Vol. 3 No. 11 (March 2005)

Uncommon Denominator

The Newsletter of the Commonweal Institute
www.commonwealinstitute.org

"We must stitch up what has been torn apart, render justice imaginable in the world which is so obviously unjust, make happiness meaningful for nations poisoned by the misery of this century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But tasks are called superhuman when men take a long time to complete them, that is all."
-- Albert Camus

Talking Points: Cultivating young cultural conservatives
Wit and Wisdom: Alan Greenspan's new job
Around the Corner: Look to Russia
Check It Out The "Illiberal Conservative Media"
Quoted! Antonin Scalia on democracy
Featured Article: "The Nature of Normal Human Variety"
Happenings: Monthly round-up
Endorsements: Anna Eshoo
Get Involved: Spread the word; become a contributor

TALKING POINTS

Last weekend, the Hyatt Regency in Dallas was overrun with young people -- ranging from third grade to high school -- who spell trouble for the progressive wing of American politics.

This was the annual convention of the North Texas chapter of Leadership Training for Christ, and it filled the hotel to capacity. Bear in mind, the Dallas Hyatt is a massive gleaming edifice, with 25 floors and over 1,100 guest rooms. The LTC guests began arriving on Good Friday and stayed through Easter Sunday. Some of them brought their own portable microwaves, and most of them brought Igloo coolers. The hotel's valet service was strained to the limit with SUVs, and the hotel's elevators groaned throughout the weekend. The DFW Airport Hyatt and the Dallas Wyndham Anatole were also booked for the convention.

Leadership Training for Christ, which has a variety of regional branches, is an organization "designed to stimulate and encourage spiritual, mental, and social growth" among youth and its "mission is to achieve this growth by developing skills in leadership, Bible knowledge, and Christian servanthood. Skill development in each of these areas will be accomplished through participation in a variety of individual and group events," such as plays, Bible quizzes, puppet shows, sing-alongs, and so forth. LTC is designed for students in grades 3 through 12. It appears to be particularly strong in the "red states", with other conferences this spring in such cities as Indianapolis, IN; Mobile, AL; and Tulsa, OK.

By and large, the kids at the Dallas Hyatt Regency seemed like good, normal kids. They ran up and down the halls, they talked on their cell-phones, they hammed it up for their friends. A few of them wore shirts embossed with scriptural quotations. One young lad had long scraggly hair, but the vast majority came well-groomed.

Why should progressives worry about such a wholesome, apolitical event? Because when it comes to cultivating progressive values among young people, and stimulating a sense of common purpose among the next generation, the Left is falling is behind. From high school groups promoting "intelligent design" to Federalist Society chapters at law schools to media training centers for young activists, conservative America is proving masterful at the arts of ideological branding, recruitment, and retention. (For two recent pieces on conservative youth, see David Kirkpatrick's New York Times article "College for the Home-Schooled Is Shaping Leaders for the Right" and Christopher Hayes's "Guy Benson, The Message Machine," a Campus Progress article about a 19-year-old intern at Fox News).

We have no way of knowing the political views of the guests at the Leadership Training for Christ convention, and not all of the kids in attendance will grow up into conservatives, but the probabilities here are a matter of common sense. This was not, after all, a gathering of the Wiccan-Vegan Youth League of Burlington, Vermont. And given the ever-closer relationship between religion and politics in the United States, an evangelical retreat of this sort is not simply an opportunity to sing "Michael Row the Boat Ashore." It is part and parcel of an ongoing tidal shift in American culture -- one that draws on the sincere feelings and beliefs of millions of people, but also one that is fed and guided and used by a political elite.

That makes it sound somewhat sinister, of course, and one certainly doesn't want to criticize the LTC kids themselves. Rather, the convention provided an object lesson in how ideas and values, political or otherwise, thrive in a culture that allows for free expression and free assembly. They thrive when adults actively encourage children to embrace them -- particularly if there's fun to be had at the same time. And they thrive when powerful figures prove adept at influencing the institutions of culture, particularly the media and the schools. This stuff is not just about political philosophies; it's about human relationships and communication, and too often it seems as though the Right is playing chess while the Left is playing checkers.

At one point over the weekend, the elevators at the Hyatt Regency were so backed up that some people simply started taking the stairs -- an apt metaphor, perhaps, for the long climb we have in front of us.

WIT AND WISDOM

GREENSPAN TO HEAD UP U2
Becomes Lead Singer as Bono Leaves for World Bank

"Longtime Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan stunned the worlds of finance and pop music today by announcing that he would leave his post "effective immediately" to become lead singer of the Irish rock band U2.

"In filling the key position with the platinum-selling musical act, Mr. Greenspan is replacing U2 lead singer Bono, who is rumored to be heading for the top job at the World Bank.

"Mr. Greenspan struck many observers as an unlikely choice to assume such an important role in one of the world's most influential rock bands, since his convoluted and often cryptic use of the English language seems incompatible with the more straightforward demands of rock music."

-- from The Borowitz Report. Read more.

AROUND THE CORNER

What a difference 20 years makes. Back in the good old days of Cyndi Lauper and Ronald Reagan, the simplicity of the U.S.-Soviet conflict provided a certain predictability to American foreign policy. We knew who our enemies were (the evil empire and its minions) and we knew who our allies were (democracies, oil producers, and dollar-hungry countries). Today, our enemies are not necessarily state actors, some states are taking advantage of the murkiness of the situation to operate in subtle ways to undermine American interests, and our allies no longer need the United States as much as they used to. In this murky and shifting geopolitical environment, Russia has been all but lost to the American public consciousness, and downgraded as a priority within the foreign policy establishment, but that's a dangerous situation that cannot be allowed to drift.

The American-Russian relationship has been adrift since the Yeltsin presidency, notwithstanding some gestures toward common cause in the "war on terrorism." Even before 9/11, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy in Russia, in reports by working groups in Washington and Moscow, described the relationship as one of "sluggish crisis," which was undergoing a "systematic ratcheting down." The reports pointed to unrealistic expectations on each side, to a dramatic disparity in power between the two countries, and to misestimates of post-Cold War complexities as major underlying reasons for the deterioration of the relationship.

Over the last five years or so, the problem has only gotten worse, in large measure because the United States's foreign policy attention has shifted overwhelmingly to the Middle East. Although Condoleeza Rice, a former academic Kremlinologist, now heads the State Department, and although George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin enjoy some personal rapport and share certain anti-terrorist policies, there is little indication that Russia is going to move up the American priority list any time soon. Crucially, this is not just a matter of choice but of constraint. The war in Iraq, whatever benefits it may ultimately bring about, has not only badly distracted the United States from other serious problems but made it more difficult to marshall the resources necessary to deal with them and more difficult to enlist our allies' help. That is unfortunate, because Russia is a simmering cauldron that poses a long-term threat to regional stability and to American interests.

The Russian Federation faces three major internal problems that threaten to become external problems if not addressed quickly and intelligently.

AIDS. Several recent reports by the U.N. and private NGOs have pointed to a burgeoning AIDS crisis in Russia that could surpass in severity similar outbreaks in Africa. The country has one of the highest rates of infection in the world, and the disease is moving into the mainstream population, abetted by a lack of government attention and honesty. Although official statistics put the number of infections at about 200,000, medical experts suggest that it could be as high as 2 million. In 2002, the National Intelligence Council reported that "the rise in HIV/AIDS will exacerbate the population decline and severe health problems already plaguing the country, creating even greater difficulty for Russia to rebound economically. These trends may spark tensions over spending priorities and sharpen military manpower shortages." The overall outlook is dire for the country's social and economic well-being. In an Oct. 2004 article titled "A Disappearing Country," New Yorker writer Michael Specter observed that "no industrialized or advanced country has ever had such a reversal of general health (except during wartime), and what it implies for the future of Russia cannot be good." (See also Scott Peterson's "Reluctantly, Russia Confronts AIDS" in The Christian Science Monitor).

North Caucasus Instability. The former Soviet republics along Russia's southern borders -- particularly Chechnya, Georgia, South Ossetia, Daghestan, and Azerbaijan -- remain embroiled in political and military conflicts that could undermine the internal stability of the Russian Federation. The recent overthrow of the government of Kyrgyzstan may be a harbinger of more trouble to come. Previously held together by the power of the Soviet Union, these small states are seeing the same kind of ethnic and religious strife that has cropped up around the world in the last decade. The regional threat is twofold: first, that the Caucasian conflicts will directly affect the integrity of the Russian state, and second, that Russia, in order to contain the situation, will over-react and slide toward despotism. In a recent paper, Larisa Ruban, of the Institute of Socio-Political Research at the Russian Academy of Sciences, wrote that "Time will tell whether Russia can overcome this emergent animosity [of the North Caucasus]. History as a guide teaches us, that this problem will not be easily solved. It is important to understand that the Caucasus was for many centuries a battle ground between the competing Russian and Ottoman empires, and that the long history of conflict between the two has been permenantly embedded in the psyche of the mountain peoples."

Unsecured Nuclear Materials. Although Russian government officials insist that the country's nuclear weapons are firmly under lock and key, and that there has been no serious breach, Western experts are much less sanguine. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, "Russian nuclear materials are less well-protected [than its weapons], including storage sites for an estimated 1,100 metric tons of highly enriched uranium and 160 metric tons of plutonium." Also, since Russia is continually remanufacturing its aging weapons, it is always transporting them around the countryside to and from factories and deployment sites. "This perpetual motion," wrote Bruce Blair in the Sept. 19, 2004 Washington Post, "creates a serious vulnerability, because transportation is the Achilles' heel of nuclear weapons security…. In Russia, the rail and other transportation lines linking the factory to the far-flung nuclear bases across 10 time zones are buzzing with nuclear activity and provide fertile ground for terrorist interception." These risks are only heightened by American inattention and by Russia's economic problems, which mean that there's little money for either well-paid guards or well-secured facilities.

So what can be done? The basic answer is that the United States must, to the degree possible, move quickly to elevate Russia closer to the top of the foreign policy agenda and help provide the resources necessary to confront the problems it faces. More specifically, important policy measures include:

* Expand and accelerate the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which is designed to reduce both countries' nuclear arsenals and to help secure nuclear and radiological materials in secure facilities. This requires much additional funding, but that money could come from moving away from a focus on nuclear deterrence (which requires the maintenance of a massive arsneal) to a focus on nonproliferation.

* The initiation of a multilateral diplomatic effort aimed at resolving the conflicts in the North Caucasus. All the countries in the region -- including Turkey, Iran, and Ukraine -- have an interest in preventing the conflicts from spreading, and the United States should play a leading role in bringing these parties to the table.

* A sustained, intensive campaign against the spread of AIDS in Russia, which will involve technical medical assistance, educational programs, and an insistence that the Russian government confront the issue head-on.

The central problem with the "war on terrorism" is that it has warped and narrowed the United States's understanding of national security. We must take a comprehensive and long-term view of the various threats that Americans face, including threats from global warming and environmental deterioration. There's been a lot of talk recently about the rise of China and the implications for American security, but at least China is a stable, fairly smoothly functioning state. Russia, by contrast, is tottering on the brink, and if it goes over, we don't want to be in the position of having done nothing to stop it.

CHECK IT OUT

The myth of a "liberal media" is something that has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, given the centrist or conservative cast of most media outlets, but so far it's been hard to find information about the issue in one centralized location. Now, a new website called "Illiberal Conservative Media" (ICM) has emerged to provide a database of information, reports, and news items on ideological bias in the country's radio, TV, and print news. A ongoing work in progress, ICM bills itself as "a project to understand and illustrate the real nature of media bias in the United States." Its founder, the anonymous blogger who refers to himself as The Realist and "a proud member of the Reality-Based Community," has observed: "Interestingly, as conservatives gained more power in the American media and political landscape, their cries of a 'liberal media' seem to have gone up rather than down. Here, I show that claims that the American media is (overall) 'liberal' are fiction." The site will help to inject some real information into debate over media bias, a debate which so far has consisted mainly of opinion. Check it out.

QUOTED!

"It is easy to see the hand of the Almighty behind rulers whose forebears, in the dim mists of history, were supposedly anointed by God, or who at least obtained their thrones in awful and unpredictable battles whose outcome was determined by the Lord of Hosts, that is, the Lord of Armies. It is much more difficult to see the hand of God-or any higher moral authority-behind the fools and rogues (as the losers would have it) whom we ourselves elect to do our own will. How can their power to avenge -- to vindicate the 'public order' -- be any greater than our own?" -- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

FEATURED ARTICLE

The following is an excerpt from "The Nature of Normal Human Variety," a conversation with Armand Leroi, a Reader in Evolutionary Developmental Biology at Imperial College, London.

"The reason I love the problem of normal human variety is because, almost uniquely among modern scientific problems, it is a problem that we can apprehend as we walk down the street. We live in an age now where the deepest scientific problems are buried away from our immediate perception. They concern the origin of the universe. They concern the relationships of subatomic particles. They concern the nature and structure of the human genome. Nobody can see these things without large bits of expensive equipment. But when I consider the problem of human variety I feel as Aristotle must have felt when he first walked down to the shore at Lesvos for the first time. The world is new again. What is more, it is a problem that we can now solve, a question we can now answer. And I think we should.

"Of course, there will be people who object. There will be people who will say that this is a revival of racial science. Perhaps so. I would argue, however, that even if this is a revival of racial science, we should engage in it for it does not follow that it is a revival of racist science. Indeed, I would argue, that it is just the opposite. How shall I put it? If you want to prove, what most of us believe, that skin colour does not give the measure of a man, that it tells nothing about his abilities or temperament-then surely the best way is to learn about the genetics of skin colour and the genetics of cognitive ability and demonstrate that they have nothing to do with each other? The point is that there will always be people who wish to construct socially unjust theories about racial differences. And though it is true that science can be bent to evil ends, it is more often the case that injustice creeps in through the cracks of our ignorance than anything else. It is to finally close off those cracks that we should be studying the genetic basis of human variety.

Click here to read the whole article.

HAPPENINGS

New Board Members -- The Commonweal Institute is expanding its Board of Directors, and is proud to announce the following recent additions:

Mike Pogue, the CEO of Last Mile Research, an Internet technology research firm and integrator of data distribution solutions for the delivery of high speed Internet access to commercial markets. Mr. Pogue began his career at Price Waterhouse, New York City, in the mid-1970s. He then embarked on a career of company-building as employee #3 in charge of sales and marketing for FactSet Data Systems, Inc., an institutional investment research company that now has over 200 employees and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. He then moved from finance to the entertainment industry, where, as President, he took Rabbit Ears Productions, Inc., from the kitchen table to Grammy and Action for Children's Television Award winner in five years with over 65 film productions, 4 television series, and multiple high definition, CD-I and CD-ROM titles. In 1999, Mr. Pogue co-founded Angel Capital Network, a Sausalito based Venture Investment bank. He continues to be active in matching early stage companies with seasoned Angel Investors in a number of western states.

Molly Moon Neitzel, the Executive Director of Music for America (MfA), an nonprofit activist organization that was started by young, disenchanted voters who became active in politics through the Meet-Up phenomenon. MfA partners with artists, venues, and regular people to organize concerts and cultural events in a wide range of genres -- blue grass, hip-hop, rock, comedy, and cartoons. At these events and in other cultural environments, MfA works in a peer-to-peer fashion to register and educate young voters and inspire the younger generation (14-24 years of age) to get involved in progressive politics.

Milbrey McLaughlin, Ph.D., the David Jacks Professor of Education and Public Policy at Stanford University. She is Co-Director of the Center for Research on the Context of Teaching, an interdisciplinary research center engaged in analyses of how teaching and learning are shaped by teachers' organizational, institutional, and social?cultural contexts. Dr. McLaughlin was a major force in founding the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities, a partnership between Stanford University and Bay Area communities to build new practices, knowledge and capacity for youth development and learning both in communities and at Stanford, and is currently Executive Director of the Gardner Center. Prior to joining the faculty at Stanford University, Dr. McLaughlin served as a senior social scientist at the Rand Corporation, where she worked on problems of policy implementation and planned change in education.

New Advisor -- Ted Nordhaus, Vice President of Evans/McDonough, a public opinion polling firm.

New Alliance -- Leonard Salle and Katherine Forrest, co-founders of the Commonweal Institute, have accepted an invitation to join the advisory board of the Stanford-based Roosevelt Institution. The Roosevelt Institution, a new progressive student think tank, has quickly expanded to chapters at Yale, Columbia, Middlebury, Texas A&M, the University of Chicago, and many other universities across the country.

Additional Exposure -- A recent article in from the Uncommon Denominator, "The Cross in the Jungle," has been included in the Prorgressive Resource Catalog. The article discusses the connection between Christianity and free-market ideology.

ENDORSEMENTS

"There is an urgent need today for a think tank to research and develop ideas and facts to inform the public and assist officeholders. The Commonweal Institute's work is urgently needed and I welcome what they will do and the impact they will have during one of the most trying times in the life of our country." -- Congresswoman Anna G. Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, 14th CD-CA

GET INVOLVED

If you agree with Anna Eshoo (see above), there are a number of ways you can help the Commonweal Institute achieve its goals.

Right now, as you read, you can simply forward the Uncommon Denominator to friends and family who might be interested in learning about the Commonweal Institute. Getting the word out is crucial.

You can also join our network of donors building the Commonweal Institute. Your tax-deductible contribution is vital to making the Commonweal Institute an effective organization. $100 would help so much! Even a contribution of $10 or $20 will make a difference because there are so many moderates and progressives. Click here to contribute online. Or call 650-854-9796. Your support is essential.

Uncommon Denominator

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