Vol. 4 No. 10 (February 2006)
Uncommon Denominator
The Newsletter of the Commonweal Institute
www.commonwealinstitute.org
"Every attempt
to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster."
-- William T. Sherman
CONTENTS
Talking
Points I: Talking 'bout freedom
Wit and Wisdom: Politics and pop culture
Talking Points II: Sticks and stones....
Check It Out: Democracy in America
Featured Article: "The Battle to Stop Bird
Flu"
Happenings: Progressive Roundtable
Endorsements: Jim Hightower
Get Involved: Spread the word; become a
contributor
TALKING POINTS
There's been a lot of talk recently about the failure of
Democrats, progressives, and the Left in general to take advantage of the
metastasizing problems of the Republican establishment. What's needed is a
plan, a leader, a program. A strategy! Here's one: seek out those independents,
moderates, and centrist conservatives of libertarian sympathies, and make
the case that the cherished principle of freedom is better served by the Left.
There's an opportunity here to gain a significant political foothold and to
exploit an increasingly vulnerable division in the conservative coalition.
Neither progressives nor the libertarian-minded, one suspects, realizes how
much shared ground actually exists between their philosophies. Certainly,
there's not a libertarian right now, in the full possession of his wits, who could be happy with the policy trends that are shaping
our country. In this, the sixth year of one of the worst administrations in
American history, freedom has never been more visibly in decline.
For more than half a century, American conservatives have trumpeted their
commitment to defending "liberty" (a term less self-evident than it
might appear). In the long, hard slog against Soviet communism, in which
Republicans tended to take a more aggressive stance, this self-congratulation
had some merit. But in many other instances -- from the pointless campaign
against flag burning to a fanatically expansive reading of the second amendment
-- the conservative approach to protecting freedom has ranged from the asinine
to the simply destructive. Progressives, who have traditionally emphasized
"equality" (ditto) in their vision of the American way, need to
explain, sincerely and forcefully, their own commitment to freedom. Without
a doubt, the opportunity is there, because the modern conservative coalition, in
which the religious right has become ascendant over business conservatives and
libertarians, has pushed through an array of policies that have made Americans
dramatically less free. Behind the specious argument that lower taxes equate
with greater freedom, and using the "war on terror" as a pretext for
every imaginable power grab, conservatives now resemble Big Brother more than
they ever have, and as a result their coalition is at risk of unravelling. Just consider some of the more obvious
liberty-undermining trends now underway:
Interference
in personal privacy. Where to begin? The assault
on the idea of a Constitutional "right to privacy." Domestic spying. Airport no-fly lists. Intrusion in personal
records, from Google searches to library fines. And this describes only what
American citizens face, let alone the unnumbered
foreign nationals who have been utterly deprived of all due process whatsoever.
Disruption of the Constitutional system of checks and
balances. At every opportunity, the administration, abetted by
conservatives in the judiciary and Congress, has asserted a breathtakingly
expansive view of executive power and privilege. The very reason that system
exists in the first place was to restrict the ability of the executive to
encroach upon individual liberties.
Interference in K-12 education. A recent
paragraph in the New York Times says it all: "When Republican
senators quietly tucked a major new student aid program into the 774-page
budget bill last month, they not only approved a five-year, $3.75 billion
initiative. They also set up what could be an important shift in American
education: for the first time the federal government will rate the academic
rigor of the nation's 18,000 high schools" (Jan. 22, 2006). The law leaves
it to the Secretary of Education to define "rigorous," effectively
giving her an unprecedented authority in evaluating high school curricula.
Requiring schools to give student information to military
recruiters. Under the administration's No Child Left Behind Act, recruiters are entitled to get the names,
addresses and phone numbers of high school juniors and seniors, unless parents
or students sign a form requesting that the data be withheld. Districts that
don't comply stand to lose millions in federal funding.
A major problem for
progressives is that they've lost a lot of libertarian-minded people by seeming
to advocate "big" government and therefore "intrusive" or
"stifling" government. What they need to do is make the case, consistently
and powerfully, that a government which helps people also makes
people more free. To make that case, progressives need to break the
current frame of the debate and shift its terms to more favorable ground.
So far, conservatives have succeeded at portraying regulation and taxation as
hostile or antithetical to personal freedom. As long as progressives respond to
that charge only by pointing to the general economic or social benefits of
government activism, they will fail to speak to one of the American public's
core values and, regardless of the outcome of any particular policy dispute,
will allow the conservative frame to prevail. The challenge is define
liberty in much broader terms than simply the absence of regulation or taxation.
The preamble to the Constitution states that one of the document's purposes is
to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
What the word "secure" implies in this context is that liberty is not
something that simply happens, that simply thrives on its own, but that it
requires protection, cultivation, and, yes, government involvement. One of the
central insights of our jurisprudential tradition, dating to Anglo-Saxon times,
is that law begets freedom -- enlightened, well-administered law, of course,
but law nonetheless -- while the absence of law begets servitude, violence, and
tyranny.
The key to making the progressive case for freedom is to talk about liberty
in the aggregate. Capitalism is certainly the most "free" of the
world's economic systems, but the conservative version of capitalism -- low
regulation, low taxation, lax enforcement, and so forth -- simply does not
create the most freedom for the most people. Instead, as in a Monopoly game, it
creates dramatic imbalances, letting the powerful become more powerful (and
therefore more free), while offering up only the illusion of enhanced freedom
for everybody else.
After five years of the anti-regulatory, anti-tax, and anti-civil liberties
policies of the Bush administration, are Americans really more
free, in the truest, deepest sense of the word? Are they freer from
pollution? Are they freer to provide their kids a better education? Are they
freer from the prying eyes of the government? Are they freer to earn a living
wage? Are they freer from the intrusive data collection of corporations? Are
they freer to express dissent? Are they freer from the dangers of ill health,
old age, or hazardous workplaces? Are they freer to travel abroad without fear
of terrorism? Are they freer from threat posed by natural disasters? Are they
freer to pursue their own vision of life, and to live up to their highest
potential?
As this list of questions suggests, freedom means a lot more than getting a
$200 refund check in the mail, a lot more than relatively cheap gas, and a lot
more than plenty of frozen food options. And the fact that a majority of
Americans think the country is off on the wrong track might suggest that more
and more of them are answering "no" to these questions.
The progressive side of American politics has to get over its apparent fear
of talking about "liberty" and start speaking a language that
resonates more deeply than any other in American culture. They need to have
confidence that their policies promote rather than restrict freedom, and they
need to share that confidence.
WIT AND WISDOM
"Some of the other Oscar-nominated movies people are talking about, George
Clooney's film, 'Good Night, and Good Luck.' If you haven't seen it, it's about
the White House's Medicare plan for the elderly." -- Jay Leno
"President Bush met at the White House with
TALKING POINTS II
The latest furor in the so-called "clash of civilizations"
involves the publication, in a number of European newspapers, of a cartoon
depicting the prophet Muhammad wearing a turban made to resemble a bomb. The
cartoon sparked protests, often violent, across the Arab world, and led to a
series of apologies by European leaders, along with statements defending the
principle of press freedom. In the mainstream media, accordingly, the dominant
frame for the story has positioned Western values of free expression against
Muslim religious sensitivities.
What has gotten lost in the hubbub is the problem of the viciously anti-semitic cartoons and articles that are standard fare
in the Arab press. Before Muslims take to the streets to defend their
religious sensitivities, and before European leaders apologize for what gets
printed in their country's newspapers, they should pause to read some of the
sewage coming out of the
On April 29, 2002, the Egyptian government daily newspaper Al-Akhbar published an article title "Accursed
Forever and Ever." The Jews, we learn, are "the virus of the
generation, doomed to a life of humiliation and wretchedness until Judgment
Day." The anonymous writer goes on to deny that the Holocaust took place,
and then suggests that it actually would have been a good idea, wishing he
could say to Hitler: "If only you had done it, brother, if only it had
really happened, so that the world could sigh in relief [without] their evil
and sin."
On March 10, 2002, the Saudi government daily published an article on the
Jewish holiday Purim, by Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma of
The
list goes on and on. The global Zionist conspiracy; the
literal blood-thirstiness of the Jews; the convenient myth of the Holocaust;
Jewish avarice; massacres of innocents; and so forth. There are many
forms of fundamentalism and bigotry in the world, but vicious anti-semitism is one of the most dangerous and most widespread.
It has built up a hideous history, and must be combatted
vigorously and consistently.
In response to the outpouring of vitriol the continuing violence against Jews,
President Bush in October 2004 signed the Global Antisemitism
Review Act, which pledges the
The Arab world's reaction to the law has not been favorable. In the article
"Arab
Reactions to the U.S.'s Global Antisemitism Review
Act of 2004," Aluma Dankowitz
writes that Arab public opinion shapers "called the act an interference in
domestic affairs of states, expressed apprehension that its implementation
would harm freedom of expression, and protested against what they saw as the
considerable Jewish influence in the U.S."
It's time for those in the West to call the Muslim outrage in this case for
what it is: hypocrisy. Whatever feelings of frustration, persecution, and
insult prevail in the Arab world, and whatever their legitimate grievances
about Israeli and American policy, no one is calling for Muslim countries to be
wiped off the face of the earth, no one is saying Muslims should be exterminated,
and no one is sending Muslims to the gas chambers. The exploitation of anti-semitism by shady and autocratic Arab governments is an
obscenity, and to the degree that regular Muslims buy into such vileness, they
are writing themselves out of the mainstream of modernity. Anti-semites need to stop finding scapegoats and start directing
their energy toward solving the real problems they face: anti-scientific
fundamentalism, political corruption, one-dimensional oil-based economies. If
they don't, it's going to be endless misery for everybody concerned, but
particularly for themselves.
We might note another irony in the reaction to the cartoons. A central reason
that has been given for the outrage is that depicting the prophet Muhammad will
encourage idolatry. But what is idolatry if not endowing images with greater
power than they deserve? The whole point of the Koranic
injunction against idolatry is that people should not place so much importance
on images that real matters of spirituality and human life are left behind.
This is analogous, incidentally, to the campaign against flag-burning in the
United States: protecting the symbol of freedom should never taken precedence
over protecting the actual freedoms the flag symbolizes, including the freedom
to destroy a symbol.
So, sure, the offensive cartoons can be "condemned." But what
really needs to be condemned is the mindset of religious fanaticism and
intolerance of free expression that seems to be spreading like the bird flu.
CHECK IT OUT
One wonders why the American public, or perhaps just
the American press, seems to respond with a gigantic collective yawn when the
subject of electoral shenanigans comes up. Do people really not know or not
care that our democratic system has been seriously undermined in recent years?
Whether or not you believe the Presidential elections of 2000 or 2004 were
"stolen," pils of evidence have accumulated
that suggests the hardball tactics of the Right -- from aggressively purging
voter rolls to aggressively "questioning" voters at black precincts
-- improperly swayed the results by crossing the line from aggressive into
illegal. And as long as there's no assertive response, there's not much reason
to think that things will change.
That's the subject of an ever-growing roster of books on the last three
elections (including 2002) and the current electoral system, including its
increasing reliance on insecure electronic "voting machines" and its
bizarre, or deliberate, inability to provide a uniform and transparent method
of registering the public will. A common theme running through these books has
to do with a veritable conspiracy of silence on the part of the media, and a
shameful refusal by political figures to get involved in investigating the
issue. Together, they give the impression that the conservative movement has
seized power illegitimately, that American democracy is truly imperilled, and -- at a minimum -- that the fundamental
civic trust between political parties has broken down in a way reminiscent of
the 1790s or the 1850s.
Not surprisingly, the Right has come out with its own handful of books charging
the Left with improper electioneering: John H. Fund, Stealing Elections: How
Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (Encounter Books, 2004); Hugh Hewitt, If
It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and
Why Your Life Depends on It (Nelson Books, 2006); and Byron York, The
Vast Left Wing Conspiracy: The Untold Story of How Democratic Operatives,
Eccentric Billionaires, Liberal Activists, and Assorted Celebrities Tried to
Bring Down a President -- and Why They'll Try Even Harder Next Time (Crown
Forum, 2005). One should note, incidentally, that these three publishing houses
are little more than private subsidiaries of the Right's messaging machine;
none of them has a track record of publishing anything other than ideologically
motivated books.
The aim, evidently, of these conservative titles is to have the debate kind of
wash away in an unresolvable
"he-said-she-said" blur of charges and countercharges -- much like
the effort to confuse the public about the science of global warming. In the
midst of that blur, Americans need to concentrate on two central facts. First,
the conservatives are the ones who control all three branches of government, so
accusing the Left of "stealing elections" is
like accusing a homeless person of embezzlement. Second, the conservative
record over the last 5 years amounts to a laundry list of misguided policies
whose failure is disputed only by those policies' architects, and sometimes not
even then.
They should also check out the following books about the history of electoral
fraud, and about the last two Presidential elections in particular:
Mark Crispin Miller, Fooled
Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They'll Steal the Next One
Too (Unless We Stop Them) (Basic Books, 2005)
Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld, and Harvey Wasserman, eds., Did George W.
Bush Steal America's 2004 Election? Essential Documents (
Anita Miller, What Went Wrong In
Steve Freeman and Joel Bleifuss, Was the 2004
Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count
(Seven Stories Press, 2005)
Lance Dehaven-Smith, The Battle for Florida: An
Annotated Compendium of Materials from the 2000 Presidential Election
(University Press of Florida, 2005)
David North, The Crisis of American Democracy: The Presidential Elections of
2000 and 2004 (Mehring Books, 2004)
Tracy Campbell, Deliver the Vote : A History of Election Fraud, an American
Political Tradition-1742-2004 (Carroll & Graf, 2005)
Andrew Gumbel, Steal This Vote: Dirty Elections
and the Rotten History of Democracy in America (Nation Books, 2005)
If
you're only able to read one of these books, read Miller's carefully researched
and closely argued Fooled Again. Despite his fondness for rhetorical
excess (which might not serve his purposes all that well), Miller backs up his
disturbing conclusions with mountains of factual and anecdotal evidence. The
central claim -- that "the two great corporate entities of government and
media have unified against" regular Americans -- and the central
call-to-arms -- that "we must start working to reclaim that right [to
vote]" -- need to be heard and heeded by anyone who loves freedom.
Complacency is the bane of democracy. Staying informed is the bane of
complacency.
FEATURED ARTICLE
The following is an excerpt from Thomas Goetz's
"The Battle to Stop Bird Flu," which appeared in the January,
2006, edition of Wired magazine.
"The 1976 swine flu
scare has become enshrined as 'the epidemic that never was,' one of the great
fiascoes of our national health care system. But in truth, government officials
performed well enough. In just a few months, they went from isolating a strange
new flu virus to delivering a vaccine to every American who wanted one. The
problem was, all they had were blunt instruments:
crude mathematical models, rough estimates of infection rates, and a vaccine
that often packed too strong a punch. They were fairly well equipped to react
to a worst-case scenario - they just weren't equipped to determine if one was
imminent. Forced to guess, they chose 'to risk money rather than lives,' as
Theodore Cooper, an assistant secretary of Health Education and Welfare, said
at the time. 'Better to be safe than sorry.'
"All of which raises a question: With the specter of an actual flu
epidemic looming, are we any better equipped today? H5N1, the strain of avian
influenza currently festering in
"Thirty years on, a new science of epidemiology is at hand. It's based on
sophisticated computer models that can get ahead of a virus and, in a sometimes
dazzling demonstration of computer science, provide exacting prescriptions for
health care policy rather than best guesses. It's an approach pioneered not by
physicians but by physicists. And it owes a lot to the nuclear bomb."
Click here to
read the whole article.
HAPPENINGS
Progressive Roundtable -- Plans are moving ahead for the Progressive
Roundtable event, scheduled for March 2-5 in the
New CI Associate -- The Commonweal Institute is proud to welcome Rob
Dickinson as a new Associate. Mr. Dickinson is known for his leadership,
management, communication, and technical skills in working in grassroots
organizing and legislative politics. As Executive Vice President of
Californians for Electoral Reform, Mr. Dickinson drafted bill proposals, lined
up legislative sponsors, initiated a grassroots lobbying campaign, and set up a
houseparty-based public education and recruitment
campaign. He is currently an independent consultant with clients in both the
political and technical arenas, and was one of the developers of the
interactive website for the Commonweal Institute's Progressive Roundtable. Mr.
Dickinson has held Vice-Presidential positions at Novation
Biosciences and Perspecta, as well as managed
software development teams at other
ENDORSEMENTS
"It's always good to put your brain in gear before you put your mouth in
motion. The folks at the Commonweal Institute do the heavy mental lifting so agitators
like me can arm ourselves on the front lines of the ideological
battles taking place every day in
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