A report compiled by the Education Trust in Washington argues that the Federal bureaucracy has allowed individual states way too much latitude in setting targets for graduation rates. So long as some sort of "progress" in graduation rates is stipulated, states are apparently in compliance with this aspect of No Child Left Behind legislation, which I have written about previously. Evidently, not only must all states increase their graduation rates (now, how would they accomplish that?), but they must aspire to the same high graduation targets. Iowa, for example, is shooting for 95%.
From the NY Times article:
While the No Child Left Behind law has created a national focus on reading and math proficiencies, it has done little to raise expectations for the number of students graduating from high school, the report said.
Because the law allowed states wide latitude, the goals for graduation rates vary widely. Nevada, for example, says its goal is to graduate 50 percent of its students; Iowa sets a target of 95 percent.
Under the federal law, states must also set targets for annual improvements, but several states say that any progress at all — even just one more diploma — is good enough, according to data collected from the Department of Education.
The report found that state-set goals for raising graduation rates are “far too low to spur needed improvement.”
I suppose there are at least three ways to raise graduation rates. One would be to lower the standards required for graduation. Another would be to maintain or even raise the standards, and then fudge the results. The third would to raise levels of student performance. If you were an educational administrator, which would you choose?
New York seems to have hit upon a reasonable answer:
Several weeks into his first year of teaching math at the High School of Arts and Technology in Manhattan, Austin Lampros received a copy of the school’s grading policy. He took particular note of the stipulation that a student who attended class even once during a semester, who did absolutely nothing else, was to be given 45 points on the 100-point scale, just 20 short of a passing mark.
Mr. Lampros’s introduction to the high school’s academic standards proved a fitting preamble to a disastrous year. It reached its low point in late June, when Arts and Technology’s principal, Anne Geiger, overruled Mr. Lampros and passed a senior whom he had failed in a required math course.
That student, Indira Fernandez, had missed dozens of class sessions and failed to turn in numerous homework assignments, according to Mr. Lampros’s meticulous records, which he provided to The New York Times. She had not even shown up to take the final exam. She did, however, attend the senior prom.
Through the intercession of Ms. Geiger, Miss Fernandez was permitted to retake the final after receiving two days of personal tutoring from another math teacher. Even though her score of 66 still left her with a failing grade for the course as a whole by Mr. Lampros’s calculations, Ms. Geiger gave the student a passing mark, which allowed her to graduate.
Ms. Geiger declined to be interviewed for this column and said that federal law forbade her to speak about a specific student’s performance. But in a written reply to questions, she characterized her actions as part of a “standard procedure” of “encouraging teachers to support students’ efforts to achieve academic success.”
The article concludes with the following:
Samantha Fernandez, Indira’s mother, spoke on her behalf. “My daughter earned everything she got,” she said. Of Mr. Lampros, she said, “He needs to grow up and be a man.”
From Michigan, Mr. Lampros recalled one comment that Mrs. Fernandez made during their meeting about why it was important for Indira to graduate. She couldn’t afford to pay for her to attend another senior prom in another senior year.
Samantha Fernandez is probably more accurate than she supposes when she asserts that her daughter has "earned everything she got." And you've got to love the idea that Mr. Lampros' unwillingness to pass Indira, despite the blood-and-guts intellectual commitment she brough to his class, constitutes either immaturity or effiminacy on his part. Kudos for keeping the discussion on an intellectual plane, Sam. And these are the sorts of people (Indira and her highly-motivated mom) whom teachers and administrators are expected to shepherd along through the educational system.
The Education Trust has its own perspective on New York schools' performance and graduation rates:
The report praised New York City schools for making sizable improvements in the past three years. But while New York has raised its graduation rate by six percentage points over the last three years, it still hovers around 50 percent. For the class of 2006, just 41 percent of Latino students graduated in four years.
Ross Wiener, vice president for policy and practice at the Education Trust, a research group in Washington, said that states should aim to have 90 percent of students graduate in four years and that schools that did not meet that goal should improve their graduation rate by five percentage points over two years.
The report criticized states as not doing enough to track low-income and minority students.
And on the issue of disadvantaged, or discriminated against, or under performing, or whatever minority students, we have yet another perspective, this time from a professor of Education at the University of Georgia:
It appears it will take a Civil Rights type of movement in education to change the present academic trajectory of black children. It will take parents and educators, concerned clergy and community activists, and members of commerce and civic organizations taking to the street — and the Internet — en masse, to demand the undelivered promises of Brown.
Such a movement should be unapologetic about making sure that black children, and for that matter all children, are prepared to participate in the global economy. It must demand that parents are supported in their efforts to parent and participate actively in their children's education, and insist that educators are provided the resources and support to effectively teach. And, it has to expose how politicians are more interested in their own political expediency than making a serious commitment to developing a world-class system of public education for all children.
Of the three methods I have identified above for raising graduation rates, which one do you believe is likely to result from such a "Civil Rights type movement?" And while I'm at it, how exactly does an educational bureaucracy, or any entity, ensure that parents are "supported in their efforts to parent and participate actively in their children's education"? What, if anything, does that even mean?
Our educational establishment in America is obsessed with fads, fantasies, wish-fulfillment, and social engineering. The one reality which they will never grapple with, as applicable in the realm of learning as in any other dimension of human experience, is that limitation is the fundamental human experience. There are limits as to what schools can do, what teachers can do, and what students can do. There were limits to what Einstein could do in the field of physics (we're still waiting on that Unified Field Theory), and limits on what Bobby Knight could do with a bunch of farm boys from Indiana (hence his epic, courtside breakdowns). In the absence of any discussion of inevitable limits and reasonable expectations, education policy will continue along these current, vacuous lines.
The consequence of all of this, from my own experience, anyway, is that teaching becomes exponentially more difficult when a void is introduced between what the students, at that moment in their lives, are capable of or willing to do (much the same thing, actually) and what the curriculum expects, or pretends to expect, them to do. An odor of dishonesty and dissembling soon taints the atmosphere of the classroom, the conference room, and most damagingly, of the mind itself. Even less-than-brilliant students quickly pick up on a fraud, particularly one allegedly being perpetrated for their benefit.
Having, in my previous post, overhauled the electoral system in America, I see no reason not to move from success to success (just like our kids) and overhaul the public education system. A few modest proposals:
1. Vouchers (because the public education system has no interest in being overhauled)
2. Six years of elementary school, four years of high school. Those who can't learn the basic skills of literacy and numeracy in ten years are not going to learn them in twelve. The example of Miss Indira Fernandez, cited above, is useful here.
3. There should be three different types of high school degrees, with varying levels of academic expectation, so that most kids, at the end of the 10th grade, can graduate. Political realities have to be considered.
4. After graduating from high school, students might:
a) do nothing
b) get a job
c) take up a life of crime
d) enter an apprenticeship program through a vocational-technical school, with something like 20 hours of work per week, and 20 hours of classroom instruction. (Unlike the educational trust, I am willing to allow schools some flexibility on the specifics.)
e) enter a two or four-year college (By the way, the bias against the two-year Associate degree is probably a mistake.)
f) do two years of prep work prior to entering a university. Fewer students would incur or pass on to taxpayers the considerable cost of a university education, and university graduates would be expected to know a good bit more than they do now.
g) engage in independent study leading to credentialization, which might be called the Parapundit route.
As my correspondent, John Derbyshire, would no doubt say of the above, "Fat Chance!" But we can all dream a little.
By the way, Logical Meme has a rather amusing take on Miss Fernandez's journey through the New York High School Labyrinth.
*I am told that this is one of the latest educational mantras, repeated ad nauseum by adminstrators. Inspiring, eh?
Friday, August 3, 2007
Saturday, July 28, 2007
One Man . . . Four Votes?
In addition to being enticing, elusive, and intellectually provocative, the above title should, I realize, by some people's lights, read "One Person . . . Four Votes?" But since I'm going to be arguing here against the universal franchise as currently structured, I'll leave it as is. Anyway, women rarely pay visits to my little clubhouse, so I'll run the risk of offense.
There's been an intriguing discussion going on at Unqualified Reservations regarding the nature of democracy, and more specifically, whether or not it is simply an adaptive fiction. For those (like me) unfamiliar with this term, an adaptive fiction is "a misperception of reality that, unlike most such misperceptions, manages to outcompete the truth."
One UR commenter, Michael S, points out that democracy in its current, hallowed form, (universal suffrage) has hardly been practiced long enough to have proven its itself as the best and final Fukuyamian political solution.
Michael S. said...
One point worth noting in any discussion of "democracy" is that human society really has very little experience with this form of government as it is now defined - i.e., universal-franchise, one-man-one-vote, with seats in representative assemblies apportioned to populations in the districts or ridings represented.
I'd be willing to hazard that almost no historical examples can be cited that are more than perhaps 70 or 80 years old. Ancient democracies, like those of Athens or republican Rome, had highly restricted electorates. Most of their denizens, including numerous slaves, did not hold the franchise. This was also true in the United States until 1865. Property qualifications for the franchise were only slowly removed, and the franchise in the U.S. cannot be said to have been truly universal until the ratification of the Twenty-Fourth Amendment in 1964, banning the exaction of poll taxes as a qualification for voting, and the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In other words, the universal franchise in the United States dates from about the same time as the independence of most British and French colonies in Africa.
One-man-one-vote-once was the usual sequence of events in most of those places, which very quickly threw off their parliaments, prime ministers, robed and bewigged judges and barristers, and slid either into anarchy or tyranny. The decline of self-government in the United States under the universal franchise has not been as precipitate, but one would have to be a fool not to see its signs.
This got me to thinking about a John Derbyshire article I read a year or two ago, in which he argued for the disenfranchisement of non-military government employees. You know, Derbyshire's always willing to think the best of our boys in uniform. But he does have a point, and I soon found myself intrigued enough to email Derb with my proposal, really just a thought-exercise, as to the re-rigging of the American voting system. Derbyshire's reply was, in essence, "fat chance!"
Fair enough. As I've said, it's only a thought-exercise, and I expect never to see any of these provisions come to pass. Nevertheless, and simply for my own amusement, I've constructed a less egalitarian - why not just say it, an unfair - voting system intended to produce better electoral outcomes. At the same time, one of the constraints of this exercise is to make such a proposal as palatable as possible to the general citizenry.
What is that, you say? The masses would rise up in righteous rage? Yeah, maybe . . . not that any politician would ever be suicidal enough to propose it. On the other hand, the citizenry is made up of lots of people, like me, who will talk politics all evening, but can't be bothered to step into the booth. Perhaps democracy is both an adaptive and self-selecting fiction, filtering out those most likely to gum up the works.
Well, here goes. My anti-democratic, elitist, and entirely unlikely overhaul of the American voting system:
Contra Derbyshire and his desire to disenfranchise government employees, we're not going to get away with disenfranchising anybody. It's just a matter of time before convicted felons re-claim their right to vote. Bearing this in mind, my preferred strategy is subtraction by addition, adding voting power to those whom I deem worthy, and denying additional votes to those I deem unworthy. Finally, I would attempt to rationalize the whole thing in a sufficiently family-friendly, pro-education, and patriotic way, thus deceiving the American public into adopting a better elective system.
Under this system, citizens could qualify for the right to exercise between one and five votes in any federal election. These votes are as follows:
1. The Citizenship Vote: This is the vote we all currently know and love. All you have to do to get it is to be a breathing 18 year old+ citizen, not noticably retarded, and without a felony record. You also have to register, and under my plan, you would still have to register, because some people are too stupid/lazy to register.
The rationalization: Everyone has a right to vote, and everyone's vote counts.
The justification: The need to appease every citizen's belief that he or she has a right to vote.
2. The Informed Citizen Vote: All high school students will be required to take a one-year sequence of courses on American History and the US Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. At the end of this sequence of courses, students will take a federally-administered test, consisting only of multiple choice questions based upon issues of fact rather than opinion. Passage of this test, in high school or at any point in one's life, qualifies one for the Informed Citizen vote. This test has no bearing on the student's GPA.
The particular questions used in the test will be selected out of a large item bank, and all of the questions in the bank will be made available to test takers ahead of time. Thus, all test takers - and remember, you can take this test at any point in your life - will have equal access to the pool of questions from which their particular exam will be drawn. A reasonable ability to memorize, and the self-discipline to study, will be sufficient to pass the test.
The rationalization: This will encourage a politically informed populace, and will require high schools to provide students with at least one year of instruction that students might actually use in the event of their arrest.
The justification: Some people are too stupid/lazy to pass this test in high school, and such people, almost without exception, will never find the wherewith all to study this subject on their own and take the exam at a later point in their lives.
3. The Net Contributor Vote: Given to everyone who pays more in federal taxes than he or she receives in government payouts, including salaries, welfare benefits, and Social Security. This provision would also exclude employees of private contractors which derive more than 50% of their revenue from federal contracts.
The rationalization: People who make a net-positive contribution to the federal till deserve an extra vote.
The justification: See John Derbyshire's article, take a look at the prescription drug benefit legislation, drive through a public housing project, or pick up an AARP publication. People are people, after all.
4. The Military Service Vote: Current service in one of the branches of the military, including the National Guard and Reserves, entitles a citizen to this vote. Veterans of military service only keep this vote so long as they remain in the Guard or Reserves.
The rationalization: We don't want to penalize our active-duty servicemen and women simply because they draw a government paycheck in excess of their federal tax obligation. They're defending our freedom.
The justification: People who serve in the military tend to make up the better component of the American lower-middle to working class, and particularly since they bear the brunt of America's military adventures, it only seems fair. Plus, I wouldn't want to take on the military when they discover that their members are being denied the Net Contributor Vote. This vote compensates them for their disqualification in the Net Contributor category.
5. The Parental Responsibility Vote: Anyone legitimately able to claim one or more dependent children on their Federal Income Tax Return, and providing for those children through funds earned rather than federal benefits, is entitled to this vote.
The rationalization: Children are our future, and parents are in effect voting not only out of their own interests, but also in their children's interests.
The justification: The justification isn't actually that different from the rationalization, though the emphasis differs. To the extent that people ever take the long view in life, they do so when they're raising kids, if they're ever raising kids. The period of child-rearing more or less corresponds to that period during which people are carrying the greatest load in their society.
To sum up, before you have kids, you live for yourself; after they're grown, likewise. Under this provision, people who provide for their own kids will be rewarded with an extra vote, and those who - for whatever reason - don't, won't.
You will note that the title of this post is "One Man . . . Four Votes?" and yet I've listed five potential votes. Bad math? Not really. It would difficult, though not impossible, for one person to claim all five votes. The only way to do so would be to make a relatively high salary while serving in the military reserve, and to pay federal taxes in excess of one's compensation from the military. I don't know what one is paid to serve in the Guard or Reserve, but I suspect that it exceeds the amount that most Guard or Reserve members pay in taxes.
Thus, Americans of sound character and strong capabilities (patriots like you and me) would probably, at any one time, qualify for no more than four votes. Still that's better than what you've got now. But I wonder if those four votes would be enough to actually lure me into the booth. Sadly, I suspect that, even under a system of my own devising, I'm destined to remain a voting voyeur.
There's been an intriguing discussion going on at Unqualified Reservations regarding the nature of democracy, and more specifically, whether or not it is simply an adaptive fiction. For those (like me) unfamiliar with this term, an adaptive fiction is "a misperception of reality that, unlike most such misperceptions, manages to outcompete the truth."
One UR commenter, Michael S, points out that democracy in its current, hallowed form, (universal suffrage) has hardly been practiced long enough to have proven its itself as the best and final Fukuyamian political solution.
Michael S. said...
One point worth noting in any discussion of "democracy" is that human society really has very little experience with this form of government as it is now defined - i.e., universal-franchise, one-man-one-vote, with seats in representative assemblies apportioned to populations in the districts or ridings represented.
I'd be willing to hazard that almost no historical examples can be cited that are more than perhaps 70 or 80 years old. Ancient democracies, like those of Athens or republican Rome, had highly restricted electorates. Most of their denizens, including numerous slaves, did not hold the franchise. This was also true in the United States until 1865. Property qualifications for the franchise were only slowly removed, and the franchise in the U.S. cannot be said to have been truly universal until the ratification of the Twenty-Fourth Amendment in 1964, banning the exaction of poll taxes as a qualification for voting, and the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In other words, the universal franchise in the United States dates from about the same time as the independence of most British and French colonies in Africa.
One-man-one-vote-once was the usual sequence of events in most of those places, which very quickly threw off their parliaments, prime ministers, robed and bewigged judges and barristers, and slid either into anarchy or tyranny. The decline of self-government in the United States under the universal franchise has not been as precipitate, but one would have to be a fool not to see its signs.
This got me to thinking about a John Derbyshire article I read a year or two ago, in which he argued for the disenfranchisement of non-military government employees. You know, Derbyshire's always willing to think the best of our boys in uniform. But he does have a point, and I soon found myself intrigued enough to email Derb with my proposal, really just a thought-exercise, as to the re-rigging of the American voting system. Derbyshire's reply was, in essence, "fat chance!"
Fair enough. As I've said, it's only a thought-exercise, and I expect never to see any of these provisions come to pass. Nevertheless, and simply for my own amusement, I've constructed a less egalitarian - why not just say it, an unfair - voting system intended to produce better electoral outcomes. At the same time, one of the constraints of this exercise is to make such a proposal as palatable as possible to the general citizenry.
What is that, you say? The masses would rise up in righteous rage? Yeah, maybe . . . not that any politician would ever be suicidal enough to propose it. On the other hand, the citizenry is made up of lots of people, like me, who will talk politics all evening, but can't be bothered to step into the booth. Perhaps democracy is both an adaptive and self-selecting fiction, filtering out those most likely to gum up the works.
Well, here goes. My anti-democratic, elitist, and entirely unlikely overhaul of the American voting system:
Contra Derbyshire and his desire to disenfranchise government employees, we're not going to get away with disenfranchising anybody. It's just a matter of time before convicted felons re-claim their right to vote. Bearing this in mind, my preferred strategy is subtraction by addition, adding voting power to those whom I deem worthy, and denying additional votes to those I deem unworthy. Finally, I would attempt to rationalize the whole thing in a sufficiently family-friendly, pro-education, and patriotic way, thus deceiving the American public into adopting a better elective system.
Under this system, citizens could qualify for the right to exercise between one and five votes in any federal election. These votes are as follows:
1. The Citizenship Vote: This is the vote we all currently know and love. All you have to do to get it is to be a breathing 18 year old+ citizen, not noticably retarded, and without a felony record. You also have to register, and under my plan, you would still have to register, because some people are too stupid/lazy to register.
The rationalization: Everyone has a right to vote, and everyone's vote counts.
The justification: The need to appease every citizen's belief that he or she has a right to vote.
2. The Informed Citizen Vote: All high school students will be required to take a one-year sequence of courses on American History and the US Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. At the end of this sequence of courses, students will take a federally-administered test, consisting only of multiple choice questions based upon issues of fact rather than opinion. Passage of this test, in high school or at any point in one's life, qualifies one for the Informed Citizen vote. This test has no bearing on the student's GPA.
The particular questions used in the test will be selected out of a large item bank, and all of the questions in the bank will be made available to test takers ahead of time. Thus, all test takers - and remember, you can take this test at any point in your life - will have equal access to the pool of questions from which their particular exam will be drawn. A reasonable ability to memorize, and the self-discipline to study, will be sufficient to pass the test.
The rationalization: This will encourage a politically informed populace, and will require high schools to provide students with at least one year of instruction that students might actually use in the event of their arrest.
The justification: Some people are too stupid/lazy to pass this test in high school, and such people, almost without exception, will never find the wherewith all to study this subject on their own and take the exam at a later point in their lives.
3. The Net Contributor Vote: Given to everyone who pays more in federal taxes than he or she receives in government payouts, including salaries, welfare benefits, and Social Security. This provision would also exclude employees of private contractors which derive more than 50% of their revenue from federal contracts.
The rationalization: People who make a net-positive contribution to the federal till deserve an extra vote.
The justification: See John Derbyshire's article, take a look at the prescription drug benefit legislation, drive through a public housing project, or pick up an AARP publication. People are people, after all.
4. The Military Service Vote: Current service in one of the branches of the military, including the National Guard and Reserves, entitles a citizen to this vote. Veterans of military service only keep this vote so long as they remain in the Guard or Reserves.
The rationalization: We don't want to penalize our active-duty servicemen and women simply because they draw a government paycheck in excess of their federal tax obligation. They're defending our freedom.
The justification: People who serve in the military tend to make up the better component of the American lower-middle to working class, and particularly since they bear the brunt of America's military adventures, it only seems fair. Plus, I wouldn't want to take on the military when they discover that their members are being denied the Net Contributor Vote. This vote compensates them for their disqualification in the Net Contributor category.
5. The Parental Responsibility Vote: Anyone legitimately able to claim one or more dependent children on their Federal Income Tax Return, and providing for those children through funds earned rather than federal benefits, is entitled to this vote.
The rationalization: Children are our future, and parents are in effect voting not only out of their own interests, but also in their children's interests.
The justification: The justification isn't actually that different from the rationalization, though the emphasis differs. To the extent that people ever take the long view in life, they do so when they're raising kids, if they're ever raising kids. The period of child-rearing more or less corresponds to that period during which people are carrying the greatest load in their society.
To sum up, before you have kids, you live for yourself; after they're grown, likewise. Under this provision, people who provide for their own kids will be rewarded with an extra vote, and those who - for whatever reason - don't, won't.
You will note that the title of this post is "One Man . . . Four Votes?" and yet I've listed five potential votes. Bad math? Not really. It would difficult, though not impossible, for one person to claim all five votes. The only way to do so would be to make a relatively high salary while serving in the military reserve, and to pay federal taxes in excess of one's compensation from the military. I don't know what one is paid to serve in the Guard or Reserve, but I suspect that it exceeds the amount that most Guard or Reserve members pay in taxes.
Thus, Americans of sound character and strong capabilities (patriots like you and me) would probably, at any one time, qualify for no more than four votes. Still that's better than what you've got now. But I wonder if those four votes would be enough to actually lure me into the booth. Sadly, I suspect that, even under a system of my own devising, I'm destined to remain a voting voyeur.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Bunker Buster
"You don't get any feeling of somebody crouching down in the bunker. This is either extraordinary self-confidence or out of touch with reality. I can't tell you which."
--Irwin M. Stelzer, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute
"I find him serene. . . . I know President Johnson was railing against his fate. That's not the case with Bush. He feels he's doing what he needs to do, and he seems to me at peace with himself."
--Henry Kissinger
Seven years into his presidency, and as his approval ratings continue their slide toward the mid-twenties, George W. Bush has awakened to the realization that all may not be well with his historical legacy (though he's certain to be long remembered).
Thus, with all the assiduous energy of the well-connected D- minus student cramming for that big exam, Bush is racking the brains of a cadre of elite eggheads, who struggle to make clear to him the distinctions between good and evil, the "lessons of history" (as if these are going to be laid bare in a few bull sessions), and to answer that most vexing of questions, "Is it the whole of America that the rest of the world hates, or is it just George W. Bush?"
From The Washington Post article:
And yet Bush does not come across like a man lamenting his plight. In public and in private, according to intimates, he exhibits an inexorable upbeat energy that defies the political storms. Even when he convenes philosophical discussions with scholars, he avoids second-guessing his actions. He still acts as if he were master of the universe, even if the rest of Washington no longer sees him that way.
Bush is fixated on Iraq, according to friends and advisers. One former aide went to see him recently to discuss various matters, only to find Bush turning the conversation back to Iraq again and again. He recognizes that his presidency hinges on whether Iraq can be turned around in 18 months. "Nothing matters except the war," said one person close to Bush. "That's all that matters. The whole thing rides on that."
These are the questions of a president who has endured the most drastic political collapse in a generation. Not generally known for intellectual curiosity, Bush is seeking out those who are, engaging in a philosophical exploration of the currents of history that have swept up his administration. For all the setbacks, he remains unflinching, rarely expressing doubt in his direction, yet trying to understand how he got off course.
Perhaps his unflinching reluctance to entertain "doubts in his direction" might in part explain "how he got off course." Would someone remind me, exactly when was he on course?
Well, in the interest of broadening the president's historical horizons, I will provide quotations from a series of historians who were asked to complete the following statement:
George W. Bush is the worst president since . . .
HOOVER: “I would say GW is our worst president since Herbert Hoover. He is moving to bankrupt the federal government on the eve of the retirement of the baby boom generation, and he has brought America’s reputation in the world to its lowest point in the entire history of the United States.”
HARDING: “Oil, money and politics again combine in ways not flattering to the integrity of the office. Both men also have a tendency to mangle the English language yet get their points across to ordinary Americans. [Yet] the comparison does Harding something of a disservice.”
McKINLEY: “Bush is perhaps the first president [since McKinley] to be entirely in the ‘hip pocket’ of big business, engage in major external conquest for reasons other than national security, AND be the puppet of his political handler. McKinley had Mark Hanna; Bush has Karl Rove. No wonder McKinley is Rove’s favorite historical president (precedent?).”
GRANT: “He ranks with U.S. Grant as the worst. His oil interests and Cheney’s corporate Haliburton contracts smack of the same corruption found under Grant.”
“While Grant did serve in the army (more than once), Bush went AWOL from the National Guard. That means that Grant is automatically more honest than Bush, since Grant did not send people into places that he himself consciously avoided. . . . Grant did not attempt to invade another country without a declaration of war; Bush thinks that his powers in this respect are unlimited.”
NIXON: “Actually, I think [Bush’s] presidency may exceed the disaster that was Nixon. He has systematically lied to the American public about almost every policy that his administration promotes.” Bush uses “doublespeak” to “dress up policies that condone or aid attacks by polluters and exploiters of the environment . . . with names like the ‘Forest Restoration Act’ (which encourages the cutting down of forests).”
EVER: The second most common response from historians, trailing only Nixon, was that the current presidency is the worst in American history. A few examples will serve to provide the flavor of such condemnations. “Although previous presidents have led the nation into ill-advised wars, no predecessor managed to turn America into an unprovoked aggressor. No predecessor so thoroughly managed to confirm the impressions of those who already hated America. No predecessor so effectively convinced such a wide range of world opinion that America is an imperialist threat to world peace. I don 't think that you can do much worse than that.”
“Bush is horrendous; there is no comparison with previous presidents, most of whom have been bad.”
“He is blatantly a puppet for corporate interests, who care only about their own greed and have no sense of civic responsibility or community service. He lies, constantly and often, seemingly without control, and he lied about his invasion into a sovereign country, again for corporate interests; many people have died and been maimed, and that has been lied about too. He grandstands and mugs in a shameful manner, befitting a snake oil salesman, not a statesman. He does not think, process, or speak well, and is emotionally immature due to, among other things, his lack of recovery from substance abuse. The term is "dry drunk". He is an abject embarrassment/pariah overseas; the rest of the world hates him . . . . . He is, by far, the most irresponsible, unethical, inexcusable occupant of our formerly highest office in the land that there has ever been.”
“George W. Bush's presidency is the pernicious enemy of American freedom, compassion, and community; of world peace; and of life itself as it has evolved for millennia on large sections of the planet. The worst president ever? Let history judge him.”
“This president is unique in his failures.”
Unique in his failures . . . now there's a legacy for the ages.
Which is not to say that condemnation from intellectual quarters has been unanimous. William Kristol has just recently revealed that Bush's presidency is likely - through the historical lens - to be viewed a major success.
News flash! This stunning redemption will be gained through victory in Iraq.
Hey, if only I could've thought of that . . .
--Irwin M. Stelzer, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute
"I find him serene. . . . I know President Johnson was railing against his fate. That's not the case with Bush. He feels he's doing what he needs to do, and he seems to me at peace with himself."
--Henry Kissinger
Seven years into his presidency, and as his approval ratings continue their slide toward the mid-twenties, George W. Bush has awakened to the realization that all may not be well with his historical legacy (though he's certain to be long remembered).
Thus, with all the assiduous energy of the well-connected D- minus student cramming for that big exam, Bush is racking the brains of a cadre of elite eggheads, who struggle to make clear to him the distinctions between good and evil, the "lessons of history" (as if these are going to be laid bare in a few bull sessions), and to answer that most vexing of questions, "Is it the whole of America that the rest of the world hates, or is it just George W. Bush?"
From The Washington Post article:
And yet Bush does not come across like a man lamenting his plight. In public and in private, according to intimates, he exhibits an inexorable upbeat energy that defies the political storms. Even when he convenes philosophical discussions with scholars, he avoids second-guessing his actions. He still acts as if he were master of the universe, even if the rest of Washington no longer sees him that way.
Bush is fixated on Iraq, according to friends and advisers. One former aide went to see him recently to discuss various matters, only to find Bush turning the conversation back to Iraq again and again. He recognizes that his presidency hinges on whether Iraq can be turned around in 18 months. "Nothing matters except the war," said one person close to Bush. "That's all that matters. The whole thing rides on that."
These are the questions of a president who has endured the most drastic political collapse in a generation. Not generally known for intellectual curiosity, Bush is seeking out those who are, engaging in a philosophical exploration of the currents of history that have swept up his administration. For all the setbacks, he remains unflinching, rarely expressing doubt in his direction, yet trying to understand how he got off course.
Perhaps his unflinching reluctance to entertain "doubts in his direction" might in part explain "how he got off course." Would someone remind me, exactly when was he on course?
Well, in the interest of broadening the president's historical horizons, I will provide quotations from a series of historians who were asked to complete the following statement:
George W. Bush is the worst president since . . .
HOOVER: “I would say GW is our worst president since Herbert Hoover. He is moving to bankrupt the federal government on the eve of the retirement of the baby boom generation, and he has brought America’s reputation in the world to its lowest point in the entire history of the United States.”
HARDING: “Oil, money and politics again combine in ways not flattering to the integrity of the office. Both men also have a tendency to mangle the English language yet get their points across to ordinary Americans. [Yet] the comparison does Harding something of a disservice.”
McKINLEY: “Bush is perhaps the first president [since McKinley] to be entirely in the ‘hip pocket’ of big business, engage in major external conquest for reasons other than national security, AND be the puppet of his political handler. McKinley had Mark Hanna; Bush has Karl Rove. No wonder McKinley is Rove’s favorite historical president (precedent?).”
GRANT: “He ranks with U.S. Grant as the worst. His oil interests and Cheney’s corporate Haliburton contracts smack of the same corruption found under Grant.”
“While Grant did serve in the army (more than once), Bush went AWOL from the National Guard. That means that Grant is automatically more honest than Bush, since Grant did not send people into places that he himself consciously avoided. . . . Grant did not attempt to invade another country without a declaration of war; Bush thinks that his powers in this respect are unlimited.”
NIXON: “Actually, I think [Bush’s] presidency may exceed the disaster that was Nixon. He has systematically lied to the American public about almost every policy that his administration promotes.” Bush uses “doublespeak” to “dress up policies that condone or aid attacks by polluters and exploiters of the environment . . . with names like the ‘Forest Restoration Act’ (which encourages the cutting down of forests).”
EVER: The second most common response from historians, trailing only Nixon, was that the current presidency is the worst in American history. A few examples will serve to provide the flavor of such condemnations. “Although previous presidents have led the nation into ill-advised wars, no predecessor managed to turn America into an unprovoked aggressor. No predecessor so thoroughly managed to confirm the impressions of those who already hated America. No predecessor so effectively convinced such a wide range of world opinion that America is an imperialist threat to world peace. I don 't think that you can do much worse than that.”
“Bush is horrendous; there is no comparison with previous presidents, most of whom have been bad.”
“He is blatantly a puppet for corporate interests, who care only about their own greed and have no sense of civic responsibility or community service. He lies, constantly and often, seemingly without control, and he lied about his invasion into a sovereign country, again for corporate interests; many people have died and been maimed, and that has been lied about too. He grandstands and mugs in a shameful manner, befitting a snake oil salesman, not a statesman. He does not think, process, or speak well, and is emotionally immature due to, among other things, his lack of recovery from substance abuse. The term is "dry drunk". He is an abject embarrassment/pariah overseas; the rest of the world hates him . . . . . He is, by far, the most irresponsible, unethical, inexcusable occupant of our formerly highest office in the land that there has ever been.”
“George W. Bush's presidency is the pernicious enemy of American freedom, compassion, and community; of world peace; and of life itself as it has evolved for millennia on large sections of the planet. The worst president ever? Let history judge him.”
“This president is unique in his failures.”
Unique in his failures . . . now there's a legacy for the ages.
Which is not to say that condemnation from intellectual quarters has been unanimous. William Kristol has just recently revealed that Bush's presidency is likely - through the historical lens - to be viewed a major success.
News flash! This stunning redemption will be gained through victory in Iraq.
Hey, if only I could've thought of that . . .
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Dalrymple's EuroDisney
Broadcasting live from somewhere in North America . . . (suburban Atlanta, actually):
In The American Conservative, Theodore Dalrymple has an excellent review of The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent, by Walter Laqueurof. As Dalrymple puts it:
"He [Laqueurof] sees Europe, once the home of a dynamic civilization that energized the rest of the world, declining into a kind of genteel theme park—if it’s lucky. The future might be grimmer than this, of course: there might be a real struggle for power once the immigrants and their descendants become numerically strong enough to take on the increasingly geriatric native population."
Once again, the "demographics as destiny" theme rises to the fore. Dalrymple has always been astute on the particular difficulties posed by large-scale Islamic immigration into Europe, as well as the slow, corrupting influence of Europe's increasingly insupportable cradle-to-grave Nanny state.
"This suggests—and Laqueur has no hesitation in so saying—that there is a problem peculiar to the integration of Muslims in Western countries, at any rate, when they are in such large numbers that they are able to make whole areas their own. Imbued with a sense of their own religious superiority, which considers a Muslim way of life better than any other, they are ill-prepared to adapt constructively to Western society.
Yet adapt they do, though not necessarily in the best way. The young men of the second generation adopt many aspects of American ghetto “culture,” which in conjunction with Islamic teaching and tradition, enables them to dominate women in a way that is to them extremely gratifying. This prevents the women (who, as Laqueur tells us, and I can confirm from personal experience, are vastly superior morally and intellectually to their menfolk) from achieving all they might in an open society. In turn, the cheap and unconstructive satisfactions of domestic dictatorship discourages Muslim men from real achievement and engagement in the wider society around them."
Dalrymple goes on to say:
"The third threat comes from the existence of the welfare state and the welfare-state mentality. A system of entitlements has been created that, however economically counterproductive, is politically difficult to dismantle: once privileges are granted, they assume the metaphysical status of immemorial and fundamental rights. The right of French train drivers to retire on full pension at the age of 50 is probably more important to them than the right of free speech—especially that of those who think that retirement at such an age is preposterous. While Europe mortgages its future to pay for such extravagances—the French public debt doubled in ten years under the supposedly conservative Chirac—other areas of the world forge an unbeatable combination of high-tech and cheap labor. The European political class, more than ever dissociated from its electorate, has hardly woken up to the challenge.
If by chance you are unfamiliar with Dalrymple's writings go here, to the archive of his work published in City Journal. A Prophetic and Violent Masterpiece, and What is Poverty, are good places to start.
In The American Conservative, Theodore Dalrymple has an excellent review of The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent, by Walter Laqueurof. As Dalrymple puts it:
"He [Laqueurof] sees Europe, once the home of a dynamic civilization that energized the rest of the world, declining into a kind of genteel theme park—if it’s lucky. The future might be grimmer than this, of course: there might be a real struggle for power once the immigrants and their descendants become numerically strong enough to take on the increasingly geriatric native population."
Once again, the "demographics as destiny" theme rises to the fore. Dalrymple has always been astute on the particular difficulties posed by large-scale Islamic immigration into Europe, as well as the slow, corrupting influence of Europe's increasingly insupportable cradle-to-grave Nanny state.
"This suggests—and Laqueur has no hesitation in so saying—that there is a problem peculiar to the integration of Muslims in Western countries, at any rate, when they are in such large numbers that they are able to make whole areas their own. Imbued with a sense of their own religious superiority, which considers a Muslim way of life better than any other, they are ill-prepared to adapt constructively to Western society.
Yet adapt they do, though not necessarily in the best way. The young men of the second generation adopt many aspects of American ghetto “culture,” which in conjunction with Islamic teaching and tradition, enables them to dominate women in a way that is to them extremely gratifying. This prevents the women (who, as Laqueur tells us, and I can confirm from personal experience, are vastly superior morally and intellectually to their menfolk) from achieving all they might in an open society. In turn, the cheap and unconstructive satisfactions of domestic dictatorship discourages Muslim men from real achievement and engagement in the wider society around them."
Dalrymple goes on to say:
"The third threat comes from the existence of the welfare state and the welfare-state mentality. A system of entitlements has been created that, however economically counterproductive, is politically difficult to dismantle: once privileges are granted, they assume the metaphysical status of immemorial and fundamental rights. The right of French train drivers to retire on full pension at the age of 50 is probably more important to them than the right of free speech—especially that of those who think that retirement at such an age is preposterous. While Europe mortgages its future to pay for such extravagances—the French public debt doubled in ten years under the supposedly conservative Chirac—other areas of the world forge an unbeatable combination of high-tech and cheap labor. The European political class, more than ever dissociated from its electorate, has hardly woken up to the challenge.
If by chance you are unfamiliar with Dalrymple's writings go here, to the archive of his work published in City Journal. A Prophetic and Violent Masterpiece, and What is Poverty, are good places to start.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Paths Crossed . . . and Crossed Again
“If one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul.”
Alphonse de Lamartine (French Poet, Writer and Statesman, 1790-1869)
Tomorrow morning, if all goes well, my wife and I will load our daughters into a taxi at 5:30 am, and we will begin the trek to Istanbul airport, and then to Paris, and then home.
For the past two summers, we've made this same journey, but this time will be different, because we won't be returning to Turkey, or so we believe, except for whatever brief visits we make in the future. In other words, we're going back home.
Like most journeys, it's one of mixed emotions. It sounds banal to say, but I'll miss living in Turkey, and miss Istanbul in particular. To continue with banalities (why not?) one of the strongest impressions I've gleaned over the past few years is that of the "small world." I don't mean in the cultural sense, much less in the spiritual sense. I'm, talking about the extent to which people actually keep bumping into old acquaintances from around the globe.
For example:
For the past twenty-five years, my friend Robert has followed a pattern of working and travelling, working and travelling, all over the world. He has lived in Atlanta, Seattle, Sacramento, several cities and towns in Arizona, as well as Botswana, New Guinea, Costa Rica, Switzerland, and now currently in New Zealand. He's bicycled across the US at least three times, as he has over much, if not most, of the world. So he's been a lot of places and met a lot of people, but even he was a bit weirded out when, while walking the crowded streets of Ho Chi Mihn City, he heard his name called, and turned to see an old friend he'd first met in Costa Rica. One of those things.
Robert and I met forty years ago, in Miss Shropshire's first-grade class at James L.Riley Elementary School. We lost track of each other a few years later, then became friends again in high school, and on into the present.
Since we've both lived in a variety of places, we have, since the 1980s, gotten together in Wyoming, where I worked summers as a college student, in Montana, where I was for about six months a unemployed bum, in Switzerland, where Robert was teaching at a boarding school, in Rome, where I had free use of an apartment, but mostly in Atlanta, where Robert was either working or killing time before of after one of his multi-year global jaunts.
As I mentioned, Robert now lives in New Zealand, but tomorrow, like me, he'll be arriving at the Atlanta airport. Totally unplanned, sheer coincidence. I knew he was considering a flight home sometime this summer, but we happened to book our arrival on the same day. It will be good to see Robert again.
Another example:
An Irish colleague of mine, who lived for a time in Saudi Arabia, ran across a fellow Irishman, and as people will do, they got to talking about where they'd grown up. It turned out they'd both come from the same smallish town in the west of Ireland. Having established that coincidence, they then got to talking about which neighborhood of the town, then which street of the neighborhood, then which address of the street they'd grown up at, on, or in.
As it happened, they eventually realized that, several years apart, they'd both lived in the same house, in fact occupying the same bedroom of this same house. And my colleague assured us (this story was told at a party) that the stranger he'd just met was not pulling his leg, as he was able to describe in considerable detail both the odd configuration of the room and the pattern of the paper that my friend and his mother had hung on the bedroom walls so many years before.
And again:
Our first year in Turkey, we lived in Ankara, and most mornings, as I waited for the campus service bus to take me to my office, I'd see the same cluster of people, with schedules similar to my own, waiting at the bus stop. Once or twice previously, I'd had occasion to speak with one member of this group, an American History professor. Though I liked him well enough, I tended to avoid conversation with him because his evident shyness made chatting uncomfortable for everyone involved.
So in the mornings, as I waited for the bus and observed my fellow bus patrons, I happened to notice that this same history professor, named Tim, seemed unusually at ease chatting with an older guy, also American, who taught in the College of Education.
On one particular morning, the older guy mentioned that he'd come to Turkey simply to avoid the boredom he'd felt after retiring from the university where he'd taught in the States.
"Where was that?" asked Tim.
The older guy answered that it was the University of Puget Sound, though he'd spent most of his career teaching at Florida State University.
"That's interesting," said Tim, "I grew up in Tallahassee."
Like the two Irishmen in the story above, they then began to discuss neighborhoods, streets, and so forth.
"How old are you?" asked the older guy.
"Forty-one," Tim answered.
"Hmm, maybe you went to school with my son," the older guy commented, to which, in reply, Tim asked, "What's your son's name?"
When the older guy answered Tim's question (and let me make clear that I am really truncating the conversation, which was now taking place on the bus), there was a moment of rather compelling silence.
"He's your son?" Tim asked.
"Yeah," the older guy said.
"He and I were best friends in middle school. I was at your house every day playing basketball. I remember you teaching us how to shoot the ball, and taking us to practice. I remember going fishing with you in the summer."
"My God," the older guy said, "You're Tim ******."
And then the recollections began in earnest. I'd never quite heard, or overheard, a conversation like this before. I wondered afterward if they hadn't, on some level, felt that they knew or were familiar with each other, even if they were not consciously aware of any such acquaintance. I kept thinking about it for days.
One last tale:
At the same party where my Irish colleague told his tale, Jimmy, another guest, told what is perhaps the strangest variation on this theme. He'd been doing some cabinetry work for Janice, a woman who lives here in Istanbul and whose husband teaches at my current university. (She and her husband both once worked at the university where I attended graduate school, but I didn't know either of them then, so that hardly counts.) Anyway, when Jimmy was finished working for the day, she offered to give him a ride home, but said they would first have to go, via taxi, to the shop where her car was being repaired. She'd drop him off on the way back.
While she paid for the work done on her car, Jimmy stood outside the garage, smoking a cigarette. As he gazed at the traffic, from across a busy street of several lanes, a man in greasy cover-alls slowly emerged. As Jimmy told it, he had the look of a long-time heavy drinker, a man ill-at-ease in some way, and he'd had to gather himself up before crossing the street.
When he got close to Jimmy, he said, in Turkish, "I know you."
Jimmy, who speaks little Turkish (like most of us), started casting around for someone to translate. About that time, Janice walked out of the shop, and again the man said, "I know you," from which point, Janice translated.
"Seven years ago," the man said, "Every morning, seven years ago, I saw you walking through Kings Cross Station. 8:30, every morning."
Jimmy was puzzled.
The man said,"You'd stand like this." He imitated Jimmy's posture. "You crossed your arms this way." The man crossed his arms just so. "I'd see you smoking a cigarette like this." He pointed to Jimmy's hand, which held a cigarette. "I know you, from London, seven years ago."
Jimmy hardly knew what to say.
The man then nodded to emphasize the certainty of his point, turned, and made his way alone back across the street.
Jimmy never did learn the man's name, nor why he'd once lived in London, nor why, in the year 2000, he'd been at Kings Cross Station everyday.
But Jimmy did acknowledge that every morning, seven years earlier, he would in fact arrive at Kings Cross Station at 8:30 in the morning, and the first thing he'd do, upon ascending the station's steps, was to light up a cigarette. And that in fact the man was right, Jimmy did fold his arms in just that way.
I hope to see my friends from Turkey again someday.
Alphonse de Lamartine (French Poet, Writer and Statesman, 1790-1869)
Tomorrow morning, if all goes well, my wife and I will load our daughters into a taxi at 5:30 am, and we will begin the trek to Istanbul airport, and then to Paris, and then home.
For the past two summers, we've made this same journey, but this time will be different, because we won't be returning to Turkey, or so we believe, except for whatever brief visits we make in the future. In other words, we're going back home.
Like most journeys, it's one of mixed emotions. It sounds banal to say, but I'll miss living in Turkey, and miss Istanbul in particular. To continue with banalities (why not?) one of the strongest impressions I've gleaned over the past few years is that of the "small world." I don't mean in the cultural sense, much less in the spiritual sense. I'm, talking about the extent to which people actually keep bumping into old acquaintances from around the globe.
For example:
For the past twenty-five years, my friend Robert has followed a pattern of working and travelling, working and travelling, all over the world. He has lived in Atlanta, Seattle, Sacramento, several cities and towns in Arizona, as well as Botswana, New Guinea, Costa Rica, Switzerland, and now currently in New Zealand. He's bicycled across the US at least three times, as he has over much, if not most, of the world. So he's been a lot of places and met a lot of people, but even he was a bit weirded out when, while walking the crowded streets of Ho Chi Mihn City, he heard his name called, and turned to see an old friend he'd first met in Costa Rica. One of those things.
Robert and I met forty years ago, in Miss Shropshire's first-grade class at James L.Riley Elementary School. We lost track of each other a few years later, then became friends again in high school, and on into the present.
Since we've both lived in a variety of places, we have, since the 1980s, gotten together in Wyoming, where I worked summers as a college student, in Montana, where I was for about six months a unemployed bum, in Switzerland, where Robert was teaching at a boarding school, in Rome, where I had free use of an apartment, but mostly in Atlanta, where Robert was either working or killing time before of after one of his multi-year global jaunts.
As I mentioned, Robert now lives in New Zealand, but tomorrow, like me, he'll be arriving at the Atlanta airport. Totally unplanned, sheer coincidence. I knew he was considering a flight home sometime this summer, but we happened to book our arrival on the same day. It will be good to see Robert again.
Another example:
An Irish colleague of mine, who lived for a time in Saudi Arabia, ran across a fellow Irishman, and as people will do, they got to talking about where they'd grown up. It turned out they'd both come from the same smallish town in the west of Ireland. Having established that coincidence, they then got to talking about which neighborhood of the town, then which street of the neighborhood, then which address of the street they'd grown up at, on, or in.
As it happened, they eventually realized that, several years apart, they'd both lived in the same house, in fact occupying the same bedroom of this same house. And my colleague assured us (this story was told at a party) that the stranger he'd just met was not pulling his leg, as he was able to describe in considerable detail both the odd configuration of the room and the pattern of the paper that my friend and his mother had hung on the bedroom walls so many years before.
And again:
Our first year in Turkey, we lived in Ankara, and most mornings, as I waited for the campus service bus to take me to my office, I'd see the same cluster of people, with schedules similar to my own, waiting at the bus stop. Once or twice previously, I'd had occasion to speak with one member of this group, an American History professor. Though I liked him well enough, I tended to avoid conversation with him because his evident shyness made chatting uncomfortable for everyone involved.
So in the mornings, as I waited for the bus and observed my fellow bus patrons, I happened to notice that this same history professor, named Tim, seemed unusually at ease chatting with an older guy, also American, who taught in the College of Education.
On one particular morning, the older guy mentioned that he'd come to Turkey simply to avoid the boredom he'd felt after retiring from the university where he'd taught in the States.
"Where was that?" asked Tim.
The older guy answered that it was the University of Puget Sound, though he'd spent most of his career teaching at Florida State University.
"That's interesting," said Tim, "I grew up in Tallahassee."
Like the two Irishmen in the story above, they then began to discuss neighborhoods, streets, and so forth.
"How old are you?" asked the older guy.
"Forty-one," Tim answered.
"Hmm, maybe you went to school with my son," the older guy commented, to which, in reply, Tim asked, "What's your son's name?"
When the older guy answered Tim's question (and let me make clear that I am really truncating the conversation, which was now taking place on the bus), there was a moment of rather compelling silence.
"He's your son?" Tim asked.
"Yeah," the older guy said.
"He and I were best friends in middle school. I was at your house every day playing basketball. I remember you teaching us how to shoot the ball, and taking us to practice. I remember going fishing with you in the summer."
"My God," the older guy said, "You're Tim ******."
And then the recollections began in earnest. I'd never quite heard, or overheard, a conversation like this before. I wondered afterward if they hadn't, on some level, felt that they knew or were familiar with each other, even if they were not consciously aware of any such acquaintance. I kept thinking about it for days.
One last tale:
At the same party where my Irish colleague told his tale, Jimmy, another guest, told what is perhaps the strangest variation on this theme. He'd been doing some cabinetry work for Janice, a woman who lives here in Istanbul and whose husband teaches at my current university. (She and her husband both once worked at the university where I attended graduate school, but I didn't know either of them then, so that hardly counts.) Anyway, when Jimmy was finished working for the day, she offered to give him a ride home, but said they would first have to go, via taxi, to the shop where her car was being repaired. She'd drop him off on the way back.
While she paid for the work done on her car, Jimmy stood outside the garage, smoking a cigarette. As he gazed at the traffic, from across a busy street of several lanes, a man in greasy cover-alls slowly emerged. As Jimmy told it, he had the look of a long-time heavy drinker, a man ill-at-ease in some way, and he'd had to gather himself up before crossing the street.
When he got close to Jimmy, he said, in Turkish, "I know you."
Jimmy, who speaks little Turkish (like most of us), started casting around for someone to translate. About that time, Janice walked out of the shop, and again the man said, "I know you," from which point, Janice translated.
"Seven years ago," the man said, "Every morning, seven years ago, I saw you walking through Kings Cross Station. 8:30, every morning."
Jimmy was puzzled.
The man said,"You'd stand like this." He imitated Jimmy's posture. "You crossed your arms this way." The man crossed his arms just so. "I'd see you smoking a cigarette like this." He pointed to Jimmy's hand, which held a cigarette. "I know you, from London, seven years ago."
Jimmy hardly knew what to say.
The man then nodded to emphasize the certainty of his point, turned, and made his way alone back across the street.
Jimmy never did learn the man's name, nor why he'd once lived in London, nor why, in the year 2000, he'd been at Kings Cross Station everyday.
But Jimmy did acknowledge that every morning, seven years earlier, he would in fact arrive at Kings Cross Station at 8:30 in the morning, and the first thing he'd do, upon ascending the station's steps, was to light up a cigarette. And that in fact the man was right, Jimmy did fold his arms in just that way.
I hope to see my friends from Turkey again someday.
Monday, June 18, 2007
A Dying Way of War
"It's a new kind of war, George. It's a new war for a new century."
--Breaker Morant*
A week ago today, my sister-in-law's stepfather was buried with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Ralph, her step-father, explained to me years ago at a family gather that he had grown up the child of immigrants in a German neighborhood of St. Louis, where he rarely spoke English until he entered school. In his teens - in the 1930s - he both played minor league baseball and acquired a pilot's license. How, during the Depression, he had access to an airplane for training, I have no idea. Like many Americans of German ancestry, Ralph was deeply troubled by the rise of the Nazis, and felt a particular need to demonstrate that his first loyalty lay with the powers of the "free world." As a trained pilot,and while still a teenager, he volunteered first with the RAF, for which he flew bombing missions, and then later with the US Army Air Force, once America had entered the war.
Given the length of his service to both Britain and the US, I realized that he must've flown a remarkable number of missions. As you may know, the US Air Force mandated that anyone in a bomber crew would be required to fly no more than sixty some-odd missions before being guaranteed a stateside posting. This guarantee was meant to boost crew morale, and sacrificed little in the way of manpower, since (as Air Force statisticians knew) most fliers would be killed in combat long before they ever made the allotted number of missions. So, when I asked Ralph how many missions he had flown, you can imagine my reaction when he answered something along the lines of "two hundred and thirty four."
"Were you ever shot down?" I asked.
"Oh yeah, five times."
My sister-in-law later confirmed that not only had Ralph been shot down five times, but he'd also been awarded six purple hearts, and in fact upon his return to St. Louis at the war's end, he was celebrated as the most highly decorated veteran from the state of Missouri. After the war, Ralph's connection with flying was maintained through service in the Air Force Reserve, from which he eventually retired with the rank of Colonel. In the civilian world, he spent the bulk of his career working for Ralston-Purina, the pet food company, which must have offered quite a "tranquil" contrast to his wartime experiences, if you know what I mean.
In my conversation with Ralph, he did mention something particularly memorable: on more than one occasion, he had bombed towns in Germany where he knew cousins of his were living.
"Wow," I said stupidly, "that must've provoked some strange emotions." (I didn't really know what to say). But it hardly mattered.
"Oh no," Ralph replied with a beaming enthusiasm, "you never see the damage you've done from the air."
Did I mention that Ralph was of German ancestry?
Anyhow, my larger point here is that not so long ago (historically speaking) it was taken for granted that when the US found itself at war, ordinary citizens, ordinary men, actually, would risk their lives to defend their country.
I realize that ethos on which the assumption is based has its dangers, which I will deal with presently. Nevertheless, a tradition of widespread military service in time of national crisis has its virtues, not least of which is that the general populace sees itself as necessarily implicated in the nation's military commitments, and is therefore that much more likely to scrutinize military undertakings.
By way of contrast to the above ethos, I find myself compelled to make reference to Jonah Goldberg, whom you may have read at the National Review, and who - after several seasons of pom pom waving for the war in Iraq - finally faced the obvious question as to why someone so ardent in his support of Operation Iraqi Freedom hadn't gotten around to actually enlisting. Goldberg, still in his thirties, was certainly young enough, was presumably bright enough, and his invaluable insights into matters of tactical if not strategic significance could certainly have proven useful on Fallujah's mean streets.
Sensing the closing of a trap, Goldberg rather ineffectually pleaded that he had a wife and two two children upon whom military service would impose severe financial hardship. He then attempted some self-deprecating joke, the punch line of which I don't remember, though I am confident that it revealed neither wit nor insight, but only a juvenile clownishness masking a well-earned sense of shame.
If I can bang the family drum a bit more, and at the same time rub Jonah's nose a little deeper in the dirt, let me briefly cite the example of my maternal grandfather, who during World War Two abandoned a fairly comfortable position with the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington D.C. in order to cold-heartedly impose financial hardship upon his own wife and two children. My grandfather's enlistment in the US Navy led him to the Pacific, where he saw considerable action, and attained to the rank of Commander. He was at the time of this impulsive folly (i.e. his enlistment) in his mid-forties, and if one were to attempt the same today one would likely be diagnosed with a mid-life crisis, prescribed Zoloft, and presented with a mountain bike. Though I never had the chance to ask him why he left a family and a desk job to go to war, I guess he believed that this was his duty. And I think that my sister-in-law's stepfather, Ralph, and my own father, who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and a lot of other people were, by mass indoctrination or by simple tradition, inclined to feel that way as well.
But, understandably, people don't so much these days. For one thing, our wars don't really smack of do-or-die national survival (see one of Jonah Goldberg's defenses of the war). It takes an awful lot of propagandizing to convince the comfortable American public of the gravity of whatever the current crisis is (Tonkin Gulf, Gulf War Two, World War Four, or is it Five, whatever) and then as the news reports and the soldier's angry letters (well, emails and blog posts these days) begin to filter back, those who can read are thankful they didn't totally give in to war fever. Not to the point of actually, you know, joining. And so life goes on.
Yes, I realize a well-placed nuclear device may someday make the words I've just written look more than a tad smug and complacent, and I guess I'll be guilty (if I'm still around) of not taking the current threat seriously enough, but it seems that everything we do in the Middle East only enhances the prospect of such a scenario someday becoming a reality.
One young American who did feel the call to service in the wake of 9/11, was of course Pat Tillman, the professional football player who passed up a multi-million dollar renewal contract with the Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the Army. He and his brother Kevin, a minor league baseball player, both made their way into the Rangers, where (oddly, I think) they served in the same unit in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the aftermath of Pat Tillman's death, there was a certain amount of chatter as to whether he was a hero, or a sucker, or a hyper-aggressive jerk who'd more or less gotten what he deserved. For whatever it's worth, I believe there was something admirable in Tillman's readiness to sacrifice enormous economic gain, personal comfort, and physical safety for his country's defense, and I believe it to be not only tragic but criminal that his willingness to do so was shamelessly manipulated, exploited, and ultimately betrayed by the same Army in which he served. The Tillman brothers' enlistment was excellent PR for the military, until it turned out that Pat Tillman had soured on the war in Iraq, which he condemned as "brutal, immoral, illegal, and unjust." According to the website Weazl's Revenge, "The Tillman brothers were due for a furlough, and Kevin stated in interviews that Pat had arranged to meet with an anti-war journalist while at home." Evidently, he wished to go public with his criticisms and reservations about the Iraq invasion, though I have read that he remained more committed to the Army's mission in Afghanistan.
Before Tillman's furlough date arrived, he was killed in combat. Though the military tried to soak this incident for all the PR hero-potential it was worth, eventually it became evident that Tillman's death had actually been a case of "friendly-fire," which the government had done everything in its power to conceal from both journalists and the Tillman family. This revelation went on to serve as one of the hundreds - if not thousands - of military-related scandals associated with Iraq that erupt and disappear with such somnolent regularity that we barely notice them anymore. They're simply the background noise to our abysmal national drama.
At this sad point in our Iraq saga, some bloggers are now alluding to an assassination of Tillman by the US military in order to prevent him from going public with his condemnation of the Iraq war, and while I'm not prepared to go that far (see the previous post on my aversion to conspiracy mania) I suppose it says a lot about the state of our republic that this sort of rumor so readily has its adherents, and besides, given what we already know, can we rule out anything?
I'm not sure if I would be comfortable living in a world full of Pat Tillmans (during his regular interviews a decade ago on the Jim Rome sports radio show, his overuse -by which I mean, his use - of the word "dude" quickly tried my patience) but he was young then, and he was from "So Cal," as the saying goes, and the question hardly matters, since I long ago accepted that it is my fate, as it is our common fate, to live, not in a world of Pat Tillmans, but in a world of Jonah Goldbergs. The powers-that-be wouldn't have it any other way.
*Fans of the film (based upon a true incident) will know that its eponymous Australian hero, Breaker Morant, while being marched to his execution for the commission of war crimes during the Boer War, turns to his fellow condemned solider, and says simply, "Well Peter, this is what comes of empire building."
You may be interested in this letter, written by Pat Tillman's brother and fellow Ranger, Kevin, regarding Pat's death. It's anger and sense of betrayal ring sadly true.
--Breaker Morant*
A week ago today, my sister-in-law's stepfather was buried with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Ralph, her step-father, explained to me years ago at a family gather that he had grown up the child of immigrants in a German neighborhood of St. Louis, where he rarely spoke English until he entered school. In his teens - in the 1930s - he both played minor league baseball and acquired a pilot's license. How, during the Depression, he had access to an airplane for training, I have no idea. Like many Americans of German ancestry, Ralph was deeply troubled by the rise of the Nazis, and felt a particular need to demonstrate that his first loyalty lay with the powers of the "free world." As a trained pilot,and while still a teenager, he volunteered first with the RAF, for which he flew bombing missions, and then later with the US Army Air Force, once America had entered the war.
Given the length of his service to both Britain and the US, I realized that he must've flown a remarkable number of missions. As you may know, the US Air Force mandated that anyone in a bomber crew would be required to fly no more than sixty some-odd missions before being guaranteed a stateside posting. This guarantee was meant to boost crew morale, and sacrificed little in the way of manpower, since (as Air Force statisticians knew) most fliers would be killed in combat long before they ever made the allotted number of missions. So, when I asked Ralph how many missions he had flown, you can imagine my reaction when he answered something along the lines of "two hundred and thirty four."
"Were you ever shot down?" I asked.
"Oh yeah, five times."
My sister-in-law later confirmed that not only had Ralph been shot down five times, but he'd also been awarded six purple hearts, and in fact upon his return to St. Louis at the war's end, he was celebrated as the most highly decorated veteran from the state of Missouri. After the war, Ralph's connection with flying was maintained through service in the Air Force Reserve, from which he eventually retired with the rank of Colonel. In the civilian world, he spent the bulk of his career working for Ralston-Purina, the pet food company, which must have offered quite a "tranquil" contrast to his wartime experiences, if you know what I mean.
In my conversation with Ralph, he did mention something particularly memorable: on more than one occasion, he had bombed towns in Germany where he knew cousins of his were living.
"Wow," I said stupidly, "that must've provoked some strange emotions." (I didn't really know what to say). But it hardly mattered.
"Oh no," Ralph replied with a beaming enthusiasm, "you never see the damage you've done from the air."
Did I mention that Ralph was of German ancestry?
Anyhow, my larger point here is that not so long ago (historically speaking) it was taken for granted that when the US found itself at war, ordinary citizens, ordinary men, actually, would risk their lives to defend their country.
I realize that ethos on which the assumption is based has its dangers, which I will deal with presently. Nevertheless, a tradition of widespread military service in time of national crisis has its virtues, not least of which is that the general populace sees itself as necessarily implicated in the nation's military commitments, and is therefore that much more likely to scrutinize military undertakings.
By way of contrast to the above ethos, I find myself compelled to make reference to Jonah Goldberg, whom you may have read at the National Review, and who - after several seasons of pom pom waving for the war in Iraq - finally faced the obvious question as to why someone so ardent in his support of Operation Iraqi Freedom hadn't gotten around to actually enlisting. Goldberg, still in his thirties, was certainly young enough, was presumably bright enough, and his invaluable insights into matters of tactical if not strategic significance could certainly have proven useful on Fallujah's mean streets.
Sensing the closing of a trap, Goldberg rather ineffectually pleaded that he had a wife and two two children upon whom military service would impose severe financial hardship. He then attempted some self-deprecating joke, the punch line of which I don't remember, though I am confident that it revealed neither wit nor insight, but only a juvenile clownishness masking a well-earned sense of shame.
If I can bang the family drum a bit more, and at the same time rub Jonah's nose a little deeper in the dirt, let me briefly cite the example of my maternal grandfather, who during World War Two abandoned a fairly comfortable position with the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington D.C. in order to cold-heartedly impose financial hardship upon his own wife and two children. My grandfather's enlistment in the US Navy led him to the Pacific, where he saw considerable action, and attained to the rank of Commander. He was at the time of this impulsive folly (i.e. his enlistment) in his mid-forties, and if one were to attempt the same today one would likely be diagnosed with a mid-life crisis, prescribed Zoloft, and presented with a mountain bike. Though I never had the chance to ask him why he left a family and a desk job to go to war, I guess he believed that this was his duty. And I think that my sister-in-law's stepfather, Ralph, and my own father, who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and a lot of other people were, by mass indoctrination or by simple tradition, inclined to feel that way as well.
But, understandably, people don't so much these days. For one thing, our wars don't really smack of do-or-die national survival (see one of Jonah Goldberg's defenses of the war). It takes an awful lot of propagandizing to convince the comfortable American public of the gravity of whatever the current crisis is (Tonkin Gulf, Gulf War Two, World War Four, or is it Five, whatever) and then as the news reports and the soldier's angry letters (well, emails and blog posts these days) begin to filter back, those who can read are thankful they didn't totally give in to war fever. Not to the point of actually, you know, joining. And so life goes on.
Yes, I realize a well-placed nuclear device may someday make the words I've just written look more than a tad smug and complacent, and I guess I'll be guilty (if I'm still around) of not taking the current threat seriously enough, but it seems that everything we do in the Middle East only enhances the prospect of such a scenario someday becoming a reality.
One young American who did feel the call to service in the wake of 9/11, was of course Pat Tillman, the professional football player who passed up a multi-million dollar renewal contract with the Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the Army. He and his brother Kevin, a minor league baseball player, both made their way into the Rangers, where (oddly, I think) they served in the same unit in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the aftermath of Pat Tillman's death, there was a certain amount of chatter as to whether he was a hero, or a sucker, or a hyper-aggressive jerk who'd more or less gotten what he deserved. For whatever it's worth, I believe there was something admirable in Tillman's readiness to sacrifice enormous economic gain, personal comfort, and physical safety for his country's defense, and I believe it to be not only tragic but criminal that his willingness to do so was shamelessly manipulated, exploited, and ultimately betrayed by the same Army in which he served. The Tillman brothers' enlistment was excellent PR for the military, until it turned out that Pat Tillman had soured on the war in Iraq, which he condemned as "brutal, immoral, illegal, and unjust." According to the website Weazl's Revenge, "The Tillman brothers were due for a furlough, and Kevin stated in interviews that Pat had arranged to meet with an anti-war journalist while at home." Evidently, he wished to go public with his criticisms and reservations about the Iraq invasion, though I have read that he remained more committed to the Army's mission in Afghanistan.
Before Tillman's furlough date arrived, he was killed in combat. Though the military tried to soak this incident for all the PR hero-potential it was worth, eventually it became evident that Tillman's death had actually been a case of "friendly-fire," which the government had done everything in its power to conceal from both journalists and the Tillman family. This revelation went on to serve as one of the hundreds - if not thousands - of military-related scandals associated with Iraq that erupt and disappear with such somnolent regularity that we barely notice them anymore. They're simply the background noise to our abysmal national drama.
At this sad point in our Iraq saga, some bloggers are now alluding to an assassination of Tillman by the US military in order to prevent him from going public with his condemnation of the Iraq war, and while I'm not prepared to go that far (see the previous post on my aversion to conspiracy mania) I suppose it says a lot about the state of our republic that this sort of rumor so readily has its adherents, and besides, given what we already know, can we rule out anything?
I'm not sure if I would be comfortable living in a world full of Pat Tillmans (during his regular interviews a decade ago on the Jim Rome sports radio show, his overuse -by which I mean, his use - of the word "dude" quickly tried my patience) but he was young then, and he was from "So Cal," as the saying goes, and the question hardly matters, since I long ago accepted that it is my fate, as it is our common fate, to live, not in a world of Pat Tillmans, but in a world of Jonah Goldbergs. The powers-that-be wouldn't have it any other way.
*Fans of the film (based upon a true incident) will know that its eponymous Australian hero, Breaker Morant, while being marched to his execution for the commission of war crimes during the Boer War, turns to his fellow condemned solider, and says simply, "Well Peter, this is what comes of empire building."
You may be interested in this letter, written by Pat Tillman's brother and fellow Ranger, Kevin, regarding Pat's death. It's anger and sense of betrayal ring sadly true.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Derin Devlet: The Deep State
“There is one deep state and one other state. The state that should be real is the spare one, the one that should be spare is the real one."--Suleyman Demirel, Turkish president from 1994 until 1999.
The somewhat dramatic, even ominous term, Deep State, refers to "an influential and informal anti-democratic coalition within the Turkish political system, composed of high-level elements within the Turkish military, security and intelligence services, the judicial branch, and important commanders of organized crime."
I first became interested in this Turkish phenomenon in the aftermath of journalist Hrandt Dink's assassination in December of 2006. However, that event, which I've written about earlier, is not the subject of this post. As I located various articles and information about the Turkish Deep State, it became clear to me that we need some term in English, equally dramatic, if not ominous, to describe those forces which seek to exercise their will through the mechanisms of the federal government, in an extra-legal, or at least starkly anti-democratic fashion.
That is the topic, the American Deep State, if you will, which I wish to explore in the near future.
I have been somewhat hesitant to raise this issue directly, though I certainly have done so obliquely in the past, out of my own aversion toward so-called "conspiracy theories," which, quite often seem to me to be the tortured constructions of the woefully confused, over causes and effects the complexity of which they can't begin to acknowledge, much less address. No, I don't envision a small circle of investment bankers, industrialists (do they still exist?), and conniving Jews unleashing global suffering for their own, ill-gotten gain. Nor do I plan to start linking to reports of alien spacecraft at Area 51.
But let's be clear. As several bloggers whose insights I admire are insistently pointing out, America is an ostensibly democratic nation, the majority of whose citizens are increasingly emphatic in their opposition to an amnesty for illegal immigrants, an amnesty which the nation's political leaders seem not to have the latitude, or perhaps the power, to permanently reject. The crux of the argument apparently comes down to the government's insistence on creating a new set of laws while flatly refusing to enforce the existing laws, in blatant disregard of the will of the American public. Something other than representative democracy is at work. I cite this as one example. Our attempts to maintain a sort of covert dominion over the Middle East, or at least over the resources extracted from its sands, would obviously be another.
In other words, the fact that I don't believe in alien spacecraft at Area 51 doesn't mean I don't believe in Area 51, despite decades of federal government denial. (In case you don't get the History Channel, the government was finally forced, in the 1990s, to admit to Area 51's existence as a result of lawsuits filed by former employees poisoned by the burning of toxic wastes at the site.)
My own skepticism ignorance, and uncertainty prevent me from linking various intriguing bits and pieces into some sweeping, tantalizing, but ultimately implausible theoretical whole. A healthy failing on my part, I suspect.
There is a great deal of blindness, blunder, stupidity, and willed self-deception in the actions of any institution, particularly one as cumbersome as the federal government. Nevertheless, the government does move, sometimes unswervingly though inexplicably, in certain directions, and it's only natural to wonder why.
Though I realize that the following opinions will come as no surprise to visitors of his site, we are not in Iraq because of Weapons of Mass Destruction or a War on Terror or to unleash a democracy or to inspire an Islamic reformation. We are not in Iraq so that George W. Bush can show up his Daddy or work through whatever Oedipal issues may be plaguing him. We are not in Iraq because all human beings crave freedom, or because George W. Bush believes all human beings crave freedom. A president, even a deluded and messianic president, isn't allowed to wander on a leash that long.
Iraq may be a disaster, but it isn't a simple blunder. It's more than a mistake. And yet, through some eyes, perhaps, it's no mistake at all. That's what I'm interested in exploring.
“The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes.”
--Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter
The somewhat dramatic, even ominous term, Deep State, refers to "an influential and informal anti-democratic coalition within the Turkish political system, composed of high-level elements within the Turkish military, security and intelligence services, the judicial branch, and important commanders of organized crime."
I first became interested in this Turkish phenomenon in the aftermath of journalist Hrandt Dink's assassination in December of 2006. However, that event, which I've written about earlier, is not the subject of this post. As I located various articles and information about the Turkish Deep State, it became clear to me that we need some term in English, equally dramatic, if not ominous, to describe those forces which seek to exercise their will through the mechanisms of the federal government, in an extra-legal, or at least starkly anti-democratic fashion.
That is the topic, the American Deep State, if you will, which I wish to explore in the near future.
I have been somewhat hesitant to raise this issue directly, though I certainly have done so obliquely in the past, out of my own aversion toward so-called "conspiracy theories," which, quite often seem to me to be the tortured constructions of the woefully confused, over causes and effects the complexity of which they can't begin to acknowledge, much less address. No, I don't envision a small circle of investment bankers, industrialists (do they still exist?), and conniving Jews unleashing global suffering for their own, ill-gotten gain. Nor do I plan to start linking to reports of alien spacecraft at Area 51.
But let's be clear. As several bloggers whose insights I admire are insistently pointing out, America is an ostensibly democratic nation, the majority of whose citizens are increasingly emphatic in their opposition to an amnesty for illegal immigrants, an amnesty which the nation's political leaders seem not to have the latitude, or perhaps the power, to permanently reject. The crux of the argument apparently comes down to the government's insistence on creating a new set of laws while flatly refusing to enforce the existing laws, in blatant disregard of the will of the American public. Something other than representative democracy is at work. I cite this as one example. Our attempts to maintain a sort of covert dominion over the Middle East, or at least over the resources extracted from its sands, would obviously be another.
In other words, the fact that I don't believe in alien spacecraft at Area 51 doesn't mean I don't believe in Area 51, despite decades of federal government denial. (In case you don't get the History Channel, the government was finally forced, in the 1990s, to admit to Area 51's existence as a result of lawsuits filed by former employees poisoned by the burning of toxic wastes at the site.)
My own skepticism ignorance, and uncertainty prevent me from linking various intriguing bits and pieces into some sweeping, tantalizing, but ultimately implausible theoretical whole. A healthy failing on my part, I suspect.
There is a great deal of blindness, blunder, stupidity, and willed self-deception in the actions of any institution, particularly one as cumbersome as the federal government. Nevertheless, the government does move, sometimes unswervingly though inexplicably, in certain directions, and it's only natural to wonder why.
Though I realize that the following opinions will come as no surprise to visitors of his site, we are not in Iraq because of Weapons of Mass Destruction or a War on Terror or to unleash a democracy or to inspire an Islamic reformation. We are not in Iraq so that George W. Bush can show up his Daddy or work through whatever Oedipal issues may be plaguing him. We are not in Iraq because all human beings crave freedom, or because George W. Bush believes all human beings crave freedom. A president, even a deluded and messianic president, isn't allowed to wander on a leash that long.
Iraq may be a disaster, but it isn't a simple blunder. It's more than a mistake. And yet, through some eyes, perhaps, it's no mistake at all. That's what I'm interested in exploring.
“The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes.”
--Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter
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