President Obama will soon announce his nominee to replace retiring Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. It's a critical nomination with long-term ramifications for civil liberties, executive power, management-labor relations, the environment and consumer rights. Hence, it is vital the public know whether the judicial philosophy and ideology of any prospective nominee to the court is compatible with their sensibilities and values. Ideally, all nominees would be forthcoming about their philosophy as the senate either confirms or rejects them with full knowledge of the sort of justice they're likely to be.
On January 1, 2007, Yale Law School professor Heather Gerken published a widely read article in the LegalTimes entitled, "How Does Your State Rank on The Democracy Index." Gerken argued that just as the Environmental Performance Index ("EPI") shamed countries such as Belgium to upgrade their environmental practices, a "Democracy Index" would embarrass state and localities into reforming their electoral administration through competition.
Since Bush vs. Gore in 2000, the debate about electoral reform has been dominated by anecdotes and overheated abstractions. Liberals like me have long suspected that states such as Ohio and Florida were deliberately disenfranchising minority voters sympathetic to Democratic candidates. Conservatives complained that voter fraud and urban political machines were allowing ineligible voters to cast ballots at the expense of Republican candidates. With her article, Gerken contended that a Democracy Index would replace a debate dominated by shouting with data driven arguments instead:
Greider's reporting however exposed that even Stockman, doubted the fiscal prudence of Reaganomics. After the article's publication, Stockman absorbed public humiliation when President Reagan took him "to the woodshed." I trace that article as a seminal moment in my own political awareness.
In the grown up world, honorable and reasonable people may initially disagree but eventually compromise upon a collective review of empirical evidence. It was in this spirit, that the nascent Obama administration reached out to Republicans with respect to their proposed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which finally passed both houses of congress yesterday.
Building consensus within America's body politic and national security establishment for a new way forward with Muslims worldwide is a formidable challenge. Many Americans still don't appreciate the complex nuances of Muslim society and remain stubbornly Islamophobic almost seven and half years after 9/11. Equally formidable is earning the goodwill of Muslims worldwide following the Iraq War as well as American atrocities perpetrated upon Islamic detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Hopefully, President Obama's historic election has finally opened a path for constructive conversation about how America can most effectively engage the Muslim world.
The CIA's former point man on Islam, Emile Nakahleh, has vigorously entered this conversation with his new book, A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America's Relations With the Muslim World (Princeton University Press). From 1991 to 2006, Nakahleh served as the director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program in the Directorate of Intelligence at the CIA. He holds a PhD in international relations and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
"We face a monumental economic challenge that goes far beyond anything being discussed in the U.S. Congress or the corporate press. The hardships imposed by temporarily frozen credit markets pale in comparison to what lies ahead.
Even the significant funds that the Obama administration is committed to spending on economic stimulus will do nothing to address the deeper structural causes of our threefold financial, social, and environmental crisis. On the positive side, the financial crisis has put to rest the myths that our economic institutions are sound and that markets work best when deregulated. This creates an opportune moment to open a national conversation about what we can and must do to create an economic system that can for work for all people for all time."
Tomorrow, America honors the birthday of heroic civil rights activist Martin Luther King. Americans revere King across the political and ethnic spectrum for his wisdom, idealism, courage and practice of non-violent civil disobedience against the forces of racial oppression. Thanks in large part to the trailblazing efforts of King and his followers; America inaugurates its first black president the very next day when Barack Obama takes the oath of office on January 20th. Yet even as Americans celebrate the historical arc from Martin Luther King to Barack Obama, the scars of racial injustice remain woven into our country's fabric.
Understandably, historians have overlooked the immediate aftermath of King's assassination in a Memphis, Tennessee hotel on April 4th, 1968. The meaning of King's life as well as the tragedy his loss represented has received considerable attention from historians and the body politic. Yet the immediate aftermath of King's death was dwarfed by his iconic life as well as the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the violence that took place during the Democratic National Convention later that year.
Presidents define our country's cultural ethos. Our cultural ethos impacts how large America's economic pie is and whether the benefits and sacrifices are proportioned fairly. The Republican presidencies of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43, promoted a cultural ethos of hyper individualism that rationalized waging ruthless class warfare against the middle class, working poor, the unemployed poor, the very old and the very young. Liberals were lonely voices against the tide as predatory conservatism eroded protections for consumers and wage earners alike.
Longtime readers of the Intrepid Liberal Journal may recall my April 2006 posting entitled, "Brain Fingerprinting and Civil Liberties." One mistake I made at the time was conflating the acronym FMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) with the term brain fingerprinting. Perhaps the most accurate generic term is brain mapping.
David Iglesias is the prototype twenty first century Republican: charismatic, Hispanic, an evangelical Christian and a captain in the Navy Reserve who served for many years in the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps ("JAG"). In 1998, Iglesias campaigned to become Attorney General of New Mexico against the heavily favored Patricia Madrid. He nearly pulled off an upset and the Republican Party took notice. In 2000, Iglesias paid his party dues and worked for George W. Bush's election.
The topic below was originally posted on my blog yesterday when the interview took place.
Shari'a is a code of law based on the Koran. In the Muslim world, many want to replace corrupt autocratic regimes with the Shari'a and establish traditional Islamic states. Western countries regard the Shari'a as a threat. Islamic parties are winning elections on it. Militants have used the Shari'a to justify acts of terrorism. Meanwhile, secular minded people find their most severe provisions repugnant.
In his latest book, The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State (Princeton University Press), Noah Feldman tells the story behind the populist movement in the Muslim world to establish the Shari'a. Feldman addresses questions about why the Shari'a is popular in spite of its harsh code and whether the Islamic state can succeed.
The centrifugal force in American politics today is the establishment's failure to deliver prosperity and security. In 2006, Americans voted for a change of direction in Iraq and economic policies at home. Instead, President Bush's "surge" in Iraq was enabled by a feckless congress as fuel prices soared, the cost of healthcare kept spiraling out of control and corporate CEOs continued to enjoy the benefits of a twenty-first century Gilded Age. Senseless privatization, predatory crony capitalism, political corruption, incompetence and corporate greed have combined to put the American Dream out of reach for people who work hard and play by the rules.
As many of you know by now, The Huffington Post reported yesterday that Senator Clinton slammed the activist organization Moveon.org at a fundraiser in February:
How many economists have you read or watched on television in recent years that claimed the economy was performing well while you struggled to make ends meat and keep up with the cost of living? Indeed, until recently a happy talk virus had infected a cabal of conservative plutocrats who preached the virtues of limited regulation, market forces and free trade as wages declined and predatory lenders had a party. It seemed we were hearing conservative politicians and their mouthpieces at the Heritage Foundation or Fox news refer to the economy as "the greatest story never told" at every opportunity.
Now that the housing and credit crisis has metastasized, conservative apparatchiks are fighting to minimize government intervention on behalf of regular folks while preserving corporate welfare. They accuse anyone who raises a fuss of waging class warfare. Instead these agents of the status quo prefer we erroneously obsess about Social Security going bust and agree to privatize it for Wall Street's benefit.
Effective change agents and activists must blend their cognitive skills and passions with deep reservoirs of inner strength. It's a life path requiring self-sacrifice, discipline, a tough hide combined with empathy, idealism joined with pragmatism, a willingness to put ego aside, resiliency and a perspective beyond the moment of immediate conflict.
Alas, many of us dedicated to pursuing the cause of peace, justice and economic fairness are demoralized by setbacks and criticisms overtime. Personal lives are also easily consumed by the flames of devotion to causes larger than ourselves, such as reversing global warming or stopping genocide. It's so easy to lose our balance as we stand apart from professional colleagues, friends and relatives who don't share our passions or devotion to change the world for the better.
(Fred Kaplan is the author of the awe inspirting history of America's nuclear intellectuals, THE WIZARDS OF ARMAGEDDON (1983). His new book sounds like an equally significant work, smashing to pieces the conventional post-9/11 narrative. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
Most Americans are eager to turn the page on the Bush years. Yet even as we elect a new president we're still coming to terms with an era that has both tarnished America's reputation and diminished its influence.
Fred Kaplan chronicles the folly of the Bush years in his new book, Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power (John Wiley & Sons).
Kaplan writes that,
"Nearly all of America's blunders in war and peace these past few years stem from a single grand misconception: that the world changed after 9/11, when in fact it didn't.
Certainly, things about the world changed, not least Americans' sudden awareness that they were vulnerable. But the way the world works - the nature of power, warfare, and politics among nations - remained essentially the same."
American politics typically reflects our cultural ethos of the moment. Just consider these questions:
Has our culture promoted community or celebrated greed?
Is our foreign policy based upon cooperation with the community of nations or the imperatives of empire?
Can individuals live in dignity regardless of their profession, economic class, ethnicity, gender, religion and sexual orientation or is gentrified wealth valued above character?
Warning, this is a long post. It's long because supporting a presidential candidate for me is deeply personal. It's not simply deciding which candidate I will pull the lever for in the privacy of a voting booth. Rather I approach the decision as an activist and ask myself: after weighing all the virtues and flaws of the declared candidates on whose behalf am I willing to devote my free time?
In my darker moments I'll ask myself, "Do any of these lying corporatist whores deserve my support? Why bother with any of them?" The ship has long sailed on my days of being a "true believer."
From 1968 to 2004, conservatives utilized the art of communication to persuade voters into supporting policies against the interests of peace and their personal prosperity. While liberals advocated obscure abstractions and responded with cerebral nuance, conservatives prevailed by hitting people in their gut. Law and order, welfare Cadillac Queens, Willie Horton, death tax, permissiveness, the flag and God were all exploited to define liberals as weak elitist traitors and conservatives as upstanding guardians of American values.
Even the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton did little to prevent the center of political gravity from shifting to the right. Consequently, a corporate plutocracy plundered the American economy at the expense of working people and small business owners, our civil liberties were systematically eroded and the neo-conservative empire culture shamefully eroded America's moral authority and geopolitical position.
In 2001, Aidan Delgado was twenty-years old and in need of a life anchor. Delgado had primarily grown up abroad in far away places such as Cairo, Egypt, Thailand and Senegal due to his father's career as a diplomat. While attending college in Florida, Delgado felt culturally out of place and adrift. Having led an "ivory tower" existence of academia and privilege, Delgado opted to join the United States Army Reserves for a different perspective.
By sheer coincidence he signed his enlistment contract on September 11th. Those closest to him questioned the wisdom of Delgado's choice. The terrorist attacks convinced Delgado he made the correct decision as the country underwent a surge of patriotic feeling and rallying to the flag. At the time he was proud of having decided to join the United States Reserves before September 11th. Delgado didn't know it yet but the next three years of his life would transform his entire being.
