First
Published On
↓
The Human Conspiracy Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog1
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The Policy Think Site: http://www.jaygaskill.com
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“THE
HUMAN CONSPIRACY BLOG”
THE
ARCHIVE
Covering All Posts from
ALL contents (unless a different copyright is otherwise identified or implied, -- as when excerpts for other news and commentary were referenced) are Copyright © 2005, 2006 and 2007 by Jay B. Gaskill, Attorney at Law. For permission to reproduce in any form, please contact the author via email law@jaygaskill.com.
SET ONE:
JUNE/JULY 06
[JUNE 29 through
Welcome to the Human
Conspiracy Blog.
You are invited to join the
pro-human team, that bravest subset of all humans. We are the ones
who have noticed that anti-people forces have emerged as a
“respectable alternative” within this modern and post modern culture. And we
are the ones who are willing to declare ourselves: We value people over causes,
over the ideologies and the other false “Gods”.
Warning: Before you “come
out” as a member of the HumanConspiracy, you
should be aware that to openly favor ”mere” human concerns
against the cultural trends of the moment can be hazardous.
Under the current social
conditions, reasonable and non-ideological discussions tend
to be marginalized or derided whenever they trespass on the secular
religions of the day. That ordinary people with common sense and reasonable
minds might need to form a “conspiracy” to promote sanity is beyond
ordinary irony.
Join the Human Conspiracy and
expect to strike sparks from the flamers of the crypto-Marxist,
politically correct left and the unthinking, literalist right. Both tend
to apocalyptic hysteria, the marginalization of real evil, and the demonization
of their opponents. Honest, intelligent arguments from the creative
center tend to irritate the fringes. Unfortunately, the fringes are
sometimes in control of the debate. But not for long….
We Hold at
Least Nine Things in Common
We may differ on a
thousand issues of “consequence”, but we share 3 priorities:
1.
Persons
over things.
2.
Humans
over causes.
3.
Humanity
over “Gaia” and the other pretenders to Ultimate Value.
Our individual agendas may
clash, but we share 3 essential human attributes:
1.
Common
biological origin tracing its lineage back to the Beginning of life;
2.
Conscious
intelligence, capable of empathy, foresight and creative innovation;
3.
The
“same boat” fate: We are the only thinking, moral, creative agents yet found.
We each honor a heritage that
includes 3 core affirmations:
1.
The
value of civilization as our essential life sustaining social technology;
2.
The
essential rules, norms and principles needed to sustain civilization;
3.
An
Ultimate Source of value beyond mere tribe (whether named or not).
Stay tuned…
POST ONE
My Private Idaho
Last week I slipped away to
my
During the visit, LG
immediately became a magnet for the neighborhood girls – one toddler, three
pre-teens – who instructed him in the art of crawling on the lawn and
inspecting the sprinkler at close range. Michael reports that LG later applied
his new skill in the bathtub.
Michael is one of the most
resolutely optimistic people I’ve ever met. He hails from the
The current president of
During this all too brief
visit, I was moved to write the following meditation:
That Gift
We
are the children of the God who made pansies. But we are not the children of a
pansy God.
It
was not by some cosmic accident that we were born into the world that God is
still making, the real world with its sharp edges, broken spirits, and opportunistic
evil.
We
were not meant to hide in the womb while evil roams outside. We were given the
blessing of difficult but important work. The Garden of Eden story was about
our passage out of the nursery. In the real word, we face impossible moral choices
and experience inevitable failure. Yet we are sustained by the Author of hope.
We
were made in God’s essential image in order to live with good and courageous
hearts in the real world. We were blessed with great powers, among them the
powers of life, conscious intelligence and creative genius. We are to use these
gifts to protect the innocent from the evil; to negotiate life’s sharp edges
with intelligence and humor; to heal the broken spirits around us; and to grow
into God’s high hopes for us. We are expected to engage with the world and use
the moral compass God has provided each of us. We were born into this world to
love and to be loved. That we are loved by the Creator in spite of all is proof
of the divine sense of humor.
All
of God’s opportunities and blessings are also burdens and challenges. What God
wants for our enemies is that which God wants for us: Seek the good in all its
forms and oppose evil in all its forms. We are called to treat our enemies with
love and respect, but we are also called to oppose evil with every ounce of
intelligence and courage in our being.
We
are called to live in joy and to experience freedom. And we are sometimes even
called to experience pain.
But
we have been given the gift of divine companionship in every experienced
moment, no matter how difficult. This is why the opposite of joy is not pain
but despair. As long as we can feel God’s caring presence nearby, even in our
pain and isolation, we will not despair.
We
are called to love God, our Creator, and the Ultimate Source of our very being
and of our very purpose. Yet our greatest gift, the one we too often have
difficulty experiencing, is the ability to hear God.
Yet
that still, small, mighty voice is never far from us. Our challenge is to hear
God over the buzz of the world.
While
in my
Lawyers, Fruit Flies &
Rotting Mangoes
@
My
apologies to fellow lawyers and fruit flies.
Lawyers, Fruit Flies and
Rotting Mangoes
By
Jay B. Gaskill
No other developed country in
the world has given its legal class so much obstructionist power, especially as
to those areas of life where most people, most of the time are simply allowed
to take reasonable (or unreasonable risks) and to bear the consequences of their
own foolishness. This point came home to me a few years ago when, in
New Zealand, a horde of tourists were ushered in the dark around an impossibly
low railing, a single metal bar separating them from a deadly and deafening
cataract of water below. “Take care,” the Kiwi guide said, “and don’t
slip. You Yanks don’t get sue here like you do at home.”
There was something
refreshingly Darwinian about that admonition and what it implied about the
healthy Kiwi culture. Actually, the infamous propensity of Americans to
sue excessively and the resulting risk-averse “nanny” culture the lawyers have
helped create is not really the product of the large number of lawyers employed
in the
Also consider:
There is no constitutional or
God-given right that a lawyer will be generously compensated for merely filing
and pursuing a lawsuit. Rotting mangoes are the causes of action and
guaranteed generous legal fees that have fueled the lawyers’ takeover of the
country. All this has taken place right under our noses in less than a half
century. Today, lawyers swarm to any exploitable crack in the power
structure of society like fruit flies to a barrel of decaying mangos. It
isn’t their fault, any more than a fly can be blamed for following the smell of
rotting fruit, a cat for chasing a mouse, or a dog for chasing a cat.
It’s in the DNA.
Continued on http://www.jaygaskill.com/Fruitflies.htm
Copyright 2006 by Jay B.
Gaskill
That Brilliant Dream:
The Republic After 230
years
@
Copyright © 2006 by Jay B.
Gaskill
↕
That Brilliant Dream
Thursday,
July 6th
Reflections
By
Jay
B. Gaskill
As a practical matter, we
comfortable Americans find it impossible to imagine the perilous State of the
This experiment would prove
durable beyond all rational hope. But in 1861, when the Civil War began, no one
knew that.
Flash forward to 1865.
The young nation was dreadfully engaged in a war more brutal and costly than
any before or since. The very survival of the
The President was not a
popular man. The war was not going well and the vilification of Abe Lincoln in
the press and among the vacillating classes was unprecedented. As a later
President, John Kennedy, wryly observed, victory has a thousand fathers but
defeat is an orphan.
In 1865,
Civilizations whose leaders
and members are not rooted in the sterner part of the moral order cannot summon
the will to defend themselves when challenged by a
more cohesive, more fervently motivated adversary. There is a Darwinian
logic at work here that favors the triumph of the religious society over the
complacently hedonist culture, the “blood sweat and tears” rally over the “make
flowers not war” withdrawal, and the committed, brave heart over the timid,
ambivalent soul.
As President Lincoln began
his terse second Inaugural Address, he recalled:
This piece is continued on
The Policy Think Site with graphics.
Go to: www.jaygaskill.com/BrilliantDream.pdf .
Thieves and Honor
@
Honor Among
Thieves -- A Modest Observation
By
Jay B. Gaskill
The current post-modern ethos
is a muddle of incoherent ideas where confused notions of cultural and moral
relativism cohabit with vague notions about “rights”.
A return to the common
sources and ultimate authority of fundamental human norms is central to any
cultural recovery from this cultural dead end.
I would open that critical
discussion by posing one simple question:
Why are there reasonably
consistent rules that apply within a working cohort of thieves?
I submit that thieves are
really hunting teams, predator cohorts that cooperate in a common endeavor – to
acquire resources by a combination of force and stealth. Because of the
inherent danger of the operation, a certain basic trust must be established,
and a division of spoils agreed to.
While actual thieves tend (in
my professional experience) to screw up, this happens most often because they
tend to violate their own agreed norms.
But the nature of the rules
they apply to themselves is surprisingly instructive. Five simple rules
are rationally necessary to the success of any criminal enterprise.
Here they are:
1.
Veracity
Without
some minimum truth fidelity and avoidance of significant deception, the
baseline cooperation for the enterprise would quickly disintegrate. In
fact there is a kind of Darwinian selection in operation here: The criminals
who fail to follow such norms are usually the first ones caught.
2.
No
theft from fellow thieves
3.
No
serious assault on fellow thieves
4.
Promise
fidelity among fellow thieves
5.
Obedience
to leadership
Like all rules, this
“thieves’ honor” set of precepts is sometimes observed in the breach, but that
begs the point:
These five norms are also at
the core of all moral systems that support civilization.
Think about it: The cohort
norms needed for the close cooperation of a predator-hunter team or for a
criminal gang (indeed for the accomplishment of any similar, survival-related
task among otherwise independent, intelligent actors) belong essentially to the
same set and:
The rules that make up
civilization’s necessary moral architecture are “thieves honor” writ large.
Within the given cohort, the
essential norms apply equally to all members, but are subject to an agreed or
imposed leadership principle. In primitive cohorts, this is the alpha -
follower model. There are other more sophisticated models as well, especially
for larger, community-based cohorts.
My proposal:
Any working civilization
represents, at a minimum, the extension of the theft-cohort norms to the entire
civilization’s scope of authority; and therefore represents at least a partial
universalization of that set of cohort norms. This creates an expectation
of equality of norm application within specific cohorts.
More,
later.
JBG
Why Blog a Murder — A
Little Evil in
@
Following a Murder Case
On
Because Dan Horowitz was a
Court TV celebrity, his agony was displayed on the evening television news,
along with helicopter shots of the property. The Vitale-Horowitz trailer was a
temporary dwelling on the construction site of the couple’s dream home.
Daniel Horowitz was then
engaged in the defense of Susan Polk who was accused of stabbing her husband to
death. At first, Horowitz attempted to soldier on, but his role as the lead
trial lawyer in the Polk case was not to be. A mistrial was declared.
Eventually, Mrs. Polk elected to represent herself – a catastrophic
mistake. She is now awaiting sentencing for second degree murder. For
that account, see http://www.jaygaskill.com/Polkfolly.htm .
Daniel’s wife had been
severely beaten and was stabbed a number of times. An abdominal stab wound was
inflicted while she was alive but the other stab wounds were probably inflicted
post-mortem. Pot shards were found on her head - apparently left when a pot was
shattered with such force that her outer skull was exposed.
A “Satanic” symbol was carved
into Pamela’s back by her killer, a crudely formed “H”.
The prime suspect, Scott
Dyleski, an older juvenile, was arrested a few days later. He was charged with
Pamela’s killing, and was ordered tried as an adult for the crime of first
degree, special circumstances murder. Scott Dyleski’s jury trial is scheduled
to start Monday, July 17th in
I knew Dan Horowitz in the
old days. I am commenting about the trial of the young man accused of
killing his wife.
You can follow my commentary
at - http://www.jaygaskill.com/Vitalehorowitzdeath.htm
JBG
First Pray For
@
Your many comments are deeply
appreciated. This piece, augmented by a Personal Footnote, is also posted
on “The Policy Think site” at http://www.jaygaskill.com/FirstPrayforIsrael.htm
JBG
First Pray for
By
Jay B. Gaskill
As a Judeo-Christian, I
firmly believe in the right of the State of Israel to thrive in peace within
defensible borders. As a moral realist, I understand what the actual conditions
of survival entail when you are living amid a sea of resentment-intoxicated
peoples, temporarily unhinged by a malevolent ideology masquerading as a
religion of peace.
Therefore, I must completely
dissociate myself from the pacifist strain of Christianity that has repeatedly
called for
These otherwise good hearted
souls are deeply confused.
Ambivalence toward the truly
evil, and passivity in the face of the real, existential threats it poses to
the good and the innocent souls among us is so profoundly wrong as to border on
evil itself.
The current struggle is far
more serious than
I note that Hamas, the
terrorist group that infects the nascent Palestinian democracy, has the
following explicit aims:
1.
“
2.
“The
Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the
3.
“There
is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives,
proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain
endeavors.
And I cannot help note with a
sense of disgust the position of leftist, Noam Chomsky, who visited Hezbollah
leader Hassan Nasrallah in May. Professor
Chomsky branded the
We have now seen what
those weapons can do…
So we should pray for the
swift success of the Israeli Defense Forces in this crisis, for the continued
support of
God save and protect the
people of Israel, the people of the
Does Democracy Have a
Future?
@ 4:
Yes.
Today, I revisited an
earlier essay, and to my surprise discovered that it is still sharp and
relevant.
ESSAY ON THE FUTURE OF
DEMOCRACY
By
Jay B. Gaskill
The
Last paragraph:
Under
these complex circumstances, we should not so quickly fault our president for
proceeding with care. He is one of the few leaders actually capable of ordering
the kinds of serious military action that will probably be needed. This is a
struggle for nothing less than the survival of the democratic model of
governance in the world. We’ve planted a single seed in the
The link:
http://www.jaygaskill.com/democracychallenged.htm
Cleaning Out
Saddam’s Arsenal in
@
CLEANING OUT SADDAM’S
ARSENAL IN
By
Jay B. Gaskill
Watch closely while the
following story emerges over the next months:
Three sources now concur:
Before the US led invasion of
Iraq, Russian Spetznatz forces assisted Saddam in removing WMD’s (bio and
chemical weapons stores), by transporting them to Syria.
The three are:
1.
General
Al-Tikriti, Saddam’s southern regional commander who defected just before the
invasion;
2.
General
Georges Sada, the second in command of
3.
Ion
Pacepa, former head of Romanian intelligence, a man with special knowledge of
the back-channel arms deals between
These revelations are just
now beginning to surface in the appropriate Congressional committees and among
the below-the-radar media. I sense the tip of an iceberg here.
One of my favorite analysts,
the military historian and commentator, Victor Davis Hanson, has just written a
piece worth your careful attention.
An excerpt:
“
So
they tell Hamas and Hezbollah to tap their missile caches, kidnap a few
soldiers, and generally try to turn the world’s attention to the collateral
damage inflicted on “refugees” by a stirred-up Zionist enemy.….most
of the West, and perhaps some in the Arab world as well, want
For the full Hanson piece, “A
Strange War”, go to:
http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson072106.html
Whenever the smoke clears, we
can hope and expect the trail from Saddam’s
JBG
LARGE SCALE AND SMALL
SCALE MALIGNANCIES ON TRIAL
Large Scale and Small
Scale Malignancies on Trial: Two Pending Stories:
1. Saddam’s Tribunal:
The deposed dictator prefers
a firing squad to hanging? Obviously this malignant narcissist is
suggesting a plea bargain. I’d accept the offer post haste. Here it is:
Execution immediately on your terms or endure the slow wheels of Iraqi
justice. Of course Saddam will wait it out as long as he has access to
the media.
2. Another
I was quoted today (
The link to my ongoing
commentary:
www.jaygaskill.com/Vitalehorowitzdeath.htm .
JBG
UN PANEL WANTS MORE
Consider this:
“
The
Then consider real world conditions:
I’ve elsewhere pointed
out (in several Op Ed pieces and a couple of longer works (linked
below), that death penalty moratoriums
tend to increase the murder rate in almost every instance.
Moreover, murder victims in
the
The murder rate is higher in
poor and minority communities than in wealthy, non-minority ones. It is
not rocket science to deduce the obvious:
The fact that minorities and
poor people dominate the lists of murderers and victims alike is a product of
the inadequate law enforcement attention often given to the dangerous areas in
which these people live.
Once you are exposed to the
data (as I have been) that demonstrate the deterrent effect of keeping and
occasionally imposing the death penalty for certain murders, it becomes public
policy malpractice to deny its protective effect to the vulnerable populations
that are already underserved by the police.
Reference:
http://www.jaygaskill.com/DeathDeterrenceReform.htm
and:
http://www.jaygaskill.com/InjectionDeterrence.htm
The Human Conspiracy Blog
TRUE FUNDAMENTALISTS
UNITE!
True Fundamentalists Unite!
Reject The
Catechism of the Unthinking Mind
As a proto- “neo-con”
(read old fashioned liberal) I share many of the “liberal” complaints about the
reflexive “religious” mind. But I have equally strong complaints about
the reflexive liberal mind. The use of religious rhetoric and images in
politics, both benign (Martin Luther King) and less than benign, is a
venerable tradition in
In my universe, the term
is reserved to all thoughtful religious and non-religious people who reason
from first principles; these reasonable minds are the true fundamentalists.
The cramped minds and often
fevered souls who have swapped memorization for thinking and who have
taken out-of-context passages from poorly understood “scripture” for
fundamental principles of life are the faux fundamentalists.
By contrast, authentic
fundamentalists might locate a passage in Vedantic scripture, another in
literature, still another in Confucianism, another in the Torah and a similar
passage in a Gospel text, and be able to identify the same essential
ethical principle operating in all four. [I recommend the lectures of C.
S Lewis in “The Abolition of Man”; this kind of analysis is
demonstrated in a brilliant summary of world ethical and religious
traditions.]This capacity to spot those significant underlying principles, the hidden
“bones of the universe”, defines the true fundamentalists. They recognize the
deep principles as the fundamentals, while seeing their expressions in various
documents as only the derived versions. And how about those
pesky real world application problems? Real world application
problems tend to be very messy, almost always setting up issues
where reasonable minds can differ, issues that are always worthy of honest,
careful dialogue starting with fundamental principles. So I would have us
rescue the title fundamentalist from the literalists.
And would
rescue ethical and policy discussions from appeals to secular and religious
dogma. For example, we are too
often presented with a laundry list of so called “religious right” positions,
as if no thoughtful person could possibly agree with them. When I hear
this, I’m often left with the feeling of being read a catechism - not one by an altar boy in the old RC Church, but by
an altar child of the unthinking anti-religious left.
Consider just these four:
1.
Stem
cell research: Must we always be for it?
2.
Human
cloning: Can this never generate a problem? ‘
3.
Physician
assisted suicide: Must we trust this model always?
4.
In-vitro
fertilization: Always and everywhere a good thing?
To any ethical realist concerned
with achieving wise and ethical public policy, all four issues are ripe for a
searching, intelligent dialogue, one that is informed
by religious and secular ethical insights. And these issues present
messy, real world application problems.
Reasonable minds, coming
from entirely different political and theological perspectives, could talk
in realistic, non lunatic terms about these four issues, agreeing and
disagreeing, yet no one would lapse into an appeal to the infallible authority
of Dogma or Fatwa.
SET TWO: AUGUST 2006
THE NEW THREAT PARADIGM
@
Copyright © 2006 by Jay B.
Gaskill
THE NEW THREAT PARADIGM
My many liberal, libertarian,
isolationist and left-leaning friends and readers take note:
We are in a radically
new threat paradigm.
Those who lived through the
cold war decades were protected from a pre-emptive nuclear strike only by a
doctrine – mutual assured destruction – that depended on a baseline level of
rationality on both sides. Like the ghost of Christmas past, the
diplomatic corps still operate in a dream world; they behave as if all the
players on the world scene will ultimately come to see the universe through the
lens of rational self interest. It was, after all, the unwillingness of Soviet
ideologues to go down in a magnificent furnace of immolation that saved the
world from a deadly nuclear exchange. The movers and shakers in the Kremlin
were ideologues to be sure, but self interested human beings as well. Now some
of the actors on the world stage are coming from a perspective completely alien
to Western thought: A magnificent furnace of immolation is not to be feared;
indeed for some it becomes the goal.
A hint of madness is a
powerful negotiating tool. Actual madness is the end of all negotiation.
Mutually assured destruction
is inoperative vis a vis the jihad.
The new paradigm is >
Mutually Assured Martyrdom.
In the meantime, many of us
in the West, particularly our left-leaning friends, suffer from a state of
ambivalence and denial that is every bit as pathological as the suicidal
jihadists who seek our destruction.
THE ROOTS OF WESTERN
AMBIVALENCE
The Ghost of
Illegitimacy
As my readers and friends
know, I strongly support the Zionist premise and the principle of military
necessity in self defense. I’m reminded that Golda Mayer once said of
those who were committing terrorist violence against
The Hollowness of Utilitarianism as a Battle Cry
No
successful army ever charged into battle crying (after the British Utilitarian,
Jeremy Bentham) “ The greatest good for the greatest
number!”
Western
civilization not only suffers from a form of survivor guilt (accomplishment
guilt), it suffers from a rationale collapse that was part and parcel of the
larger collapse of religion as a wellspring of national purpose. I am
persuaded that a deep underling source of anti-Zionism in the West is purpose
envy in the context of the collapse of nationalism and Marxism as viable ideals
worth dying for. I have elsewhere argued for a new paradigm. In other
essays I’ve described its outlines:
….
a powerful, emerging normative model, the ideal of the Creative Civilization,
in which the civilized order explicitly and effectively protects and nurtures
the conditions for human creative activities. These conditions include
zones of safety from predation and zones of protected freedom where creative
activities are kept safe even from internal oppression.
Before
the “modern” era, creative civilizations appeared in history as special nodes
within a larger civilization. One thinks of the ancient city states like
the Athens of 600-200 BCE and of Renaissance Florence under the protection of
the Medici family. The modern efflorescence of scientific inquiry and
exploration are all part of the human creative endeavor, broadly construed.
Some
civilizations are doing a far better job in nurturing and protecting human
creative activities with their respective boundaries. None, to date, have self
consciously organized to perform this function. The advent of large
scale, self consciously creation-engendering civilizations will be a signal
event in our species development. Finally, the “liberty-friendly” civilizations
will confidently answer the question, “Freedom for what?” From I2I: The Dialogic Imperative > http://www.jaygaskill.com/i2i.htm
]
We have had hints of this
deeper value over and over again in the last century. Where did the
creative artists leave when given a chance? Where did they find refuge? We must
win the struggle against this atavistic jihad or there will be no refuge.
None at
all.
JBG
ALSO:
SEEDS OF THE GREAT CONVERGENCE
@ 2:27 am
Copyright © 2006 by Jay B.
Gaskill
Reflections on the Stages
of the Awareness of Being:
Why A “Great Convergence”
May be Underway
By
Jay B. Gaskill
This is one of my
philosophical excursions. I happen to believe that the secular -
spiritual divide in Western culture will heal itself over the next two
decades. In outline, I describe how that process might look.
One excerpt:
Religions are
tradition-supported, shared software constructs designed to facilitate contact
with this Ultimate Being in the context of communities of co-seekers who share
normatively rich Global Reality Models that are congruent with the religious
software.
The models of natural science
are abstracted, formally scripted, provisional empirical Global Reality Models
that are designed to track the event contours of exchange relationships in the
world.
More on “The Policy Think
Site > www.jaygaskill.com/Awareness.htm
Terror Fatigue
@
We fatigue too easily because
we are too comfortable, and we love our comfortable illusions more than we love
reality.
Did we not learn
- decisively learn - how dangerous it is to cede terrorists control over
actual territory? If
Meantime, as many in the
Western world play the role of chattering, hand wringing spectators,
our friends in
We are, in
fact, witnessing a series of connected events:
They are part of a world war
against the West, the purpose of which is to gain more than a patch of
territory in
Meantime let’s all pray that
And let’s pray that the
sleeper cells among us are rooted out, and that their sponsors in
There was an era, not all
that long ago, when partisanship closed ranks against a common threat.
Our survival may well depend on whether we are able to find that “golden
thread” of deep agreement that transcends our other differences.
JBG
A Brief Pause in
@
Copyright © 2006 by Jay B.
Gaskill
When the history of the 21st
century jihad against Western civilization is written,
By all accounts, the IDF was
less surprised by the stubborn resilience of Hezbollah than the civilian
government. Lessons are being absorbed on all sides during this pause.
The key now appears to be
Short of an
immediate full scale air assault on
JBG
The Real World vs. Utopian
Pacifism
@
Copyright © 2006 by Jay B.
Gaskill
The Real World vs. Utopian
Pacifism
Whenever any military
operation by the
For perspective, I invite you
to think of
When we hear of Israeli
casualties and IDF troop deployments, the multiplier is 2093.
This means, for example, that
when we read news reports on August 11, that “[A]s Israel’s death count from
the rocket attacks rose to 120, ten thousand I D F soldiers were mobilized,”
the US equivalent might read: “As the US civilian death count from the missile
attack rose to twenty five thousand lives, the US mobilized more than 20
million troops.”
In the real world, pacifism
works as a strategy only when the opposing force (think of the British in
Had a Gandhi been the leader
of the Palestinians all these years, statehood would have been peacefully
negotiated long ago.
Had
JBG
Optimism Among the Rubble
@
Victor Davis Hanson’s
insights, always excellent, are particularly apt today. In his latest,
read why the
Go to
http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson081806.html
JBG
CAN WE PREVAIL …. IN TIME?
@ 2:
Copyright © 2006 by Jay B.
Gaskill
The UN and
In today’s Washington Post,
columnist Richard Cohen writes:
“This inability of
“When George Bush used the
term “Islamic fascists,” he had a point. But it’s futile to use colorful
language when, in reality, you’re out of the conversation altogether. This is
another baleful consequence of the
For the full piece, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/21/AR2006082101143.html?sub=AR (sign in required) or visit www.jaygaskill.com/CohenChurchillOpEd82206 .
I have no problem with
Richard Cohen’s critique of European ambivalence and timidity — and none
whatsoever about his take on the ultimate nature of the struggle with the
latest enemy of Western civilization.
But there are three
counterpoints to be made:
(1) George Bush is the only
president we have right now.
(2) Our president is reviled
by many Europeans precisely because he recognizes the nature of the threat, and
— to rub it in – he is throwing American power around in a way that exposes the
pathetic weakness of the hollowed-out European military establishment.
(3) This is not a credibility
problem at all, it is an integrity problem – of course the Europeans believe
this president. That is, in fact, the root of their problem with
him: Mr. Bush is holding the Europeans feet to the fire, and they (i.e., many
of their leaders) hate him for it.
Mr. Bush is not acting like a
wounded duck. Skeptics who missed his last press conference can read the full
text at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/08/20060821.html
So what are we poor Americans
to do?
Let’s not leave a nuclear
bomb program intact in the
So let’s suck it up, bide our
time, but act decisively and effectively before it’s too late. Waiting
for a “new” president is waiting for a “new”
JBG
ON THE BURDEN OF BEING
“CHOSEN”
@
Copyright © 2006 by Jay B.
Gaskill “The
Policy Think Site” http://www.jaygaskill.com “The Human Conspiracy Blog” http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog1
I write this as I prepare to
return to the Bay Area from as place not far from my childhood home…
ON THE BURDEN OF BEING
CHOSEN
The latent and growing
anti-Semitism in the world needs to be explained. I suspect that it represents,
at its very roots, a profound misunderstanding of what it means to be a
“chosen” people, and a complete misreading of the Jewish situation,
particularly in the
Chosen-ness does not carry with
it any particular territorial land grant, and it does not warrant the least bit
of envy.
The right to live in one’s
own space is no different for those who are “chosen” (see below for what that
state really entails) than it has always been for human communities: It must be
earned and re-earned.
The tendency to succumb
to envy, especially unwarranted envy, is part of the pathology of the
human condition, one that religious traditionalists would readily recognize:
They would say that the propensity to envy is an “original sin”, one (it must
be noted) that is proscribed in the Decalogue.
To envy chosen-ness is to
envy those who carry a burden
Let me offer a counter-view,
one shaped by my own theology and experience.
ON NOT ENVYING CHOSEN-NESS
I believe that we humans are
information-receiving systems (esp. vis a vis deity’s
wideband transmitter) of great sophistication … and awesome stupidity.
To be “chosen” by God means
to be elected (by virtue of having received a moral insight) to carry out a set
of missions that, even if performed with great skill and courage, will get you
killed.
Chosen-ness is being tasked
to do the difficult, even impossible thing. The very notion that it carries
with it a sense of terrestrial entitlement is a serious error.
The Jewish people were
“chosen” to receive, live and promulgate the Torah’s core message. After 8,000
years, the world is a better place for that mission. [It is at least an open
question whether the remaining Jewish people are better off for haven been chosen.]
ON REMEMBERING
When I was a little boy, I
lived just a few blocks from this place in
As a high school student in
Sometime later I connected
the dots. All those bodies in the scalloped edge black and white photos in my
parents’ dining room chest had tattoos too.
I internalized that lesson. I
cherish my Jewish friends and I love
Never again is tattooed in
my hindbrain.
Some among our
respective communities and outside them are angry at “The Zionists, or
“The Jews”, or “
I imagine many of these angry
souls feel very frustrated that their wisdom doesn’t guide
I hope they can appreciate
how grateful I am that it doesn’t.
JBG
COLD TURKEY: A MODEST
PROPOSAL
@
Copyright © 2006 by Jay B.
Gaskill
NOTE: Some very
interesting comments are arriving as a result of this “proposal”.
Tomorrow, I’ll share some of them, along with my personal take. JBG
COLD TURKEY: A MODEST
PROPOSAL
The “Bush Doctrine”,
succinctly stated, is that post 911
This is a “no-sanctuary and
no-aid-to-the-terrorists” policy. Whenever (if ever) is it actually
enforced with sufficient will and resources, the terrorists will be
doomed. I suppose you’ve noticed that we’re not there yet. That
post 911 “get tough and serious policy” was easier to state than to implement.
As I write this, several
So it is now time to
consider a Modest Proposal.
BACKGROUND:
I believe that Thomas
Friedman was dead on when he identified oil money as the mother’s milk of
terrorism. And I agree with President Bush that we are addicted to oil.
Regrettably, we may not have
the time for any miraculous technological alternative solution to emerge. To
reduce world-wide demand from oil enough to drive down the per-barrel price
significantly is a pipe dream in the short and mid term because we can’t
control
No American oil diet and no
miraculous technological revolution, give us any reasonable prospect
within this dangerous next decade of driving the world’s oil price low enough
to starve terrorist regimes like
This leads me to a sobering
bottom line:
WE CAN’T DENY TERRORIST
REGIMES ACCESS TO OIL MONEY BY REDUCING OUR OWN CONSUMPTION.
If you believe, as I do, that
it would be suicidal insanity to allow
The “Modest Proposal”
Scenario:
This administration (or its
successor) announces to all the terror states that have access to oil money
that they must desist (agreeing to a credible verification protocol) from
aiding terrorists and from developing weapons of mass destruction. After
a reasonable deadline, the US (with or without allies) will destroy their
entire oil extraction capability (using air power) and if necessary render
their oil fields themselves unusable for many years. [This is a huge roll of
the dice, only partly bluff. It may require that at least one terror state
actually suffers sharp interruptions in revenue, in the
expectation that such a startling show of seriousness will intimidate the
rest. Once is it clear to all the players that we are actually serious, a
number of forces will emerge in the region and elsewhere to appease us.]
The loss of life inflicted in
such an attack would not be zero, of course, but it would be far less than a
massive attack on the offending country’s cities or from any
boots-on-the-ground invasion. And – I must remind everyone – the number
of casualties would be far, far lower than the number of lives lost if any 911
style attack on
Of course, no “sane”
political leader will want to be associated with this “modest proposal”,
because the consequences of its implementation would be a drastic increase in
the per barrel cost of crude oil, one with withering economic consequences. Or
would it?
Newly discovered oil reserves
in
If our threat was first
directed at
Without a doubt, the shock
impact on the oil markets would be severe, but (in this scenario) would be
limited in time and scope. Even if
The world total daily
production of oil is about 76 million barrels, more than 20 times
Several of us think that
this Modest Proposal – or something very like it – may well prove a necessary
adjunct to mere diplomacy. The operative word is necessity. Nothing short will
trigger the consideration of the “Modest Proposal” option.
Is this just Madness, or
“An inconvenient truth”?
Tomorrow,
your comments and my response.
JBG
The Human Conspiracy Blog
A MODEST PROPOSAL, PART 2
@
Note: See the
preceding post for context.
A MODEST PROPOSAL PART TWO
Waiting for a Miracle
Four comments follow, three
from professors and one from a politically active GOP attorney.
I know all four to be good
people. No two of them agree. And that is our problem in a microcosm.
We
are at one of those historical pivot points that will be written about later
with the benefit of acute hindsight. Either the A-bomb Genie is
decisively confined to the bottle in the
Here is what some of my
friends had to say:
A Professor of Economics and
Public Policy at an
Your
modest proposal is another thought-provoking piece. …
Launching
air strikes against
I
recommend a policy that directs intelligence and military efforts against the
murderers and their supporters. That the
A retired professor of
literature at a
It’s
madness. Sheer insanity.
A
regime in the region that has just proven itself not very strategically
intelligent, and absurdly irresponsible,
So
much for nuclear disarmament, rogue nations and ignoring U.N. mandates. PLUS,
no one wants to even talk about
So
we blow up the
A retired professor of the
philosophy of science (
“That
is the first thing I’ve heard that might actually work. It may well come
to that.”
An
attorney in a rocky mountain state with strong ties to the GOP told me:
Re
the prospect of the current administration taking military action:
“He’s
not going to do that. There isn’t enough time left.”
Re the Modest Proposal:
Polite
silence.
MY TAKE
My friends’ opinions in
descending order represent:
1.
American
idealism;
2.
international
idealism (in which a certain moral equivalence between
3.
foreign
policy pragmatism;
4.
political pragmatism.
Meantime, we Americans face
the future with calculated ambivalence and a president crippled by adverse
public opinion and a frightened GOP.
And we have arrived at an
uneasy confrontation with a clique of medieval mullahs who control of billions
dollars in oil revenue and who implacably intend to continue to arm their
captive country with 21st century weapons. Only a fool would buy into the
notion that these weapons are just for self defense. Their purpose is to
murder our friends and to humiliate the hated West.
This is one of those bizarre
situations in which the plain truth sounds like hyperbole.
We face governing cadre of
resentment-saturated authoritarian imams who are seeking the restoration of a
lost empire. They are perfectly willing to manipulate the other
resentment-saturated militant minds in the region. These are the loosely
wrapped foot soldiers for whom jihad is therapy for
their medieval irrelevance.
The situation is dangerous
beyond calculation.
I have no clue where the
Iranians have buried their A-Bomb development facilities. But it is
evident from any satellite photo where their oil fields are located, 50 to 65
of which are in production at any time. The secret nuclear development
sites are well hardened but the oil field sites are unprotected.
Oil revenue accounts for 80%
of this regime’s international buying power, the only currency that will buy
ex-pat nuclear scientists, centrifuge parts, and the rest of the WMD
ingredients.
Oil is the Iranian
jugular.
A nuclear armed terrorist
regime in
We have a little time to wait
for a miracle, but no time to wallow in denial. I’m reminded of the South
African example. Against all odds, a relatively peaceful regime change
was followed by unilateral nuclear disarmament. It was an authentic
miracle.
Would
that
A Footnote:
I tend to agree with those
who doubt that the “modest proposal” will ever be carried out. The
reasons are clear enough: striking at known military targets (like uranium
reprocessing facilities and missile launch sites) falls within the norms
of ordinary warfare (even when unavoidable civilian casualties result).
But hitting key economic targets (with far fewer casualties) is somehow out of
bounds. And there is the not trivial concern about the economic and political
blowback from taking out one of the world’s major oil producers.
Here is my real question: Suppose we had a pre-WWII time machine and
could have known with certainty in say 1936 the horrors that would follow
Hitler’s ascent to power in
JBG
SET THREE: SEPTEMBER 2006
2 Pathologies
@ 3:
Copyright © 2006 by Jay B.
Gaskill
My Friends & readers,
My Blog silence was
unavoidable. I’ve been sidelined recently due to a family medical emergency
that, after nine agonizing days, has just now begun to abate. I am deeply
grateful for the prayers and good thoughts of our friends during this period.
Let no one tell you– whatever your spiritual predisposition - that prayer
is meaningless or without effect.
As the effects of that first
pathology begin to recede, I am drawn by personal memories of 9-11, a searing
ten day experience spent in
I’ve chronicled this
transformative time on the “Policy Think Site” (http://jaygaskill.com/91105d.htm ) and I intend to revisit the topic soon.
The second pathology is that
of members of the partisan left who in a time of actual war for the
survival of liberal, western civilization, have chosen to promote denial of the
nature and severity of the challenge and a level of leadership hatred that has
no comparable analogue … other than the vilification of President
Lincoln during the Civil War.
Yet, there are islands of
sanity.
Even the recent Senate report
on pre-Iraq intelligence has been tainted by elements of this partisan
pathogen. Therefore I was impressed and reassured by the sober and
rational discussion of our intelligence community’s performance during the run
up to the Iraq War in one of my favorite web-spots.
The September 9, Power Line
article, part one , by Paul Mirengoff, an attorney in Washington, D.C. –a 1971
graduate of Dartmouth College and a 1974 graduate of Stanford Law School is
excellent. Go to: http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015234.php
For Part Two
go to: http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015248.php
More here, later….
And Where Were You?
@
Copyright © 2006 by Jay B.
Gaskill
AND WHERE WERE YOU?
My wife and I were in
Our stay was much longer.
As I’ll be seeing my wife in
her hospital room today (thank God she is soon to come home and we expect a
full recovery), the new part of this reminiscence will be abbreviated.
That day and the following
several days in
Today, I am drawn to recall,
most vividly, the humanization effect in
For me it still is.
Here it what I wrote my
children back then:
Hi Guys,
I wish you had been with
me. On the night of
Robyn was still asleep as I
quietly slipped out of bed, went to the desk chair and tapped on a
keyboard. Seconds later, I stared numbly at an odd color image. An
airliner had been captured mid-collision, partly inserted in the side of a
skyscraper. It was an absurdly tiny image, not more than two inches on my
screen. It framed the last horrific moment when most of its passengers were
still alive. Evil had paid a call on our most vital city, vividly and obscenely
exposing itself.
A few minutes away, the
second of two airliners had blasted
Wednesday, we wandered into
mid town. By accident, we found a sacred spot. Across from St.
Francis Church, a fire wagon, Ladder Truck 24, was parked by its station. The
truck, covered in white powder, still piled high on the rear bumper, had become
an impromptu shrine for N.Y.F.D.’s Chaplain Father Mychael Judge and his fallen
comrades.
[Note I took three pictures
of Ladder Truck 24 that day: http://jaygaskill.com/911ladder24a.jpg
, http://jaygaskill.com/911ladder24b.jpg and http://jaygaskill.com/911ladder24c.jpg
]
I walked around and around
that truck, staring at the tracings in the dust. Loving fingers had left
benedictions on every surface, like “HONOR AND PRAISE TO N.Y.F.D.” and “WE OWE OUR LIVES TO YOU
For the next week, among the
floating grief and shock, we encountered countless other sacred spaces, in
doorways, shop windows, on a block long unrolled scroll of butcher paper in
Union Square, where a solemn little girl sat, writing…
As I emailed you then:
“Evil is real.
“Tuesday morning it came to
this city, near the
“Good is real. The last
few days here have renewed my belief in the human capacity for heroism and
virtue under duress. It is an honor to be among the New Yorkers. I
wouldn’t be anywhere else right now.
“Evil has too often been
excused or ignored or defined away. Yet it returns
like a night flare on a battlefield, illuminating the configuration of
forces. That terrible light clarifies everything. In its
actinic glare, all the differences among the good melt into insignificance.”
When our plane finally roared
down the runway at JFK; the images of the candles and photos in
How many would remain trapped
in their comfortable moral relativism, living out an empty ethos of political
correctness? I thought of the hollow sophisticates for whom evil and good
were archaic ideas. I saw them in their comfortable places, waiting out
the rage and tears of the “common people” with patronizing superiority. I could
see them, anchored like prehistoric flies in amber, peering out, unaware of
their confinement. How did they not feel trapped? How could anyone
have experienced this without being changed?
On
One of my favorite movie
scenes was in the Steve Martin film, The Jerk, where his black sharecropper
father prepares to send him off into the world. “Remember three things,”
he says. He kicks over a turd in the barnyard with his shoe. “That
is shit.” Then he turns over a tin of shoe polish in his hand. “And
that is Shinola.” Then the film’s sharecropper dad added these two nuggets of
wisdom, “God loves the working man,” and “Don’t trust Whitie.”
Coded in these three
sharecropper’s nuggets was worthwhile epistemology, ethics and theology. Any
father should do as well. “Shit & Shinola” is about authenticity and a
practical theory of knowledge. “Whitie” is a wise parental warning about
caution when operating outside known social/ethical norms. And in his
“working man” aphorism, the sharecropper dad describes a God who is on intimate
terms with the common people, and whose affection favors those who honestly
earn their way through toil.
Has the academic
intelligentsia done any better? Frankly, not a lot seems to have changed
in those circles during the last three decades. Most of the academy seems
still stuck where it was in the 1960’s on the really ultimate questions.
Most still believe that the non-scientific belief systems, i.e., every
fundamentally important positive belief system relating to the human enterprise
which cannot be empirically proved, must be ignored, or condescendingly
tolerated. It amazes me that otherwise intelligent people cling to this view
even when it should be obvious that morality itself is directly tied the
existence of ultimate reality. Our survival depends on rediscovering the
deep connections the existence of which these intellectuals have refused to
entertain.
Over the thirty years I have
spent in courtrooms and jails, it has become very clear to me that the moral
center is dropping out of the general culture. In this respect, my clients were
just exaggerated cases of the general trend. Ethics increasingly seems
indistinguishable from strategy. On the street level, it is the coping
strategy of the drug dealer and the gang banger. On the boardroom level it is a
pragmatic “success” strategy. “Don’t do wrong” has been replaced by “Don’t
get caught.”
There are five questions we
must be able to answer for ourselves and credibly to our children and
grandchildren.
What is evil?
Why is evil?
Why should we bother to do good and avoid the bad?
Why are we here?
Why should we care what happens
in the world after we die?
No one can answer these
questions without recover our connection to reality, both in its deeper and
more practical manifestations. We need to awaken. I say that because our
species has been enthralled by a series of three reality alienating trances.
The
shaman trance. In
this state, we, like our primordial cousins and their contemporary
counterparts, saw physical reality as chaotic, arbitrary and dangerous.
Our tribe was told that an invisible spirit world predominates over the
visible, physical world. We were told that safety is with our tribe under
the shaman’s trance. In this spell, we believed that the spirits would be
propitiated by sacrifice and ritual.
The
white coat trance.
We began to experience this new spell with the rationalist spirit of the 18th
century and for the next two centuries. We were taught that physical
reality is wholly predetermined by a system of laws that only science can
master. Safety, we were taught, is in the national tribes or the tribes
created by scientific ideology. All this under the
spell of a radically materialist view of everything. This is the
white coat trance. In this spell, we think that the physical world will
be subdued by the power of reduction and classification.
The post-modern
trance. Those of us
caught in the post-modern trance were told that physical reality cannot be
propitiated nor subdued at all. In this spell, we believed that neither
reason nor spirit can prevail. We were told to seek refuge in a tribe or
one of the many sub-tribes defined by the oppression experience.
We can wake up from these
trances as long as we can exercise the gift of undrugged, conscious
intelligence.
As you grow up you will begin
to think about these issues more carefully. When you do that, I want you to
imagine a child at your side….
You feel the tugging at your
sleeve. You look down. You see a small wise face, who
looks up expectantly.
The small voice says, “I have
five questions…”
Of course you can’t answer a
child’s questions until you can answer them for yourself.
We should never forget the
simple truths. All that is truly important comes from three deeply entwined
relationships: our relationships with each other; our relationships with our
own futures; and our relationship to ultimate being, however named or
unnamed.
It is ultimate relationship
that gives meaning and shape to the first two.
Belief is like water.
If you let it freeze, something in you dies. If you fail to hold it,
something in you dies. A belief system is an inescapable necessity of
engagement with reality. You keep drinking or you die in a desert of your own
making. I have found these three beliefs as necessary as a drink of water in
the desert.
There really is an objective
right and wrong. [As general principles of behavior, the largest moral
rules always apply irrespective of race, country, culture.]
Everything is full of
purpose. [We, the intelligent life forms on planet three in solar system
orbiting a class G sun on the spiral arm of a single galaxy, are locally
discovering these purposes and acting on them. Our apparent isolation in
a large Universe does not diminish these discoveries.]
.
Ultimate being is at the
center. Of course, there is a measure of randomness in the world; of course bad
things happen; of course the present moment is never perfect; of course
creation is always unfinished; of course the gifts of foresight and creative
capacity necessarily allow room for evil; of course people’s understanding of
deity and deity-like creatures is confused; but all this changes nothing.
Ultimate being is real. And we are held in ultimate relationship.
Faith is nothing more and
nothing less than the commitment to a reality model for which there is less
than perfect empirical proof. The dirty little secret of the skeptics is
that all valuable human endeavors, science, art, and even the dialogues of the
skeptics, are deeply and inescapably founded in faith stances. The
alternative is paralysis.
The seventeenth century
French mathematician, Blaise Pascal, is probably more famous for his wager
about God and the afterlife than the theory of probability and his
contributions to the calculus. Crudely, the popular version of the wager
is pragmatic in flavor. In the absence of conclusive proof about hell,
the wager goes, prudence dictates commitment to the faithful life, since the
costs of following that course are minimal compared to the risks of rejecting
it only to discover, too late, that the faithful were right all along.
No one may disregard the
moral significance of creation and integrity in the conduct of one’s own life
without consequences. The prospect of any continuity of our being
post-mortem, it seems to me, carries with it the risk of Ultimate
Accountability. Pascal was a very wise man.
But the child tugging at your
sleeve is asking for more. And here it is:
Believe in the holy origin of
all things; that creation is holy; and that conscious being is holy.
Believe the deep unity whose
reality is directly perceived by the mystics and saints, that binds us to all
conscious beings throughout time and beyond time. Believe that this is
the rock on which all ethics is founded. And it is the core insight, the
ur-foundation of all authentic religion. Believe that, even if human
beings were placed again on the earth deprived of any memory or history of
religion, of the enlightened ones, of the saints, mystics or prophets, that our
species would surely rediscover these basic things. Or die.
Believe they are truths
inscribed in the warp and woof of reality itself, imbedded in the architecture
of all consciousness, awaiting rediscovery.
Believe that we are here to
share the task of ongoing creation, of ensuring its continuation, and of
safeguarding its fruits; that these precious things have been entrusted to our
care.
Believe that we are here to
practice integrity with humor and humility, and to experience the journey of
life, including all its pain and joy.
Believe that we are here to
promote the Good, by honoring, facilitating and fulfilling creation in us and
outside ourselves, by respecting the integrity and favoring the health of all
conscious beings, starting with our own, and respecting all lives, starting
with our own.
Believe we are here to
recognize the reality and threatening nature of evil in an unfinished universe
and to oppose all evil with character, intelligence, and courage.
Believe we are brought here
as children, and we are allowed to stay here to grow and become wise
children. That we are to play and to learn. That
play is the fountainhead of creation, the wellspring of joy, the birthright of
children. That we may yet become the wise children of
Creation.
Oh, one more thing.
Believe that I am very proud of you.
And that I love you very
much….
Dad
Why are those with the
most to lose still on the sidelines?
@
Why indeed? Read an illuminating analysis in today’s WSJ.
A sample from Bret Stephens’
piece:
“When
I was 19, I moved to
–
Rachel Newman, “My Turn” n Newsweek,
“Here’s
a puzzle: Why is it so frequently the case that the people who have the most at
stake in the battle against Islamic extremism and the most to lose when
Islamism gains–namely, liberals–are typically the most reluctant to fight it?”
Here’s the WSJ link: http://www.opinionjournal.com/wsj/?id=110008951
Read. Think. Act.
JBG
“PC World” and “THE Shark
Weapon”
@ 5:48 am
THE SHARK WEAPON
Copyright © 2006 by Jay B.
Gaskill
My earlier piece about “Lawyers
and Fruit-flies” (go to http://www.jaygaskill.com/Fruitflies.htm
) that caught the attention of Steve Thompson at Auto Week should be augmented
with these observations:
Sharks, Fruit Flies and
Social Change
Consider for a moment the
social consequences of the omnipresent threat of a lawsuit (a scare that has
assumed almost mythic proportions in our culture). This is the Politically
Correct World’s new “shark-weapon”. Its
effect on daily life is as palpable as the dorsal fins of a great white in the
surf near your favorite beach. We lawyers acquired our shark reputation
honestly. It’s a product of three things: (a) the duty of exclusive
loyalty to our clients (if you think about it, this is an amoral prime
directive), (b) the relentless search for money (both that of the client and,
even better, from the “deep pockets” whose alleged harmful mischief must be
paid for), and (c) a kind of Darwinian struggle in which the “kinder and gentler”
lawyers are relegated to the back room.
Among the many shark jokes,
my favorite is the one where the lawyer, stranded on a lifeboat with three
clerics, easily swims through shark infested waters unscathed after one or more
of the men of G-d have been eaten. The explanation for the fact that the sharks
parted to make way for the swimming lawyer, “professional courtesy”, is a
plausible punch line but only partly true of the profession. Sharks do
eat sharks.
Given our rich legacy of
predatory advocacy, one might be tempted to ask, “How well have you lawyers
done in Politically Correct World?” Quite well, thank you. And in
the explanation for that happy outcome we can discover the keys to social
change, in this instance, how to overcome the obstacles to our liberation from
the Politically Correct World’s silliest excesses.
The analysis starts with an
understanding of how interest group politics really works. Our political
leaders earn their way by meting out benefits and favors to the various
interests that make up their respective coalitions of supporters. As a result,
every elected legislature with a staff budget has learned the same lesson: Hire
as many “fixers” as you can. These are the social workers, the ambitious
interns, the good hearted people dedicated to “making government work” (in this
setting, to help the boss get reelected), by serving the ombudsman,
complaint-resolving, facilitating role. This is an even more important role for
a Congressperson today than, say, 75 years ago, because: (a) one vote in
hundreds is not likely by itself to impress anyone, (b) the complexity of
modern life and the bewildering array of incoherent regulations and agencies
that affect us can’t be managed without official help, and (c) sometime in the
last fifteen years, government began to run out of real money.
Let me take up the last point
in more detail, because it directly relates to why we lawyers continue to
prosper in Politically Correct World. In the good old days, the
legislative body could essentially buy votes from various constituent groups by
appropriating money – all the better if the expenditure benefits everyone and
you thought of it first and get the credit. As taxpayers began their
decades-long struggle to restrain the process of spending – since, after all,
they were paying for it – fiscal constraints began to change the game.
Legislators soon discovered that they could dispense favors via the regulatory
process, effectively transferring most of the cost “off the books”. No
regulation is cost free, since there is an enforcement infrastructure to be
maintained and the cost burden of compliance can be huge. But, in the
latter case, it’s not a taxpayer funded cost.
This game can only work so
long without being noticed. There soon arises a critical mass of constituents
complaining about the regulations (hence the ombudsmen function above). Worse,
the prosecuting agency can become so visible and unpopular that its original
supporters must leave office. [Term limits actually facilitate this abdication
of responsibility for prior legislative mistakes by producing the musical
chairs game, where last year’s senator is this year’s mayor. But that
really is another topic.]
Then some unsung genius took
an idea that originated in the original civil right’s struggle and harnessed it
to the Politically Correct World Agenda. It was the “public interest
lawsuit.” This is the general notion (think of the last class action
notice you received about some product you’ve long ago discarded) that
government creates a right to sue, guarantees the recovery of attorneys fees,
and steps out of the way. The sharks do the rest.
It was a brilliant ploy
because the general public naively believes that lawsuits somehow come from
that netherland called “the courts”, that mysterious place where there are good
and bad judges, occasional justice, but almost no power of democratic control,
except for the futile attempt to get more “good” judges and fewer “bad” ones on
the bench. The general notion that lawsuits are somehow insulated from
democratic control is one of the cleverest scams in the last half century.
We are an unreasonably risk
averse society in large part because there is a cottage industry of lawsuits
predicated on the notion that stupidity should be protected. The failure
to guard against remote risks caused in no small part by careless victims
results in a lawsuit because we the people through our elected representatives
agreed to make it so. Our employers dare not seek to terminate a poor
performing employee who suddenly claims “mental disability” because that action
might be seen as prohibited “retaliation.” Because of the reasonable fear of an unreasonable lawsuit, we all suffer the bad
employee and wait it out. Retaliation-claim lawsuits (
appropriate in very limited situations) are ready made opportunities for
“victim-gaming”, and the laws that allow them just didn’t just drop out of the
sky. The same can be said of the bogus harassment claims made to extort
promotions, the lawsuits brought by burglars injured during the course of their
crimes by “a dangerous condition”, and the countless other excesses that give
our noble sharks a bad name.
Allow a more original
metaphor. Lawyers swarm to any exploitable crack in the power structure
of society like fruit flies to a barrel of decaying mangos. [Go to http://www.jaygaskill.com/Fruitflies.htm
for the rest.]
Reform anyone?
JBG
The Human Conspiracy Blog
LESSONS FROM A “GOTH”
MURDER IN
@
Copyright © 2006 by Jay B.
Gaskill
THAT SORDID, DISTURBING
“GOTH” MURDER CASE ENDS TODAY
As I wrote (on The Policy
Think Site) yesterday:
Scott Dyleski will
undoubtedly and deservedly be sentenced to life in prison (without parole
eligibility) for the special circumstances murder of Pamela Vitale. [I will
recap the sentencing and appeal issues that day and following.]
I wish I could say with
confidence that this kind of savage, sick killing was so unique that it is unlikely
to recur.
All the evidence suggests to
the contrary.
This was the “first blood” of
young serial killer “wannabe”.
I believe that the dark
cultural milieu that generated SD’s malevolent mindset continues to attract –
and warp – other susceptible minds.
Hence: My last postings on
the Dyleski Case will complete my discussion of the “WHY?” question.
As I was quoted in today’s
ANG Newspapers:
www.jaygaskill.com/TribuneDyleskiPresentence.htm
“On
Thursday, Dyleski’s defense attorney Ellen Leonida — citing her client’s
troubled upbringing and lack of criminal or violent history — filed a
memorandum asking the judge to consider giving the teenager a chance for
parole.
“‘When
Scott moved to
“Despite
these facts, legal experts say it is highly unlikely the judge will impose the
lesser sentence. However, the judge could act as ‘a 13th juror,’ setting aside
the special circumstance or finding that a sentence of life without parole is
cruel and unusual punishment, said Jay Gaskill, former Alameda County public
defender. ‘(I’d be) shocked if the trial judge even seriously entertains
reducing the sentence from life without parole to life with parole,’ Gaskill
said. ‘Each of these lenient decisions would be subject to an appeal by the
district attorney. The appeal would take a year or two and in the end the life
without parole sentence would probably be restored.’”
My latest commentary is at:
http://www.jaygaskill.com/Vitalehorowitzdeath.htm
JBG
SET FOUR:
OCTOBER 2006
BOOM!
@ 3:
BOOM!
The next question is whether
this nuclear bomb test will be followed with others. That would be an
especially dangerous development because it would imply a process of
weapons refinement leading to deployment of nuclear tipped missiles.
Our problem is threefold:
(1)
(2) The Chinese regime is
still playing both sides.
(3) The
The ripple effects will be
profound. The next 45 days will tell us much more about the resolve of the key
players in the region.
This is
JBG
BANG!
Tuesday
BANG! [BOOM!
Revisited]
“The Sounds of Two
Hands Tied”
The experts are still
scratching their heads.
A blast of less than a
kiloton could be a hoax, a fizzle, or a suitcase bomb. Satellite
surveillance points to activity that might presage another test.
Or not.
What is not in dispute: The
North Korean regime is dangerous and unstable.
The two most potent players,
The myth is that the
As diplomacy grinds forward,
JBG
About “The Church” and
Those Darned Celtic Mystics
And the Challenge of
Radical Islam
Celtic mysticism survives as
a world religion because of its tacit adoption by branches of Christianity that
originated in
The history of this influence
is complicated, but two distinct Christian figures stand out. The first was
censured by the RC, and the second was sainted. Go figure.
Pelagius (c. a. 354-418)
Pelagius, who came from
somewhere in
Patrick (387-461)
St. Patrick, Patricius
Magonus Sucatus, was born in Kilpatrick (a village near
Because of Patrick’s
ministry, Irish Christianity is joyful, earthy, and celebratory in contrast
with the Roman version of the time. Patrick did not reject the natural world.
Patrick did reject a theology of sin, and stressed the goodness of creation.
Patrick’s Celtic Christianity has been described as “fleshly and
incarnational”.
For an excellent take on
early Celtic Christianity, read Tom Cahill’s discussion of Patrick in his book,
“How The Irish Saved Civilization.”
Then for the latest
controversy in
The
Church of England has launched an astonishing attack on the Government’s drive
to turn
In
a wide-ranging condemnation of policy, it says that the attempt to make
minority “faith” communities more integrated has backfired, leaving society
“more separated than ever before”. The criticisms are made in a confidential
Church document, leaked to The Sunday Telegraph, that
challenges the “widespread description” of
The
Church says ‘privileged attention’ has been given to the Islamic faith. It
claims that divisions between communities have been deepened by the
Government’s “schizophrenic” approach to tackling multiculturalism. While
trying to encourage interfaith relations, it has actually given “privileged
attention” to the Islamic faith and Muslim communities.
Written
by Guy Wilkinson, the interfaith adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr
Rowan Williams, the paper says that the Church of
England has been sidelined. Instead, “preferential” treatment has been afforded
to the Muslim community despite the fact that it makes up only three per cent
of the population.
The
leaked report follows a week of tension in which a Muslim policeman was excused
armed guard duty at the Israeli embassy in
The
report lists a number of moves made by the Government since the
“Indeed,
one might argue that disaffection and separation is now greater than ever, with
Muslim communities withdrawing further into a
sense of victimhood, and other faith communities seriously concerned that the
Government has given signals that appear to encourage the notion of a
privileged relationship with sections of the Muslim community.”
Insiders
at the House of Bishops meeting last week, where the briefing paper was “well
received”, say it marks a radical departure from the Church’s usually
diplomatic relations with the Government on the multi-faith issue. One bishop
said it was the first time the Church had launched such a defence of the
country’s Christian heritage.
The
paper, entitled Cohesion and Integration – A briefing note for the House [of
Bishops], argues that the effort invested in trying to integrate Muslims since
the London bombings has had no positive impact on community relations and that
Ruth Kelly’s controversial Commission on Cohesion and Integration seems doomed
to fail.
It
can also be revealed that the archbishop met Miss Kelly, the Communities
Secretary, last month to discuss how the Church of
England could contribute. Bishops are dismayed that no Christian denomination
is represented on the commission.
The
bishops’ document questions how effective it will be and says the focus for
solving the problem should not be placed on one particular minority but
“with the ‘majority’ communities and in the core culture”.
“In
relation to faith, there has been a divided, almost schizophrenic approach,”
the briefing paper says. The Government was misguided in “scapegoating the
Muslim community as the source of the problem at the same time as believing
that they should be uniquely responsible for solutions”. It goes on: “The
contribution of the Church of England in particular and of Christianity in
general to the underlying culture remains very substantial.”
The
2001 census showed that 72 per cent of Britons describe themselves as
Christian. “It could certainly be argued that there is an agenda behind a claim
that a five per cent adherence to ‘other faiths’ makes for a multi-faith
society,” says the document.
Mr.
Wilkinson, who was an archdeacon in
Information
appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Group
///
@ 1:55 am
The Chinese culture honors a
deep tradition of incrementalism. The 21st Century presents a problem of acute
acceleration.
At this historic juncture,
the Korean problem is acute.
“Gradual” doesn’t always work
in the nuclear age. Will the
Chinese wake up?
Stay tuned….
The Noose Tightens
@ 12:13 am
I now believe there is hope
for realistic progress in addressing the Pending Problem. My
comments will follow tomorrow and the next day…
JBG
The UN Will soon approve to
following partial embargo, with possible “watering-down amendments” sponsored
by
EG:
@
Note: This discussion
began with the October 9 & 10 posts.
Saturday Update:
We have a Resolution
The Security
Council approved the resolution today. When the full text is
available, I will post it Sunday. From a news report today:
[U.S.
Ambassador to the UN, John]
I invite you to review the
relevant provisions of the UN Charter below. I will reference them
tomorrow as soon as the UN adopts the final text of the proposed Korean embargo
resolution.
.
CHARTER
OF THE UNITED NATIONS
CHAPTER
VII
Action
With Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, And Acts of
Aggression
Article
39
The
Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace,
breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or
decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to
maintain or restore international peace and security.
Article
40
In
order to prevent an aggravation of the situation, the Security Council may,
before making the recommendations or deciding upon the measures provided for in
Article 39, call upon the parties concerned to comply with such provisional
measures as it deems necessary or desirable. Such provisional measures shall be
without prejudice to the rights, claims, or position of the parties concerned.
The Security Council shall duly take account of failure to comply with such
provisional measures.
Article
41
The
Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force
are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the
Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include
complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air,
postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance
of diplomatic relations.
Article
42
Should
the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be
inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air,
sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international
peace and security. Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and other
operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the United Nations.
Article
43
1.
All Members of the United Nations, in order to contribute to the maintenance of
international peace and security, undertake to make available to the Security
Council, on its call and in accordance with a special agreement or agreements,
armed forces, assistance, and facilities, including rights of passage,
necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security.
2.
Such agreement or agreements shall govern the numbers and types of forces,
their degree of readiness and general location, and the nature of the
facilities and assistance to be provided.
3.
The agreement or agreements shall be negotiated as soon as possible on the
initiative of the Security Council. They shall be concluded between the
Security Council and Members or between the Security Council and groups of
Members and shall be subject to ratification by the signatory states in
accordance with their respective constitutional processes.
Article 44
[….]
Article
45
[…]
Plans
for the application of armed force shall be made by the Security Council with
the assistance of the Military Staff Committee.
Article
47
[…]
Article
48
1.
The action required to carry out the decisions of the
Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security shall
be taken by all the Members of the United Nations or by some of them, as the
Security Council may determine.
2.
Such decisions shall be carried out by the Members of the United Nations
directly and through their action in the appropriate international agencies of
which they are members.
Article
49
[…].
Article
50
[…]
Article
51
Nothing
in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or
collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the
United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to
maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the
exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the
Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and
responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any
time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore
international peace and security.
Charter
of the United Nations - Chapter 7 [with minor deletions]
The Noose Begins to
Tighten — a Bit
@
NOTE: The process followed in the Korean crisis may
well serve as a guide for the subsequent international response to
THAT SLIPPERY NOOSE
As “watered down” (in the Japanese
Ambassador’s phrase), the final version of the UN Sanctions resolution falls
short of a true embargo because it fails to explicitly grant members the right
to take action in international waters to interdict North Korean shipments that
appear to have evaded the restrictions. This right, however, is implied,
in my opinion.
The other changes involve
limiting the import-export restrictions to missile, nuclear and larger scale
military assets. But “luxury” goods are prohibited as well as the use of
international fund transfers to accommodate any of the restricted hardware
transfers.
Given the situation,
Ambassador Bolton is to be commended for getting this much. The full
resolution (set out below) references Chapter Seven of the UN Charter (see
the full text in my earlier post) which grants member states certain military
powers of enforcement (exploited by the
Bush Doctrine, Part
Two
@
IT’S NOT JUST
THE U.N.
Nuclear materials often leave
a distinctive signature (isotope ratios, for example) that allows them to be
traced. To paraphrase the Bush Doctrine, the administration has already
declared that a regime that lends support to a terrorist group is on the same
target footing as the terrorists themselves. To this, in the context of an
openly rogue state (
“The transfer of nuclear
weapons or material by
The language “grave threat”
is diplo-speak for “we are free to attack with overwhelming force.”
Though this remark was aimed
at the Korean regime, we can be sure that
JBG
AND….
The UN-Resolution 1718
The sanctions against the
People’s Republic of
The UN-Resolution 1718
adopted on
The full text of resolution
1718 (2006) reads as follows:
“The Security Council, Recalling
its previous relevant resolutions, including resolution 825 (1993), resolution
1540 (2004) and, in particular, resolution 1695 (2006), as well as the
statement of its President of 6 October 2006 (S/PRST/2006/41), Reaffirming that
proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, as well as their
means of delivery, constitutes a threat to international peace and
security, Expressing the gravest concern
at the claim by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) that it has
conducted a test of a nuclear weapon on 9 October 2006, and at the
challenge such a test constitutes to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons and to international efforts aimed at strengthening the global
regime of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the danger it poses to
peace and stability in the region and beyond, “Expressing its firm conviction
that the international regime on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons
should be maintained and recalling that the DPRK cannot have the status of a
nuclear-weapon state in accordance with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons,”Deploring the DPRK’s announcement of withdrawal from the
Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and its pursuit of nuclear
weapons, “Deploring further that the DPRK has refused to return to the
six-party talks without precondition,
“Endorsing the Joint Statement
issued on 19 September 2005 by China, the DPRK, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the
Russian Federation and the United States,
“Underlining the importance that
the DPRK respond to other security and humanitarian concerns of the
international community,
“Expressing profound concern
that the test claimed by the DPRK has generated increased tension in the region
and beyond, and determining therefore that there is a clear threat to
international peace and security,
“Acting under Chapter VII of the
Charter of the United Nations, and taking measures under its Article 41,
“1. Condemns the
nuclear test proclaimed by the DPRK on 9 October 2006 in flagrant disregard of
its relevant resolutions, in particular resolution 1695 (2006), as well as of
the statement of its President of 6 October 2006 (S/PRST/2006/41), including
that such a test would bring universal condemnation of the international
community and would represent a clear threat to international peace and
security;
“2. Demands that the
DPRK not conduct any further nuclear test or launch of a ballistic missile;”
“3. Demands that the
DPRK immediately retract its announcement of withdrawal from the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons;
‘4. Demands further
that the DPRK return to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, and underlines the
need for all States Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear
Weapons to continue to comply with their Treaty obligations;
“5. Decides that the
DPRK shall suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile programme
and in this context re-establish its pre-existing commitments to a moratorium
on missile launching;
“6. Decides that the
DPRK shall abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programmes in a
complete, verifiable and irreversible manner, shall act strictly in accordance
with the obligations applicable to parties under the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the terms and conditions of its
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Safeguards Agreement (IAEA INFCIRC/403)
and shall provide the IAEA transparency measures extending beyond these
requirements, including such access to individuals, documentation, equipments
and facilities as may be required and deemed necessary by the IAEA;
“7. Decides also
that the DPRK shall abandon all other existing weapons of mass destruction and
ballistic missile programme in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner;
“8. Decides that:
(a) all Member
States shall prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to the
DPRK, through their territories or by their nationals, or using their flag
vessels or aircraft, and whether or not originating in their territories, of:
(i) any battle
tanks, armoured combat vehicles, large calibre artillery systems, combat aircraft,
attack helicopters, warships, missiles or missile systems as defined for the
purpose of the United Nations Register on Conventional Arms, or related
materiel including spare parts, or items as determined by the Security Council
or the Committee established by paragraph 12 below (the Committee);(ii)
all items, materials, equipment, goods and technology as set out in the lists
in documents S/2006/814 and S/2006/815, unless within 14 days of adoption of
this resolution the Committee has amended or completed their provisions also
taking into account the list in document S/2006/816, as well as other items,
materials, equipment, goods and technology, determined by the Security Council
or the Committee, which could contribute to DPRK’s nuclear-related, ballistic
missile-related or other weapons of mass destruction-related
programmes;(iii)luxury goods;(b) the DPRK shall cease the export of
all items covered in subparagraphs (a) (i) and (a) (ii) above and that all
Member States shall prohibit the procurement of such items from the DPRK by
their nationals, or using their flagged vessels or aircraft, and whether or not
originating in the territory of the DPRK; I all Member
States shall prevent any transfers to the DPRK by their nationals or from their
territories, or from the DPRK by its nationals or from its territory, of
technical training, advice, services or assistance related to the provision,
manufacture, maintenance or use of the items in subparagraphs (a) (i) and (a)
(ii) above;I all Member States shall prevent any
transfers to the DPRK by their nationals or from their territories, or from the
DPRK by its nationals or from its territory, of technical training, advice,
services or assistance related to the provision, manufacture, maintenance or use
of the items in subparagraphs (a) (i) and (a) (ii) above;(d) all
Member States shall, in accordance with their respective legal processes,
freeze immediately the funds, other financial assets and economic resources
which are on their territories at the date of the adoption of this resolution
or at any time thereafter, that are owned or controlled, directly or
indirectly, by the persons or entities designated by the Committee or by the
Security Council as being engaged in or providing support for, including
through other illicit means, DPRK’s nuclear-related, other weapons of mass
destruction-related and ballistic missile-related programmes, or by persons or
entities acting on their behalf or at their direction, and ensure that any
funds, financial assets or economic resources are prevented from being made
available by their nationals or by any persons or entities within their
territories, to or for the benefit of such persons or entities;
(e) all Member
States shall take the necessary steps to prevent the entry into or transit
through their territories of the persons designated by the Committee or by the
Security Council as being responsible for, including through supporting or
promoting, DPRK policies in relation to the DPRK’s nuclear-related, ballistic missile-related
and other weapons of mass destruction-related programmes, together with their
family members, provided that nothing in this paragraph shall oblige a state to
refuse its own nationals entry into its territory;(f) in order to
ensure compliance with the requirements of this paragraph, and thereby
preventing illicit trafficking in nuclear, chemical or biological weapons,
their means of delivery and related materials, all Member States are called
upon to take, in accordance with their national authorities and legislation,
and consistent with international law, cooperative action including through
inspection of cargo to and from the DPRK, as necessary;”9. Decides
that the provisions of paragraph 8 (d) above do not apply to financial or other
assets or resources that have been determined by relevant
States:(a) to be necessary for basic expenses, including payment
for foodstuffs, rent or mortgage, medicines and medical treatment, taxes,
insurance premiums, and public utility charges, or exclusively for payment of
reasonable professional fees and reimbursement of incurred expenses associated
with the provision of legal services, or fees or service charges, in accordance
with national laws, for routine holding or maintenance of frozen funds, other financial
assets and economic resources, after notification by the relevant States to the
Committee of the intention to authorize, where appropriate, access to such
funds, other financial assets and economic resources and in the absence of a
negative decision by the Committee within five working days of such
notification; (b) to be necessary for extraordinary expenses,
provided that such determination has been notified by the relevant States to
the Committee and has been approved by the Committee;
orI to be subject of a judicial, administrative or
arbitral lien or judgement, in which case the funds, other financial assets and
economic resources may be used to satisfy that lien or judgement provided that
the lien or judgement was entered prior to the date of the present resolution,
is not for the benefit of a person referred to in paragraph 8 (d) above or an
individual or entity identified by the Security Council or the Committee, and
has been notified by the relevant States to the Committee;”10. Decides
that the measures imposed by paragraph 8 (e) above shall not apply where the
Committee determines on a case-by-case basis that such travel is justified on
the grounds of humanitarian need, including religious obligations, or where the
Committee concludes that an exemption would otherwise further the objectives of
the present resolution;
“11. Calls upon all Member
States to report to the Security Council within thirty days of the adoption of
this resolution on the steps they have taken with a view to implementing
effectively the provisions of paragraph 8 above;
“12. Decides to establish,
in accordance with rule 28 of its provisional rules of procedure, a Committee
of the Security Council consisting of all the members of the Council, to
undertake the following tasks:
(a) to seek from all
States, in particular those producing or possessing the items, materials,
equipment, goods and technology referred to in paragraph 8 (a) above,
information regarding the actions taken by them to implement effectively the
measures imposed by paragraph 8 above of this resolution and whatever further
information it may consider useful in this regard;
(b) to examine and take appropriate action on information
regarding alleged violations of measures imposed by paragraph 8 of this
resolution;
I to
consider and decide upon requests for exemptions set out in paragraphs 9 and 10
above;
(d) to determine additional items, materials, equipment, goods
and technology to be specified for the purpose of paragraphs 8 (a) (i) and 8
(a) (ii) above;
(e) to designate additional individuals and entities subject to
the measures imposed by paragraphs 8 (d) and 8 (e) above;
(f) to promulgate guidelines as may be necessary to facilitate
the implementation of the measures imposed by this resolution;
(g) to report at
least every 90 days to the Security Council on its work, with its observations
and recommendations, in particular on ways to strengthen the effectiveness of
the measures imposed by paragraph 8 above;
“13. Welcomes and encourages
further the efforts by all States concerned to intensify their diplomatic
efforts, to refrain from any actions that might aggravate tension and to
facilitate the early resumption of the six-party talks, with a view to the
expeditious implementation of the Joint Statement issued on 19 September 2005
by China, the DPRK, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation and
the United States, to achieve the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean
peninsula and to maintain peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and in
North-East Asia;
“14. Calls upon the DPRK
to return immediately to the six-party talks without precondition and to work
towards the expeditious implementation of the Joint Statement issued on 19
September 2005 by China, the DPRK, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian
Federation and the United States;”15. Affirms that it shall keep DPRK’s
actions under continuous review and that it shall be prepared to review the
appropriateness of the measures contained in paragraph 8 above, including the
strengthening, modification, suspension or lifting of the measures, as may be
needed at that time in light of the DPRK’s compliance with the provisions of
the resolution;”16. Underlines that further decisions
will be required, should additional measures be necessary;”17. Decides to remain actively seized of the matter.”
The UN Charter prohibits
pre-emptive self defense by member nations. In a true emergency, that
wouldn’t stop any great power from acting in its own security interests, but at
present the administration will abide by the rules. We can reasonably
expect that
Paragraph 41 of Article Seven
is followed by this:
Article 42
“Should
the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be
inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air,
sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international
peace and security. Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and other
operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the United Nations.”
The existential threat
from Korean nukes is not yet critical. The administration has bought some
time. The ball is in
JBG
Have it your way…
From the wire services we
learned:
Monday
Ambassador Wang Guangya has
indicated that
“This is a resolution we have
to implement,” Ambassador Wang said. “Inspections yes, but inspection is
different than interdiction and interception.”
Comment:
Will ”subtle” be enough? I very much doubt it…
JBG
@
A disclosure: I eventually
opposed the Vietnam War.
As Thomas Friedman has
suggested, there are parallels between that war and the current war in
Like Tomas Friedman, John
McCain, and Elie Wiesel, I supported the current
Here is the central problem
as I see it:
We are in the early stages of
a life death struggle against forces whose faux-religious ideology has a
chilling resemblance to the Nazis at their very worst. [Obviously,
the moderate followers of Islam who don’t support “conversion by sword” are
excluded from this assessment.]
The length of the struggle
(probably three administrations long) confounds the rhythms and time spans of
the American election cycle.
We don’t have an FDR and we
don’t have a Churchill.
The primary locus of the
jihad, for now, is
Nothing has changed, except
our will to prevail.
JBG
Dealing with Faux Failure
@ 1:28 am
DEALING WITH FAUX
FALURE
No we haven’t yet birthed a
Western Style democracy in the
Yes, we have taken down an
old style tyrant and, in the doing, we have stirred up
a nest of jihadists who feared the success of this very approach all
along. [Note —
We’ve already succeeded in
changing the rules of the game.]
As politically correct
“modernists” we are now supposed to lament that the apparent result is untidy,
violent and imperfect. {As if it could have been neat, peaceful, and perfect!}
Keep in mind: It is well
within our capabilities to destroy all our enemies. They know that — at
least the sane members of the ‘hate
JBG
Optimists Unite! You only
have your despair to lose…
@ 3:
Optimism?
Part One of Two
We can prevail in
My favorite Scholar of
military affairs and current events, Victor Davis Hanson, has nailed the
“Many wars metamorphize into
something they were not supposed to be. Few imagined that the
Do read the full article:
The Wonders of
Hindsight--Looking back is a sure way to stumble, by Victor Davis Hanson http://www.victorhanson.com
JBG
OPTIMISM, PART TWO —
EATING THE BITTER FRUIT
@ 7:
OPTIMISM, PART TWO OF TWO
ENJOY THE BITTER
FRUIT BECAUSE IT BEATS STARVING
Copyright 2006 by Jay B.
Gaskill
Let’s consider how
Background: Reliable
Gulf War one began for
classic reasons. The
A Thought Experiment: Suppose
we had known at the outset, that our resumption of the interrupted war (recall
that the Gulf War was never fully resolved by a peace treaty) would result in
the following outcomes: (1) A rapid dismantlement of the old regime;
(2) The formation of a new government (within three years)
dominated by the formerly oppressed Shi’a and Kurds; (3) Oil
production restored; (4) The virtual elimination of the prospect of
Iraq remaining an oil funded exporter of terror in the region;(5)
An ongoing internal struggle driven largely by elements of the formerly
oppressed Shi’a who are (as I write) still attempting to inflict brutal revenge
on their former oppressors, the Sunni.
The worst case scenario was
not chaos. After all,
The worst case scenario has
been taken off the table by events. Why? (1) The Iraqi Shi’a won’t put up
with it. (2) Even a minimal American presence will prevent it from being
imposed by
The bottom line is that we
have already won.
The fruits of our victory are
both bitter and sweet, but on balance they are far better than the scenario
that would undoubtedly have unfolded had we sat by, allowing Saddam to remain
in place while the sanctions deteriorated further. That scenario would resemble
JBG
About Hope
and Community
@ 4:
Copyright ©
2006 by Jay B. Gaskill
The Value of
Hope and Communities of Healing
a
personal reflection
By
Jay B.
Gaskill
Note: This was adapted from remarks I
delivered yesterday.
In August and September,
my wife R. was taken to the edge of the abyss by a mosquito bite carrying a
potentially deadly pathogen. In some cases, the
No one of us can ever know
when the darkness will strike this suddenly and this close. No child of God is
ever truly alone, but if we fall into isolation, we can suffer
bereftness.
R. spent 25 nights in a
hospital. Late one night after getting home, I made this note to
myself: “Each of us lives in a circle of our own making.”
Because R’s circle
includes this congregation and all the other overlapping circles of loving
friends who joined in prayer for us, the darkness was held at bay.
There was a moment by R.’s
bed in ICU. I didn’t know whether she could even hear me. I told her about all
of the love that surrounded us, about all of the people from the St. M.’s
Choir, from the rest of this parish, from as far away as South Africa, of all
those who were sending good thoughts, all who were praying for her. In that
moment I saw a faint smile of understanding. The grace of peace passed over her
face.
Let no one tell you that
we can flourish alone in this indifferently secular world, or that our
heartfelt prayers are unheard, or that any of us can thrive for long without
being part of a healing community.
We received many “good
thoughts” and “good wishes” during those harrowing days and nights from our
secular friends that were deeply appreciated. But the truly potent messages,
the ones that actually drove back the darkness, were the heartfelt prayers, the
petitions to our Creator, the Holy One who loves and blesses us, every one.
When you find your healing
community, cherish it, keep it and give it your support.
JBG
The Watchmaker Leaped
@
An Exercise in
Theological Speculation
THE WATCHMAKER LEAPED
By
Jay B. Gaskill
[For a more extended
treatment of this idea, go to “The Policy Think site” > http://www.jaygaskill.com/WatchmakerinLove.htm ]
The biblical / Tora Genesis
account of creation can be read as code, embedded in myth. But myths
can capture more valuable life truths than the arid lessons of philosophy and
the pitiless conclusions of empirical science.
Yes this, too, is myth…
In the beginning God began
making universes.
The First Universe was the
creation of a space-time bounded realm wherein events could take place. But it
was lifeless.
God hovered over that deep in
a state of proto-awareness.
Light is code for conscious
being, in the first instance, that of God.
Each divine engendered Day
was the creation of a New Universe, successive iterations of the First Try.
With each “Day”, God became
more conscious and alive (in the sense that we humans might dimly understand
those terms).
We are living in the Sixth
Universe. It was made by God on the Sixth Day
This Universe started out as
did all the rest: a divine watchmaker’s masterwork-in-progress. But this
time God was very pleased, caring deeply about the greatest creation yet, that
of living, intelligent, morally capable conscious beings, a people to love, and
to love God in return.
But there was a trap: both
for God and for us.
It turned out that in order
for humans to be made in God’s essential image (as creative, intelligent
conscious living beings), God had to let go of any control over human
decisions, and depend exclusively on humanity’s ability to acquire
knowledge.
Otherwise we’d have been
soulless automatons, unworthy of love and incapable of giving authentic love in
return.
Because God did love us, God
was thereby bound to love to our freedom. As a result, God became fully part of
our joy, love, and creative accomplishment, but God was also caught up in our
pain, desolation, venality and corruption.
It was almost too much. There
was a very dangerous moment when God considered our erasure. God could have
started over with a Seventh Universe.
But we were spared.
So God decided to become more
involved: from divine Watchmaker to divine coach, divine mentor, co-sufferer,
revealer and inspirer. To accomplish this, God needed to take the Supreme Risk.
In this moment, God fully entered the universe. This was a dangerous,
irrevocable step, even for the Creator of all Universes, because it meant that
God would be shattered, divided and wounded, taking on all our pain, and
sharing all our risks, including the risk that we would ruin everything for all
time. All of these (and more) became also God’s pain and God’s risks.
For a time we weren’t told.
Then an iterant rabbi
appeared among us in first century
The rest of the story is not
yet over.
But the Watchmaker is now in
the game…
Outline of the Genesis
Narrative:
Day One: Light (1:3-5)
Day Two: The firmament separates earth from the
universe. (1:6-8)
Day Three: Land and water are separated (1:9-13)
Day Four: Sun, moon, stars; light separates from
darkness. (1:14-19)
Day Five: Water animals and birds (
Day Six: Land animals are created, finally humans,
and God is pleased. (1:24-31).
Day Seven: God “rests”. (2:1-3)
SET FIVE:
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2006
AMERICAN POPULISM 101
@
Copyright © 2006 by Jay B.
Gaskill
AMERICAN POPULISM 101
(POPULISM, POLITICS AND
PARTY, CONTINUED)
by
Jay B. Gaskill
This is an ongoing
discussion. Go to www.jaygaskill.com/ppp to catch up.
As promised, I’ll now outline
the three most prominent threads in the reemerging American populism that will
shape the parties and the political discussion over the next decade.
They are:
1. Procedural populism.
The signal anti-populist development of the last 65 years was the emergence of
governance via non-elected institutions under the control of the non-populist
elites of the two parties. Principally the courts and the administrative agencies,
these new power centers have quietly and not so quietly set public policies in
motion that never could have gathered sufficient popular support.
Examples, many obvious, will follow as I expand this discussion. The signal
pro-populist development in the same period was the emergence – principally in
2. Me-first nationalism.
Starting with Ross Perot several election cycles ago, this is the many headed
hydra that the elites in both parties fear the most, and it is the most
universal form of populism. The failure of the Soviet Empire is an
international model is a classic case of a putative universal ideology hitting
the nationalist wall. Note that party elites of all stripes tend to be
more internationalist than the so called “common people”.
3. Tough minded
populism vs. the wimp elites. This covers a whole range of issues that
will be pivotal in the next decade, all interesting.
Background and a Reprise
In the wake of the democratic
defeat of 2002, I wrote about the coming populist reformation. It will be
an interesting exercise to review just how far the democrats have moved – given
their recent reversal of fortunes, because that will determine – at least in
my opinion – how durable or evanescent their victory will be over the
next three election cycles.
This is what I wrote then:
The democrats need a leader
whose visceral commitment to a muscular and farsighted defense of the homeland
is immediately recognized as authentic, a leader who speaks with a distinctly
American voice, the voice of a modern populist. This must be content not
stylistic populism because Americans can tell the difference.
Here’s what the post 9-11
version of a renewed American populism would look like:
·
Populism
speaks with the confident assertion of American exceptionalism, the ideal of
·
Populism
is rooted in our common American social values, especially the historically
pro-family social traditions that govern in the heartland. These values
trump all the non-democratic institutions of governance. While I still believe
that a legitimate populist movement can accommodate local custom (when popular
sentiment clearly differs from the mainstream, thinking of the accommodations
for gay marriage in Vermont for example), I also believe that there can be no
accommodation for the anti-democratic reversal of the popular will in the rest
of the country in this important area of life, especially by judicial
fiat. When judges abuse their trust by overriding the popular will on
essential “family values” issues, a populist rebellion is inevitable.
·
Populism
values the contribution of all newly arrived Americans but recognizes that the
current very low rate of assimilation poses a threat to American cultural
integrity. There is an emerging populist consensus about immigration: the
rigorous exclusion of illegals coupled with robust restrictive border control
and a very high priority for assimilation into American culture and values.
·
Populism
is authentically tough on crime and terrorism. National and domestic security
considerations (especially during the current wartime conditions — think of
FDR’s “Freedom from Fear”) trump all bureaucratic processes, political
correctness, isolationist obstructionism, and fractious interest group
politics. A self confident populist administration would overcome the narrow
civil libertarian objections to “racial” profiling to exclude terrorist
suspects and to the use biometric identification technologies and terrorist
lists for all those entering the
·
A
populist environmental policy is explicitly pro-human, with equal emphasis on
resource preservation and people access. Environmentalism by the people and for
the people prevails over those who worship the environment as some quasi-deity
or who elevate the protection of obscure species at the expense of the concerns
of ordinary people.
·
Populists
favor and honor productive work (which includes the critically important work
of child rearing) over all forms of subsidized idleness. Few living democrats
seem to honor the pro-work ethos of FDR’s New Deal except in hollow rhetoric.
·
Populists
agree that the burdens of taxes must be meaningfully reduced on those who are
actually working for a living. This issue transcends all the other
left-right, partisan issues on tax policy.
·
Populist
economic and social policy is governed by the goal of promoting upward mobility
without undermining the value of the goal: to be successful, financially
secure, and to be allowed pass on those benefits to one’s family.
Liberals find it incomprehensible that “ordinary” working people, who (from the
perspective of the Euro-centric left) have no prospect of gaining great wealth,
would nevertheless oppose confiscatory taxation of estates. This is
because these liberals don’t take the American dream as seriously as do the so
called “common” people.
In other words, there is a
core populist agenda the departure from which vitiates all populist rhetoric.
There is more to come.
Stay tuned…
JBG
Populism 101 continued:
What About the GOP?
@ 1:
Copyright © 2006 by Jay B.
Gaskill
PART THREE (This
is an ongoing article — to catch up go to http://www.jaygaskill.com/ppp.htm )
POPULISM 101 CONTINUED:
WHAT ABOUT THE GOP?
Having earlier identified
some of the populist shortcomings of the liberals, I’ll now continue the
discussion with a similar analysis of the conservative side. As I wrote
on this blog earlier, conservatism has undergone a renaissance mostly because
of the excesses of the left.
The last election may or may
not expose the growing ideological fractures in the conservative ranks.
We can assume, for the purposes of this analysis, that the
Will the conservatives be
able to mount an effective challenge to the democrats?
That depends, in my analysis,
on the extent to which the conservatives recapture their earlier populist
momentum (that was driven by mostly populist rejection of elitist democratic
liberals). The GOP lost its populist identification in 2006. This
debacle was driven by a popular revulsion at the ruling congressional
republicans who were seen as phony populists. To understand how this happened
we need to review the surfacing cracks in the conservative movement.
As a coherent belief system,
conservatism is in trouble. Revulsion at the excesses of the left no
longer fully or adequately defines “conservative”. Here is my short list
of the conflicts and overlapping sub-movements within this loosely defined
conservative alliance:
1. The religious vs. secular
conservatives (the latter unconcerned about God in the pledge or the Decalogue
in the public square);
2. The “social” conservatives
vs. the “socially tolerant” ones (generating issues like abortion vs. free
choice and traditional marriage vs. “new paradigm”);
3. The libertarian
conservatives vs. the public order conservatives (this fuels the drug
legalization conflict, among others);
4. The isolationists vs.
interventionists (isolationists went silent when the
5. Between
the nationalists and internationalists (of which the free trade vs.
American protectionism is but one example).
The President first
identified himself as a possible populist political leader when he was the
governor of
The President’s populist
persona reemerged post 911 in the rubble of the
This issue will always trump
the rest provided two conditions are met: (1) the leader doesn’t break trust
with the American people and (2) we actually succeed in beating our enemies.
For the moment, the fractures
on the right were healed and the left was silenced. Then…
Stay tuned…
JBG
Populism 101 — The Real Reason That Liberals Hate Bush
@ 6:
Copyright © 2006 by Jay B.
Gaskill
POPULISM 101
THE DISCUSSION CONTINUES
WHY LIBERALS HATE THIS
PRESIDENT
The liberal intelligentsia
who woke up on
When the republican Texas
governor, whose occupation of the White House on that occasion was an
historical fluke (from their point of view), suddenly became a credible
populist, tremors of real fear rippled though the entire democratic
establishment. The democrats had endured a previous republican populist
under the movie star turned Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan. A repeat
performance by RR II could well have ended the democratic dominance of the
American political scene for decades. These democrats knew, but were
loath to publicly acknowledge, just how far their party had strayed from the
blue collar roots of the FRD coalition – hence the “Reagan democrat” phenomenon
and the Democratic Party’s ongoing vulnerability.
Insiders in the Democratic
Party knew all too well that a majority of their former “working class” allies
were not in favor of the abolition of the death penalty for murder, had
absolutely no pacifist inclinations when it came to anyone who would dare
attack America, and no longer responded like ‘red diaper baby” neo-com’s to the
anti-capitalist, class bating that had served their European labor counterparts
so well.
I believe that the original
impulse that fueled the liberal campaign to stoke hatred of George W. Bush was
fear. The democratic inner circle knew that this president must be
stopped from gaining real traction among their “natural constituencies” at all
costs.
When President Bush – who had
relied on the same intelligence that had led President Clinton to the same
conclusion – was confronted with the post invasion failure to find Saddam’s
large stocks of WMD’s, the democrats were quick to exploit the issue:
They instinctively knew that the weak link of any populist leader is a betrayal
of trust.
Had “W” been a more
effective, visceral populist, instead of the inherently decent son of George
and Barbara, he would have turned on
The populist mind is
combative and loves victory.
This president’s current
troubles flow from his inability to deliver victory quickly enough. I am
certain that the
But the political landscape
will be formed by the larger war, the jihad against the West, by the energy
production independence issue and by that sleeper issue that won’t go away: Who
will be working in this country at what jobs, for whom and at what pay?
Stay tuned…
JBG
THE HAND-WRINGING STUDY
GROUP FUMBLES
@ 5:
THE IRAQ GROUP
A STUDY IN AMBIGUITY AND
INCOHERENCE
Out of
the Box Thinking?
Borrow from — do not ignore —
the lessons of history.
Think about it. The
Baker-Hamilton Group tells us that stabilizing Iraq is in our vital interests,
BUT that we probably can’t get it done with current resources, BUT the nations
in the region (conspicuously avoiding blaming the troublemaker-in-chief, Iran)
are less than helpful, and THEN recommends that we get tough – NOT with the bad
guys in the region and in-country – but with our friends in Iraq (the
first democratically elected body to emerge in the region since the
establishment of Israel), asking them to do with even fewer resources that
which we can’t seem to accomplish with far greater power. This is faux
unanimity without coherence.
Sorry Tom Friedman (whose
newest position — “give our friends an impossible deadline and pray” — is on
display in today’s NYT), but I am persuaded that Senator John McCain is spot
on: We can deliver more security forces to
Will no one say the
obvious? Thinking outside the box here requires us to recall the salutary
effect on
What I wrote in this space on
November 15th still applies:
Cost accountants can’t run
a war. Nor can the PC disabled.
I grant that our necessary
military presence in
I strongly suspect that what
is called for now – in addition to more forces on the ground – is a new
attitude, one more informed by the students of organized crime than by the hand
wringers of political correctness.
I submit that our forces in
We reserve the right (and
promise to intermittently exercise that right with brutally sufficient force as
needed) unilaterally to crush any armed elements in country that are opposed to
our interests or the orderly operation of the Iraqi government’s attempt to
impose peace under law.
All this takes place with the
end game in mind:
JBG
THE
COMING POPULIST REFORMATION?
@
Copyright © 2006 by Jay B.
Gaskill
THE
COMING POPULIST REFORMATION?
Populism
101 cont.
As the conservative and
liberal elites grapple with the implications of coming populist reformation,
everyone should remember that the main populist strands of opinion, concerns
and perspectives are not the only such threads in American politics, just the
ones most often neglected by the elites of the left and right. This is
why populism tends to erupt from time to time, instead of congealing around a
particular party or set of interest groups. The center of gravity of
American populism is located among those who are too busy working, earning and
living real lives (elites would say “mundane” lives, here) to become political
junkies. They periodically awake — like the mythical sleeping giant –
only when provoked by prolonged policy neglect or irritated into sufficient
anger by repeated disregard of their core values and concerns. When the elites
forget who really serves whom for long enough, there is hell to pay.
Populism has a sharply
different look and feel in the USA as opposed to – say- Venezuela or Iran
because the American middle class is so well entrenched and numerous that its
numbers overwhelm those who cling to hereditary privilege. While ours is
not a fully “classless” society, its various divisions tend to be blurry and
membership levels very fluid as people and families migrate from hardship to
wealth and back again. This is the country where the less wealthy can
reasonably aspire to wealth and the wealthy can reasonably worry about losing
everything.
In this milieu, there are
only two great “class” divisions in the populist mind that really matter:
those who work, create value and struggle to make productive things happen for
themselves, their families and the community at large, and those who manipulate
the former group. In the populist mind, the manipulative class includes
the idle rich, the idle poor, and the political and cultural leaders who
exploit the productive “class”.
The coming populist
reformation will be driven by the events and exigencies of the next few years
because these challenges will bring the failures of elites of right and left to
address the core populist values and concerns into sharp relief.
We elites could have seen
this coming. Think of the California tax revolt, the popular resistance
in many states to judicial or administrative attempts to impose political
correctness (as in the aborted attempt to conflate gay rights with the earlier
post-slavery struggles of the civil rights era) and the abrupt right turn by
the democrats on the “border security” issue.
What are the challenging
events and exigencies of the next few years? The broad outlines are
already clear. The pattern was first evident with the oil and hostage
crisis under the non-populist President Jimmie Carter and became blatant with
the
Incidentally, when one is
discussing disaster in the context of growing populism, “disaster” can take one
or both of two forms: (1) The trigger event that inaugurates a true populist
eruption – through neglect or deception – actually happens; (2) We get a
powerful, irresponsible populist figure on the stage bent on “sticking it to”
the elites. The notion of a “populist reformation” is that the elites
will be able to reconcile rational policy to the main populist concerns before
a triggering disaster takes place. The game so far has been one of
obfuscation, placation and deception. In the hyper information age, this
game is now over. Information flow has been democratized.
The list of hot button
populist issues and pending challenges to our elites is longer than this, of
course. I’ll get to several more as this discussion progresses.
Stay tuned.
JBG
The Blue Dogs of
@
Copyright © 2006 by Jay B.
Gaskill
POPULISM 101
The Series
By
Jay B. Gaskill
The Blue Dogs of
Why The
Populist Reformation Will End Political correctness
NOTE: This is an
article-in-development. To catch up go to www.jaygaskill.com/ppp/htm
Political junkies know that
“Blue Dog Democrats” are the party’s moderates and semi-conservatives.
They have been locked out of the building so long that they have turned blue in
the cold, hence the term.
Well, as a result of the last
election, there are more of them. And as a group, they are less
politically correct than the dominant democrat species. Within the small group
of original Blue Dogs we find Representative Jane Harmon, ranking democrat of
the House Intelligence Committee, by all accounts an intelligent and effective
moderate. The new Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, a quintessentially politically correct
liberal had twice snubbed Ms. Harmon. The Class of 06 will give this
Speaker much more trouble. And there is more trouble still in the making.
I am predicting that the
worst excesses of political correctness will be rejected by the American people
first then by their representatives. We are beginning to see the first signs of
this trend; the coming populist reformation begins to gain traction in
Congress.
A Review:
Here’s the deal: We’ve
evolved two cooperating political elites, each of which runs one of the two
parties and shares three common traits: (1) high education levels, (2)
important wealth (3) a distrust of the populist vote bordering on fear.
Winning elections for each requires a periodic courting ritual during
which the populist vote (on which success depends) is earnestly sought,
followed by a measure of post-election betrayal.
The corporate country club
conservatives and the Lexus limousine liberals have so far succeeded in
achieving a rough division of the populist center: social populists on one
side, economic populists on then other.
But conditions are rapidly
changing. Democrats are finally desperate enough to bend the rules of
political correctness in order to recapture congress.
In the
populist mindset< the Family social traditions that govern in the heartland. These values trump all the non-democratic
institutions of governance.
While I still believe that a
legitimate populist movement can accommodate local custom (when popular
sentiment clearly differs from the mainstream, thinking of the accommodations
for gay marriage in Vermont for example), I also believe that there can be no accommodation
for the anti-democratic reversal of the popular will in the rest of the country
in this important area of life, especially by judicial fiat. When judges
abuse their trust by overriding the popular will on essential “family values”
issues, a populist rebellion is inevitable.
Some of the populist
shortcomings of the liberals were outlined in an earlier article:
http://www.jaygaskill.com/liberalismasreligion.htm .
The coming populist
reformation will be driven by the events and exigencies of the next few years
because these challenges will bring the failures of elites of right and left to
address the core populist values and concerns into sharp relief.
The Populist Reformation vs.
the Political Correctness Imposed by the Elites
By this time in history, the
term PC (or Political Correctness) should require little explanation. Yet I’ve
discovered a large variation among audiences; often –while a plurality “gets
it” — a substantial number of people – especially on the “left coast” have
never actually given the matter any thought; for them the whole idea is
dismissed as some “talk show” construct.
I believe that the topic
deserves serious analysis, particularly in light of my contention that the days
of PC (at least in its most aggravated forms) are numbered.
Political Correctness
is a form of social Marxism in which the role of the proletariat is replaced by
an ever expanding victim class, including groups that are “entitled” to redress
of grievances. These grievances can include mere slights, among other
things, the offense of speaking ill of them (an offense determined solely by
the victim class). This places open discussion, free speech and normal
social interaction hostage to the most overheated victim-sensitive souls among
us, and opens up an avenue for a form of blackmail by persons or groups posing
as victims.
Enter Blair
One current side effect is
the notion of “multiculturalism” a construct based on an ethos of tolerance so
extreme that we are now expected to tolerate as “equally valid” groups and
individuals whose intolerance poses an actual danger to our essential freedoms.
British Labor PM, Tony Blair,
a brave man with common sense, recently made the following observation, much to
the consternation of the left on his side of the
“If outsiders wishing to
settle in
“If you come here
lawfully, we welcome you. If you are permitted to stay here permanently, you
become an equal member of our community and become one of us. The right to be different. The duty to
integrate. That is what being British means.”
A major American public
figure giving a similar speech might well be required to apologize for his or
her violation of “PC” rules.
Origins of PC
What we now call “PC” took
root in the wake of the Vietnam War. It was a promising beginning. New social
and political norms, aimed at reversing patterns of racism and sexism, captured
university and workplace cultures beginning in the late 60’s. But, as momentum
gathered, even sexual banter was forbidden as possible “harassment”. This sorry
development caused distress among males who had enjoyed the benefits of “sexual
liberation” during and immediately following the anti-war movement. The
introduction of this neo-Puritanical element was the real beginning of
“political correctness”.
Obviously, the PC movement had
no sense of humor.
In the very beginning, there
were major legislative gains for the civil rights movement; race-based
discrimination was banned in public accommodations and schools. It was an
admirable accomplishment, if late, and a great
watershed in American history. These early successes generated pressures
to expand the movement by including more oppressed groups. The search for
new “victim classes” had begun. The movement reached a legislative zenith in
the early 90’s.
When “insensitive” jokes were
banned as potentially offensive to each new protected victim group, the first
signs of incoherence began to develop within this loosely defined movement. At
least at first, black Americans could still tell sexist jokes and disparage
“cripples”, but that was soon to change. All criticism of the new order was to
be shut down, and any defense of its primary targets, (Southern politicians,
the police, the military, and – eventually –all white males with crew cuts),
would be ridiculed as politically “retrograde”.
The parallels from the
communist era became too obvious to ignore. Parody was irresistible. Our
assigned PC nannies began to look like stand-ins for the Chinese party officers
and Soviet secret police who spied on everyone under Mao and Stalin. Then some
unsung comedian invented the term “political correctness” and it stuck to the
movement like a limpet to the bottom of a ship. Of course, under those
communist regimes, people who deviated from political correctness tended to
disappear. Except for the secret graves, PC reality often does resemble
parody. Just how did we get in this miserable place without a
fight?
Political correctness, as its
name indicates, actually has roots in the New Left, the “Post-Marxist Marxism”
that infiltrated the milieu of the 60’s. By no means did Marxism define the
anti-Vietnam War movement (since Marxists are not pacifists, especially against
capitalist targets). At the time, especially in the movement’s
Social Marxism germinated
among the “Critical theory” intellectuals whose ideas can be traced back to
PC is a socio-political
ideology based on four elements:
1. A radical
egalitarianism, the notion that all human differences are arbitrary and
accidental and that the proper goal of society is: (a) to pretend these
differences don’t exist; and/or (b) to force social reality to conform to the
construct in which they don’t exist.
2. Systems of legal,
peer, and cultural repression designed to punish those who deny or oppose #1.
3. A “victim” coalition to
implement #2 against all who resist (who now become, by definition, the
oppressors).
4. A style of
implementation that conceals the hard edges of the forgoing by promoting
fictional voluntary compliance, forms of social
“reeducation”, and “consensus building.”
This amounts to a thinly
disguised return to tribalism (whose membership is defined by PC victim/oppressor
categories), a de facto repeal of the gains for the individualism and
rationalism of the Enlightenment. The latent incoherence of the PC agenda
becomes evident when conflicts emerge – as they already have– among the various
“victim” groups, and when membership of one or more such victim groups must be
narrowed, eliminated, or the excluded members even redefined as oppressors. The
group of favored minorities resembles an exclusive social club. The
exclusion of the Jews in the decades after their active leadership
participation in the
American Civil Rights’
movement coupled with the growing anti-Semitism among some African-American
leaders is one case in point. The attempt to exclude hard working,
“over-achieving” Asian-American students in the affirmative action context is
another. The prospective exclusion of Hispanic-American
males (as “too Catholic” and “too macho”) is the newest trend.
Well educated, high achieving
African-Americans are not far behind. The growing tribalism has actually
prompted some to self identify as “Euro-Americans” but I doubt that membership
in “club victim” will be open to them!
The populists are now
laughing at the PC elites. Think how they/we will look to some future
generation: They/we were trapped in a prison of ambivalence. They/we
tended to say that it’s not for us to judge others, while hoping to escape
judgment ourselves. Yet we elites felt guilty because we know we might be
wrong. When some shrill members of our assigned peer group demanded our support
for their cause, we agreed. “Yes you are victims. Of course we support
you.” Sometimes we signed petitions. They/we even wrote checks, rarely
paid attention to the real world consequences of their/our beliefs. By “us”,
“they” and “we’, I’m not talking about the
strident followers of Marx, Lenin and the other ideologies of grievance,
discredited for the most part, but alive and well among the intelligentsia. And
I’m leaving out those ardent worshipers of Allah, God, Christ, or the Buddha
who are busy trying to get over their sectarian differences even as their
numbers shrink among the post graduates who hope to run things when they grow
up. No, I’m not referring to those blessed with authentic moral convictions.
This is an interesting group to be found an anthropology museum in
No, the PC elites are a
special group: They/we are the educated and sophisticated “elites”, the
first beneficiaries of first world economies and culture. We include that vast
pampered army of boomers, yuppies, and “bobos” featured in a media run mostly
by us. We live in urban areas in
They/we have achieved the
supreme act of mental compartmentalization: We claim to believe in human rights
while at the same time we’ve become the grownups for whom “right” and “wrong”
are just the inventions of Culture, Tribe, and Individual Preference. We
are “free” only in the sense that we can adopt the transient enthusiasms of
gesture politics and moralist stances with the same abandon as a child trying
on Halloween costumes. We are not free because, when challenged, the very
rights we claim to support are founded on the fragile foundations of cultural
relativism.
Rescue is on the Way
The PC elites are not
constrained by principle or consistency because these are artifacts of a
discredited age. But they are afraid to openly challenge the moralist
enthusiasms of their peers, especially their claims as victims, because they
might be excluded from the tribe. They’re certainly not ready to challenge the
notion that, beneath all the gestures and enthusiasms, there is a hollow
core. These elites are the prisoners of a facile and hollow political
correctness. The hollow, pseudo-ethical mess at the center of the PC ethos is
more evident than they dare think. Their children can smell ambivalence as
easily as a guard dog can smell fear.
All this will change. The PC
elites are about to be rescued by the coming populist reformation.
Stay tuned.
Stepping on
@
“Blue Dogs”, part of the Populism
101 Series is just below this post…
Another “Modest Proposal”
Copyright © 2006 by Jay B.
Gaskill
Do We Dare?
In a previous post I
suggested (a) that the fall of
In today’s Wall Street
Journal editorial pages we read:
