Uncommon Denominator
The Newsletter of the Commonweal Institute
www.commonwealinstitute.org
-- William T. Sherman
CONTENTS
Wit and Wisdom: Politics and pop culture
Talking Points II: Sticks and stones....
Check It Out: Democracy in America
Featured Article: "The Battle to Stop Bird Flu"
Happenings: Progressive Roundtable
Endorsements: Jim Hightower
Get Involved: Spread the word; become a contributor
TALKING POINTS
There's been a lot of talk recently about the failure of Democrats, progressives, and the Left in general to take advantage of the metastasizing problems of the Republican establishment. What's needed is a plan, a leader, a program. A strategy! Here's one: seek out those independents, moderates, and centrist conservatives of libertarian sympathies, and make the case that the cherished principle of freedom is better served by the Left. There's an opportunity here to gain a significant political foothold and to exploit an increasingly vulnerable division in the conservative coalition. Neither progressives nor the libertarian-minded, one suspects, realizes how much shared ground actually exists between their philosophies. Certainly, there's not a libertarian right now, in the full possession of his wits, who could be happy with the policy trends that are shaping our country. In this, the sixth year of one of the worst administrations in American history, freedom has never been more visibly in decline.
For more than half a century, American conservatives have trumpeted their commitment to defending "liberty" (a term less self-evident than it might appear). In the long, hard slog against Soviet communism, in which Republicans tended to take a more aggressive stance, this self-congratulation had some merit. But in many other instances -- from the pointless campaign against flag burning to a fanatically expansive reading of the second amendment -- the conservative approach to protecting freedom has ranged from the asinine to the simply destructive. Progressives, who have traditionally emphasized "equality" (ditto) in their vision of the American way, need to explain, sincerely and forcefully, their own commitment to freedom. Without a doubt, the opportunity is there, because the modern conservative coalition, in which the religious right has become ascendant over business conservatives and libertarians, has pushed through an array of policies that have made Americans dramatically less free. Behind the specious argument that lower taxes equate with greater freedom, and using the "war on terror" as a pretext for every imaginable power grab, conservatives now resemble Big Brother more than they ever have, and as a result their coalition is at risk of unravelling. Just consider some of the more obvious liberty-undermining trends now underway:
Interference in personal privacy. Where to begin? The assault on the idea of a Constitutional "right to privacy." Domestic spying. Airport no-fly lists. Intrusion in personal records, from Google searches to library fines. And this describes only what American citizens face, let alone the unnumbered foreign nationals who have been utterly deprived of all due process whatsoever.A major problem for progressives is that they've lost a lot of libertarian-minded people by seeming to advocate "big" government and therefore "intrusive" or "stifling" government. What they need to do is make the case, consistently and powerfully, that a government which helps people also makes people more free. To make that case, progressives need to break the current frame of the debate and shift its terms to more favorable ground.
Disruption of the Constitutional system of checks and balances. At every opportunity, the administration, abetted by conservatives in the judiciary and Congress, has asserted a breathtakingly expansive view of executive power and privilege. The very reason that system exists in the first place was to restrict the ability of the executive to encroach upon individual liberties.
Interference in K-12 education. A recent paragraph in the New York Times says it all: "When Republican senators quietly tucked a major new student aid program into the 774-page budget bill last month, they not only approved a five-year, $3.75 billion initiative. They also set up what could be an important shift in American education: for the first time the federal government will rate the academic rigor of the nation's 18,000 high schools" (Jan. 22, 2006). The law leaves it to the Secretary of Education to define "rigorous," effectively giving her an unprecedented authority in evaluating high school curricula.
Requiring schools to give student information to military recruiters. Under the administration's No Child Left Behind Act, recruiters are entitled to get the names, addresses and phone numbers of high school juniors and seniors, unless parents or students sign a form requesting that the data be withheld. Districts that don't comply stand to lose millions in federal funding.
So far, conservatives have succeeded at portraying regulation and taxation as hostile or antithetical to personal freedom. As long as progressives respond to that charge only by pointing to the general economic or social benefits of government activism, they will fail to speak to one of the American public's core values and, regardless of the outcome of any particular policy dispute, will allow the conservative frame to prevail. The challenge is define liberty in much broader terms than simply the absence of regulation or taxation.
The preamble to the Constitution states that one of the document's purposes is to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." What the word "secure" implies in this context is that liberty is not something that simply happens, that simply thrives on its own, but that it requires protection, cultivation, and, yes, government involvement. One of the central insights of our jurisprudential tradition, dating to Anglo-Saxon times, is that law begets freedom -- enlightened, well-administered law, of course, but law nonetheless -- while the absence of law begets servitude, violence, and tyranny.
The key to making the progressive case for freedom is to talk about liberty in the aggregate. Capitalism is certainly the most "free" of the world's economic systems, but the conservative version of capitalism -- low regulation, low taxation, lax enforcement, and so forth -- simply does not create the most freedom for the most people. Instead, as in a Monopoly game, it creates dramatic imbalances, letting the powerful become more powerful (and therefore more free), while offering up only the illusion of enhanced freedom for everybody else. Liberty in the aggregate is not served by the law of the jungle. It is best served by creating legal structures and systems in which people are properly rewarded for their efforts, can make their way forward, are protected from abuse, and can fully express their personal beliefs and pursue their personal preferences.
After five years of the anti-regulatory, anti-tax, and anti-civil liberties policies of the Bush administration, are Americans really more free, in the truest, deepest sense of the word? Are they freer from pollution? Are they freer to provide their kids a better education? Are they freer from the prying eyes of the government? Are they freer to earn a living wage? Are they freer from the intrusive data collection of corporations? Are they freer to express dissent? Are they freer from the dangers of ill health, old age, or hazardous workplaces? Are they freer to travel abroad without fear of terrorism? Are they freer from threat posed by natural disasters? Are they freer to pursue their own vision of life, and to live up to their highest potential?
As this list of questions suggests, freedom means a lot more than getting a $200 refund check in the mail, a lot more than relatively cheap gas, and a lot more than plenty of frozen food options. And the fact that a majority of Americans think the country is off on the wrong track might suggest that more and more of them are answering "no" to these questions.
The progressive side of American politics has to get over its apparent fear of talking about "liberty" and start speaking a language that resonates more deeply than any other in American culture. They need to have confidence that their policies promote rather than restrict freedom, and they need to share that confidence.
WIT AND WISDOM
"Some of the other Oscar-nominated movies people are talking about, George Clooney's film, 'Good Night, and Good Luck.' If you haven't seen it, it's about the White House's Medicare plan for the elderly." -- Jay Leno
"President Bush met at the White House with Jordan's King Abdullah. Yeah, there was one awkward moment when President Bush asked King Abdullah, 'How's Queen Latifah?'" -- Conan O'Brien
TALKING POINTS II
The latest furor in the so-called "clash of civilizations" involves the publication, in a number of European newspapers, of a cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad wearing a turban made to resemble a bomb. The cartoon sparked protests, often violent, across the Arab world, and led to a series of apologies by European leaders, along with statements defending the principle of press freedom. In the mainstream media, accordingly, the dominant frame for the story has positioned Western values of free expression against Muslim religious sensitivities.
What has gotten lost in the hubbub is the problem of the viciously anti-semitic cartoons and articles that are standard fare in the Arab press. Before Muslims take to the streets to defend their religious sensitivities, and before European leaders apologize for what gets printed in their country's newspapers, they should pause to read some of the sewage coming out of the Middle East. Here are just two:
On April 29, 2002, the Egyptian government daily newspaper Al-Akhbar published an article title "Accursed Forever and Ever." The Jews, we learn, are "the virus of the generation, doomed to a life of humiliation and wretchedness until Judgment Day." The anonymous writer goes on to deny that the Holocaust took place, and then suggests that it actually would have been a good idea, wishing he could say to Hitler: "If only you had done it, brother, if only it had really happened, so that the world could sigh in relief [without] their evil and sin."
On March 10, 2002, the Saudi government daily published an article on the Jewish holiday Purim, by Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma of King Faisal University. "For this holiday," we learn, "the Jewish people must obtain human blood so that their clerics can prepare the holiday pastries....Before I go into the details, I would like to clarify that the Jews' spilling human blood to prepare pastry for their holidays is a well-established fact, historically and legally, all throughout history&. [D]uring the holiday, the Jews wear carnival-style masks and costumes and overindulge in drinking alcohol, prostitution, and adultery." The list goes on and on. The global Zionist conspiracy; the literal blood-thirstiness of the Jews; the convenient myth of the Holocaust; Jewish avarice; massacres of innocents; and so forth. There are many forms of fundamentalism and bigotry in the world, but vicious anti-semitism is one of the most dangerous and most widespread. It has built up a hideous history, and must be combatted vigorously and consistently.
In response to the outpouring of vitriol the continuing violence against Jews, President Bush in October 2004 signed the Global Antisemitism Review Act, which pledges the United States to "continue to strongly support efforts to combat antisemitism worldwide through bilateral relationships and interaction with international organizations." Among its various provisions, the Act requires the State Department to include in its "country reports" on human rights abuses "instances of propaganda in government and non-government media that attempt to justify or promote racial hatred or incite acts of violence against Jewish people."
The Arab world's reaction to the law has not been favorable. In the article "Arab Reactions to the U.S.'s Global Antisemitism Review Act of 2004," Aluma Dankowitz writes that Arab public opinion shapers "called the act an interference in domestic affairs of states, expressed apprehension that its implementation would harm freedom of expression, and protested against what they saw as the considerable Jewish influence in the U.S."
It's time for those in the West to call the Muslim outrage in this case for what it is: hypocrisy. Whatever feelings of frustration, persecution, and insult prevail in the Arab world, and whatever their legitimate grievances about Israeli and American policy, no one is calling for Muslim countries to be wiped off the face of the earth, no one is saying Muslims should be exterminated, and no one is sending Muslims to the gas chambers. The exploitation of anti-semitism by shady and autocratic Arab governments is an obscenity, and to the degree that regular Muslims buy into such vileness, they are writing themselves out of the mainstream of modernity. Anti-semites need to stop finding scapegoats and start directing their energy toward solving the real problems they face: anti-scientific fundamentalism, political corruption, one-dimensional oil-based economies. If they don't, it's going to be endless misery for everybody concerned, but particularly for themselves.
We might note another irony in the reaction to the cartoons. A central reason that has been given for the outrage is that depicting the prophet Muhammad will encourage idolatry. But what is idolatry if not endowing images with greater power than they deserve? The whole point of the Koranic injunction against idolatry is that people should not place so much importance on images that real matters of spirituality and human life are left behind. This is analogous, incidentally, to the campaign against flag-burning in the United States: protecting the symbol of freedom should never taken precedence over protecting the actual freedoms the flag symbolizes, including the freedom to destroy a symbol.
So, sure, the offensive cartoons can be "condemned." But what really needs to be condemned is the mindset of religious fanaticism and intolerance of free expression that seems to be spreading like the bird flu.
CHECK IT OUT
One wonders why the American public, or perhaps just the American press, seems to respond with a gigantic collective yawn when the subject of electoral shenanigans comes up. Do people really not know or not care that our democratic system has been seriously undermined in recent years? Whether or not you believe the Presidential elections of 2000 or 2004 were "stolen," pils of evidence have accumulated that suggests the hardball tactics of the Right -- from aggressively purging voter rolls to aggressively "questioning" voters at black precincts -- improperly swayed the results by crossing the line from aggressive into illegal. And as long as there's no assertive response, there's not much reason to think that things will change.
That's the subject of an ever-growing roster of books on the last three elections (including 2002) and the current electoral system, including its increasing reliance on insecure electronic "voting machines" and its bizarre, or deliberate, inability to provide a uniform and transparent method of registering the public will. A common theme running through these books has to do with a veritable conspiracy of silence on the part of the media, and a shameful refusal by political figures to get involved in investigating the issue. Together, they give the impression that the conservative movement has seized power illegitimately, that American democracy is truly imperilled, and -- at a minimum -- that the fundamental civic trust between political parties has broken down in a way reminiscent of the 1790s or the 1850s.
Not surprisingly, the Right has come out with its own handful of books charging the Left with improper electioneering: John H. Fund, Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (Encounter Books, 2004); Hugh Hewitt, If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It (Nelson Books, 2006); and Byron York, The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy: The Untold Story of How Democratic Operatives, Eccentric Billionaires, Liberal Activists, and Assorted Celebrities Tried to Bring Down a President -- and Why They'll Try Even Harder Next Time (Crown Forum, 2005). One should note, incidentally, that these three publishing houses are little more than private subsidiaries of the Right's messaging machine; none of them has a track record of publishing anything other than ideologically motivated books.
The aim, evidently, of these conservative titles is to have the debate kind of wash away in an unresolvable "he-said-she-said" blur of charges and countercharges -- much like the effort to confuse the public about the science of global warming. In the midst of that blur, Americans need to concentrate on two central facts. First, the conservatives are the ones who control all three branches of government, so accusing the Left of "stealing elections" is like accusing a homeless person of embezzlement. Second, the conservative record over the last 5 years amounts to a laundry list of misguided policies whose failure is disputed only by those policies' architects, and sometimes not even then.
They should also check out the following books about the history of electoral fraud, and about the last two Presidential elections in particular:
Mark Crispin Miller, Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them) (Basic Books, 2005)If you're only able to read one of these books, read Miller's carefully researched and closely argued Fooled Again. Despite his fondness for rhetorical excess (which might not serve his purposes all that well), Miller backs up his disturbing conclusions with mountains of factual and anecdotal evidence. The central claim -- that "the two great corporate entities of government and media have unified against" regular Americans -- and the central call-to-arms -- that "we must start working to reclaim that right [to vote]" -- need to be heard and heeded by anyone who loves freedom.
Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld, and Harvey Wasserman, eds., Did George W. Bush Steal America's 2004 Election? Essential Documents (Columbus Alive, 2005)
Anita Miller, What Went Wrong In Ohio? The Conyers Report on the 2004 Presidential Election (Academy Chicago Publishers, 2005)
Steve Freeman and Joel Bleifuss, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count (Seven Stories Press, 2005)
Lance Dehaven-Smith, The Battle for Florida: An Annotated Compendium of Materials from the 2000 Presidential Election (University Press of Florida, 2005)
David North, The Crisis of American Democracy: The Presidential Elections of 2000 and 2004 (Mehring Books, 2004)
Tracy Campbell, Deliver the Vote : A History of Election Fraud, an American Political Tradition-1742-2004 (Carroll & Graf, 2005)
Andrew Gumbel, Steal This Vote: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America (Nation Books, 2005)
Complacency is the bane of democracy. Staying informed is the bane of complacency.
FEATURED ARTICLE
The following is an excerpt from Thomas Goetz's "The Battle to Stop Bird Flu," which appeared in the January, 2006, edition of Wired magazine.
"The 1976 swine flu scare has become enshrined as 'the epidemic that never was,' one of the great fiascoes of our national health care system. But in truth, government officials performed well enough. In just a few months, they went from isolating a strange new flu virus to delivering a vaccine to every American who wanted one. The problem was, all they had were blunt instruments: crude mathematical models, rough estimates of infection rates, and a vaccine that often packed too strong a punch. They were fairly well equipped to react to a worst-case scenario - they just weren't equipped to determine if one was imminent. Forced to guess, they chose 'to risk money rather than lives,' as Theodore Cooper, an assistant secretary of Health Education and Welfare, said at the time. 'Better to be safe than sorry.'Click here to read the whole article.
"All of which raises a question: With the specter of an actual flu epidemic looming, are we any better equipped today? H5N1, the strain of avian influenza currently festering in Asia, has yet to pull off the mutation that would customize it for human-to-human transmission. But we know it's an especially lethal virus; most health experts expect it will make that jump soon enough. So the task for experts is to devise a plan that pinpoints how the virus might spread through the US population - a plan that draws more from the Soviet approach to disease forecasting than from the CDC's approach in 1976.
"Thirty years on, a new science of epidemiology is at hand. It's based on sophisticated computer models that can get ahead of a virus and, in a sometimes dazzling demonstration of computer science, provide exacting prescriptions for health care policy rather than best guesses. It's an approach pioneered not by physicians but by physicists. And it owes a lot to the nuclear bomb."
HAPPENINGS
Progressive Roundtable -- Plans are moving ahead for the Progressive Roundtable event, scheduled for March 2-5 in the San Francisco Bay area. There, a select working group will decide on priorities for the creation of new capacity in the areas of marketing, communications, strategy, and coordination for the nascent progressive movement. Influential progressive blogger Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (whose Daily Kos blog averages over 700,000 readers per day) will be speaking on the first day of the event about factors hampering the Democratic Party at the national level, and what progressives must do to move forward. As word about the Progressive Roundtable has spread, more and more people have expressed a desire to be included, but all slots are currently filled and there is a growing waiting list. Even though the total number actually in attendance must be restricted in order to carry out the tasks of the meeting, others interested in progressive infrastructure are welcome to visit the Progressive Roundtable website. There they can learn more about the event, read and post articles in the Resource Library, list their own organizations in the Organization Directory, and feed questions to the working group team members. A report on the outcome will be posted on the site following the convening.
New CI Associate -- The Commonweal Institute is proud to welcome Rob Dickinson as a new Associate. Mr. Dickinson is known for his leadership, management, communication, and technical skills in working in grassroots organizing and legislative politics. As Executive Vice President of Californians for Electoral Reform, Mr. Dickinson drafted bill proposals, lined up legislative sponsors, initiated a grassroots lobbying campaign, and set up a houseparty-based public education and recruitment campaign. He is currently an independent consultant with clients in both the political and technical arenas, and was one of the developers of the interactive website for the Commonweal Institute's Progressive Roundtable. Mr. Dickinson has held Vice-Presidential positions at Novation Biosciences and Perspecta, as well as managed software development teams at other Silicon Valley companies, including 3Com, Apple, Taligent, and Excite@Home. He received a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley.
ENDORSEMENTS
"It's always good to put your brain in gear before you put your mouth in motion. The folks at the Commonweal Institute do the heavy mental lifting so agitators like me can arm ourselves on the front lines of the ideological battles taking place every day in America. For too long progressives have walked fearful of their shadows, whimpering and whining about what's wrong and fighting amongst themselves over crumbs. With the help of the Commonweal Institute, that time is over." -- Jim Hightower, National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of If the Gods had Meant us to Vote They Would Have Given us Candidates
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