A Response to Dan K
As my final post in the book club, I would like to react specifically to a long post from Dan K, as a number of readers urged me to do. I have reprinted his post here, with my response following each paragraph.
Why did I have such a strong reaction to Dean Slaughter's initial piece? Because in my view American intellectual life, in the public sphere at least, is sbsolutely chocking, gagging, suffocating on patriotism. Patriotism is a legitimate emotion; most of us have affection for the places we're from - nothing wrong with that. But there is surely such a thing as too much patriotism. And in my view, American culture is smothered in patriotism, and emotionally addicted to it, to the extent that it is impeding clear, constructive and broad-minded thinking about other matters.
This is an important point, one that I understand and can sympathize with. Patriotism, like religion, is often turned to bad purposes or used to shield things from scrutiny that should absolutely be scrutinized. But my perception is really that patriotism has been hijacked in American politics, in ways that are very bad for our country as a whole. After 9/11, the reaction everywhere was to fly the flag or wear it on lapel pins. I remember being puzzled by that, as I saw the attacks not simply as an attack on American but as an attack on the West, on an entire value-system that is by no means unique to this country.
Further, people from more than 80 countries died in the twin towers, symbolizing the growing cosmopolitanism of capitalism (which is part of what was being attacked). But my reaction was emphatically not the reaction of the vast majority of Americans. And in the ensuing rally around the flag, the rhetoric of patriotism was used to silence any substantive dissent with the Administration's policies. More fundamentally, if, as Dan K recognizes, American political discourse is much more overtly patriotic than the discourse of other countries, then to me it makes much more sense to reframe what patriotism actually means than to denounce patriotism. I argue in my book that true patriotism is best captured by Carl Schurtz's phrase: "My country right or wrong; when right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be set right." When as now, our country is going in the wrong direction, true patriotism lies in criticizing the government and insisting that current disastrous policies be set right.
So I just don't think that what the world needs now is yet another book on the true meaning of American patriotism, filled with the usual lofty and high-minded rhetoric about capital-L Liberty, capital-T Tolerance, capital-D Democracy etc. I'm afraid my instinctive reaction to the essay was "not more of this!"
The book is aimed both at Americans and foreign audiences. But the subtitle of the book for foreign audiences will be "The Idea That Is America: Reintroducing Ourselves to the World." Foreign audiences will find a very different account of American history than the triumphalist rhetoric they have been accustomed to hearing from us; one that focuses on our frequent failures to live up to our own rhetoric and that points out some of the darkest moments in our history. My discussion of liberty takes its cue from the second verse of American the Beautiful, which ends: "America, America, God mend thine every flaw; Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law." A rather different picture of liberty than the one we are now purveying - one that says we can't ourselves have liberty unless we are prepared to accept the constraints of law, both at home and abroad. The end of that chapter argues, buttressed with the thinking of Truman, Eisenhower, and others, that America has to accept a new set of rules governing the use of force. Each chapter is actually designed to challenge the current understanding of a particular value, or, as in the case of tolerance and humility, to argue that they were central values to our founders but that they have been completely distorted or ignored today, disastrously.
I am frustrated by all of this inwardness because I think those with the education and capacity to understand global issues, and the institutional support to research them in depth and write about them, ought to be writing books that exhort Americans to look beyond their national borders, get beyond debates about national identity, national purpose and national pride, and approach global problems with a practical, cooperative, can-do spirit, without a lot of undue, unnecessary emphasis on where the problem-solvers happen to be from. They need to be told to get beyond their introspective conversations about whether America is this or America is that, beyond their post-Cold War and post-9/11 navel-gazing and wound licking, and just lend a freaking hand! (This goes for left as well as right: too much moping and raging about what's wrong with us can be just as unhealthy as too much bragging about what's right with us.)
This book is intended to be absolutely the opposite of bragging about what's right with us. It does indeed urge Americans to look beyond American. I quote here from my introduction: "this book is about far more than words, spoken or sung. Empty words yield hollow promises, breeding deep cynicism at home and abroad. We must translate our ideals into concrete plans and policies. And we must hurry, because the world is watching and the stakes could not be higher." Each chapter ends with one or two very concrete proposals for what a foreign policy based on what I argue is the meaning of liberty, democracy, justice, equality, tolerance, and humility that I trace through American history would look like.
They should be exhorted, in the words of a couple of great internationalists of the past century, to remember their humanity and forget the rest. They should be encouraged to think more about how much they can learn from the rest of the world rather than how much they can teach it; and think more about ordinary non-special helping rather than exceptional oh-so-special heroism. Exhort them to open up, stretch their necks out of the foxhole, and demand more media coverage of the rest of the world - a community they are part of whether they like it or not. And instead of indulging their native chauvinism and narcissism, let them know they have an obligation to learn more about these things.
I completely agree and it is a message that I try to pound home again and again. From my conclusion:
"Above [a threshold of fundamental human rights], we should be prepared to tolerate national differences with strength and self-confidence. We must be secure enough to listen and learn, to invite other nations and peoples to challenge our versions of universal values just as we question theirs. We must insist on tolerance itself as part of the pantheon of universal values. We should insist that other nations respect the decision of a majority of the American people and of American courts on the legality of the death penalty--a position that we share with Japan, among other liberal democracies. Conversely, we must respect the decision of many other nations to impose limits on hate speech, libel, and the leaking of official secrets; to have an established state religion; and to deny or limit the right of abortion.
Launching and helping to lead such a global debate will make us stronger and safer. We should begin with the stories recounted in this book. If we acknowledge how long it has taken us to make our values a reality for all Americans and recognize that in many places we still have a long way to go, we will communicate immediately that we are willing to engage in a real debate about what these values mean and how they can best be achieved. We will signal that for us, democracy is not some kind of template to be imposed on others, but is instead a system of government that depends on debate and difference."
They should also be told that there is already a gathering global social movement out there that needs intellectual, moral and material assistance, and that it is time for them to join it. Americans on the whole seem to be the last to "get it" as far as the global movement goes. Let history judge which nations were exceptional, and which not; or which nations promoted universal values and which did not. There is no time for that now!
As I have written repeatedly, this book is anti-American exceptionalist, and argues that our founders themselves did not want or expect us to be exceptional for very long. But Dan K is right about a gathering global social movement in the world that the U.S. needs to join. At the end of my chapter on equality, I write:
"The United States and other wealthy countries can do much more to achieve the [Millennium Development Goals]. Most Americans believe that the United States gives far more in aid than it actually does. We currently give a bit more than 0.1 percent of our GDP in official development assistance, about $15 billion per year. Increasing that number to 0.7 percent--the target set by the United Nations--would increase U.S. contributions to about $90 billion and challenge other developed nations to raise their commitments as well.
Many Americans, perhaps most, would embrace these goals altruistically if they knew the real facts. But we need not rely on altruism. Achieving these basic but universal birthrights will be as good for us as for the people we are trying to help. Providing global equality of opportunity, at the most basic level, means providing an opportunity for billions of people to become productive members of society--buying, selling, thinking, building, serving, and caring. Those are the activities that fuel economic growth, for their countries and for ours. These activities also provide societies with the essential infrastructure to address problems of disease, crime, environmental degradation--all the problems that spill across borders and ultimately hurt us. Again, living up to our values also serves our interests, both at home and all around the world.
And we can do more. In absolute dollars, trade is a far more effective way to improve the life chances of billions of people around the world than straight aid. The chapter goes on to spell out precise trade policies we need to adopt.
Could we get some more popular books from American global affairs specialists where the reader might actually wonder whether or not the author was from America? Do these authors all have to make such a show of dropping to their knees, rending their garnments and blubbering in their constitutions as they receive the gifts of the holy spirit Jefferson or Madison? Why do so many of these books have to about the Idea of America, the American Way, the American Path, the American Spirit, the American Experience - America, America, America. Enough! We have heard it all before. There is nothing new under the sun here.
I don't think this is helpful. I recognize that the nature of a book club is that no one has read the book first, so I would not fault Dan K for claiming nothing is new here before reading the actual book. But for me the real question is what can each of us do to try to turn the country around. As I write in the introduction, I wake up these days and read the paper and feel like I am living in a bad dream, and that I increasingly don't recognize the country I thought I lived in, and the country I love, in the world. After teaching a seminar three years ago reading through the Federalist papers and a lot of other founding documents, it struck me that one particular interpretation of our values was being dressed up as the only patriotic interpretation, and that the best way to counter that was to turn to our founders, our poets, leaders, and activists to support a very different interpretation.
I happen to be from New Hampshire. Imagine if every time someone proposed a practical national policy like reforming health care, or reducing the deficit or cleaning up the air, I responded by saying "Yes indeed, because caring for the sick is a New Hampshire value", or "Absolutely, be cause all true Granite-staters believe in fiscal discipline", or "Certainly, because nothing better expresses the New Hampshire value of stewardship, shich is at the same time universal, than caring for the environment." Isn't all this both cloying and irrelevant? Wouldn't my listener (even another New Hampshire listener!) justly complain "Enough already with this New Hampshiremania!"
Maybe. I would have thought that a New Hampshire politician who wanted to convince New Hampshire voters to oppose the Patriot Act, say, would be likely to link such opposition to "live free or die." I come from Virginia. And certainly in Virginia, and most of the American south, if you want to generate popular support for something, going back to Jefferson, Madison, Woodrow Wilson, and Martin Luther King and demonstrating that what you are proposing fits with a much longer American tradition and is consistent with our national values will help. Dan K and other readers may lament that, but it is a political fact. Indeed, when I give talks it is often people in the audience from the South and from the military who respond immediately. Before the U.S. can talk to the world in any way that makes sense, we have to convince American voters.
Ending global warming makes obvious sense. Preventing large nuke-packing countries from blowing themselves up makes obvious sense. We don't need a damn permission slip from James Madison or Woodrow Wilson!
If the business of government, either domestically or internationally, were only about finding and selling policies that make sense, this country, and the world, would be in a very different and far better place.
I've been giving you a hard time Anne-Marie but taking a substantive post from a reader and debating it point by point was not only the right thing to do but serves as a great example of what a guest poster should do around here. Bravo!
In a lot of your posts I see that we disagree less than I thought, but we still have major differences.
I put this to you as the difference at the bottom of it all: You seem to think that 9-11 was a defining moment, something that should inform all of our future decisions on the foreign policy and domestic fronts.
I just don't.
I think it's far more important that while we should internalize the lessons learned, we should also get out of our reactive stance. It happened. It was horrible. But we are still here and we have a lot of work to do, and it can't all be informed by the 9-11 experience.
If you care to reply, there's one niggling issue I'd love for you to address -- the place of the American people in foreign policy debates. Foreign policy issues are probably the most "elite" dominated issues that we face. Many of us with valid opinions, but not your expertise, feel drowned out by the specialists. We have even seen, with regards to the Iraq war, statements dismissing polls because you don't wage a war based on what some orthodontist thinks.
But we pay for our policies. We pay our taxes, we pay in the missed opportunities when money is spent overseas instead of at home, we pay with the lives of our friends and family members and some have paid with their own lives.
I am really worried that your eloquent talk about values sets us on a defining path where the opinion of those of us outside of the security and foreign policy establishment will be forced to go along with a set plan, whether or not it suits the tastes, wants and desires of the American people at the moment.
I've read a lot of your writings since this debate has begun, and read a lot of interviews with you. I've seen you struggle with whether or not the Iraq war was legal or could have been justified even if it was illegal. I've read you writing and talking about how to influence the Amertican people and other people around the world. But here's what I haven't read from you: I've never read you saying that policies should be defined by the national will.
I know you want to convince people at large to accept your point of view. But have you considering tailoring your policies to fit the tastes of the masses, rather than trying to influence the masses to support your policies?
What place do you see for the average American in foreign policy debate? When should our government express the will of the people if they happen to be in opposition to the values that you've presented to us?
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
June 24, 2007 9:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sigh.
It wasn't an attack on the west. It wasn't an attack on a value system. Osama Bin Laden was not blowing up buildings because he disagrees with our concept of a market economy, nor with our notion that women should have the right to vote. Al Quaeda was not attacking lap dancing, pornography or christian television stations.
Apparently, despite 3000 casualties and a world shaking attack, Ms Slaughter could not be bothered to actually listen to what Osama and his cohorts were saying and had been saying for years.
Instead, she chose to remain obliviously self absorbed. This verges on mental illness.
Capitalism was not being attacked. What was being attacked was a country which, in the eyes of Osama Bin Laden and cohorts, had been making war upon Islamic nations for a generation. According to Osama, America was the evil empire, and he was striking a blow against the Death Star of that Empire.
This passage leaves me all but speechless with its aggressive cluelessness.
Does Slaughter really think that it all comes down to abstract, chattering class, drawing room discussion. 9/11 happened because Osama disagreed with Roe vs. Wade?
Where is the substantive discussion of American policy? Where is the balance? Where is the acknowledgement of the military industrial complex? What does Anne Marie Slaughter think should be the proper limits of American power, the proper balancing of force and diplomacy in the world?
destor23 seems to suggest that 9/11 was a defining moment for Ms Slaughter. I find that profoundly disturbing, since Ms Slaughter's response to 9/11 appears to have been to simply ignore the actual actors and motivations of the event, and to turn inward, searching for causes and answers in her own emotional stratum.
I am unable to find anything useful in this.
June 24, 2007 10:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
What so fascinating about this site is that globalism when it involves economics and greater economic freedom it is denounced. However, when it a fanatasy of a political globalism, not led by the United States, it is raised as an anti-American point. Therefore, confirming all the worst about the American far left. Fortunately the American Left, with or without blogs is largely irrelevant to American politcs.
As for American exceptionalism there has been and is two forms of it. There is the type often associated with American internationalism. America is in someway better than everyone else and can and should impose its will on the world. The other often associated with the Far Left but also seen in Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan, that the world is so exception for good or for ill, that it needs to say uninvolved in the world.
Bush and the American Far Left that share so many traits, are fortunately exceptions. Unfortunately American Academics too influenced by Marxism and a post-Modern ideology have become so outside the American norm as to be regularly ignored. There needs to be a serious conversation among mainstream, the large majority, of Americans about reinolving the U.S. in the world based on America's long term values and the realities that exist in the world not want is wished for or what ideology demands.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
June 24, 2007 10:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Personally, I would have preferred to see a response to this comment:
The character of that establishment tradition is a sort of contractual alliance between hard-boiled imperialism and soft-hearted missionary idealism. The former see the American government and the military, diplomatic and intelligence instruments it has at its disposal as mainly tools for competition and domination. The purpose is to crack open markets for import and export, extract favorable terms, bribe and intimidate local officials, chase away foreign competitors, and change local regimes when those regimes do not provide a friendly business environment. For these people, the US government and US commerce and financial capital all form one seamless whole. Going to the government with a request for help with a local official is no different than going to a private sector service supplier for help with one’s payroll system or travel bookings. The business of America is business, and the US government is itself just a business that provides certain services to other businesses.
And there is a revolving door among all the divisions of this conglomerate. Some of the private firms and their consultants do work for US intelligence, and intelligence gathered by the US government is in turn passed on to the private firms. ===
I see this series of posts, along with most of the neoconservative foreign policy material that Josh solicits for the TPM empire, as being tryouts or demos for foreign policy slots in the Hillary Clinton Administration. And therefore find them doubly disturbing.
sPh
June 24, 2007 10:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, I fear that Anne-Marie has purposefully avoided legitimate questions about who in America gets a voice in foreign policy.
I also fear that she's avoided the question because if she were to answer it honestly, she would have to offend us. She's part of a system where the only people who have a voice were trained in a select few academic programs or have been associated either with the government's defense establishment or the contractors who serve and also lead that establishment.
She seems so far unwilling to even address the problem that our foreign policy doesn't take the average American's opinions very seriously. I am hoping that she's still reading, realizes that this is a fundamental problem and will visit the comments in order to address it.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
June 24, 2007 10:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
The 'elites' vs the 'orthodontists' caused me to take 'The March of Folly,' by Tuchman off the shelf.
"...a factor usually overlooked by political scientists who, in discussing the nature of power, always treat it, even when negatively, with immense respect. They fail to see it as sometimes a matter of ordinary men walking into water over their heads, acting unwisely or foolishly or perversely as people in ordinary circumstances frequently do. The trappings and impact of power deceive us, endowing the possessors with a quality larger than life. Shorn of his tremendous curled peruke, high heels and ermine, the Sun King was a man subject to misjudgment, error and impulse - like you and me."
June 24, 2007 10:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ok, I can't resist.
First congratulations to Ann-Marie Slaughter on actually responding directly to Dan K's post.
That highly unusual approach of actually debating something is what prompted me to read this topic although I haven't read the book, or the many other threads in which it is discussed (or been following TPMCafe much at all lately).
Second, my impression is that the discussion is about whether and how to "reframe patriotism" so as to resonate with, or alternatively to help re-educate patriotically inclined Americans.
I was particularly struck by this passage:
That strikes me as a positively brilliant reframing of "tolerance and humililty" as an American patriotic virtue. It will appeal to anyone who is tolerant of the death penalty, censorship, religious oppression and oppression of women.
Instead of the sour cynical nastiness of "liberal progressives" who are as virulently isolationist as Pat Buchanan, the soaring prose about tolerance and humility can make you actually feel good about your conservative, status quo politics.
But remember, you're likely to be up against this kind of reply:
Condoleeza Rice
The problem you face is that no matter how brilliantly you express it, advocacy for tolerating the status quo isn't very inspiring.
June 24, 2007 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
I thought it was a great, even inspiring post, both in its willingness to address one of our best commenters and in its hope that American values can exist without implying we're unique or above the judgment of other nations. I felt something of that when Kerry said in the 2004 debates that we ought to be able not just to assert our right to an act of war but fairly and honestly to justify it to our citizens and other nations, or else forget it. While he won the debates, he got some flak for that, the GOP claim that it meant others have "veto power" over the laws of the United States. I took it to be in the tradition of the Declaration of Independence: "Let facts be submitted to a candid world."
Slaughter's post is not going to satisfy critics, both those who still are suspicious of patriotism and people like me. As I've commented, I fear any assertion of values that appears in any way to legitimize preemptive acts of force against those who do not share our values. I don't see her projects as having really distanced themselves from the worst kind of Wilsonianism, the Bush kind and not the League of Nations. It also won't quiet my fears that "values" are something we inspire from a religious vision of America and the status quo, not from the political process. But at least it articulates them in a way I can handle for what they are.
We're seeing a whole spate of books that amount to examining American core values from left, right, and center alike. Think of all those books on the framers asking what lessons they'd have now. One can think of this as just rationalizing one's stance by appeal to authority or as just a sign of anxiety that we've any point of rest left to us. I'd like to hope for now it's a good sign, in that we should be raking over basic writings and institutions. It's why I also read philosophy and why I'm pleased we've a judicial branch that, at least in principle rather than in Scalia, is supposed to do so as well. It's also why I wish we had more a scientifically and culturally literate citizenry and debate period. But no, it doesn't bring me closer to the Truman Project, the Concert of Democracies, and the next Clinton administration.
Finally, it's not quite true that bin Laden wasn't interested in "values" things like the status of women, just in American power and its abuse. Basically, he is not pleased with the lack of fundamentalism in a lot of Arab regimes and would like to replace them by polarizing the Muslim world and initiating an American response. Bush played along just great, one us vs them thinker to another.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
June 24, 2007 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
First, your basic premise is questionable.
" But I grew up believing that ours was a country that tried to stand for good in the world and that upheld the fundamental values that bind us together as a nation. As I read our history, the values that our founders embraced and that our greatest presidents, poets, soldiers and songwriters have celebrated are seven: liberty, democracy, equality, justice, tolerance, humility, and faith."
It's not your fault that you grew up with the wrong beliefs--most of us were indoctrinated with the values you list. We were never told about the racist Constitution, the genocide of the Native Americans, the 150 years of female disenfranchisement, the racism toward fellow Americans (African- and Japanese-Americans most notably), the sense of God-driven Manifest Destiny which made the US a world power built on the death and impoverishment of so many world citizens and not a few Americans. And isn't pride in all this called patriotism? And isn't it dishonest to suggest otherwise?
More recently, the enmity of foreigners toward Americans of which you speak is based on the refusal of the US government to follow world conventions and its bloody, brutal aggression against defenseless countries. You refer to this--but isn't this behavior consonant with, rather than at variance with, our history? And aren't unfriendly foreigners beginning to catch on to the real 'idea that is America'? And can't we learn more from other countries' intellectuals on these matters than we can learn from long-dead white American men?
So I would re-title (and rewrite) the book: The Idea That Should Be America, based, as Dan K suggests, on the better social and political values out there in the world today, if we would lay our arrogance--AKA patriotism--aside and listen, and then apply these values not only to our foreign policy but more importantly to our domestic policy, for starters. Why should American taxes be used to promote global equality of opportunity when America lacks domestic equality of opportunity for education, health care and decent jobs? And fixed elections, making us a world joke?
I was recently in the Republic of Ireland during their presidential election, with twelve people running and proportional representation. Something for everyone. Talk of coalitions, power blocs and power sharing. My particular favorite, the Green Party, with a voice. We can learn more from the Irish, I submit, than we can learn from Madison. Please listen to Dan K.
June 24, 2007 2:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your "majority" doesn't include Minnesota. We haven't executed anyone in over 100 years and the death penalty is not an option in this state.
This is yet another example of how constricted and narrow your own view is of Americans. We are not all alike. The death penalty is also against the teaching of the Catholic Church and tens of millions of us belong to that faith. We don't all hold YOUR values and we don't want YOUR values forced on us either and as far as I'm concerned your embrace of the death penalty negates your claim to "liberal" values and it certainly puts us at odds with the EU which contains most of the democracies I'd want to be associated with in any case.
June 24, 2007 3:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
I come at this from a more inward looking place. I believe patriotism has little if anything to do with internationalism. I think of Clinton from a town called Hope, Arksansas. I was driving back from Iowa today past Hope, Minnesota. For most Americans, patriotism and hope for the future is right here, at home. At home.
I don't care if you are left, right or center. Not much of anything is attacking our value system out here. The only thing we have to fear is utopian zealots from left or right messing in other people's cultures and meddling in other people's quarrels and getting the Minnesota National Guard sent off to defend someplace other than Minnesota or our neighbors in Wisconsin or Iowa.
June 24, 2007 4:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dan, I don't know what to make of your comment. Who do you intend to pick out when you say things like "the American Left" and "American Far Left." You capitalize the words as if your intended targets are identifiable and worthy of a proper noun. But I can't make sense of it.
I can't help but think that you are throwing out labels with the intent of scaring people--reinforcing the idea that universities are "dens of liberal snakes," that are "bent on corrupting our children," or some such nonsense. And it seems you want to put that in opposition to the "good, but quiet American"--the yeoman farmer who is dismissed by "Marxists and Post-Modernists."
I agree that this country needs to have a big discussion about our foreign policy. It should be free of demands of ideology, but it should also be free of the politics of emotional manipulation. What do you think the result of that discussion would be? Are you trying to say something beyond typical right-wing talking points?
June 24, 2007 5:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: We were never told about the racist Constitution, the genocide of the Native Americans, the 150 years of female disenfranchisement, the racism toward fellow Americans (African- and Japanese-Americans most notably), the sense of God-driven Manifest Destiny which made the US a world power built on the death and impoverishment of so many world citizens and not a few Americans.
Good grief, how old are you? I'm 40 and "diversity" and "inclusiveness" were themes in my grade and high school history texts! Tales of Harriet Tubman, Squanto, Sakajawea, even fictional buffalo and sequoia trees dominated outAmerican history curriculum. I'm sure people who grew up pre-60s had skewed textbooks which extolled the good and buried the bad (with the excptuion of slavey, which in the North at least was given its proper attention due to post-bellum Yankee triumphalism), but everyone who grew up since did not suffer those lacks.
Re: More recently, the enmity of foreigners toward Americans of which you speak is based on the refusal of the US government to follow world conventions and its bloody, brutal aggression against defenseless countries.
Very recently, yes. But it's a little hard to blame 9-11 on Gitmo unless bin Laden, like Merlin in T.H. White's tales, is living backwards in time. By the way, why didn't the world just as angry at France for its torture and atrocities in Algeria, and Britain for its treatment of IRA suspects? For that matter why is China gven little more than a tsk-tsk for its treatment of the Tibetans, Falun Gong, etc. I'll happily forth at the mouth over Gitmo with everyone here, but perhaps there's a bit of a doubvke stnadard out there whereby America's sins are always treated as ten times worse than anyone esle's? I do get tired of other people throwing stones when their windows are not exactly shatter-proof acrylic either.
Re: And fixed elections, making us a world joke?
Fixed elections is an overstatement. Flawed elections is more accurate. (The Democrats could not have won a congressional majority last year is our electoral system was actually rigged)
Re; The death penalty is also against the teaching of the Catholic Church
??!!?
The Church that used to burn heretics. Huh? More very fragile (stained glass) windows, do put down those stones.
To be a bit more accurate, Rome now disapproves of the death penalty excpt in extarordinary cicrumstances, but it has pronounced no categorical ban.
June 24, 2007 5:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
no
June 24, 2007 6:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
We should insist that other nations respect the decision of a majority of the American people and of American courts on the legality of the death penalty
The death penalty is a fucking travesty. Barbaric.
Is that an American value? Killing people?
Eye for an eye, ay?
Very Enlightened, indeed.
"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani
June 24, 2007 6:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
The description Daniel offers of "Far Left" is libertarianism, but there is no symmetric Far Right mentioned. BTW, what traits does Bush share with this Far Left?
A changing interest in foreign involvement is neither right or left wing. The use of that involvement is the rub, and I think liberals have been chastened by failures and blowbacks, mainly Vietnam, but also including smaller ventures like Somalia. Conservatives have tried their hand at foreign adventuring but seem resistant to learning any lessons (see Iraq).
So now we do see a difference between the nominally activist liberals avoiding the use of power, and the nominally cautious conservatives throwing it around with abandon, damn the torpedoes/terrorists.
Regardless of whether the liberal or conservative approach to governance is wise and effective, can we agree conservatives lack standing to lecture liberals on foreign policy?
June 24, 2007 6:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow. Facts are so interesting.
Here is the full list of "liberal democracies" like Japan that have the death penalty:
What a crock of shit.
"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani
June 24, 2007 6:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is silly. First of all, academics have a limited input into foreign policy decisions, which are made by politicians, who are elected by the American people, and by foreign-policy professionals, who are either selected by politicians or work their way up through the (hopefully) more or less meritocratic systems of the US government. Second, having an input into the academic debate over foreign policy is an option available to anyone who wishes to invest the time and effort to get a Ph.D. in a relevant field, and has the brains to do so. If you don't want to invest that time and effort, then what inflated sense of entitlement permits you, not just to make grand pronouncements on the subject, but to denigrate anyone who presumes to belong to a university faculty or to set up a study group as a member of an illegitimate "elite"? If Ann-Marie Slaughter belongs to a foreign policy intellectual "elite" (open to dispute), that might have something to do with the fact that she has a goddamn degree in the subject. Disagree with her, fine, but cut it out with the bogus populist "down with the elites" crap. This is a sort of anti-intellectualism that belongs in the camp of Pat Buchanan.
Accumulating Peripherals
June 24, 2007 7:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is a useless post, but what exactly do you have against South Korea and Taiwan?
Accumulating Peripherals
June 24, 2007 8:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
My impression is that a lot of Americans may have been told about slavery and the ethnic cleansing and/or genocide committed against the Native Americans, but they mostly dismiss it as something that happened a long time ago which has nothing to do with us today. They certainly don't look at how wars against the Indians used to be justified and compare it to rhetoric today. Our past is irrelevant to them and teaches them nothing about the present. And most of them certainly don't know about the sorts of governments we've propped up in the past few decades, or the mass slaughters we've helped happen in Angola, Indonesia, East Timor, El Salvador, Guatemala, etc, or that we overthrew a democratic government in Iran.
Probably quite a few still don't know that Abu Ghraib was anything more than the work of a few bad apples--I have an intelligent friend who seemed surprised to hear that anyone thought there was anything more to the story than that.
June 24, 2007 8:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
As for your 9/11 Gitmo comment, Osama claimed to be outraged by the sanctions on Iraq, which impoverished the country and killed hundreds of thousands of children, and the US tilt towards Israel, and the occupation of Saudi Arabia by infidels. I sorta doubt he actually cares that much about innocent people, Arab or not, but he is playing to an audience which has grievances against American policy. You apparently didn't know that.
Neither does Prof. Slaughter, judging from her comment about attacks on the West. I'm happy to see her try to engage her critics, but not very impressed by the result. Depressed, rather. Apparently there is something about even liberal patriotism which rots the brain.
June 24, 2007 8:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
shorter Greenbaum: there needs to be a 'serious conversation--unfortunately, it won't include most TPM readers, because you're all irrelevant.
So, apparently, this conversation will happen between Greenbaum, Norman Podhoretz and David Horowitz--and they will come to the conclusion that it is absoutely necessary to bomb Iran, Lebanon, the West Bank, and Berkeley into smithereens, followed by a purge of American academics who refuse to name their 'fellow travelers' and denounce their pinko ideology. Only then will American triumphalism be safe!
June 24, 2007 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm all for a new kind of death penalty--'executing' corporations that are found guilty of serious crimes. I'm also for building lots of new prisons--to house white collar criminals, in less than country club conditions.
I don't think George Bush would treat Enron as he did Karla Faye Tucker, however.
June 24, 2007 8:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
1. I don't doubt that diversity and inclusiveness may have dominated your textbooks, but they didn't dominate Harriet Tubman's life, the lives of African Americans who were summarily lynched, the Japanese Americans who were sent to concentration camps or, more recently, that of the poor survivors of Hurricane Katrina or African Americans in Mississippi or Florida. The nobility of certain Americans isn't at issue here, rather the ignobility(?) of the US government and its part in 'The Idea that is America' and the exportability of that idea.
2. I never blamed 9/11 on Gitmo, or mentioned them. The US is at variance with the international community on: Geneva, cluster bombs, torture, UNESCO, Kyoto, world court, land mines to name a few. If you want to bring up torture in a thread discussing 'The Idea That Is America' then I think it is disingenuous to inject a defense of torture that, okay we torture, but we don't torture as much as _______. As far as America's sins being ten times worse than anyone else's, it's an interesting question when you consider events like the firebombing and nuking of Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thanks for raising it.
3. Okay, US elections aren't "fixed", they're "flawed" and "rigged". Probably these distinctions are lost when we translate them into French, German, Spanish etc. The point is that we can't really export our elections as a value, can we?
June 24, 2007 8:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not anti-intellectual by any means and comparing me to Pat Buchanan is a low blow and beneath you, based on the other posts I've read by you.
I am raising a legitimate point which is that foreign policy debate, which is as much paid for in dollars and lives as domestic policy, is often closed to opinions from the general population.
Fact is, one doesn't need a doctorate in foreign policy from a college in order to understand this stuff. It's complicated, but not beyond most thoughtful and interested people.
We sorely need to open up foreign policy debates so that they include people outside of what has become a foreign policy establishment. This is not some mystical art that can be practiced only by a selectly trained few. Hell, most of our "foreign intelligence" is gained by reading newspapers in various regions. In a time when so many of those papers are online, any interested citizen can know about as much as a CIA foreign services agent.
Times have changed. Foreign lands are no longer so foreign, even to people who can't afford to travel. I am merely suggesting that a better informed population should have a greater voice in our foreign policy.
You seem to think that's some sort of junk populism. I think it's time that the people who see policies inacted in their names should have a voice.
But I'm no anti-intellectual, sir. And NEVER compare me to Pat Buchanan. I mean, seriously, one friend never calls another a Buchanan.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
June 24, 2007 9:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fair enough on the Pat Buchanan low blow, and also I elided what I didn't like in your post with what I didn't like in sphealey's post and in Dan K's post, which you were agreeing with, but still ought to be responded to discretely. So I rescind the Pat Buchanan, sorry about that, I was trying to say something else.
But substantively, I don't agree with this line of thinking much. I think the flattening of debate between foreign policy thinkers and average people is what you're seeing in front of you, in this book club, and while this is great, I don't think it needs to go much further than this. I think taking the views of "average people" into greater account in foreign policy is likely to produce as much horrorshow as sense; average Americans' views on foreign policy between late 2001 and late 2004 were often nightmarish, and only lately have they retreated to a semblance of normalcy. The people in Dick Cheney's amateur gun club who took over the US's foreign policy establishment for 3 years were precisely regular folks who thought they knew something about the world. CIA officers are not geniuses, and only a bit of the information they have isn't available to the rest of us, and anyway the publicly available information is usually more important; but the CIA had procedures and rules for coming to a consensus on a reasonable intelligence assessment, one that preserved caveats about what was known and what only suspected, about likelihoods and debatable points. It was the BYPASSING of those procedures by a bunch of cocky amateur nincompoops that produced the Iraq war.
In foreign policy, as in other things, we have a system of representative republicanism, not pure democracy. That makes sense. It also makes sense that when elected foreign policy makers want expert advice, they turn to people who have Ph.D.s in the subject, just like when they want advice on agriculture policy or anything else. In the 1960s, we got into Vietnam because the "best and the brightest" turned out to be wrong (though, notably, none of those "best and brightest" were Southeast Asia area experts). But over the last 5 years, we have largely gotten into trouble because we DIDN'T listen to experts or follow the rules on intelligence creation or basically listen to reason and expert consensus, in field after field after field. So I am just very, very wary of a certain line of anti-expert critique that is emerging lately in various places -- Rick Perlstein's recent essay on China hands in the Nation is another example -- and that implies that anyone who has a position at an "establishment" university or think-tank is compromised by involvement with Big Business and the military-industrial complex and should be ignored on these grounds. The US government really has not been listening to the opinions of political science professors very much over the last 6 years; that is not the source of our problems.
Accumulating Peripherals
June 24, 2007 9:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I disagree with your assessment, Matt. The administration has often relied on academics in justifying the Iraq war and it's more general approach to foreign relations. Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz, to name a few. The Iraq War wasn't an accident or a mistake. They did it on purpose and on the belief that there was academic support for their positions. They really did expect to scratch the Arab skin and find liberal democrats underneath.
However, the problem as I see it is that policy makers turn towards too select of a group of academics. I could make that point with the Iraq War, but I mean it more generally--it's not simply that one or two schools of thought are preferred over others, it is that foreign policy expertise is expected to come from particularly small areas, i.e. New Haven, Boston, New York. In some ways, the expectation is natural since those universities produced much of the post-World-War-2 world order. Nonetheless, the base of expertise has expanded over the past 60 years to the point that the over-representation of a few universities is no longer justified.
I hope that I will not be labeled anti-intellectual, but I have to say that this is one area that I find very frustrating. Generally, I believe the government should rely on experts in determining policy, but it should not be the case that expertise rejects democratic will. The people need to define goals and ends, and then let the experts work out the means.
In any case, I am bothered when experts refuse to answer questions from the public. Prof. Slaughter's effort here is admirable, but it doesn't happen very often on this site. If we're stupid is it too much to tell us so? If we're wrong, shouldn't we be corrected? Part of the problem is that the experts who come to this site seem not to care what we think, even when presented with apparently strong arguments against their positions.
June 24, 2007 10:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm grateful to Dean Slaughter for taking the time to produce such a detailed response to my earlier comment. I'm sorry I didn't acknowledge the response sooner, but I have just returned from a weekend trip back home to help my parents celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary, and I'm checking in on TPM Cafe for the first time since Saturday morning.
It's late, and I can't produce any extended comments right now. But perhaps I can just emphasize one point which goes directly to the tile of Dean Slaughter's book:
Simply put, America is not an idea. It is an actual, physical place with a real history. This is not just an idle debate about a relatively meaningless rhetorical point. The tendency to identify the United States with certain ideals, rather than its concrete manifestation in action and history, entails a failure to see the United States as it really is, rather than as some lofty spirits might wish it to be. It produces the tendencies toward ahistorical forgetfulness and a see-no-evil self-deception that are so pronounced in this country. And those childish traits of mind have real, harmful effects on the US, its people, and people abroad.
The stark contrast between the United States as it actually exists and the United States of the poets did not just begin with the Bush administration. With all due respect to those poets, who have contributed much to the US literary tradition, not many poets have served as Secretary of Commerce, Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of Defense or President. Nor is poetry likely to be very prominent among the vocations of the people who operate and staff transnational or multinational corporations and banks.
There is a virtual conspiracy of ignorance protecting Americans from knowledge of their own history, and from the responsibilities of adult thinking. Indulging the public's taste for patriotic schmaltz and flights of idealistic fancy might be good politics in the short run, but it ultimately does them no service, and only further robs them of the capacity to exercise informed and adult self-governance.
June 24, 2007 11:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Arthur, you wrote: "The problem is that no matter how brilliantly you express it, advocacy for tolerating the status quo isn't very inspiring."
1. Inspiring to whom?
2. Is inspiration a good basis for foreign policy?
3. Are carving out a place in government policy for tolerance, and tolerating the status quo, synonomous? I don't think so. Anne-Marie advocates a place for tolerance, and one can disagree vigorously with her, as some in the thread have done, over where to draw those lines.
She is hardly, however, in favor of tolerating the status quo in all respects. I believe she supported the Balkans interventions to put a stop to the genocide, for example.
Is the question of intervention in other peoples' affairs best seen as an either/or matter?
Interventions in other peoples' affairs vary greatly in their aims, purposes, and effects and I think it is helpful to bear that in mind.
As one possible heuristic, types of intervention might be arrayed along a spectrum, extending from the most intrusive and coercive to the least.
The question then might be asked: With regard to what, if any, types of circumstances are the following types of interventions justified and appropriate?
a) military intervention for humanitarian ends (I disagree with those who consider that an oxymoron)
b) non-military but relatively coercive 'hard' interventions, such as conditions for receiving IMF loans during an economic meltdown
c) non-military, softer interventions, such as are embodied in many foreign assistance programs (US, non-US, multilateral, and non-governmental) which seek to advance values and policies intervenors intend to promote, such as rule of law promotion, democracy promotion, and family planning, which are more or less controversial.
I don't find helpful the sort of all-or-nothing polarized rhetoric, whereby interventions in other peoples' affairs are either presumptively wrong and unjustified for being arrogant and imperialist, or required, lest a fetishization of tolerance leads us to refuse to intervene in situations where we both could, and should.
Now try making that sort of approach sing on a bumpersticker in a candidate's speech. ("Intervention abroad: Sometimes yes, sometimes no.")
June 24, 2007 11:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Reece, this is a metastasizing argument, on both our sides. I'm thinking both about academic "experts" and about field-professional "experts", and both about knowledge and about procedural rigor in coming to decisions. Now you've added the question of classically "elite" vs. non-elite institutions. I would just say that I think this line of thinking is off base. The administration cherry-picks its "academics" and experts according to ideological criteria, not old school ties, and as a result they tend to be odd-men-out in academia: the neo-cons from Chicago (Wolfowitz), the right-wing political economist (Fukuyama), or plain old kooks like Victor Davis Hanson. But I think if you read the WaPost's amazing current series on Cheney's MO, you'll find that the narrative of the last six disastrous years has largely been one of people with little substantive expertise using their mastery of bureaucratic infighting to paralyze and circumvent people who had substantive expertise -- Cheney and a couple of compadres going around established procedures, putting cronies in key spots to implement stupid policies because they just wanted to. We've had kids out of Regent School of Law running the DoJ for the past few years; I'd really need to hear a pretty strong case to accept that what we need now is more non-expert decisionmaking.
Accumulating Peripherals
June 25, 2007 12:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
First and foremost a good American Leftist (or Rightist) opposes the "American Imperial Presidency." S/he understands that "American values" are trotted out solely for the purpose of attempting to justify the Imperial President's excercise of personal power the reason for which exercise is known only to the President.
S/he understands further that when a member of the foreign policy elite bloviates on the subject of values, that member's signaling that s/he's aware of how the game's played and prepared to deploy the "values argument" on behalf of whichever president will employ the member in the future.
Had Slaughter, Ikenberry, and Kleinberg been employed in the White House in the Summer of 2002, we can be confident they'd have been members of the WHIG working eighteen hours a day to sell the President's policy to the rest of us and basing their marketing effort on whichever "American values" the focus groups showed were, momentarily, in the ascendancy among the American public.
June 25, 2007 2:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Re: The US is at variance with the international community on: Geneva, cluster bombs, torture, UNESCO, Kyoto, world court, land mines to name a few.
All of the above list being the doing of George Bush, who turned his back on 60 years of foreign policy consensus through which America had had been in concert with the international community.
Re: they're "flawed" and "rigged". Probably these distinctions are lost when we translate them into French, German, Spanish etc.
You don't think other countries have flaws in their elections too, leading to governments which have the electoral support of only a minority of their citizens?
June 25, 2007 3:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Are South Korea and Taiwan really the two countries that stand out on that list?
You really think that's a list of "liberal democracies"?
Are you proud to have our country included there?
Kazakstan. Sierra Leone. Sudan. Saudi Arabia.
Cmon. Seriously?
"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani
June 25, 2007 3:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why I think we need a Historian around here:
Reads a bit like today, doesn't it? But it's 1917
There's a great short Biography at The Jewish Women's Archive.
aMike
June 25, 2007 5:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
American Dreamer,
1 and 2. I don't disagree with the broad thrust of remarks by Dan K and Ellen to the effect that patriotic schmalz is basically a marketing tool used by flaks to "inspire" the populace into accepting whatever the current line happens to be.
3. The overwhelming majority of the foreign policy establishment in the US is inclined towards "status quo" policies. Their careers were built on supporting tyranny in the name of "stability". Those policies imploded on 9/11 and US policy makers recognized that they had to extricate themselves from the outcome of 60 years of such policies in the middle east while surrounding that retreat with as much misdirection (including patriotic schmalz) as possible to keep their foreign policy establishment, their former allies, their current enemies, the American people, and, as far as I can make out, themselves, as confused as possible.
The passage I focussed on was unambiguously an attempt to link the concepts of toleration and humility with the conservative quid quo pro idea that we'll tolerate your vicious aspects and you tolerate ours. If she had meant to conceal the message she would not have selected as her examples of what should be reciprocally tolerated the US death penalty on the one hand and censorship, religious oppression and oppression of women on the other hand.
I haven't read enough of her material to comment on her other views but it would not surprise me at all if she does draw the line at tolerating genocide and only advocates toleration of censorship, religious oppression and oppression of women. The impression I got was merely of being more conservative and status quo inclined than the Bush administration. I did not get the impression that she was quite as virulently hostile to progress as say the Kennedy or Johnson administrations.
(4) Your abstract discussion of whether "intervention in other peoples affairs" is an either/or proposition leads neither to a bumper sticker nor a productive policy debate.
I'm not planning to elaborate much but just couldn't resist the opportunity to contrast the utterly uninspiring patriotic schmalz in support of tolerating censorship, oppression of women and religious oppression with the more skilful deployment of patriotic schmalz by Condi. It reminds of John Kerry "reporting for duty".
June 25, 2007 5:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
I hope no thinking person actually thinks this way. I do not and nobody that I respect thinks this way either. However, there are people who use this fake "patriotism" in combination with threats and fearmongering to advance personal goals of conquest of our own society. Emma Goldman complained about essentially the same phenomenon that prof Slaughter is advocating against.
The fake patriotism that we see today as in 1917, is entirely the product of a grand manipulation of public attitude. It must be resisted by thought, reason and faith that we can grow beyond these irresponsibly childish beliefs.
The point that prof Slaughter makes is that we need to build a national consensus to break away from the mindset that simultaneously enables the theft of our society's resources and emboldens the rest of the world to hate this particular spot.
June 25, 2007 5:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
One of the great problems liberals and the Democratic Party has had since 1968 or perhaps 1972 has been the conflation of liberalism, socialism, Marxism, Communism and the like. Thus the use of the word liberalism has for decades has been run away from by Democrats because it no longer stood for the traditional values of liberalism, which are largely the traditional values of the United States, liberty, equality of opportunity, tempered free markets and an activist internationalism. The last item meaning a globalism with the U.S. as the leader of the trend.
I have been vaguely aware of the wide gap between the New Left, the far left, and liberals since listening to Phil Ochs in the 1960s. However, since joining this site over two years ago it has been ever more apparent that there is an enormous gap between liberals, and professional Democratic politicians and the far left so often represented by people who write here.
Reference to "right-wing" talking points is like the right saying "liberal" or "socialist" it is designed to end thinking. To me the Far Left unlike Liberals, I capitalize them because people seems to self-identify themselves, reminds me increasing of those around George Bush. This has been increasingly evident to me as the disassociation from the realities of the world, especially the desire to see the world as black and white is ever more apparent at the Cafe.
A last point about Universities. Not only have I recently attended Columbia University in NYC but I have a cousin who is a professor at one university and friends who teach at others. The Universities are not corrupting the youth of America, as Horowitz would have you believe, there are irrelevant to the youth of American. Since I am closer in age to the faculty than to my fellow students there is a shocking disconnect between many professors who see the world as divided between the "good" victims and the "bad" victimizers, and their students who want the highest grades on their way to graduate school.
One of my points is that in the 1950s and 1960s many academics were vitally important to the general political debate, today the Baby Boom academics, do not speak to most Americans. Most Americans are not ideological, either left or right, however there is a tilt in America in favor of moderate government involvement in people's lives, a moderate internationalism, and general favor of free markets. There is also a neverousness about the curretnt world's impact on many of the traditional assumptions Americans have about their lives. The Far Left and the Far Right speak to none of these issues. The both speak to their ideological assumptions and their self-righteousness.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
June 25, 2007 7:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think both yes and no.
aMike
June 25, 2007 7:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
There is no doubt that Dr. Slaughter's response has generated, what I feel to be an excellent conversation.
First, America is both an idea (or better yet, a set of ideas) and an actual manifestation, a place. All nations are ideas, all nations are fictions (i.e. Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities). All nations believe in their own brand of exceptionalism. Like it or not, that exceptionalism and how it manifests itself (i.e. national myths, popular and political culture, etc) forms a foundation for a nation-state as well as for the larger international community.
What should be critiqued, as many have done here, is how those ideas are put forth. In the public sphere and in education (at least what I try to do in my college courses) is critique the ideas and stories that are put forth good and bad.
There is a definite need to critique the negatives of American foreign policy and American history, but that doesn't mean that we abandon all of the good that has occurred in American history.
Second, I am curious what mechanism, some on this forum, would suggest to involve the public in foreign policy. What should we do? I think I do my part by trying to teach my students about foreign affairs, but unfortunately for the vast majority of the country (and this isn't unusual just for the United States) they have little to no interest in what goes on beyond their front door step. What specific mechanisms should we engage in to have the general public have a larger voice in foreign policy?
Third, I have read a lot of people excoriating academics for their writing and their influence on foreign policy. As a fellow academic, I take issue with that idea. Yes, academics do have influence on foreign policy, there is no doubt. At the same time, however, these academics have spent years training, studying, writing, etc. about their particular subjects. It would be folly not to consult and use their expertise. Believe it or not, the academics writing on international relations subjects have wide differences on the proper conduct of foreign affairs. Those differences may not seem large, but when it comes to using specific instruments of policy, what levels, etc. There is a good deal of disparity in writings of academics and their specific expertise. These foreign policy elites do have an influence on policy, but it is not some monolithic stranglehold as some would seem to suggest.
There is no doubt that we need to do a better job of critique in the conduct of American foreign policy, but I would argue that responses like Dr. Slaughter's are a forthright attempt to engage in this idea. I saw a lot of complaints about some of her positions, but not a lot of ideas about what we might do to the contrary. Perhaps, that is where this conversation should go next.
June 25, 2007 8:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
But why did they want to? I really don't believe that people operate on whim. Actions are justified by beliefs.
I've looked through a bit of the piece on Cheney, but I can't bring myself to read it.
In any case, it's not the kids from Regent University in the government that really bother me. It's the people from Yale and Harvard--John Yoo, Douglas Feith, Alberto Gonzalez . . .
June 25, 2007 8:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
I read A.M. Slaughter's book this weekend and understand her book's structure and theme. She has identified certain "values" (which she finds compelling and prevailing in our history) and describes how those values have changed and evolved to mean different things in different times. These values are universal in name, but are utilized differently by the people of the world and we must respect and even tolerate that utilization if we are to forge a world consensus.
As an example, she points out that at the time of the founding of this nation, democracy meant slavery for some. According to Slaughter this was an accepted interpretation at the time or the founding and since then the "idea" of democracy has evolved to mean all people, not just propertied white men. The problem with this is that she is wrong. Slavery wasn't an accepted interpretation of freedom and democracy at the time of the founding. Those men were well acqainted with the evils of slavery, they knew it was wrong, they knew that it made a mockery of their claim that all men are created equal. Those representatives from the Northern states were absolutely opposed to slavery and wanted it abolished (for various reasons, not just on moral grounds). It wasn't an accepted interpretation, it was a tolerated interpretation.
It was tolerated, not because we as a people held any virtue or idea in common, but because the true genius of America was our ability to compromise, even though that compromise violated our "ideals" or "values". They did so because they knew that the true thing of value, was power - who had it, who wanted it, who used it and how it was and should be used.
It seems that the rest of the world understands this, it is only Americans who prefer not to see it for what it is. That of course, is because we are wielding it - we prefer to cloak it in "values" and "ideas" and hide it under a veneer of virtue not because of what the rest of the world thinks, but because of what we would like to think of ourselves - that we are a virtuous, value laden people who wield power judiciously and only to further world peace and freedom.
Of all the values discussed by Slaughter, I was struck by the absence of the only value that would advance the debate - honesty. Sadly, as long as we delude ourselves with discussions of our virtues and values, as long as we pretend to be something we never were, we'll remain a nation that elects someone like George Bush whose dishonesty is so stunning as to make the rest of the world wonder if we are not just dishonest as a people, but delusional as well.
June 25, 2007 8:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Jason,
The influence of academics on foreign policy doesn't have to be a strangehold in order to be critiqued, examined and questioned.
Anne-Marie Slaughter is quite influential. Yes, she earned her influence. But I'm much more interested in how she uses it than in how she got it.
The inevitable conclusion of her work is more war. The best you can say is that they'd be better run wars than what we have now because Slaughter would have us act in better concert with other countries. But it's still more money down the drain and more boots on the ground. I do have a problem with that.
As for an alternative? How about we only engage militarily with countries that actually, you know, attack us?
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
June 25, 2007 8:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have been excoriating academics for their influence over foreign affairs, and I think this is among my reasons for doing so. You tell us that there isn't a monolithic stranglehold, but that must be seriously doubted when supposedly diverse academics advocate policies which produce the same result.
Several of us went through this back in December when Slaughter, Ikenberry, et al sought to convince the readers of this site that a new international organization of liberal democracies would be the best way to advance our foreign policy interests in the 21st century. Their argument went something like this:
1. The U.N. dangerously constrains our ability to act in the world.
2. Ensuring American and global security will require military intervention.
3. Liberal democracies are legitimate international actors while authoritarian states are illegitimate.
4. Therefore, a new institution for liberal democracies should be created to legitimize military intervention outside of the U.N.
Most of us had the same reaction: Whaaaa?!
Now, I readily admit that I am not a political scientist--I don't have a Ph.D. But I'm also not an idiot. Would Irving Kristol disagree with any of their recommendations? Would Dick Cheney?
So, yes, there are complaints about her positions, largely because she seems to advocate the same policies we have been living under for the past 6 years. If Prof. Slaughter wants to offer some new ideas for American foreign policy, that would be great. But we haven't seen them yet, and I seriously doubt a new book telling people how great we are is going to add anything.
June 25, 2007 8:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, yeah, actually, they are the ones that stand out, because they and Japan are the only other advanced industrial democracies on the list. But I do think there's an interesting question there about East Asian attitudes on the death penalty, since South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan pretty much covers East Asian advanced industrial democracies. And this means that when you say the US should join the rest of the world's civilized countries in banning the death penalty, what you actually mean is that the US should join Europe. And South Africa, I guess.
I'm against the death penalty, incidentally.
Accumulating Peripherals
June 25, 2007 8:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Destor23,
I am glad we are discussing this and I appreciate the response. I am also aware of Dr. Slaughter's work and Ikenberry, I use some of it in my own academic research. However, Slaughter's influence in the foreign policy elite is, IMHO, overstated. Having conversed with a number of the academics, she is influential, but not to the point of being a Condi Rice or even a Madeline Albright
Second, I disagree with your conclusion that her ultimate conclusion is war. First, let me state that I am not trying to be a slaughter apologist. I, like many of you, find fault with some of her work and with the work of the Princeton Project. From what I have read of her writings and her colleagues is the emphasis of different mechanisms for conducting foreign policy.
The instruments (i.e. much more diplomatic engagement, working through international institutions, etc.) would create less antagonism, not more. Those instruments are not a panacea to America's foreign policy problems, but a lot better than what we have got over the past four years.
Third, I agree with you with regards to the idea of intervention. I wasn't a fan of it then and am not a fan of it now. In fact, I have advocated that what we doing there is more peacekeeping than anything else (which is a different form of intervention with all kinds of stuff going on).
I wonder, however, at what levels should we intervene? Should we do it based on humanitarian grounds (i.e. Darfur, etc.). It is these kinds of questions which I hope we will continue to debate and we will get a clear picture of the mechanisms people propose to solve our foreign policy problems, as well as transnational issues.
June 25, 2007 8:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
I guess I should clarify what i meant by monolithic stranglehold. What I mean was that I get the impression that people on this forum tend to lump all of the academics together (i.e. the Truman Scholars, Liberal internationalists, neocons, etc.). Yet amongst that group is a wide diversity of mechanisms, instruments, beliefs in international instituions being used, etc. that exists.
Second, I do not agree with the Princeton Project's idea for a new international institution, but I do support the idea of reforming the institutions that we do have in place (i.e. more transparency for the IMF, WTO, etc.). But you seem to argue that Kristol and Cheney would agree with that sentiment. In a phrase, no they would not. This goes back to the idea that these scholars have different ideas about what instruments we should use to achieve America's foreign policy goals. Cheney and Kristol would never agree with this new institution.
The policies of Ikenberry, Slaughter, and others are decidedly more multilateral and reforminst than you give them credit for.
Finally, I would be curious as to what new foreign policy ideas you would propose for the U.S.? I am generally curious.
I don't necessarily propose new ideas, but ideas that work within the larger framework that this administration has ignored for the past six years.
June 25, 2007 9:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
First, we ought to believe in the law.
People make much of the idea that international law does not have a centralized authority that can enforce the law effectively--there is no international judicial system. But I really think that is a red herring. Most crimes in this country, most crimes in European countries, most crimes under national regimes go unpunished. And yet, we still try to follow the law because we believe it is right.
I suggest that we start to examine existing international law and follow it because we believe it is right. If institutions need reform, they ought to be reformed, but the need for reform does not give us the right to skirt the law--laws to which we have consented.
Second, we ought to reorder the distribution of our military around the globe. We spent too many resources protecting areas, like Europe, that either can protect themselves or are not likely to be disrupted by war.
Along these lines we ought to dismantle our military command structures as they exist around the world. The Pentagon has effectively replaced the State Department as the diplomatic mission in many areas and we need to reverse that trend. Foreign governments should contact us through our diplomats and not our generals.
Third, we ought to increase our foreign aid, especially to countries lacking basic infrastructure. Our willingness to work with and aid development in a country should not be dependent on the political characteristics of the country, i.e. whether it is a democracy or not, though we should be careful to avoid supporting despotic regimes. We ought to support the people as much as possible without strengthening the government.
Fourth, we ought to support intrinsic democratic movements, regardless of ideology, particularly in the Middle East. In other words, we should not be afraid of democratically elected "Islamist" movements. While, the realities of governing will temper some movements, militant movements that come to power should be aware that once in power they become responsible for their actions just as any other sovereign nation. I think this is a really good idea for several reasons not the least of which is that it will provide us with targets should militant groups decide to threaten international peace.
That's good enough for now. To summarize, we need to operate under international law. We need to reassess threats and redistribute our military. We need to reduce the influence of the military on our foreign affairs. We need to build good will through international development aid. And we need to support intrinsic democratic movements.
Slaughter seems to pay lip-service to some of these same goals (see her bit about tolerating the politics of other countries above). That's fine.
Kristol and Cheney may not support Slaughter's institution, but they support her goals--the use of American military force to transform foreign countries. That's what really concerns me--the ends and not the means.
June 25, 2007 9:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, do you see Condoleeza Rice's statement as consistent with the neoconservative worldview (which I would define roughly, as all war, all the time in the service of making the world over in the image of neoconservatives)? As a sanded down or neutered version of it?
What does her statement imply about her views on regime change, say, with regard to Iran and North Korea? What are your views on bringing about regime change in those countries, and how you would propose that we do that?
It's one thing to lament the sorry status quo in many parts of the world. It seems quite another to derive a workable foreign policy doctrine from that. It you could whisper in the President's ear what immediate steps would you recommend that he take to attack unjust status quos around the globe? Building on the stellar success to date of the Iraq war effort to transform the Middle East, whose status quo would you endeavor to improve next, and how?
June 25, 2007 9:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is a lovely discussion. There is very little nonsense here. Even those I vehemently disagree with -- well put, well expressed -- I appreciate it.
June 25, 2007 9:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Reece,
I don't disagree with any of your suggestions. I favor all of those ideas. I would add that we should be more distinctive in our public discourse, meaning that we shouldn't lump antagonists into one large category. I would add more, but I have to go teach in a bit.
However, I do disagree with you on Slaughter's goal of using the military to transform foreign countries. From her writings, I don't get that sentiment (although I do get that from Cheney, etc.). That is one of the fundamental differences between liberal internationalists and neocons is the use of the military. The former privileges other instruments above the military, the latter does not.
From what I have read of Slaughter, including her last book, she falls into the camp of the former and not the latter. I appreciate the response and I think if you and I were to talk further, we wouldn't be that far off in our ideas, but perhaps more on our views of academics like Slaughter and Ikenberry.
Good debate. Hope we can do it more later.
June 25, 2007 9:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the reply. Sorry for being oversensitive about the Buchanan remark.
Let me give a quick answer to you though about whether a more consensus driven foreign policy (by which I mean one that better takes the will of the American people into account) would have bad results: In my experience, I've seen the American people sold on wars by experts in and outside of the government. But I've never seen the American people clamoring for war and needing experts or the government to calm them down or talk them out of it. It just never seems to happen that the population at large "calls for war." 9-11 was an exception but it's also the rational kind of "find who did it and bring them to justice" response that I'd want in a foreign policy.
It's hard to imagine that the American people, were they given a voice, would have approved things like our military interventions in latin america or of Viet Nam or of Iraq.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
June 25, 2007 9:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm pretty loathe to use the military for most anything.
Should we have troops in Darfur? I don't know. MIght bring us into conflict with China. But beyond that, Darfur isn't attacking us. Do I want to see on the news that a 19 year old soldier with a mom back in Kansas has been shot out of a helicopter and then dragged through dusty streets while people cheer? No, I guess I don't.
I keep hearing that we should have done something to stop the Rwandan genocide. But was anyone willing to relive our Somalia experience at the time?
We did well in the Balkans but had to fight from 30,000 feet to keep our own casualties down and because of that a lot of civilians died.
If I know anything about the military it's this: I'm not in it and won't ever be. It's not going to be my blood spilled for some cause, humanitarian or otherwise.
Maybe we should have a separate volunteer force for humanitarian missions. I'd feel better if I knew that the soldiers we were to send to a killing field like Darfur were people who signed up for that, rather than people who signed up to protect the United States, which isn't under attack.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
June 25, 2007 10:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Our foreign-policy history is not one of acting while conscious of the "idea" of America, but one of promoting our interests, usually commercial, or strengthening defense through alliances. To be fair, since our ideas are not necessarily shared by others, the state-interests stance is honest.
What is dishonest is cloaking that stance in language about promoting democracy. What is even more dishonest is conflating the interests of certain multi-national corporations with those of Americans (see Iraq).
While security analysts and businessmen simply take what is and work with it, some writers and academics want a theory of foreign policy, a scheme that can be applied. I feel no such need. Do what is necessary, and only that.
June 25, 2007 10:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Re: All of the above list [US at variance with the world community] being the doing of George Bush Hogwash. Do you think that the Vietnam War was a Sunday school picnic without a trace of atrocity? Do you think that Clinton and Bush41 didn't use cluster bombs in Yugoslavia, Kuwait and Iraq? "America in concert with the international community" isn't a fact (it's what Dan K is proposing) but American hegemony is, and THAT is "the idea that is America" now being picked up by the Dem presidential candidates (except Kucinich and Paul) if you'll notice. Note also the Progressive Policy Institute where Will Marshall is in tight with the DLC and The Truman Project with Rachel Kleinfeld who are seeking a new Dem narrative to continue the agenda of American world hegemony.
Re: other countries have flaws in their elections too Of course they do. In spite of its more democratic (to me) elections Ireland does not have a high participation rate. Democracy is hard work, and there are no easy answers, but there are better systems out there than the flawed US system with the electoral college (NV voters rate higher than CA voters across the state line), gerrymandering (90-some percent return rate), supreme court interference, abuse of voter roles, etc. Dan K's point is that we should not go back 'patriotically' to Madison and Jefferson for the answers but solve problems as you say "in concert with the international community".
June 25, 2007 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm still not sure of your point.
Slaughter misrepresented the notion that "liberal democracies" all support the death penalty, when, in fact, almost all of them do not.
It's more than just Europe.
Even if it was just Europe. Yes, we should join Europe, then.
I do agree, it's an interesting question re: the East Asian countries.
"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani
June 25, 2007 10:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
CSCS, I think the point he's trying to make is this:
Not all "liberal democracies" oppose the death penalty. But all the 'white' ones do.
I think what he's getting at is: are some "liberal democracies" less equals than others?
June 25, 2007 10:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ellen, you may want to enter Jerry Mayer's Democratic Message on Foreign Policy 2008 Contest. Three to ten words on why Dems 'taste better and are less filling' or whatever. You do get a free T-shirt if you win.
June 25, 2007 10:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
CSCS, of the list you give, the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Botswana, Guyana, Jamaica, Lebanon, Malaysia, Nigeria, Trinidad & Tobago are all democracies.
You might not think they're liberal. But "liberal" is arguably one of the most ill-defined, amorphous, and fought-over words of the 20th Century.
I've read your comments here for meore than a year. I like them! I know you're not a racist. But does it bother you that your argument boils down to "white democracies don't have the death penalty, non-white ones do?"
June 25, 2007 10:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
from Smedley Butler's book 'War is a racket":
"In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army.
"So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side...it is His will that the Germans be killed.
"And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill the allies...to please the same God. That was a part of the general propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious.
"Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits."
--Major General Smedley D. Butler, USMC, recipient of two Congressional Medals of Honor, 1935
June 25, 2007 10:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
More and more there is a buck to made not only in commercial interests abroad, especially in wartime, but also in the promotion of those commercial/military interests, with PR firms getting hundreds of millions of dollars to promote the Iraq war for example. Is there big money involved in think tanks? You betcha. In academia?
June 25, 2007 11:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't see much value in the term "neocon worldview". I do see her statement as consistent with the outlook of the Bush administration she is part of (not a watered down version of it).
Its not a set of concrete policy prescriptions but an example of successfully using patriotic schmalz in support of an overall posture supporting transformation of the Middle East rather than toleration of the status quo there.
My impression is that Ann-Marie Slaughter's material is an attempt to do the same in support of an overall posture "tolerating" stability in the Middle East. The two seem directly counterposed to each other, almost as though one was preparing material to counter the possibility of the other being drafted as a Presidential candidate eg after presiding over an Israel-Palestine settlement ;-)
My point is that mobilizing patriotic sentiment in support of a of a conservative posture of tolerating oppression just doesn't work as a counter to mobnilizing patriotic sentiment in support of a posture of transformation.
It sounds exactly as phony as "Reporting for duty".
June 25, 2007 12:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for clarifying what you meant.
Please feel free to reply to my questions. They were not intended to be rhetorical ones.
June 25, 2007 12:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Conflict Investment" is the term coined by Richard Morgan for his novel "Market Forces", taken to include both KBR and Blackwater, but also Unocal wooing the Afghans and similar. Add to that "vulture funds" buying up distressed countries' loan debts.
June 25, 2007 1:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not racist, but simply ignorant about which countries on that list were liberal democracies (hell, let alone democracies for some of them!).
Of course, if some kind of inadvertent/unintentional racism came out, it would not only bother me, but, I hope I would own up to it. But I really don't think that's the case here. It really is more of not knowing all that much about foreign governments.
Believe me, foreign policy is not my strong point. I'm the first to admit it, and my knowledge doesn't get much beyond "not dropping bombs on countries that didn't attack us." But I do know that the list of countries that still support the death penalty is not all that admirable, and we're on it.
And I do know that when people generally talk of and think of "liberal democracies," they're talking about France, England, Germany, Spain, etc, etc. They are certainly the ones we are most often compared to, and the ones we most often compare ourselves to. At least I think so.
Isn't it more significant is France and Great Britain support a particular policy, versus Botswana and the Bahamas? And that has nothing to do with race, but world power, number of people, economy, global impact, etc, etc.
So, anyway, my fault I think was sloppy phrasing, and not looking at that list closely enough.
Thanks to you and Matt for pointing that out.
Lesson learned.
"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani
June 25, 2007 1:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let me offer a slight twist on this. There is, within Academia, an elite. Most of academia isn't heard from. Given enough time, this would be quite easy to prove, but I only had a few hours of stolen air conditioning in my own little corner of academia to work on a start. Here's a little chart of the Presidents' academic credentials, as well as those of the persons they defeated, from McKinley through George W. Bush.
There are over 3,500 accredited institutions of higher education in the United States. How many institutions are in this admittedly obsessive-compulsive list. Of those in the list, how many are private and how many public? Of those private, how many are "Ivy League" or the equivalent? Of the Ivy League, how many are either Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Columbia?
Hmmmm. Does that tell us anything?
Check the biographies of the cabinet officers, especially since 1950, and you won't see a very different picture. I'm not one who sees a cabal under every cabbage leaf. . . but. . . . . . .
aMike
June 25, 2007 2:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I will respond to your questions, but briefly and without implying willingness to discuss further both because I do not have time for extended discussion and because such discussion would go beyond the scope of this thread.
1. I did not see any hints concerning Condi's views on regime change in North Korea or Iran in her article. My impression of the administration's position is that they want a deal with North Korea similar to that with Libya and that they want to mobilize economic sanctions against Iran to discourage nuclear proliferation rather than for regime change. Their posturing about regime change in Iran has not been particularly helpful to the internal revolution that will eventually overthrow that regime but is mainly aimed at demobilizing Sunni hostility to what the Iraqi insurgents describe as a joint US-Iranian occupation of Iraq and at helping the Israelis to focus on a more distant enemy than the Palestinians while adapting their public opinion to the necessity of withdrawing from the West Bank. (However the long term resuls of both of those objectives will of course be helpful to the Iranian revolution.)
2. I would not just whisper but shout that ending the Israeli occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories should be a high priority as the hypocrisy involved in supporting that occupation thoroughly undermines transformation of the region. (I take it for granted that he does not need any advice that the bloodbath and regional war that would result if the US betrayed the elected government of Iraq would be disasterous for transformation).
3. Promoting transformation in sub-saharan Africa would also be important both for its own sake and to reduce hostility to the obviously self-serving character of the US interest in transformation of the Middle East as the only plausible long term answer to the stagnation that breeds terrorists there.
June 25, 2007 2:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
You have nothing to apologize for. When most of us think of "liberal democracies" we're thinking of Western democracies and when we think of values we're thinking of Western values.
The problem we face today is that United States itself is turning away from Western values and the neocon utopians from left and right are leading the parade.
June 25, 2007 3:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Certainly in the "New Right" movements of the sixties and early seventies, libertarianism was considered one of the factions of the right. Right and left really don't deal well with it.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
June 25, 2007 3:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
My first wife's mother knew Pat Buchanan socially, and he was an occasional dinner guest. My ex tells me you really have to know him in person to know how deeply to detest him.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
June 25, 2007 3:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm all for a new kind of death penalty--'executing' corporations that are found guilty of serious crimes. I'm also for building lots of new prisons--to house white collar criminals, in less than country club conditions.
*******************************************
You don't think ENRON got the death penalty? Or Arthur Andersen, their enablers?
June 25, 2007 4:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
well south korea hasn't used the death penalty in 10 years and their justice ministry is talking about abolishing it altogether.
Taiwan's president has also stated he wants to get rid of it.
June 25, 2007 4:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the HU. I've entered and am -- as we speak -- off to guard my mailbox and my justly deserved winnings.
TIRED OF THEIR BULLS**T? TRY OURS!June 25, 2007 6:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's remember that even in Europe's liberal democracy public opinion is very closely divided on capital punishment; in fact some polls even show support for reinstituting it in a number of countries. So it's not like there's some vast popular consensus against it. Rather, it's a case of governing elites deciding what's best and making it happen. Now, I happen to agree with them on this, but if you look at popular sentiments abroad I really don't see much difference between Europe and the US on this matter.
June 25, 2007 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
But our "governing elites" are leading in the wrong direction and it's not even in the same direction as the very old elite in the Catholic Church. I just can't see how anyone claiming a "liberal" perspective can hold the death penalty as a positive "value". At best, it might sometimes be a necessary evil. The value we ought to be championing is the rule of law, not the rule of the lynch mob.
June 25, 2007 6:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
A friend of mine is a criminal defense attorney in a Southern state. She's shaped a good deal of my views on capital punishment.
Given she does do death penalty defense, I was surprised to find that she is not completely opposed to the death penalty. Perhaps your term "necessary evil" fits here, and certainly not lynch mob.
She finds the death penalty both too widely given as a sentence to someone with limited assets for defense, and then an interminable period before sentence is carried out. Her basic criterion for death sentences is to convicts that have a high probability of recidivism, and when there is strong evidence and also a well-qualified defense.
A crime of passion, a battered spouse, or even an armed robbery gone bad do not strike her as just candidates for death sentences. When it comes to serial, contract, and mass killers, however, she wants to see a fully funded defense, but has no hesitation about a death sentence for a Bundy or McVeigh.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
June 25, 2007 7:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
. . . she wants to see a fully funded defense . . . .
Nothing like a bit of wishful thinking. May we assume that your interlocutor is -- for the immediately foreseeable future --opposed to the death penalty?
June 25, 2007 7:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, I deal with snark only with Lewis Carroll and an obsolete intercontinental cruise missile.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
Lady Astor: "Winston, if you were my husband I'd put poison in your tea!"
Churchill: "Madam, if I were your husband, I'd drink it."
June 25, 2007 8:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amen (or maybe right on?). I thought you might be interested in hearing a bit of Sr. Helen Prejean, who spoke at the American Association of Colleges and Universities in New Orleans last January.
Some of the other podcasts are worth a listen too.
aMike
June 25, 2007 9:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ellen, you caught my Boston humor and came up with a winner--I love it.
June 25, 2007 9:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: But our "governing elites" are leading in the wrong direction
I think the tide is turning on this one. Public support for the death penalty is falling and several states have enacted moratoriums on executions, in some cases with the open support of GOP governors and legislatures. America was originally in step with the rest of the world on the death penalty (the public was turning against it back in the 60s) and I suspect the last thirty years will turn out to have been an aberration.
June 26, 2007 3:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Almost no one sheds a tear for Bundy's and McVeigh's. The issue is always: "Are we sure this is the guy?"
Even with well-funded defense, the pressure to convict somebody guarantees a high error rate. Given that error in capital cases is unrecoverable when the sentence is carried out, the simplest solution is to just plain never execute anybody.
June 26, 2007 5:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
US Democratic party and communism? You don't really have a clue about communism, do you? If communism is really so bad (and I think it is), you'd be well advised to learn what it is. The Dems it ain't.
I'm also puzzled by your use of the term "far left". As far as I'm aware, far left would typically be represented by communists. Yet I don't recall reading any posts on this site advocating such staples of communist ideology as abolition of private ownership, centrally planned economy or rule of the proletariat. Have I missed something, or are you using the term "far left" as a cudgel to beat anyone you don't like over the head with?
June 26, 2007 8:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
What the French did in Algeria or British to the IRA or the Chinese to the Tibetans etc. were all considered to be internal affairs. If Abu Ghraib was in Texas and the inmates were all American, I'm sure that the international outcry would have been negligible.
June 26, 2007 8:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think if we stop "franchising" American culture we'd be on the right track.
How much do we franchise? Quite a bit I believe. We see McDonalds restaurants in every conceivable country, probably now StarBucks, KFC, Disney World, television, movies. I havn't traveled much but it would seem to me a common sense start to leave the rest of the world's cultures alone would be to refrain from such franchising.
I don't have a problem with exporting goods, but I don't like global franchising of businesses. Each country should have their own restaurants, television, movies, theme parks, and coffee shops, in my ideal world anyways.
Most folks here talk about the military industry but forget about the franchising of American culture which is just as insidious if not more insidious in my opinion.
As far as refraining from franchising generic democracy, I'm neutral on that as obviously there is some truth to the following quotation, and we don't want to be isolationist:
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)
The author herself knew that a values conversation would be a loaded one from the start in a liberal blog. I would tend to guess that if the democracy holders to be take ownership of - come up with their own - values, then the values have not been "franchised," and I don't see a problem with consulting a would be democratic government in this respect. It would be no different from consulting a corporation on their mission statement as the foundation of their business plan. As long as the values or mission statement comes from the principals, and not from the consultants, what's wrong with it?
The important thing is the principals of the would be democracy must take ownership of drafting their own constitution, their own values, their own governmental structure.
June 27, 2007 10:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
I get your point, but I'm not sure that such an effort is possible, even though it is worth thinking about. I wonder if anyone as done a cultural impact (as opposed to an economic impact) of this sort of thing. Most of us who travel abroad are aware that MacDonald's and Burger King seem to be everywhere. We're perhaps less aware that other American Merchandising chains made inroads into European countries even earlier. Woolworth's has a presence in Passau, Germany, which must date to the 1960s, if not before. It's a couple of blocks from the train station, but I bet most Americans are hardly aware of it--they're not looking for a dime store (10 pfennig store?) when they're marching off the train into the old city center.
In the city center, the two MacDonald's are more discrete neighbors than the MacDonald's are here, conforming to local ordinances protecting historic buildings. Imagine, a MacDonald's in a building dating to 1400. They also make concessions to local culture. MacDonald's in Bavaria sell beer! I've not seen Ronald toasting the Hamburglar with his stein raised high, however.
My hypothesis is that popular culture precedes commercial invasions, and we still have the world's strongest pop culture machine. Where in the world do teenagers with the funds to purchase them not wear jeans? The length, color, and sheen of shorts is determined here, and the fashion spreads around the world. The shorts or jeans themselves may be made in Asia, but the idea was made here.
When things work the other way--Virgin Atlantic Airlines, Virgin Records, Shell Oil, we're oblivious to them. How many people are aware that the toll house cookie is based on a Swiss Product--Nestle is a Swiss company.
I'm thinking that as we become more world conscious or the world becomes more conscious of opportunities in fast food America, we're going to see a reverse fast food franchise phenomena. I'm not sure that it hasn't happened already. There are now three Chinese Fast Food restaurants in my town of 26,000. All have individual names, but all have the same menu (quite literally--the only thing different is the name at the top). MHO, I wouldn't mind a little competition for Taco Bell from some smart and savvy Mexican restaurateur.
The end result, again MHO, will not be a total homogenization of culture--but an opportunity for persons to sample bits of world culture (not necessarily the best bits, I hasten to add) without having to plunk down $500.00 for an air ticket. Having had a taste for the ersatz thing, perhaps they'll develop a desire to experience the real...and we'll become less strangers to each other.
aMike
June 28, 2007 6:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Tex-Mex is a legitimate style of cooking. New Mexico is another. Both are different from Classical Mexican.
You remind me, however, of one of the best things I ever saw on a menu. At a Classical Mexican restaurant in New York City, the appetizers included "genuine American nachos, adapted for the Mexican palate."
I fondly remember a different sort of fast food, from street vendors. NYC probably has the most; there are cities where no one would know what a knish was, much less find one on the corner. Things are going in the right direction when the knishes are joined by the empanadas and pupusas.
Not to be forgotten is regional American cooking, especially given that the US is far larger than many countries. Alas, the fear of mad cow disease has made the St. Louis style fried brain sandwich a thing of the past, but, until I was in the area, I didn't know the joys of their local fried ravioli and concrete ice cream. I was also pleased to find the White Castles of my youth still running there.
A White Castle hamburger has to be appreciated for what it is. The "steam-fried" burgers have very little resemblance to an excellent grilled burger. If you compare them in that manner, you will be disappointed. I think I only really understood the White Castle, a favorite of my childhood, when I had my first Chinese steamed bao. White Castles are much closer to beef bao than to what most think of as a good hamburger.
--
Howard
Q: What did the Zen Master say to the hot dog vendor?
A: Make me one with everything.
June 28, 2007 6:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
No Fair, Howard.
It's only 10:15, and now I'm starving. It took a mountain of willpower to shed 50 pounds, and, like glaciers in global warning, that will power is shrinking and heading towards my personal equator. Hopefully it will not disappear entirely. <mantra>I really love salad. I really love salad, I really love chocolate mousse salad</mantra>
aMike
June 28, 2007 7:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
I like the caramelized sugar-coated cashews and peanuts. When they set up at street level near a subway stop you can smell it as soon as you step off the train.
In DC we called White Castle's standard fare "sliders." They still exist in Chicago area.
June 28, 2007 8:06 AM | Reply | Permalink