Immigrants have always been the driving force behind the American Dream. Xavier University's Institute for Politics and the American Dream recent survey verifies that the most fervent believers in the American Dream are immigrants, Latinos and African Americans.
And, yet, American history is loaded with varying degrees of resistance to immigrants. It's; therefore, ironic that in America immigration could be stridently resisted by native-born citizens. For Americans, this is a paradox because everyone, apart from Native Americans, is connected to immigrants.
Everyone.
Ben Franklin was upset in 1749 because the German immigrant population that year nearly equaled Philadelphia's resident population. Franklin feared Philadelphia would become a "German colony."
Abraham Lincoln, noting the emergence of the Know Nothing Party formed to stop Irish-Catholic immigration said, "We began by declaring that 'all men are created equal' and when the Know Nothings get control, it will read, 'all men are created equal except Negroes, foreigners and Catholics.'"
And now in 2010 the Arizona legislature, spearheading an anti-immigration movement, has declared that police are required to stop "illegal-looking" persons on Arizona streets requiring them to produce "papers."
A little-mentioned but disturbing part of the law is that private citizens may sue local governments or agencies "if they think the law is not being enforced," inspiring legalistic and costly vigilantism and citizens "reporting" anyone they have a mind to. If the police think the charge is groundless, the put-off citizen can still tie up courts and run up bills by suing the government.
Maybe it's about the fear of losing jobs?
No. As a 2010 study by the Fiscal Policy Institute shows, "immigration and growth go hand in hand, and areas with low levels of growth wind up with low levels of immigration but with highly skilled immigrants."
So, if your community is teeming with immigrants: congratulations. It means you are in the midst of a boom.
In Phoenix, the region with the highest economic growth rate in America over the last 20 years, the immigrant worker population is only 21 percent of the work force. In places such as New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, they have nearly twice Phoenix's immigrant workforce percentage and, yet, they have not needed to bring in the Gestapo.
In fact, Phoenix actually contradicts the Fiscal Policy study because, in spite of the massive growth, it has a relatively small immigrant worker population.
Areas with the lowest growth and lowest rates of immigration also have the highest skill, education and income in these areas. It is these immigrants who take the "good-paying jobs" because there aren't enough natives qualified to meet the needs of these low-growth, lower-education communities.
If we look at places with very low immigrant workforces like Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Detroit (all under 10 percent), we discover that these immigrant groups are often equally or, more likely, better educated than the native population. In Pittsburgh for example, 63 percent of the native population has "some college" but among immigrants there 79 percent have attended college.
Then there's "border security." But we're closing borders quite effectively in the largest sense. In the U.S., 25 percent of all scientists and engineers are foreign born as are 40 percent of all engineering professors and 50 percent of all PhDs in engineering, computer sciences and life sciences. Since 9/11 the number of foreigners with exceptional skills or advanced degrees allowed into this country has dropped 65 percent!
In 2003, for the first time, America began importing more technology than it exported. According to Cornell's physics Nobel Prize winner, Robert Richardson, we have a serious scientific and engineering manpower problem. We rank 23rd in the world in the percentage of students who become engineers and scientists.
Less than three years ago we ranked third.
The anti-immigration movement in Arizona reeks of a police state that, ironically, could not be more intrusive in our personal lives while simultaneously expanding the role of government to levels seen only in totalitarian states.
A dear friend of mine is a German-Jewish immigrant, and he came here with his parents and sister at the end of WWII--the parents having escaped Nazi Germany by the skin of their teeth. My friend was 6 years old when their ship arrived in New York Harbor. His mother took his hand and guided him to the main deck to see his new homeland. The dominant scene was not the New York skyline but the overwhelming and powerful presence of the Statue of Liberty.
"What's that?" he shouted in German, breaking the awed silence of his fellow passengers.
His mother leaned over and in German whispered, "Eines tages alles." Or, "In time, everything."
Still true?
Or do we have a new Know Nothing movement on our hands?
Or worse, does the lady in the harbor now wear a sign that says: "Just kidding, suckers?"
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Fear and Grieving on the Protest Trail
The recent State of the American Dream Survey by Xavier University's Institute for Politics and the American Dream shows a predictable overall decline of faith that the American Dream can be achieved in our time.
While understandable in this major recession, underlying the numbers are indications that the dim view of the future is deeper than the recession.
Certain numbers are harbingers of something new and possibly disturbing. For example,
1. The core idea of a positive American Dream legacy is in trouble with 68% of us doubting the possibility of American Dream achievement for our descendants.
2. 74% believe the world doesn't look up to America the way it used to.
3. A majority of Americans (52%) now believe that the world looks elsewhere for the creation of the future.
4. In the midst of otherwise overwhelming concern about jobs and the recession, only 6% consider "a good job" to be elemental to the American Dream. It's an assumption--not a dream.
This is bigger than the recession.
A positive outlook toward the future is a core aspect of the American Dream because it is based on opportunity. The tension in the country today is oddly disconnected from the future and its energy seems committed to extending the present. It's about maintenance, not improvement. It's not about aspiration; it's about the status quo. The American Dream is not being endangered by the new protest movement. It's being ignored.
While Americans remain confident in themselves, there is deep disappointment in the institutions entrusted with the job of steering our future course. Institutional failures are seen across the board. Political institutions. Corporate and religious institutions as well.
The strongest belief in the American Dream and in the future exists among immigrants, Latinos and African Americans. The American Dream always was and continues persistently to be created and re-created in the imaginations of people on the outside--outside the country or outside mainstream successes taken for granted by those whose families have achieved them.
Amidst a very critical view of the American Dream's current status, there is a consistent disparity in outlook between non-whites and whites, immigrants and native-born Americans.
African Americans, Latinos, and first- or second-generation immigrants view the American Dream more positively on nearly every measure in this survey than do white Americans. The part of our society still worst off in terms of social or economic measurements is the same group that is most positive about the American Dream.
African Americans are the only demographic group where a majority believes that reaching the American Dream is easier than it was for their parents. More than 40% believe it will be even easier for their own children to reach.
The United States has 305 million people today. Immigration will continue to change America's ethnic and racial makeup. The population is projected to reach 439 million in 2050.
In the division between the hopeful and the less hopeful, there is behavioral evidence from a social science point of view that something resembling "grief" is being played out in certain parts of the white community. The sense of encroachment by immigrants and non-whites is not uncommon, but the realization that minority status will soon be applicable to white America has, for some, a desperate finality to it. There is a concerning sense of loss of control and consequent fear.
The stages of grief, usually connected with death, were identified by psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross:
The hopeful prospects seen in the Africa-American and Hispanic communities are partly consequent to the election of President Obama. Similarly, it is not a difficult step to symbolically link Obama's election to a sense of demise among certain parts of the white community. For these, the morning after Obama's election began a period of denial, which now quite obviously has moved to anger.
Denial is the "birther" movement refusing to accept Obama's legitimacy fed by an underlying belief that their country has been stolen from them.
Denial is the irrational refusal to accept reality--such as the passage of the healthcare law. At least 10 members of Congress are reporting threats of violence. Racial epithets and spitting on black Congressmen have been televised. These and other incidents are an angry consequence to passage of the healthcare law.
Bargaining has yet to appear but acceptance, perhaps a long way off, is nonetheless inevitable. The question is how extensive and lasting will be the corrosive effects of denial and anger--particularly in the upcoming elections?
While understandable in this major recession, underlying the numbers are indications that the dim view of the future is deeper than the recession.
Certain numbers are harbingers of something new and possibly disturbing. For example,
1. The core idea of a positive American Dream legacy is in trouble with 68% of us doubting the possibility of American Dream achievement for our descendants.
2. 74% believe the world doesn't look up to America the way it used to.
3. A majority of Americans (52%) now believe that the world looks elsewhere for the creation of the future.
4. In the midst of otherwise overwhelming concern about jobs and the recession, only 6% consider "a good job" to be elemental to the American Dream. It's an assumption--not a dream.
This is bigger than the recession.
A positive outlook toward the future is a core aspect of the American Dream because it is based on opportunity. The tension in the country today is oddly disconnected from the future and its energy seems committed to extending the present. It's about maintenance, not improvement. It's not about aspiration; it's about the status quo. The American Dream is not being endangered by the new protest movement. It's being ignored.
While Americans remain confident in themselves, there is deep disappointment in the institutions entrusted with the job of steering our future course. Institutional failures are seen across the board. Political institutions. Corporate and religious institutions as well.
The strongest belief in the American Dream and in the future exists among immigrants, Latinos and African Americans. The American Dream always was and continues persistently to be created and re-created in the imaginations of people on the outside--outside the country or outside mainstream successes taken for granted by those whose families have achieved them.
Amidst a very critical view of the American Dream's current status, there is a consistent disparity in outlook between non-whites and whites, immigrants and native-born Americans.
African Americans, Latinos, and first- or second-generation immigrants view the American Dream more positively on nearly every measure in this survey than do white Americans. The part of our society still worst off in terms of social or economic measurements is the same group that is most positive about the American Dream.
African Americans are the only demographic group where a majority believes that reaching the American Dream is easier than it was for their parents. More than 40% believe it will be even easier for their own children to reach.
The United States has 305 million people today. Immigration will continue to change America's ethnic and racial makeup. The population is projected to reach 439 million in 2050.
In the division between the hopeful and the less hopeful, there is behavioral evidence from a social science point of view that something resembling "grief" is being played out in certain parts of the white community. The sense of encroachment by immigrants and non-whites is not uncommon, but the realization that minority status will soon be applicable to white America has, for some, a desperate finality to it. There is a concerning sense of loss of control and consequent fear.The stages of grief, usually connected with death, were identified by psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross:
*Denial
*Anger
*Bargaining
*Depression
*Acceptance
*Anger
*Bargaining
*Depression
*Acceptance
The hopeful prospects seen in the Africa-American and Hispanic communities are partly consequent to the election of President Obama. Similarly, it is not a difficult step to symbolically link Obama's election to a sense of demise among certain parts of the white community. For these, the morning after Obama's election began a period of denial, which now quite obviously has moved to anger.
Denial is the "birther" movement refusing to accept Obama's legitimacy fed by an underlying belief that their country has been stolen from them.
Denial is the irrational refusal to accept reality--such as the passage of the healthcare law. At least 10 members of Congress are reporting threats of violence. Racial epithets and spitting on black Congressmen have been televised. These and other incidents are an angry consequence to passage of the healthcare law.
Bargaining has yet to appear but acceptance, perhaps a long way off, is nonetheless inevitable. The question is how extensive and lasting will be the corrosive effects of denial and anger--particularly in the upcoming elections?
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
What Happened To The White Picket Fence?
In the American Consumer Republic, the Xavier University for Politics and the American Dream's first national survey of the Dream found that the alleged sanctity of home ownership may be the creation of advertisers and the realtor lobby.
This shift in the "ownership society" mentality may or may not be permanent, but for now and probably for years to come, it's likely to be bad for real estate developers, agents, home builders,, building materials, furniture and appliance manufacturers.
Only 6% of Survey respondents made home ownership their first choice when asked: "what comes to mind --- not in terms of what anyone else believes the dream is --- but in terms of what you think the American Dream is." (Another 7% made it their second choice.)
"Opportunity" was the first choice of 21% and for 14% it was the second choice. Not far behind were "freedom" and "family." (Of course there is nothing particularly "American" about "family." )
On the housing market front, lenders are finding that the social stigma of walking away from mortgage obligations is becoming culturally acceptable and seen as smart in some cases. This moral elasticity would have mortified home owners in the past. Part of "making it" was not just owning a home, but also being able to afford it.
As market watchers wait for housing numbers to improve to the peak levels 0f 2005, as if it were inevitably only a matter of time, someone should tell them that they have a better chance of Godot stopping by for dinner.
To hear the gurus talk about the housing market and new construction gives the impression that the housing industry exists to create jobs and economic activity --- not houses. But this isn't a "build it and they will come proposition." Take a tour of Tokyo and see the number of buildings and other projects constructed unnecessarily that now remain virtually empty. It's reminiscent of old Soviet bloc make-work projects where the fruit of labor is being busy, not being productive economically or otherwise.
Corroborating the Dream Survey, a recent article in US News, "Surviving the American Makeover," notes that:
"America's consumer industrial complex has an arsenal of tools for prying money out of consumers. But they're based on the dated premise that material stuff represents success."
Undeniably, advertising has influenced American Dream folklore and helped fashion the American tableaux in its clients' images. But the chances of an unvarnished assessment of the Dream is greatest in bad times like ours -- when people are most skeptical about the re-castings advertising makes possible.
In these tough economic times, the Survey catches the perceived value of hard work at its peak because the rewards for it are directly connected to accomplishment and not luck or social position as they seem to be in our gilded ages.
Sometimes advertisers seem angry at consumers for not spending in tough times. During the Depression, the consumer was portrayed as tight-fisted because of "unwarranted fear" or weakness rather than as unemployed or impoverished. Allstate uses a softened version of this today by appropriating FDR's "nothing to fear but fear itself" speech which is an indirect way of blaming the consumer for not spending -- as if the only constraints to a booming economy were psychological.
In the Survey, the expression of concern about the recession and jobs was strong but not in connection with the Dream, as only 8% thought it was important to the dream.
That's because it is not a dream to have a good job in America. It's an assumption --- upon which the launch of a personal Dream is predicated.
Hope for Dream attainment is declining along with America's view of political and corporate leadership.
On the plus side, Americans are realizing that there's more to the Dream than stuff.
This shift in the "ownership society" mentality may or may not be permanent, but for now and probably for years to come, it's likely to be bad for real estate developers, agents, home builders,, building materials, furniture and appliance manufacturers.
Only 6% of Survey respondents made home ownership their first choice when asked: "what comes to mind --- not in terms of what anyone else believes the dream is --- but in terms of what you think the American Dream is." (Another 7% made it their second choice.)
"Opportunity" was the first choice of 21% and for 14% it was the second choice. Not far behind were "freedom" and "family." (Of course there is nothing particularly "American" about "family." )
On the housing market front, lenders are finding that the social stigma of walking away from mortgage obligations is becoming culturally acceptable and seen as smart in some cases. This moral elasticity would have mortified home owners in the past. Part of "making it" was not just owning a home, but also being able to afford it.
As market watchers wait for housing numbers to improve to the peak levels 0f 2005, as if it were inevitably only a matter of time, someone should tell them that they have a better chance of Godot stopping by for dinner.
To hear the gurus talk about the housing market and new construction gives the impression that the housing industry exists to create jobs and economic activity --- not houses. But this isn't a "build it and they will come proposition." Take a tour of Tokyo and see the number of buildings and other projects constructed unnecessarily that now remain virtually empty. It's reminiscent of old Soviet bloc make-work projects where the fruit of labor is being busy, not being productive economically or otherwise.
Corroborating the Dream Survey, a recent article in US News, "Surviving the American Makeover," notes that:
"America's consumer industrial complex has an arsenal of tools for prying money out of consumers. But they're based on the dated premise that material stuff represents success."
Undeniably, advertising has influenced American Dream folklore and helped fashion the American tableaux in its clients' images. But the chances of an unvarnished assessment of the Dream is greatest in bad times like ours -- when people are most skeptical about the re-castings advertising makes possible.
In these tough economic times, the Survey catches the perceived value of hard work at its peak because the rewards for it are directly connected to accomplishment and not luck or social position as they seem to be in our gilded ages.
Sometimes advertisers seem angry at consumers for not spending in tough times. During the Depression, the consumer was portrayed as tight-fisted because of "unwarranted fear" or weakness rather than as unemployed or impoverished. Allstate uses a softened version of this today by appropriating FDR's "nothing to fear but fear itself" speech which is an indirect way of blaming the consumer for not spending -- as if the only constraints to a booming economy were psychological.
In the Survey, the expression of concern about the recession and jobs was strong but not in connection with the Dream, as only 8% thought it was important to the dream.
That's because it is not a dream to have a good job in America. It's an assumption --- upon which the launch of a personal Dream is predicated.
Hope for Dream attainment is declining along with America's view of political and corporate leadership.
On the plus side, Americans are realizing that there's more to the Dream than stuff.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
How We See the Future
" A majority now believes, after the end of the so-called American Century and victory in the Cold War, that the world is looking elsewhere in terms of future success or direction."
You might expect that the American Dream would appear to be in trouble in the midst of the longest recession since the great Depression. However, the first State of the American Dream Survey from Xavier University's Institute for Politics and the American Dream indicates the problems perceived by Americans are much deeper than this recession.
To recover the 8.4 million jobs lost so far in this recession would already require creation of 175,000 new jobs every month for 48 consecutive months --- just to get even with December 2007.
The only time in US history when new job creation equaled 175,000 per month was in the 1990s when the Internet was commercialized and the world was first digitized, monies were transferred electronically, all glitz/no substance dot.coms grew like typhoid, cell phone usage and the stock market exploded and real estate blossomed at "Tulip Mania" multiples.
Here's the point amplified by the Dream Survey.
The American people know that there is no new industry or set of industries on the horizon capable of creating 175,000 American jobs per month in the global economy.
This can only come from beyond the horizon --- in currently UNKNOWN industries.
Let's face it, 76% of the jobs in America's economy are service jobs. This is the highest such percentage in the developed world. Service jobs are primarily about maintenance, not growth. US tech firms have been moving to emerging markets because they can get the same work at 1/5th the cost.
Technology as we know it cannot save the day, because it relies on newer and cheaper iterations of increasingly mature industries and worn technologies. This may well lead to productivity increases, but that creates profits, not jobs. As legendary Wall Streeter Leon Levy writes, "one point of productivity eliminates about 1.3 million jobs." As a point of context, it took the entire decade of the 1980s to create 1.3 million jobs.
For the first time in 100 years, a majority of Americans doubt that the US will create the future.
75% of us "don't think the rest of the world looks up to America and our society the way it used to. This has nothing to do with the recession but it has a lot to do with doubting the achievement of the dream for next generations.
Americans have not lost confidence in themselves. Nearly two-thirds still see themselves as achieving the Dream. It's their kids and grandkids they're worried about.
But they have lost confidence and have little faith in the stable of leaders in the political and corporate world. There is no political advantage here for anyone. Americans know that the structural changes in this global economy give no credit for past performances.
Perhaps we are inured to the "legacy problem." America's traditional confidence that each generation's lot will improve over the last has eroded, and we seem to be getting used to it.
What will happen? What can happen is what happened in 1961 when the US emerged from the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union; when the Cold War peaked. It was the year when the Berlin Wall was constructed. Tension between the US and Soviet Russia was the central global fact.
Also in 1961, Soviet Premier Khrushchev promised at the 22nd Communist Party Congress that within 20 years the Soviets would outproduce America in all of the major industrial sectors --- coal, steel, cement, fertilizer, tractors etc.
And they did too.
This would have been a major achievement if it had been 1951 and not 1981. The US had moved on with an explosion of imagination and invention, and created a new technological world to which the rest of the world had to conform.
The American people want to believe that we still possess the daring-do leadership and burning inventiveness to do it again --- but they doubt it right now. Who could blame them when we look around at political warriors engaged in Pyrrhic warfare and timid corporate leaders concerned for the next quarter not the next decade.
Inventing the future is the Dream's signature because that is what freedom and opportunity uniquely allow --- but cannot guarantee.
You might expect that the American Dream would appear to be in trouble in the midst of the longest recession since the great Depression. However, the first State of the American Dream Survey from Xavier University's Institute for Politics and the American Dream indicates the problems perceived by Americans are much deeper than this recession.
To recover the 8.4 million jobs lost so far in this recession would already require creation of 175,000 new jobs every month for 48 consecutive months --- just to get even with December 2007.
The only time in US history when new job creation equaled 175,000 per month was in the 1990s when the Internet was commercialized and the world was first digitized, monies were transferred electronically, all glitz/no substance dot.coms grew like typhoid, cell phone usage and the stock market exploded and real estate blossomed at "Tulip Mania" multiples.
Here's the point amplified by the Dream Survey.
The American people know that there is no new industry or set of industries on the horizon capable of creating 175,000 American jobs per month in the global economy.
This can only come from beyond the horizon --- in currently UNKNOWN industries.
Let's face it, 76% of the jobs in America's economy are service jobs. This is the highest such percentage in the developed world. Service jobs are primarily about maintenance, not growth. US tech firms have been moving to emerging markets because they can get the same work at 1/5th the cost.
Technology as we know it cannot save the day, because it relies on newer and cheaper iterations of increasingly mature industries and worn technologies. This may well lead to productivity increases, but that creates profits, not jobs. As legendary Wall Streeter Leon Levy writes, "one point of productivity eliminates about 1.3 million jobs." As a point of context, it took the entire decade of the 1980s to create 1.3 million jobs.
For the first time in 100 years, a majority of Americans doubt that the US will create the future.
75% of us "don't think the rest of the world looks up to America and our society the way it used to. This has nothing to do with the recession but it has a lot to do with doubting the achievement of the dream for next generations.
Americans have not lost confidence in themselves. Nearly two-thirds still see themselves as achieving the Dream. It's their kids and grandkids they're worried about.
But they have lost confidence and have little faith in the stable of leaders in the political and corporate world. There is no political advantage here for anyone. Americans know that the structural changes in this global economy give no credit for past performances.
Perhaps we are inured to the "legacy problem." America's traditional confidence that each generation's lot will improve over the last has eroded, and we seem to be getting used to it.
What will happen? What can happen is what happened in 1961 when the US emerged from the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union; when the Cold War peaked. It was the year when the Berlin Wall was constructed. Tension between the US and Soviet Russia was the central global fact.
Also in 1961, Soviet Premier Khrushchev promised at the 22nd Communist Party Congress that within 20 years the Soviets would outproduce America in all of the major industrial sectors --- coal, steel, cement, fertilizer, tractors etc.
And they did too.
This would have been a major achievement if it had been 1951 and not 1981. The US had moved on with an explosion of imagination and invention, and created a new technological world to which the rest of the world had to conform.
The American people want to believe that we still possess the daring-do leadership and burning inventiveness to do it again --- but they doubt it right now. Who could blame them when we look around at political warriors engaged in Pyrrhic warfare and timid corporate leaders concerned for the next quarter not the next decade.
Inventing the future is the Dream's signature because that is what freedom and opportunity uniquely allow --- but cannot guarantee.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Pouting as a National Political Strategy?
While our politics is quite nasty and unproductive right now, we would be wrong to think it is an unprecedented moment for small-minded political crankiness.
It's not.
But this doesn't make explaining it any easier. I tried stepping back from the maelstrom and looked for a lead in science at things like Godel's "Incompleteness Theorem" and Heisenberg's "Uncertainty Principle," but the most accessible scientific thing I could find was some graffiti in a pancake house bathroom in Princeton that said, "Einstein peed here." Then below that it said, "Heisenberg MAY have peed here." That didn't help either.
Finally, going through old government books I rediscovered John C. Calhoun's plan for "Concurrent Majorities." The essence of the concurrent doctrine is that in order to pass law, Congress needed a super majority that consisted of a majority of the majority party and a majority of the minority party.
This raises an important question: What's the point of elections? More important, what's the purpose of representative government?
Nonetheless, the idea of concurrent majorities is always going to find a sympathetic ear from the party in the minority, whether is't the Democrats or the Republicans. While it would perhaps please the minority party, it didn't find support outside Calhoun's South Carolina back then. So, South Carolina introduced the Ordinance of Nullification that stipulated that states could decide what national laws would apply to them and which wouldn't. Again, this may well appeal today in some places; however, it simply failed to become law.
So, America has replaced the Ordinance of Nullification with the filibuster. The advantage of the filibuster is that the support of a state or congressional majority is unnecessary for bringing the Congress to a dead halt. It requires a super majority (60 votsd today--not as tough as Calhoun's plan) to stop a filibuster. The odds of many Democrats agreeing on anything is embarrassingly small. So the minority has decided to use the threat of the filibuster to stop or slow virtually every initiative of consequence before the Congress. It's their right and may be quite a clever technique. But as such, it also runs the risk of confirming that the only place in America where pouting is protected by law is the U.S. Senate.
That's what a filibuster is about most of the time. It is an honored technique because of Jimmy Stewart's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." And, yes, there have been some fine filibusters in life and in the movies.
But the filibuster is the strategy of a spoiled child pouting and threatening to stop anything and everything from happening in Washington because on a straight-up vote they would lose. A filibuster is like Little Lord Fauntleroy holding his breath as a punishment to an adult. As we all know this can only be a very short-term victory, especially if done all the time because one will eventually implode into what is likely to become a dishonorable splat on the Senate floor and on our TV and computer screens.
Why Democrats are so afraid of the filibuster threat is amazing. Even without a filibuster-proof Senate, they still have a bigger majority than President Bush had.
To get simple up or down votes the old-fashioned way, the first thing to do is to call their bluff. Whomever it is. Let them filibuster their brains out. The second thing is to see who tires of the game first, the parched senators of the American people who eventually demand that Little Lord Fauntleroy get over himself.
The mid-term elections typically go in favor of the "out" party and it's going strongly in that direction now. Why would the minority party risk that win by purposefully manifesting petulance and holding its breath?
It's not.
But this doesn't make explaining it any easier. I tried stepping back from the maelstrom and looked for a lead in science at things like Godel's "Incompleteness Theorem" and Heisenberg's "Uncertainty Principle," but the most accessible scientific thing I could find was some graffiti in a pancake house bathroom in Princeton that said, "Einstein peed here." Then below that it said, "Heisenberg MAY have peed here." That didn't help either.
Finally, going through old government books I rediscovered John C. Calhoun's plan for "Concurrent Majorities." The essence of the concurrent doctrine is that in order to pass law, Congress needed a super majority that consisted of a majority of the majority party and a majority of the minority party.
This raises an important question: What's the point of elections? More important, what's the purpose of representative government?
Nonetheless, the idea of concurrent majorities is always going to find a sympathetic ear from the party in the minority, whether is't the Democrats or the Republicans. While it would perhaps please the minority party, it didn't find support outside Calhoun's South Carolina back then. So, South Carolina introduced the Ordinance of Nullification that stipulated that states could decide what national laws would apply to them and which wouldn't. Again, this may well appeal today in some places; however, it simply failed to become law.
So, America has replaced the Ordinance of Nullification with the filibuster. The advantage of the filibuster is that the support of a state or congressional majority is unnecessary for bringing the Congress to a dead halt. It requires a super majority (60 votsd today--not as tough as Calhoun's plan) to stop a filibuster. The odds of many Democrats agreeing on anything is embarrassingly small. So the minority has decided to use the threat of the filibuster to stop or slow virtually every initiative of consequence before the Congress. It's their right and may be quite a clever technique. But as such, it also runs the risk of confirming that the only place in America where pouting is protected by law is the U.S. Senate.
That's what a filibuster is about most of the time. It is an honored technique because of Jimmy Stewart's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." And, yes, there have been some fine filibusters in life and in the movies.
But the filibuster is the strategy of a spoiled child pouting and threatening to stop anything and everything from happening in Washington because on a straight-up vote they would lose. A filibuster is like Little Lord Fauntleroy holding his breath as a punishment to an adult. As we all know this can only be a very short-term victory, especially if done all the time because one will eventually implode into what is likely to become a dishonorable splat on the Senate floor and on our TV and computer screens.
Why Democrats are so afraid of the filibuster threat is amazing. Even without a filibuster-proof Senate, they still have a bigger majority than President Bush had.
To get simple up or down votes the old-fashioned way, the first thing to do is to call their bluff. Whomever it is. Let them filibuster their brains out. The second thing is to see who tires of the game first, the parched senators of the American people who eventually demand that Little Lord Fauntleroy get over himself.
The mid-term elections typically go in favor of the "out" party and it's going strongly in that direction now. Why would the minority party risk that win by purposefully manifesting petulance and holding its breath?
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
New Biographies of Ayn Rand Resurrect "Selfishness" as a Courageous Philosophical Proposition
There are two new biographies of Alissa Rosenbaum, aka Ayn Rand, and there is something magnetically car accidental about them and about her, even for someone who thinks selfishness is not a virtue. We can't help but rubberneck her life simply from amazement. Rand beats reality TV because, whether or not you like her, she mattered.
A recent survey sponsored by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Monday Club discovered that after the Bible, Rand's work had the greatest impact on the live of those surveyed. She still sells about 300,000 books a year--best-seller proportions--long after her death.
I have read all her books (and three of her biographies) in the same way I watch right-wing commentators, fanatical religious preachers, and CNBC "Don't Regulate Me" financial news. I listen from time to time to country music and now and then even watch a soap opera or "The View." They are part of the culture and I feel the obligation to understand it and that effort alone would be condemned by Rand and certainly her intellectual precursor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, because it reflects an interest in what other people thing. Such things were a waste of time of Rand and Emerson because what others think, do or need is a waste; it "scatters and withdraws such force from your life...it loses your time...," as Emerson wrote in Self-Reliance. Good works are like penances and we are made invalids by them and they are "apologies for living in the world."
I like and admire Rand at a distance. She learned plotting by studying the work of Victor Hugo and this was a good choice because he moves a complex story well and satisfies the reading needs of the non-experts. Despite the opportunity, she did little for women's rights--quite the opposite in fact, as she believed woman's role was to serve men and she had some convoluted sexual ideas that played out in her fiction and in her real life. Her romantic models in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are for submissive women and manly, dominant, cold and rough men. That's a branch of thinking part from philosophy.
There is something absolutely compelling and alluring about Rand that is unavoidable to anyone who looks into the matter. You don't have to like or agree with her to be amazed at her unbending will, fierce confidence, and marketing skill to invent herself against the bad odds presented by a nation that imagines itself to be Christian. For religious people, especially Christians, she eliminates the thorny problem of sin because she believes in neither God nor the Golden Rule.
However, in a capitalist society she remains and icon. She made herself up and succeeded in making selfishness, cloaked in individualism and objectivism to be sensible, courageous and honest. The despised idea of anything collectives is at the heart of her absolutely dire opposition to Marxism (she's an immigrant from Soviet Russia) or any collective mentality to include church life. It is perhaps ironic that she named her philosophy "objectivism" considering that in the writings of Max, communism was to be an answer to the objectification of workers as capitalism eliminated their creativity and individuality. Marx believed that man was a creative being and that capitalism squashed this instinct--or need--into a mashed together pea soub combining man with his labor.
I do think Rand was courageious and honest. Her task was made easier perhaps because of her committed atheism. It was this atheism, along with her well-known and extended adultery that limited her p9olitical connection with her contemporary conservatives (especially William Buckley and his religious friends) who wanted to adore her. Adultery today is public and increasingly commonplace among our leaders, most ironically among right-wing Christian leaders in the Congress and in the churches.
In the end it appears that Rand's philosophy was not a philosophy at all but an entrepreneurial marketing tool for the institution of herself while giving her fancs and excuse for guilt-free self-centeredness. It's OK. Remember you're courageous and bold and the only person on earth.
These are both fine biographies (although I much prefer the one by Anne Heller) and are wroth rading in order to understand her intellectual resurgence that is periodic and tracks precisley with peiords of conservative political retrenchment.
Reading her intellectual and spiritual anti-matter predecessor, Emerson, is less entertaining for sure and I'd rather have dinner with Rand. I think she would have preferred Emerson's America of the mid-19th century when public financial regulation was essentially non-existent.
Emerson, the found of Transendentalsm, was described by Herman Melville after their 1849 meeting as a man who had a "defect in the region of the heart" and a "self conceit so intensely intelectual that at first on hesitates to call it by its right name." Such a man would be hampered, would he not, b the care of the world? At least Rand can be seen as a living reaction against a Soviet world she new too well. It seems, though, that the things she hated were a natural response in the extreme, to the very things she advocated.
A recent survey sponsored by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Monday Club discovered that after the Bible, Rand's work had the greatest impact on the live of those surveyed. She still sells about 300,000 books a year--best-seller proportions--long after her death.
I have read all her books (and three of her biographies) in the same way I watch right-wing commentators, fanatical religious preachers, and CNBC "Don't Regulate Me" financial news. I listen from time to time to country music and now and then even watch a soap opera or "The View." They are part of the culture and I feel the obligation to understand it and that effort alone would be condemned by Rand and certainly her intellectual precursor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, because it reflects an interest in what other people thing. Such things were a waste of time of Rand and Emerson because what others think, do or need is a waste; it "scatters and withdraws such force from your life...it loses your time...," as Emerson wrote in Self-Reliance. Good works are like penances and we are made invalids by them and they are "apologies for living in the world."
I like and admire Rand at a distance. She learned plotting by studying the work of Victor Hugo and this was a good choice because he moves a complex story well and satisfies the reading needs of the non-experts. Despite the opportunity, she did little for women's rights--quite the opposite in fact, as she believed woman's role was to serve men and she had some convoluted sexual ideas that played out in her fiction and in her real life. Her romantic models in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are for submissive women and manly, dominant, cold and rough men. That's a branch of thinking part from philosophy.
There is something absolutely compelling and alluring about Rand that is unavoidable to anyone who looks into the matter. You don't have to like or agree with her to be amazed at her unbending will, fierce confidence, and marketing skill to invent herself against the bad odds presented by a nation that imagines itself to be Christian. For religious people, especially Christians, she eliminates the thorny problem of sin because she believes in neither God nor the Golden Rule.
However, in a capitalist society she remains and icon. She made herself up and succeeded in making selfishness, cloaked in individualism and objectivism to be sensible, courageous and honest. The despised idea of anything collectives is at the heart of her absolutely dire opposition to Marxism (she's an immigrant from Soviet Russia) or any collective mentality to include church life. It is perhaps ironic that she named her philosophy "objectivism" considering that in the writings of Max, communism was to be an answer to the objectification of workers as capitalism eliminated their creativity and individuality. Marx believed that man was a creative being and that capitalism squashed this instinct--or need--into a mashed together pea soub combining man with his labor.
I do think Rand was courageious and honest. Her task was made easier perhaps because of her committed atheism. It was this atheism, along with her well-known and extended adultery that limited her p9olitical connection with her contemporary conservatives (especially William Buckley and his religious friends) who wanted to adore her. Adultery today is public and increasingly commonplace among our leaders, most ironically among right-wing Christian leaders in the Congress and in the churches.
In the end it appears that Rand's philosophy was not a philosophy at all but an entrepreneurial marketing tool for the institution of herself while giving her fancs and excuse for guilt-free self-centeredness. It's OK. Remember you're courageous and bold and the only person on earth.
These are both fine biographies (although I much prefer the one by Anne Heller) and are wroth rading in order to understand her intellectual resurgence that is periodic and tracks precisley with peiords of conservative political retrenchment.
Reading her intellectual and spiritual anti-matter predecessor, Emerson, is less entertaining for sure and I'd rather have dinner with Rand. I think she would have preferred Emerson's America of the mid-19th century when public financial regulation was essentially non-existent.
Emerson, the found of Transendentalsm, was described by Herman Melville after their 1849 meeting as a man who had a "defect in the region of the heart" and a "self conceit so intensely intelectual that at first on hesitates to call it by its right name." Such a man would be hampered, would he not, b the care of the world? At least Rand can be seen as a living reaction against a Soviet world she new too well. It seems, though, that the things she hated were a natural response in the extreme, to the very things she advocated.
The Pope's Dilemma
In politics, if a story runs continuously for three or more days, it has legs. If it's a bad story then whatever you've done to kill it has failed and it gains an independent life as it's released into the ether where it freely metastasizes.
Right now, Pope Benedict has such a story on his hands in the case of his recent revocation of the excommunication of Richard Williamson, a priest who went rogue long ago.
If you were the Pope's political consultant in this, the City of Man, what would you advise him to do in this now decidedly public matter?
If you're worth your salt, you have to be brutally honest with him in devising a public strategy. You can't b an ego cozy or adoring sycophant trying to protect him from or denying the relevance of public criticism. You have to help him understand the criticism and figure out how to most effectively absorb and then deal with it. You must be able to look in the eye and say: "On this matter, Your Holiness, you have not spoken ex cathedra, but ex ignorare.
Oh, and don't forget that just as it is with presidents, governors and mayors, a staunch cadre of loyal insiders are ever present and dedicated to protecting their own interests ad power in their relationship with the Boss. This means they will do anything to discredit you, the outsider, who doesn't understand the way things really work and who doesn't understand that they are different from everyone else.
Your Brief:
1. Richard Williamson, and Englishman and current resident of Argentina, is a 1971 Roman Catholic convert from Anglicanism who was ordained a Catholic priest in 1976. In 1988, he was excommunicated because he represented himself as a bishop in direct and willful contravention of a papal edict against it. He was excommunicated for violation of Canon Law for that act. This excommunication has now been reversed.
2. Much of the world has the impression that Williamson was excommunicated for his Holocaust denials and an additional string of ultra right-wing ideological pronouncements. This impression has complicated the public reaction to the revocation of the excommunication because it seems to them he had been cut off from the Church for those actions, not a procedural canonical violation. It, therefore, seems to the public that he has been fortiven his Holocaust denials and asociated views.
3. Among his publicly pronounced and recorded views are these samples:
This may be canonically accurate, but in the City of Man, perception equals truth and you and counselors are on the wrong side of perception on this one. While the world prosecuted and denounced Nazis and their sympathizers for crimes against humanity, the Church seem stuck with a morally indefensible position wherein they excommunicate and then forgive a mere violation of Church law but seem unaware of the big picture--crimes against humanity.
Right now, Pope Benedict has such a story on his hands in the case of his recent revocation of the excommunication of Richard Williamson, a priest who went rogue long ago.
If you were the Pope's political consultant in this, the City of Man, what would you advise him to do in this now decidedly public matter?
If you're worth your salt, you have to be brutally honest with him in devising a public strategy. You can't b an ego cozy or adoring sycophant trying to protect him from or denying the relevance of public criticism. You have to help him understand the criticism and figure out how to most effectively absorb and then deal with it. You must be able to look in the eye and say: "On this matter, Your Holiness, you have not spoken ex cathedra, but ex ignorare.
Oh, and don't forget that just as it is with presidents, governors and mayors, a staunch cadre of loyal insiders are ever present and dedicated to protecting their own interests ad power in their relationship with the Boss. This means they will do anything to discredit you, the outsider, who doesn't understand the way things really work and who doesn't understand that they are different from everyone else.
Your Brief:
1. Richard Williamson, and Englishman and current resident of Argentina, is a 1971 Roman Catholic convert from Anglicanism who was ordained a Catholic priest in 1976. In 1988, he was excommunicated because he represented himself as a bishop in direct and willful contravention of a papal edict against it. He was excommunicated for violation of Canon Law for that act. This excommunication has now been reversed.
2. Much of the world has the impression that Williamson was excommunicated for his Holocaust denials and an additional string of ultra right-wing ideological pronouncements. This impression has complicated the public reaction to the revocation of the excommunication because it seems to them he had been cut off from the Church for those actions, not a procedural canonical violation. It, therefore, seems to the public that he has been fortiven his Holocaust denials and asociated views.
3. Among his publicly pronounced and recorded views are these samples:
- During a 1989 speaking tour of Canada he stated that Jews, the "enemies of Christ," fabricated the Holocaust as part of a Zionist scheme to found the state of Israel.
- He called the claim that six million Jews were murdered by the Nazi regime another fabrication and stated that no Jews were gassed to death in concentration camps. He gussied up this claim by saying that "no more than 200,000-300,000 died in the camps and that none of these were gassed." Somehow, murdering only 300,000 Jews by means other than asphyxiation was OK?
- He blamed Israel for the 1991 Gulf War and called it another consequence of their "false Messianic vocation of Jewish world domination."
- He condemned the film, "The Sound of Music," for "putting friendliness and fun ahead of authority and rules," which is to say ahead of the authority and rules of Nazism!
- Since "modern man does not want women to do what God wants them to do, namely have children, she takes her revenge by invading all kinds of things God intended only men to do." For example, women should not attend universities or seek formal education of any kind, and "if you want to stop abortion, do it by example. Women should never wear trousers or shorts."
- Women make poorly focused and incompetent lawyers because before going into court they would look in a mirror to check their hair and, if they did not do so, they would make poorly focused and incompetent women. Williamson holds in common with Islamic terrorists' views on the primacy of God in civic matters, misogynistic views of women, irrational resistance to "modernity" as if it could be prevented by opposing it, and virulent anti-Semitism.
This may be canonically accurate, but in the City of Man, perception equals truth and you and counselors are on the wrong side of perception on this one. While the world prosecuted and denounced Nazis and their sympathizers for crimes against humanity, the Church seem stuck with a morally indefensible position wherein they excommunicate and then forgive a mere violation of Church law but seem unaware of the big picture--crimes against humanity.
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