from its August recess, there will be a final "scrum" in which compromises will be accepted and deals will be made, and some kind of health care bill will be cobbled together. For members of Congress who are on the fence, or just being cagey, a shift in public opinion about health care reform could sway their votes and mean the difference between legislative victory or defeat for Obama's initiative.

Some commentators have compared the angry demonstrations and shouting at recent town hall meetings to the tactics used by fascist brown shirts in the 1930s. At the same time, Republican propagandists have suggested that Obama and the Democrats are Nazis; Rush Limbaugh has described Obama's healthcare logo as "right out of Adolf Hitler's playbook". Last week someone painted a swastika on the door of democratic congressman David Scott, and a woman at a town brawl demonstration held up a sign with a picture of Obama's face superimposed on a picture of a Nazi stormtrooper.

The opponents of health care reform, having unleashed the dogs "Fear" and "Anger" in order to prevent proponents of reform from actually answering questions from their constituents, are innoculating themselves against the charge that they are behaving like fascists by leveling this same accusation preemptively at their targets. Also, of course, everyone hates Hitler and the Nazis so getting that label to stick to Obama will carry a lot of emotional weight.

All of these tactics and techniques are well known. An earlier politician wrote the following about the use of big lies:

All this was inspired by the principle--which is quite true in itself--that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

The author of his quote is Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X).

Addendum: For the story about who exactly were the expert liars who conspired together to create the myth of death panels see this story in the New York Times.

Obama's Strategy for Health Care Reform

2009-06-10T13:18:00.008-04:00

Thus far the Obama administration has been letting Congress take the lead in framing legislation to bring about fundamental change in the way Americans get their health care paid for. The bills being developed in Congress currently feature a "public option" that would create a government run and financed health insurance fund that would compete with the big private health insurers, like Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, and the other for profit health insurance companies. These companies, as well as the for profit hospitals, the manufacturers of medical equipment and supplies, the big pharmaceutical companies are now launching a massively funded public relations campaign designed to get rid of the public option idea and go on with "business as usual" for another few decades.

At the same time, the Obama plan has ticked off progressives because he and his democratic allies in Congress have decided at the outset to take a "single-payer" option off the table. There was a good discussion of this on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now show the other day with Bernie Sanders and the President of the California Nurses Union, Rose Ann DeMoro in which they both expressed frustration and anger about Congress not taking the single-payer option seriously. The single-payer option is the only possible plan that offers significant cost savings while also ensuring universal coverage. It has been empirically tested and refined in Canada and other countries that have long ago accepted the proposition that health care is a human right, to another opportunity to make a killing in the market. There is a well-developed proposal for a system of national health insurance (see PNHP)

There is no good reason for Congress not to even consider a single-payer option. But perhaps this is a calculated political strategy. The insurance industry and their Republican allies in the Congress are already lining up to oppose the "public option" that they claim will eventually threaten the private insurance business. The public option plan does not have the advantages of the single-payer system in terms of cost saving and administratiive simplicity nor in terms of universality. But it does allow the private health insurance business to stay in existence to compete with a government financed insurance program. But the private insurers and their allies are already whining that by offerring the public a lower cost option for health insurance, the public option will eventually take over the market and price private companies out of the competition.

I believe that this argument is total bullshit -- did all private schools and colleges go out of business when state governments started funding schools? But in any case, what Obama ought to say to this argument is: "OK, if you guys won't let us have the public option which may eventually drive some of your insurance companies out of business, then we are putting the single-payer option back on the table and that is what we will be pushing through Congress this year." Your choice is between accepting a proposal that may put some of insurance companies out of business eventually, or one in which they will all be put out of business immediately. Your choice."

It is likely that if the Democrats in Congress and the President play this particular brand of political hard ball the Republicans will walk and refuse to vote for any plan. But once Al Franken gets seated, the Democrats have enough votes to pass it anyway, without any Republican support. If they avoid the 60 vote threshold by means of reconciliation they will need only 50 votes to pass it in the Senate, and they should be able to do that even if convervative Democrats such as Arlen Spector and Ben Nelson vote with the Republicans.

If the Republicans start screaming bloody murder about employing this tactic to get a long overdue national health insurance bill passed, I suggest that President Obama dispatch Rahm Emanuel to Capitol Hill to convey to them the immortal words that Vice President Dick Cheney said to Senator Patrick Leahy --- "You can go fuck yourselves".

Killing Abortion Doctors vs. "Killing Babies"

2009-06-06T08:05:00.013-04:00

The murder of Dr. George Tiller is another demonstration (as if we needed one) why it is a mistake to allow idiots access to handguns. It also illustrates the illogical nature of the anti-abortionist argument that equates performing abortions with "killing children". Before he was murdered, allegedly by a right-wing extremist by the name of Scott Roeder, Dr. Tiller's name often came up on the Fox channel's show The O'Reilly Factor, where he was referred to as "Tiller the Baby Killer."

The term "baby" is used to refer to offspring of a certain age. I was my mother's baby at one point in my life, then I was her child, then her teenage son, and now I am her adult son. I am now called "middle-aged" a euphemism for "old". The terms "ovum", "embryo", "fetus" refer to mammalian offspring during gestation, that is, before they are born. The term "infant" refers to a newborn who is unable to speak. We use "toddler" for very young children who are just beginning to walk.

We can play semantic games with these words, for instance, we can say to a pouty teenager that they are "Acting like a baby," which will generally be taken as an insult. Calling a teenager a baby is misusing the language: if we take these terms in their literal and precise meaning, a teenager is not a baby. Similarly, calling a fetus a child is misusing the language. But here there is an obvious point that people are trying to make when they misuse the language in this way -- they are saying that they believe that fetuses (and perhaps ova and embryos) have the same moral status as babies.

Rather than playing these semantic games, why not just address this question frankly? The reason is is that once one does so it becomes clear that it is not at all obvious that it is true that fetuses have the same moral status as children. Simply calling fetuses children begs the central question in the debate over abortion. Unfortunately, however, some people seem to believe that begging this question is a way of answering it. That is, they believe that if one repeats the mantra "Abortion is killing babies." often enough with enough sincere conviction, it becomes true.

There is no similar problem for the sentence "Killing doctors who perform abortions is murder." This is quite literally and obviously true because no one in their right mind doubt that doctors who perform abortions are persons who have certain moral and legal rights which are violated when they are deliberately killed. This is a settled question of ethics and law.

There are, however, some people who seem to believe that it is morally justifiable to murder doctors who perform abortions in order to save the lives of "babies", by which they mean fetuses. Here is where the misuse of the language leads to moral confusion and error, not to mentioned incitement to hatred and violence.

It is not a settled question as to whether fetuses are persons who have certain moral or legal rights which are violated when the women who are gestating them decide to end their pregnancies. It is a hotly contested question subject to intense debate. To describe the fetuses who die as the result of abortions as "babies" or "children" treats that debate as though it were settled, when in fact it is not.

What is settled as a matter of law is that it is legal in the United States of America for women to seek and have abortions. One may not like this law, or agree with it, but it is in fact the law. Wishing the law were different than it is does not change the law. Calling fetuses "babies" and calling abortion "murder" does not change the law. It only serves to mislead people and to incite hatred against women who seek abortions and doctors who provide them with these medical services.

The murder of Dr. Tiller illustrates that words can be harmful. From what I can gather from press reports, the person accused of his murder believed that abortion was "baby-killing" and therefore that Dr. Tiller was literally a "murderer". Since the law was not going to punish him for his crimes or prevent him from committing similar ones in the future, the murderer decided to become a vigilante and give Dr. Tiller what he deserved himself, namely that he deserved to die for performing abortions. Nor was this the first time Dr. Tiller was targeted by members of the "pro-life" movement. Nor was he the only abortion doctor to have been murdered --David Gunn was gunned down in Florida in 1993 --and Barnett Slepian was slain in 1998. These killings reveal a pattern: the reasoning that allows some people to reach the conclusion that it is permissible to murder abortion providers is a trifecta of moral errors.

First, as I already noted, it is wrong to simply assume that abortions are murder. Second, it is wrong to take the law into ones own hands. And third, it is wrong to suppose that death is an appropriate and ethical punishment for murder.

When one commits murder one violates another person's right to life. To deter and punish murder by having a private individual or state deliberately kill the offender is another violation of the right to life. I don't have time to argue the case for this here (see my "Death Penalty and the Forfeiture Thesis" in the Journal of Human Rights), but even murderers do not "forfeit" their right to life, and no one, neither private individuals nor states, have the rightful authority to cause that right to be forfeited. In particular, vigilantes like Scott Roeder do not have this power.

I do hope that if Roeder is convicted of this heinous crime that he is severely punished, for instance, that he spend the rest of his life in prison. But I am glad that he will not be subject to the death penalty under Kansas law.

I suppose that this makes me "pro-life".

The Golden Rule

2009-06-05T07:10:00.006-04:00

There is…one rule that lies at the heart of every religion – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples – a belief that isn’t new; that isn’t black or white or brown; that isn’t Christian, or Muslim or Jew. It’s a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the heart of billions. It’s a faith in other people, and it’s what brought me here today.

--President Barack Obama, speaking in Cairo Egypt, June 4, 2009

The Golden Rule (GR): Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, is widely accepted as a valid moral rule. However, it is fairly easy to show that it yields incorrect and inadequate moral guidance in many cases. But there are reasons why it has been so widely accepted and continues to be taught, and these reasons have to do with its very incompleteness as a principle of ethics, and its connection with the idea of reciprocity.

The GR can be stated in either a positive or a negative manner:

GR+: Do unto others as you would have them to do unto you.

GR-: Do not do unto others as you would not have done unto you.

In the first version it states a principle of positive duty while in the second it states one of negative duty. However, it is possible to state the GR in a way that is neutral between acts and omissions:

GR0: Treat others as you would have others treat you (where "treatment" can be understood as involving both acts and omissions).

By employing the subjunctive "would" the GR is quite different in its implications than the principle:

GR%: Treat others as they have treated you.

The GR% is a principle of pure reciprocity. Using it prescribes returning kindness for kindness and cruelty for cruelty, presumably in the same proportions as they are received from others. One might regard the GR% as "fair" in that it would rule out repaying a kindness with cruelty, and also, repaying cruelty with kindness. But unless you have already been acted upon by others in some way, there is no way to interpret the GR%. The change to talking about how one would want to be treated, obviates this problem, but as we shall see, creates other problems.

Also by way of preliminary clarification, one should understand the GR as having implicit universal quantifiers:

GRQ: Everyone should always treat all others as they themselves would wish to be treated.

Making the quantifiers explicit allows us to see more clearly why GR provides incorrect moral guidance in many cases.

Consider the rich man who does not wish to be given money as charity in order to feed his children (because he doesn't need it) who reasons that since he does not want to be treated as a recipient of charity, others, who might be much poorer than he, should not either. Or consider a case from my own experience. I would like my wife to attend my lectures because I would want to get her honest opinions on how I did. She, on the other hand, has repeatedly told me that she does not want me to attend her lectures since she thinks I would distract her and make her more nervous. If I followed the GR I would attend her lectures and if she followed the GR she would not attend my lectures. But this is clearly wrong: the right thing to do is for me not to attend her lectures and for her to attend my lectures.

In order to be successfully applied the GR assumes that there is a symmetry in the conceptions of the good between the agent and the patient, that others would want to be treated as oneself wants to be treated, but this is obviously untrue in many cases.

But, it will be objected, the cases I have chosen to illustrate a problem with the GR are framed at the wrong level of abstraction. Rather than framing the application in terms of specific types of actions (giving charity or attending lectures) the GR should be understood as recommending that one treat other persons in accordance with their own conception of their good. Since I would want others to respect my own conception of my good I should assume that others would likewise want that I respect their conceptions of their own good.

So then we might restate the GR as: "Everyone ought always treat all others in accordance with their own conceptions of their own good" or more succinctly:

GR*: Treat others as they want to be treated.

GR* is an improvement over GR because rather than assuming that the agent's own preferences are automatically a good guide to the patient's preferences, it asks us to consider the patient's preferences directly. But one immediately sees there is another problem with this formulation. What if the moral patient involved has a mistaken view of what their own good consists in?

Suppose Janine has a fifteen year old son, call him Oscar, who thinks it is in his best interest to drop out of high school and get a job as a gas station attendant. Janine, as Oscar's parent, would be acting irresponsibly to simply agree to this idea. Oscar has a mistaken view of what his good consists in and his own wishes in this case ought to be set aside in favor of Janine's more adequate conception of her son's good.

The problem with GR* is that in some cases one ought to treat people in ways that those people should ideally wish to be treated rather than in the ways they actually do wish to be treated. So we need to revise the GR once again:

GR*I: Treat others as they should ideally want to be treated.

But now we can clearly see that in order to apply GR*I one needs to have a theory of the good which tells one what it is persons ideally should want for themselves. Since the GR purports to be a moral rule or principle, let's assume that the term "should want to be treated" can be understood as meaning how he or she "morally ought to be treated." On this interpretation, the GR tells us something uncontroversial but also rather unhelpful, namely that we ought to treat people the way they ought to be treated.

To avoid this tautology, those who employ the GR as a guide to moral action must have a substantive ethical theory which describes the kinds of treatment which persons are morally entitled to receive. The GR*I will thus yield rather different prescriptions depending on which moral theory the agent has. If the agent is an ethical egoist he would want to be treated in ways that maximize his self interest. As Brian Medlin points out, it is doubtful that this principle can be consistently universalized. If the agent is an act utilitarian he wound want others to treat him so as to maximize the utility of all concerned on each occasion in which he is acted upon. On this view, the agent must be prepared to accept the fact that his or her own interests may be sacrificed at the altar of utility. If the agent is a contractarian he will want that others keep their agreements with him in cases in which he keeps his agreements with them. In this case, the relationship between the GR and the principle of reciprocity comes into focus. To the extent that the rules of morality can be viewed as conventions that are chosen and followed because they are in the long run mutually beneficial, the GR functions as a way of reminding us to be faithful to these agreements and the practices they support. If you would want others to keep the promises they make to you, then you are required to keep the promises you make to others. If the agent is a Kantian he will want others to treat him as an end in himself. If he is a virtue theorist he will want others to treat him so as to promote his eudaimonia, and so forth.

Depending on the moral theory of the agents who apply the GR*I, it will yield rather different moral prescriptions, and this feature of the GR may, as Paul Weiss has observed, be the basis of its nearly universal appeal, "because it allows and even tempts as many interpretations as there are modes of self-regard and systems of ethics" (Weiss 1941, 421).

But the GR can also support quite wicked actions if only the agent is willing to be treated in a similar fashion. If my ethical theory prescribes wanton murder and mayhem, and I am willing to be the recipient of such actions myself, then the GR does not rule it out. According to Weiss's analysis, for the GR to function as a moral rule three conditions must also be met:

(a) We know what we want.

(b) What we want is identical with what we ought to desire.

(c) What is good for us is also good for the rest. (Weiss 422).

The key conditions are the second and third – that we know how ideally we should want to be treated, and this idea of the good is valid for others. But how can we prove (a) and (b)? Kant provides at least the beginning of an answer. In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) he observes:

Let it not be thought that the common "quod tibit non vis fiery, etc." could serve here as the rule or principle. For it is only a deduction from the former, though with several limitations; it cannot be a universal law, for it does not contain the principle of duties to oneself, nor of duties of benevolence to others (for many a one would gladly consent that others should not benefit him, provided only that he might be excused from showing benevolence to them), not finally that of duties of strict obligation to one another, for on this principle the criminal might argue against the judge who punishes him, and so on. (note 7)

In the Second Formulation of the Categorical Imperative he proposes a different principle, that persons (both ourselves and others) be treated as ends in themselves rather than as means only. We can then reinterpret the GR as follows:

CI2: Everyone ought always treat all other persons as ends in themselves rather than as means only.

CI2 says that one should always regard other persons as rational agents in their own right who have a good in themselves and for themselves. In the case of competent adults, this is usually understood as entailing that one respect the other person's autonomous wishes concerning themselves. So, in the case of competent adult moral agents, CI2 is equivalent to GR* -- we should treat other adults in the ways in which they autonomously wish to be treated. This reading of the GR follows on the assumption that competent adult moral agents are the best judges of what is in their own good consists in. In cases involving minors or adults with impaired judgment or mental capacity, the alternate rule would be to do what is in their best interest, which is equivalent to GR*I in that it allows a substituted judgment as to what a person's good consists in. It does not, however, automatically assume that the agent's conception of his or her own good is a reasonable approximation to the patient's good. If the patient is, say, suffering from advanced dementia, then if I am their caregiver I ought to take care of various tasks for them, such as paying their bills, but I would not consider it in my best interest to have them take care of paying my bills for me. Kant's Categorical Imperative can thus be understood as an improved version of the GR. It is an improvement because rather than relying on a subjective and perhaps idiosyncratic conception of the good which an agent may have and which the agent may or may not share with the patient, it proposes a general conception of the good for rational moral agents that could in principle be embraced by all rational moral agents.

Kant claims that the second formulation of the CI is equivalent to the first formulation: Act only on that maxim that one can at the same time will to be a universal law. So then can the GR pass the universalization test? Not, it seems in the standard version, since I would not want other people to treat me in accordance with their conception of their good in cases in which their conception was mistaken or in cases in which it disagreed with my conception of my good. Willing the standard version of the GR would result in a contradiction of my will since in cases in which my conception of my good implied A and other agent's conception of his good implied ~A, I would be willing both A & ~A by willing that both of us follow the GR. I can, however, will the GR*I without contradiction since in this case if I am a competent and autonomous moral agent I would be willing that others treat me in accordance with what I conceive to be in my own best interests, and if I am not autonomous, then I would be willing that they treat me in accordance with what I should regard as in my best interests. In both of these cases, other agents would be directed to treat me as an end in myself whose best interests are morally considerable and should be taken into account in their decisions about how to treat me.

But Kant's theory provides only a "thin" conception of the good. A utilitarian theory attempts to put some additional flesh on the bare bones of respect for persons. Utilitarians often argue that in deciding how one ought to act one ought to take into consideration the interests and preferences of other persons as well as one's own interests and preferences. They also agree that one should be impartial and give equal consideration to the interests of other persons. In these particular respects, the GR captures the notion of equality of consideration that is found in utilitarianism. GR* expresses a moral rule that is similar to the Principle of Utility (PU) as understood by a preference utilitarian. If we assume that utility can be measured in terms of preference satisfaction, the preference utilitarian version of the GR would be to "Do unto others so as to maximize aggregate preference satisfaction of all concerned, where each person's preferences should be considered to have equal weight to one's own." This is similar to GR* which advises us to treat others as they want to be treated. However, the idea that people's preferences provide an adequate conception of the good is highly doubtful for reasons already discussed.

Perhaps only a fully developed virtue ethics can provide us with an adequate conception of the personal good that would apply with equal force to oneself as well as to others. According to the virtue ethics view what we ought ideally wish for ourselves is what will make us better people; but "better" in the virtue sense, that is, what will make us more just, more courageous, more charitable, more wise, and so forth. Ideally we should all wish that we become the most virtuous people we can be. This leads to a version of GR*I which tells us that we ought to treat others in ways that will make them more virtuous persons. Ideally, everyone ought to desire that they become more virtuous persons, since on this view, the attainment of virtue is considered to be the highest good for human beings. We should aim for eudaimonia (moral virtue, flourishing, or happiness) both for ourselves as well as for others.

This then leads to another version of the GR:

GR*E: Treat others so as to promote their eudaimonia.

GR*E is more adequate than the earlier versions, but is still lacking as a practical moral rule because it is not easy to interpret and apply. The specific actions that one ought to take in order to fulfill this maxim will vary depending on both the characteristics of the agent and also those of the patients to whom the actions are directed. Rather than a guide to practical action, the GR*E can function as a way of interpreting the Golden Rule so as to fulfill Weiss's conditions (b) and (c), but applying it depends on our knowing what virtue consists in and how best to promote it.

REFERENCES

Paul Weiss. "The Golden Rule." Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 38. No. 16 (1941): 421-430.

The Republican Party

2009-02-14T12:31:00.006-05:00

I must confess to being rather pleased with the way the Congressional Republicans comported themselves during the recent debate over the economic stimulus plan. They convincingly demonstrated once again that as a party they are intellectually bankrupt and have absolutely no new ideas. They are sticking to the same low taxes + small government ideology that got us into this economic mess. They continue to use lies and distortion and overheated rhetoric to disguise the fact that they see their job as blocking progress.

The majority of the people voted last November for change and hope. But the Republicans stood up resolutely for "No change" from the failed economic policies of the past, and "No hope" for preventing a further decline of the economic situation. While the President and the Democrats were busy trying to figure out a way the stop the bleeding, the Republicans were standing around trying to prevent the emergency plan from succeeding and complaining about how many bandages were being used.

I really do hope they keep it up. The politics of obstruction, their putting party ideology ahead of what is best for the country and its people, their insistence on digging even deeper into a political dry hole, is going to lead the Republican party further into the political wilderness. If they keep this up the Republican Party will end up as a club for angry white men from the South.

So my advice to the Republican leadership is "Keep up the good work!"

Vulnerability and International Humantarian Law

2009-01-20T08:06:00.013-05:00

The Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their optional protocols contain many elements that clearly derive from considerations of relative or special vulnerability. The VCP states that:

Moral agents acquire special responsibilities to protect the interests of moral patients to the extent that those moral patients are especially vulnerable or in some way depending on the actions and choices of those moral agents. (for more on the VCP see Ethics of Global Responsibility)

The core value of protecting human dignity found in international humanitarian law (IHL) parallels international human rights law (IHRL) but its principles are designed to apply in situations of warfare or armed conflict. The key principle is that of distinction or civilian immunity which requires that,

Parties to a conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants in order to spare civilian population and property. Neither the civilian population as such nor civilian persons shall be the object of attack. Attacks shall be directed solely against military objectives. (Crimes of War - An Educator's guide. ).

This principle, and the other core principles of IHL, such as concerning the treatment of wounded combatants or those who have surrendered, deal with what in just war theory is called jus in bello, that is, the law dealing with the moral and lawful means of war-fighting, not with the justification parties to the conflict have (or believe they have) for engaging in armed conflict, which is called jus ad bellum. Both parties to armed conflicts are equally bound by the principles IHL, whether or not they have a "just cause" for going to war. Moreover, the fact that one party to a conflict may have breached IHL and have committed war crimes does not give license to the other party to do likewise. All parties are bound by IHL at all times.

The VCP provides an ethical basis for the principles of IHL in that in situations of war and armed conflict civilians are clearly relatively vulnerable to harm as compared to armed, trained, and equipped soldiers. Civilians, whether they be women, children, or men who are unarmed and are not presenting a threat to military forces, must be protected because of their relative vulnerability. Similarly, soldiers who are wounded are vulnerable and must be protected, and so are soldiers who have surrendered and laid down their arms. It is a war crime and a violation of IHL to kill former combatants who have surrendered.

It is also quite counterproductive since if the opposing forces do not trust that if they are captured or forced to surrender they will be treated humanely, they have a greater incentive to fight to the death. In the closing days the WWII German soldiers more willingly surrendered to Allied forces than they did to the Soviet Army because the latter was under orders to "give no quarter" and take no prisoners.

The Geneva Conventions establish four general principles that are designed to regulate armed conflict so as to balance the attainment of legitimate military objectives with the protection of noncombatants:

1. Military Necessity: IHL seeks to ensure that there is a considered balance between civilian cost and military gain. The concept of military necessity acknowledges that armed forces have a legitimate interest in winning a battle or war, and that they can take military actions required to defeat their opponent. However, military necessity is always constrained by the humanitarian rules of IHL. Military necessity can never be a justification for violating the other rules of international humanitarian law, since it is already allowed for within the law.

2. Humanity: A principle that forbids the inflicting of suffering, injury or destruction not necessary for military purposes. This principle sets the framework for much of international humanitarian law, including restrictions on attacking civilian targets, use of unnecessarily cruel weapons, and humane treatment of prisoners.

3. Distinction (civilian immunity): A principle that attacks should be directed only against military targets. Some potential objectives are granted immunity, namely the general civilian population, places, localities, or objects used solely for humanitarian, cultural, or religious purposes (hospitals, churches, mosques, schools, museums, etc). Such immunity is lost if these localities are used for enemy military purpose. Yet, there is always a presumption in favor of the immunity.

4. Proportionality: A principle relating means to ends, used to determine the lawfulness of any armed attack which causes civilian casualties. "Collateral or incidental damage occurs when attacks targeted at military objectives cause civilian casualties and damage to civilian objects." "As formulated in Additional Protocol I of 1977, attacks are prohibited if they cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, or damage to civilian objects that is excessive in relation to the anticipated concrete and direct military advantage of the attack."(Ibid).

It is important to think clearly about these principles in order to understand the criticisms that international human rights organizations raise about the behavior of parties involved in armed conflict, since they base their judgments on these principles IHL.

So, for examples, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and indeed every responsible human rights organization, has condemned the firing to Qassam rockets by Hamas militants into Israeli towns and cities as a war crime. The reason is that these weapons are inherently indiscriminate and they are not being used against military targets; they are being used against the civilian population of Israel. No one would for a minute take seriously a claim by Hamas fighters that they are, in fact, not intending to target civilians, but only Israeli military targets, but that, unfortunately, the only weapons that they have available are inaccurate and sometimes miss their intended targets and cause collateral damage to civilians.

If a weapon is inherently indiscriminate and is likely to cause civilian causalities that are disproportionate to any conceivable military advantage that might be gain from their use, they should not be used. It is not sufficient, in other words, for parties to a conflict to merely claim that they are not intending that their weapons kill or injure civilians; they must act so as to insure that civilians are protected from harm unless "military necessity" requires otherwise. The act of firing rockets into cities is clearly not required by military necessity, so this case is an easy call for the human rights NGOs.

Other cases present greater challenges in applying IHL to concrete events. In recent days both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have issued reports criticizing the Israeli Defense Forces for using artillery shells containing white phosphorus in densely populated civilian areas of Gaza. (http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=ENGNAU200901199045&lang=e&rss=recentnews.)

White phosphorus is a highly incendiary substance that ignites on contact with oxygen. According to the Amnesty researchers who collected the evidence of its being used,

"Yesterday, we saw streets and alleyways littered with evidence of the use of white phosphorus, including still burning wedges and the remnants of the shells and canisters fired by the Israeli army," said Christopher Cobb-Smith, a weapons expert who is in Gaza as part of the four-person Amnesty International team.

"White phosphorus is a weapon intended to provide a smokescreen for troop movements on the battlefield," said Cobb-Smith. "It is highly incendiary, air burst and its spread effect is such that it that should never be used on civilian areas.”

"Donatella Rovera, Amnesty’s researcher on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories said that such extensive use of this weapon in Gaza's densely populated residential neighbourhoods is inherently indiscriminate. "Its repeated use in this manner, despite evidence of its indiscriminate effects and its toll on civilians, is a war crime," she said."

In recent days, before the cease fire, white phosphorus artillery shells landed near an UNRWA compound and al Quds hospital causing fires and civilian causalties.

We warned the Israelis hour by hour through the night of the vulnerabilities here as the shells came closer and closer, and shrapnel was coming into the compound on a regular occasion," John Ging, UNWRA's Gaza director of operations, told the media. "Nonetheless, we have now been subjected to these direct hits."
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert apologized for the attack, but said Israeli forces had come under fire from the UN compound. "It is absolutely true that we were attacked from that place, but the consequences are very sad and we apologize for it," he said. (http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/01/16/israel-stop-shelling-crowded-gaza-city)

The doctrine of "military necessity" is sufficiently vague as to make it a difficult call as to whether the behavior of the IDF in this case was in fact a war crime. If indeed it is true that there were Hamas fighters attacking IDF soldier from or near the UNWRA site, then it is possible that military necessity required the use of these weapons in order to protect IDF soldiers on the battlefield.

Nevertheless, both AI and HRW have called for the cessation of the use of white phosphorus shells in Gaza, based largely on the pattern of evidence that the use of white phosphorus shells in crowded civilians areas is likely violate the principle of discrimination:

Human Rights Watch believes that the use of white phosphorus in densely populated areas of Gaza violates the requirement under international humanitarian law to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian injury and loss of life. This concern is amplified given the technique evidenced in media photographs of air-bursting white phosphorus projectiles. Air bursting of white phosphorus artillery spreads 116 burning wafers over an area between 125 and 250 meters in diameter, depending on the altitude of the burst, thereby exposing more civilians and civilian infrastructure to potential harm than a localized ground burst.(http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/01/10/israel-stop-unlawful-use-white-phosphorus-gaza).

On January 7, 2009 an IDF spokesman told CNN, "I can tell you with certainty that white phosphorus is absolutely not being used." But on January 17th AI's researchers found indisputable evidence that it has been used in Gaza. The BBC reported on January 15th that white phosphorus shells had been used against the UN compound, and that doctors in hospitals had been treating many civilians with serious and unusually painful burns that are consistent with exposure to white phosphorus. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7831424.stm)

It appears that the IDF may not have been wholly truthful when it denied its use of this weapon, but of course, control of information about battlefield methods and tactics is standard operating procedure. But, given the evidence, it is hardly credible that the IDF took every reasonable precaution to prevent civilian casualties in the Gaza conflict. It is not sufficient to claim that civilian casualties in Gaza were not intended and that they are regrettable: international humanitarian law requires that the strong take every reasonable precaution to protect the weak, defenseless, and vulnerable from unnecessary harm and injury. Given the high number of civilian casualties produced the the Gaza war, it is evident that the IDF did not do this.

The fact that Hamas is also guilty of war crimes, and that it may have employed civilians as human shields, a practice that is also a war crime and a violation of IHL, cannot be used to condone or excuse Israeli violations of international humanitarian law. Israel is responsible for its own behavior. As the smoke clears and reveals the damage produced by this conflict, I expect it will become increasing clear to unbiased observers that the Israeli military action produced an unacceptably disproportionate number of civilian casualties relative to the military objectives it achieved.

The Open Society and Its Enemies Today

2009-01-07T06:50:00.009-05:00

The term 'open society' connotes personal liberty, tolerance, transparency, and democracy. It was employed by the French philosopher Henri Bergson to describe political cultures that are non-authoritarian and based on the twin pillars of personal liberty and human rights. But it was another European philosopher, Karl Popper, who gave the term its popularity when he chose it as the title of a two volume study of the roots of totalitarian and fascism that he wrote during the Second World War.

When his book, The Open Society and Its Enemies (OSE), was published in 1945 his primary target were the "closed societies" of the time, the totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Popper's main goal in this work, and in his Poverty of Historicism (1957), was to trace the historical roots of these totalitarian ideologies in the history of western thought. In the first volume of OSE he argued for a heterodox interpretation of Plato's Republic which Popper portrayed as the source of the idea of utopian social control. In the second volume he attempted to show that influential nineteenth century thinkers, particularly, Hegel and Marx, adapted Plato's dangerous ideas and set them loose on the world in the form of utopian holistic historicism. While Popper vigorously opposed these systems of totalitarian control, he was emphatic about the need for open societies not not to tolerate intolerance and warned repeatedly that in order to safeguard liberty we must be constantly vigilant about forms of social control and intolerance that would subvert the possibility of openness. We must, he argued, "claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant" (OSE vol.1, p. 265).

More than sixty years after OSE appeared we live in a much more open world. Nazism was defeated and forever discredited; the totalitarian regimes the former Soviet Union and its planned economy has likewise fallen and has been replaced by a market economy and somewhat greater tolerance of dissent. The Chinese are this year celebrating twenty five years of economic liberalization that has ushered in an era of unprecendented economic growth and prosperity for the most populous nation on earth. There are only a handful of totalitarian societies left today. One can mention the regime in North Korea, the military dictatorship in Burma, as perhaps also al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other religious extremist groups who seek to create an Caliphate that will enforce an orthodox form of Islam.

But we should also understand that there are enemies of the open society in our midst. These foes of freedom and reason employ more subtle means of silencing dissent, sowing division, and promoting intolerance and bigotry. These enemies employ forms of propaganda and thought control designed to control what people think and believe in democratic societies, and unless we learn to recognize their tactics, we can fall prey to the threat of closing our minds to new ideas and frustrating the process of inquiry.

The idea of a open society is based on tolerance of difference and indeed the celebration of diversity of race, of religion, of politics, of culture, of taste, of values. Open societies value plurality and oppose homogeneity and above all purity. But a culture of tolerance of openness is vulnerable to various forms of lies, deception, and manipulation. By being open such societies are vulnerable to attack from elements within the society that seek to close it, not in the crude way of earlier forms of totalitarianism, by excluding people or ideas from full participation in it, but rather by sophisticated techniques of thought control and manipulation of public opinion. These techniques have gotten out of control in American politics and have created a culture of deception, in which every kind of lie and deception is tolerated and indeed celebrated as "spin".

Noam Chomsky was among the intellectuals to clearly understand this threat. Writing in the 1980s in books like Necessary Illusions and the Manufacture of Consent, he identified the forms of thought control in democratic societies that are used by the enemies of liberty and democracy to maintain their power and privilege. They employ sophisticated techniques of public relations, advertising, and propaganda to manipulate public opinion. They use the "big lie" favored by Hitler and Goebbels; they engage in revisionist historical myth-making; and they distort language in ways that Orwell would have recognized so as to make things appear other than they are. In an age of mass media and mass communication, these techniques are even more potent because those who employ them are able to use the media as an electronic megaphone to pour their poison into the ears and eyes of millions.

The the recently deceased playwright Harold Pinter was another voice who warned us about the dangers of lies and deception particularly by politicians. He contrasted literary truth, which is in his view multifaceted, and partly subjective, with factual truth:

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

He used the occasion of his receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature to denounce in not uncertain terms the way in which, in particular, the United States government lied about its reasons for invading Iraq saying that:

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading -- as a last resort -- all other justifications having failed to justify themselves -- as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.

But exposing lies can be a challenging enterprise. In order to prove that someone is lying one must first show that the statements he or she made are factually false, then one show that the speaker believed that these statements were in fact true, and finally, one must prove that the speaker intended to deceive his or her audience by claiming certain things to be true that he or she believed to be false. Because politicians can easily conceal what it is they believe to be true and their intention to deceive, our political culture is rife with lies. But it is also awash with something else that may be even more common and more insidious --- bullshit.

I am using the term "bullshit" here in a precise, philosophical sense identified by Harry Frankfurt in his small book of the same name. In this work Frankfurt defines bullshit as speech that has no regard for the truth, but is chosen because it is likely to influence people's perceptions of reality. Lies and bullshit are closely related, in that they both involve misrepresentation: in order to lie, one must believe that something is true and then speak with the intention to make one's audience believe the opposite of what one believes to be true. Both the honest person and the liar must therefore have some regard for the truth. The bullshitter, on the other hand, "does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose" (p. 56). As Frankfurt further explains the distinction between lying and bullshit:

What bullshit essentially misrepresents is neither the state of affairs to which it refers nor the beliefs of the speaker concerning that state of affairs.... What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise.... Both he and the liar represent themselves falsely as attempting to communicate the truth. The success of each depends upon deceiving us about that. But the fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something that he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor to conceal it. (pp. 53-55)

Frankfurt's analysis of bullshit allows us to distinguish between bullshit and fiction. When a writer of fiction, such as Pinter, or any other novelist or playwright, writes without regard for the truth, we do not call it bullshit because there is no attempt to deceive us into thinking that the speaker is attempting to tell the factual truth -- he or she is asking us to willingly suspect our disbelief and play along with the fictional premises of the work of art. Writers of fiction aren't interested in reporting the truth or concealing it, but neither are they trying to conceal that fact. But bullshitters are; they are trying to make us believe they are speaking truthfully when in fact they have no regard for the truth at all.

There is no better example of bullshit than "Joe the Plumber" from last fall's presidential campaign. Here is a guy, Samuel J. Wurzelbacher by name, who asked then candidate Barack Obama a question about the implications of his tax policies by portraying himself as a licensed plumber who was planning to buy his boss's business which he claimed was worth $250,000. In fact, as we later found out, Mr. Wurzelbacher does not have a plumber's license, his bosses' business is only worth $100,000, he himself makes $42,000 a year and owed back taxes on that amount. "Joe the Plumber" represented himself as a hard-working and successful small businessman, but in fact he was a fraud and what he said was total bullshit. He did not care whether the premises of his question were true or false, all that mattered to him was that he thought he could get Obama to admit that under his proposed tax policies he would be subject to an increase in his marginal tax rate. He just made up facts to suit his purpose.

So what happened to this bullshit artist? Instant meida celebrity and, at least among the Republican faithful, Joe to Plumber became a symbol for the notion (also bullshit) that Obama is a socialist because he favored having rich people pay a modestly higher marginal income tax rate. Rather than being ridiculed and publicly shamed, Joe the Bullshitter was lionized.

Our media culture is awash in bullshit. It is full of speech that does not even attempt to communicate truths or make claims whose veracity can be rationally assessed. Most people no longer seem to be interested in truth; what matters is someone's ability to lead his audience to accept something, or as Stephen Colbert says, to believe things on account of their "truthiness". We are suffering from "truth decay" that is rotting our ability to determine what to accept as true and worthy of belief.

The key question for defenders of open societies is how best to respond to this brown tide of bullshit that is polluting our public discourse? The financier George Soros, who was a student of Popper's, and whose main philanthropic foundation is named the Open Society Institute, wrote an interesting editorial commentary that identified the reason why lies and bullshit are threats to an open society:

Popper failed to recognize that in democratic politics, gathering public support takes precedence over the pursuit of truth. In other areas, such as science and industry, the impulse to impose one’s views on the world encounters the resistance of external reality. But in politics the electorate’s perception of reality can be easily manipulated. As a result, political discourse, even in democratic societies, does not necessarily lead to a better understanding of reality.

Soros argues that, "the separation of powers, free speech, and free elections alone cannot ensure open society; a strong commitment to the pursuit of truth is also required." He suggests that we need to have new ground rules for political discourse, that we need to inoculate the public against various forms of deception by exposing them to public scrutiny, and that we need to name and shame those who use them. Likewise, Pinter concluded his Nobel speech with these words, "I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory."

If in order to protect an open society we should not tolerate intolerance and bigotry, then neither should we tolerate lies and bullshit. In traditional closed societies, the pursuit of truth is frustrated by techniques of social control that limit dissent and critique of current orthodoxies. But in democratic societies such as our own, the pursuit of truth is under an even more insidious attack. By tolerating and rewarding bullshit we indicate that the truth does not matter; that one need not consider it as relevant at all. All that matters in a society that tolerates so much bullshit is that people come to believe what the bullshitters want them to believe, at least for a while.

What is to be done about the bullshit storm? I suggest that our first line of defense is to put our bullshit detectors on high alert and be prepared to recognize it and name and shame those who use it. I see some evidence that this kind of response to bullshit and deception is beginning to appear more frequently in the mainstream American media. As a long time reader of such publications as the Nation, the New York Review of Books, and Salon.com (not to mention Chomsky and Pinter), I am used to learning that the things reported in the mainstream corporate new media are lies and bullshit. But I have recently been amazed that correspondents from these liberally biased news media have begun to become regular guests on cable TV news shows such as Keith Olberman's Countdown and on the Rachel Maddow Show. What I appreciate about these cable new shows is that their hosts, Olbermann and Maddow, are not afraid to name and shame the liars and bullshitters. The other night, for instance, in talking about the flap over Pastor Rick Warren claiming that he never compared gay marriage to incest and pedophilia, Maddow simply showed a video clip of Warren saying that he is opposed calling relationships between brothers and sisters, men and children, and men with multiple wives "marriage" and that he believes that gay marriage is comparable to them. She nailed him in a lie and he was even a finalist for the "Denial is not just the name of a river in Egypt" award for the most barefaced lie of the year (Sen. Ted Stevens won that one).

Olbermann and Maddow are, of course, using humor and political satire as defenses against bullshit; a technique pioneered by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on their wildly popular late night shows on Comedy Central. Using comedy to convey political criticism is a great anti-bullshit technique because comedy, like fiction, is not supposed to be taken seriously as an attempt to speak the truth. However, like fiction, one can invert their assumption by mocking and making fun of those who lie for a living -- what Olbermann calls professional prevaricators -- and with tongue in cheek, outing their deceptions. While seeming not to be pursuing the truth, one can speak truthfully about what others are lying and bullshitting about.

The Blogosphere is, of course, also full of bullshit, but it is sometimes a good place to go to find bullshitter detectors doing their duty. The You Tube effect, shown, for instance, with the "macaca" episode involving the Virginia politician George Allen, came from blogs that posted the video showing exactly what Allen had said. Politicians no longer have plausible deniability when there are video cameras on everyone's mobile phones.

To be continued....

New Look for 2009

2009-01-07T06:42:00.001-05:00

I have decided to change the looks of this blog, delete the old posts from past years, and start over with new resolve to keep it up to date with comments on current events.