here’s an op-ed i sent to the local paper:

Greg Norman (Letters, 7/9) is correct to object to Arthur Mokin’s (Guest Viewpoint, 7/5) assertion that criticism of Israel is almost exclusively an expression of “Jew-hatred”, but he fails to properly rebut the substance of Mr. Mokin’s reasoning.

Mokin proposes underlying Jew-hatred to explain a disparity in the coverage of two somewhat similar recent events involving the murder of Turkish nationals: in one case, a number of civilians killed by Kurdish separatists within Turkey; in the other, a similar number killed by Israeli defense forces off the coast of Gaza. Accepting Mr. Mokin’s research into the volume of relevant coverage, the first incident “died on the day it was born”, while the second “had legs.” The question he proposes is, why? In deciding on secret, perhaps even unconscious, Jew-hatred as an answer, Mr. Mokin overlooks more obvious grounds.

It is clear that Mr. Mokin begins from a supposition of hidden racism, calling Jew-hatred “the oldest prejudice in the world.” A nonsensical assertion given the long history of humanity predating the origin of Judaism, but revealing as to the partisan mindset of the author. I propose an alternative explanation based upon a proper distinction arising from a specific difference between the two cases.

Though the victims were in both instances killed and in both instances Turks, the killers were in one instance soldiers and in the other insurgents. Because of this, while the tragedy of the deaths in both cases is equal, the meaning of their murders is not. Simply put, the legitimacy of statehood brings with it a higher standard of conduct. Not only is this a fact of how people do think, it is a statement of how they ought to think. Thus the disparity of outrage in response to the two cases can be understood as an expression not of Jew-hatred, but of an appropriate prejudice that holds lawful states to a different standard than terrorists.

This appropriate double standard might be observed in the extensive coverage accorded a recent gunsight video showing American soldiers killing unarmed Iraqi civilians – including two journalists – from an Apache gunship. Compare that flurry of coverage and outrage to the daily accounts of car bombings that kill similar, if not greater, numbers of Iraqis, yet similarly die on the day they are born. This difference has nothing to do with hatred of Americans and everything to do with the fact that America, as a lawful nation, is rightly held to a higher standard as regards the use of lethal force than shadowy militants who grant themselves a license to kill.

Consider also two fictional examples, one in which a man is murdered by a criminal and another in which a man is murdered by a police officer. While both victims are equally dead, the latter is certain to generate more press and outrage than the former, as the issue is ultimately not murder but the violation of trust inherent to the abuse of power.

In making the argument he does, Mr Mokin implicitly proposes Israel be regarded as a legitimate state yet held only to the low standard applied to insurgents.  He attempts to blur this distinction by claiming that both Israel – nuclear-armed and by far the most powerful military in the region – and Kurds in Turkey – a people so oppressed that even their name has been declared illegal – are “struggling for survival” in a hostile mid-east. We are by now well-familiar with this attempt to reframe standards of civilized behavior by invocation of constant, if fraudulent, existential threat, having lived through the first eight years of what we are told will be a generational war on terror.

Such thinking destroys the very principle of statehood, reducing legitimate authority to mere force. Herein lies a grave and hidden danger of the reflexive recourse to charges of anti-semitism, and likewise, anti-Americanism: by failing to hold recognized authority to a higher standard we undermine the justification, and hence the meaning and value, of such authority. By defending the actions of sovereign authorities by comparison to the worst actions of self-elected militias we invite and enable the degeneration of sovereignty into a tyranny.

i’m headed out of town for a few days. would like to get back to this discussion when i return. some food for thought:

Also, a very interesting article from The New York Review of Books: The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment.

The non-conscious nature of partisan thought, apparent to anyone who follows it sufficiently, was demonstrated a few years ago in a lab and reported in the New York Times:

Using M.R.I. scanners, neuroscientists have now tracked what happens in the politically partisan brain when it tries to digest damning facts about favored candidates or criticisms of them. The process is almost entirely emotional and unconscious, the researchers report, and there are flares of activity in the brain’s pleasure centers when unwelcome information is being rejected.

In light of this, being reality-based as regards politics takes on a perverse meaning. Whereas ideally, according to the Enlightenment values mentioned in the famous passage of Ron Suskind’s article that brought the phrase “reality based community” into public awareness, attachment to reality is maintained by a skeptical, rational, common sense. Knowing the irrationality of partisan thought, the politically realistic person behaves rationally by disguising emotionally determined positions as rational ones. In politics, only a fool says what they really mean on controversial topics and expects a rational discussion to follow.

To attempt to publicly distinguish between rational principle and emotional value is to, as the I Ching terms it, tread upon the tail of a tiger.

Which brings us to Rand Paul’s appearance on the Rachel Maddow show to discuss his comments regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

more to come on this when i have a little more time…

last week i flew cross country on a plane and wrote a long post with a similar title. i still plan to return to that post – to post that post. this is something of an introduction and tangent. an introductory tangent.

first, i’d like to remove politics from this blog and over to Hamlet’s Nation, and that way to separate out that particular species from the genera of discussion here, leaving Androids in Love as a place to discuss love, narcissism and the phenomenon of coming alive. a phenomenon intimately connected with the so-called God’s Eye View, henceforth GEV.

ToCome Alive (CA) is to participate in the GEV. In traditional terms – and by Tradition i am referring to the tradition of thought and feeling inherent to civilization – to participate in the GEV is to be ensouled; and it is possession of a divine soul – a soul which participates in the GEV – that characterizes a human being.

To mark the recent anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the editor of the local Weekly approvingly quoted some other commentator’s judgment of Bush’s decision to invade as the worst decision ever made by a president. Here’s my still evolving letter in response:

Summing up the invasion of Iraq as the worst decision ever made by a president seems the strongest criticism, but overlooks a more serious problem. Even if Bush’s decision is accurately ranked as such, the greater peril to our nation is not a function of this catastrophic triumph. Rather, the deeper danger is so ordinary as to be routinely overlooked: Bush, as president, had no power to initiate the war, and congress had no power to authorize him to do so.

This is more than a technicality of constitutional authority. As James Madison wrote in 1793:

“Every just view that can be taken of this subject, admonishes the public, of the necessity of a rigid adherence to the simple, the received and the fundamental doctrine of the constitution, that the power to declare war including the power of judging of the causes of war is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature: that the executive has no right, in any case to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war. ”

Though Madison encourages the public to accept this as a fundamental, received, doctrine, the reasons for it are readily apparent – particularly in light of the last eight years, during which individual liberties have been in effect suspended as a part of the endless and undeclared War on Terror. By abdicating its authority to decide causes for war, Congress overrode a fundamental safeguard of democracy, with next to no public recognition of that fact. As Hamilton wrote in Federalist #8, war inevitably increases the power of the Executive. As the last eight years have made plain, under an imperial president the nation loses the reins of its own destiny and is left managing realities created by executive action.

There is nothing to be gained by ranking Presidential errors. What we need is a firm public consciousness of the necessary and legal limits of Presidential power.

Here are the first few introductory paragraphs to the Federalist Papers, by Hamilton, Madison and Jay. Number 1, from which these paragraphs are taken, was written by Hamilton. I post them here because I find the observations highly interesting and very judiciously expressed. An audio file of the paper follows the quote.

To the People of the State of New York:

AFTER an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world. It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.

This idea will add the inducements of philanthropy to those of patriotism, to heighten the solicitude which all considerate and good men must feel for the event. Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good. But this is a thing more ardently to be wished than seriously to be expected. The plan offered to our deliberations affects too many particular interests, innovates upon too many local institutions, not to involve in its discussion a variety of objects foreign to its merits, and of views, passions and prejudices little favorable to the discovery of truth.

Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments; and the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country, or will flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several partial confederacies than from its union under one government.

It is not, however, my design to dwell upon observations of this nature. I am well aware that it would be disingenuous to resolve indiscriminately the opposition of any set of men (merely because their situations might subject them to suspicion) into interested or ambitious views. Candor will oblige us to admit that even such men may be actuated by upright intentions; and it cannot be doubted that much of the opposition which has made its appearance, or may hereafter make its appearance, will spring from sources, blameless at least, if not respectable–the honest errors of minds led astray by preconceived jealousies and fears. So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right in any controversy. And a further reason for caution, in this respect, might be drawn from the reflection that we are not always sure that those who advocate the truth are influenced by purer principles than their antagonists. Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition, and many other motives not more laudable than these, are apt to operate as well upon those who support as those who oppose the right side of a question. Were there not even these inducements to moderation, nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties. For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.

 

 Federalist Papers, #1: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

a musical illustration of one axis of the cosmic cube…

the story of a a whistleblower not driven by delusions of grandeur, Brooksley Born, who warned of the instability of the financial system.

still watching this…

part 1:

part2:

in short, concern that the perfect not be the enemy of the good is only of use in a society where the good isn’t the enemy of the perfect. or in other words: a society in which the institutions (dominant class interests, or ‘the good’) are in harmony with the the common good (i.e. the perfect).