Who are we? Who do we want to be?

History has shown that from time to time a society has to decide who they are and what they want to be. This is not something they do on purpose but are more often forced into it when things get really tough. It makes some sense as when things are going well, people don’t have the need for such thoughts. The United States has been in that position several times; just before and during the Revolution, the Civil War and during the Great Depression and World War II. As we enter the second year of the worst economy since the Depression and are entrenched in two wars, we find ourselves again at that point. These are not the only issues that beg these questions, however.

• Torture: Does protecting our national security ever give us the right to use this? No, it does not. I reject the suggestion that we need to do away with our values to stay safe and believe when we turn our backs on our core beliefs we increase the risks we will be attacked.
  
  • Torture is the antithesis of everything we stand for. Benjamin Franklin said ‘Those who would give up liberty for security deserve neither.’ He was right. There are a number of reasons for this. I am honestly torn about which I think it more important – the precedent with set abroad or the one we set at home? If we can torture others, we inch closer to the day when we can torture our own citizens. This isn’t just my opinion, it was that of several George W. Bush lawyers who opposed it. Moreover, one can see this in action when they see how long some American citizens have been detained for suspected anti-American activities. These are the very things our founding fathers wanted to prevent. There’s also the point that we see ourselves as a benevolent force in the world but not everyone else does. When we forfeit our belief in the rule of law as it pertains to others, we become hypocrites and pave the way for others to do as we have done.
    
  • Torture doesn’t work. Don’t take my word for it, read a little about how investigators get decent information. It is not through torture. Al Qaeda trains its people to deal with torture so they aren’t going to talk. Ask John McCain how much he gave up during his seven years in a POW camp. Plus, the people who would talk, generally would say anything to stop the pain so whatever intel they give cannot be relied on. Dick Cheney has said that we got good information through these methods but has never said if we could have gotten it any other way or if better information was missed because of what we did. In fairness, he probably doesn’t know and that is a whole different problem.
    
  • We follow the Geneva Convention to protect our soldiers. If we can find loopholes in the Geneva Convention, do we really think other countries won’t do the same thing? Really? Are we that stupid?
    
• Social safety net: Our political debates tend to center around a few themes and one is how big our government should be. Do we want a small government with almost no taxes where we all fend for ourselves or do we want one that does for all of us collectively what we cannot do individually? I would opt for the latter. The irony is I know we don’t want to decide, we want both. Exhibit a for this theory is California, which has the closest thing to direct democracy in the US. The Californian electorate is confused about this as anyone. Because they can hold direct referendums, they prove they want it both ways. Prop 13 gutted the states’ ability to tax the citizens (yes, I know property taxes were crazy back then) but the same people vote for plans to expand health care and improve education. It seems we all want decent roads, a good military, an education system that doesn’t suck but you know what? Taxes pay for that. Oliver Wendell Holmes said, ‘Taxes are the price you pay for a civilized society.’ Who are we then?
  
• Why do we care about places outside the US and even in space?
  
  • Foreign aid: When polled, people will consistently think that we both spend too much money helping other countries but then think we should be spending more than we are (their estimates are that we spend at least 10 percent of our budget on aid and should spend something closer to that but less while the real amount is less than three percent.) I think a huge chunk of this is that most people cannot find most other counties on a globe. President Clinton said that we should have a policy where we have more friends than enemies, and I agree with that. A first step would be to know more about other cultures. It is hard for us to ‘get’ the India/Pakistan situation if we do not know the history and/or cannot find either on a map. Africa is not only not a country but is much larger than Europe yet we learn a lot more about England than anything in Africa.
    
  • Spacedust: I attended an event this week where people seemed to think the space program is just not worth anything. They are not alone. At least a few Members of Congress have supported ending NASA and using that money for things closer to home. President Kennedy was right when he said we should go to the moon, though it’s too bad he didn’t live to see it. Studying the stars does more than waste tax dollars, it inspires innovation. It creates jobs. It teaches about who we are and why we are here. Plus if we don’t get global warming under control it might find us a new place to live… (no, I don’t think we will do that – at least in my lifetime)
    
  • The arts & humanities: Such an easy target and so important to our society. We may not always see the immediate value of either but should they go away we would see the impact of their absence.
    

Barack Obama’s victory in November was, to me, a sign that we want to go in a new direction. The course he has set for the country is one that I think we will make life better for all of us and inch us closer to being what we want to be. My hope is that we will not just look to him but to each other and start to openly talk about this and not just debate it.

The craziness just keeps on coming… (or in case you missed these gems)

The last few months have been fun for most Democrats, with the GOP imploding in the most public of ways. Last week’s bombshell was Senator Specter’s defection and nothing topped that but that doesn’t mean the week wasn’t funny and strange.

• Conservatives attack President Obama’s condiment choice: Arlington, VA residents were treated to a rare POTUS/VPOTUS visit when the duo went out for a ‘working lunch’ at a local favorite. Personally I thought the most absurd thing to come out of the stop was the amount of time MSNBC devoted to it until I read this: http://mediamatters.org/research/200905070031 Sean Hannity, and a host of his colleagues, were outraged that the President ordered his hamburger with mustard and not ketchup. I get that they have been trying to paint him as someone who is out of touch with the American people but is this really the best they have? Does anyone really think FOX News is ‘fair and balanced?’ What-ever.
  
• Republicans attach each other over ‘listening tour’: In an effort to ‘re-brand’ the party, several prominent Republicans set out on their listening tour. The team, made up of Mitt Romney, Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Jeb Bush held a pizza party in northern VA. Now there is an inherent irony in having Mr. Cantor (aka ‘Dr. No’ to the people on the Hill for his obstructionist positions and rhetoric – he even got into an argument with President Obama regarding the decree John Boehner issued instructing all GOP Members of Congress to reject any Obama proposals even before reading them) speak about this issue but there’s more to this than that. Shortly after, Michael Steele, head of the GOP, told the press that moderates ‘are welcome in the party as long as they don’t change it.’ My translation: We are a big tent party as long as we don’t have to listen to anyone who doesn’t share every one of our views. The National Council for a New America has said they want to focus on the ‘traditional’ Republican values such as reducing the size of government, increased personal liberties (and probably responsibility) and supply side economics and move away from the cultural issues. For some reason this just reminds me of Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares. It’s as if some Republicans understand the menu that has won elections in the past (during the first W administration Ohio lost more than 300,000 jobs but the state went for him in 2004 because of gay marriage) doesn’t work anymore but others want to stay where they are. Mike Huckabee said this was a ‘sad day’ – maybe for them, it sure made me laugh. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22242.html
  
  
• Ron Paul makes sense, sort of: I don’t often get to say that I agree with Ron Paul and think most of what he said about the flu is wrong, he did get it partially right. I did read a headline that indicated the former presidential nominee and Congressman thinks the federal government is hyping the flu for its own nefarious reasons and while I DO NOT believe that, a little less paranoia about it would be a good thing. Back in 2006, I was always talking about the bird flu and all my friends and colleagues thought I was crazy. Maybe I burned through all my flu fears then but I just cannot worry too much about H1N1. Should people be careful? Sure. Should we all stock up on three months of food and water? I don’t plan to and will not get vaccinated should a vaccine be developed. My only remaining concern is that the outbreak will subside in the northern hemisphere, it will come back next fall when the regular flu season begins. http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/05/03/swine.flu.react/
  

Compassion and the Court: A lot has been made over comments President Obama made about what he is looking for in a new Supreme Court Justice. He said he wanted someone who understands their rulings will impact people’s lives directly and therefore they need ’empathy.’ Apparently ’empathy’ is a code word for ‘activism.’ If there are two things that get conservatives all riled up, they are ‘activist judges’ and abortion. Supreme Court nominations provide them with a twofer of sorts for them. Senator Jeff Sessions was recently given the top spot for the GOP on the Senate Judiciary Committee (kind of ironic given that the reason he is in the Senate is that he was rejected when he was nominated to serve as a judge) has said he will not vote against someone because they are gay, there will be a big fight. Team Sarah, an organization that has been raising money and doing other things for Sarah Palin (they organized a call in against Kathleen Sebelious because of abortion, it didn’t work) will get back involved but I have gone off message.

It may seem counterintuitive to want a compassionate court. Aristotle said that ‘the law is reason free from passion.’ I agree with that but also understand the practicality and usefulness of empathy and have a rather strange example of why it is so important. If one country has proven they understand this principle, it’s Rwanda.

Fifteen years ago, Rwanda was the site of one of the worst genocides in history. In three months, nearly one million people were killed by their own friends, neighbors and even family and all this was done basically by hand. Many international organizations dismissed the country and decided peace was impossible there. They proved us all wrong. A big challenge they faced was that for the first time survivors and the killers would be asked to live alongside each other and many thought this would lead to more violence. The government responded by setting up smaller courts all over the country. In these Gacaca courts, the killers faced the survivors and in exchange for telling the truth, received much lighter sentences. This gave the survivors to confront them and get some justice. It also meant that previously unknown details of the genocide were uncovered. Moreover, the death penalty was abolished. While Hutu militants claimed the newly installed Tutsi president was having any Hutus who went home killed, they weren’t. It’s not perfect or pretty but has allowed that country to start to heal.

This is an extreme case, of course, but if they can work through their problems to achieve some normalcy via a better judicial system, maybe that’s a lesson we can learn here.

Arbitrary collection of recent events:

1. Swine flu: Any story that can knock a subject like torture off the front pages has to be huge, and bad. This is both. The current strain is a Flu A subset H1N1 (There are several flu types – A, B & C – only A can cause an epidemic or pandemic. H is the protein hemagglutinin, which gets the virus into a host cell and the N is neuroaminadase another protein that turns the cell into a virus factory). Being an A H1N1 means it is also a descendent of the 1918 flu that killed between 50 and 100 million people worldwide. And this was before air travel became. It used World War I to travel through Europe. Its origins are disputed, some scientists believe it began in China while others say the first outbreak was in Kansas (check out, Gina Kolata’s Flu: the story of the great influenza pandemic of 1918 and the search for the virus that caused it or John Barry’s The great influenza. Or Google it. With over 150 deaths in Mexico so far and cases in at least seven US states, this has the potential to be really, really bad. I would hope anyone concerned about this would check out either www.cdc.gov or www.who.org to get information as the media loves a crisis.
   

    

   In fact when asked about the similarities between this flu and the 1918 version, Sanjay Gupta’s comments only seemed to make a pandemic seem more likely today than it was then. When he responded to viewed questions he talked about the lack of air travel, the ability to be contagious with the flu before symptoms appear and then digressed into how this differs from seasonal flues in that its impact is seen mostly in young, healthy people rather than the very young/old. So what you’re saying, Sanjay, is “Yes, this could very well kill everyone in the prime of their lives.” I am not saying he should sugar coat anything but we are already near panic about everything else – the economy, terrorism, war, pirates – this is not the time to freak out.

    

2. Politics and the flu: Because how the two parties view this is the real question du jour. President Obama’s stimulus bill apparently included $850 million for pandemic prevention but was taken out in a compromise with Senator Susan Collins (R-NH). Her vote was crucial to the bill’s passage through the Senate but one has to wonder why this was signaled out. Her office issued a statement that she thought this was a worthy cause but should go through the appropriations process rather than be considered stimulus. The interesting this about the current crisis is that the 1918 flu caused a one to four percent drop in the US GDP. The 2010 budget does contain money, albeit much less, but I wonder if this grows will we look and think that it was just too little, too late?
   

1. Red rover, red rover, send Arlen right over: The only Democrat who didn’t look like he was happy about Arlen Specter’s defection to the Democratic party was Congressman Joe Sestak (D-PA) but that’s only because he wanted to run for the Senate himself (and people say Specter put his ambition before his country). Bah-humbug. I am ecstatic about it. No, this will not give the D side a totally filibuster proof Senate but it shows how the GOP has changed. It’s always fun to watch the Republicans fight, to me anyway.
   

    

2. California; find yourself here (on vacation): Maybe it’s the 11 percent unemployment rate but California recently changed its advertising campaign. The tagline used to be ‘California: find yourself here’ but they added ‘on vacation’ to the end. Interesting times.
   

    

New Yorkers miss Eliot Spitzer: It may be the economy but it seems most don’t like the way David Patterson is doing his job and would rather have Spitzer at the helm. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/05/04/poll-bring-back-spitzer-say-new-yorkers/