The Comfort of Old Ideas

There are two very simple reasons why religious people stick with the religions they are given (more often than they turn away from them or break off to form their own versions, that is). First, in believing that the foundations of their religion are given by a God or come from some superior (but not necessarily supernatural) intelligence that these beliefs are good and reasonable and worth keeping. Additional to that, the longer such beliefs remain, the more ingrained they can become, even as they stagnate, and the more worth keeping they seem—after all, if they lasted this long, they must be working. The second reason people stick with the religions they have is something I got at in last week’s essay, the comfort of it. Like in Pam Wynn’s poem Religion, the rooms of the house (of religion) may be “heavy and dark” and the “ground on which it stands” may be “beginning to cave in,” but “once the walls were familiar, comforting.” Where there was comfort before, there is still comfort enough to want to hold to old things, be it religious beliefs or anything.[1]

This holding to old beliefs can of course put people in positions that might seem strange to us on the outside. An example of this can be found in that Economist article about the Arab women protesting in Sana’a[2]. These women, subjugated to a secondary, if not tertiary, role in life, come in their religion-demanded garb, covered from head to toe, protesting a part of the very process that has put them in such a low position. They don’t do this because of potential reprisal if they were to take the opposite side, though that certainly could be an issue on some level. They do this because child marriage, whatever we outsiders might argue the negative aspects are, is a part of the system in which these women have become who they have become. This is a system that, as far as they know or at least believe, has come from God. To think otherwise, or to even question the rightness of this or any other part of the system, would put them in opposition to a system of belief that touches at the heart of their very being. Wynn’s house may be old and cramped, but it is still her house, the place where she lives, the place where she has lived every day since she was taught or sought religion.

Stepping away from a religion that subjugated you to a lesser role, that demands you cover yourself from head to toe, that you not speak to a man who is not your father or your husband—this would seem somewhat easy. If a system puts you down, the natural response, logically, is to get away from such a system. But, then the comfort aspect comes back into play, for, if you step away from the belief system that has been with you all your life, that was with your father and your mother and your grandparents and their parents and back for many a generation, where do you go? Life requires a certain sense of control, of order, or the day-to-day existence would be far too overwhelming. Sometimes you need the water in the pail, the moon in the water, right where you want and expect them to be. Sudden realization, like that of the nun Chiyono,[3] cannot work for everyone. Sometimes the sudden is simply scary for being so sudden, not a welcome break from a harsh reality, but a distraction from a comforting one.

Ludwig Wittgenstein used a “family resemblance” group of traits to define religion[4], the idea being that the more of these traits are present, the more comfortable we are defining a given system as a religion. The list is composed almost entirely of traits that would be comforting to a follower of a given religion. A moral code puts everything in order, makes life easier to live without the chaos. Similarly, prayer and ritual put a person in direct practical (meaning here, related to active practice, not necessarily useful) connection with their beliefs, making the ephemeral seem very real. A supernatural or superior intelligent being that drives a religious foundation puts all the rules, the order in the hands of someone better than us, someone who must have known more than we know and who knew how to make things work, how to keep life livable. Revealed truth and a deep intense concern—these put a certain import on belief, make it seem, even if its foundation may be proven false, an objective good. There are those—myself, occasionally among them—who may not believe in the godliness of Jesus Christ (or perhaps that he was ever even a single, living individual) but who still find in his words reasonably guidance for living. The Ten Commandments may not have come from God but they still encompass the basic rules that virtually every civilization has ever put down for its basics. And, any complex worldview that establishes which historical events are important or unimportant, which ones led us to this point in history and which ones did not, any worldview that leads to the notion, spelled out or not, that this is how we are supposed to live, how we have always lived and how we should always live, is a comforting worldview… at least as long as one remains within its bounds. Stepping out of those bounds—in that there is not comfort but frightening actions leading to the unknown. Stepping out of those bounds would be like not praying “for a rainbow” as Wynn does in her poem, but leaving the house altogether to stand in the rain and get wet and not knowing if the cold and the rain will make you sick or make you free.

 

progress vs tradition
Now Playing: boondock saints II

Admitting a certain atheist bias up front, I must say that it seems that progress and tradition do not go hand in hand. And, thus, religion, dependent as it is on tradition, does not fit well with progress. Outside of what we have covered in class, of course, there seems a certain irony in that early temples—where religion began—it has been suggested, came into existence because of supposed “progress” i.e. the agricultural revolution. But, separate from that—an argument certainly to be made, but not in this essay—religious cosmology and religious adherence to the immaterial quite readily holds people back from advancing thought and understanding about the universe, and sometimes quite actively obstructs such advancement (the excommunication of Galileo comes to mind). In Nakae Chōmin’s “A Discourse by Three Drunkards on Government,” the character of the Champion makes a clear political distinction between what he calls the “lovers of nostalgia” and the “lovers of novelty.” That same distinction fits quite handily upon the dialectic of religion vs. modernity or tradition vs. progress.

Not to bring in too many outside sources in the first week[1], but Max Weber argued that of the various religions—some being more conducive to progress than others—Protestantism, in particular, promoted Capitalism in the West (which many would, of course, see as progress) by legitimizing individualistic profit seeking, making it a duty willed by God; by justifying capitalist exploitation and work discipline by making conscientious labor a sacred duty; and by creating a climate in which poverty was seen as a result of individual failing. In America today, it’s almost too easy to see how this Protestant work ethic has remained, so that we have long debates over healthcare or any sort of welfare for the poor. Christianity (or either of the other two Abrahamic religions). Hinduism, Buddhism—these religions love the idea of charity, but in practice do not necessarily live up to it because of ideas like those Weber described. Religious tradition, even relatively new ones like Protestantism, get in the way of “progress.”

As said in class, seeking the holy, especially in the modern era, is about finding continuity, finding order. The religious person—even, the atheist, but after a different fashion—seeks a way to give meaning to everyday existence, to put a purpose to all we must experience. And, the empirics of science discount this meaning. Having grown up in a religious environment, I understand how comforting such a thing can be (the meaning, not the discounting of it), and in an increasingly chaotic world, an increasingly populous world, the individual almost has to seek something outside empirics to make living worth it. Religious cosmology, whatever one a person may choose, provides a (relatively) straightforward explanation for how the universe is constructed and how it is supposed to work. Any unknown portion is attributed to the supernatural and even for that there are rules and guidelines for how the supernatural is to act. Outside of say ancient pantheist religions like the Olympian, just about any religion also provides a moral code, and this puts further order on life, and order is generally more comforting than chaos.

It is worth noting, as well, that any religion with an eschatology—that is, a specific belief about the end—like the Abrahamic religions, like Christianity, there may even be a sense that, since we are near the endtimes, certain progress is, even if potentially positive, unnecessary. Chomin’s Champion compares the lovers of novelty to “living flesh” and the lovers of nostalgia to “a cancer.” While this may be a bit hyperbolic, it is fitting. Science, modernity, progress—these are living, evolving ideas whereas religion, tradition—these are dead notions whose very stillness is what makes them so comforting at times.

¡Si su puede!

¡Si su puede! – campaign slogan for Gonzalo “Goni” Sanchez de Lozada

Yes we can! – campaign slogan for Barack Obama.

Two men who became president only a few years apart (1) In two very different, but also similarly divided countries. Bolivia, divided primarily by class, notably with the indigenous peoples many of the poorest; and the United States, divided politically between the left and the right, also, like Bolivia, divided between the haves and the have nots. Both these men were intelligent, well-educated, and arrogant. And, both men were met by large opposition throughout their respective countries: Goni by indigenous protestors, poor people who, while they may have not been educated enough to even understand his economic aims, more importantly didn’t necessarily have reason to care, focused more on the day to day problems, on living life in an economically broken country; Obama by political opponents, the Republican Party, “the party of No,” the teabaggers, the birthers.

 

Notably, both men had to boil their campaigns down to simplistic campaign slogans to even get elected, had to resort to rhetoric to get votes. Explaining one’s point in a long speech may seem like the way to go, but far too often, in large populations, one has to pare everything down, cut away all the excess and give the people a simple phrase to which they can attach themselves.

¡Si su puede!

Yes we can!

Goni was forced to resign after 14 months, after protests and riots. Obama is only coming to the 14-month mark in the next couple weeks. There are no violent riots, but there is certainly still active opposition. Goni’s problem was simple: the indigenous made up a large part of Bolivia, and in what was essentially a 3-candidate race, he won with only 22.5% of the vote. Obama, on the other hand, had more than 50.

Despite opposition, Goni set out to get foreign investment in Bolivia—in his earlier term as president, he has privatized some businesses, for the purpose of bringing in capital and creating jobs, but with the effect of putting local business under foreign control, and effectively taking jobs away from local, indigenous people… as global capitalism would dictate. Bolivia is a relatively poor country, so, serving the structural forces of the world, it would be appropriate that it be exploited. And, Goni’s economic plans might have even helped the economy within Bolivia in the long run… If only the short run had not been making a large population of poor people think their country was being sold off (again) to foreigners.

Similarly, Obama began his presidency with highly debated economic programs, and significant efforts to reach out to regimes “on the wrong side of history.” He “sought to ‘reset’ relations with Russia by searching for common ground on arms control, missile defense, and Afghanistan. He began scaling back economic sanctions against Cuba. And he put out diplomatic feelers to Myanmar… and Syria” (3). Michelle Malkin, Fox News regular and outspoken opponent to Obama, suggested that he “solidified his place in the international view as the great appeaser and the groveler in chief.” The birthers spoke out, demanding his birth certificate. In Bolivia, opposition to Goni began to refer to him as Gringo—as he had been educated and spent much of his life in the United States, as his father has been in exile here (4). Teabaggers compared Obama to Hitler, and spoke vehemently against his healthcare ambitions as Socialism. Goni’s opponents crowded around government offices and broke down the doors.

The key ingredient here as to why Goni was forced to resign and Obama will have at least his four years is a simple matter of politics, specifically democracy. Obama had more support, and our two-party system is steeped in a sense of stability inasmuch as we know that whatever gets done now can be reversed or retarded in 4 years. So, while opposition may be loud, it doesn’t necessarily resort to violence any longer.

(1) Goni had a previous term as president, but his latest campaign was in 2003, Obama’s in 2007

(2) Yeah, I’m talking about global capitalism again, but then again, I’m a bit of a structuralist… obviously

(3) Charles Kupchan. “Enemies Into Friends,” Foreign Affairs 03/01/10

(4) Now, Goni is, like his father, living in exile in America

do we even need democracy in china and the middle east?

Before we get to the prospects for democracy in China or the Middle East, it is necessary to put together a practical definition for “democracy.” The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) “tends to see democracy as a process involving political equality and popular control… preconditions for democracy include basic human security, rule of law and respect for basic human rights…” (1). There are those who might argue we don’t consistently have those things even here in the United States, so we might have to simplify the definition a bit. By the simplest definition, modern democracy would have to include universal suffrage and free and fair elections, and protection of civil rights… at least, so we’ll work with that.

 

Will China become democratic any time soon? The short is answer, is probably not. But, then again, democracies can arise suddenly and unexpectedly. One precondition for democracy put forth in the past was “a certain amount of wealth… a per capita income of approximately $250 in 1970 dollars” (2) and “China now has the world's fastest-growing economy and is undergoing what has been described as a second industrial revolution” (3). The problem, is, though, that China’s “rate of economic change hasn't been matched by political reform, with the Communist Party - the world's biggest political party - retaining its monopoly on power and maintaining strict control over the people. The authorities still crack down on any signs of opposition and send outspoken dissidents to labour camps” (3). An Amnesty International report said “China easily operates the most stringent capital punishment regime, with an estimated 3,400 executions” in 2004 (4). As long as China still puts down dissidents with violence, or imprisons them simply for speaking out, then the 2^nd (freedom of expression) of Robert A. Dahl’s 8 criteria for democracy is out, as is Anthony Giddens’ 3^rd of 3 (an effective legal framework of civil liberties or human rights). As long as China has “a longstanding set of policies restricting the information to which citizens are exposed” (5) by censoring, for example, internet access, then #6 (alternative sources of information) is gone. China has a single-party system, so the first (a multiparty system) of Anthony Giddens’ 3 criteria for democracy is out.

 

Barrington Moore, who listed five basic conditions for the development of democracy in his book, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, expresses “strong agreement with the Marxist thesis that a vigorous and independent class of town dwellers has been an indispensable element in the growth of parliamentary democracy. No bourgeois, no democracy” (6), so what these countries need before democratization is a significant class of property owners, even a growing middle class. The latter, in my opinion, might actually be a better indicator of a move toward, if not democracy, then some significant political change in another direction (such as Imperial Russia’s move toward communist revolution). What seems an indicator of a serious resistance to democratization (but, notably, a move toward capitalism) is a growing proletariat, a working class too busy with work, too overwrought by working conditions and food insecurity to even be able to work toward democracy. So, factories of jobs outsourced from the West in China, or purported near-slavery conditions for workers on, say, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai—these stand in the way of democracy, just as slavery did in the United States, but they line up quite well with capitalism.

 

So, what about the Middle East? What about Dubai, for example, where the Burj Khalifa, a powerful symbol of extravagance, was only completed after the “real estate bubble popped” (7) in that country, was only built because of exploitation of workers. The countries of the Middle East lack “the conditions, such as a democratic political history, high standards of living, and high literacy rates” (8) necessary for democratization. The Project on Middle East Democracy suggests that “democratic reform in the Middle East should be viewed not merely as a development objective, but as a strategic priority” (8) but maybe it would be easier to “allow Iraq to lapse into a purportedly pro-American despotism like Saudi Arabia and Egypt… and reform at some future date” (10). Given, the state of war in the Middle East, it seems unlikely that any “revolutionary break with the past” (i.e. Barrington Moore’s 5^th condition for democratization) will be coming any time soon. In fact, it seems more likely that conditions in the Middle East would become more entrenched, in response to war, before they move toward democracy.

 

Now, we could ask if democracy will be coming to China or the Middle East ever, as opposed to soon, but what is important to realize here is why we want it to come at all. We want democracy in China and the Middle East not because we really, truly believe in democracy and think it is the best thing for everyone (though some of us may think that), but because “we seek democracy's practical dividends” (10); we seek trading partners, we seek peaceful relations; after all, democracies “do not seem to fight one another” (2). So, the question is, do we even need democracy in China and the Middle East? If it isn’t democracy, necessarily that we want to spread, but capitalism, do we need them to be democratic? As long as China’s economy is rising, we will borrow money from them and look the other way when they lock up dissidents. If we manage to get practical control over the resources (read: oil) in, say, Iraq, then will we care how democratic their government is? Or, will we allow despots to be in charge, as we have many times in the past, as long as they will sell us oil, or as long as they will take our outsourced jobs.

 

(1) http://www.idea.int/about/faq/index.cfm

(2) The Transition to Democracy: Proceedings of a Workshop (1991). http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=1755

(3) China Country Profile. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/country_profiles/1287798.stm

(4) Penketh, Anne. China Leads Death List as Number of Executions around the World Soars. 5 April 2005. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0405-07.htm

(5) Zittrain, Jonathan and Benjamin Edelman. Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering in China. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china/

(6) Barrington, Moore. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy,

(7) “The Moment.” Time Magazine 18 January 2010. 17.

(8) Basham, Patrick and Christopher Preble. The Trouble with Democracy in the Middle East. 30 November 2003. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3325

(9) Project on Middle East Democracy. Mission Statement. http://pomed.org/about-us/mission-statement/

(10) Hanson, Victor Davis. Democracy in the Middle East: It's the hardheaded solution. http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/769bfuqn.asp

jihad as a structural force

This past week, Muammar al Gathafi (1) called for a “jihad, or holy war, against Switzerland, in an escalation of his vendetta against the country where police once arrested his son” (2). Swiss voters  banned the building of minarets in Switzerland last fall. Minarets are important to Islamic mosques, so effectively, Switzerland said no to mosques, to Islam. While there could be some debate about whether or not the Swiss have a moral right to deny Muslims something architecturally essential to their places of worship, or whether or not it is appropriate to suggest that the response should be a religious struggle against Swiss interests, what I have found myself wondering in response to this story was not about that but something else. Specifically, I’ve been wondering if I (or anyone) could make a structuralist argument about the notion of jihad. If terrorism can be boiled down to its rational choice cause, its cultural cause and its structural cause, then I thought jihad could just as easily be explained under each. And, being a structuralist, for the most part, I decided I wanted to find the structural argument behind what is so obviously on the surface a cultural thing: jihad.

 

So, I would like to begin with Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab Najdi who, in the late 1700s led a political uprising against the Ottoman Empire, which could be called the hegemon of the Middle East from 1299 to 1922. The specifics of what Ibn Abd-al-Wahhab are something worth a whole discussion of their own, I suppose, but I would like to generalize instead about the purpose, a reaction to outside rule at a time when Imperialism and Colonialism around the globe were starting to meet up with the first inklings of Nationalism. Of course, that last sentence is misleading, treating Imperialism and Colonialism and Nationalism as forces the support themselves, structural forces, but they do not necessarily begin as such in and of themselves. While Global Capitalism is the easy structural force to use in modern times, as you go back in history, it is a little harder to use. But, the argument could be made that colonialism and mercantilism, the kind of trade that involved brute force when locals wouldn’t trade—for example, in the Opium Wars, the British and French used military force to make China open up its markets to more outside trade—and used whatever tools were at its disposal to keep natives down and profits up—that this sort of colonialism and imperialism was the immediate predecessor to what we call global capitalism. And, by Marxist terms, this would put feudalism the next step up in that chain, a more localized form of proto-capitalism. And, going back even further, you come to the point that, as Daniel Quinn puts it so succinctly, we “locked up the food.” The first agricultural revolution made possible food surplus. And, someone had to be in charge of the storage and the distribution, and it came down to the priests—or the administrators of such surpluses invented religion as we know it in cementing and guaranteeing their role in various civilizations; it’s a bit of the chicken and egg debate, really, whether the government administrators and/or priests came first and took upon themselves this role or this role came first and those put in charge of it gained more and more import and prominence as time went on. But, however it went, the point at which we had food surplus altered civilization to the point that tribalism and old ways of doing things were thrown to the wayside, and wherever the more “advanced” peoples have met up with the less “advanced” peoples—those still living without food surplus, without proto-capitalist control—they have forced them, my military means if not socio-cultural influence, to change.

 

Now, having simplified all of that, I’ll simplify even more: it comes down two forces moving against each other, one the one side that which has become Global Capitalism, the force that began with the agricultural revolution and has changed names and tactics a bit as it has gotten more and more integrated into the lives of every man, woman and child around the globe; and on the other side, going with a romantic view here, a more natural, tribal force, that that forms social groups without bureaucracy, without the sort of leaders we are familiar with in modern times… this smaller force is what turns into nationalism when a people are dictated to by outsiders; it is what leads individuals like Ibn Abd-al-Wahhab to preach a stricter form of Islam as a political force (3). It may be a cultural reaction to a structural force, and there may be underlying that a rational choice response in the leader of such a movement, but if these responses cannot exist without the structural force, then can one not argue that such responses, nationalism and revolution, are in fact structural in cause if not in nature?

 

So, when al Gathafi speaks about pan-Africanism, when he calls for jihad against Switzerland for turning against Islam, is this simply a cultural thing? For that matter, when referendums come up for vote to ban minarets, to politically act against a religion, is it not that same as when the British put down the Indians in order to profit off their labor and their resources, or when the slave trade exploited Africans for economic progress across the globe? Global Capitalism requires nations to exist on the periphery, to be available for exploitation. If every action has an equal and opposite reaction, then the direct reactions to such structural forces would seem to be, on some level, themselves structural. Nationalism comes from Colonialism, and jihad and terrorism come from Global Capitalism.

 

(1) Many different spellings of his name are used, so I’ve decided to use the romanization used on his own webpage, http://www.algathafi.org/.

(2) it is of course worth mentioning that in the West we tend to take jihad to refer to a literal war, a violent effort toward some cause, and this line from the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/25/muammar-gaddafi-libya) seems to take that same tone, especially as it mentions the arresting of his son which, while it did clearly anger al Gathafi when it happened, and did directly lead to significant economic and political responses—the Guardian says that he was “so enraged by his son's two-day detention that he shut subsidiaries of Swiss firms in Libya, had two Swiss businessmen arrested, cancelled most flights between the two states and withdrew about $5bn (£3.2bn) from his Swiss bank accounts.” But, this recent call for jihad doesn’t necessarily stem from that. Still, the Guardian calls it a “vendetta” and defines jihad as the usual “holy war,” a simple shorthand in place of looking into the term, which is more akin, especially in this latest call, to something more like a boycott. Despite our usual Western notion of what jihad entails, al Gathafi has not called for violence against Switzerland.

(3) author Philip K. Dick once argued (though I cannot find the exact quote at the moment) that all religion is essentially a political force, and I would agree in that any religion, as it gains followers, will work toward a pseudo-nationalist end of controlling its political environment to match its religious idealogy, just as the uprising led by Ibn Abd-al-Wahhab sought to do.

the people's voice, the politician's hindrance

As noted on usconstitution.net, and as should be obvious to any of us living in this country, the United States Constitution, and the “democracy” that results there from, is “deliberately inefficient.” This sort of deliberate inefficiency dates back to the earliest historical democracies, notably Greece. In effect, the inefficiency, not just general bureaucracy but the most important (arguably) pieces of our American system of government—checks and balances, separation of powers, even Federalism itself—serves to divide power so that no one person can ever have too much control, so that no one branch of government can have too much authority. Occasionally, though, this inefficiency, and the details thereof, presents itself in such a way as to make it seem that one man can have too much authority, at least for a time. This doesn’t go as far as, say, the appointment of a Roman dictator, an emergency measure that bypasses an otherwise democratic (in spirit if not in actuality, just like our American system) government.

 

Instead, we can see a very recent example of what I’m talking about in Senator Richard Shelby’s blanket hold on somewhere around 70 nominations/appointments of federal judges and executive branch positions in order to demand some attention to some of his person, political interests. A spokesperson for Shelby specified those interests as “the Air Force's aerial refueling tanker acquisition and the FBI's Terrorist Device Analytical Center.” Those things may be important—I don’t know enough about the specifics there to comment, really, but that isn’t the point here. This sort of hold has been around for a while, Section 2 of Rule VII of the Rules of the Senate allow for no consideration of bills, resolutions, reports, etc. without unanimous consent of those present. Withholding such consent—that is the hold Senator Shelby used recently. Of course, Article II, Clause 2 of the US Constitution requires the President’s appointments and nominations, though they are his decision, to occur “by and with the advice and consent of the senate.” So, like Senator Shelby did recently, any senator may hold hostage such appointments, at least temporarily—like a filibuster, such a hold may be ended by a cloture vote—to draw attention to whatever he sees fit.

 

An older, tangentially related example can be found in your history book—though it is usually cited for a separate issue—in the landmark Supreme Court decision in Marbury vs. Madison. John Adams, in the last days of his tenure as President, made some final appointments, notably that of William Marbury as justice of the peace for the county of Washington. The presidential seal was affixed by Secretary of State John Marshall, but the commission—the physical papers—were not delivered to Marbury, because Adam’s tenure ended and the new president, Thomas Jefferson had his Secretary of State, James Madison, withhold the documents. The president—not a senator, as in the recent incident above—and the Secretary of State stood as the agents of inefficiency here, the agents of opposition. For, what is our two-party system but a system of opposition, an antagonistic system that has become a more and more palpable divide in our country over the years? It may supply a sense of stability—with two opposing parties, the country cannot go too far to one extreme, for such movement will simply be reversed when the other party takes over—but it also slows down progress, be it objective and shared by people on bother sides of the partisan divide, or subjective, a partisan-specific issue… but I digress.

 

There is efficiency possible in government, but it comes from the dictator, the monarch. It comes from putting the decision-making in the hands of one individual. And, it can result in a positive effect—many a Roman dictator solved the crisis that led to his appointment, one of them, Cincinnatus, even voluntarily quit the position immediately thereafter; the rise of South Korea’s economic strength (as we saw in class recently, in viewing a segment from “Asia is Rising”) could be credited to General Park Chung Hee; when Tsar Peter I dictated European dress in the Russian court, it transformed Russian culture; and, another Russian example, ending serfdom took the act of Tsar Alexander II, not a popular movement or a revolution from below. But, under these leaders, under dictators and monarchs, there is brutality. There is a lack of personal freedom. Our republican democracy gives us—though some might debate the thoroughness of this one, given the number of people we imprison or execute in a given year—a freedom from brutality and tyranny, and, with far less limitation than in many other countries, many personal freedoms we would not have under a system the operated with efficiency.

 

Is it a good thing that Madison could arbitrarily stop a presidential appointment, that Shelby can now? Probably not, in and of itself, but it is just a piece of a system that most Americans would argue is a good one, even when they might protest big government or the political direction we are going at any given moment.  It is something we get, when we the people demand a voice.

 

Some sources consulted (i.e. the ones that aren’t obvious like, say the constitution):

http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_sepp.html

http://rules.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=RuleVII

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100209/ap_on_go_co/us_senator_blocking_nominations

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/marbury.HTML

A Level Playing Field with Unequal Sides

a cross-post from an assignment for my political science class, to forgive me if i don't take the time to explain that structural, cultural and rational approaches, or neglect to say much specifically pertaining to the two films used as the jumping off point for the assignment.

While “Asia Rising” makes a good case for a rational choice (and a bit of a cultural one as well, but to a much lesser degree, possibly more my reading into what was on the screen, while the filmmakers were more focused on the rational side of things) approach to South Korea’s economic rise, I am of the opinion that the structural approach taken by “Life and Debt” in describing the economic situation in Jamaica that holds more water. As I see it, there may be rational choice elements and there may be cultural elements (especially in the perpetuation of things like Oscar Lewis’ “slum culture), but what really drives things are structural elements. In the modern world, of course, the primary structural system is Global Capitalism.

 

Capitalism has been shown to alter whole culture before, whether for good or bad. One example, historically, is Old Calabar of Africa, where the slave trade turned the local culture in to a capitalist culture. Local chieftains had to take on the dress and mannerisms of Europeans (this, not essentially part of capitalism, but an important detail in the transition from their old way of life to their new one, and contrary to my overall point here, this brings in perhaps a little of the rational choice approach), the slavers who came in their ships upriver to Calabar. Wealth started to be measured in new terms—or, really, measured at all, as hereditary rule was the thing before—in how many men and canoes a man could command, as they took canoes upriver to gather slaves to bring down to the European ships. Government in the “canoe houses” became increasingly more centralized, bureaucratic, and the society around it became more stratified, divided between the richer men in control and the poorer men (many slaves in practice if not fact) under them (a bit of the cultural approach here, though still driven by structural elements). Along with centralized government, and perhaps the driving force behind the political change, the slave trade also brought a change to the economy of Old Calabar. The trade was very profitable, increasing constantly that divide between rich and poor, while credit from Europe allowed for conspicuous consumption, and the rich leaders of the canoe houses acquiring more and more slaves and belongings. They became capitalists, interested not in the meager profit that would get them by but the increasingly large profits of modern capitalism. This fits with the structuralist approach of World Systems Theory, the notion the capitalism exists for and is driven by a constant need for accumulation, profit and expansion. The slave trade existed so colonies around the world could exploit Africans to make huge profits and the trade itself turned other Africans into exploitative capitalists. It altered the very heart of places like Old Calabar…

 

…just as it has damaged Jamaica, The WTO, the IMF—these organizations serve capitalism, serve the nations who already dominate the global market. And, their decisions in regards to, say, the banana industry and the US-backed Chiquita and Dole corporations, serve to level a playing field and standardize rules between the Brobdignagian economies and desperately poor Lilliputians (in comparison). But, level fields and egalitarian rules are meaningless in s system built on exploitation and economic dominance. As Karl Marx argued a century and a half ago, the only way for business to make profits (any profits, really, but the key here with modern capitalism is the inherently demanded massive profits) is to cheat the workers, to pay them less and less and this system tears down the smaller economies, like Jamaica, because it is fundamental to its inner working that it “is forced to let [such small economies] sink into a condition where it must feed [it].” It is no coincidence that one of the workers from the Kingston Free Zone described her work in “Life and Debt” as such: “it’s like you’re working under slavery.” The surface has changed, old style slavery has been sublimated into capitalist exploitation. In Calabar there was a distinction between those legitimately enslaved (ie those captured upriver) and those illegitimately enslaved (ie two princes who fell victim to a plot that put them into slavery when they had been slavers), as if such a distinction makes any sense when viewed objectively. It is the kind of distinction the WTO or the IMF might make if the slave trade (as it was) were still around, the kind of distinction they make in spirit when they “level the playing field” between Chiquita and Dole and the Jamaican banana industry. But, then again, what choice does Jamaica have but to go along with it—they can’t really opt out of the global market, can they?

 

Works cited: Though I used no direct quotes in there, the basics of the Calabar material, but not my analysis thereof, come from my recent reading of “The Two Princes of Calabar.” That line about capitalism being forced to let workers (or as I used the line, speaking on a larger scale, small economies) sink into a dependent role is from the “Manifesto of the Communist Party.” And, of course, there are my notes on “Life and Debt” and “Asia Rising,” though I didn’t cite the latter really at all and used the former as a “jumping off point,” per the assignment, for my take on the broader issue.

Anyone can participate in politics… as long as he has money
Now Playing: alice in chains
The United States Supreme Court’s recent decision in Citizens United v FEC “struck down decades-old limits on corporate and union spending in elections (including judicial elections) and opened up our political system to a money free-for-all, according to Richard Hasen, Slate Magazine (“Money Grubbers” 21 January 2010). According to Justice Stevens, in his official “opinion”, the “real issue in the case concerns how, not if, the appellant may finance electioneering.” I was going to get into some of the specifics of this recent case (and will cover them briefly in a moment), but it seems a larger issue is at stake, something that has come up many times before (in the reversed Austin v Michigan Chamber of Commerce or the partially overruled McConnell v FEC, to name the two most obvious (and most cited) recent cases) and will come up time and time again, that of monetary involvement in the political process.

This latest decision was described by President Obama, in his State of the Union address as “opening the floodgates for special interests” to spend without limit” on political campaigns, or more specifically, on electioneering ads. But, one has to wonder if this just cuts out a single step in the process, ie the creation of a Political Action Committee (PAC). Corporations, non-profits, anybody—they could already donate money to political campaigns, just sometimes limited to indirect contribution by way of a PAC. Now, it seems, they might not have to bother with that step any longer. Citizens United put together a documentary on how Hillary Clinton would be a horrible choice for president and set out to make the documentary available free on demand on cable—this is the key point in the recent decision; it was not a question of whether or not an organization can spend millions of dollars putting together a negative portrayal of a politician, not a question of whose money gets spent, necessarily, or how it gets spent, but a question of whether on demand constituted public presentation, so to speak. In the aforementioned Slate article, Hasen suggests that the court might have been expected to go at this narrowly, covering that question and that question alone, but instead, the Roberts court, in the opinion of Hasen, was “recrafting constitutional law.” Of course, in the opinion of the President of Citizens United, David Bossie, (statement, 21 January 2010), it is “a tremendous victory, not only for Citizens United, but for every American who desires to participate in the political process,” something he goes on to call “the right of every American citizen,” as if the only way to participate in the process is to throw money at it.

Of course, money has been shaping political campaigns since the beginning. For example, in his Bank Veto Message, 10 July 1832, President Andrew Jackson said, “it is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.” He called the existing national bank, and by all rights all of what William Jennings Bryan would call in his 1896 Presidential Campaign Cross of Gold speech, “the encroachments of organized wealth,” “subversive to the rights of the States, and dangerous to the liberties of the people… Will there not be cause to tremble for the purity of our elections?”

So, it is worth asking, what is so different now that even President Obama had to bring up the recent Supreme Court decision in his State of the Union address, if our elections have already has a certain financial impurity for, well, as long as we’ve had them? For that matter, if we are a capitalist nation—and, make no mistake, we most certainly are—why do we infringe on such spending in the first place?

Supreme Court decision(s) excepted, is… or rather, should money be a first amendment issue? Jon Meacham, in his Andrew Jackson biography, American Lion, suggest that Jackson was of the opinion that “the country was being controlled by a kind of congressional-financial-bureaucratic complex in which the needs and concerns of the unconnected were secondary to those who were on the inside.” That is, those with financial and political capital were more important, fundamentally, to the system than the common man, damn the “by the people, for the people.” It is worth mentioned that Jackson was a laissez-faire capitalist; he believed in the free market, and stood more against the National Bank specifically than against all financial institutions, but he also wished to “buttress presidential power with mass support—something never done before,” according to Robert Remini in Andrew Jackson and the Bank War. Klaus Hansen, in Mormonism and the American Experience, suggests that Jackson’s veto of the National Bank “made possible the creation of the modern American capitalist empire with its fundamental belief in religious, political, and economic pluralism.” By tearing down the National Bank and leaving the economy unregulated, Jackson made possible the Industrial Revolution in America, and the emergence of corporations and monopolies larger than the National Bank ever was. And, all this in the name of defending the “purity of our elections.” Yet, we come back to money buying ad time, money paying campaign promoters, money buying elections. As Samuel Bryan suggested, decades before Jackson’s presidency, and centuries before the Citizens United decision, “if the administrators of… government are actuated by views of private interest and ambition, how is the welfare and happiness of the community to be the result of such jarring adverse interests?” (Anti-Federalist, Centinel I, 5 October 1787).

What it comes down to, then or now, is a very simple premise: in a capitalist system, is it unexpected or unwarranted that finance will, if not already then eventually, control everything? The common man necessarily becomes a disinterested, uninvolved party, recognizing, at least unconsciously, the smallness of his part. And, he in turn, if he wants to “participate” in politics, must donate what meager cash he has to a campaign or a PAC, when larger sums are already driving the campaigns’ direction and policy. The bourgeoisie use their pocketbooks to, still, “bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes,” while the masses go out and vote, only in part, and pretend that their individual votes matter more than the millions of dollars from special interests.

synchronicity dictates i talk about haiti

so, monday (then again wednesday) in world civilizations class, we were discussing the haitian constitution (from 1801, after the slaves took control). then, monday night in comparative politics class, i had opportunity to mention jared diamond (particularly, his use of haiti in his book collapse) after our teacher suggested haiti and the united states couldn't be compared. then, tuesday, as we all should probably have heard by now, haiti had a 7.0 earthquake, flattening buildings and killing, well, a whole lot of people. so, since i am supposed to be writing a blog entry (for the aforementioned comparative politics class) anyway, i figured i would go with the flow of synchronicity and write a little bit about haiti. reader's note: this first paragraph won't be in this blog entry as it appears on the class site, though it will everywhere else... which, though i've been neglecting my blogs for a while, would be at myspace, at livejournal (that one later posting automatically to facebook), and at my website, lemmingdrops.com. now, on to haiti and some attempt at comparative politics. again, this paragraph won't be in the class version, so forgive any phrasing that seems redundant with it present... like the opening sentence of the next paragraph.

i'd like to talk about haiti. the earthquake this week has taken one of (if not THE) poorest countries in  the western hemisphere and dragged it even farther down the scale, flattening buildings, including apparently the 5-story hotel where the UN offices there are located, a prison, houses, businesses, even some buildings at the airport in port-au-prince, the capital. just today, president obama said the US would be sending $100 million twoard the relief effort, not to mention thousands of soldiers. the more cynical side of me wonders what's the point? did any of us in america care about haiti just a few days ago?

a little history:

christopher columbus landed at haiti in 1492, and thereafter came much exploitation by the spanish for gold. not, of course, before the spanish executed a local "queen" when she stood up to them. that queen, anacaona, is revered still by the haitian people.

hisapniola (the island which is now haiti and the dominican republic) was a notable location for pirates and slavetraders, and there was dispute over the island between the french and spanish was settled in 1697--that's when haiti became its own territory, then called saint domingue. it was, like many other parts of the new world, an agricultural land, worked by slaves. inspired by the american and the french revolutions, the haitians slaves rose up in 1792. it took a while, and some fighting, but by 1804, haiti achieved independence. according to jared diamond (collapse 335), at that time haiti "was still the richer, stronger, and more populous  part of the island," something that would change drastically over time.

the haitian constitution owes some of its basic language to the american declaration of independence. it speaks of all me being born "free" and being "eligible for employment." it even goes further than our declaration (or our constitution)--and expectedly so, given it was being founded by former slaves--outlawing slavery. but, then it also specifically calls for roman catholicism to be the "only publicly professed faith," puts a specific value on marriage and the family and specifically dictates how cultivation, "the colony being essentially agricultural," would work: essentially a communal system (like the russian mir at the same time, but run by families), the consititution demanded cultivation, demanded farming, and outlawed imports of "good similar in nature" to its exports, an economic protectionist move. haiti had seized its independence and was dictating a clear role for its people and its self in the world.

they even annexed the eastern side of the island for a time, twice. as diamond points out, by the 1850s, haiti "controlled less area than its neighbor but had a larger population." haiti's stance against outsiders--the aforementioned ban on most imports as well as further policies forbidding foreigners from owning land or controlling means of production--plus their mixed heritage and language (while the dominican republic was seen as spanish-speaking, european) kept it mostly out of the world market. while much of the world was industrializing, particularly the united states not too far away, haiti remained relatively poor. 

1915 to 1934, the US occupied haiti (and the dominican republic 1916-24) militarily, ostensibly to prevent unrest and protect our interests in panama farther south. whatever strife or instability had been in haiti before, was amplified after the US left. under dictator rafael trujillo (evil maybe, but efficient like many a dictator), the domincian republic modernized quite a bit over the following decades. haiti remained poor, unstable, until it had its own dictator, papa doc duvalier. unlike trujillo, though, duvalier lacked "interest in modernizing his country or developing an industrial economy" (collapse 338). he died in 1971, his son ruled until he was forced out in 1986. haiti returned to instability.

diamond asks why these two countries, sharing the same island, unfolded so differently. he cites environmental differences; notably, rain comes mostly from the east, so the eastern side of the island supports more plant growth, the dominican side has higher mountains with rivers that flow down into the eastern side as well--he even calls th cibao valley in the dominican side of the island "one of the richest agricultural areas in the world" (collapse 339). the paradox is that the haitian side developed an agricultural economy first. and, it was valuable to the richer french empire (at the time, ie the 1500s), which encouraged the slave-based plantations, while the poorer spanish empire neglected to do so with the dominican side of the island.

what is has come down to more recently is deforestation and poverty on the haitian side, a coup d'etat in 1991, a purportedly corrupt election in 2000, and another coup in 2004. since 2004, there's been a united nations stabilization mission in haiti, made up of nearly 10,000 personnel, but as of 2007, according to a red cross report, this mission has failed to gain control over armed gangs throughout the country. and, now, this week, the country was ravaged by a 7.0 earthquake. and, nations around the world are throwing money and supplies at the problem. but, while lives might be helped, the country will remain what it is, unstable, economically weak, and lacking in the natural resources it once had and used well.

one has to wonder if protectionism, like the haitian constitution's limit on imports, or reliance on constitutionally-dictated agriculture as the rest of the world was drifting toward industrialization--even at the start of the 19th century--crippled haiti so much that it never had a chance without a serious overhaul. after all, the american south's reliance on slave labor crated such economic (and subsequently, political) disparity between the north and south that it led us to civil war. haiti began the 19th century prosperous and independent (as did the american south), but lacked true connection (see the ban on imports) with the world's economy, even its French parent, and did not evolve economically as it, arguably, needed to evolve in order to survive. instead, it has limped along, remained poor, gone through many periods of instability, and now can do little to help itself when disaster strikes.

 

glenn beck versus reality
Mood:  irritated

watching glenn beck last night, i just had to record it and take some notes. tactics on his show angered me too much to just ignore it--the usual method when watching fox news is to laugh and remind myself these are far right folks who, while they may have an audience, have no actual politica power, so i'll just ignore them for now as best i can

but, glenn beck is talking about obama and healthcare, with a nice drawing of a tree, the roots the people obama supposedly surrounds himself with when considering healthcare. there's a nice clip of obama saying what people he associates himself with when considering economic policy and foreign  policy. but, the clip doesn't establish the people obama claims in connection with his healthcare policy. that is just the first misstep in beck's coverage, inventing his own list of who obama associates with. some, of course, are givens, people in public office, put there by obama, but overall, the links are all beck's invention.

all this, by the way, to compare america to germany, as we are wont to do whenever the administration does something we don't like (hell, i've probably even done it). of course, beck's reasoning there is that what made germany go bad was only two things, money (or the lack thereof) and crazy people. yeah, that's nice and specific, very fair and balanced and informative

so, beck mentions john holdren, obama's advisor on science and technology. see, apparently, in the 70s (mostly written around 73 but published in 77) holdren cowrote a book called ecoscience in which is discussed options for, among other things, population control if overpopulation gets too far out of control. the book presents mostly hypotheticals and goes into political, legal, and social ramifications of certain options like forced abortions, sterilants in the water and laws regulating how many children a woman can have. the thing is, the book, even in the excerpts cited by someone denouncing it (http://zombietime.com/john_holdren/) is clearly not presenting a plan for what should or will be done. the book is not an opinion piece establishing that holdren or his 2 coauthors believe we need to start forcing abortions and sterilization. and, the book does actually suggest that social change would be a better plan, changing society so that people want to have less children

of course, i've just presented more information than beck did. one of his guests says that holdren said some things in writing once about drastic measures for population control. beck mentions forced abortion and sterilants in drinking water than asks (because asking a question is a handy way of accusing someone of something without outright saying it) if it was holdren or sunstein (cass sunstein, office of information and regulatory affairs, who beck says he likes the ideas of, but presents as one of the "crazy" roots here because he is a friend of peter singer, author of animal liberation), on the root next to holdren who said we should take children away from unwed and unfit mothers (yes, that last one is also in the ecoscience book, and sounds a lot like what we try to do already, when are child and family services organizations run effiiciently anyway). one of his guests says, oh that couldn't be sunstein, so it must have been holdren. it's still just vague enough that they haven't actually accused holdren of supporting forced abortion. but then, 10 minutes later, when the caption at the bottom of the screen informs the enraged (either at beck or at holdren, depending on one's political bent, of course) viewer that holdren "does not support population control" beck has already used holdren as a way to explain how the green movement's involvement as one of obama's healthcare tree roots (a connection he doesn't bother to explain in itself; in fact, though the diagram seems to be of beck's design, he says he couldn't figure out the green movement connection until he figured out what follow) makes sense because the green movement thinks people are a virus (which of course fits with holdren's notion that we need to control population, even as the timing of beck making this connection comes about 20 seconds before the screen informs us first that holdren said forced abortion was constitutional (he did) then that holdren does not support population control

that last fact, which of course doesn't come up in anything beck or his guests say out loud, is in line with official statement from holdren's people, that the material about forced abortion, etcetera, comes from "a three decade old, three author college textbook. dr holdren does not believe that determining optimal population is a proper role of government [(this bit, he said in his confirmation hearing)]. dr holdren is not and never has been an advocate for policies of forced sterilization." his coauthors, the ehrlichs, have pointed out that they "were not then, never have been, adn are not now 'advocates' of the draconian measures for population limitation described--but not recommended--in the book's 6o plus small type pages cataloging the full spectrum of population policies that, at the time, has either been tries in some country or analyzed by some commentator." as the back cover of ecoscience says, the point to the book is to provide "concrete strategies for dealing with the environmental crisis" not to support any of those strategies

but, what does the reality matter, as beck just used holdren (who he didn't quite accuse of supporting forced abortion outright) to make the green movement sound bad, just as he used peter singer to make sunstein sound bad, and all these roots to make obama sound bad. and, all of this without really getting into even one thing obama has actually said or done regarding healthcare