Frank's Musings

All recorded history has chronicled contrasting systems of belief adopted by human groups—religious, ideological, political.  When they are used to justify the personal ambitions of a compelling individual or interest group, they usually become uncompromising Manichean (dualist) philosophies.

It is tempting to think that in the absence of that compelling individual or interest group different belief systems could coexist peacefully.  Removal of a manipulator of collective will is never easy.  Both Israelis and Iranians are paralyzed by their faiths from resisting the ultimately self-destructive policies of their leaders.  Hamas and Hezbollah both can only be defanged by empowering Iranians to moderate the mullahs.  Likewise, external pressure must be applied to the Israeli government to redirect the IDF to defending Israel’s UN borders with a Palestinian state instead of staking a claim from the river to the sea.    

A joint U.S., European, and Arab intervention under UN auspices will be necessary to accomplish these goals.  Interrupting the course of history in this way will be costly and hard to sell to the powers behind all these jurisdictions.  Not doing so, however, only prolongs the cycle of “war, timeout” that Friedman outlined in the 6/18/2024 NYT.

The Supreme Court’s reversal of the ATF classification that bump-stock-modified firearms qualify for being controlled as machine-guns smacks of ribald politics.  That regulation was consistent with Congressional action and had Donald Trump’s approval when he was President.  Its reversal signals the continued genuflection of the Court’s conservative majority to the desires of even a scandal-weakened NRA.   No doubt, the NRA still will be a major financial supporter of the expected 2024 Trump presidential election campaign.  We can expect Trump will repent his decision to cave in to the outrage caused by the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting at the hand of a sole, bump-stock equipped rifleman. 

It is confusing and disappointing how blatantly the six conservative Justices displayed allegiance to a political candidate whose reelection chances might well have influenced their decision.  It certainly confirms Linda Greenhouse's conclusion in the NYT that Chief Justice Roberts is failing to protect the Court from jeopardizing its prestige with the American public.

If the people of Gaza have truly lost their allegiance to Hamas as their government, they should be recruited to lead of the subversion of Hamas’s authority.   Israel should offer them the military support of the IDF. This transformative Israeli strategy will require a degree of trust in the good judgment of the beleaguered Palestinians to act on their frustration with being held hostage by militant Islamist extremists.

Unfortunately, that trust is unlikely to be adopted by an Israeli government dependent on coalition with militant Jewish extremists. Therefore, any joint American, European, and Arab strategy for helping to defuse the Levantine Flashpoint must start by empowering the forces of moderation on both sides of this conflict.  That means at first finding and supporting new leadership both in the Palestinian Authority and in Israel.

The financial resources are there; the painful choices to discipline radical religionists on both sides are balanced; impatience with the ultimate failure ever to experience spiritual reward is universal. Deferring peaceful material coexistence in return for supernatural beatitude is not an inviting trade.  Heaven on earth is all we can hope for.  If we devote our energies and innovation to preventing life on earth from being awful, we won’t need the promise of halcyon after death to motivate people to behave civilly towards each other, even in Gaza. 

What gave our Founding Fathers the confidence to submit their self-government choices to ratification by all their countrymen?  Were they overwhelmed by the logic of their collective intellect and by appreciation for the gift of clear thinking they possessed solely by divine right?  Or did they recognize in each other a common impatience with the shortcomings of autocratic rule for a community of people brought together because of their common belief that distance from tradition would allow them to find a better way to provide for themselves.

In either case, their action was not encumbered by political correctness.  The immediacy of modern communications no longer permits a cabal of superior intellects to formulate a plan to impose or even propose a set of rules that approximates universal welfare.  This is not to celebrate the efficiency of dictatorship; but it concedes that there is a price to be paid for recognizing the human rights of every individual.  Providing that incentive in return for everyone’s contribution to society’s productivity has resulted in achieving world economic, technological, political, and cultural leadership.

Today, the would-be heirs to the majestic Founders of the republic cannot believe that there is a near majority of the American voting public who have mistaken the ideal of democratic liberty for the freedom to choose what is in their individual short-term best interest.  Somehow, they have confused collective best interest with communism.  Dictatorship of the proletariat was never more than dictatorship in the name of the proletariat for those who were unwilling to accept outcomes determined by even a well-regulated market.  Likewise, MAGA Republicans distrust submitting their destinies to collective rules, most recently articulated by their bombastic leader when he disdained his followers’ welfare in the Las Vegas heat because he only wanted their votes.