Vol. 5 No. 10 (April 2007)
Uncommon
Denominator
The Newsletter
of the Commonweal Institute
http://www.commonwealinstitute
“An inglorious peace is better than a dishonorable war.”
CONTENTS
Talking Points: Four years on….
Wit and Wisdom: A new job for the sacked U.S.
attorneys
From the Blogs: “The Internet and Politics”
Check It Out: The wisdom of Murray Edelman
Featured Article: “A History of Violence”
Happenings: TV Interview; new CI Director; new
CI Fellow; car donations
Endorsements: L. Hunter Lovins
Get Involved: Spread the word; become a contributor
Four
years ago, in April 2003, when the initial phase of combat operations in
“Most Desirable Outcomes. A
better life for the Iraqi people. A revitalized
country that ably balances pluralism, self-determination, and civil liberties.
Harmonious relationships with
“Least Desirable Outcomes. The
radicalization of large numbers of young Arab and Muslim men. Breakup of
“Most Dangerous Prospect for the Iraqi People. That their country becomes the next
“Most Narrowly Averted Catastrophe. The burning of hundreds of oil wells. This time,
“Worst Catastrophe That Could Have Been Easily Averted.
The looting of
“Most Heartening Moment. A
variety of moments, really, when our young people in uniform showed themselves
to be free of the racial hate that war can bring out in people.
There were orders to be culturally sensitive, of course, but the Uncommon
Denominator believes that the vast majority of soldiers have genuinely
avoided the kind of racism that developed in
“Least Expected Good News for Latin Americans and Africans.
The
Where
will we be in another four years? How much of the self-inflicted damage –
military, economic, political, and moral – will the
Bush Offers
Attempt to Calm Furor over Mass
Sacking
“In a
bold attempt to end the controversy over the sacking of eight United States
attorneys, President George W. Bush today offered the fired prosecutors what he
called ‘exciting new positions’ in Iraq.
“With the
President facing pressure from Congress over the firing of the attorneys and
funding for the continuing war effort, Mr. Bush told reporters at the White
House that sending the “surge” of eight
“‘Congress
has been trying their darnedest to limit my ability to prosecute this war,’ Mr.
Bush said. ‘Well, I can think of no one more qualified to prosecute this war
than those eight prosecutors’.”
— from The
Borowitz Report
Visitors
to the Indonesian
Although
our nation was founded on the concept of citizen lawmakers and town meetings in
which everyone had a voice, politics in the U.S. has evolved into a highly
professionalized activity in which citizens are expected to contribute money
and volunteer in campaigns under the direction of the pros, and then go away
until the next election. The media have also been professionalized beyond the
days of the citizen broadsheet of Ben Franklin and pamphlets of Tom Paine.
Political information has become the province of professional journalists,
pollsters and commentators, who themselves have become the property of giant
media corporations. Citizens are expected to watch, listen to and read what
they are given and not ask questions reporters have not thought of (or been
brave enough to ask).
The
Internet is changing this. The internet holds the promise of re-democratizing
American politics and media, enabling citizens to recapture the peoples'
democracy envisioned by the nation's founders. It promises a democratic process
in which all citizens who want to can apply their particular talents to the
aspects of politics and media that they are attracted to. As in Balinese art,
some will be better and more effective than others, but all will have
access.”
Read the
rest of Patrick O’Heffernan’s “The Internet and
Politics: Re-Democratizing America” on the Commonweal Institute blog at: www.commonwealinstitute.org
Some truths bear much repetition. One of the
most important is that successful democracy requires a well-informed
public. Knowledge enables choice; ignorance invites manipulation.
Truth nourishes freedom; spectacle diminishes it. An electorate mindful
of the ways of power can better resist its abuse; a public unaware of the
problems it faces will find it harder to achieve real self-determination.
Fortunately for democracy, there’s Murray
Edelman, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the
In his most recent work, The Politics of
Misinformation (
Another troubling read is Edelman’s earlier work, Constructing
the Political Spectacle (
Even if
this strikes you as common sense, Edelman shows how it all works, in detail, in
depth, and with theoretical sophistication. His writing is academic, and
his conclusions are not exactly heartening, but both books are high-octane,
high-nutrient. Check ‘em out.
The following is an excerpt from Steven Pinker’s “A History of Violence” which appears in
the March, 2007, issue of The New Republic.
“In the decade of Darfur and
“Some of the evidence has been under our nose all
along. Conventional history has long shown that, in many ways, we have been
getting kinder and gentler. Cruelty as entertainment, human sacrifice to
indulge superstition, slavery as a labor-saving device, conquest as the mission
statement of government, genocide as a means of acquiring real estate, torture
and mutilation as routine punishment, the death penalty for misdemeanors and
differences of opinion, assassination as the mechanism of political succession,
rape as the spoils of war, pogroms as outlets for frustration, homicide as the
major form of conflict resolution—all were unexceptionable features of life for
most of human history. But, today, they are rare to nonexistent in the West,
far less common elsewhere than they used to be, concealed when they do occur,
and widely condemned when they are brought to light.
“At one time, these facts were widely appreciated.
They were the source of notions like progress, civilization, and man's rise
from savagery and barbarism. Recently, however, those ideas have come to sound
corny, even dangerous. They seem to demonize people in other times and places,
license colonial conquest and other foreign adventures, and conceal the crimes
of our own societies. The doctrine of the noble savage—the idea that humans are
peaceable by nature and corrupted by modern institutions—pops up frequently in
the writing of public intellectuals like José Ortega y Gasset
("War is not an instinct but an invention"), Stephen Jay Gould
("Homo sapiens is not an evil or destructive species"), and Ashley
Montagu ("Biological studies lend support to the ethic of universal
brotherhood"). But, now that social scientists have started to count
bodies in different historical periods, they have discovered that the romantic
theory gets it backward: Far from causing us to become more violent, something
in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler.”
Read the whole article at www.edge.org/3rd_culture
New CI Board Member – The Commonweal Institute is proud to welcome Judith
Schwartz as a new member of the Board of Directors. Ms. Schwartz is
founder and principal of To the Point, a marketing consulting firm specializing
in compelling video narratives, audience-centric content development and
information architectures, and integrated multimedia campaigns. Her clients
over the past two decades have included leading high tech and consumer product
companies such as Logitech, Apple, Sun, SGI, and Novell, as well as many
startups and non-profit organizations. She designed groundbreaking web
communities and interactive applications, leading multidisciplinary teams of
expert specialists. In the 1980s, following a stint at Apple Computer, she was
President of Polar Spring Corporation, a company that developed a patented
water treatment technology based on freeze crystallization. In 2006, she
published her first political novel, Doublethink: A Tale of Unintended
Consequences, published by Raise the Bar Press, which explores the challenges
and risks facing American society. Ms. Schwartz began her professional career
in the museum field, working for such institutions as The Brooklyn Museum, The
Museum of Broadcasting, the Akron Art Institute, the Whitney Museum of American
Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She received her B.F.A. from
TV Interview – On March 15, 2007, CI President Katherine Forrest was
interviewed by Michael Killen for the Killen Report, a San Francisco Bay Area
television broadcast, on the subject “2008 Candidates Awareness of Status of
the Election Process.” As Dr. Forrest summarized the appearance:
“Presidential candidates (and their campaign staff) should be concerned not only
about appealing to voters and getting out the vote, but also about making sure
that the voters who would want to vote for their candidate are (a) able to vote
and (b) will have their votes accurately counted. As of March, 2007, it
looks like the 2008 presidential candidate squad is not on top of the
situation.”
The
interview will be shown on Bay Area community access TV throughout April, and
can be viewed online at:
http://video.google.com
New CI Fellow – The Commonweal Institute is proud to welcome Mary
Ratcliff as a new Fellow. Ms. Ratcliff has over 30 years of
experience in the software industry and is currently a senior software
development manager for a geographically diverse team in a large software
company. She is also a senior editor and writer at both The Left Coaster
(http://www.theleftcoaster.com/)
and Pacific Views (http://www.pacificviews.org/),
and writes a monthly column for the e-zine, Nebraska Vox-Populi (http://www.voxpopuli-ne.com/). Her particular areas
of interest include the environment, energy policy, human psychology and
behavior, and leadership. Ms. Ratcliff has a BS in Electrical Engineering from
http://www.pacificviews.org
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ENDORSEMENTS
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if we can't speak in ways that broad-based, diverse constituencies understand?
Concepts like Natural Capitalism aren't easy to communicate. As Commonweal
Institute develops ideas and implements new, creative strategies for
communicating moderate and progressive concepts, we'll all benefit. You have my
heartfelt, best wishes for rapid success!.” — L.
Hunter Lovins, President, Natural Capitalism,
Inc.
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© 2007 The Commonweal
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