Was the war worth it?

In a recent article Time magazine asked whether the war in Iraq was worth it.

I was against the war from the beginning because I sensed that the motives behind it weren't right. There seemed to be an ulterior motive behind it and the politicians involved were not being straightforward about it. I didn't trust the characters involved.

It is too soon to tell whether the war in Iraq war was worth it or not. Perhaps in 20 years. I believe in time it will be grudgingly accepted as so.

Was the Vietnam War worth it? Yes, I believe in the long run it was. Vietnam, especially North Vietnam, was an isolationist nation, not wanting to be part of the greater world. That war forced it to open up. Today, Vietnam is one of America's closest associates, in trade and travel. That war also led to America’s rapprochement of China under Richard Nixon, diffusing possible future conflicts in that part of the world.

Wars, history has shown, have facilitated and forged the world's determined path towards globalization. The Iraqi war, in a characteristically perverse way, as the Vietnam war did, is furthering that process. Saddam Hussein was resisting that process by not cooperating with the rest of the world. Hence, to my way of thinking, the war.

It is unfortunate that the present administration in Washington was so deaf to the advice given it by other, advice that could have made the war in Iraq a success. If the troop levels had been higher, as many in the know had insisted, Iraq today may be more settled and secure. If the troops had protected the existing infrastructure of Iraq, like the hospitals, the energy grid, museums, security forces, things would be much easier. But, then, this administration was from the outset inherently incompetent, because neoconservatives were running things, people who are overly ideological and naive.

Francis Fukuyama, of "The End Of History" fame, originally supported the idea of "regime change" in Iraq. However, he soon changed his mind when he saw how inept and poorly the administration was executing the war. His neocon brothers seemed to be out of their depth, not fully examining and understanding the consequences of such a war. They hadn't learned from the past or the first Iraqi war, ignoring it as though it was irrelevant. He recently wrote an article entitled "After Neoconservatism" in which he voiced his concerns about how neocons are running the war and how it will affect future American foreign policy.

Fukuyama recently discussed the intellect of neocons with the French intellect Bernard-Henri Levy. I don't view the neocons aligned with Bush as particularly intellectual or deep thinkers. They tend to be like MBAers (Master of Business Administration), which Bush also happens to be, who don't or can't see the world as multidimensional, who think the world can be improved or corrected with just a few tweaks. (They are suspicious of intellectuals because they see them as cluttering things up.) If they had thought more deeply about Iraq they may have taken a more coherent, sensible approach in trying to establish democracy there. Democracy is contingent on many things. The Bush neocons thought it would be a cakewalk, done with a few broad strokes. (It took the West centuries to develop and try to get it right.) That is why Fukuyama stands apart from his neocon brothers, because he is a more complex thinker. I don't think of him as a neocon in the conventional sense, but as a pragmatist. If Bush and his neocons had practiced pragmatism - a philosophy ideologues like them detest, - the mess in Iraq would probably not exist today.

Unfortunately, Fukuyama may have had a hand in encouraging neocons to think the way they think, with his "end of history" idea. (I tend to agree with his idea). His idea is that the liberal democracy practiced in America and much of the Western world had become the final form of human governance may have wrongly emboldened neocon. He came to that conclusion because liberal democracy was the only form of human governance left standing after it only rival, communism, collapse. It had triumphed over all others form, implying that it was the holy grail of human governance and that its spread shouldn't be impeded To simplistic thinkers like neocons, such an idea was cart blanche. It made them hubristic and cocky in that they thought they could rightly throw America's hegemony around and it would readily be accepted throughout the world, because, as Fukuyama opined, history had fashioned it that way.

Larry Diamond of Stanford University's Hoover institution was quite exited about going to Iraq at the beginning to help establish democracy. He is an expert on Democracy and he was on a mission, a kind of new frontier mission, landing on the moon. He naively thought democracy was doable in Iraq. He soon had his eyes opened and realized that if you don't have security, which Iraq was loosing rapidly, democracy is not possible. He soon returned to America, saddened and disillusioned. Voting alone was not sufficient enough. Democracy needs institutions to uphold it and they would take years to establish In Iraq.

America and the world have been trying to establish democracy in Haiti for years. After ten years things there are not any better there, but worse. That shows how little we know about what generates and keep democracy afloat.

Sadly, in this world, we sometimes have to get things very wrong to eventually get them right. It shows the perverseness of our development and human advancement. There still is no manual in how to establish democracy in countries that have never experienced it before. It still seems to be a secret as to what really makes it work. Democracy is a system that has developed through try and error. That is what America seems to be experiencing in Iraq.

English as number one.

Perhaps it is arrogant and chauvinistic of me to think that English should be the number one international language since it is the only language I know and am happy to know. Nevertheless, it is my opinion, and judging by its extensive use, from air traffic control to global commerce to the Internet, that English is the only language that is capable of connecting this complex and unavoidably interactive world. It is the chief means of communication between nation with umpteen languages, like those in Scandinavia and Europe. Moreover, it seems logical to me that English should be the international language because it is the mother tongue of democracy and market-oriented economics, the dual system that has virtually come to govern the world.

That English has nurtured and facilitated the world's key governing principles (human rights, rule of law, economic theory and practice, etc.) is an excellent reason why it should be the international language. Those principles were born and cultivated in the British Isles where English started, and from where they were initially exported worldwide. Yet, such an argument doesn't fully explain why English is at this juncture the chosen language of world affairs.

I found a good explanation for English’s predominance in "The Journal of The English-Speaking Union". One of its contributing authors concluded that the dominance of English was significantly due to its being "in the right place at the right time". That makes sense. For instance, English was rightly positioned in two world wars, as the language of the winning side. As a result, English gained a special status, first as the chief language in the fight for freedom, with the efforts of Britain, its colonies and the United States, and then as the language of reconstruction of its defeated enemies. It was the language of triumph. This certainly helped galvanize English as the world's premier language. In the aftermath of the war it became the language of international treaties like those dealing with trade and currency exchanges.

I see a parallel relationship between Democracy's ascendancy and English's ascendancy. English has developed as a user-friendly language, where the user is generally in control of its use. Other languages are not as democratic or user friendly, less flexible and more dictatorial about their use. English is quite a democratic language in that it is organic, constantly adapting and modernizing. I think it is also significant that the two major countries that speak English are the countries that have exported democratic ideals and principles. The Magna Carta, the nascence of democracy, was written in the British Isles. The United States is the one who established lasting democracy in Germany and Japan, the defeated enemies. The U.N., an institution devoted to encourage and reinforce democratic principles and human rights around the world, is headquartered in an English speaking country. English is a modern language. Democracy is a modern governance. The two have a lot in common.

French also had the opportunity of being the international language because it was the instigator of a very important world activity, diplomacy. As the years went by, though, the French and their language lost out to English because of France's losses in colonization, and the influence that went with it. As a result, French was relegated to a second tier language. In directly, those French losses resulted in an introspection, which manifested itself in a protectionist attitude towards the French language which in turn made French less flexible than English and thus less attractive as an instrument of global communications.

Because Chinese is the most spoken language in the world, it could become the international language that English is now. However, I don't think so because it is a very difficult language to learn and use. Another drawback is its inflexibility. This became apparent when China and Taiwan were discussing their separation (Taiwan essentially is a rogue state of China that broke away during the communist revolution) and Taiwan's right or non-right to independence. They had to turn to English for the sake of clarity and reason. Had they continue their exchange in Chinese, the chances of an international incident were very really. Their turning to English may have prevented a war between them. English's usage allowed a vagueness, which English is good at, to enter the discussion, allowing for the ambiguous interpretation of such absolute Chinese terms as nation, state, self-determination, freedom and equality, which otherwise would have been fighting words.

The above explanation of why English is or should be the number one international language may be on their own unsatisfactory, but as a whole those things are what have facilitated English's ascendancy Yet, English itself can also take credit for its rise to the top. As a consummate opportunist it has enrich and advance itself by borrowing from other languages, in the process making itself flexible, resourceful and extremely relevant. However, one historical circumstance above all has given English the opportunity of being number one. Had it not been for the world becoming a sufficiently connected place, the need for a central language of communications would never have been possible or necessary.

Film

I belong to a philosophy forum. A suggestion was made that a 'film club' category should be added to it. I voted against it. Then I realize I may have been too hasty in my decision. When I voted I was thinking it would just turn into a geeky discussion and go of track. But then I thought of the impact movies have had on society since their inception. That impact, I thought, can best be articulated in a philosophical way.

There are many negative aspects about movies, like gratuitous violence and sex. However, I think movies generally have had a positive influential on society. Their mass apply has developed common bonds of understanding. They subliminally have helped align society to function in a coherent fashion, developing common modes of behavior and tastes. In America, where the genre was basically invented, films have helped many new immigrants assimilate to their adopted land. They have also helped expand modernity and democratic values throughout the world. They have, in a perverse way, expanded knowledge in their portrayal of historical events. As propaganda they were encouraging and supportive in defeating the enemy in W.W.II. Often, though, they just have been pure entertainment, a release, like circuses for the masses.

The impact of movies can be enormous. Some impacts are just trivial. Nevertheless, they are indicative of the influence of movies. I remember my father telling me that in one movie Clark Gable was bare chested and not warring at least the customary under shirt. In the following weeks of the release of that movie under shirt sales plummeted and never recovered. A similar thing happened in the wearing of hats by men. Sales of hats dropped as movies portrayed men not warring them as they once did.

Some of the impacts are real and not trivial. Movies can be effective in drawing out social issues that would otherwise be avoided or overlooked. They can raise awareness and provoke much needed discussion. In most respects this task now has fallen on television. But movies still carry a lot of weight in raising conscience. Tom Hanks’ movie “Philadelphia” raised awareness to the needless and thoughtless bigotry displayed towards aids victims. After the movie a more sympathetic and less superstitious attitudes developed towards this once taboo subject. Movies help get out the message and dispel the wrong-headedness that so often has accompanied uncharted social waters. Movies that once portrayed Jews and African Americans as inferior and marginal now portray them as part of the main stream, helping to break down racial barriers and change social attitudes toward them.

There was a time when drunkenness was romanticized on the silver screen. Eventually that stereotype died away under social pressure, helping curtail the number of accidents due to alcoholism. Smoking has declined over the years because similarly it was no longer romanticized in the movies or accepted as a social norm as it once was.

The other day I saw a move called “Far From Heaven”. It was appropriate that I saw it again because of my writing this article. It came out in 2001 but took place in 1957. It was deliberately given a 1957 flavor, in how it was filmed and how it was musically scored. It dealt with two contentious issues that for the most part have been defused today, homosexuality and racial segregation. However, the power of this movie made me feel that those issues were still divisive and with us, that racial segregation and anti-homosexual attitudes were still part of our culture. I remember movies made in that era which portrayed homosexuality and interracial relationships as abhorrent acts, leaving the feeling that they would always be so because the cultural consensus of the day said so. However, many moviegoers back then felt uncomfortable with the discriminator behavior they saw depicted on the screen, about how people were being attacked and marginalized just for being different or themselves. In their discomfort those moviegoers helped change perception and attitudes in future generations. Though this movie reflectively showed how far we have come in changing things, it also was a reminder that we still have a distance to go in making society a truly just and equitable place for everybody.

It is hard to measure how much movies have influenced social change, in making things more just, representative and equitable. My sensibilities, though, tell me that such change could not have happened without the movies, this larger than life art form.

Civilization has needed and had many facilitators to help develop and ease it along, like philosophers, theologians, lawyers and scientists. In the 20th century movies also have played a major role in facilitating and mediating society and individuals, helping us in how we ought to organize and govern ourselves. Some will argue, though, that movies have also perverted society with mindlessness repetition and excessive portrayals of sex, violence and hedonism. All I can say to that is, like all human endeavors, this enterprise also has its negative aspects, its down side. However, overall movies have made life richer and more tolerable.

Holiday in Kariwak Village

I must tell you about the extraordinary vacation I had in February. For openers, it was extraordinary because I did something I said I would never do, go to the Caribbean. Why I never wanted to go there is because I am not a sun worshipper or one to sit around the pool. Anyway, I went to the island of Tobago.

English friends who have been going there for years finally persuaded my wife and I to holiday there. We first arrived in Trinidad and then had a four-hour layover before we continued on our journey to Tobago. I arrived grumpy at our final destination because of the long journey, the lack of sleep and our having to wait for our room. However, the grumpiness soon went as I became acclimatized to the place.

While on vacation I happened to read something about Karl Marx. I tend to search for connections between the things I experience simultaneously. In this case I was searching for a connection between Marx and the surroundings I was in. The connections I made made my vacation more extraordinary and memorable.

Marx was a utopian. The setting I was in seemed utopian to me. Marx believed that the recognition and emancipation of the proletarian - the common workingman, would lead to a utopia. According to Marx, the proletariat's struggle with its opposite, the bourgeoisie, for better pay and working conditions, would lead to a utopia. My feeling was that this vacation spot, Kariwak Village, was populated by the proletarians Marx believed one day would be liberated and become equal to the bourgeoisie. In fact, the proletariat bad become like the bourgeoisie, now also having the money to afford extended vacations in far away places.

The day before we arrived Freddy Laker had died. I read his obituary in The Times, which our friends brought from London. Almost instantly I made a connection between him and this holiday retreat, and also between him and Marx. He was deeply connected with this time and place. Moreover, perhaps he was the one most responsible for the sustainability of this place. You see, he is the one who really made air travel affordable to the masses and the proletariat so they could vacation in such places.

Laker convinced governments to deregulate the airline industry, thus bringing about lower airfares. Lower air fares to such destinations as Tobago also had its Marxist liberating effect on the people that lived in them. It helped bring employment and opportunities to the local people who otherwise wouldn't have them. As The Times put it, Laker saw himself as the champion of the 'forgotten man'. In that thinking he was not only a capitalist but also a true Marxist. Marx would have applauded his helping to emancipate the proletarians and his treating them better and as equals to the bourgeoisie.

Besides there being a connection between Laker and Kariwak there is also a coincidence. Laker's low priced airline, the first in the world, started in 1977. Kariwak Village was started in 1977. It's as though something was in the air; as if they anticipated each other. It's as though the founders of Kariwak sensed a growing need for destinations like theirs. It's as though Laker sensed a growing need for ordinary people to get to vacation spots like Kariwak. Both enterprises were preparing for a growing travel surge, from a public that had more leisure time and money to spend. Both needed the other to succeed. Laker supplied the low airfares and the Kariwaks of the world supplied the destinations.

Kariwak Village considers itself a holistic center. I am one who thinks in holistic terms about the world. Marx was a holistic thinker also, thinking of the world as one. He anticipated globalization and proletarians around the world thinking alike. The tourism that sustains the Tobagos and the Kariwaks of this world is truly a phenomenon of globalization

Our hostess and one of Kariwak's cofounders, Cynthia, is not only gracious but is also a holistic person. If she wasn't I don't think she could or would have envisioned such an enterprise, which require holistic thinking and many different components to succeed. When I mention the connections I had made she looked at me in puzzlement. However, I think I convinced her that all three players I have mentioned are connected, that all are part of the larger scheme of the world, one of globalization and interconnectedness. All have helped facilitate this holistic process.

Does it Matter?

John Maynard Keynes, perhaps the most celebrated economist of our time, once said something to the effect that “in the end it doesn’t matter because we are dead”. He may have said that as an after thought when he was explaining to governments how they could improve their economies. What he meant by that statement is that in the scheme of things it doesn’t real matter what we do to improve our situation because in the end we are dead and we wont know the difference. Nevertheless, I found it an extraordinary thing to say because it does matter what we do while we are alive. And he knew it. Talk about being paradoxical.

What Keyens said makes sense on one level, that in the end it doesn’t really matter. We all understand that. But what about in the interim, before we die, while we are alive? At some point it may not make a difference to the world when we die or whether we accomplish anything. But what about the future and the next generations? I think it makes a difference whether we leave this world with a working legacy or not? So in the end it does matter.

What made me think of Keynes statement is my own writing and whether it matters if I write or not. Who cares? Well, I care. Perhaps it may not mean anything to anyone else whether I write or not or what I write about. Why I write is because I am interested in developing ideas and discussing things that aren't generally thought about. In doing so I can see an enhancing process in me, one which parallels an enhancing process that occurs in society as it does its business and discusses things. What I am trying to say here is that the essence of life is in the doing. So what Keynes said, if taken too literally, is counter productive.

I can’t remember the name of the book, but it is a book that basically said the same thing I said above, that the essence of life is in the doing, in remain engaging and pushing the envelope. The author of this book wrote that when societies work to increase economic production and strive to expand thier lot in life, societies tend to improve and advance. Some might argue the opposite, that expanding our economic capacity and individual wealth, instead, creates more problems for society, like further ruining our environment, creating material shortages and spawning new social ills, rather than advancing us.

The idea that society becomes worse off because of economic expansion and because of our striving for more material wealth was questioned by Julian Simon. He was an optimist. However, as an economist he was also a realist. A colleague of his explained that Simon “believed that the world needs problems because they make us better. Problems make us better off than if they had never occurred.” Simon's conclusion fits right in with my theory that we develop through perverse means. If things were always right, humans wouldn't have to struggle or do anythings. The essence of living is in the doing and resolving, more so than in the final outcome.

Here is one example of Simon's optimism and his not being wrongheaded. In 1980 he bet a group that in ten years the commodity prices of five metals would be below where they were then. During the decade that followed the world's population grew by 800 million, the greatest increase in history, and the store of metals didn't get any larger. And economic production grew during that time. Yet in 1990 the price of those metal dropped by more than half. Shortages and escalating prices brought about a positive effect, conservation, innovations and alternatives. This example turns Malthusian theory on its head, which believed, some 250 years ago, that Civilization would not be here today due to it not being able to sustain itself because of its growing population and increasing consumption of dwindling resources.

I am sure Simon would agree with the author above, whose name I can’t remember, that the expanding of economic activity is good for us because it engages us in new ways, with new problems that require new problem solving. The knowledge gained in one area, like economics, has a way of finding its way to other areas of life, translating itself in other social areas, overall expanding and improving our management and communications skills.

What Keynes said has sort of a defeatist attitude about it. By thinking that way, that in the end it doesn’t matter, because we are dead, sends out a negative signal, like what’s the point of living or trying to resolve problems. I am still puzzled by what he said. However, I think he said it partly in jest and partly in the fact that he knew he was dying.

The Paradox

One of the first books I read about globalization was “Global Paradox” by John Naisbitt. I bought it because I wanted to learn more about globalization. As Naisbitt put it, there is a paradox about globalization in that it makes the world economically bigger and smaller at the same time. After finishing the book I wanted to know more about the paradox.

Naisbitt took it for granted that the reader instinctively knows what the paradox is. Most of use have a cursory knowledge of what it is. It is a phenomenon. But what is a phenomenon?

Knowing the paradox is not easy. I couldn’t find a satisfactory explanation for it. But, then, I was not thinking of it in the traditional, philosophical sense. I was thinking of it as a mechanism, as an action thing, as a phenomenon. What I found instead were explanations for things inanimate. I interpreted Naisbitt’s global paradox to be organic, something that animates and motivates things. He portrayed it as a force that causes change in the world, not as something lifeless and benign.

Hoping to find support for my interpretation, I looked up the paradox in a philosophy dictionary. There, however, I found it described as an abstraction, difficult to understand. There was nothing animating or life-like about it. Then I read a book that discussed the role of the paradox in writing. It described the paradox “as the ‘schizophrenic presentation’ of two or more possibilities, each having equal claim to validity”. It also said that the paradox is a “child of polarity, a linguistic construct by which we give expression to our polarized human existence”. As a linguistic construct it animates what is written through a ‘creative tension’, generated by the ‘schizophrenic’ polemics it incapsulates. A Shakespearian example was given to show this linguistic construct at work where Juliet calls Romeo a "beautiful beast", two conflicting ideas but in combination very revealing and animating. A physical example of the linguistic paradox at work would be the opposing poles of electricity, each also having equal claim to validity, schizophrenically engaging in the creation of energy. This is how I see the paradox, as a power house, a sort of dialectical dynamo.

“The paradox is a child of polarity.” The paradox, then, resembles something in nature, like the the opposite poles of electricity. One of my articles was about contradiction and it being central to reality. Contradiction also is a child of polarity. The paradox and contradiction are related. Contradiction is the stuff of dialectic engines. The paradox is also a dialectical engine. This engine animates, energizes not only the written text but also the world we live in. It also creates and makes things possible. For instance, if the paradoxes of up and down, in and out didn’t exist we wouldn’t have the space we live in.

In many respects globalization and paradox are the same. Both are events. Both have deep meaning and create situations that are puzzling. They both send out mixed signals. Both are mechanisms that facilitate the human enterprise.

The other day I read a blog article that reminded me of the paradox. It presented an explanation for the metaphysical nature of the world. I think it did a good job. The article was entitled "entropy and dialectic".

The article explains that those two events or forces have put pressure on the world to become what it is, globalized and similar. Basically it is this, entropy deconstructs systems of culture and governance all over the world and as they reconstruct and renew themselves they become more alike, following the principles of the second law of thermodynamics about open and closed systems. Communism is a good example of a closed system which suffered permanent entropic damage and then reconstructed itself in its rival's image.

The dialectic, the article argued, adds the paradoxical element to globalization. It is the brain working, saying that despite the growing similarity we don't want everything to be the same. Culture resists sameness. In resisting while also melding with similarity we become wiser and more sophisticated because we are challenged with new concepts and alternatives. The paradox educates and improves our skills because it engages us with conundrums that require dialectical thinking and solutions.

Though entropy and dialectic are two different occurrences they are related. Entropy itself is part of a paradoxical relationship administrated by a form of the dialectic. Entropy is one side of the thermodynamic coin, the side which is about decline and disorder. The other side is about conversion and renewal. Entropy applies to thermodynamics' second law which refers to decline. Renewal applies to the first law. The second law says that in the end systems will come to an end. But the first law says that systems can continue if they are managed well and rejuvenated. What renews and rejuvenates systems is a type of dialectical, polemic action that converts ‘energy’ from less to more, from bad to good, as the first law says. These laws highlight the fundamental paradoxical nature of our world.

The world is always in flux. This flux is due to the polemic nature of the world. Naturally, it is paradoxical flux.

Capitalists and Labor.

The other day I read an article about the violent acts perpetrated by organized labor in the United States during the latter part of the 19th century and into the 20th century, when labor was first organizing. The writer of the article, a conservative, portrayed these violent acts as terrorist acts and blamed them on the growing liberal/progressive element of the time. There is a constant theme to the articles written by this author, one of liberal/progressives bashing and that they throughout history have been the ones who have encouraged and cultivated the environment for terrorism and anarchy.

The liberal/progressives he speaks of in this article worked to advance a just and humane society in America. The author considers those liberal/progressives as subversive elements because in trying to create better working conditions for labor they were disrupting the righteous, free flow of capitalism. According to what I read in this article it was all right for capitalists to exploit labor and deny it better working conditions and salaries but it wasn't all right for labor to demand better treatment for its workers from capitalists. The inference I got is that labor should have been grateful to capitalists for creating jobs and to bad about the abuses perpetrated by them. After all, according to what was inferred, the abuse is part of doing business. However, I don't see those early labor agitators as terrorists or anarchists but as perhaps desperate and cornered people who had little or no recourse to address their labor grievances, hence the violence.

Let me make myself perfectly clear. I don't condone violence. Anyone of reason cannot condone such activity. However, sometimes it has been the only means of recourse because the injustices and intransigencies instigated by humanity wouldn’t resolve themselves through reason. Violence, as we know, gets one's attention like nothing else. And unfortunately, sometimes there is no alternative. It is the means of last resort.

I really don't understand why the writer is against the labor movement. But then, he is a conservative; a state that tends not to support labor unions. And as a traditionalist he has a warped sense of how society ought to function, in a particularly structured, 'ruling class' way. He doesn't realize that the labor movement has had as much a part in creating the capitalist/democratic system we live in, which he seems to admire, as capitalism. The conflict between capitalism and those who have struggled against it for better wages and working conditions is what has made America what it is today, a reasonably decent place to live in. Because of what the labor movement has done for America he should be supportive of it rather than denigrate it.

The struggle between labor and management is what has given capitalism and free-market economics its legitimacy. If capitalists ran the whole show without labor’s input, as our writer suggests should have been the way, capitalism would have destroyed itself long ago like Marx observed. Marx believed, and rightly so, that capitalism's contradictions would be the death of it. Contradictions must to be resolved. Labor has challenged capitalism’s contradictions and altered many of them so as to make it fair and accessible to all. I don’t think our writer who is anti-Marxist wants to prove Marx right. So instead he should be supportive of the labor movement.

The way I understand it, our writer believes that from its beginnings capitalism was a fully developed system, like there was some sort of manual/bible out there on how it ultimately should be conducted. No. Capitalism has had to learn itself and its mode of operation from the bottom up just like has every other worthwhile system of human governance. The labor movement and the violence it sometimes provoked were part and parcel of its development. If capitalism had been full of clarity and wisdom from the start about how to properly conduct itself it would have known initially how to treat labor properly and avoid all the violence that has occurred in its name. But it didn't, hence the need for labor's participation to help shape it. It is, after all, a two way street.

Humans have always learned best and more convincingly through experience. An a priori wisdom has never been enough. For instance, just because the Ten Commandments told us how to behave we didn't follow it advice. No, we have learned its wisdom by first breaking its rules. True wisdom has always been gained through experience, practice and transformation. The free market place of ideas and commerce we reside in today was developed this way and unfortunately also through violent clashes, as those between labor and capitalism.

Capitalism on its own, without the labor movement, would have truly created a system of the survival of the fittest, a system to benefit a few, a system that would eventually have destroy itself or brought barbarians to its gates. Our writer’s criticism, though, is legitimate and worthy because such criticism in the larger arena has helped temper some of the outrages committed by the labor movement. As a criticizer of the labor movement he serves the same great purpose as those who criticize capitalism, tempering capitalism's extremes and helping to make it into something everybody can survive and benefit from, not just a few.

Natural Law II

I showed an acquaintance , JB, the article I wrote on “Natural Law”. I think he was impressed and thought I captured its essence pretty well. Interestingly, he focused on one particular idea I mentioned, “ruling class”.

One thing JB said that is interesting is, “rudimentary to ruling class is the concept of the ‘survival of the fittest’. He said that those two concepts are essentially conservative ones, confirming what I thought. What he said also added support to my argument that the person who originated the phrase “survival of the fittest”, Herbert Spencer, was a conservative. I was challenged on that point by another acquaintance.

JB wrote “natural law is unavoidable and it is the reason why neither communism or socialism are a viable system of economic and human governance”. I agree with him. It is an idea that I have been trying to articulate in past essays. He is saying that natural law doesn’t only apply to human existence but also to governing systems. What ‘natural law’ and ‘survival of the fittest’ are saying is that communism and socialism were not fit to survive because they didn’t follow natural law, the law of the ‘jungle’, which says that you have to remain current and adapt if you want to survive. Also, those systems tried to circumvent and reinvent natural law. All systems have to renew themselves to survive. That is natural. Communism in particular was inherently incapable of renewing itself. There are forces in nature that eat equally away at both physical and abstract systems. Natural law cannot distinguish between them. Abstract systems like human governance suffer from the same deteriorating forces of atrophy and entropy as do physical systems. They suffer from ware and tare, obsolescence and neglect. In physical systems parts have to be replaced. In abstract systems ideas and methods have to be replaced. Both systems also require maintenance. Communism, unlike Democracy, was incapable of replace worn out, static methods and ideas in its governance with new and fresh ones, Inherently it didn’t have the means or compulsion to do so. Communism succumbed to the dictates of natural law. It couldn’t avoid them. Hence its collapse.
 
“But also a natural law is the human desire to "level the playing field" for those unable to do so on their own. So no matter the dismal historical outcome of such efforts, we try and try again...thinking that we just have not hit on the right combination yet...struck the right balance so to speak.” After reading that I think natural law can be manipulated and transcended. How did I deduce that from what JB wrote? Let me explain.

There is Natural Law and then there is natural law, the latter is the advent of humans. Humans, in a sense , have transcended some aspects of Natural Law. JB implies this, although not intentionally. First of all, he believes and said, like a true conservative, that natural law says there are those who are born to govern and those who are born to be governed. But he is also saying that in doesn’t necessarily have to be that way because of the desire to “level the playing field”. For instance, there have been people from humble backgrounds with no governing experience that have become presidents and prime ministers. Such a transition has occurred mostly under Democracy, a system that has transcended and transformed the natural laws of the past. Natural law now believes more in equally than it did in the past, leveling the playing field as JB said. Whereas in the past natural law said it was only natural for kings and monarchies to rule, it now says it is natural for anybody who thinks she/he can be a leader to be a leader. Natural law doesn’t discriminate like it used to or is socially imposed as it used to be. Today’s natural law also says you don’t have to remain poor because you were born poor. It also says that one can move beyond one’s ‘station’ if one has the ability or desire.
 
I sort of get the impression that JB thinks, showing his conservative colors, it is futile to for people to try and transcend natural law and the ‘stations’ in life they have been handed. However, America, where he resides, is a great example of transcending what was once presumed to be social nature law. For instance, social natural law in the past was totally against same sex relationships. However , today it is almost as natural as heterosexual relationships. Also, years ago it was believed that blacks would never be equal to whites. That’s no longer is naturally accepted. I remember reading that in the 50’s it was natural to think that Jews, minorities and women would never rise to senior management position in large corporations. It also was unnatural for them to be in politics. Today those old natural laws have been transcended and the world has not fallen apart.

Natural law

I’ve had trouble understanding “natural law”. Some traditional conservatives and religious people talk about it as thought it should be the guiding principle of life. One article defined natural law as “the innate sense of morality that is believed to be written on people’s hearts and can be divined by human reason.” An encyclopedia defined it the “ theory that some laws are basic and fundamental to human nature and are discovered by human reason without reference to specific legislative enactments or judicial secessions.” It goes on to say, “Natural law is opposed to positive law, which is human-made law, conditioned by history and subject to continues change.” I am still unsure of it.

I guess there is a connection between natural law and religion because it is mentioned as a basis for morality and common sense. The Ten Commandments is a form of natural law because they do make common sense and are hard to argue with. Perhaps it also has to do with the idea that humankind is an extension of God. The rational behind that, I would think, is that God has instilled in us certain unalienable, 'God' given rights.

There is a connection between natural law and natural rights. John Locke (1632-1704) made the connection. Natural law and natural rights are connected because they both make perfect sense. A natural right Locke said individuals have is the right to own property. This natural right is a corner stone of America’s Declaration of Independents. In the Declaration it is worded as the right to pursue happiness. It was worded that way so as not to sound mercenary and selfish. In the Declaration there also are other natural rights Locke spoke of, the rights to life and liberty. It is also natural and natural law to think, Locke said, that one’s own labor is one’s property, belonging to them and should be paid for if employed by others.

Natural law and positive law are not as opposed to each other as one might think. In theory they are supposed to be. But in practice they aren’t that estranged. The Declaration and The Constitution of the United States together is a perfect example of this. The Declaration spells out the natural rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the Constitution encompasses the positive law that respect and uphold those natural rights. The framers of the Constitution knew full well that people by nature wouldn’t or couldn’t uphold and practice natural law on mere faith, just because it was declared as self-evident. For it to be respected and endure, natural law has to be supported by positive law of legislation and the courts.

I don’t think it is a coincidence that natural law emerged as an idea when it did, during Locke’s time. At the time the scientific revolution was in full swing and philosophers and scientists were beginning to understand the mechanics and logic of nature. They believed if such logic exists and works for nature why could it not be applied to the organization and workings of humankind. The word natural became synonymous with things that make sense and work. It was reasoned that if natural law and its derivatives was applied to the working of humankind and society they would function better and more logically.

Edmund Burke, the supposed founder of modern conservatism, didn’t believe in natural law. I thought he would have because today’s conservative do. However, conservatism in his day was different. He believed in a class structure and wasn’t for the common man. Natural law and its natural rights meant that under it the masses would be liberated and have input in the running of government. Burke didn’t think the masses were capable of organizing and governing themselves. A ruling class should continue to exit, he thought. Today, however, natural law is a cannon of conservative thinking. In Burke’s day it was viewed as liberal thinking. That reversal emphasizes something I have been thinking about, the topsy-turvy relationship that exists between conservative and liberal thinking, often trading places on issues.

I don’t think natural law is as natural as it is made out to be, especially when it comes to natural rights. I guess they feel natural because they obviously feel instinctive and inherently right. They are, after all, hard to argue with, like it is hard to argue with Mother Nature. However, it took some deliberation and education to open our eyes to them, to discover they were natural and inherent to all of us. It took someone like Locke to point out that they are and should appear as self-evident. He pushed the idea of natural rights as a way of making government realize that they are responsible to us, their constituents, not the other way around. When Locke first introduced them to us they didn’t appear to be so natural. However, now that we have a greater awareness and understanding of them they come to us as ‘second nature’, like the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. What could be more natural?

Finally, I think natural law implies a responsibility. If we are to expect natural rights like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness we must show responsibility and know they come with strings attached. They shouldn't be abused. And if we are to have them for ourselves we must acknowledge them for others. Also, natural rights require a vigilance because there is always someone around who wants to deny them to us. If we take them to much for granted we could lose them. And that is also natural law.

Darwin everywhere

All of a sudden there is a lot of 'Darwin' out there. Everybody is talking about Darwin. He has become a metaphor for a a whole host of things, from religious to business causes. Religious arguments use him to make the case for or against ID/Creationism or evolution. Business arguments use him to forward the idea that companies have to change and evolve to remain competitive. Traditional conservatives use Darwin to bash liberal/progressives and their evolutionary ideas.

There is a new business book out called " Dealing with Darwin". It emphasizes the importance of renewal and remaining flexible in the business world in order to continue to be competitive and alive. I think ID/Creationists should read it in order understand a major principle of evolution in the human domain.

I bet we are still evolving to stay ahead of the game.

Bias

I just read about the shelving of a glossy, monthly publication put out by the U.S. state department. The publication, Hi Magazine, was meant to influence the Arab world so that it would look more favorably on America. Its shelving obviously means that it failed in its mission of propagandize to the Arab world.

What came to mind as I read about this magazine's demise is the idea of bias. I was wondering whether this is an example of conservative bias. Is it conservative bias that did it in? After all it was put out by a conservative administration, anxious to gloss over its rock bottom image. Maybe bias is not the right word to use to explain its demise. But one definition of bias is the idea of being misleading. Another is the idea of something being warped. Why this magazine failed is because it appeared to be slanted and dishonest. The Arab world saw through its bias and ideology, finding it misleading and warped.

Conservative bias is what did in this magazine. Liberals never would have attempted this kind of bias. Liberal bias is more open faced and up front in comparison to conservative bias. Conservative bias in this case presented a whitewash and the Arab world saw it for what it was.

There is something sad about this publication, with its conservative viewpoint. It is sad that it was even considered necessary to publish such a glossy propaganda piece. There was a time when America didn't need this kind of sleazy self-promotion. America's image used to be a positive one. But since the neocons took control of the government, declared war on Iraq and have pushed their weight around, America's image has taken a beating around the world. There is a mean spiritedness, self-righteousness about the present conservative administration in Washington. And the world feels it. The sad thing, and also naive, is that these conservatives thought they could gloss over America's tarnished image with a glossy, bias publication.

A UCLA study has revealed the extent of the liberal bias in the media. It is overwhelmingly liberal. Conservatives say, see we told you so and say that this doesn't bode well for news gathering and reporting. According to them liberal bias in the press distorts social values and doesn't reflect the true nature of things. Well, I would say the opposite is true. I would say that the press is meant to be liberally biased because if it was conservatively biased the true facts about life wouldn't come out and we would have more useless publications like "Hi Magazine". It is the conservative bias in the press that does not reveal the true nature of things. That is why many of them want to take over the press, because they want to hide reality and paint pretty pictures instead.

The conservative bias and propagandizing displayed by the "Hi Magazine" episode reminds me of another time, of communist and totalitarian regimes. To get out their distorted, fabricated message those regimes would 'spin the word' and gloss over reality so as to remain in power. History shows that trying to corner and control politics and society in such a way inevitably fails. Not only do we have a front row seat viewing such a failure occurring again with the demise of Hi Magazine but also with the unravelling of the neoconservative agenda and ideology in Washington. Liberal bias may be exaggerated. But this exaggeration is really a defense mechanism against the persistent attempts of totalitarian, conservative bias to take control. Liberal bias, in a sense, is the guardian of the truth.

Bias in the media will always exist. Liberal bias, though, is preferable to conservative bias any day because it is more open and unvarnished. It also deals with the underbelly of society, something most conservatives would rather not expose. And by not wanting to expose reality, like the realities of Aids and homosexuality, conservative bias often has made things worse by covering things up, glossing them over and being in denial. Overall, liberal bias takes more kindly to being challenged about its claims than conservative bias, making for a more spirited dialogue.

The publication of Hi Magazine is an example of the naivety of conservative bias, thinking that it can improve the world through childish and parochial antics. To make the world better conservatives should be more outward and open-minded, like liberals and their bias.

Hypocrisy - "Evolutionists for Stalin"

I just finished reading an article entitle "Evolutionists for Stalin". Sounds a lot like “Spring time for Hitler.”

The article blames Darwin's theory of evolution and its materialism for the atrocities of Stalin and Hitler. I find that a mighty stretch. I also find a liberal bashing behind the author's conclusion. As a traditional conservative he believes the bulk of societies ills are due to liberal ideas. Darwin's theory of evolution, in traditional conservative thinking, is a liberal idea, responsible for the atheism that led to fascism, tyranny and a whole host of other problems that have befallen humankind.

Hitler and Stalin acted on something Darwin theorized? One might just as well blame the second law of thermodynamics for their atrocities. That excuse was used in the French Revolution.

I had to read the article again because I was amazed at its conclusion. In a sense its argument passes the buck. It is not like traditional conservatives to blame a doctrine or theory for somebody’s criminal actions, as in this instance. Under conservative thinking people are supposed to be responsible for their own actions. According to conservatives, people are the source of their own criminality, not society in general. However, conservatives recently have been doing what they accuse liberals of, blaming a particular social order for their own failings.

I say that conservatives have failed and are hypocritical because they didn’t try hard enough to stop Hitler or Stalin in their nasty deeds. Conservatives are the ones who didn’t want to enter WW2, an entrance that could have tackled fascism and totalitarianism at the outset.

It was a conservative, a conservative!, Herbert Spencer, who first twisted Darwin’s theory and applied to the social order. He is the one who said that life is about 'the survival of the fittest', not Darwin, as many believe. He was the one, who drew it from Darwin’s theory of evolution, a theory, as we know from reading here, traditional conservative detest. However, conservatives rallied around that mindset once, as a template for organizing society. As I said, that idea suited them once. They thought it would help create the ideal society. Now I understand that is not the way they think because that idea has caused too much brutality in the world. Sounds hypocritical to me.

Conservatives in America detest FDR for having introduced socialistic policies, in the form of the New Deal. He wanted to make a better society than the survival of the fittest conservative dogma offered. So he enacted the New Deal. With it he wanted to temper the harsh consequences of a survival of the fittest society. To this day conservative detest the New Deal because of its attempts to level the playing field between rich and poor. In contrast Hitler and Stalin continued their conservative thinking in their adhered to the conservative dogma of the survival of the fittest. On this side of the Atlantic many conservatives admired Hitler and insisted in not getting involved in WW2 to stop him. They thought he was creating a model society. Sounds hypocritical.

It is the conservatives in America who wanted to continue doing business with Hitler. In so doing they were essentially appeasing him. According to conservatives, appeasement is supposed to be a liberal failing. They always go on about how we liberals are appeasing the terrorists by criticizing the war in Iraq. And they continually point to Neville Chamberlain and how he appeased Hitler by negotiating with him instead of declaring war. Ironically, Chamberlain was a conservative. I guess this is another example of how hypocritical conservatives can be because they are also capable of appeasement.

It is farfetched to say that Darwinian thinking was responsible for Hitler and Stalin’s atrocities. It is as farfetched as thinking that Bush type thinking - hubrisic, self-righteous, unilateral, isolationist, was responsible for 9/11. Come to think of it, I do think that type of conservative thinking was responsible for 9/11. It brought it on with its mean-spiritedness, shallowness, lack of insight and ideological fervor.

I wonder what caused humankind’s atrocities before Darwin came along? I suspect conservatives might say they were caused in anticipation of Darwin.

Fascism

Lately there has been a lot of interest in fascism. It probably has to do with the mood and the circumstances of our times, what with the war in Iraq, the rise of fundamentalism, the concentration of power and the growing disparity between rich and poor.

I just read an article by Paul Bigioni entitled “Fascism then. Fascism Now?” The article is meant to be a warning because as the author says we seem to be repeating history. Bogioni writes about corporate monopolies, which he argues, are at the crux of contemporary fascism. He sees parallels between today’s monopolistic business practices and that of Mussolini and Hitler's fascistic practices, which led to W.W.II. He also sees Bush&Co’s pandering to the rich and its war on terrorism as signs of fascism. I agree with Bigioni that things aren’t as egalitarian, equal and open as they should be. However, I don’t think we are headed for the serious kind of fascism of the past, as Bigioni seems to think.

The word fascism is bandied around so freely as to sometime be meaningless. We often use it wrongly, such as when we feel alienated and put upon. I looked it up in wikipedia, the free Internet encyclopedia, and it said, “there is little agreement among historians, political scientists, and other scholars concerning the exact nature of fascism.” However, it is generally associated with authoritarianism where citizens are dominated by a specific political ideology, something Bigioni sees occurring. It certainly is contradictory to democracy.

Someone asked, “ How do we ferret out the fascism that is ingrained in our behavior”. I like the question because it acknowledges the fact that we are all capable of fascistic behavior in one way or another, like we are all capable of doing evil, unawares of course. Hence, I don't think you can truly ferret out fascism. It is an inherent trait. I also believe it is ingrained institutionally- a reflection of human nature, in the way we organize and govern ourselves. In democracy we have learned to contain and counter this ingrained behavior. We do it through perverse means, by encouraging competing fascisms. America is a good example of this. It is replete with competing fascisms. By cultivating competing fascisms in business and government, democracies keep the bigger fascism of the past in check. In democracies the fascism of the ‘state’ is kept in check by the fascism of the media, capitalism, special interests and an open, churning society. An example, Bush's Social Security fascistic reform was kept in check by the fascism and the special interest of Social Security’s beneficiaries.

I remember hearing somewhere that fascism meant justice. Somebody said that Mussolini might have coined the idea, as the combination of corporate and state power. Bigioni wrote something that perhaps supporting that idea: “Mussolini spoke of a ‘corporate’ society wherein the energy of the people would not be wasted on class struggle. The corporation would resolve all labour/management disputes; if they failed to do so, the fascist state would intervene.” Mussolini suggested that under fascism a class struggled would no longer exist. That may have been interpreted by some as a form of justice.

I learned that "fasces" was an ancient Roman symbol, a staff with a double-sided axe on top, which Mussolini appropriated in trying to recreate the grandeur and power of Rome's past. It may have become a symbol of justice, like a judge's gavel, I was told. Moreover, the fascist states of Mussolini and Hitler also used Roman type symbols and props profusely to portray their authority, like insignia's and emblems on marching staffs and event backdrops. As it happens, Bush&Co. uses such backdrops to convey its power and propagandize its messages, a behavior that mirrors past fascism behavior. Fascism also is about staged events like those Mussolini and Hitler held, events that don’t usually reflect reality, again, something that Bush&Co is guilty of. Fascism, then, is an 'ism ' that masks reality.

In his article Bigioni more than suggests that liberals are responsible for fascism. Conservatives tend to blame liberals for all sorts of societies ills. The argument goes that liberals are the ones who brought us socialism, which in turn spawned fascism. Today, Bigioni writes, neo-liberals are responsible for the rise in fascism. He writes, “Under the sway of neo-liberalism, Thatcher, Reagan, Mulroney and George W. Bush have decimated labour and exalted capital”, capital meaning big business.

I thought those people he mentioned are conservatives. I guess conservatives are also capable of fascism.

Existentialism

I was debating about what to write on next. Should it be about existentialism or natural law. Then I thought, perhaps I should combine the two. I have the habit of combining odd things. (One odd combination was Hegel and thermodynamics.) Do they have anything in common? I'm not quite sure but let’s give it a try.

I became intrigued in existentialism after I heard one of our public figures refer to himself as an existentialist. The idea stayed with me and I couldn’t shake it off because, as I discover, I am also one. However, it is only until recently that I started delving deeper into the subject. I was reminded of it again by the recent 100th birthday of Jean-Paul Sartre, another self-professed existentialist.

There is a debate about whether Sartre coined the term existentialism. I was reading an article about existentialism and it said that it isn’t an easy philosophy to define or explain. There are all sorts of variables and varieties involved. One thing is certain, the individual is the central feature. I imagine existentialism comes from the idea of extension, the extension of oneself. Existentialism is about how one views oneself in the context of the world. In other words, the way I see the world is an extension of myself. If I imagine it to be flat and backwards, it is. If I imagine it to be round and progressive, it is. One conducts his/her life according to how they see it. Now, since everybody who is an existentialists is cognitively different, each extension of oneself is different. No wonder, then, the difficulty there is in defining what an existentialist is. I know that I am a different existentialist from the public figure I heard say he is. However, one thing that most existentialist believe is that the world is improvable.

One thing that is common to all existentialists is the idea of responsibility, that we are responsible for our lives and if we cause any wrong we should take responsibility for it. We are never victims. We are reflective but not to the point of undermining ourselves. Another thing I understand we have in common is that we are our own best friend. We have no heroes because we are our own hero.

Sartre said that “existence precedes and rules essence”. That sounds existentialist; saying that the individual is not born with an essence but creates its own essence as it goes along. In other words, we are what we make ourselves. Our nature is our nature, not one the world has imprinted on us.

However, I think there is a kind of arrogance in thinking existentially. There is an enlightened conceit about it. There is the believe that one is the product of oneself. I find that hard to believe in its totality because a lot of it has to do with circumstance, mainly with what kind of environment one is brought up in and what opportunities one has. I think one’s essence also has to do a lot with what preceded one. For instance, whether one comes from a bourgeois background or not has a bearing on it.

Kierkergaard (1813-1855), a Danish philosopher, was the founder of the idea of existentialism. I think he developed it to counter Hegel’s universal outlook, that the essence and being of human existence is derived from the collective. Kierkergaard believed this essence initially and fundamentally is derived from the individual, that the individual is the starting point from which ideas and existence flows, just like an atom is the first principle of existence. I tend to agree but I also believe that neither institution, individual or collective, can exist without the other. They feed off and help define the other.

My connecting existentialism and natural law will have to wait because I am still pondering it. I have a feeling, though, that existentialists draw from natural law to form their world view.

Polemos

When I first started thinking about the way of the world - the workings of the world - the idea of conflict entered my mind. I am not talking about warfare or violence but the conflict of ideas, institutions and the human struggle, like a competitive conflict. I sensed this phenomenon to be as natural an occurrence as night and day. What is more, I felt that our society fosters and cultivates this conflict as though it is a life force. Let’s see if I can explain and convey this idea.

I prefer to use the word polemics rather than conflict because it doesn’t have the same negative connotation. As it happens, polemics comes from the Greek word polemos which means conflict. To my ear polemics sounds more constructive, like in electricity. Electricity is a good example of what I mean. It has two conflicting poles or forces like in polemos. I wonder if the two are related. They do sort of have the same spelling. Anyway, the poles in electricity polemically engage each other to produce a current of energy. Can you visualize the polemic activity and the creation that is going on between the two poles? This is how I see polemics in our society, as a mechanism and a dynamo that propels and energizes us.

Polemics is a corollary of contradiction. Everything has it contradictory, opposite number without which nothing would or could exist. Things define themselves through opposites. Heraclitus, who originated the dialectic, a process based on polemos and contradictory opposites engaging each other, said "if you do away with contradiction or polemics (I added polemics) you do away with reality". He intuited this phenomenon more than 2500 ago in ancient Greece. “Heraclitus asks us to imagine the polemos is common to all things”, like contradiction, like in night/day, up/down and male/female.
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Being argumentative comes to mind when polemics is mentioned. One is also being dialectic when one is being argumentative or polemic. When one is being any of these things one is usually electrifying and animating a situation. These type of exchanges are incremental and add to the proceedings of life. “Unity is found in the constant balancing of opposites”.

My last post was about liberal democracy. Liberal democracy is a human governance that embodies the social polemics I am talking about. There the liberal ideal of human organization is pitted against the democratic ideal, two ideals I distinguished in my last easy. The clash of these opposing ideals makes for a dynamic and meaningful form of governance. Without that kind of engagement there wouldn’t be the ‘creative tension’ that has become so essential in maintaining modern society. This is one reason why this form of governance has ascended to the top, because of its unique sense of polemics and it application.

I believe that polemics and politics are related. They sort of sound the same and work on the same principle as opposites. However, I had no means of connecting them until I discover Karl von Clausewitz, a Prussian general and military theorist, who made the connection for me. Two hundred years ago he said this, that “war is a continuation of politics by other means”. In that utterance Clausewitz joined polemics - war in Greek, and politics, recognizing them to be the same, satisfying me that they are one in the same. At least Clausewitz has give credence to my idea.

Today, for the most part, the polemics of politics has replaced the polemics of war. Politics has essentially supplanted war. Good thing that it has because humankind can no longer afford to be as warlike as it once was. It needed another outlet and a better way to resolve its differences. The world of today can not endure the equivalence of a WW2 and its more sophisticated weapons. Whereas once the conflict of war defining humankind, the polemics of politics now does. Polemics, however, is still essential for driving humankind as Hegel knew when he said, “Humankind needs conflict, and its reflection, to remain alive and awake”, so it doesn't atrophy. Polemics stir and stimulate us. As Clausewitz might say today, politics is the continuation of war by other means. Politics is certainly more pragmatic and less destructive than war.

I am fond of saying, “Litigation creates Civilization”. Litigation is typically polemic, as socially and politically polemic as you can get. The core of Civilization is about methods, procedures and how to conduct ourselves. Litigation is the polemic exchange in which, through the clash of opposing interests and ideas, such as in liberal democracy, we have devised our civil code and social policies. Civilization was born from nothing. Polemics is what has given it its definition and substance. Whereas once warring polemics did most of Civilizations bidding, today, for obvious reasons, polemic politics has become its chief bidder. In our politics we have the quintessential polemics, liberal vs conservative. The Constitution of the U.S., the most admired piece of legislation, was hammered out through the litigation of both liberal and conservative positions. Litigation is also what upholds and dispenses it.

Liberal Democracy II

I made the claim that our society under liberal democracy is the most successful ever. I was challenged on that statement. The challenger said that our society and liberal democracy have not been around long enough for us to judge whether it is the most successful or not. She wrote that “The longevity of Chinese society appears to have a pretty good claim for ‘most successful ever’ and they don't appear to have needed capitalism nor democracy to achieve this”.

I have to define what I mean by successful.

I see liberal democracy as the most successful form of human governance ever because it is the only one left standing. Its last major rival was communism whose reign and influence ended in the 1980s. No new alternatives have appeared since to challenge it, which means to me there is nowhere else for human governance to go. Liberal democracy is the culmination of centuries of experimentations on how to ideally govern humankind. From its beginning humankind has steadily grown closer and more connected. In its connectedness humankind has needed a uniform type of governance. Liberal democracy is with us because it is the only one up to that task. The fact that liberal democracy has not been fully implemented around the world is another matter. That is not a reflection on its viability or legitimacy. However, liberal democracy will always be a work in progress. That is the beauty of this system, that it is always growing and redefining itself so as to reflect the changing needs and aspirations of society, like no other system before. It is not a perfect system but considering the disposition and idiosyncrasies of humankind it is the best that can be had.

Another reason why it is the most successful is because it has empowered the most people. Liberal democracy has empowered more people with the bestowing of freedom and the right to purse self-interests than any system before. China may be a successful civilization but it rarely empowered anybody, until now. In embracing capitalism, China today is slowly empowering its citizens with the right to pursue their own self-interests, to be materialistic and property owners. With private property will follow democratic reforms, as it has in the West. It is already happening. The Chinese constitution was changed recently to guarantee some property rights. The Chinese are also becoming more vocal and demanding in their materialism. Many with means are now traveling freely and seeing the world, unlike before. That is success.

Liberal democracy is slowly imposing itself on China and making a difference. With the recent outbreaks of SARS and bird flue China has been forced to be more open to the world because it is no longer an isolated state. If it wants to continue to trade with the rest of the world and maintain its economy it has to be transparent on such matters as health. Ironically, with this new and necessary transparency its people are slowly gaining democracy because it opens a dialog between the Chinese government and its people. In such matters the government has to get the cooperation of its people and that procedure in itself is democratizing. Admittedly it is happening in baby steps. Nevertheless, it is happening.

Ironically, as China develops it will become more polluted and its citizens will gain more control over their lives. Citizens will demand more pollution controls, better health care and truthful answers. Those demands will translate into their having a greater voice in the running the country and their gaining a more accountable, transparent government.

Some people will ask, what is so great about empowering people? It’s a recipe for a more dysfunctional society, they’ll say. That’s an old argument. Instead, empowerment is one way of discouraging dictatorships. Moreover, from an economic stand point it is a win-win situation. For instance, it is from the empowerment of people to pursue self-interests that society finds the solutions to its needs and problems. (It is empowered individuals who discover the technologies and techniques that keep humanity alive and healthy, not governments.) In the past, China, under its total dictatorship, relied on committee rule to find and develop the solutions it needed to continue. In the long run that was a disaster. In time, though, some insightful Chinese leaders realized that the state alone could not meet the needs of its people and solve the problems the modern world imposed on them. They turned to capitalism to do that job, a first step towards liberal democracy.

Liberal Democracy

A political philosophy forum asked the question "How should society he organized, if at all?"

The last part of question is redundant because society needs organization. There would be no society if it wasn't organized.

It was during the Enlightenment that the question of how our society should be organized was first seriously posed. Today I think that question has been answered. Through the process of elimination the world has come to the realization that liberal democracy is the only alternative for organizing society in the modern world. The fact that it hasn't been fully implementation is another matter.

I don't think it is an accident that liberal democracy has percolated to the top.

Liberal democracy is the combination of two governing ideals. 'Liberal' comes from the idea of people being free to pursue their own self-interests. It is also associated with the free market system - capitalism. Democracy comes from the idea of the collective, that society should function as one and organize for the collective good.

It is easy to see how these two ideals may oppose each other and can be incompatible. However, this kind of opposition within organic, living systems is replete throughout the natural and physical world. Every system has its binary system in order to remain vital and reproductive. The human race has its male/female. A Day has day/night. The space we live in has up/down. Computing has the binary code of 1 and 0. The human brain has two hemispheres and electricity, the most famous binary system of all, has its two opposite poles of -/+. All those systems are alive and successful because of their bipolar nature. Everything that exists has two dimensions of itself. If this kind of makeup is essential for success in the natural, physical world why would it not also be true for human governance. The reason why we have evolved into a dualistic system of governance is because it is the only way, as nature has shown, to keep it alive and continuous.

A Russian philosopher by the name of Berdyaev, during the birth of the communist regime, foresaw that if you build a governing system based on a single theory it will inevitably end up in a dictatorship. As we see, he was right.

Communism and liberal democracy were the last of the governing rivals. The outcome of their rivalry determined how society should ultimately be organized. Today the ascendency of liberal democracy is filling the void left by the collapse of communism, a sign that there is no other alternative to what transpired.

Democracy

The other day I encountered a woman who didn't believe we live in a democracy. I said to myself, obviously she is being very subjective. Then I wondered, what made her that way and I, on the other hand, to think that we do live in a democracy. Maybe we have different definitions for democracy. Some people thing it is just about voting and being heard. Others like me see it as far more complex, as a total environment, contingent on many things. And it has to be different and alternative things because it serves many masters.

Some people think we don't live in a democracy because voting doesn't accomplish or change anything. They feel they have no influence. They feel unappreciated and left out, alienated. I said to the woman that the ownership of property is a sign of democracy because when you own something one gets a measure of recognition and appreciation from the community. And you can speak out and demand things because of it. But, she said, apartment dwellers don't own property, so how do they get recognition. I said, well, they own property with respect to their labour. Nobody can take that away from you without something in return. That's democracy. Also, apartment dwellers have debts and owe money. And when people owe money they get recognition and respect from their lenders because lenders like to get their money back. It's tacit but that is also part of democracy.

Someone asked me to give some examples of the contingencies democracy depends on. I said I mention one, private property.

As Arthur Schlesinger, Jr wrote: "Democracy is not possible without private ownership because private property - resources beyond the arbitrary reach of the state - provides the only secure basis for political opposition and intellectual freedom". As we know, private property is not always tangible. There is one's labour, which I mentioned, and intellectual property. With the ownership of property comes a whole host of protective devices that feed into democracy. I think that the establishing and recognition of private property in places like Haiti would go a long way in helping establish democracy there.

So many of democracy's contingencies are negative things for most people, like capitalism, mass media, secularism, pluralism, utilitarianism and globalization. Nevertheless, those things reinforce it while sometimes appearing to erode it. Democracy is a perverse system.

Another thing that democracy is contingent on is a middle class. The middle class brings about the mass property ownership that the system of democracy depends on. Democracy is also contingent on security and stability. (That's one reason we need a central government, one that is effective and efficient.) That is one reason why it is going to be so difficult to establish democracy in Iraq, because of the lack of them.

It is also contingent on people like us, us being generations of people who have practiced and taken it for granted. It is in our blood. We don't have to think about it. Democracy is an esoteric enterprise. It has taken us a long time to develop and accept it.

P.S.

I just read something that I think backs up my contention the conservative governance occurs within liberalism, written by a conservative: "The public supports conservative presidents so long as they leave alone the liberal programs that benefit them."

"Pervasive Pessimism"

I just read an article “Pervasive Pessimism” by Jan Larson on the conservative blog site “The American Daily” (www.americandaily.com/article/9747). I took exception to it because I found it distorted, rabid and flagrantly wrong. I wrote Larson about it and this is what I said. I edited my original letter to be clearer:

Dear Mr. Larson,

As soon as I read you saying that liberals are naturally pessimistic I could hardly contain myself. I think you made that up just to be polemic. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am a liberal and I am not a pessimist. However, neither am I the pollyanna, ***-eyed optimist you seem to be.

Conservative are optimists. [Ha!] If so, why are so many railing against [Larson equates criticism with pessimism] Bush's deficit spending, his choice of Miers for the Supreme Court, his making government bigger and his getting involved in a war that wasn't really necessary. Conservatives are pretty pessimistic about what has happened to the U.S. military. Conservative are pessimistic because Bush is not behaving like the conservative he said he was. And why are so many conservative hankering for "the good old days"? That seems like a pessimistic outlook to me.

[Anyway,] I think a dose of pessimism is good. [For instance,] sound economic policy is base more on pessimism than optimism, like the possibility of shortages, slowdowns, terrorist attacks and things just going plain wrong. That is why economics is called the "dismal science". It was a conservative that gave it that title - Thomas Carlyle.

You say that liberals are always being negative about this administration, but not offering any new ideas or solutions. Well, the liberal have come up with the best answers and here are conservative constantly knocking them down. When the liberals regain power they will continue with those great ideas they have put into place. There are only so many great and wise ideas that can be had in human governance and liberals have discovered most of them. But let's be optimistic, there is always room for improvement, even in the mind of a liberal.

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Larson’s big evidence that liberals are visceral pessimists is that they dominate the media. He says that the media of late has been full of news stories about disasters. (Like, they never happen.) Sadly, what I hear from him is that if conservatives dominated the media they would talk about only happy stories, not necessarily news, but warm fuzzy stories. Perhaps they would just mention that ‘silver lining’ that accompanies disasters. His other evidence that liberals are always pessimistic is their constant criticism of the President, for his starting an unnecessary war, for being slow in his response to natural disasters, for giving tax cuts to the rich, for gutting essential government programs and for chipping away at our democratic institutions. Larson doesn’t see any of the liberal criticism as necessary or constructive but just plain partisan bitching. I say, if liberals seem pessimistic it is because they see their nation being spoiled and tarnished by an extremely ideological, self-serving conservative movement.

Criticism, which Larson equates with pessimism, is an integral part of a vibrant and legitimate Democracy. Without criticism states have become dictatorships. In a Democracy if one feels that one party has virtually all the power, ramming its ideologically through without any means of legislative opposition, one naturally resorts to the only means one has to be noticed, being vocal and critical. Conservatives have acted that way in the past and rightly so. Perhaps liberals have been hyperbolic and shrilled in their criticism. But that’s because it has been the only means of getting the public’s and the media’s attention, a public and media that has been until now generally reluctant to criticize this administration. And liberals have been intimidated and gagged by this administration at every opportunity. There have been too many failures of late to remain uncritical. Another thing, when criticism is denied and stonewalled bad news and deeds tends to be swept under the proverbial rug. Criticism keeps democratic governments transparent and accountable. There is little transparency in this administration and that is a good reason for pessimism, all around.

Larson says that liberals just criticize and don't offer any new ideas. The new ideas liberals have had were implemented years ago. The liberal idea today is to continue to build on them. However, the conservatives are now rolling back many of them. Conservative new ideas are ‘hatchet-job’ ideas. They include ridiculous tax cuts for the rich, eliminating environmental protections, the gutting of government and international treaties, the dismantling of the UN, preemptive wars and the discrediting and marginalizing of the opposition. They literally would like to do away with the secular state. They want to turn back the clock to a supposedly better time. In this sense liberals are more realistic than conservatives.

I know of at least on pessimistic conservative, Pat Buchanan. He said something that I think is pretty pessimistic for him to say, that "The conservative movement has passed into history," That statement is pretty profound because it comes from one of America's chief conservative leaders. That statement confirms something I have always believed, that liberalism is the main force of Democracy, not conservatism. If we live in a democracy, to paraphrase Richard Nixon, we are all liberals - some with conservative tendencies, but all liberals. Liberalism holds the sway and that is noticeable in how BushCo is beginning to unravel, under its pressure for more openness and flexibility.

It begs the question, is there room for ultra, unabashed conservatism in a Democracy? I think only on the periphery, as a sort of counterweight or stopgap. If conservatives held total power their so-called optimism would kill us.

Change and Conservatives

Roger Scruton, British writer and philosopher, wrote in his latest book about how he discovered his conservatism. He discovered it during the sociopolitical upheavals of the 60s. Many newly minted conservatives (neoconservatives) find or found their routes in that time. They see those years as a loss of innocence and civility, lost in the 'sexual revolution', the civil rights movement, feminism, students demanding social and academic change, affirmative action and so on. It was a heady time for change. Conservatives are traditionalists and don't like change. That is why Scruton became a conservative, because he didn't like the supposedly progressive changes that occurred in the 60s. He saw most of what transpired then as undermining Western values and way of life. He sees our civilization poorer for it today.

Scruton said Edmund Burke (1729-97), a political philosopher, helped him discover his conservatism. Conservatives point to Burke as the founder of modern conservative thought. However, I am still a little hazy about what Scruton learnt from Burke and what connects them as conservatives. Some aspects of their conservatism differ and are vague. Perhaps one connection is that Burke romanticized about aesthetics as does Scruton (for instance, the dislike for modernism) - an endeavor that seems to be a mark of conservatism. Another aspect of conservatism is a deep suspicion for abstract ideas, a suspicion both men share. Both men tend to see things in black and white - no nuancing - another sign of conservatism. Conservatives seem to me to be rigid and inflexible.

Burke said something interesting, "A state without the means of change is without the means of its conservation." That is profound. But I would think it is also contradictory and confusing for conservative thinkers. Conservatives don't like change. Yet, they follow someone who said that you have to change in order to continue to be. It is probably from this contradictory statement that the expression comes, "you have to change to remain the same". It does sound like something a conservative might say as a way of squaring it with Burke’s contradiction.

Burke’s remark is certainly contradictory. But, then, it speaks to the contradictory nature of the world. It talks about change and conservation, two ideas that seem to oppose each other. The contradiction is that change is generally associated with undoing things rather than conserving them. However, I think most of us understand what is meant and how this contradiction works. For instance, if one doesn’t change the oil in one’s car engine, periodically, one isn’t conserving or protecting the workings of the engine. What Burke means is that if you don’t periodically change or reform the sociopolitical nature of the State, it will in time, under pressure from the forces of change, fall apart. Change is also needed to combat the atrophy that naturally undermines things. And this is what happened to the communist State; it died from atrophy and the lack of change that would have combated it. Communism didn’t have the means to change and thus lacked the means of conserving itself. In contrast, Democracy is with us and expanding because it has the structural means for change and reform. Democracy maintains itself through change and remaining flexible.

Burke doesn’t account for the origins of change. Why is it necessary for a state to change in order to conserve itself? Burke didn’t offer any empirical evidence for it. Perhaps, though, he got the idea from experiencing the French Revolution, knowing that the same thing had happened in England during its “Glorious Revolution”. In both cases these States, as they were, were toppled because they resisted change. They broke under pressure. Neither wanted to change their ways of governance, so they suffered the consequences. Each State would not relinquish any of its powers so the people could participate in their own governance. In both cases the stubbornness of the State in not wanting to change was the reason for its collapse. Perhaps it was from Burke's utterance that Hegel got the idea that history is determined by change. Burke's idea also may have led Darwin to his theory of evolution.

Conservatives must have a difficult time of it, living in this world that is always changing. Change is inevitable. New elements and circumstance are always entering into it, requiring change and accommodation. And there is something unsettling about their resistance to change because one would think that they believe it once was a perfect world, that is until so-called progress and liberals started mucking things up. Maybe they don’t think it was once a perfect world, but instead it was somehow complete, at equilibrium and couldn’t be improved on. They keep resisting but the world marches on, demanding change. They would like to go back to the “good old days”, if they ever existed, when women were women and men were men. Ironically, conservatives are responsible for a lot of the social changes they bluster about. That change has come in the form of a backlash, provoked by the years of their colonization and trying to reinvent the world. It is as a result of "chickens coming home to roost".

Historically, why do things change? There are two forms of change that have bearing on us. One is induced by the natural flux of the universe, such as changes in the day (day, night), the seasons, the weather and those caused by the natural forces. Our existence is essentially determined by those changes. But that is not the change conservatives like Scruton are talking about. He is talking about social and political change. And in many respects that change is as natural as the first. The problem is that Scruton doesn’t think so. It comes as natural as thinking. When humans began thinking, things began to change. Thinking begets thinking and thus change begets change. People always have wondered how things could be different. That wondering is followed by action, which in turn causes change. People get restless and that also causes change. People think they can improve their lot in life. And with all this thinking and changing there is bound to be a change of unintended consequences. This unintended change/consequence is perhaps what Scruton is really railing about.

However, resistance to change can be a good thing. It keeps and consummates the worthy social and political changes made. Liberals and progressives go forth and instigate necessary change, but conservatives are the ones who contain the change and keeping it, as they can, to a minimum. A sort of compromise is reached between liberals and conservatives and on it goes. Sometimes they find themselves changing positions on themselves. This is how our governing system developed and works. It takes both of them to create a workable and legitimate governing system, through the give and take of both. The toughest thing is reaching and maintaining a balance. Overall, I think we have achieved it

I think there is at least one thing Scruton and I can agree on, that there is little truth to the idea that “The more things change the more they remain the same. That is imaginary. Things never remain the same.

Ideology and "The End Of History"

One of my favorite books is "The End Of History" by Francis Fukuyama. I like it because its premise echoes something I sensed, that humankind ostensively has reached an end point in its "ideological evolution". This end point represents a general consensus on how, in the main, we should and ought to be governed. Fukuyama opined that this end point represents humankind's "final form of human government".

I think of "The End Of History" as a metaphor for acquired wisdom, about how we ultimately should and ought to govern ourselves. Experimentation in human governance is over. The basic principles are set, in economics and social policy, for governance in the modern world. I am thinking this is what Fukuyama meant by it. The title doesn't mean the end of History per se but the end of a particular history, of hard core political ideology. We know that History will not end as long as there are humans around to make it.

What drove Fukuyama to conclude that humankind had reached the final form of human government was the collapse of communism. That meant liberal democracy was the only alternative form of governance left in the world. Furthermore, as he pointed out, not only had liberal democracy triumphed over communism but also over all other forms of government known to humankind. Liberal democracy is a mix of capitalism - free market economics - and democracy. Fukuyama didn't used the term capitalism because of its negative connotation. The evidence that it is the last form of government is that all developed and developing nation around the world are employing its principles.

I am thinking of this book for another reason, because of what is happening in American today. As I see it, America and its citizens essential had reached a consensus and an equilibrium in its governance. A general agreement had been reached as to what people wanted and expected from their government. Extreme ideology in governance had been contained. However, things changed five years ago when a group of ideologues came to power. They were different from the breed that preceded them. They were determined to undo the policies and agencies that were well established and accepted by the general population. These ideologues told the people that government was bad and then proceed to gut it. They wanted to role back elements of government like affirmative action, progressive court rulings, treaties and environment policies. In diplomacy they didn't use the well-established method of the " carrot and the stick" to cajole others to their way of thinking. They just use the stick. Their ideology has been "our way or the highway". For some ideological reason they have want to dismantle a perfectly good social security system, one that generally has served the nation well. Their education and science agenda has made things worse, not better. Their neoconservative ideology has become a curse for the country and the world, and in the end I predict will be their undoing.

My point is this, that ideology has been reintroduced in American politics, making America more divisive and weaker than ever. Prior to this America was fairly united and balanced. The world looked upon America favorably. Prior to this, political ideology had not been mainstream. Cooperation was the way. But this administration has re-injected ideology into the political process. This administration thought they had sensed the pulse of the nation, America’s mood and what it really wanted. They thought wrong when they brought back old time ideology and started undermining the progressive governing gains made over them years.

Essential what Fukuyama said is that we have moved beyond fundamental ideological differences in politics. There is one goal, good and accountable governance for all. And America basically discovered how to do it. Obviously, though, this idea has been lost in America. But I am confident it will come back. Recent events signal that. Americans want a government that is transparent, that will help in a crisis, set mutually beneficial policies, look after the less fortunate and set a good example for the rest of the world.

I can see a silver lining in having this administration and its extreme ideology in power. Its severity and consequences is re-awaking and reminding the America people what they really cherish and want in their governance. Prior to this the American people had fallen asleep and were taking things for granted. They though they had arrived. Transparent and accountable government requires constant vigilance and electoral responsibility. This negative episode in American politics may again put America on the progressive track.

The Need for Good Governance.

For some time in Washington there has been this ideological notion that government is bad. This idea came into the main with Ronald Reagan who said that government wasn't the solution but the problem. Five years ago the ideologues that believe this took control of Washington and the federal government. And in that time they have managed to make their ideology reality.

Hurricane Katrina made us aware of the importance and necessity for a central government, as a central command system. However, the present government failed in its mission of oversight. But instead of acknowledging this failure of government, the ideologues said, see, we told you so. They told you that you can't or shouldn't depend on government in a pinch.

How convenient for the government haters. First they gut the government and then fill it with incompetent people and then tell us that they were right from the beginning. Government does stink. They did accomplish their self-fulfilling prophecy. Government stinks when you deliberately make it stink.

Government haters have told us that the private sector can do things better than the government can. Ironically they used Hurricane Katrina as an example. They point to the great effort Wal-Mart has made in giving people the basics. Wal-Mart made heroic efforts with truck loads and truck loads of stuff to save people as did other companies. However, what companies can do on their own is limited. They don't have the overview the government has. In the final analysis it is government that is needed to orchestrate and coordinate the momentous undertaking of infrastructure rebuilding.

The problem with companies doing the government's job is that self-interest eventually takes over and they may abandon the task. Companies can lose interest in a venture like rescuing and providing for the needy because there is no money to be made in it. Sometimes they go bankrupt and can't finish the task, so the government has to take over. Governments don't have financial investors and share holders who expect a profit at the end of the day. Governments have only the voters to answer to.

If the private sector and corporations are able to help and contribute we should remember who initially made it possible for them to do it and profit. It is government that created and maintains the environment in which companies can legitimately thrive. Without government it would be a free-for-all, an environment that eventually even companies couldn't survive in. Government is what keeps them, as best it can, being good corporate citizens, so they can benefit us all.

Corporations are not necessarily accountable. And we are not really surprised when they are not. But governments should be, especially in a democracy. However, the present government has decidedly been unaccountable and it can be because it has outflanked and marginalized the opposition. Also, in the past the opposition has been too timid to criticize. We should learn something from this.

One thing the Katrina catastrophe has shown us is that we need two healthy sectors to prolong live and society, the private sector and the public sector, working together in tandem. They keep each other in check and balance out each other. Government, though, because of their breadth and scope, should be first among equals.