Are you ready for some football?

Apparently, the city of New Orleans is. In less than a week, the Saints will be back at home in the Crescent City, playing a real home game for the first time since Katrina ravaged the team’s playing field, the Super Dome, over a year ago. Having spent a year playing home games in San Antonio and Baton Rouge, the return home, the return to a sense of normalcy, is a much welcomed one for Saints players and countless football fans in New Orleans.

The National Football league seems to be quite excited about the return, as well. The league has scheduled the home opener in a prime-time spot on Monday night. And it’s attracted big-time musicians U-2 and Green Day to be a part of pre-game festivities that will benefit Music Rising, the group dedicated to bringing music back to the Gulf. For the NFL, getting the Super Dome rebuilt and football back to New Orleans was a huge deal, and this game represents the culmination of their efforts.

So fans are happy, players are happy, and the league is happy. The Saints will provide a much-needed rallying point for New Orleanians, an escape that takes their minds and energies of all the crap they’ve been dealing with. And the return of football will surely provide a little boost to New Orleans’ struggling tourism sector. Then what’s wrong with this whole situation?

It’s yet another example that government officials are, in a sense, turning the other cheek to the city’s poor and much of its former population. While the city’s tourism-rich areas have redeveloped, the ninth ward and other areas lay in ruin. While businessmen and women and many white-collar workers have returned to the city, thousands upon thousands of musicians, artisans, and people that made New Orleans so unique are displaced around the country because they have no homes to go home to. While the Super Dome, home to about 100 highly paid athletes and cherished by fans willing to shell out top dollar for tickets, is rebuilt, countless hospitals, schools, and other buildings that serviced the city’s entire population are things of the past.

Bringing football back to New Orleans is definitely a nice story. And when people watch the game on Monday night they will without a doubt hear some incredible tales of survival and perseverance. However, what they will not hear is that the return of the Saints and the rebuilding of the Super Dome has been used to overshadow the city’s real problems on the rocky road to recovery.

The New Guy

To my two or three loyal readers (I hope there are at least that many), I'd like to introduce a new cohort. Since it’s become glaringly apparent that I have trouble keeping up w/ posting on a regular basis I’ve invited a friend to join me at the Oxymoronic Philosopher. I’m excited to see a new perspective…and it should be interesting as he’s a current college student at a big university with a lot of interesting thoughts to put out there (no pressure, kid). His interests are in politics and sports…and anything else he decides to tell you himself. And, let’s not forget, he’s taking his first philo class ever this semester! So give a nice warm welcome to Ping when we hear from him sometime over the next few days.

We Missed the Pontiff's Point

I’ve been wanting to comment for a few days now on Benedict’s comments at the University of Regensburg last Tuesday and the Muslim fallout that followed, but decided to wait until I had a chance to read the entirety of the Pontiff’s lecture (can always count on NPR and the BBC) before chiming in. While Benny probably should have been a little more careful with his choice of quotes, a charitable reading of the transcript conveys a hopeful message for true dialog and makes some very pertinent points.

What we’ve all heard…THE sound bite that seemed to escape from the context of the address:

…he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship of religion and violence in general saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and then you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith that he preached."

What we missed was the careful criticism of forceful evangelizing. Though he may have erred by focusing criticisms toward Islam and not looking back an acknowledging past wrongs of his own faith, the Pontiff espouses the central reason why faith must not be “spread by the sword.” From the Gospel of John: “In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was God.” Logos is the Greek used by the author in this passage and it means both Word and Reason. “In the beginning was Reason, and the Reason was God.” The nature of God is reasonable, Benedict claims, and to spread faith by force is not; therefore it goes against the very nature of the Divine. The claim he is really making is that God is not so all-powerful and all-knowing that we cannot even use the greatest capacities endowed on us to understand what is truly good. He is saying that we cannot expect killing and maiming one another to be a reasonable means to any good end, because it is against the very nature of God.

God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf.

Reason, not blind faith, is the way to God…a pretty extraordinary claim from a man of faith??? Not really, but that’s another story.

Benedict then goes on to make a call for dialog between Islam and Christianity, but more-so between Reason and Religion…or what he has seen Reason become. The Pontiff scolds the academia of the West not for becoming too reasonable (as Spaz claims) but for too narrowly defining what reason is. We are prone to defining reason, Benedict claims and I concur, as only that which can be defined with the “certainty resulting from the interplay between mathematical and empirical elements.” We have moved theology, questions of mysticism and divine experience, and even morality and social (soft) sciences to the fringes of reason or beyond. This narrow definition makes it difficult, if not impossible, for dialog to blossom. How are people of faith, mystics, moral thinkers supposed to speak if they cannot come to us with the scientific rigor we demand? They have tried, in the past to change their language to that of the sciences (Aquinas), but in doing so they lose their message and their heart and soul. The answer is on the side of reason. Reason must once again open her doors and welcome perspective from outside of the mathematic and empirical if we are truly to talk and, more importantly, listen to one another. Truth with a capital T is not only truth derived from scientific experimentation nor is it only truth derived from mystical experience. Truth with a capital T is Truth that arises out of a dialog of all human experience and Truth that leads us to acceptance and cordiality among one another. For what is it really that separates scientific knowledge from knowledge of faith but a simple decision of where one chooses to stop asking for verification of claims? The boundary of the games are different, the people playing the games must still live together.

"It's unacceptable to think!"

QTime or WMV via Crooks and Liars

Another great "Special Comment" from Olbermann. Dubya is getting just plain scary... A CEO, when s/he gets out of control and loses sight of the big picture has a board to rein them in or throw them out...where's Congress when we need them...for that matter, where's the angry American public? A blowjob nearly costs a decent President his job, but continuous tantrums and endless wars...eh, we're ok with that. I'm not the first to say it, but I'll say it again. Somethin' ain't right here.

If you haven't listened already...

Check out Frank Deford's commentary from morning edition this morning: Sports Obsession Holds Boys Back in College. It's poignant, but it's also a hoot.

Dolan May Need an Excedrin...

Big Pharma…I know it’s an old topic, but it’s in the news again today. Peter Dolan, CEO of Bristol-Myers Squibb, stepped down today amid a federal investigation into some shady business dealings undertaken to keep a generic version of big-seller Plavix off the market. The FBI even came knockin’ at (actually, knockin’ down) the door of his NY office. Here’s the background: Bristol’s biggest money maker is a heart pill called Plavix. Something like 1/3 of their profits are derived from this drug alone. The company expected its patent to remain safely in their hands for another couple of years, but recently a generic drug maker announced it would release a version of Plavix this year. Dolan scrambled and put together a deal to pay-off the generic drug maker to keep their version off the market. This, if you haven’t figured out, is not really the way the Feds like to see business run.

Drug makers are simply incapable of innovating (read finding new ways to dupe consumers) fast enough to beat the expirations of their big money patents. They can only invent new diseases…ehem, excuse me, drugs…so fast. I heard the argument made by a few analysts today that the problem is in the “old guard CEOs.” Drug companies, they say, need new blood…they need risk takers and innovators heading up the ranks. This makes sense from a market perspective; drug companies are profit driven. But does it really make sense as part of the big picture? We’re operating under the assumption, here, that markets are a sufficient and efficient motivator for the correct type of innovation…yet we see time and again that the innovation they motivate manifests itself as shady business and marketing ploys to sell drugs to people who don’t need them…not to mention creating drugs for diseases that no one really knew were a problem until the drugs arrived.

Why is the motivation misdirected? Why does the market, with so many obvious pressures toward profit, not guide drug makers toward the altruistic ends intended for medicine? It’s quite simple, really. The people who need the most help, who suffer from the most diseases, who have the highest death rates, who live with the most ailments are also the people with the least purchasing power. There is no profit to be realized in helping them. Profits are to be found in clever marketing to the middle and upper classes of society. Those with less ailments, but with money to pay to cure those lesser ailments. When a drug is developed that could help the downtrodden, it’s so outrageously priced that very few can find a way to afford it…of course, this is because R&D is so expensive and it takes so long to develop a new drug (i.e. – we must protect our profit margin and keep our investors happy…if the stock price falls, I’m out of a job). The simple truth is this: incentives of a free market align terribly with the altruistic goals that medicine should cling dearly to.

So what’s the answer? I’m not sure really. Would non-profit drug makers more efficiently meet the needs of a wider range of consumers? Probably not, because some incentive is better than none at all…relying purely on charity and good-will is scary, and drugs still are expensive to make. Should drug companies be part of the government sector? Well, we’ve seen how good they are at R&D and providing for the common good…it’s questionable. Anyone have any ideas to bat around? We know it won’t ever happen, but it’s fun to think about…is there a more efficient incentive structure than the free market to drive drug makers to act toward the common good?

The American Caste

This sad but oh so true commentary from Tuesday evening’s Marketplace:

BETH SHULMAN: At one time, education was our great equalizer. Children got an equal chance to rise based solely on their own potential, regardless of their family background. But today, education is deepening the economic divide.
Rising costs at public and private universities are outpacing student aid. Meanwhile federal tax breaks for college actually help wealthy students more than poor ones.
It turns out that families with incomes of at least $92,000 get more tax breaks for college than families making less than a third of that. Tax breaks simply don't help the poor the way they do the rich. They often don't make enough to qualify. And studies show that financial aid for college goes increasingly to wealthier students.
That doesn't bother institutions of higher learning. In fact, they're skewing their dollars towards helping affluent children on purpose. They want to show that they've bet on horses that win instead of helping people equally at the starting gate. This way, the gap between the educated haves and have-nots keeps growing.
Since 1980, the earnings gap between college entrants and high school graduates more than doubled. Enrollment rates of the rich at four-year colleges, the ticket to higher pay, increased by 20 percent in the last decade.
But poor students' enrollments are actually falling. Any increase in postsecondary education among the poor has been mostly at two-year colleges.
This shouldn't surprise us. Tuition's an expensive, up-front investment. Many students can't afford to borrow the amounts needed for higher education as costs go up.
If we want to claim education as the great equalizer again, we need to put our money where it needs to go, to the children of everyday working Americans.
If not, instead of giving every child a chance to excel, we face an America that simply keeps children in their economic place.
RYSSDAL: Beth Shulman is author of "The Betrayal of Work."

Coupled with this commentary on the disappearance of the “American Dream” from last Thursday this is just a recent representation of a scary but not-so-new trend of American society. Call it what you want…a caste system, apartheid, the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat…there is and has been a growing gap between the haves and have-nots that has been ignored for far too long. Why is it ignored? Because America, despite all our checks and balances, our talk of meritocracy, our belief in the “common good,” our calls for personal freedom and responsibility, is a class society. In a class society, the ruling class, no matter it’s good intentions in providing for the good of all will not...cannot…give up its power.

There has always been a sort of ruling class in American politics, but the beauty of the system established from the very beginnings of Revolution out of principles of the Enlightenment is that it has always facilitated upward mobility. The ruling class was not a closed class (except to women those of a skin tone other than white…but that’s for another post). One could be born the son of a farmer in a one room log cabin and find himself President of the nation one day. The sons and daughters of coalminers and mill workers were given more-than-adequate educations in public schools and provided opportunities to go on to higher education. There was a time when you didn’t just hope and dream that your children would be better off than you yourself…you expected it. You expected to be repaid for your hard work and perseverance; after all…this is America.

But America, as these pieces illustrate, has failed her working class. One can no longer pick herself up by her bootstraps and fight for a better life. We make it impossible for the sons and daughters of blue collar labor to get a college degree. Not to mention the fact that the blue collar labor that once meant a hard working job in a mill or factory that provided the family with benefits and a pension now means a job flipping burgers or stocking shelves at Wallyworld for meager pay and little or no healthcare. But what has led us into these precarious waters? Is it a fault of the system? Maybe…if we look to Marx we find capitalism playing out in just this way: a growing proletariat becoming more dissatisfied by the day eventually overthrows the whole shebang. Is it a fault of the people? Most definitely, for we define the system and the institutions. We created the laws that now allow corporate giants to create the laws. We’ve allowed families to maintain fortunes far beyond necessity…because if you earned it you get to keep it, right? Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “What is the most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.” In this we have failed and failed miserably. We have allowed a class to emerge and now they act as any reasonable ruler would…they protect their power and hoard all other power available. They band together and grow their fortunes. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll trickle down, but I doubt it.

Visiting SAAM...

A friend and I visited the Smithsonian American Art Museum this weekend, and I have to say, it’s definitely a must see if you’re in the DC area. SAAM, which is housed in the old patent office building near Chinatown and the Verizon Center, the third building designed for the new capitol city and a stunning example of Greek-revival architecture, has been under renovation for the last 7 years. The building is still a work in progress with a courtyard shaded by a lattice-work glass canopy set to open to the public sometime next year, but it’s still a sight to see. While the building itself is stunning and there are many incredible exhibits by American artists on display, two pieces have held my attention even a few days later. One, a memorial to a lost wife, I found simply awe inspiring and captivating. The other, a photographic work by William Wegman, is nothing less than a microcosm of human decision making.

Grief by Augustus Saint-Gaudens is a stunning sculpture created by the artist on commission from the writer Henry Adams in memoriam of his wife who committed suicide in 1885. The original stands in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, but the museum holds in its collection one of a few replicas made by the artist. The bronze representation of an asexual, robed figure deep in contemplation quite simply imposes itself upon your mind. I found myself drawn back to it, even after having passed by and moved on down the hall. I could not take my eyes of this overpowering work. The face of the figure is serene, calming…but sexless. It may be male, it may be female, but it really does not matter. It is a calm center to an unsettling mass, and you find your eyes drawn back to it constantly. It is said in the description that Adams requested Saint-Gaudens depict an image of the Buddhist idea of nirvana. Detachment…a calmness in a crazy world. I believe the artist succeeded in depicting just that.

The other piece, which, regrettably, I cannot find an image of online, is entitled “One or Two Spoons, Two or Three Forks.” It’s a curious photo by Wegman of an arrangement of one spoon and two forks with only the handle of a fourth utensil in the field of view. As the title not-so-implicitly states, the identity of that fourth utensil determines the meaning…the way we perceive and think about…the entire photo, yet it remains unknown. Isn’t this life? Isn’t this how it truly is? Meaning is always decided at the margin, at the very edge of what we can know. We constantly go through life ascribing meaning and making decisions based on the assumption of knowledge, but we often forget that we’re working with a vastly limited set of ideas. Those ideas, that knowledge, that truly matters…that will lead us to right decisions and true perceptions…always lies just outside of our field of view. What a curious and wonderful little piece of work by this “Funney/Strange” artist.

So if you’re in DC and looking for a place to step out of the muggy weather and into a wonderful world of imagination and creativity, check out SAAM. These are just two of the many, many wonderful works that stuck with me even a few days later…maybe you’ll find your own.

Faith in Democracy?

An interesting discussion has started but has yet to come to fruition over at MMF. The other day Hanno asked “What does it mean to say "I have faith in democracy"?” What a terribly interesting and convoluted question to ask. It really is about as loaded as they come. It’s got all the fun ingredients that can lead to a good knock-down-drag-out argument. We’ve got religious undertones, politics, patriotism, political philosophy, ambiguity, and did I mention religion? But, honestly, what does a claim like that mean? Well, Hanno, here’s my shot at it.

We’ve got to start with faith, because the entire question hinges on this ultra-ambiguous little jewel. The word is loaded with religious connotations but has a wide secular usage as well. It doesn’t just play in one game, so to speak.

What is secular faith? In many instances, it’s an inductive argument. “I have faith that Katy will be on time to pick me up tomorrow.” In saying this, there’s no appeal to some higher reason, some higher being or power. I’m simply stating that, “hey, she hasn’t been late before, so I believe she’ll be on time tomorrow.” But secular faith also comes in degrees…it becomes more ambiguous than an appeal to induction. It can signify a character judgment or an assessment of the strength of a relationship. To tell a friend making a difficult decision, “I have faith that you’ll do the right thing,” is, once again, not an appeal to a higher power. It is, however, different in some meaningful way from a simple induction. I’m not stating the belief that my friend has made the right decision in every instance in the past, maybe not even in a majority of situations. The belief I’m stating is more along the lines of a discernment of my friend’s moral fiber…or if the decision is in regards to me, a judgment about the state and import of our relationship. It’s an appeal to a less concrete notion of induction. This secular faith relies more on “feelings” and less on evidence, but it still remains in the secular realm. In either of these cases, or those that lie between, faith is a judgment call on the part of the believer. It is a willful determination to hold a belief, but one that is based on prior experience, evidence, and intellect.

Religious faith…this is not an entirely different construction of belief, but one with a wholly disparate ground. It is still an act of the will choosing to hold a belief about the world…a belief based not in evidence, prior experience, or intellectual rigor, but in the grace of God. Aquinas put it something like (and this is a loose paraphrase not a quote) an ascent of the will to belief brought on by the grace of God. In other words, I have faith in or about something not because I make a judgment but because I make a choice that God’s grace has influenced (or allowed) me to make. This religious connotation, this faith without evidence, is the heaviest baggage that the term is forced to carry. Even in the most mundane of secular utterances of “faith,” one cannot help but wonder about the evidence held by or intellectual prowess of the speaker. That is the religious undertone that makes many cringe when someone starts a sentence with “I have faith…”

So lets see if we can bring this back around. What does it mean to say, “I have faith in democracy?” Well, it means that I believe in the democratic system of government. It means that I have at least a general understanding of out how it works and that I agree with its principals and foundations. It means that I have seen it bring about good results in the past and induce that it should do so in the future. It means that I have made a judgment call based on the evidence presented me thus far, and think that it’s the best choice we’ve come up with to date. But…if I say that I have faith in it, you might question whether I’m making this judgment or just blindly following along (with or without the grace of God…or Goddess), but now we understand why.

Now, of course, there are other ways to approach the question of faith in democracy:

Does saying I have faith in democracy mean that I believe it will arrive at the best outcome in every occasion?

Does saying I have faith in democracy mean that I believe in our government actors and their ability to reach a good outcome within the framework of the system?

Does saying I have faith in democracy mean that I believe we as voters make the best, most informed decisions about who we put in the positions within the framework?

But these are all questions for another day, as it’s time for me to get some sleep.

Going Home

Meg had a post over at Meg’s Blog back in May in which she posed the question of why one can never really go home again. Personally, I don’t buy the idea that one cannot. Going home…in my mind…isn’t so much returning to a physical place as it is returning to a feeling. Feelings are fickle. Physically going to one’s home…going back to the town you grew up in…won’t, necessarily, give one that feeling of “being home.” Though the place may be the same and the people very similar, the remembered emotion can’t be rekindled. Why is this? Well…nostalgia is an interesting and twisted thing. It’s a remembrance of a time and place and feeling that never truly existed as a single entity, yet it is a time and place and feeling to which one longs to return. That feeling of home is a nostalgic remembrance, and truly one that going home does not recreate.

Does this mean that one cannot ever return home? No. Because as much as that feeling is not recreated by returning to that place, it can just as easily be incarnated anew in different setting. For me…it happens at the beach, overlooking rolling waves, smelling the saltwater, feeling the sand on my feet…and the feelings of home come rushing to me. It happens in the mountains as I feel enveloped by their majestic tree covered peaks. It happens surrounded by my closest friends. The feeling of going home is what home truly is. It’s not a place or a time. It’s not a seeing the house I grew up in or driving through my little western PA hometown. It’s an overwhelming feeling of love, of belonging, of warmth. Home is an emotion…not a place.

Pure Conjecture and a Dash of Post Hoc

What a crazy, interesting world we’re living in…over the last 2 months we’ve seen Israel and Hamas get into it, Israel and Hezbollah blow each other’s civilians and infrastructure all to hell, BP let the Alaskan pipeline fall into a state of such disrepair that they had to shut it down, and the British government apprehend terrorists suspected of planning to use some sorts of liquids to cause an explosion on a plane. Yet…gas prices have fallen and the stock market has climbed for three days straight for the first time in who knows how long. Something doesn’t make sense here…

While the US government encourages nations in the Middle East to blow each other to bits and strips US citizens of even more freedoms (eventually we’re all going to be flying naked) gas prices fall and the market surges in spite of news of the loss of 8 million barrels of oil a day from our economy…maybe they know something in the White House that the rest of us average Joes and Janes don’t. Or maybe…just maybe, economic actors and markets aren’t really such “rational” decision makers…

Like I said…conjecture…

And post hoc ergo propter hoc: Taking away civil liberties and allowing wars to continue unnecessarily, as well as a little terrorist scare, works wonders for the markets.

If You're Looking for an Incredible Read

Definitely head over to MMF and check out Aspazia's series on interviews of residents of Grove, OK, the small, conservative town where a compassionate doctor was performing hundreds of abortions in the first half of the 20th century. Dr. Henrie, from the picture Spaz's interviews are painting, must have been an incredible person.

I'm off for a weekend of golf and beer...

Renting a lakehouse for the weekend for a bachelor party for a good friend from college. I've been thinking about this whole "ritual" throughout the planning process. Hopefully I'll have some fun thoughts to put into writing when I get back on Sunday...or recover from the hangover on Monday. Until then...words to live by from Hemmingway:

"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut."

Mantra for the weekend???

RED ALERT, RED ALERT!

THE SKY IS FALLING, THE SKY IS FALLING...run for your lives!!!
The worst part about terrorist activity in this climate is that it reinforces the ideals of the neo-cons and serves (in their minds and those of thier supporters) to justify and rationalize their power-grabbing ways. So...terrorists achieve their goal yet again...no one needs to die, they just need to make us afraid to live our lives and maintain our freedoms.

Bumper Sticker:

Never take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

Beer Blogging

Sitting here sipping on one of my favorite brews, I’ve decided that I should make beer as big a part of my blog as it is of my life. So here it is: Beer Blogging. I hope to make this a recurring and interactive post. I doubt it will be weekly, but every so often one will pop up…I promise.

Tonight’s Brew: Tröegs Hop Back
Hop Back is brewed by the Tröegs Brewing Company in Harrisburg, PA, which opened its doors with a waft of hoppy aromatics back in 1997. Mechanicsburg natives and brothers Chris and John Trogner have an incredible touch for handcrafting some superb beers in Central Pennsylvania.

The Story:
I first discovered Hop Back the summer after my 21^st birthday at my favorite hometown watering hole, the Jean Bonnet Tavern. That was a helluva summer filled with plenty of golf, plenty of late nights with good friends, and pitcher after keg after pitcher of good beers. The Bonnet is known in the area for carrying a wide array of microbrews and being a place where friends can gather in a quiet, laid back atmosphere for some good conversation and some great times. From that summer on, Hop Back has remained, easily, one of my top 5 beers.

The Details:
Hop Back is, as the name would suggest, a wonderfully hoppy creation. It’s an amber ale with a bold hop bite and sweet floral aroma. The hop takes your tongue by surprise on that first sip, but the sweet finish is there to soothe the startled taste buds. If you’re a fan of pales and ambers this is a must try.

So what’s your favorite? I know for a fact there are some beer drinkers out there reading this...tell me what it is I should try next time I’m wandering the isles of my local beer store or searching out a good microbrew in the PA/MD/VA area…or anywhere else for that matter.

I apologize...

To anyone who has attempted to leave a comment...thank you! I apologize that they have not been posted, I didn't realize I had moderation turned on...I just thought I wasn't gettin any love over here.

Neo-Neo-Hegelianism (yeah, I stole that idea)

We see Fukuyama's neo-neo-Hegelianism in which there is a natural end -- liberal democracy -- towards which all governments naturally move if only freed from tyranny. Create a power vacuum and provide some purple finger ink, et voila, instant democracy.

SteveG gives voice here to something that’s been brewing upstairs for me for a long time now…what the fuck makes us so special? I’m not saying that liberal democracy is bad. I love living under this system and can’t imagine living any other way. It allows for dissent, provides economic and social structure, as well as the whole “majority rule, minority rights” ideal. This doesn’t, though…at least in my eyes…give us the right to push our system on the entire world by force. What leads us to believe that it is objectively the best…and, in fact, only…way to govern justly?

To describe the neoconservative belief that we are in the right in using all means possible to spread “liberal” democracy around the globe as neo-neo-Hegelianism is very telling. Hegel saw the progression towards “freedom” as the natural state of societies. Giest drives us towards this end ideal. But he left the ideal largely undefined. The neo-Hegelians took up this cause but defined the end. Communism…yes, it would be struggle, but this is the direction in which dialectical materialism was leading us. The material restraints placed on individuals functioning as a society affect the dialectic progression (borrowed by Marx from Hegel) in such a way as to lead us to a proletariat revolution. We would need strong leaders, an authoritarian system at first…we’d have socialism. But eventually, we’d achieve the ideal. So the masses began to believe and so one of the great social experiments of history began…and then failed. But the point is this…they believed communism to be the end…the ultimate social/political/economic system. An unjustified belief?

Now we see neo-neo-Hegelianism. Communism failed and whatever defeated it must be the stronger system, the new ideal. The new ideal must be capitalism thriving in a liberal democratic socio-political environment. So then, it becomes not only our right, but our duty to spread democracy. We are obligated to give this gift of freedom to the world…are we not? Should we not use any means possible to deliver this gift?

Well, if we accept a dialectical progression of history in the form Hegel lays out, then we are obligated to assume that there is some system that in the end will bring about this ideal freedom. IF we accept that...but why are we to believe that there is one ideal for all the world? Islam, ingrained in the hearts, minds, and souls of its adherents, inherently sets up a wholly different and conflicted socio-political system than liberal democracy. Does this system grant individuals the same freedoms as our system does? No. But is their ideal freedom, their perfect life/perfect society the same as ours? I doubt it. They see the world differently than we do and experience freedom differently than the west.

In any case…let’s grant the assumption that there is one ideal freedom and move on with our argument. The next step must be to question how we know that liberal democracy is the ideal system to bring about “freedom.” We must think pretty damn highly of ourselves to truly believe this proposition. Just look to the past at “ideal” systems that have failed…why shouldn’t ours. It’s only doing a half-assed job at providing real freedom and quality of life in the nations that already practice it…why shouldn’t there be some yet unimagined system that is better than this?

But again…let’s grant that it is the best tool in the shed. We then arrive at the question of spreading liberal democracy. Are we obligated to do so…if it’s the best system and we believe it will truly bring about “freedom,” then, yes, we most certainly are…but at what cost? How many lives are to be lost, how many cities are to be destroyed, how many bombs are to be dropped before the ends no longer outweigh the means? If this is really part of the progression…the way things ought to go…why do we feel such a need to push and prod it along? Undue use of force will simply mire the progression. The esteemed one-time-neoconservative Fukuyama himself wrote that neoconservatives “...believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States. Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support.” (thanks Wikipedia) In other words…war mongering is not the way to go about spreading liberal democracy if we do believe that it’s the best system. We must win over the “hearts and minds” of the world...bombs only incite terror and terror impedes true progress.

Also…along the same lines…check out this post over at Bitch PhD by NO_NYM.

It Sure Ain't Easy

So it’s been a week since I last blogged, and I’ve realized something…this ain’t gonna be easy. I work full time (like most bloggers probably do) and commute an hour each way, and, damn-it, when I get home I just want to grab some grub and park my butt on the couch in front of the idiot box. Also, for as much NPR as I listen to, news sites I read, and blogs I frequent…fresh ideas are often hard to come by. But I’m making a commitment, right here, right now…to myself…I’m doing this. I’m going to keep this up…it may not be every day (b/c let’s face it, hungover blogging just doesn’t sound like fun) but it’ll be frequent enough. There’s also a reason for it…and this is just a step in the right direction…I hope…

I have aspirations of eventually…though it seems far off in the distance right now…going to grad school. Problem is…I’ve forgotten how to write. Use it or lose it…well, I’m losing it. Sure, I can do the corporate jargon and techno-babble shit with the best of them. I can write emails and correspond with clients. But that’s such a watered down, boring version of the English language that it damn well might be making me dumber. There’s no subtlety there, no nuance. Hell, half the time I’m pretty sure what I’ve written has absolutely zero meaning (negative meaning…is that possible?? could something be so horrendous and boring that having been written down on paper it actually detracts from the human knowledge base? is humanity dumber for the things I’ve written? Professional Development Plans (PDPs) fit in this category, I believe). So if I plan on getting into grad school, I’ve got to relearn how to write something worthwhile…assuming I knew how to do that in the first place.

Which brings me to another thought…Jesus H Christ the thought of grad school is scary. That’s a commitment right there, how ‘bout it? One can go to college, get a degree in whatever seems fun at the time and still have a plethora of job options after graduation. There’s very little expectation of a college grad actually working in their degree field. If you go to grad school…it seems to be a different story. You’ve made a commitment to that field now, buddy. You don’t go and get a PhD in philosophy to come out managing a…never mind, maybe philosophy’s a bad example, but you get my drift. Trouble is, I’ve never been much for planning like that. I’m a go with the flow kinda guy…I’ve always made life decisions on the fly with full faith that things would work out ok. Faith in what? Hell if I know…God, luck, irony, karma. Grad school, though, takes some effort…some planning. Am I ready for that commitment? I’ve been the wedding guy this summer, watching all of my friends get married and sitting back going “Holy cow, no way! I’m not that guy! Not getting married yet! Living MY life right now! Nope, no way, no how, not now!” But really…how much less of a commitment is deciding on a path for grad school? Seems pretty similar when you think about it. And what about what kind of program to get into? Can’t get a job if you’re a continental…so they tell me…but I kinda like what they’re talking about, so how do I reconcile that? And speaking of jobs…am I really considering going back to school for 5 or so more years to come out making about what I’m making now??? Can someone please call me a psychiatrist, I’ve gotta be crazy.

But, what the hell…I’ve never been the kid to take the easy path. I’ll dive in head first…probably smack my head on the bottom of the pool cause I’m a big guy…but I’ll recover. It’s time to go for it…

Aaaaaah….I feel better…

Values Talk...

It's about modernization within Islam and out of it. It's about whether our value system can be shown to be sufficiently robust, true, principled and appealing that it beats theirs.

Tony's talking values...and he's sort of right, but we've got tread lightly with this language.

In a speach given in LA today as the last event of his visit, Blair focused on the Middle East conflict reframing the discussion in terms of western values versus fundamentalism. The PM terms it as modernization, but what I think we're really talking about here liberalization. Liberal values must prevail over radicalism if we are ever to see a cooling of tempers in the region. There really only are 3 outcomes, as I see it...Israel takes military control of the entire region with US backing, Israel is wiped off the face of the planet, or everyone learns to live together. I think it's safe to say that third outcome is the most likely to be allowed by world powers. But how do we get there? Well it ain't easy. We have to start by dealing with the last 100 years that SteveG outlines eloquently in a post today. And then there are the religious tensions...the chosen people in the holy land issue. Liberalism is a wonderful tool for dealing with these issues, and if it should overcome fundamentalism I can see a brighter future in the region.

But as I said, we must be very careful with this values language. To set up a dichotomy of western values vs. fundamentalism in the current political and public discourse game sounds eerily like setting up a Christian vs. Muslim paradigm. This language can quickly serve to incite violence rather than extoll the virtues of liberalism. In fact, it may be ill-guided to even throw this idea into the arena. Islam, like Christianity once did, must undergo a liberalization from the inside out, rather than forced from the outside. It's still a growing and evolving belief system...granted, it is one based in a more rigid moral/religious code than any other belief system to arise out of human thought, but it still has room for growth from within. To try to force it is to disrespect it, to guide it gently may be the answer...

This pobably is somewhat nonsensical...as I'm just working throught these thoughts...but if anyone can add anything or criticize anything, please do.