“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
James Madison
Excitement in Egypt fades, unrest follows all over the Middle East and spreads to our Midwest. America, seemingly powerless in foreign affairs, has an effective option: to remove our military presence from Iraq and Afghanistan, now. No action would help the fortunes of people promoting true democracy in the region more than the cessation of U.S. warfare on people who live there. Ending our imperial adventures there would also be healthy for the state of American democracy. In addition to lives and money, Americans have lost precious freedoms, as a direct result of our prolonged state of war.
Whatever our objectives for these deadly, destructive wars were originally, they have not been fulfilled, and they won’t be. Wikileaks told us nothing new. The insanity of the wars and the ineffectiveness of the occupations have been obvious for some time. Our involvement is costing 2 1/2 billion dollars each week, in borrowed funds. While most Americans can still ignore the death and destruction, not being personally involved, many of our political, business and media leaders are screaming against our ballooning public debt. The debt can be dramatically reduced, with virtually universal consent, simply by bringing the troops home.
Mainstream conservatives and liberals, as well as peaceniks and tea partiers, are increasingly united in their calls for wars’ end. The neocons, loudly pounding the war drums in the beginning, drowning out all opposition, have gone undercover, excepting an occasional mumble about mistakes that were made. Only the heroism of our military people stands as an emotional, but not reasonable, excuse for “staying the course”. “We cannot let them die in vain.” But if we are sending others to die only because some have been killed already, then we must conclude that all have died in vain. “We cannot support the troops unless we also support the mission,” which means we must leave them there to kill or be killed. We can see why the founding fathers tried to make it difficult to go to war. How can we have the hubris to force democracy on Afghanistan and Iraq while lending only lukewarm support to democracy elsewhere in the area, and letting it die here?
Most people dislike war, and the more we learn about it, the less we approve. A special election nationwide would bring the troops home the next day. Yet we have continual warfare. The establishment, controlled by the scarcely hidden military-industrial complex, will make sure that the issue never gets to a popular vote. The peoples’ will always takes a drubbing in war, as do human rights. Wire-tapping, routine searches, citizens spying on each other, secret kidnappings and torture, imprisonment without habeas corpus, all get people to fear their government. The longer war lasts, the blurrier becomes the distinction, for the rulers, between “them” and “us.”
Despite growing resistance from all sides, our two ruling parties keep the wars going, each terrified that the other side might use the heroism of our troops against them. Regarding the casualties, one side would help the families of the dead and rehabilitate the wounded, while the other side would toss the “dead wood.” Nobody in actual power proposes to immediately stop the carnage. We see plans to start bringing the troops home in the near future, but the plans are rotten with loopholes, and already our leaders have begun to hedge. We are guaranteed a long lasting, unwanted American presence in the Middle East, killing, dying, and letting the future pay for it.
During the Vietnam conflict Eisenhower’s warnings about the power of the “military-industrial complex” to subvert our freedom were amplified. Those warnings have been proven true, though historical revisionism transformed the Vietnam War from an unneeded, colonial war to a “noble cause.” The revisionists were then able to get the country involved in more “noble causes” in the Middle East. The doublethink, whereby we know the military-industrial complex subverts our democracy at the same time we believe in the noble cause of all American warfare, allows war to continue indefinitely. And whenever someone dares to present the truth, the establishment counters by waving the bloody shirt, rendering further resistance futile.
The revolution in Egypt was peaceful. America can encourage peaceful steps to democracy by ending war with Egypt’s neighbours. At the same time we can start to repair the deep injuries to our democracy due to ceaseless war. Recent stories from Afghanistan tell us that the latest surge has been successful. People over there like us. How many times will we continue to believe the “light at the end of the tunnel” stories? Our fortunes will vastly improve, in the long run, when we stop blowing up people, places, and things. To build democracy there, we rebuild it here: if we play it right, we could get a win-win.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
THE PARTY FAITHFUL
"The broad movement of American politics in recent decades has been toward greater inequality, the discrediting of public institutions and a near idolatry of private markets at the expense of corporate accountability."
Katrina Vanden Heuvel, THE NATION, January 24, 2011
"If free enterprise becomes a proselytizing holy cause, it will be a sign that its workability and advantages have ceased to be self-evident."
Eric Hoffer, THE TRUE BELIEVER
Economically, things are rough all over, excepting a tiny minority that waxes ever richer. Meanwhile some Americans, calling themselves Tea Party Patriots, are so sure of the righteousness of this inequality that they enthusiastically elected politicians who have pledged not only to uphold the situation, but to eliminate remaining social safeguards. While our capitalist economy is imploding, these people fear impending socialism. After many years of capitalism's gradually being released from constraints imposed after the last Great Depression, the predictable collapse has happened, and the only thing we have to fear, apparently, is another round of constraints upon private enterprise.
The Tea Partiers, their prodders in the media, and their secret exploiters among the extremely wealthy, feel no need for logic. Their loyalty, "near idolatry", to the economic system that brought on this current persistent recession is based on faith alone. Free enterprise is good, freer enterprise, better. Socialism in any form is evil. Economic inequality is right. The rich are entitled to their luxuries just as the poor are entitled to their privations.
To rational people, economic systems are tools, to be used by societies for the mundane purpose of delivering more and better goods and services to more people. As human beings progress, we learn from mistakes, so we can improve on existing systems. The social safety net, along with business and industrial regulations and public works projects, were enacted when it became clear that unbridled free enterprise morphs into a sophisticated piracy that causes misery on a scale traditional pirates can only dream about. Knowing this, a return to free-range capitalism would be insane. Yet to the Tea Party faithful, this is where we need to go...not because it is sensible, but because it is morally right.
Tycoons and entrepreneurs know that economics and morals do not make a good fit. Right is getting a product or service and selling it at a profit. Wrong is failing to do so, thus losing money. It's a primitive impulse. Our forebears could not look too closely at how mastodons might feel about being hunted. People needed food. Bring down a mastodon and many people get to eat. It was a collective operation, too. Faithful devotion to rugged individualism in mankind's early days would probably have nipped the human race in the bud. Human progress depends on doing what works.
Communism taught us the horrors of unhampered collectivization, which not only killed and enslaved millions, but failed miserably to ease poverty. Modern liberals are not looking around for a new Lenin. But common sense shows that some collective action by society can have positive effects, that it does not pave the road to Gulag. We know we can have sensible controls on free enterprise without stifling initiative. As citizens of a democracy we are naturally free to evaluate our government's effect on our economy, to make adjustments, to set goals. We're not stuck with anything.
As citizens of a democracy, we are free to argue over the effectiveness of any plan, any procedure, to discuss the price, to compromise, to revise. Human institutions being imperfect, reasonable people can always make improvements. The Tea Party faithful, however, insist on a narrow, subjective reading of the Constitution, by which the national government has no power but to protect business from government. Profit is sacred, it's every man for himself, and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must be fought for and preserved, apparently, at gunpoint. Planning and cooperation are sins. Has capitalism taken on a religious reverence because it no longer works?
In the current disaster, government bailed out the financial and automobile industries and invested in job creation. And though prosperity is not yet around the corner, these moves are understood to have averted a worse catastrophe. To the Tea Party faithful, the right thing would have been to let the disaster go as far as it would go. Bank failures, industrial bankruptcies, joblessness on an enormous scale--these would have been acceptable alternatives to socialism. At least we would all be free to get and keep whatever we can. No nirvana, no celestial virgins, no eternal planet, no streets of gold--the Tea Party paradise is an earthly one, where government has no hold on anybody. If this does not sound promising, it's what comes from confusing philosophy and religion with the unexciting process of economics.
Katrina Vanden Heuvel, THE NATION, January 24, 2011
"If free enterprise becomes a proselytizing holy cause, it will be a sign that its workability and advantages have ceased to be self-evident."
Eric Hoffer, THE TRUE BELIEVER
Economically, things are rough all over, excepting a tiny minority that waxes ever richer. Meanwhile some Americans, calling themselves Tea Party Patriots, are so sure of the righteousness of this inequality that they enthusiastically elected politicians who have pledged not only to uphold the situation, but to eliminate remaining social safeguards. While our capitalist economy is imploding, these people fear impending socialism. After many years of capitalism's gradually being released from constraints imposed after the last Great Depression, the predictable collapse has happened, and the only thing we have to fear, apparently, is another round of constraints upon private enterprise.
The Tea Partiers, their prodders in the media, and their secret exploiters among the extremely wealthy, feel no need for logic. Their loyalty, "near idolatry", to the economic system that brought on this current persistent recession is based on faith alone. Free enterprise is good, freer enterprise, better. Socialism in any form is evil. Economic inequality is right. The rich are entitled to their luxuries just as the poor are entitled to their privations.
To rational people, economic systems are tools, to be used by societies for the mundane purpose of delivering more and better goods and services to more people. As human beings progress, we learn from mistakes, so we can improve on existing systems. The social safety net, along with business and industrial regulations and public works projects, were enacted when it became clear that unbridled free enterprise morphs into a sophisticated piracy that causes misery on a scale traditional pirates can only dream about. Knowing this, a return to free-range capitalism would be insane. Yet to the Tea Party faithful, this is where we need to go...not because it is sensible, but because it is morally right.
Tycoons and entrepreneurs know that economics and morals do not make a good fit. Right is getting a product or service and selling it at a profit. Wrong is failing to do so, thus losing money. It's a primitive impulse. Our forebears could not look too closely at how mastodons might feel about being hunted. People needed food. Bring down a mastodon and many people get to eat. It was a collective operation, too. Faithful devotion to rugged individualism in mankind's early days would probably have nipped the human race in the bud. Human progress depends on doing what works.
Communism taught us the horrors of unhampered collectivization, which not only killed and enslaved millions, but failed miserably to ease poverty. Modern liberals are not looking around for a new Lenin. But common sense shows that some collective action by society can have positive effects, that it does not pave the road to Gulag. We know we can have sensible controls on free enterprise without stifling initiative. As citizens of a democracy we are naturally free to evaluate our government's effect on our economy, to make adjustments, to set goals. We're not stuck with anything.
As citizens of a democracy, we are free to argue over the effectiveness of any plan, any procedure, to discuss the price, to compromise, to revise. Human institutions being imperfect, reasonable people can always make improvements. The Tea Party faithful, however, insist on a narrow, subjective reading of the Constitution, by which the national government has no power but to protect business from government. Profit is sacred, it's every man for himself, and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must be fought for and preserved, apparently, at gunpoint. Planning and cooperation are sins. Has capitalism taken on a religious reverence because it no longer works?
In the current disaster, government bailed out the financial and automobile industries and invested in job creation. And though prosperity is not yet around the corner, these moves are understood to have averted a worse catastrophe. To the Tea Party faithful, the right thing would have been to let the disaster go as far as it would go. Bank failures, industrial bankruptcies, joblessness on an enormous scale--these would have been acceptable alternatives to socialism. At least we would all be free to get and keep whatever we can. No nirvana, no celestial virgins, no eternal planet, no streets of gold--the Tea Party paradise is an earthly one, where government has no hold on anybody. If this does not sound promising, it's what comes from confusing philosophy and religion with the unexciting process of economics.
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