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30 March 2007

Building a Hegemony of Values

Can Shelby Steele’s definition of victory in Iraq be valid? In his OpEd article in the Wall Street Journal on December 8, 2006, he fails to see that the collapse of the bipolar world caused by the crash of communism has made it more costly for the West to shepherd the Third World into the culture of material wealth. In the past, military and political competition with the Soviet bloc could force them to rain financial aid on Third World countries, satisfying their hunger for economic well-being (or, at least, their own dictators’ corrupt concupiscence). Now, it has become the singular burden of the “sole superpower” and its dependent societies in the West to instruct and finance the development of the Third World.

While waiting for this relief effort, or in disbelief it will ever come, Islamic terrorists have indeed resorted to menace as their tool of leverage over their perceived cultural oppressors. But their determination not to organize into an integrated foe protects them from being vulnerable to military control. This is an advantage of fundamentalist nihilism. It makes winning the hearts and minds of their populations all the more difficult, because they are not accessible through weapons and armed tactics.

Victory against Islamic terror must be defined in terms of cultural transformation. It can only be achieved through information and persuasion, not attack and police action. The American ambivalence that Mr. Steele complains about has arisen because we realize that our security will be a lot more costly than sending a half million troops and spending ten billion dollars a month in supplies and equipment. We shrink from undertaking the hard work needed to give an equitable stake in global economic wealth to the Islamic and other cultures of the Third World.

29 March 2007

A Global Income Model

In their OpEd in the March 24-25 Wall Street Journal, Messrs. El-Erian and Spence perceptively describe only half of the equilibrium that has driven world economic growth over the last thirty years. Western imports of commodity-like consumer and industrial manufactures, largely from East Asia, have created trade surpluses for those suppliers. The credit that feeds that consumption has offered those suppliers an investment opportunity in which to hold the liquidity generated by those surpluses.

The reason that this system has not collapsed is that the balance of trade has been transformed into an exchange of information products for physical products. The real estate boom, fanned by the sub prime lending frenzy, has given impetus to world trade. But the underlying momentum of the global economy is more a function of communication technology’s obliteration of national barriers to the flow of capital and other economic factors. Ultimately, money managers in the export-driven societies of the East indulge the appetites of consumers in the industrial societies of the West because their employment in the information economy makes them creditworthy.

Until now, this global income model has operated without guidance from a monetary authority protecting it from the “policy mistakes” that Messrs El-Erian and Spence warn could jeopardize it. Until now, the IMF has played a narrow, if widely resented, role in modulating international imbalances of payments. Perhaps we will need a central manager of incomes around the world in the future to assure continued smooth transfers of visible for invisible goods and smooth exchanges of payments for investment and production.

26 March 2007

Microbial Threats and Wealth

In the March 22, 2007 Wall Street Journal, Henry Masur pointed out the discrepancy between the resources that Congress and the pharmaceutical industry have devoted to antibiotic research and those that have been invested in responding to alleviating chronic diseases, like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. A simple explanation is that the victims of the latter have typically been wealthier customers for drug companies than the unfortunate people in less developed countries who suffer from tuberculosis, meningitis, malaria, and other infectious diseases. This is one of the reasons that AIDS did not spark the creation of combination anti-retroviral therapies until the disease traveled from Africa to the West.

It is short-sighted, in Masur’s view, not to recognize that the scourge of poorer countries will eventually bedevil the wealthy countries of the West because bacteria will adjust to our lack of attention to their adaptability. Infectious disease probably afflicts the least affluent in our own society disproportionately. That may be why Congress is the right forum to fight this battle. The votes of the less affluent are valuable currency that equalizes their lack of purchasing power.

Leaving Micromanagement to the Military

Contrary to the charges of the Bush Administration, Congress’s setting a deadline for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq does not mean depriving them of its support. Nor does it mean micromanagement of the military. Certainly, the armed forces are the best judges of how to carry out a military strategy. Unfortunately, the Iraq occupation is not and never has been a military problem. The Armed forces are the wrong instrument for its resolution. The military is designed to respond to attacks on our physical security, which it is clear never was at risk in Iraq. In fact, the presence of our Armed forces there mostly places our troops in physical danger.

Some cockeyed demonstration of bravado! The only audience that is impressed is the Administration’s Republican base. It certainly does not deter fundamentalist Islamic radicals from their terrorist ways. They can be defeated only by diminishing their base among deprived Muslim populations. Economic development and political empowerment, in spite of the risks to our own comfort, will be the only solution in the long run.

23 March 2007

The Purpose of Public Education

Public education was created not to realize the intellectual potential of each individual, but to assure the availability of the diverse skills, commensurate with personal potentials, that a working democratic society needs. Parents are responsible for assuring their offspring achieve their personal potential, not government. Those who can afford it will pay for specialized education, such as college prep or Liberal Arts College. Those who cannot must rely on what society provides in its own best interest, not in the parochial interest of the children.

The ultimate goal of our society, as framed by the founding fathers, is to assure all its citizens their life, liberty, and ability to pursue happiness. If the actual achievement of happiness were the measure of its success, the judgment criteria would be very subjective indeed. We would be tempted to use soporific tactics to win that goal.

Perhaps the goal of a democratic society should be to maximize the fulfillment of each citizen’s potential; or that might even be the goal of its public education system. That would be an expensive objective to achieve -- one that teachers unions would like to see adopted. But it would not necessarily accomplish the most effective social organization in which individuals will thrive.

Civic organization is an art of the possible. Its purpose is not constantly to strive for the ideal. Therefore, a democratic society suffers not when its individuals sacrifice their possibilities, but when its possibilities are limited by sacrificing the potential represented by all its individuals.

21 March 2007

Polls and Democracy

Governing the country according to the latest polling results has wrongly been characterized as an abandonment of responsible leadership. On the contrary, the judicious use of opinion polling techniques is a tool that only recently has become a reliable indicator of the ever-changing attitudes held by members of a democratic society.

Western civilization is more informed than ever before, and its citizens are better educated. Their leaders must constantly monitor their thoughts on the issues of the day if they are to be able to anticipate their desires and clearly anticipate their needs. Moreover, modern advances in IT have made representative forms of democracy less and less efficient. Thus, governing according to opinion polls is a fulfillment of the promise of democracy, not its rejection.

Is an Apology in Order for Iraq?

Should a Congressman apologize for an honest mistake? Is there such a thing when it comes to national security matters? In the U.S. Constitutional system, the President has all the cards to determine what the facts are as far as the country’s security is concerned. The Congress can only assure the people that the President and his administration have developed and evaluated the information needed to make policy and have competently executed it. If he was deceived, he is duty bound to investigate, remove the instigator of the deception, and correct the policy -- not to apologize.

When it comes to national security issues, the President cannot make an honest mistake. He can only do the right thing or make a willful transgression. It’s a high standard, but the stakes do not allow for any margin of error.

Therefore, Senator Clinton’s stance on the Iraq War has been correct, although she must still carry out the duty to assure that any violation of the peoples’ trust is reproved. Her rival, Senator Obama, was not in a position of oversight when he was deceived, except as a U. S. citizen. Along with Senator Clinton, he surely rebuked the Bush Administration at the 2006 ballot box along with most other voters.

So probably did former Senator Edwards. However, the apology of the Presidential candidate from North Carolina for his vote in the Senate supporting the invasion of Iraq implies that he was motivated by more than the information provided by the Bush Administration. It may not be wise to elect another President who admits that his judgment in matters of national security can be easily swayed by factors other than hard intelligence.

Tolerance

Bret Stephens wrote in the March 13, 2007 Wall Street Journal about Islamosocialism. He pointed out how European progressives have allowed their tolerance of multiculturalism to be manipulated by fundamentalist Islamists who have made it an issue of civil liberties to protect their right to impose submission on their women. This is the genius of any religion, including Islam: it can turn liberal thought to its own defense, no matter how reactionary its beliefs and practices. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has also warned of dangers of this tactic in her book, Infidel.

Of course, a culture like Western liberal democracy can be manipulated also for the opposite effect. Its members’ underlying resentment of Jews was brilliantly exploited by Joseph Goebbels to screen the tactics of the 3rd Reich. Those who propagandize convincingly take advantage of intolerance just as well as do those who play on the uncertainties of the faithful. An exclusionary impulse drives religious and secular nationalist movements alike.

20 March 2007

Thoughts on Faith

The author of Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, Anne Lamott, told Brian Lehrer, “The opposite of Faith is not doubt. The opposite of Faith is certainty.” What an insight!

Consequences of Withdrawal from Iraq

Of course the consequences of congressional calls for withdrawal from Iraq would be “devastating” for President Bush’s concept of regional and U.S. security. It would limit his freedom to act unilaterally, which he has been raised to believe he has the right to do. Many of the problems that Bush has caused are owed to his upbringing as a spoiled brat, whose whims apparently were never challenged.

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