by Editors

America –Thank God– Is not Its Leadership

 

 

Preface (by DW Foreign Policy Editor, Dusty Schoch) –

Len Carrier just forwarded me an article written by a law professor shortly after 9/11/01. He wrote it in response to reading an article in an Pakistani newspaper where someone had posted an ad offering a reward for any person’s killing an American….any American.  The author of the article* was an American law school professor named Peter Ferrara, and his sentiments expressed nearly six years ago in the wake of bin Laden’s assault on “America” are just as valid today as they were then, in spite of what Bush and the neo-cons have done to America’s image abroad and in spite of the fact that what we have done in Afghanistan and Iraq was—in nearly every respect—wrong.

In forming and maintaining my views of and feelings for my native America, I try to keep in mind what a dear friend and mentor told me once about my love and feelings for my friends.  She (my mentor and friend) and I were speaking one day about a mutual friend who had recently committed a really foolish and arguably “bad” act…maybe not as foolish or bad as militarily invading a sovereign country on false pretenses, but clearly a reprehensible thing.  I was saying to my friend that, in spite of what our mutual friend had done, I still found it impossible not to care for him and want to keep him for my friend. I’ll never forget what my friend, Maggie Crow, said to me that day. In regard to the same mutual friend, she said,  “Dusty, I still love him too.  I never loved him for being perfect.”

One day, during the mid-stages of the war in Iraq, I was discussing with Len Carrier my growing “disenchantment” with “America” as an evolving country. I was ashamed (and still am) for what we, as Americans, were doing in the Middle East.  Len, our In-House Historian and Philosopher brought me solace that day by pointing out how many countries in history have survived periods of really bad leadership. The Russians, one of Europe’s oldest cultures, have survived Communist totalitarianism as did Germany and Italy their fascist tyrannies. America will survive its currently crumbling reign of neo-fascist terror under Bush’s brand of neo-con Judeo/Christian/Zionist/Petro Herronvolk.

And, as we in America survive, we would be wise to keep disseminating the message this brilliant law scholar posted immediately after 9-11-01. America is not its leadership. We are over 300 million people of a nation whose ethnic and cultural diversity has never been rivaled in the history of Mankind. When some ignorant Islamic zealot in Pakistan, or even in Iraq, calls for the random slaughter of Americans, he’s ipso facto demonstrating his ignorance of the fact that America is the homeland of 8 to 10 million Muslims (over one third the total number of Islamics in Afghanistan).  So, one out of 33 “Americans” killed “at random” will automatically be…you guessed it…faithful followers of Mohammed.

Without further stealing of his “thunder”, I’ll print for us all here the ever-relevant words of an American scholar on what it is to be an American. We need to keep reminding the world of the fact that America is the Spartacus of international freedom. In the patchwork and, in parts, torn and tainted quilting of our mosaic history, we have certainly sewn some poor—and yes—even outrageously bad patches. But the sewing of the American Quilt is still under way. We are a work in progress, and we are still the greatest experiment in freedom any peoples in the history of the world have ever dared… and we never were, are not now, and never in the future will we ever be merely what our leaders appear to be and  do in our names.  We should never make the mistake of loving our country under the delusion that either it or we were ever…perfect.

We will endure, we will out-live, and ultimately we will renounce and rid ourselves and our American homeland of Bush and his fascist, war-mongering  bully boys and the world will again look to us and see us for what we are….which is …. Them.   Free.    

 

IN THE MEANTIME…LET’S KEEP REMINDING

THE REST OF THE WORLD…

 

 

What Is An American?
A primer.

By Peter Ferrara, an associate professor of law at the George Mason University School of Law.
September 25, 2001 9:20 a.m.

 

You probably missed it in the rush of news last week, but there was actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper there an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American.

So I just thought I would write to let them know what an American is, so they would know when they found one.

An American is English…or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. An American may also be African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani, or Afghan.

An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim. In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan. The only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of them choose.

An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that he will answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.

An American is from the most prosperous land in the history of the world. The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes the God-given right of each man and woman to the pursuit of happiness.

An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need. When Afghanistan was overrun by the Soviet army 20 years ago, Americans came with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country. As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any other nation to the poor in Afghanistan.

An American does not have to obey the mad ravings of ignorant, ungodly cruel, old men. American men will not be fooled into giving up their lives to kill innocent people, so that these foolish old men may hold on to power. American women are free to show their beautiful faces to the world, as each of them choose.

[Note from Dusty- We must forgive the writer for the previous paragraph, as in September of 2001, no one (including skeptical me) could have foreseen what the Bushite Fascists were capable of.]

An American is free to criticize his government’s officials when they are wrong, in his or her own opinion. Then he is free to replace them, by majority vote.

Americans welcome people from all lands, all cultures, all religions, because they are not afraid. They are not afraid that their history, their religion, their beliefs, will be overrun, or forgotten. That is because they know they are free to hold to their religion, their beliefs, their history, as each of them choose.

And just as Americans welcome all, they enjoy the best that everyone has to bring, from all over the world. The best science, the best technology, the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best athletes.

Americans welcome the best, but they also welcome the least. The nation symbol of America welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed.

These in fact are the people who built America. Many of them were working in the twin towers on the morning of September 11, earning a better life for their families.

So you can try to kill an American if you must. Hitler did. So did General Tojo and Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung, and every bloodthirsty tyrant in the history of the world.

But in doing so you would just be killing yourself. Because Americans are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an American.

So look around you. You may find more Americans in your land than you thought were there. One day they will rise up and overthrow the old, ignorant, tired tyrants that trouble too many lands. Then those lands too will join the community of free and prosperous nations.

And America will welcome them.

*The original print of the article is available on line at National Review Online –   http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-ferrara092501.shtml

 

Posted in America, Political, War | Leave a comment by Editors

REJECT BUSH’S IMMIGRATION BILL

BILL By: Leonard Carrier, DW In-House Historian and Philosopher

Congress is now debating the hodge-podge of an immigration bill that the George W. Bush desperately wants to sign. So far, it contains something for everyone—more miles of fence, a path to legality for the roughly twelve million illegal immigrants already here, and, dearest to Bush’s heart, a guest worker program that would allow U.S. employers to pay low wages to hundreds of thousands of foreign workers. The bill is a nightmare. Like the No Child Left Behind Act, and the Patriot Act, this 1000-page Frankenstein monster was cobbled together by staffers with no likelihood that anyone in Congress would actually read the whole thing. We know that “No Child Left Behind” has failed its purpose, and we now know that the Patriot Act was used as an excuse to have the government spy on us; but this immigration bill promises to top them both in sheer stupidity, and, I should add, cupidity on the part of employers lusting to make profits on the backs of underpaid workers, while leaving American workers out in the cold.

The first thing that Congress should do with this bill is to uncouple the part that tries to right our present immigration woes from the so-called guest worker program. The concentration should be on how best to give the twelve million illegal immigrants already here a path to legality. Congress should not be afraid of the word ‘amnesty’ The best way to handle the problem of undocumented workers is to offer them a way to come out from the shadows. They are not felons. Being “illegal” is a civil offense, not a criminal one. They should be given the chance to purchase a new temporary visa that would allow them to work in this country, and also to pay taxes. The price should not be too high to prevent their becoming legal, and it need not be paid all at once. If their record is clean after a two-year period, they could be given a choice, either to renew their temporary visa, or to apply for a permanent visa. Anyone with a criminal record should be deported, as should anyone who does not opt for legality. We already have sufficient immigration laws on the books to find and deport those who opt to stay in this country illegally. Congress should use money designed for border fences—which is money ill-spent, since the fences are really no deterrent–to increase the number of immigration agents whose job it should be to find and deport illegal immigrants. More important, employers should bear the responsibility should they hire illegal immigrants. A really stiff fine, or even jail time, might be imposed. If undocumented immigrants are prevented from getting jobs, then it is highly likely that they will either leave the country, or else take the necessary steps to become legal.

Central to Bush’s plan, however, is his guest worker program, which would allow foreign workers to enter the country to work on a temporary basis. If Bush gets his way on this, the path is open for hundreds of thousands of new “guest workers” to flood our employment rolls. What Bush doesn’t say, however, is that we already have a guest worker program for unskilled laborers, one that is largely hidden because these workers are socially and geographically isolated. This is the current H-2 program that brought about 121,000 guest workers into the United States in 2005, roughly 32,000 doing agricultural work, and the others in low-paid non-agricultural industries.

The H-2 workers, however, are not treated like guests. Instead they are systematically exploited and abused. They lack the ability to change jobs if they are mistreated and are instead bound like slaves to the employers who import them. If workers complain about abuses, they face deportation or other retaliation. Even though the Department of Labor provides some basic protections to H-2 workers, government enforcement of their rights is nearly non-existent, and private lawyers typically refuse to take their cases. This being the case, these workers are routinely cheated out of wages, forced to live in squalid conditions, denied medical benefits for injuries on the job, and are held captive by employers or labor brokers who confiscate their documents. All this has been documented in a 2007 report of the Southern Poverty Law Center, entitled, “Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States.” This report is based on thousands of interviews with guest workers, scores of legal cases, and the experiences of legal experts throughout the country. As Congressman Charles Rangel put it recently, “This guest-worker program’s the closest thing I’ve ever seen to slavery.”

Of the twelve million illegal immigrants in the United States, most of them entered legally. They chose not to try to renew their visas and instead went underground. The reason they chose to do this should be obvious. They did not like the way they were treated by their employers. When their work visas expired they were supposed to leave the United States Rather than do this, and rather than put up with the exploitation they experienced, they became illegal immigrants. Now President Bush wants more temporary workers to enter our low-wage labor market. It should be clear that this tactic is likely to swell the ranks of illegal immigrants once the mistreatment of these new workers forces them to choose either to leave or to go underground. Bush’s plan is simply a way of allowing employers to hire disposable labor on the cheap. Congress should reject it, not only because it will exacerbate our present immigration problem, but also because it would deprive Americans of jobs they would be willing to perform for a fair wage.

Before any new guest-worker program is installed, the defects of the old one need to be cured. Here is an outline of the recommendations contained in The Southern Poverty Law Center’s report. First, Federal laws protecting guest workers from abuse must be strengthened, including a process that allows workers to gain permanent residency over time. Second, The Department of Labor must force employers to comply with guest-worker contracts, including a means of recovering earned wages not paid by employers. Third, Congress must provide guest workers with access to our courts, including federally funded legal services for all guest workers and penalties for employers who confiscate guest-worker documents. The Thirteenth Amendment to our Constitution abolished slavery. It is high time that the “legalized slavery” of our H-2 programs be brought to an end.

Posted in Bush, Immigration, Political | Leave a comment by Editors

SHOULD WE IMPEACH BUSH AND CHENEY?… YES…OR NO?

 

By: Dusty Schoch, DW Foreign Policy Editor
 
My Memorial Day answer to the question of whether Cheney SHOULD BE impeached has to be…. (as you scroll down the method in my madness will become apparent)…
 
Yes, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes Yes, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes Yes, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes Yes, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes Yes, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes Yes, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes Yes, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes Yes, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes Yes, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes 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yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes, yes, yes and yes..
 
THAT IS EXACTLY 3424 YES’S—ONE FOR EACH AMERICAN SOLDIER CHENEY HAS SENT TO HIS & HER DEATH IN IRAQ THROUGH May 23, 2007, AND COUNTING……..
 
Dusty Schoch May 28, 2007

 

 

Posted in Bush, Bush Lies, Cheney, Political, War, War On Terrorism | Leave a comment by Editors

Global Warming Increases

 

By DW Environmental Science  Contributor, Patrick Morton*

 

 

 

            Last March I issued warnings about the real and present danger of Earth’s temperature rising. Sadly the situation is getting markedly worse by the minute while the current powers-that-be twiddle.

With our national leaders openly intimate with carbon-based fuel-mongers, is it any surprise that permissible levels of carbon dioxide emissions have been nearly doubled to make it appear like America is solving the problem?

America has five percent of the world’s population contributing a fourth of the total greenhouse gases which spark global warming. That’s twice the carbon emissions of Japan, Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy combined.

Sure, the President’s advisors officially claim that the average global temperature has only increased one degree Celsius in the last decade. But, we’re truthfully supposed to be cooling off while we’re seeing that two degree Fahrenheit rise. A mere two degree rise in polar temperature will not melt the ice.

Yes, it is true that the earth does have natural warming and cooling trends. But these changes occur gradually and are greatly influenced by the Milankovitch cycles. One of these cycles is how the earth tilts on its polar axis over time. Another cycle is how our orbit around the sun varies from nearly circular to elliptical over a different time schedule.

By the Earth’s natural cycles, we are supposed to be in a cooling trend for the Northern Hemisphere and polar ice should be building up. It must now be admitted that mankind does impact the environment. By our lust for carbon-based fuels we are over-powering the natural cycles of our world.

 

It’s time to sober up.

In February, 2004 at Barrow, Alaska it rained in the dead middle of winter!

Low-lying coastal communities are already being taken by the effects of thawing ice and rising seas.

The recent glacier event where an iceberg the size of Rhode Island (over 1,200 square miles)
broke off the Antarctic ice shelf actually happened.

Ice fields all over the globe are now unrecognizable to the scientists who study them. For the past two summers, ice-free water ways appeared in the North Pole region.

Polar bears, now less than a thousand, are becoming extinct. Because of melted hunting grounds, their average weight has decreased fifteen percent since the 1980’s. Females are getting too thin to breed and new cubs rarely survive winter. The scientists who study them fear their job titles will soon read Polar Bear Historians.

 

More sobering information can be seen at www.artic.noaa.gov/detect

 

We must start making ecological decisions with the seventh generation in mind. Take a look at www.bp.comfor numerous solutions and calculate your carbon footprint, a gauge of carbon dioxide you are putting into the atmosphere.

 

* Patrick Morton is a teacher of science, writer (news columnist) and ecologist living in the High Point, area. This is his first (hopefully of many) contributions to DW regarding our environment.

 

Posted in Environmental, Global Warming, Political | Leave a comment by Editors

SO WHAT… if Iran gets the bomb?

 

 

A DW Debate between Leonard Carrier (DW’s In-house Historian and Philosopher)

And Dusty Schoch (DW Foreign-Policy Editor) on Whether Iran should become

A Nuclear Power.

 

LEN’S OPENING:  (PRO)

 

            Everybody has dire predictions about what will happen if Iran gets nuclear capability.  Hillary Clinton and all the other presidential candidates in both parties cross themselves and say that this would be anathema to them.  No way can Iran get the bomb.  These politicians would be willing to do what?  Bomb Iran, invade their country, sow destruction far and wide?  Kill little children with cluster bombs, dismember people with bunker busters, but above all else don’t let these Persians have a nuclear weapon?

            What’s the big deal here?  Iran has said that it wants to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.  So maybe we don’t believe them.  Suppose we’re right.  Suppose that they really want to be able to fashion a nuclear weapon.  The nuclear club consists of the United States, China, Great Britain, Israel, Russia, France, India, and Pakistan.  Why don’t they want to let Iran in?  That would mean that Iran would have the same status as the other bomb-capable nations.  That would mean that those other nations couldn’t just bomb Iran with impunity.  That would mean that Iran would be able to fight back and inflict considerable damage on any possible invader.  Well, we can’t have that.  That would mean that we couldn’t use our muscle to make the Iranians do what we want them to do, which is to get them to give us their oil without the costly invasion we inflicted on Iraq.

            If Iran got the bomb, then we wouldn’t be able to threaten them without getting a counter-threat.  That would mean that Israel wouldn’t be the only nuclear nation in the Middle East.  That would mean that Israel might have to sit down and talk to Palestinians and forge a lasting peace.  Oh, that would be calamitous, wouldn’t it?  Let’s face it, if Iran got the bomb they wouldn’t use it, just as the Soviet Union didn’t use it, and just as we didn’t use it against them.  It would be back to Mutually Assured Destruction.  Looking back on those days, they didn’t seem that bad at all.

(As an aesthetic addendum, Len shares with us a prosaic

Portrait of Iran and its peoples…

Authorship: Surprise!—Len Carrier himself)

 

 

Pictures from Tehran

Tall, sunlit buildings posed before majestic mountains,

Autumn streets dappled with their colored leaves,

Fountains shooting forth their spray,

 

Skies smiling down on crowded streets,

On music makers, on children with their painted faces,

On wide, green soccer fields with fans in rapt attendance,

On women in their long dresses and bright scarves,

Glamorous in their understated beauty.

 

Oh, shining city beneath the snowy hills!

This is what you are now.

 

What you will be tomorrow is left to chance

And the whims of godless men.

L.C.

 

 

 

DUSTY’S COUNTERPOINTS:

 

 

Len, this is (most likely) the most important issue you and I will ever debate. An initial   listing of my  counterpoints to your proposal that we should favor Iran’s building a nuclear arsenal would include: (1) I think it was a suicidal mistake to let Pakistan have the bomb because they’re perennially an easy-coup away from landing the bomb in the hands of people who despise us (America/Israel) and believe that in a nuclear holocaust they will all go to heaven which a sizable percentage of them prefer to breathing air on earth. (2) Iran is worse in every respect than Pakistan. (3) If nukes had been in the hands of the Japanese and the Americans in 1945, there would have probably not been a 1946, as we knew it, or a 2007 for that matter as we know it. (4) You’re heading us in the wrong direction – We need to reduce, not expand, the number of nations with doomsday discretion. (5) You’re naively equating the leadership of Iran with rational humanity. They are led by fundamentalist lunatics. You’re arguing for investing preemptive holocaust power on people who are theocratically led  and who despise us with the fervor of fundamentalist idiocy. (6) You’re philosophically-oriented to the impaired point of thinking there “must be an answer” to every problem.

Quite frankly I view this problem as a dilemma—a  truly classic conundrum from both the logical and moral perspective. We have no “right” from either position—legal or ethical– to prevent Iran from arming themselves. We are asserting it because it is logical and because we can. In this situation I’m prone to  say “to hell with our humanly-civilized concept and construct of justice”; we’re talking global survival. If it takes tyrannical power to produce plutonium peace, I’m in favor of it. These are different days, my historically-sage friend. “Justice” was a meaningful phrase when the world knew only  conventional means of destroying one another. Since E=MC2, all notions of justice and “fairness” are less than archaic. They are irrelevant. Humans in the process of destroying one another now have it within their collectively aberrant power to take the whole world with them. E=MC2 gave us god-like power; power in fact sufficiently potent to effectively end incalculable life forms and ecosystems on earth.

 

Somehow, every intuitive bone in my body screams we must keep these Islamic creeps from having the ability to make us and fellow species (millions) on earth extinct. They are a theocracy. They unfortunately KNOW they are good and we are evil, and the more unfortunately KNOW they will not be permanently dead if or when we nuke them.  We certainly cannot view these Islamic nuts as we viewed the Russians and the other nuclear nations which, with the possible  exception of Pakistan, are inhabited and commanded by people sane enough to know that when they die, they will remain dead a very long time.

 

You are flirting with the idea of permitting the placement of doomsday (ours) weaponery in the hands of a national personality more insidiously disposed and insane than Charlie Manson.

 

Here’s the meat of what I suggest you consider most as you compose  your rejoinder:  Until we know what will work to best turn this conundrum into a plan to prevent the birth of a new nuclear (especially theocratic, especially Islamic) power, we should consider ourselves the physicians of a very sick world, and we should follow scrupulously the Hippocratic Oath:  First do no harm. Endorsing the development of the doomsday bomb by Iran…with these crazy Islamics living next to Zionist-crazy (and nuclear-armed) Israel…. is NOT THE ANSWER. Crazy, fundamentalist Iran whose majority of jihad-ready Moham-mad-men are presently itching to sacrifice themselves in the pan-Islamic* quest to make Israel disappear into the sea (or better vaporize it into the atmosphere),

And by *pan-Islamic, I mean, even with our allied Shieks of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, the peoples of those countries would love to see Israel disappear in a cloud of nuclear dust. Our alliance with those OPEC nations is a matter of oily détente, and the oil taps are tightening every second as the reserves get shorter and the world gets hotter.

 

My bottom line at this stage of contending is that not having presently the RIGHT answer is no call or justification for yielding to the intellectuals’ compulsion to HAVE an answer.  Sometimes doing NOTHING IS THE RIGHT THING.

 

Just one scenario to pose for an example: If we do what we should do—and immediately withdraw all U.S. troops from the Middle East, there will certainly follow considerable chaos. Out of chaos, order routinely arises. Letting the Sunnis, Shites, the infidel Israeli’s and the rest of the warring sons of Abraham have at each other and enjoy all the conventional war they want…now and before there are two of them with doomsday machines, might very well establish an order where the fittest (rationally and strategically) in fact survives.

 

While the Middle East is involved in a roaring and contagious conventional war, no nation among them will have the leisure or capacity to develop nuclear weapons.  I can’t prescribe the precise progression of events or see the future. No one can. But give Iran and Israel the bomb and I cannot envision a future with any peace, either of mind or of military machinations. Leave them alone and I can envision Israel unilaterally eliminating anything close to a bomb-factory in Iran. You saw how they aborted Iraq’s ambitions in that regard. I think America should stay the hell out of it and let the Middle East Hatfields and McCoys pursue their perennial convenings of conventional war.

The prosaic words you sent describing Iran are beautiful, as are its people. But their beauty does not render their leadership benign. The world is full of beautiful and deadly creatures. Truth is, the Middle East as a crude third-world whole, lives today in the dark ages, culturally and religiously. The horrible conundrum with which we’re faced is the result of a world technologically compressed and culturally constant. We’ve got medieval fundamentalist Hebrews and Arabs warring over the same old promised sand and  Zionist bones of contention their forbears fought over 2000 years ago with daggers and slings. But they’re sporting AK 47’s under arm and plutonium cataclysm under covert construction. We, as technical innovators and suppliers, are their enablers. “We” being our amoral, invisible, intractable military corporate cyborgs. The ones whose old, surplus and discarded Stinger missiles are in alien hands plucking our Black Hawks out of alien skies as we write each other here on the safe side of mayhem.

 

The centered, circumspect thinkers (which would include you and me and our ilk) have got to maintain the big-picture intelligence to deal with new problems with new stratagem.  Your “let Iran arm itself” philosophy is in distinctly  past principle and practicality perfect.  Wouldn’t argue against it if we were talking planes, tanks, guns and conventional explosives. These things, Dresden included, kill only arguably-responsible humans and environmentally they’re fairly benign.  Fission and fusion weapons are ….. u n t h i n k a b l e.   I can’t think of another word.  We need to be planning and scheming with Manhattan-project desperation ways to shrink the existing arsenals to extinction before one of our loose nuclear cannons fires a first volley the nuclear responses to which shrink unitary earthly life to extinction.

I have no answers to the lingering connundrum at this point. Only non-answers. I look at your proposition as the zen sculptor looks at the block of granite he must ultimately evolve into a product which is “finished” and “right”. As he chips away he determines only what the shape taking form is “not”. Allowing Iran access to the nuclear button to me is clearly only something I can say with certainty is “not” the way to pursue nuclear peace, much less universally-desirable disarmament. We have no nuclear “peace” at present- only an armed and dangerous doomsday standoff.

 

I am not particularly worried about the “peace” which cyclically reigns between perennial-conventional wars on earth.  I am dreadfully worried about global warming and other things which might create such massive  annihilations that the effects on our unitary ecology are either irreversible  and/or end-time cataclysmic. The fact that America (along with other competing or allied nations) is possessed of sufficient toxic power to destroy life on earth is itself unthinkable. Especially in view of the fact America’s systems of guidance and governance have been proved sufficiently flawed to have evolved the world’s preeminent nuclear power into the world’s most dangerous (and loathed) imperialistic predator.

 

Men of reason, circumspection, memory and compassion must recapture the attention and reform the conscience and conduct of America.  It may be a highly “improbable mission”, but that doesn’t mean we should cease trying.

Len, you must continue your devil’s advocacy on this issue. Don’t pull in your talons because of my preview. Argue this with me as passionately and persuasively as you can manage, and with every cerebral sinew you can muster. I need you to challenge me and fight me so we can help each other see not only more clearly the defect in your thesis and reason, but also hopefully—prayerfully—catch even an evanescent glimpse of the shape that amorphous piece of granite must assume to afford the future of life on earth a viable foundation…a formula….a form of peace, in the old, conventional sense of that seemingly disintegrating concept.

This is not just about Iran, but about all nations who’ll ultimately figure they can follow what ever precedent Iran and N.Korea establish in their on-going efforts to challenge America’s right-or-wrong plan to be the baddest ballistic bully on the block.   So, get on with your chipping, Professor.  I suggest not going too far afield in terms of pre-nuclear history.  Caesar’s Gallic Wars aren’t going to give us much steerage into the age of H-Bomb hell on earth.  Like it or not, we’re talking about the weird and very-here and now world of Dr. Strangelove and On the Beach. Russia and Iran are allies. Russia and China are allies. I’m not afraid for the few years I have left.  I’m afraid for the few years my children and planet earth may have left. I’m pondering, for sakes other than mine, the unthinkable.  So help me, Len. Give me your best shot.

 

 

LEN’S REJOINDER

 

Here’s  my best shot on why I think that a nuclear-armed Iran is a lesser of evils.  We both agree that were no country to have the bomb we’d all be better off.  That, unfortunately, is one genie we can’t put back in the bottle.

So now that we have many nations possessing nuclear capability, what do we do about the nuclear have-nots?  Our present tack has been to threaten those who want nuclear capability with sanctions, or even worse.  Why do you suppose that is? The ostensible reason is that we don’t want so-called “crazies” like Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il to use them on peace-loving nations like us.  One has to remember, however, that the only nation ever to use nuclear weapons was the good old, peace-loving USA.  We not only used them on Japan, but our generals are presently contemplating using tactical nuclear weapons, not only in any battles we might have to fight in the Middle East, but also from manned space stations, as well.

Our long stare-down with the Soviet Union did not produce one single nuclear incident.  This was because both parties knew that any first strike would produce a counterstrike.  There was a stalemate that finally resulted in arms reduction on the part of both nations.  Heraclitus recognized this more than two thousand years ago, when he claimed that only where you have conflicting and equal opposites do you have peace and stability.

Our invasion of Iraq was an object lesson for countries like North Korea and Iran.  If you only bluff about having weapons of mass destruction, woe betide you.  We’ll blast you with cluster bombs and bunker busters, and we’ll contaminate your water supply with depleted uranium, killing more than 600,000 people who otherwise would have lived.  So the message is clear to any rational-thinking leader of a country like Iran, a country possessed of enormous supplies of energy which they know we desperately need:  either get armed with a proper deterrent, or else let those who have a better-supplied arsenal roll right over you and steal your natural resources.

Right now Israel has nuclear capability. Will it be tempted to use it if it feels that Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, or Lebanon are exerting too much pressure on them to make peace with the Palestinians?  Unless we rein them in, I think they would.  The Israelis have no compunctions about bombing what they believe are nuclear facilities in Iran.  They’ve done it before, and they are poised to do it again.  If Iran had nuclear capability, Israel wouldn’t be the bully of the Middle East anymore.  They would be more likely to come to terms with, not only the Palestinians, but their other Arab neighbors, as well.  Out of discord, said Heraclitus, comes the fairest harmony.

Both India and Pakistan have the bomb.  Now those nations are not at each other’s throats as they were when they were fighting with conventional weapons.  My prediction is that the longer their nuclear stalement continues, the better the prospects for a lasting peace between India and Pakistan; and then they can begin mutual disarmament the way we did with the Soviet Union.

I also do not view Iran’s leaders as “crazies.”  Ahmadinejad might have some weird views about the holocaust (if he really does have those views and isn’t being misquoted), but he is not someone who would set the world on fire with a nuclear war.  It’s a good thing Bush demurred in debating Ahmadinejad, because the clever Persian would have tied our tongue-tied president into logical knots.

What those nations seeking nuclear capability want is justice.  We’ve been calling the shots for them for too long.  We removed the democratically elected leader of Iran and replaced him with the Shah.  What business of ours was that?  We wanted the oil, and we wanted a client state to make it easier for us to take it. We’re now attempting to do the same thing in Iraq.  When the Iranians kicked out the Shah, the mullahs took over.  But the mullahs aren’t about to start a war. They know that their country would be annihilated if they did.  So far, only we and the Israelis have started wars in the Middle East. I count the war between Iraq and Iran as a war we instigated, since in those days Saddam was our client and we supplied him with weapons–even those chemical and biological weapons whose remnants were resurrected under the phrase “weapons of mass destruction.”

Mao might have got many things wrong–cultural revolutions and iron rice bowl economics among them–but there was one thing he got right.  Justice comes from the barrel of a gun.  In today’s military climate that gun is a nuclear one.  Without it a nation has to accept some one else’s justice. Is there a danger that this gun will be used?  Of course there is, but this is a dangerous world.  I believe that there is more danger of its being used when there is no threat of a counter-use.  This, of course, is open to dispute; but I remember the motto of the Strategic Air Command, in which I was proud to serve during the Cold War: ”Peace is Our Profession.”  We meant it, even though our B-52s were carrying nuclear warheads meant for the Soviet Union should they attack us.  Of course, that attack never came, and I believe that it was because our nuclear capabilities balanced out.

The question remains:  should we go to war with Iran to prevent them from gaining nuclear capability?  If what I have said above carries any weight, then the answer is “no.”  Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. — L.C.

 

 

 

DUSTY’S REBUTTAL OF  LEN’S REJOINDER

 

As is par for your philosophical course, Len, you  responded to my counterpoints with a beautifully-composed argument.  But, as with beauty in women, beauty in polemics can be seductive.  Only difference, the charm of what you have just written is, thank-heavens, resistible.

 

Not a single one of your reasons holds any water. They are merely chips off the block of some truth which will hopefully take better shape hereafter. I’ll take them one at a time:  Remember our topic and the bone of contention – It is NOT whether the U.S. should militarily attack or otherwise prevent Iran from having the bomb—Rather, it is simply whether it is best for the international community, the world, if you will, that Iran have the bomb. You have contended that their having bomb is a situation to be preferred over their not having it.   I will now contend with your argument’s premises one at a time:

 

First you suggest that America has no right to prevent Iran as a nuclear “have not” from becoming a nuclear “have” nation like America because America used nuclear weapons against Japan…and threatens to use them (tactical grade) in the Middle East.  Len, this is an argument against permitting any nation nuclear arms. America in 1945 was at its peak both in terms of international integrity and nonaggression.  If WE chose to drop the bomb in the course of wanting an accelerated and clean resolution to the war in the Pacific, we can expect Iran’s trigger fingers to be a hundred-fold “itchier”.  What’s good for the Goose is in fact good for the Gander, but what was bad for America (not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki) remains worse for Iran.

 

Second you contend the Soviet Union’s nuclear armament has proved innocuous since the cold war standoff, and implicitly you are contending that what was “safe” in the case of Soviet Russia will prove safe when Iran is armed with nukes.  The scary thing is, you’re not kidding. I’ll mention only a few trump cards that independently sweep your cards off the table. (1) We came, with the Cuban Missile crisis so close to becoming cosmic gas. (2) Russia’s stockpile (enough to extinguish all American life 5 times) resulted in Japan’s nuclear assailants (America) building its stockpiles to a point sufficient to snuff out essentially all life on earth; not sure how many times, but once would seem enough.  Heraclitus’ theory of peaceful standoff between “equal opposites” has no application where the weapons held by the combatants are doomsday weapons.  Didn’t you see the movie “War Games”, Len?  Didn’t you hear that wonderfully-inspired war-game programmed computer spout the Oracle’s truth at the end of the flick by saying, that “In the game of thermonuclear war, the only way to win is not to play.”  The corollary to this rule, Len, would be—The only way to prevent the game’s being played (as we did in Japan) is to ELIMINATE EITHER THE PLAYERS OR THE WEAPONS THEY PLAY WITH.  I submit, since we (U.S.) is already armed, the elimination of thermonuclear weapons is the preferred alternative; and there are only 2 alternatives imaginable.

THIRD you suggest that we attacked Iraq because they DIDN’T (truly) have the bomb (or any other WMD’s), and that if they had had them, we’d have been more reluctant to … attack, conquer and occupy them.  Len, this is not an argument that makes it more rational to permit Iran to build a nuclear arsenal it presently does not have. If Iran had the bomb, given their relative size and non-ICBM capacity to deliver it, we could make them disappear preemptively at will.  We’re much more powerful than Goliath was over David.  It would take Iran decades to get as insanely armed with nuclear over-kill as we.  Iran’s nuking up is dangerous to us because they will have the power to equip terrorists with suitcase bombs that could easily be containerd-through our ports or open borders.  We need to prevent Iran from producing nukes they can distribute under their robes and tents to anti-western Jihadists.

 

FORTH you reprise your argument of nuclear-deterring détente between Russia and America in suggesting Israel would be less likely to nuke its enemies if its enemies (e.g., Iran) could nuke them back.  At the same time you argue that Israel is likely to nuke its enemies at any time they think they might be losing a conventional war over the Palestinian problem.  I think, Len, you are contending that two nuclear idiots are better than one.  These Biblically-bellicose enemies have historically used against each other every weapon at their avail (most of which either we or Russia has manufactured and shipped to them).  I’ll say it again— Nukes in the hands of America is wrong. The “nicest” and most respected nation on earth used the unthinkable weapons in WWII. There is a thousand-times greater likelihood for nuclear war when the players are Zionist and Islamic fundamentalists motivated by the intellects and animus of pre-medieval religious fanatics. These nations should be deprived of all forms of explosives. Giving them plutonium bombs is…again (but I promise—not for the last time)….unthinkable.

 

FIFTH -  I’m really surprised you played the “justice” card in this Armageddon doomsday game.  I told you up front I had no “solution”, but this is clearly one of the most patent  “non-solutions”.  Sure it’s “unjust” in every sense for the biggest nuclear bully to say to the lesser nations “Thou shalt not have nuclear weapons”. And in endorsing America’s such declaration, I do not endorse either the ethicality or rationality of Aristotle’s “Golden Men”  (i.e., his philosophy that there will always be people whose superior intelligence and powers make them better equipped to make decisions affecting their …inferiors.)  I simply stick by my guns at this point. There are (very unjustly for every species of life on earth) already too many nuclear powers. The un-represented (in Congress or English Parliament) fish in the sea and fowl in the air quite un-justly have no voice in the matter which will certainly affect their being among the “quick or dead” in their future contexts.  Forget “little picture” justice. Considering the macrocosmic globe and the “justice” affecting all integrated and interdependent life on earth, no nation on earth is justly in possession of doomsday Armageddon power. End of sermon. End of argument.

I’m glad (and thank you for your part in the restraint) that our SAC boys didn’t nuke Russia and light the fuse to the Armageddon war.  But, beyond that gratitude, I feel like being in the planes carrying those bombs, was aiding and abetting a  sin against nature if there ever was one.

 

SIXTH, you state that a question remains—that being: Should we go to war with  Iran to prevent them from gaining nuclear capability.  I think I might join your “no” in that debate but it is quite unrelated to the debate here under way. That’s another fight for another day.   Let’s wind this one up.  I’ll give you the closing argument on why, if you still do, Iran should have nuclear bombs.

 

 

IN CONCLUDING…

 

CONSIDER THIS… “BULL”

 

I commenced my counter-pointing of your pro-nuke argument for Iran by referring to the problem as “conundrum” and “dilemma”.  My first faulting of your proposition was in mentioning that the most glaring defect in your logic was that you apparently think that it’s logically incumbent on us to in fact DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE PROBLEM.

 

Robert Pirsig (like you, Len, a professor of philosophy) wrote a book some time ago entitled “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, which was a challenging and provocative examination of the areas of ethicality and aesthetics wherein the term “quality” is viewed variously as either illustrative or axiomatic.  In short, his book, viewed as philosophic thesis stands for the proposition that the term “quality” is incapable of logical limitation or utilitarian definition. That’s because it is imbued with both relativistic and subjective …qualities (opps…I should have said “aspects”).

 

In the course of unraveling his fascinatingly-creative only quasi-fictional book, Pirsig discusses a way he has devised of thinking outside all boxes.   In the course of delivering his discourse on quality and the pursuit of excellence, Pirsig poses and rejects our concepts of conundrums and “dilemmas”.

 

Even before Pirsig and his book, Albert Einstein taught us in his ending the debate between the particular and wave physicists on the nature of light (where the former were contending it was a particle, and the latter a wave) that the question that seemed dilemmatic was in fact not, because, as he eventually proclaimed, light was neither a wave nor a particle, but rather “both. “

 

Pirsig was heading us in a similarly expansive and liberating direction when he argued to us through  his protagonist’s wrestlings with the mind-numbing denotations of “quality” that there are more than two things to do when facing what we perceive to be a dilemma. He poses the philosophical or logical “dilemma” in metaphorical fashion as the proverbial two-horned bull. He postures us as matador in the ring with the bull and it’s dual-pointed menacing  array heading our way and asks us to re-think the essential nature of the dilemma.

 

Long story short – he suggests we quit looking from horn to pointed  horn in order to decide which we’ll choose for purposes of impalement.  He instructs us to get the image of conundrum and dilemma altogether out of our minds and think outside that box  as he had learned to do in order to save his sanity and perhaps even his own life.

 

When the bull is headed your way, with those terrible pointed horns, don’t think you have only two alternatives. Think outside the sandy box of the bull ring and do as he did. At the last moment with the bull’s approach, he finds himself no longer willing or able to look the bull in the face. There is no answer to his “dilemma” there, and so long as he is staring at the bull no other “options” will appear. So he looks down…into the sand of the bull ring in fact.  Then and there the solution appears.  It is the sand itself. He reaches down and scoops it up in his hands and instinctively hurls it in the eyes of the impending bull. Bullfight over. Matador walks away, to fight (or maybe not) another day…

 

Len, it presently appears to me clearly that we have with the situation of Iran’s becoming armed with nuclear weaponery what  appears to be a classic or even paradigmatic dilemma.  A nuclear-armed Iran is…unthinkable.  On the other hand, a war waged against Iran by either the U.S. or  another “Allied Coalition” to prevent Iran from becoming nuclear armed is also…unthinkable.

 

Somewhere out there, there is a pail of sand for the eyes of this Arabian Bull, this Islamic ICBM wannabee.  We just need to keep thinking with Einsteinian stealth outside all the old boxes.  If we could bomb or invade Iran and accomplish the mission of keeping it forever nuclear disarmed, I might be disposed to join the hawks in such a mission. History and intelligence counsel me that such force begets only reprisals worse than the originally-perceived enemy.

 

But simply because we don’t presently know what the answer is today does not mean there is none, either right on the sand within our frightened view or…out there inchoate in someone’s Einsteinian noggin.  Simply doing nothing (from America’s standpoint) as said before, may be the best answer, at least for the time being.   Iran may find its eyes filled with Israeli (and/or Pakistani and/or Indian) sand long before its nuclear horns come within poking distance of the U.S.

 

When all presently-perceived options are unthinkable, we must wait. We must wait until one of us has a better idea.  If we keep our heads and hearts in the right places, the idea will come. That’s my “field of peaceful dreams” position at least.  And I’d certainly love it if you—any of you has a better idea.

Best,

 

Dusty

 

War is still our only enemy.

4/11/07

 

LEN’S CLOSING

 

 

 

Final Words

            I find myself not so much in disagreement with Dusty on the main thrust of his argument, but rather on the details.  But, as always, that’s where the devil resides.  Let me then briefly respond to the points Dusty raises.

 

First:  Dusty contends that since we bombed Japan when no other nation had nuclear weapons, Iran would be more likely to use them in a first-strike capacity.  I disagree.  We might not have used atomic weaponry if we knew Japan had a second-strike capacity.

 

Second:  Dusty claims that in a “game of chicken” with nuclear weapons, Heraclitus’ notion of a balance is inapplicable.  I disagree.  We have many nuclear nations now, and no nation has used these weapons against another. That’s empirical evidence that a standoff does work.  Our use of them occurred when no one else had them.

 

Third:  I simply reiterate that in the face of a bellicose nation that wants to steal your oil, it’s better to be more prepared rather than less.  We have long been bellicose toward Iran.  We still list Iran as a member of an “axis of evil.”  We listed Iraq that way, and look what we did to them.

 

Fourth:  I give more credit than Dusty does to the intelligence of Israelis, Arabs, and Persians.  A main reason why there is so much turmoil in the Middle East is that we have declared that region in our “national interest” ever since the Carter Doctrine. Our own meddling in that area has created more friction than there would be otherwise.

 

Fifth:  I can agree that no nation on earth is justly in possession of nuclear weapons.  So why isn’t justice followed?  Why don’t we start by dismantling our nuclear arsenal?  The only justification is that we want them for self-defense.  But if that’s a justification for us, then it has to be a justification for any other nation.  This is an application of Kant’s principle of universality.

 

Sixth:  Dusty agrees with me that it would not be worth going to war with Iran to prevent their gaining nuclear weapons, but he says it is unrelated to our dialogue.  I disagree.  We are not arguing in a vacuum.  My premise concerned what we would be willing to do to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I assumed that there was no way our present Administration would allow it—and that means war if all else fails.  But here a cost-benefit analysis is helpful.  There was also no way we were going to let Saddam stay in power in Iraq.  After 3,500 American dead and perhaps 30,000 wounded, along with hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, we got an escalating civil war with no conceivable exit.  A conflict with Iran would be even deadlier.  So, given the present state of mind of our leaders, my claim is that it’s the lesser of evils for Iran to have the bomb than it is for us to forcibly prevent them from getting it.

 

Finally—the bull:  I heartily concur that we should always try to “think outside the box.”  My argument that it’s a lesser evil for Iran to have the bomb assumes that the Bush Administration doesn’t know how to think outside the box.  “My way or the highway” is the mantra of these policy-makers.  Either Iran knuckles under—or else.  What I have outlined is a worst-case scenario.  It is one in which Iran really wants to fashion a bomb and not use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.  It is on that assumption that I have proceeded.  But what if Ahmadinejad is telling the truth? What if he really wants a peaceful use of nuclear energy? We could certainly find out by sitting down and talking to the Iranians. We could get other nations to help us, in the way that China is helping to defuse North Korea’s nuclear aspirations.  We could defuse the situation in Iran with diplomacy, but we choose not to do so.  We would rather try to sell the American people a story about an “axis of evil,” so we can more easily get them in a frame of mind for more war.  My earlier lyrics on the beauty of Tehran are meant to provide another framework.  So Dusty and I agree on the most important proposition:  war is the enemy. – L.C.

4 12 07

 

Posted in Peace, Political | Leave a comment by Editors

I MUS… COMMENT SOME MORE….

Three DW Writers –Dr. Leonard Carrier, DW Foreign-

Policy Editor, Dusty Schoch and H.P. City Councilman, Al Campbell

Offer  insights on the Imus affair and its political  and cultural

Implications ranging from. . .

 

Was It Just about Money? (Len)

 

Was It Much Ado About Nothing? “N” is for

“Nappy” and for . . . ??? (Dusty)

 

Why Ask Me ?(Al)

 

AND FINALLY…(as conclusion by Dusty)…

 

WHAT MIGHT JESUS HAVE DONE WITH IMUS?

 

(A  PARABLE…you only get to read

at the end of the article)

 

 

 

“All About Money and Power”

 

By DW In-House Historian and Philosopher, Dr. Leonard Carrier

Don Imus stepped over the line, but he was just offering a riposte to a comment one of his cohorts made about the Rutgers women’s basketball team. They thought it was funny, just like some of the other crude comments they make about celebrities every day–except these women weren’t fair game, because they were just college kids playing the game of basketball. If Imus had used the phrase, “nappy-headed ho” to describe the rapster Snoop Dogg, then there wouldn’t have been any cause for apology. He would not only have been accurate, his remark might even have been considered funny. Snoop thinks that he has the right to demean black women with his raptster videos whereas Imus doesn’t have that right. Snoop is wrong; nobody has that right–yet the people who make money on Snoop’s recordings don’t seem to care. Where is the outrage  from women’s organizations ? They should be leading a boycott against Snoop’s albums, including his latest CD, The Big Squeeze.

Some people don’t like “shock jock” radio or television. That’s fine. Just turn the channel. What happened to Imus after his unfortunate remark shows how hypocritical Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Snoop really are. Remember, it was Sharpton and Jackson, that dynamic duo, who jumped on Joe Biden for calling Barack Obama “clean” and “articulate.” Who are they to be the gatekeepers of political correctness? Where were Sharpton’s apologies to the Duke lacrosse team for slandering them after all charges were dropped? We all remember Jackson’s “hymietown” slurs against Jews, as well. Why aren’t Sharpton and Jackson deploring Snoop’s recordings? Could it be that it’s because Snoop is black, and it’s all right for black men to make money defaming women? Even worse are the sanctimonious statements of people such William F.Buckley, who described Imus’s firing as a “return to decency.”  If the Buckleys in our country were really concerned about decency, they would use Imus’s mistake as a platform for launching a serious discussion about race in the United States, instead of merely pointing their fingers and saying “shame.”

 

The worst offenders in this mess are the heads of CBS and NBC. First they demanded apologies, which Imus contritely issued. Then they gave him a suspension. Finally, when the PC crowd really got loud, and sponsors threatened to pull ads, they fired him. What a cowardly, gutless thing to do! The irreverent Imus, despite his iconoclasm, was actually one of the few commentators who made sharply critical comments about the political scene. Many politicians were on the receiving end of his well-deserved zingers–including George H.W. Bush for his meager charitable contributions. Even if you didn’t agree with him, you knew he wasn’t going to pull any punches. With Imus gone–and before him Howard Stern on radio–we aren’t going to get anything on our corporate stations except pabulum. One wishes that CBS and NBC had been so protective of viewers’ sensibilities when they helped to cheerlead for the invasion of Iraq. Their response to Imus did not reflect a concern for decency.  Rather, it reflected a concern for money. Although we would still object, we could better cope with Imus’s dismissal if those who fired him had been honest and admitted that their decision was based on a concern for money and power.
What should have happened in Imus’s case was simply his public apology to the Rutgers women’s basketball team. He issued that apology early on, and it was graciously accepted. That should have been it. But that wasn’t it, and we’ll all be the poorer for it by not having access to Imus’s dissenting opinions. If you’re like me and are really ticked off about their false piety and money-grubbing behavior, I suggest that you keep watching CBS and NBC just so you can boycott the products of every single advertiser that pressed those stations to fire Imus.

 

Imus’s firing has deprived us of an honest dialogue about racial bias. We have lost an opportunity to witness public contrition and insight from someone who is now forced to endure his shame in silence.  Without his voice this issue becomes another embarrassing page in history, except for the Sharptons and Jacksons who will squeeze as much dishonest propaganda from it as they can.  All of us need to understand what motivated Don Imus’s behavior so that we can better understand our own.  The brave young women of Rutgers knew that instinctively when they asked to meet with him.  That they chose to forgive him should have set an example for the rest of us.

Leonard S. Carrier

I FEEL … I MUS

By: DW Foreign Policy Editor, Dusty Schoch

Who are the bigger fools, after all—the fools who issue racist remarks or the fools who make a bigger deal out of it?  I’m neither a fan of Imus nor do I approve of his careless and rude references to Rutger’s Basketball squad as being “nappy-headed ho’s”. Having said that, and at the risk of appearing the bigger fool, I’m tossing my two bits in this current racial brouhaha for two reasons of principle concern: (1) I believe Imus’ firing by CBS was patently unjust and motivated more by dollars than principle,  and (2) I believe current media commentators are missing the most salient point in the controversy which is that Imus, and our white majority are the victims of reverse discrimination in matters of racial  “taboos” and blacks alone can—and should—fix this situation.

 

What should you do when the KKK threatens to exercise  their Constitutionally-guaranteed right to  parade (with proper permit) through your peaceful hometown?  Options:  Stage a media-filmed counter-culture display of contempt for the KKK? Secretly invite the old-guard Panther Party or Black Muslims to come and throw stones or worse? Seed the clouds on parade day to make it rain on the hooded ones?

The answer is simple and none of the above. The answer is — don’t go.

The KKK is beneath any enlightened contempt and any call for  concerted opposition to their long-collapsed clan effort to keep the black race “in their  place” has long ended.  The hooded ones are a joke, and responding to their dying displays of Albino-Alamo bravado with anything but indifference is aiding and abetting their still hideous cause, defunct or otherwise.

 

The same with racial minutia such as Imus’ verbal ejaculation. His firing  and career termination is just as lop-sided silly and over-reactionary as was the firing of Jimmy the Greek for simply stating the truth about black athletes in the prior decade. Jimmy (the legit gambling syndicate’s odd’s setter) stated simply and truly that black athletes are physically superior in America at least partly due to their selective breeding during times of slavery. If any of that assertion was subject to anthropological or genetic debate, it was still far short of being a hate-filled or hate-mongering remark in any way demeaning the black race.

 

But that didn’t stop the black community and it’s quick-draw demagogic spokesmen from doing to Jimmy what was just done to poor shock-jock, Imus. When someone white slips and uses the “N-word” in public, he’s as good as dead if he’s either a politician or a public figure, because all politicians and public figures serve at the will of the corporations, and the corporations serve at the will of the media, because the media serves the will of the dollar, and anything that might DEVALUE or DIMINISH  a broadcasting company’s (or their dollar-supplying advertising clients) IMAGE will cause that company to immediately canibalize any human in their midst, in order to nip the flow of lost dollars in the bud. They’ve gotta kill him before Neilson’s dollar dogma kills them.

 

In poor Imus’ case, he was fired before he had time to apologize for his words.

Please don’t get me wrong-  I don’t care a fig about Jimmy the Greek, Imus or that Seinfeld Show comic who all caught the quick  ax for  racially-slurring slips of tongue.  But the principle of the trend is odious and…as far as America’s image as a culture (if Bush has in fact left us with any) is concerned, it makes us all look like a bunch of robotic, neurotic, shame-ridden idiots.  Not to mention, in our over-kill, inverse-discriminating behavior, just plain un-just. Not to mention hypocritical.

 

Black people, especially comics, are regularly granted carte-blanch in referring to white folks as “honkey”, “cracker”, “whitie” and if you’re artistically poverty-stricken enough to audit their “Def Comedy Jams” on TV, or rap “music”, you’ll find hundreds of demeaning if not openly-explicative names for Caucasian Americans pouring out like a spring of artesian insult. And where is the backlash from the insulted white race?  They (blacks)  regularly use, and claim exclusive dominion in regard to the term, “nigger”, whereas they invariably  insist “whitie” use the euphemized “N-word”.

 

In direct regard to Imus’ career-terminating transgression, I submit there was nothing “racist” (i.e., racially insulting or hateful)  about what he did or said. He referred to the black Rutger’s basketball team as “nappy-headed ho’s”. He compared their looks to the (predominantly black) members of another team and said the latter were better looking.  “Nappy” in Webster’s has absolutely no negative definition, denotation or connotation. “Nappy” is defined as “covered with nap, or ‘downy’ “.   The root word, “nap” is defined as “having a downy coating”, or “referring to the short and fuzzy ends of certain cloth.”  African Americans are normally darker in color than Caucasian Americans.  This is no “stereotypical slander”; this is genetic and anthropological reality. The hair (covering the head) of African Americans in general, and specifically the hair covering the heads of one or more of the Rutger’s team can be, without insult or any negative intent be characterized as “nappy”.  Accordingly, the term, “nappy headed” is in no way a racial or reputational slur, unless you’re brain-challenged enough to buy into the implication that, as with “nigger”, only black males have the right to refer to black women with such “racially-exclusive” terms of ironic endearment (which they appear to be when black  rappers refer to their own significant others as  “nappy headed” , “ho’s” and “bitches”, which many of them do, incessantly).

 

Bottom line to Imus’ tar and feathering was, had the statement been issued publicly by a black person, no one would have noticed. I repeat: No one would have faulted (or fired) a black man for referring to these lady ball players as “nappy-headed ho’s”. That, ladies and gents, ho’s, pimps and bitches everywhere, is hypocrisy and  reverse discrimination at their most ridiculous.

 

IT’S JUST LIKE THE “N-Word” PROBLEM….

 

The Imus case centered around a white man’s use of racially “taboo” words. It’s a twisted and one-sided bias, perhaps best epitomized by the arch-evil…. “N-word” – You know- the word so “bad” we can’t even say it hypothetically. What a silly and sad set of  affairs—this aberrant cultural Mexican standoff over a two-syllable word. Compared to the “N-word”, “nappy” “ho” are minor-league race cards. So, from this point on, I’m using Imus’ “nappy ho” heave-ho as a stepping stone to a consideration of the unspeakable word that dwarfs all the other racially taboo words – “nigger”. Saying “nappy ho” over American airwaves got Imus summarily fired.  Saying the word I just wrote, I submit, might have gotten him killed.  Maybe even “legally”.  Stay with me a while. This is important stuff.

 

The solution to this insanity?  None immediately  possible because the blacks don’t want a solution. The blacks could easily take the power of the “n-word” away by simply and officially  and collectively agreeing—and proclaiming– not to take offense at it. By continuing to maintain that they have been “wounded” by the utterance of the word “nigger”, they continually, willfully and purposefully assign and invest destructive power in the word. If they regularly walked up to white people (intelligent and red-neck alike) and said, “call me ‘nigger’ if you like—After all, it’s just a diminutive of an archaic adjective derived from the country of origin for many African Americans, that being Nigeria. The word “nigger” simply denotes that we are members of that descended and evolved race.”

 

Racial game over. If blacks simply “allowed” bigoted and non-bigoted people of any race to use the word, the word would have no power. It has power only because the blacks continue to insist it is “taboo”.  It is taboo and powerful and damaging only because they continue to take offense.  There are no words that Caucasians can  claim (or choose)  that have a similar effect or offensive impact.  Why do you suppose that is?  It’s simply because Caucasians feel and have resolved to continue to feel that there is no word that can be used to demean them that does no more than denominate or refer to them as Caucasian.  The word, “Nigger” in fact does nothing more than denote the race of the one referred to.

 

For the past hundred years, black Americans have decided to cling to their position that there was insult warranting their “resentment” inherent first in “nigger”, then in the more old-south-polite, “darkie”, thereafter in the more politically-correct “negro’, and still longer thereafter more politically-correct “colored”, which was thereafter deemed less accurate and therefore more offensive than their “true” color  label. “Black” was collectively OK for a short time last decade, and now it appears there’s only one appropriate way for a white to refer to a black in the U.S., that being “African American”, and I utter it at the risk of causing offense to important folks like Barrak Obama who want to be referred to regressively as “black”).  Ho….hummmmmmmmm!  Do I ever get tired of all this galactically-stupid bantering about words!

 

Give it up, Black man. Give up your collective lack of self-esteem for being black and declare yourself  ipso facto in the promised land…that place where white folk have always pretty much comfortably existed…where you can refer to them with any word in the world that roughly transmits the message that they are members of a race  in which they are  never ashamed to be.

 

I for one don’t give a tinker’s damn if a white, black or yellow person refers to me with any adjective that  means they are calling me Caucasian.  I’m not  “proud” of being Caucasian in lieu of “racially other” because, having read history, I find that most the really bad deeds and mistakes cultures and peoples throughout history–including little incidents like WWI ,WWII, the Holocaust, the Crusades, the burning of witches, the drowning of the Anabaptists—for baptizing their children too late–have all been committed by the predominately white folk on earth.  So “pride” is not the cause of my being immune from insult when someone—with the use of any term (including “cracker”, “honkie”,”whitie”, —you name it—the list is long) refers to the fact that I am white.

 

Now you can not  include in such list things like “white trash”, because that’s going beyond calling someone “white”…it’s calling someone “base” or “worthless’ or worse.  The term “nigger” says only two things:  The speaker is referring to or addressing a member of the black race, and the speaker is an idiot who, simply for the nasty and sadistic pleasure of it is risking getting his throat cut for exercising his right to (stupid) free speech.

 

Why, then should black (excuse me- African American) citizens be permitted  exclusively to own the “N-word” when there is no counter-part “C-Word” whites can call taboo, “fighting words”?

 

Did you know, parenthetically,  that our State and Federal Appellate courts have bought into this non-sense? Take for example the common law crime of simple assault.  Most states (including mine, N.C.) have case law (judicial appellate decisional law)  holding that there are basically “no words that justify an assault”. This means, if you refer to some stranger in the street as a “bigoted dumb-ass”,  he commits an “unjustified and unprovoked” and hence criminal assault on you if he gets mad and hits you.

 

There are exceptions to that general rule when courts (including NC’s) have ruled that some words are so insulting and provocative that men of ordinary temper and prudence are reasonably unable (hence not required) to resist hitting people who use those words.  Included in those “exceptionally-provocative” list of words–which includes one’s mother and her immaculate lingual behavior in regard to the insulter and/or his body parts–is the word “nigger”.

 

There are cases holding that where a white man calls a black man “nigger”, he has justified the black man’s assaulting him by way of reprisal. That’s not to say the black man may not be sued and held financially responsible for the damages he inflicts in his assault, but it is to say he may be found innocent of any criminal charges because the courts have determined that he need not hold back his fist when a white man he’s just called “cracker” counters  his insult with …the N-word.

 

No, I’m not kidding you. I’m a lawyer. I’ve been on the losing end of this very issue in court (defending a foolish, loose-tongued cracker).  In answer to the question in your hopefully-amazed noggin, the answer is “no”. There are no cases in which the courts of our country say it’s justified for a white man to assault a black man because he’s been hurled any epithet which as a bottom line simply means the black man has called the white man…Caucasian.

 

Look it up in Webster’s unabridged dictionary. The term “nigger” has only one denotation (definition) – it is: “a member of any dark-skinned race”.  That’s all, folks!

 

It doesn’t say there are any implications of any negative nature whatsoever in the term. It means only what it says- It denotes that the person so addressed or designated is a member of a dark-skinned race. It does not mean he is the son of slaves; it does not imply he is unworthy or unclean. It implies only that he is a member of a dark-skinned race. The “connotations” of the word, if any, exist only in the hearts and heads of the black (sorry- again…African American) individuals who ELECT,   who CHOOSE to take offense at the use of the word.  So I ask you finally, where is the power in the word but in the heart of the man who elects and chooses to feel anger at its utterance? The red-neck ninny who utters the word may hope it hurts its black target, but it’s the black person who

elects to be hurt. In this land you can elect to be free or imprisoned…In this land you can also elect to be hurt or indifferent when you hear someone refer to you with a word that simply means you’re a member of your race.

 

The minute African Americans DECIDE that there is no harm or insult in words like “nigger” , “nappy”, “jig” (God help me I can’t ..and won’t try to conjure up all the ones I’ve heard–all you crackers and N-word denoted individuals out there know what they are) there will be no harm, and the old power in the “N-Word” will be dead. Only the black can kill it. Some white trash will use the weapon as long as it works.

 

All those words (“nigger”, “jig”, etc. ) are worthy of the same attention I suggested we pay to the KKK when they come to town and want to parade before us. Don’t go there. Don’t empower them with your attention and energy. That is what they seek and the only thing they seek.

 

Black people,  do likewise: Do not empower the red-necked cracker who calls you “nigger” by …noticing him. Don’t go there. Don’t empower them with your attention and energy. The moment the black man shows the imbecilic white (who would use the word) that the word has no power, the black man will have finally asserted his own equality, and white man (even the imbecilic) will gradually abandon its use. If the word don’t hit, they’d finally quit.  (Thanks, Johnnie C..  It wasn’t exactly O.J.’s glove, but it did in fact fit.)

 

I started out writing about what a small matter this Imus thing was and then proved myself the fool.  It wasn’t a small thing. Racial strife in this country is a big big thing. The Imus affair makes this abundantly clear. Racial self-consciousness and poor self-esteem on the part of the black minority is so pathologically extant—a century and a half after the emancipation proclamation, that we’re shocked every time it raises its nappy head.

 

Truth is, it’s all a matter of self esteem. The white man using any racial epithet is lacking self esteem and is attempting to raise himself by his bigoted bootstraps in the process of lowering his black brother…with a word.  By taking offense at the utterance of that word (the N one), the black man, because of his own suffering self esteem, is handing the wounded white man a weapon that only the wounded white man can wield in a hurtful way. The black man with undamaged self esteem, who has no un-expressed sub-conscious misgivings or regrets about being what he genetically is, is insulated—absolutely immune to injury by means of being referred to as what he is.

 

So what? What have I said with all this detouring from Imus’ words to N-words?  I’m afraid it comes down to this: Bigotry is here to stay. There will forever be little people wanting to feel big by making others feel smaller.  On both sides of all racial lines. I don’t envision any future where  white bigots will ever let loose of the weapons that black bigots continue to GIVE them.  I have here, quite conclusively (says I) contended that the power to destroy the power of the “N” word is and remains exclusively in the heart, mind and actions of the African American.

 

Bigotry is here to stay, but at any moment any individual African American simply decides it, he can instantly demand, seize and possess the same insulation that shields the white man in this society. There is no word a black man can use that causes a white man any substantial pain or misgivings where that word simply accuses the white man of being a white man.

 

African Americans, African American brothers and sisters, it’s your choice. Join with us whites in simply and forever deciding that a black human being —just as the proverbial rose–by any other name remains the same.

 

Putting  Imus in Perspective

 

This is certainly no nursery story being wound down to its end. The sky above our globally-warming planet is in fact falling. We are a disturbed and frightened people involved in a war being waged by our leadership under false pretenses. We have peace to establish and an earth to save and we are wasting inordinate time and energies gossiping about who’s going to adopt the orphaned child one of Hefner’s discarded old ho’s and inherit the fortunes she made in the trade.

 

We’re crucifying the fools among us and letting the diabolically-wicked villains  run the world amuck for oil, dollars and for  the Rapturous hell of it.

 

All we need is a change of focus. A redirection and adjustment of attitude. Whites need to realize that blacks need a little more time to muster their self esteem. In the meantime, if we see some of our own white race playing the race card (using the word, “nigger”) let’s beat the black man to the punch and knock the sucker out ourselves. It won’t get us out of trouble in criminal court because that’s a card they only let the black men play. But let’s play it anyway. Let’s do it because we’re not being forced to do it and because it’s the right thing (for us) to do.

 

Let’s get our legislators to apologize for the slavery thing our great-great grandparents and fathers did. Let’s do that too because we don’t have to.  For all you black brothers and sisters out there, whether you’re nappy-headed or straight, please do us non-bigoted white folk and yourselves a favor, and when some cracker uses the n-word, just say back to him—“That’s what I am. So what’s up, white man?”  Please do that and you will have done something the red-neck is totally incapable of understanding. You will have risen above him. Turned the other cheek. Disarmed him.  I still may slap him silly….and guess what.  He won’t understand that either.

 

Peace

 

War’s Still Our Only Enemy

Dusty Schoch

4 15 07

 

Counterpoints by Al Campbell*

 

 

Dusty,

 

Often it is assumed that skin color is the automatic doorway to racial or ethnic discussion.  Simply put, black American individuals are expected to know and understand who, what, why, where and when of all issues relative to conditions where blacks are participants yet white Americans are seldom treated the same within the white community.  The Imus case is no different and his disgraceful characterization of young women remains the hot-button wasted discussion.

 

The shameful term which he so comfortably used appeared to me to be a regular part of his demeanor.  He was more familiar with that kind of language than I – in truth, I had never before heard the phrase and was surprised like most normal people.

 

My selected realm of daily activities is not inside a small box of misinformation or degrading slang language.  Outside of that arena, I too have to be taught that with which I am unfamiliar.  My skin color is not a carte-blanch passageway into all black racial disruptions.  My skin color is not a free entrance to “black” issues nor does my skin color restrict me form the remainder of the learning horizon.

 

Over the years, like many other blacks, I have experienced the strange feeling of being asked about situations where blacks are a part while at the same time, passed over relative to current situations.  It is as though blacks are incapable of learning outside the “colored” box.  Really now, has time changed?

 

Personally, my choice of involvement whether reading, writing or simply conversing is attracted by the merits of the issue and not the skin color of the people.  What is said is more important than who said it.   What is done by a black person is no less important to me if done by white person.  A bullet shot from the hand of a black person is no less deadly than one shot from the hand of a white person.  To me, crimes by either are equally detestable and unacceptable.  Foolishness has no ethnicity.

 

Over the past forty years we have seen, persons of high elective office, the ministry, business CEOs, personalities and the list goes on, suffer career-ending punishments because of some form of foolishness.  Imus is no different.

 

I have never viewed his foolish show nor listened to his foolish tirades.  I am ignorant enough without soliciting more and his skin color plays no part.

 

My scripture teaches me, “But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart and they defile the man.” Matthew 15:18 – KJV

 

 

When wrong has been committed and exposed the perpetrator should be punished and Imus is no different.  A career ending infraction is a punishment suffered by ministers, politicians, business leaders and others…Imus is no different

 

Al

 

*Mr. Campbell is a former member of the High Point, North Carolina city council. He has been recognized by the current Governor Michael Easley for his service to the state.

 

Dusty’s Reply to Al…

 

Dear Al,

 

A brief response to your letter has to start with a defensive statement. If I thought I owed you an apology for asking for your opinion partly because you are African American, I’d have begun this reply with that apology. But I don’t. Your words make it clear that you don’t think African Americans are, because of their race, better able to answer questions about race than anyone else.  I disagree. I was born to a white family and community with white biases and know a whole lot more about how they express their attitudes about blacks than most all Blacks.

 

Having said that, I want to remind you that you have written for our DW site before, and every time I—or any one else writes an article therein—you are asked to contribute any comments you care to contribute to our website forum. The website begs everyone to contribute, regardless of political, religious or racial origins or affiliations.

 

When blacks and whites converse with each other, both are guarded…not because they’re bigoted, but because all words have differential connotations in different racial sub-communities. I wish this were not the case but it is. If you took offense at my asking you to express your opinions about the attitudes and realities of the black community, I am sorry, and saddened.  Feel free at any time to ask me about my view of the white sub-culture. I was raised by a grandmother who was raised by descendants of slaves. A grandmother whose parents were slave owners. My grandmother was in fact named “Birdie” by the children of former slaves who never left their (Alabama) plantation and enjoyed my grandmother’s singing (which they taught her) while they  picked cotton together in fields they collectively worked after the Civil War.

 

I myself was raised by a black family (two of them in fact).  I have spent a lifetime puzzled and discontent with the racial climate in my country. I will always do everything I can think of to better the situation.

 

I feel that you felt in my sending you the paper to review that I was seeking the viewpoint of a “token” black, or in any case “marginalizing” you.   Not the case. I sent it to you because you’re African American and I respect your opinion. You have insights into the collective mind, vernacular and soul of the black community that I don’t have. Vice-versa with me and the white community.

 

You and I and the rest of America have a shared community. In this community there is racial strife, like with the cases of Jimmy the Greek and with Imus. I—as you–never paid attention to either of them either, but what happened to each widely affected—and shed light on–our shared community.

 

I very much appreciated what you said at the end with -

Because of the user’s intention when using the N-word, it is unreasonable to say, “That’s what I am.” To ignore the misguided, yes – to concur with the misguided, Hell No, Never!

 

I can both see your point, agree with much of it, but the whole truth requires more. Just saying “no” to anyone’s use of the word “nigger” does not end the problem, either with the word or the racial tension that fuels its powerful engine of hatred. Saying “Hell no..Never…insures the empowerment of the word and the bigot who uses it…forever.”

 

Since you brought in Biblical Scripture as authority for your “No, Never!” remedy for racial slurs, I’m going to finalize my comments to you and our DW readership with my idea of how Jesus would have handled the situation had he found himself in the position of the Rutgers basketball team—having been insulted by the likes of Imus….

 

 

 

 

A Concluding Comment—and Parable from Dusty…

 

What Might Jesus Have Done to Imus for

Such a Racial Slur?

 

( Warning and Apolgia: What follows is a dramatic parable containing

some “bad” (very) words and bigoted slurs; so let the reader be forewarned.

Both the writer and DW staff deplore the use of language present in this

parable in the context of actual human communication (street talk).

The writer (Dusty) asks us to consider and accept the “taboo” words in the

dramatic/artistic context in which they are conceived, and understand

that it would not be possible to share the message in the parable

without making resort to language we all know, but consider “profane”.)

                                         THE ANSWER TO THE IMUS

ISSUES  IS ALREADY WRITTEN

 

I am convinced that Jesus gave us the answer. I think if some early-Judean skin head (non Jew) had approached Jesus on his way to Jerusalem and said: “What the fuck you doing on that donkey, you goddamned kike?…You think you’re king or something?” ,  Jesus would have turned the other cheek.  I can imagine the conversation going something like this:

 

Jesus: “I’m on the way to town and you are welcomed to come with us. And what, might I ask,  do you mean in referring to me as “Kike”?

 

I can see the skinhead pause with that question and shrink back a bit, then after pondering saying possibly,

 

“A Kike is a fucking Jew, stupid. Where have you been for the past 3 years.”

 

Jesus:  “I’ve been…studying and praying, and doing a little teaching and …ministering.  We can both see I am not—as you say—fucking, but I am  riding to town with these friends.  As for my being a Jew, I find you and I clearly see eye-to-eye in one very important respect. I am, verily a Jew. And a Jew with a following I again invite you to join, if you’d like to come with us to Jerusalem.”

 

Skinhead:  “What the hell for, man? Why on earth should I follow you and your donkey into town today? Those palm leaves there in your path—I can gather them myself.”

 

Jesus: “Are you willing to do that?”

 

Skinhead: “What- put palm leaves in front of that donkey…or follow you to J-town.?”

 

Jesus: “Either one. Choose either one, but in either case, do come with us. We would love to have you come…and be with us.”

 

Skinhead: “Why should I come with you…a stranger…into a town full of armed  soldiers, tax collectors and money lenders”?

 

Jesus: “In order to be with us and learn more of the magic you have just learned.”

 

Skinhead: “Magic!  What Magic have I just learned?”

 

Jesus: “The Magic that  in your heart just converted me from ‘Kike’ to … ‘stranger’ .”

 

Skinhead: “How long will we be in Jerusalem?”

 

Jesus: “As long as it takes to …share the magic.”

 

 

Dusty

4 23 07

 

 

Posted in Iran, Peace In Mid East, Political | Leave a comment by Editors

	Bush’s Unceasing War in Iraq…

Ironically and accurately viewed as:

 

“ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS DOWN ON THE FARM”*

 

By: Leonard Carrier.  DW’s In-House Historian and Philospher

 

Everything that’s going on in Iraq, and at home, makes it look like a phony war–no defined enemy and no call for personal sacrifice except on the part of the military. That makes it look more like a “war game” than a real war. The reason I wouldn’t classify it as a war game, however, is that people are getting killed by the thousands (us) and by hundreds of thousands (them).

To me that makes it seem more like a laboratory experiment. We’ve got the rats (Iraqis) at our mercy, and we’re using the cats (our military) to experiment on them. Sometimes the rats fight back and kill some cats. In the background are the animal trainers (like Paul Bremer) who devise a new environment for the rats to live in (flat income tax, privatization of oil revenues) to see how many rats can survive in those new surroundings.

We also have the animal doctors who measure how much depleted uranium it takes to kill the rat-babies. We let the rats form a government–but only under our political trainers. We then devise punishments for the rat-government when they don’t meet certain demands, like controlling violence on the part of certain rat-rebels whose rat-families have been killed by our cats.

If this sounds like speciesism, that’s because it is. We use terms like “raghead” and “greaseball” to describe the rats, and we devise tortures for them for our entertainment, just to let them see how much we detest them (Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib). All the while, we tell the rats that what we’re doing is for their own good, that it’s part of “democratization,” and then we take a poll to see whether we’re convincing any of them. Of the rats we do manage to convince, we tell them that it’s too bad the other rats are now their enemies for collaborating with us, and that they’d better watch their backs. Then we can check to see how effective they are in staying alive.

Orwell had it right. In 1984 his premise was that constant war abroad allowed Big Brother to run roughshod over everyone’s rights at home (except for those running the rat race). Then in Animal Farm he showed how easy it was for the pigs to take over the farm and persecute the other animals. Iraq is our animal farm, and the pigs who control the cats are having a field day.

 

*This article is a reprint of Dr. Carrier’s recent contribution to our corresponding Blog –http://watchingpolitics.com/?p=3481,  with his and their kind permission.

 

Posted in Bush, Bush Lies, Political, Terrorism, War, War On Terrorism | Leave a comment by Editors

Libertarian Contentions and Ruminations
on Voluntary Slavery

(An Exercise in Recreational Polemics)

In part a re-print of a philosophical debate between Dr. Leonard Carrier (DW In-House Historian and Philosopher)  and Professor Walter Block, American’s “Leading Libertarian Philosopher”, followed by

A Questioning of (almost) All Contentions by Dusty Schoch,

DW Foreign Policy Editor

(Acknowledgment: The Original (2-part) portion of this debate is Available athttp://watchingpolitics.com/?p=3463) – our corresponding blog where Len Carrier is

Contributing Editor, with their kind permission.)

 BLOCK/CARRIER DEBATE ON SLAVERY

By Leonard Carrier – contributing editor

Once again we feature an article by Walter Block, America’s leading Libertarian philosopher.  This time, Professor Block defends the idea that a person should be allowed to sell himself into slavery.   Remember, please, that the fundamental driving idea of Libertarianism is the Axiom of NonAggression, according to which a person may do anything he wants so long as he doesn’t aggress against others.  A corollary is that the government may not compel us to do anything whatsoever if our not doing the things government wants us to do does not harm others.  Self-imposed slavery, not paying our taxes, being prostitutes, using drugs, refusing to serve in the military, owning machine guns and not helping people in serious distress are but a handful of the things Block defends.  Of course he is against medicare and forced social security.

Our own Professor Leonard Carrier offers a rebuttal to Block.  Block’s essay is over 40 pages and we have been obliged to edit it severely.  Dr. Carrier’s essay is short but he has generously agreed to have it edited, too.

********************************************

WALTER BLOCK

The following scenario will illustrate a problem. You are a rich man who has long desired to have me as a slave, to order about as you will, even to kill me for disobedience or on the basis of any other whim which may occur to you. My child has now fallen ill with a dread disease. Fortunately, there is a cure. Unfortunately, it will cost one million dollars, and I, a poorman, do not have such funds at my disposal. Fortunately, you are willing to pay me this amount if I sign myself over to you as a slave, which I am very willing to do since my child’s life is vastly more important to me than my own liberty, or even my own life. Unfortunately, this would be illegal, at least if the doctrine of inalienability (non-transferability) is valid. If so, then you, the rich man, will not buy me into slavery, for I can run away at anytime, and the forces of law and order will come to my rescue, not yours, if you try to stop me by force.

At the extreme left are those who oppose sales, markets, and prices for anything. In this viewpoint, held mainly by the dictators of such countries as North Korea and Cuba, and by professors of sociology, literature, and religion at American universities, everything would be inalienable.  Instead of greedy profit-driven enterprise, the economy would be organized around the socialist principles of central planning and “benevolence.”

At the extreme right would be the libertarian philosophy I shall defend which maintains that everything should be legally alienable or commodifiable.

The underlying point of the libertarian critique is that if I own something, I can sell it (and should be allowed by law to do so). If I can’t sell it, then, and to that extent, I really don’t own it. Take my own liberty as perhaps the paradigm case of the debate over inalienability. The claim is that if I really own my liberty, then I should be free to dispose of it as I please, even if, by so doing, I end up no longer owning it…………..My thesis: No law should be enacted prohibiting or even limiting
in any way people’s rights to alienate those things they own. This is “full monte” alienability, or commodification.

Suppose that the master says to his human property, “Now that you are my slave and must obey me, give me back that $1 million I just paid for you.”  At most, this example proves it was foolish to sell yourself into slavery, not that it was wrong, illicit, or contrary to libertarianism. It would be like agreeing to work for $1 per year. Silly, perhaps, but no rights violation.

The voluntary slave agreement is not a “mere” promise. Rather, it is a bona fide contract where consideration crosses hands; when it is abrogated, theft occurs. If you pay $1 million for the right to enslave me, and I spend it, work for a week at your plantation, change my mind, escape, and the forces of law and order refuse to turn me over to you, then I have in this manner stolen that amount of money as surely as if I broke into your vault and absconded with it. [The slave owner is entitled to force the slave to return.]

******************************************

LEONARD CARRIER

No matter how bizarre or counterintuitive, it seems that the ugliest, most unloved opinion, can count on having a defender. A case in point is Walter Block’s defense of one’s right to sell or barter one’s way into slavery. When I first read all 46 pages of Professor Block’s compendious treatise, I could not suppress the thought, “Is he kidding?”  Yet, no, Professor Block is not kidding.   He is [the] keeper of the pure flame of Libertarianism:  that cantankerous minority view that holds that property rights are the be all and end all of morality.

Can’t someone voluntarily give up his freedom in order to pursue what he thinks is a greater good?  The answer to this question, is “no.”  [L]iberty is the sole foundation of a Libertarian creed.  You can’t both extol the virtues of liberty to justify the performance of other acts, and also cede that liberty to another. Mill made this same point, but Block chose not to demur.

The notion of property itself has a logical foundation.  I, myself, have certain properties—of being a certain height, weight, bulk, mental disposition, and capacity to act. Block seems to think that I am myself my own property.  I say this because he says that I can sell myself, like chattel, to the highest bidder, and thereby relinquish my right to remain at liberty.  This is logically absurd.    In order for properties to exist, there has to be a subject to have these properties. When Block says that one can sell or give away one’s properties, this is fair enough.  But one cannot give away or sell the “I” that is the subject of these properties. That “I” is the moral agent that is at liberty to sell or give away whatever it owns.  But one does not own oneself.

Block thinks that one can contract or promise to sell oneself into slavery.  This is a huge mistake.  Contracts and promises are invalid when what is supposedly contracted or promised is immoral.  Of course, one can say, “I promise,” or sign a contract that stipulates such, but that doesn’t make it a promise or a contract.  The reason why promises and contracts can’t bind one to immoral actions is simple.  Both of these agreements create an obligation to do what is promised or contracted.  But if what is so promised or contracted is immoral, then there can be no obligation to do what is immoral.  So even if the person who attempts to contract himself into slavery is sincere, his so-called contract is null and void from the very start.  This is because slavery is an immoral institution, and anything that supports it is also immoral.

Finally, Block should consider what it is to be a moral agent.  Clearly, since he claims to be concerned with rights of a moral agent, he should carefully consider the bearer of these rights. The foundation of morality, as both Block and I would seem to agree, is the liberty of the moral agent.  I find it impossible to believe that one can give up liberty, the foundation of morality, in the name of morality itself.

 

DUSTY’S  ADDENDUM

Interesting debate!  Spending that amount of time and cerebral energy on such a dusty and buried bone of contention smacks a little of playing fiddle while  Bush-reprised empire burning is at its height;  but having said that, I’m moved to join in with a little yanking at both ends of the bone.

Forget the group and tenets of “Libertarian” and simply approach it with the sound and reasonable acknowledgement that we live in a society with a social contract. By this contract, we’ve given up our rights to impose our own will (and morality) upon the majority in return for living in civil peace, harmony with and under the protective rules and authority of our duly-elected and governing sovereign. We’ve agreed, moral or not, to be law abiding. We’ve further agreed to grant the majority the right to legislate what is morally and criminally right (tolerable and allowed) and wrong (intolerable and proscribed).

As a member of our society we’ve agreed to abide by our democratically-legislated laws or leave (after we perhaps peacefully petition for relief and receive no redress).  Block, notwithstanding, wants his Libertarian notions of freedoms to trump our (and his own I should remind) social contract.  His remedy is of course obvious—move to another country with a more malleable social contract. The war lords in Afghanistan would probably welcome him—under his contracted enslavement–with open arms.

Always gentlemanly Carrier wants to debate Block as philosophers most always do—on the propounder’s own often (as here) absurd grounds. I suggest to both  re-entering the realm of what’s common sense, and in our case real. Under the existing laws promulgated under our centuries-old (time-tested and true, the best there is) social contract, we’ve given up as individuals the right to demand individual exceptions to laws passed by our democratic majority. That moots…solves…ends the question.

There have been through the checkered course of American history, laws few would dispute were “immoral”, by whatever standards were then faddish. This included the days of slavery in American under the identical social contract now in effect. The majority then deemed and legislatively proclaimed the “abominable institution” “legal”, and ipso facto, it was. If we disagreed with that we had the right not to own slaves ourselves, and the right to  move to another country where the social contracting parties had made it illegal.

In this country, at this time, we’ve agreed that—right or wrong—we won’t do it. We’ve legally proscribed the institution and the behavior.   Len is right when he says the theoretical contract (of voluntary enslavement by the slave) is immoral, but he glossed over the point that, under our social contract (the one Block has implicitly pledged to abide by residing in the country where it without exception prevails) the institution of slavery is prohibited; no exceptions.

Where the contract is illegal, morality is a collateral issue. Americans, under their social contract, have previously agreed not to enter contracts their country has deemed illegal and that is a matter of law…not simply “morality”. If we permit individual members of our socially-contracted community to place their own, infinitely-variable and perennially chameleonic  senses of “morality” above their socially-contracted duty to adhere to what is “legal”, we have launched the true war of Armageddon – the war of all against all.

So the resolution of the present debate is apparently too simple for our two philosophers who’ve skated over the frosty-hard foundations on which we’ve agreed to live. Block appears willing to become civilly disobedient. If he enters a contract to perform that which his countrymen have agreed is “illegal”, then he has breached his contract with his countrymen.  He is—morally and legally–hoisted on his own petard.  He must concede that breaching his own contract with his countrymen (actually the laws of his sovereign federation and its government) is “immoral” because, at the very least, from the ethical standpoint, he is breaking his implicit bond to abide by his sovereign’s laws.

As to the collateral issues of one’s being or not being “property” in this country, as a matter of both common sense and law, this is a dead issue. Under our laws, we are people, and people can’t here be sold as property. We’ve agreed to that when we agree to remain here as citizens.

Having said all that, “slavery” in every real sense is fully legal in our country, depending on how you define it. We can contract with one another to “enslave” ourselves for any number of hours a week, month or year to another, and be accountable in courts of law if we breach our duties of voluntary, capitalistic, de-humanizing “employment”. But at the same time we’ve agreed we have no right to kill one another, and so if the right to judge the quick and the dead is written in the employment (or enslavement) contract, it’s an illegal and unenforceable compact. It’s a no-brainer I’d say.

In closing, I think the dangers of slavery are obvious, as are the dangers of employment (legalized capitalistic slavery). Look at what the scholastic enslavement (as employed professors) of Block and Carrier has accomplished – it has driven both to the point of  such logical distraction that they are each willing to enter a debate so puerile  it publicly confirms their insipient old-age dementias.  Just kidding, of course, as I have gleefully sauntered in their little sophomoric sandbox for a shovel or two myself of forensic frolic.

Bottom lines here are so so simple. Block is right, but only relatively right.  He’s right if he’s standing in Afghanistan.  Len is right, but only relatively right on the grounds he’s asserting when he’s standing in church.  I’m right—without being relative—because I’m right here—standing in America, where it’s clearly illegal to enter a contract which enslaves anyone for any reason, including me and my dying son. I (and Block and Carrier) have agreed it’s illegal because we’ve previously agreed to abide by our social contract with our sovereign. Debate over.

Our laws are not always “right” in the moral sense.  Our laws in the past permitted us to put cocaine in our Coke, and that Coke into our slaves to make them work harder loading cotton onto  Mississippi barges. But it was and remains right—both in the legal and moral senses I submit—that we abide by  our social contract that says essentially this—It’s best—and so we agree—to rely on and adhere to  the majority’s idea of what’s “right” to determine what’s “legal” in this country of democratic majority rule.  A whole lot better than relying on one man’s judgments in that–or any–regard.

In passing, I’ll supply Block the question he perhaps should have asked and answered, at least for rhetorical effect:  It’s legal (at least not illegal) in most states to commit suicide.  So, if it’s legal for me to kill myself, isn’t it silly to submit it’s rational to forbid me to sell myself?  Sounds logical until you consider the equally obvious-  It takes only one to kill himself. It takes two to enslave. It’s never been illegal to be a slave– only to be an enslaver. We’ve chosen not to outlaw suicide but to proscribe a third party’s unlawfully assisting it.  Block has no right to tell his fellow countrymen that they must permit one of their peers to enslave Block. Forget morality, and forget Block’s presumed plenary rights over the use and abuse of his own flesh.  The law says his would-be owner can not  become his owner, and that, quite frankly is none of Block’s business, at least so long as he’s living in the good ol’ for-the-time-being Free U.S.A.  Now, again, at the risk of repetition, there’s still Afghanistan, Mr. Block…s’il vous plait.

J Dusty

3 30 07

 

Posted in Political, Slavery | Leave a comment by Editors

Apology Needed for Slavery

By: Dr. Leonard Carrier, DW In-House Historian and Philosopher  (with an “Amen-dum” by DW Foreign-policy Editor, Dusty Schoch)

 

Recently, the State of Virginia issued a formal apology for slavery, and other states, such as Georgia, Maryland, and Missouri, are on the verge of doing so this year. It is fitting because 2007 marks the anniversary of two salient dates in history. The first is 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in Great Britain, and the second is the 150th anniversary of the Dred Scott decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that a runaway slave to a non-slave state was still a slave and must be returned to his owner. This gap of 50 years shows how far behind the ethical curve America was in redressing the injustice of slavery. Our federal government is still behind the curve in not considering an apology on behalf of the nation.

Although Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, it freed only those slaves in the Confederacy, and not in the North or in Border States such as Kentucky. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1865, but the failure of Reconstruction led to the evils of segregation, and it was only with the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1950s that black citizens got legal protection from racial discrimination, and even that did not stop the racial violence that occurred during the next decade. Even as racial violence has abated, Hurricane Katrina showed that legal protection was not enough to overcome the federal apathy and incompetence that resulted in the deaths or impoverishment of black citizens in New Orleans.

So we see that slavery has cast a long shadow in the United States. There is really no way to make proper amends for the harm it has caused, but a first step is to recognize it as the evil it was and to apologize for it. The great ethical principles all demand it. The Golden Rule states: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Emanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative proclaims: ”Never treat others merely as means but also as ends in themselves.” So if you were a victim of slavery because your ancestors were treated as mere means to an economic end, wouldn’t you want an apology? Simply asking the question provides its own answer.

 

DUSTY’S AMEN-DUM

 

Len has just graced us with his reaction, in both the ethical and historic contexts, to those States in the process of issuing official apologies to African-Americans for the enslavement of their ancestors. I have to admit it swayed me away from my luke-warm attitude towards innocent people apologizing to other innocents. It was my mother’s family—way back—and way down in Alabama that owned slaves.  Why should I be held responsible for that?  Moreover, how can I alter the fact I was named after Tuscaloosa Alabama’s most illustrious Confederate General, Major General, Robert E. Rodes?  I certainly cannot.  So why should any of us white folk apologize for something that happened a century and a half ago that no living person had anything to do with?

But then I read and considered Len’s words and his considered proposal.  Len argues persuasively that Katrina may be reasonably viewed as sequela to our former cultural disease – the “abominable institution” as  liberal elitists referred to it in its day.

When you take into consideration the “good” that might come to our African-American subculture by way of improvement in their individual and collective “self esteem” and sense of continued and unrequited injustice, it makes sense. If a white majority of our still white-dominated nation apologize to a minority of the same people for wrongs suffered by the minority’s ancestors, and make that apology on behalf of the country as a whole that “allowed” it, nothing is lost and the act has minimal “cost” in terms of either material expense or personal sacrifice. It is a gesture of good faith, good will and compassion.

I don’t think it’s something we (the innocent) NEED–by way of moral obligation or mandate–to do for our minority brethren. And that’s the point. That’s exactly why we SHOULD do it.  Black people vote now and exercise civil rights commensurate with white Americans because of the mandates of statutory and Constitutional laws. It’s compulsory. How much greater the gesture will be perceived when it is totally un-required….voluntary and thus patently flowing from the hearts and souls of compassionate fellow citizens.

Thanks, Len, for helping me restructure and evolve my thinking and ethical inertia from “Why should we… To why on earth should we not!”

Dusty

War is Still  our Only Enemy

Posted in Political, Slavery | Leave a comment by Editors

Scooter Libby

Carl Rove

Why Libby Gets a Free Pass

 

For as long as it took the jury to come to a guilty verdict, I was afraid ”Scooter” Libby was going to be acquitted. I assume that they just wanted to be sure, just as prosecutor Fitzgerald wanted to be sure he’d get a conviction by charging only Libby, not Cheney or Rove.

 

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