First Published On

The Human Conspiracy Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog1

The Policy Think Site: http://www.jaygaskill.com

 “THE HUMAN CONSPIRACY BLOG”

THE

ARCHIVE

Covering All Posts from

June 29, 2006 through June 6, 2007

 

 

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 July 29th, 2006]

 

June 29, 2006

 

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

 

June 30, 2006

My Private Idaho

 

Last week I slipped away to my Idaho retreat. Michael and his wife, C, long time friends and sometime neighbors, had touched down briefly from their two year long South African saga, introducing “little Guy” to me and the neighborhood. “LG” is one bright, energetic, healthy, sturdy little baby, his adoption complete, thank you, but his US immigration papers still pending in a bureaucratic loop. [C, the adoptive Mom, is a US Citizen.]

 

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 UK’s Lake Country and is, by any measure, an authentic Celtic mystic. LG is this couple’s second attempt at adoption. Their first, little “S”, was taken home at about 4 months, with Aids antibodies in his system in the hope that his would one of the many cases in which baby is carrying Mom’s antibodies but not the HIV pathogen.

The current president of South Africa is of the thoroughly irrational opinion that there is no connection between an HIV infection and Aids. Michael and C were under no such illusions when they took little S into their home, and kept him even after he became sick. The hospital offered to let S die in the ward set aside for such grim events, but M insisted on keeping little S till the very end. S died in Michael’s arms.

 

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 Idaho retreat, I can sometimes hear God’s still voice over the buzz of children’s voices….

 

 

July 3, 2006

Lawyers, Fruit Flies & Rotting Mangoes

 @ 3:46 pm  (as edited July 4th - 6th) A Longer Version of this Piece appears in “The Policy Think Site” http://www.jaygaskill.com/Fruitflies.htm    

 

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 US.  The lawsuits and the lawyers are themselves byproducts of something else; I call it the large number of rotting mangoes, a metaphor I will soon explain.  Consider: There is no constitutional or God-given right to sue anyone for negligence or for almost any other cause.  Lawsuits arise from what we legal scholars call a “cause of action.” Granted, there were a few basic causes of action inherited from the British Common Law when the American Republic was born, but they were both few and basic. Generally speaking, lawyers didn’t run peoples’ lives at work and at play in the days of Jefferson, Washington, and Adams.  For that matter, the situation hadn’t gotten out of hand as late as the Eisenhower years. 

 

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 

 

July 6, 2006

 

That Brilliant Dream:

The Republic After 230 years

 @ 9:19 pm

Copyright © 2006 by Jay B. Gaskill 

 

 

July 4, 2006

         

July 4, 1776

 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 Union as it existed 230 years ago. Something authentically new had been born, a non-royalist, democratic republic, founded and sustained – against all odds – in the Judeo-Christian tradition and the English version of the Enlightenment. 

 

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 United States of America was profoundly in doubt. 

 

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, Lincoln presided over chaos and many smelled defeat. 

 

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  .

 

                        

July 8, 2006

Thieves and Honor

 @ 2:59 pm

 

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

 

July 10, 2006

Why Blog a Murder — A Little Evil in Lafayette

 @ 2:57 pm

 

Following a Murder Case

 

On October 15, 2005, the body of Pamela Vitale, wife of criminal defense attorney, Daniel Horowitz, was discovered in the couple’s trailer home in suburban Lafayette, California.

 

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 Martinez, CA

 

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 

 

July 15, 2006

First Pray For Israel, Then Peace

 @ 8:16 pm

July 19, 2006

 

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 Israel, then Peace

 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 Israel to retreat, to refrain from proactive self defense and ultimately … to risk immolation. 

 

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 Israel’s putative friends in Europe seem to acknowledge. How could it be otherwise when thousands of Israeli children (a large plurality of all Israeli children) are going to bed tonight in bomb shelters?  How could it be otherwise when the bombing and missile attacks (hundreds of missiles, one attack barely missing Shimon Perez) are being orchestrated by the proxies (Hezbollah and Hamas) of a terrorist nation state (Iran) and its terrorist puppet regime (Syria), both of which seek Israel’s ultimate destruction? How could it be otherwise when the nation of Israel, having been resurrected in 1947 under the aegis of the United Nations with the support of Europeans, is now on the verge of being abandoned by those same “friends”?  These are the same European states (excluding England) that were complicit through cowardice and denial when the holocaust was perpetrated on their own soil. The “resurrection” of this same pattern of cowardice and denial is dangerous beyond all measure.

 

I note that Hamas, the terrorist group that infects the nascent Palestinian democracy, has the following explicit aims:

1.     Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.

2.     “The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up.

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 US and Israel as “terrorist” states and supported arming the  Hezbollah. “I think that Nasrallah has a reasoned argument and a persuasive argument that they (the weapons) should be in the hands of Hizbollah…”

 

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 Israel by the US, and for the ultimate defeat of all the forces that have aligned themselves against the prospect of a peaceful, safe and thriving Israel.  It is no coincidence that these same forces wish us grave harm and seek to overthrow the institutions that protect religious liberty and the blessing of civility everywhere. 

 

God save and protect the people of Israel, the people of the United States of America and all those peoples who stand for the peaceful coexistence of religions in the context of civil society.

 

 

July 21, 2006

Does Democracy Have a Future?

 @ 4:05 pm

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 Fukuyama Wave Meets the Rocky Beach

 

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 Middle East.  The contest has just begun.

 

The link:

http://www.jaygaskill.com/democracychallenged.htm

 

 

July 22, 2006

Cleaning Out Saddam’s Arsenal in Lebanon?

 @ 2:13 pm

CLEANING OUT SADDAM’S ARSENAL IN LEBANON?

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 Iraq’s Air Force; and

 

3.     Ion Pacepa, former head of Romanian intelligence, a man with special knowledge of the back-channel arms deals between Russia and Saddam’s Iraq.

 

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.

 

Israel’s Mossad and defense forces have taken seriously the possibility that these mass kill agents were delivered by Syrian to the Hesbolla in Lebanon.  If so, their use at the tip of missiles aimed at Tel Aviv could result in hundreds of thousands of casualties.  I believe the Bush Administration concurs.  Note that the Israeli government only briefly debated the need for ground troops in Lebanon, and quickly agreed on their necessity.  I believe that the real concern about WMD stockpiles in Lebanon’s was enough to produce unanimity is the Israeli government.

 

One of my favorite analysts, the military historian and commentator, Victor Davis Hanson, has just written a piece worth your careful attention.

 

An excerpt:

 

Iran and Syria feel the noose tightening around their necks — especially the ring of democracies in nearby Afghanistan , Iraq , Turkey , and perhaps Lebanon . Even the toothless U.N. finally is forced to focus on Iranian nukes and Syrian murder plots. And neither Syria can overturn the Lebanese government nor can Iran the Iraqi democracy. Instead, both are afraid that their rhetoric may soon earn some hard bombing, since their “air defenses” are hardly defenses at all.

 

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 Israel to wipe out Hezbollah, and perhaps hit Syria or Iran. The terrorists and their sponsors know this…

 

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 Iraq to Syria to Hesbolla in Lebanon will eventually be exposed.

 

JBG

 

July 27, 2006

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 California Murder:

 

I was quoted today (7-27-06) re the California murder trial of Scott Dyleski, the alleged “Goth” teenage killer of the wife of attorney Daniel Horowitz. The link: http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_4101478 

 

The link to my ongoing commentary: 

www.jaygaskill.com/Vitalehorowitzdeath.htm  

 

JBG

 

 

July 28, 2006

UN PANEL WANTS MORE US MURDERS?

 

 

Consider this:

Geneva, Switzerland (AHN) - The United States should adopt a suspension on death sentences, a U.N. rights body announced on Friday. The body based its citation on the fact that capital punishment appears to be disproportionately imposed on minority groups and poor people. [My emphasis]

 

The U.S. “should place a moratorium on capital sentences, bearing in mind the desirability of abolishing death penalty,” the U.N. Human Rights Committee said in a 12-page release of findings on U.S. compliance with a 40-year-old treaty on civil and political rights.”

 

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 US are more likely to belong to one of the minority categories than not. 

 

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

July 29, 2006

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 US history. The spectre of a theocratic state, however, has been confined to science fiction.  Robert Heinlein wrote a  novelette about an ultra oppressive religious regime taking over in the US. It’s in a paperback called, “Revolt in 2100” and the story is “If This Goes On”. Heinlein, a secular libertarian, was not hostile to all the so-called fundamentalist faiths.  In his book, the Mormons – who were on the outs with the administration in the story - were among the resistance. When I talk about the reflexive religious mind, I’m not singling out the so called “religious right” and not the evangelists – an often admirable group who constitute an entirely separate and sometimes overlapping sub set of the authentically religious.  I’m really talking about the passionate parrots who inhabit the theological fringes but all too often dominate the media. I refuse to give cede the title “fundamentalists” to these talking heads.

 

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

 

August 10, 2006

THE NEW THREAT PARADIGM

 @ 6:18 pm

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 Israel. In paraphrase– We may be able to forgive you for killing our children but we can never forgive you for forcing us to kill yours. I suspect that the reasons on other side of this question turn on one’s notions of legitimacy. The Zionist assumption is that of the right of the Jewish people to create, sustain and protect a viable state in their original homeland.  The sharply opposite assumption (Die infidels!) has been stated and restated by the Islamists with greater or lesser subtlety.  The softer counterpoint to Zionism, however, is the assumption of partial illegitimacy. This applies equally to the Western states, especially the US and Israel, which are seen through the lens of the conquered.  This frame of reference works to implicitly legitimize those forces that want to do us in.  This soft form of anti-Zionism will ultimately lose traction, I suspect, because its instruments are such bloodthirsty exemplars of the thirteenth century mind. Our civilization’s legitimacy lies not in history – because no nation has a completely clean record in that respect – but in its relevance to the human future.

 

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: August 10, 2006

 

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            

 

 

 

August 11, 2006

Terror Fatigue

 @ 3:55 pm

 

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 Afghanistan had not been eliminated as a staging base for jihad we might now be living in a different world. 

 

Israel seeks to deny the jihad terrorists use of territory in Lebanon but is finding that the task is far more difficult than expected. 

 

Meantime, as many in the Western world play the role of chattering, hand wringing spectators, our friends in England have aborted a catastrophe over the Atlantic Ocean: The picture of ten airliners falling to the water in flames haunts the mind, but does it awaken the complacent?

 

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 Africa or the Middle East. The goal of the jihad is to give birth to an Islamic superpower, armed with deliverable nuclear weapons. Then the goal is to continue the jihad from that platform.

 

Meantime let’s all pray that Israel prevails, if necessary with concrete, meaningful assistance from her friends.

 

And let’s pray that the sleeper cells among us are rooted out, and that their sponsors in Iran and Syria are overthrown.  And that the sleepers among us who don’t yet “get it” wake up.

 

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

 

August 15, 2006

A Brief Pause in Lebanon

 @ 1:36 pm

Copyright © 2006 by Jay B. Gaskill

 

 

When the history of the 21st century jihad against Western civilization is written,

Israel’s recent self-defense incursion into Lebanon will be described as an important pivot point.  From our perspective, locked as we are in the present, we can’t know which event cascade will dominate the next few pages.  But we can be sure that the conflict will resume in Lebanon and that the jihadists will continue to probe the West’s weak points.

 

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 Iran, the weapons supplier, puppet-master and payroll clerk for the Hezbollah and much of the region’s terrorist activity.  Toppling Saddam might have temporarily frightened Libya, but it has done little to deter Iran.

Short of an immediate full scale air assault on Iran, there are several things that can be done to inhibit and interdict Iran’s terror-supply function; money travels through financial channels, and arms are shipped in containers that can be destroyed in transit. 

 

Israel needs more than moral support at this juncture. History will record whether we were up to the task.

 

JBG

 

 

 

 

August 20, 2006

The Real World vs. Utopian Pacifism

 @ 7:33 pm

Copyright © 2006 by Jay B. Gaskill 

The Real World vs. Utopian Pacifism

 

Whenever any military operation by the US or one of our friends runs into difficulty in the field (and what army has not?), we tend to hear the suddenly emboldened voices of utopian pacifism from pulpit and press. Yes, military action is a blunt instrument and yes its employment, even for the noblest and most necessary purposes, inevitably generates human suffering. The same can be said of law enforcement in the world’s most difficult neighborhoods.

 

For perspective, I invite you to think of Israel’s suffering and response in terms of a multiplier. The total Israeli population (76% of whom are Jews) is about 7m. The total US population is about 299m.

 

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 India) has a traditional sense of conscience.

 

Had a Gandhi been the leader of the Palestinians all these years, statehood would have been peacefully negotiated long ago.

 

Had Israel been led by a Gandhi, we’d be lamenting the second holocaust.

 

JBG



 

August 21, 2006

Optimism Among the Rubble

 @ 1:33 pm

 

Victor Davis Hanson’s insights, always excellent, are particularly apt today.  In his latest, read why the Lebanon situation contains the seeds of hope.

 Go to

 http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson081806.html

 

JBG

 

 

August 22, 2006

CAN WE PREVAIL …. IN TIME?

 @ 2:03 pm

Copyright © 2006 by Jay B. Gaskill

 

 

The UN and Europe are going to rescue peace in Lebanon?  Sure they are.

In today’s Washington Post, columnist Richard Cohen writes:

 

“This inability of Europe to get its act together is what suggests 1938. Back then, Winston Churchill was hardly the only one who thought Hitler was intent on war. After all, the German leader was an ideological zealot and a murderer to boot. Still, England did little. Similarly, you don’t have to have Churchillian prescience to see that what happened once in Lebanon can happen again. Hezbollah’s avowed aim is to eradicate Israel. Listen to what it says. Pay attention. It will renew its attacks the first chance it gets. This is why it exists.

 

“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 Iraq war. The United States is not only preoccupied, it is loathed. The leadership it once was able to exert — especially in the Middle East — is a thing of the past. If its credibility is to be restored, another president will have to do so. In the meantime, as we always learn, Europe without American leadership is a mere tourist destination.”

 

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 Middle East’s principal terror sponsoring nation for some hypothetical “new president” with European “credibility” to deal with. 

 

Iran must be restrained, if possible by diplomacy and sanctions, if necessary by a massive air campaign.  And we all know that, at the end of the day, only the latter will prevail. 

 

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” Europe and a “new” UN.  I believe in miracles, but I think they follow, not precede courageous action.

 

JBG

 

 

 

August 26, 2006

ON THE BURDEN OF BEING “CHOSEN”

 @ 3:46 pm

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 Middle East.

 

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 Idaho. While my parents were busy in the kitchen one weekend day, I sat on the carpet in the dining room and opened the bottom drawer in the chest next to the outside door. Inside I found a box of pictures, black & white with scalloped edges, pictures my dad had brought home from “The War.” He’d served in WW II as an army officer, entering Germany in 1945 behind the advancing lines. Among the pictures, I discovered a small set that I can never forget, photos of dead bodies, piled high. Many, many bodies, piled very, very high. I was enthralled and repelled by these deadful images. Later when my younger brother and I got into them, Mother caught us. We never found those photos again. After my parents died, Jack and I couldn’t find a trace of any of our father’s photos.

 

As a high school student in Idaho and later as law student in Berkeley, I greatly enjoyed the company a number of Jewish friends, and along the way I absorbed their stories of family gatherings. There was always an aunt, a Rachael, or an Eva, who showed her Nazi prison camp tattoo it to the children so that they would never forget. 

 

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 Israel as I love my own country.

 

Never again is tattooed in my hindbrain.

 

Some among our respective communities and outside them are angry at “The Zionists, or “The Jews”, or “Israel” .They are trapped in a narrative that tracks the same history I know very well. It just doesn’t scan the same way in my brain.

I imagine many of these angry souls feel very frustrated that their wisdom doesn’t guide Israel’s policy.

 

I hope they can appreciate how grateful I am that it doesn’t.

 

JBG

 

 

AUGUST 29, 2006

 

COLD TURKEY: A MODEST PROPOSAL

 @ 9:48 pm

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 America must regard the countries that support terrorism against us as having no more immunity from US military retribution than the terrorists themselves. 

 

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 Middle East countries are still giving direct aid to the current jihad, among them Iran and Syria, and others, notably Lebanon, are unable to curb the jihadists within their own boundaries.  When we add our putative friends who seem unable or unwilling to effectively control the terrorist arms suppliers within their own borders (notably France and Russia) and the passive-aggressive mischief makers like Mainand China (who can be counted on to trip us covertly, then offer sympathies when we fall) and our overt enemies (North Korea foremost aming them), it becomes increasingly difficult for terrorists to take the Bush Doctrine seriously. This is happening because of the power of oil.Remember that forcible regime change in Iraq? It actually had the salutary, but sadly temporary effect, of frightening Libya and Korea.  To be fair, it also had the semi-permanent effect of inspiring the Saudis to get more serious about curbing their own Bin Laden sympathizers. But the deterrent effect of Iraq’s regime change is waning, even as its ongoing cost is irritating American public opinion.

 

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 China, let alone the rest of the developing world.  Today, a rapidly industrializing China consumes about 5 million barrels of oil a day to our 20.  Tomorrow, the Chinese consumption alone could easily increase five fold. 

 

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 Iran. To curb the rogue regimes that are bent on achieving nuclear super power status we need to deny them all or nearly all of their oil money.

 

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 Iran’s regime (in its current form) to buy its way into the nuclear bomb club (or to allow any other regime of similar irresponsibility to do that), then you would be forced to consider (as I have) the grim prospect of another pre-emptive war. And, once that dire thought enters your mind, you may well recoil (as I have) from the very idea. Surely, you think, there is another way.  Well, there is.  But it is audacious and dangerous.  Of course, compared to the risks of inaction and denial, it is truly a “modest proposal”.We need to deny Iran and any other regime with similar malevolent ambitions access to the oil moneys needed to develop the a-bomb. We need to do this effectively. We need to employ air power.  The rationale is already policy – the existing Bush Doctrine is sufficient. 

 

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 New York, LA or Washington DC ever succeeds using atomic weapons.  

 

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 Canada and Australia are expected to generate production exceeding Saudi Arabia’s daily output.  Iran currently only sells about 3.8 million barrels a day with reserves of about 90 million barrels.

 

If our threat was first directed at Iran and taken seriously, it would have a ripple effect on the other producers with terror-support ambitions. If, as in the case of post Saddam Libya, the other terror-supporting oil-funded states folded, the actual impact on world oil supplies would be manageable.

 

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 Iran were fully taken out of production, the daily oil loss would be less than half of the daily oil production of Saudi Arabia or The US.

 

The world total daily production of oil is about 76 million barrels, more than 20 times Iraq’s contribution.  The biggest loser would be China’s development boom.  But with careful planning, the economic impact of the technologically developed countries, like the US, could be mitigated and eventually overcome. Obviously, this action would necessarily trigger profound adjustments in US energy policy and arrangements; foggy promises and half measures would suddenly become urgent priorities.

 

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

August 30, 2006

 

A MODEST PROPOSAL, PART 2

 @ 2:22 pm

  

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 Middle East, or the developed civilized world will live in a reign of terror that will make the nuclear standoff of the Cold War seem like the good old days. We are on the verge of changing threat paradigms from mutually Assured Destruction (between rational non-suicidal enemies) to Mutually Assured Martyrdom.

 

Israel is not the problem. Does any reasonable person really think that the Israelis would launch on us? We are at greater risk from the French.  Does anyone really doubt that Israel would happily give up its secret nukes as part of a genuine peace accord in the region?  The immediate task is not to attempt to disarm Israel but to prevent the emergence of a nuclear armed Islamic empire.

 

Here is what some of my friends had to say:

 

A Professor of Economics and Public Policy at an Eastern University, a person whose judgment I greatly respect, wrote:

 

Your modest proposal is another thought-provoking piece.  …

 

Launching air strikes against Iran would impose dire hardship on many persons who are innocent of any complicity in murder or terror, who in truth recoil against any such behavior.  The death and hardship inflicted on innocent families by such a policy is an injustice in itself, and would turn many minds, and more hearts, against the United States

 

I recommend a policy that directs intelligence and military efforts against the murderers and their supporters.  That the U.S., with all its wealth and military might, is apparently incapable of waging such a campaign, is a telling commentary on the foresight and ingenuity of our government.  It is now nearly five years since the attack on the World Trade Center.  We defeated the axis powers in less time than it has taken us to bring bin Laden to justice.

 

A retired professor of literature at a West Coast University wrote:

 

It’s madness. Sheer insanity.

 

A regime in the region that has just proven itself not very strategically intelligent, and absurdly irresponsible, Israel, has the bomb, and is not any more a “democracy,” unless you’re Orthodox, than is Iran. Israel is edging very close to a theocracy itself, one with some messianic and rather bizarre visions of its own future.

 

So much for nuclear disarmament, rogue nations and ignoring U.N. mandates. PLUS, no one wants to even talk about Israel’s “nuclear ambitions.” 

 

So we blow up the Middle East oilfields, before they can shut off our supply of oil, and then make up the difference from the Western Hemisphere? (What about all that coal in Montana, or corn oil, or the methane gas from sparrow farts?) As if Canada wouldn’t sell oil to China? As if China couldn’t outbid us? As if we’re just the top dog, and that’s the end of it?

 

A retired professor of the philosophy of science (Oxford trained, a mid-western university) told me:

 

“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 Israel and those who want it demolished is evident);

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 Iran cannot be permitted to emerge, no matter how inconvenient the task of aborting its birth.

 

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 Iran had a Bishop Tutu.

 

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 Germany. Would we be equally paralyzed by all the objections? I suspect that any American leader who managed to take the necessary decisive action at that time would be remembered by history as an adventurous fool, worse still, as a cowboy…

 

JBG

 

 

SET THREE: SEPTEMBER 2006

 

September 10, 2006

2 Pathologies

 @ 3:06 pm

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 Manhattan near the center of things. 

 

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….

September 11, 2006

And Where Were You?

 @ 2:20 pm

Copyright © 2006 by Jay B. Gaskill

 

 

Monday September 11, 2006

 

 AND WHERE WERE YOU?

 My wife and I were in Manhattan on September 11, 2001, temporarily lodged in a tiny office-apartment at 27th and Madison, following one of those over-the-top Long Island weddings. We were to return to SFO from JFK on United flight 93 a couple of days later. 

 

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 New York were life changing on many levels. If you’ve poked around the “Policy Think Site”, you will have encountered the threads and traces of the 911 Event as it has powerfully influenced my thinking.

 

Today, I am drawn to recall, most vividly, the humanization effect in New York, the efflorescence of flags and candles, the raw openness of everyone you met on the street.  Manhattan’s hip, hard edge had been burned away and we were privileged to see the wonderful, tough, compassionate and passionate people living inside the veneer.  Union Square became the epicenter of recovery and reconnection.  I’m old enough to remember People’s Park in Berkeley, just a short walk from my old law school. Our flag, so dishonored and reviled in that earlier time in Berkeley, had become a revered symbol of recovery in Union Square; it was a deeply ecumenical symbol of hope and a better way of life on these mid-September days.

 

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 September 10th 2001, I went to sleep in Nathan’s Manhattan office, a few hours after we had looked across Roosevelt Island at the Manhattan skyline, sipping wine with friends.  We slept in a Murphy bed near a tiny bathroom, about twenty short blocks from the World Trade Center.  On Tuesday morning, I woke at 9:07 A.M.

 

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 America into a different world. That morning, we would smell and taste the dust of falling buildings. If a moral seismograph existed, this event was a 10. Everywhere we walked over the next few days, the psychological and moral environment had profoundly shifted.

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 9-11-01.” The American flag was draped across the ladder. Candles and photos adorned the hood and grillwork of the truck.  A large black and white photo of Father Mychael leaned against the fire station doorway. The station was nearly empty; two solemn men stood watch in the doorway.

 

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 Manhattan apartment where we are staying.  Evil announced itself in a succession of grotesquely unreal images, and a monumental murder.

 

“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 Union Square and the vivid memory of Ladder Truck 24 were heavy in my mind.  As I looked out the window, I imagined a huge series of concentric circles surrounding Manhattan.  Somewhere, there is a zone outside the last circle. Some people have not been changed by this.

 

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 September 11, 2001, most of us, for that moment, became New Yorkers.  In that descending actinic glare, the night flare on a new battlefield, we glimpsed a new truth; we found a new resolve, and a renewed sense of purpose. But, when not anchored in deep belief, these moments of moral purpose are transient.  I wondered: How long can this last?

 

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

 

September 17, 2006

Why are those with the most to lose still on the sidelines?

 @ 2:50 pm

 

Why indeed? Read an illuminating analysis in today’s WSJ.

 

A sample from Bret Stephens’ piece:

 

“When I was 19, I moved to New York City. . . . If you had asked me to describe myself then, I would have told you I was a musician, an artist and, on a somewhat political level, a woman, a lesbian and a Jew. Being an American wouldn’t have made my list. On Sept. 11, all that changed. I realized that I had been taking the freedoms I have here for granted. Now I have an American flag on my backpack, I cheer at the fighter jets as they pass overhead and I am calling myself a patriot.”

 – Rachel Newman, “My Turn” n Newsweek, Oct. 21, 2001

 

“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

 

 

 

September 18, 2006

 

“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

September 26, 2006

LESSONS FROM A “GOTH” MURDER IN LAFAYETTE, CA

 @ 4:52 pm

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 Lafayette, he was in the sixth grade. He and his mother lived outdoors, in a lean-to shack, constructed of straw and mud,’ Leonida wrote. She said the lean-to was rat-infested, and that Dyleski lived without running water or electricity.

 

“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

 

October 9, 2006

BOOM!

@ 3:01 pm Monday 

BOOM! 

 

North Korea, a dying regime led by a malignant narcissist, has rattled. One simple, small-yield nuclear device has been detonated underground.

 

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) Seoul, a major industrial city, is a hostage against any military action.

(2) The Chinese regime is still playing both sides.

(3) The US president is politically handicapped.

 

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 China’s last chance for international credibility as a responsible force. Don’t hold your breath…

 

JBG

 

October 10, 2006

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, China and the US have at least one hand tied down each.

 

The myth is that the US is tied down in Iraq.  Not so.  Ours would be an air attack and we have all the necessary forces at the ready.  Our right hand is tied because the North Korean regime has enough artillery aimed at Seoul to inflict hundreds of thousand of casualties.  And we are almost powerless to forestall that outcome.  Think of the Hollywood hostage situation, a school of children held at gunpoint. Think of that grim scenario writ large. Very large.

 

China need only cut off the North Korean oil supply.  The regime would collapse in short order.  But China would suffer the influx of refugees, possibly in the millions.

As diplomacy grinds forward, China must be pressured to use its considerable influence to avert disaster.  But this Chinese regime, like its predecessors, is cautious to a fault.

 

JBG 

 

OCTOBER 11, 2006

 

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 England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.  Think of a river fed by Judaism, Greco-Christianity and the Druids.  Celtic Mysticism survives today within tiny pagan cults. But it acquired “legs” as a powerful subtext of Christianity, especially as it is practiced within some of the Protestant Churches of Ireland, Scotland and England. Many of the English-speaking churches of the Anglican Communion (including the American Episcopal Church) tend to incorporate the spirit of Celtic Christianity in both worship and doctrine.

 

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 Britain, was both an RC priest and a Celtic monk. He shaped the character of the Celtic Christianity by stressing individual free will and each person’s ability to improve as a spiritual being outside of the church’s institutional grip. As a contemporary of Patrick in Ireland, he disagreed with Augustine’s doctrine of original sin. He believed that our nature was not tainted by the sin of Adam and that we earn hell or damnation on our own. Of course Pelagius was condemned by the RC for opposing Augustine’s doctrine that man could be saved only through the Roman Church

 

Patrick (387-461)

 

St. Patrick, Patricius Magonus Sucatus, was born in Kilpatrick (a village near Dumbarton, Scotland). He died March 17, 461.

 

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 Britain, I note the following development as described in the Telegraph: By Jonathan Wynne-Jones (Filed: 08/10/2006)

 

The Church of England has launched an astonishing attack on the Government’s drive to turn Britain into a multi-faith society.

 

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 Britain as a multi-faith society and even calls for the term “multi-faith” to be reconsidered.

 

 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. Britain remains overwhelmingly a Christian country at heart and moves to label it as a multi-faith society suggest a hidden agenda, it says.

 

The leaked report follows a week of tension in which a Muslim policeman was excused armed guard duty at the Israeli embassy in London, Asian and white youths clashed in Windsor, and Jack Straw suggested that Muslim women should not wear the full veil across the face in public.

 

The report lists a number of moves made by the Government since the London bombings in July last year to win favour with Muslim communities. These include” using public funds” to fly Muslim scholars to Britain, shelving legislation on forced marriage and encouraging financial arrangements to comply with Islamic requirements. These efforts have undermined its interfaith agenda and produced no “noticeable positive impact on community  cohesion”, the Church document says.

 

“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 Bradford during the riots of 2001, says the Government is wrong to see faith as the cause of a divided society.

 

Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Group

///

 

 

October 12, 2006

China

@ 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. China’s long term interests favor the gradual assimilation of the Korean entity. But North Korea is ruled by an unbalanced narcissist with nukes. 

 

“Gradual” doesn’t always work in the nuclear age.  Will the Chinese wake up?

 

Stay tuned….

 

 

OCTOBER 14, 2007

 

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 China (see my October 15th Post for the final, final version):

 

EG: China’s U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya now says “The measures contained in the resolution must be firm but appropriate.” China is apparently worried about a provision that would authorize all countries to inspect cargo leaving and arriving in North Korea to prevent any illegal trafficking in unconventional weapons or ballistic missiles. “Once it comes into operation, it could easily lead, by one side or the other, to a provocation of conflict, which could have serious implications for the region.”

 

 

 

 

October 14, 2006

China Agrees

 @ 3:50 pm

Note: This discussion began with the October 9 & 10 posts.

 

Saturday Update:

We have a Resolution

CHINA’S OVER-CAUTIOUS RULERS approved the draft Korean resolution with “minor” changes.

 

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] Bolton, said the changes sought by Moscow and Beijing were essentially technical in nature. But China’s U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya said Saturday morning that Beijing had a broader concern about the impact of the draft resolution on peace and stability in the region. Wang cited a provision that would authorize all countries to inspect cargo leaving and arriving in North Korea to prevent any illegal trafficking in weapons of mass destruction or ballistic missiles. ”Once it comes into operation, it could easily lead, by one side or the other, to a provocation of conflict, which could have serious implications for the region, for the countries,” he said. ”We have found a solution to the inspection problem,”

France’s de La Sabliere said, without disclosing the compromise. He said a Russian concern about equipment subject to sanctions had also been addressed. ”My understanding is they will go along with the package,” he said, referring to the Russians and Chinese. The latest draft demands North Korea eliminate all its nuclear weapons but expressly rules out military action against the country, a demand by the Russians and Chinese. The Americans also eliminated a complete ban on the sale of conventional weapons; instead, the draft limits the embargo to major hardware such as tanks, warships, combat aircraft and missiles. But the resolution would still ban the import or export of material and equipment that could be used to make nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles.  In another key change to gain Chinese and Russian support, the resolution now says local authorities will cooperate in the inspection process, which covers shipments by land, air and sea. Both China and Russia share borders with North Korea and are uncomfortable with the possibility of the U.S. interdicting ships near their coasts. Bolton said he expected most actions would be performed at ports. 

 

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]

 

 

October 15, 2006

The Noose Begins to Tighten — a Bit

 @ 3:25 pm

 

NOTE: The process followed in the Korean crisis may well serve as a guide for the subsequent international response to Iran.  This is one reason, among several, that both Russia and China (each of which depends on Iranian oil) are foot-dragging…   

 

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 US in Iraq). This resolution purports to limit the enforcement authority to Paragraph 41 (not authorizing an invasion, for example).  Here is the full text (and my final comments will be at the end.)

 

 

Bush Doctrine, Part Two 

 @ 6:54 pm

    

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 (Korea) and a less openly rogue state (Iran) the President has added:

“The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States,” Bush said in a brief statement in the diplomatic reception room at the White House. “And we would hold North Korea fully accountable for the consequences of such action.”

 

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 Iran was taking notes….

 

JBG

 

AND…. 

The UN-Resolution 1718

The sanctions against the People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)

The UN-Resolution 1718 adopted on October 14, 2006 (article added on October 15, 2006)

 

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 North Korea will do something to provoke the Security Council to tighten the noose and that China and Russia will continue to drag their heels.

 

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 China’s court for now…

 

JBG 

 

 

October 16, 2006

Have it your way…

 

From the wire services we learned:

 

Monday

China began searching trucks crossing its border with North Korea. Earlier Beijing resisted U.N.-ordered cargo checks. 

 

Ambassador Wang Guangya has indicated that China will not stop and board ships to search for WMD & missile materials 

 

“This is a resolution we have to implement,” Ambassador Wang said. “Inspections yes, but inspection is different than interdiction and interception.”

 

Comment: China has better internal Korean intel. than we do.  My tentative assumption here is that China wants to seem friendly to north Korea while applying subtle pressure.

 

Will ”subtle” be enough?  I very much doubt it…

 

JBG

 

October 20, 2006

Iraq and Vietnam

 @ 3:43 pm

 

 

Iraq and Vietnam

A disclosure: I eventually opposed the Vietnam War.

 

As Thomas Friedman has suggested, there are parallels between that war and the current war in Iraq.  The difference is that our defeat in Iraq would be far, far more harmful.

 

Like Tomas Friedman, John McCain, and Elie Wiesel, I supported the current Iraq war.  Vietnam was a major battlefield in the Cold War.  Our departure from the field and the subsequent disaster there was not fatal to our eventual success in the larger struggle against the Soviet Empire.

 

Iraq is a major battlefield in the Terror Wars, more accurately, the war to Repel the Jihad against Western civilization.  It is not at all clear that we can suffer a defeat in Iraq and still prevail in the struggle to abort the formation of a major, oil funded and nuclear armed radical Islamist power in the Middle East. [for more on this line of reasoning, look at my articles on The Policy Think site.]

 

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 Iran.  Our plan was to stand up an alternative regime on its border, a democratic Iraq.  That was and is a necessary step in containing and ultimately defeating the jihad. 

 

Nothing has changed, except our will to prevail.

 

JBG

 

 

October 25, 2006

Dealing with Faux Failure

 @ 1:28 am

 DEALING WITH FAUX FALURE

 

 

No we haven’t yet birthed a Western Style democracy in the Middle East

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 America coalition’ know that.  So what happens next represents our self imposed restraint…

 

JBG

 

 

 

October 27, 2006

Optimists Unite! You only have your despair to lose…

 @ 3:08 am

Optimism?

 

Part One of Two

 

We can prevail in Iraq and the world will be better for it…

 

My favorite Scholar of military affairs and current events, Victor Davis Hanson, has nailed the Iraq issue in a recent piece:

 

“Many wars metamorphize into something they were not supposed to be. Few imagined that the Poland war of 1939 would within two years evolve into a war of annihilation involving the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, Germany, Japan, and Italy. So too with the third Iraqi war of 2003 (following the first 1991 Gulf War, and the second, subsequent 12-year no-fly zone stand-off) that has now become a fight against jihadists for the future course of the entire Middle East. “What matters now is not so much what the war was or should have been, but only what it is — and whether we have learned from our mistakes and can still win. The answer to both questions is yes. We have the right strategy — birthing (through three elections already) an autonomous democracy; training an army subject to a civil government; and pledging support until it can protect its own constitutional government.”

 

Do read the full article: October 24, 2006

The Wonders of Hindsight--Looking back is a sure way to stumble, by Victor Davis Hanson http://www.victorhanson.com

 

JBG

 

October 28, 2006

OPTIMISM, PART TWO — EATING THE BITTER FRUIT

 @ 7:04 pm

 

OPTIMISM, PART TWO OF TWO

ENJOY THE BITTER FRUIT BECAUSE IT BEATS STARVING

 

Copyright 2006 by Jay B. Gaskill

 

 

Let’s consider how Iraq looked to nearly all perceptive outsiders between Gulf War I and Gulf War II.  The country was ruled by an ethnic Sunni thugocracy that dominated the majority population of ethnic Shi’a and the ever oppressed Kurds, employing history’s proven totalitarian methods (mass murder and selective torture).

Background: Reliable Iraq population and demographic numbers are unavailable, but this is about right:  Iraq has a population of about 27m.  This crudely sorts 2 to 1 Shi’a to Sunni with a 20% or so remainder, most of whom are Kurds. The Shi’a, once liberated cannot go back into the Sunni bottle.

 

Gulf War one began for classic reasons.  The Iraq regime had attempted to take over another oil producing country by force of arms. That effort, had it succeeded, would have threatened the stability and peace of the entire region.  It failed only because of a US led military operation (Gulf War I) that resulted in a sanctions regime that was being successfully gamed by the defeated Iraq regime, corrupt UN officials, and complicit elements within the French and Russian governments.  The thug-in-chief of the defeated country (now on trial for crimes against the people) was still employing foreign scientists in a nuclear bomb program and was actively shopping for banned fissile materials.  No he hadn’t gotten as far as he wanted the world to believe, thinking - as thugs tend to think - that non-thugs can easily be bluffed and intimidated.  As the losing regime of Gulf War I, Iraq was in violation of the terms of  the “peace” arrangements that had been negotiated post-defeat.  The US, therefore, was still in a technical state of war when Gulf War II began.

 

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, Iraq was a defeated enemy, our laudable humanitarian impulses, notwithstanding.  To have expected peace and flowers was unrealistic in the extreme.  A dictatorship like Saddam’s was like a pressure cooker.  All of the latent ethnic, family and other issues and disputes were held in check by the use of brutal force.  When the pressure was removed, an eruption of significant violence was inevitable.The real worst case scenario?  It was the effective takeover of Iraq by neighboring Iran because of the supposed  Shi’a – Shi’a affinity (ignoring nationalism, the residuum of the brutal Iran-Iraq War and the fact the Iran Shi’a are Persian), and the new country’s military weakness.

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 Iran. We might imagine a future American administration giving up on the dream of a pluralistic democracy there.  But acquiesce in a de facto Iran takeover?  Never.

 

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 Korea — except the latter is not sitting near the economic jugular vein of the West

JBG 

 

 

October 30, 2006

About Hope and Community

 @ 4:10 pm

 

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 West Nile virus can trigger a frighteningly profound, downhill neurological cascade. R. and I thank you for your prayers.  She’s here today, and all will be well.

 

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.

 

October 29, 2006

 

JBG

 

 

October 31, 2006

The Watchmaker Leaped

 @ 4:45 pm

 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 Palestine as the “Son of Humankind”. When he was executed by a tyrant, yet appeared later to his students as a living link to God, the Event was a coded message to us. We’re still decoding that lived-out metaphor for God’s self-wounding. A rabbi’s life, execution and improbable return recapitulated, as if in a play, the Original Sacrifice that God made in order to be fully with us.

 

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 (1:20-23)

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

 

         

November 27, 2006

AMERICAN POPULISM 101

 @ 5:49 pm

Copyright © 2006 by Jay B. Gaskill

 

Monday, November 27, 2006

 

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 California producing what some political scientists are now calling “hybrid government” of the popular initiative as a tool for setting social and tax policy in ways that the legislative bodies – controlled by party elites – did not.

 

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 America as representing the powerful social exemplar for the world. This is the populism that animated the chants of rescue workers in the rubble of the World Trade Center, “USA! USA!”

·        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 U.S.

·        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

 

December 1, 2006

Populism 101 continued: What About the GOP?

 @ 1:05 am

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?

December 1, 2006

 

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 Iraq conflict will have been moved to a background issue by 2008. 

 

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 Trade Towers fell, but returned as the “Why is Israel so important, anyway?” crowd);  

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 Texas.  Having run an oil company and a baseball team “W” plausibly presented as less patrician and more authentically “blue collar” (if that phrase isn’t already obsolete) than his father.  His first presidential campaign was headed to victory when a last minute revelation of his all-to-cleverly hidden DUI broke.  The aura of inauthenticity nearly cost him that election, and did depress his popular vote. 

 

The President’s populist persona reemerged post 911 in the rubble of the World Trade Towers.  It was plain to all discerning observers that on that day and in the company of the firefighters, police and rescuers, “W” was among men like those he had rubbed shoulders with in the oil business and on the baseball field and that he was comfortable.  Everyone in that rubble zone felt that this President was one of them, and that the “SOB’s” who’d done this to our country would be made to pay.  A populist republican president was born in that moment, riding the one issue that trumps the typical republican rep as the party of corporate CEO’s and the country club set – Don’t tread on America

 

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

 December 4-5, 2006

Populism 101 — The Real Reason That Liberals Hate Bush

 @ 6:08 am

Copyright © 2006 by Jay B. Gaskill

December 4th 2006

 POPULISM 101

THE DISCUSSION CONTINUES

WHY LIBERALS HATE THIS PRESIDENT

 

The liberal intelligentsia who woke up on 9-12-01 were not yet changed by the experience. 

 

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 Clinton’s CIA, fired several scapegoats, and invaded Syria.

 

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 Iraq conflict will be a background issue in 2008.  But how it seems to be resolved before then will help shape the political landscape for a decade or more.  

 

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

 

December 8, 2006

THE HAND-WRINGING STUDY GROUP FUMBLES

 @ 5:03 pm

  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 Iraq and must do so yesterday.

 

Will no one say the obvious?  Thinking outside the box here requires us to recall the salutary effect on Iran, Syria, and even Korea when we took down Iran’s dictator with such startling swiftness.  The prime mover in the current unrest inside Iraq (allowing for sectarian thug-ism, the opportunistic exploitation of a temporary governmental weakness) is Iran, whose aims are clear: to extend control to its former enemy.  We need to have a conversation with Iran all right, but one best done via back channels with steely resolve.  Bug out of this situation or we will unleash the hounds of hell.  We are now in the situation in which our unique power to break things – if credibly threatened – will do far more good than all of the Baker style diplomacy and “economic incentives” in the world.  Iran has a jugular vein and we have the ability to step on it.  I grant that, even if Iran is cowed into quiescence, we will need more forces in-country, at least for 20 months, but the end game is actually doable only when we are able to intimidate the trouble makers.  Sorry, my peace loving friends and colleagues, but this situation calls for muscle, resolve and a bit of old fashioned Mafioso style ruthlessness.  Peace will follow justice and the latter must sometimes be imposed by the good guys on the bad guys.  We can wish forever that the naïve hopes of the naïve among us will somehow come true without intimidation, but thugs are thugs.  It has always been so.

 

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 Iraq is a very hard sell at the moment, but the ruinous consequences of our ignominious defeat there would be felt for decades. 

 

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 Iraq need to preserve the ability to act unilaterally, especially when the nascent government is paralyzed by fear and indecision.  Our position should be bright line simple and well advertised: 

 

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: Iraq tamed, Iran turned, Syria cowed. 

 

JBG

 

December 6, 2006

THE COMING POPULIST REFORMATION?

 @ 5:16 pm

Copyright © 2006 by Jay B. Gaskill

  

December 6, 2006

 

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 9-11-01 attacks on American soil.  There are a number of vital sub-issues, among them the primacy of the English language, the obligation of the elites to control the influx of unassimilated “outsiders” and to vigorously promote the assimilation of the “newly arrived” and the fervent wish of those who work for a living to be able to retain their earnings.  These populist issues (in altered form) are alive and well in Europe where the elites may have irretrievably mucked thing up.  Here, the American elites on the right and left are on notice that there is still time to avert disaster. 

 

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

   

December 9, 2006

The Blue Dogs of Washington - The Coming End of Political Correctness

 @ 10:30 pm

Copyright © 2006 by Jay B. Gaskill

 

POPULISM 101

The Series

By

Jay B. Gaskill

 

The Blue Dogs of Washington:

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 Atlantic:

 

“If outsiders wishing to settle in Britain were not prepared to conform to the virtues of tolerance then they should stay away. He added: ‘Conform to it; or don’t come here. We don’t want the hate-mongers, whatever their race, religion or creed.

 

“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 Berkeley epicenter, free love, free drugs libertarianism, traditional social democracy, a mid-western patriotic decency (“We just don’t do that!”) were equally strong elements of this unlikely coalition.

 

Social Marxism germinated among the “Critical theory” intellectuals whose ideas can be traced back to Germany’s Weimar Republic. The Weimar Republic (1919-33) ended in political and economic chaos and Hitler’s takeover. Among the German intellectuals of that period, two “social” Marxists, Eric Fromm (1900-1980), and Herbert Marcuse (1838-79), moved to New York and lectured at the “Institute of Social Research”. Although Fromm and Marcuse disagreed (the latter accused the former of espousing “hedonism”), both were highly visible critics of American capitalism and bourgeois culture, contributing to the “New Left” and the subsequent ideas that formed modern (should I say postmodern?) “PC”. Of the two, Marcuse was a stronger critic of Soviet Stalinist excesses and Fromm was a stronger exponent of sexual, gender liberation.

 

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 Kansas.  All these people were inoculated against the essential ambivalence I referred to.

 

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 Europe and North America, but this is the information age, so actually we live all over the place; we’re a widely dispersed global elite. For the most part, we are the comfortable cohort who find peer support in our shared essential ambivalence.  We include teachers, professionals, leaders, journalists, and consumers. We are the “new minds,” the children of “science”. We are the new generations weaned in the post-religious culture.

 

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.

 

December 11, 2006

Stepping on Iran’s Jugular

 @ 4:00 pm

“Blue Dogs”, part of the Populism 101 Series is just below this post… 

 

December 11, 2006

Another “Modest Proposal”

Copyright © 2006 by Jay B. Gaskill

 

Do We Dare?

 

In a previous post I suggested (a) that the fall of Iraq would be a disaster (b) that the least we could do in support of its fragile new government would be to restrain Iran whose cross border efforts to undermine democracy in Iraq must be stopped and that (c) we have the power to “step on Iran’s jugular”. 

 

In today’s Wall Street Journal editorial pages we read: