DIVERSITY: THE NEW SHIBBOLETH

Yale Kramer

Knaves and fools invent catch-words and shibboleths to keep honest persons from coming to just understanding.—Sir Walter Scott, 1809

I am sure that Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is neither a knave or a fool, but often kindly people believe foolish things, and Justice O’Connor has received, unexamined, the foolish notion bequeathed to the Court 25 years ago by Justice Powell in Bakke that “student body diversity is a compelling state interest.” (Underlining ours.)

The theme of diversity runs throughout her opinion in the Michigan Law School case. Indeed, it is the basis of her opinion: “…respondents [the law school] assert only one justification for their use of race in the admissions process: obtaining ‘the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.’ In other words, the law school asks us to recognize, in the context of higher education, a compelling state interest in student body diversity….Today, we hold that the law school has a compelling interest in attaining a diverse student body.”

There are many reasons that argue against O’Connor’s opinion, and these have been articulated most recently by Shelby Steele in the Wall Street Journal and Carol Iannone in the National Review Online. What seems to have been neglected is an examination of O’Connor’s use of the concept of Diversity itself in the context of higher education. Although it is used dozens of times in her opinion it remains vague and enigmatic.

She accepts unquestioningly the school’s educational judgment that diversity is essential to its educational mission, and that diversity will “in fact yield educational benefits.” This despite the fact that a study by the National Association of Scholars as well as two other studies (see Iannone) have shown “that the only educational benefit of proportional representation is…proportional representation itself.” Despite the doubtful claims made by the school that racial diversity “promotes learning outcomes…and better prepares them [the students] as professionals…” these claims remain unexamined in her opinion.

When one searches the decision for some description of the way racial diversity could educationally benefit students one looks in vain. The best that you can come up with is “students who will contribute most to the robust exchange of ideas.” Or “classroom discussion is livelier, more spirited, and simply more enlightening and interesting when students have the greatest possible variety of backgrounds.”

When you read this without thinking too hard it doesn’t sound so bad at all. As a matter of fact it sounds like fun. Who wouldn’t want to participate in a nice, spirited conversation with a robust exchange of ideas? Sounds like a fun dinner party, so let’s have Mary (a lawyer), Tim (a businessman), Charlie (a psychoanalyst), Mark (a history professor), Diane (a historian of education), Sarah (a black theatrical producer and very witty), Chuck (a real estate broker and gay) over for dinner next Friday. We are a little worried because they are all strangers to each other, but for some reason we feel that it will turn out to be entertaining. Everyone will gossip and tell anecdotes about their current lives, and express their views about Martha, or Hillary, or Dubya. We’d hear a couple of lawyer or broker jokes. The stock market (oh the losses), plays, movies, until well past 11pm. Would there be any profound wisdom expressed, ideas that will stand the test of time, important knowledge? Are you kidding? But it will be a hell of a good evening.

Now what if we did a little social science experiment and had invited Alessandro, our building superintendent, and his sweet wife Teresa, both of whom speak heavily accented English. Alessandro is a little injured if you mistake him for someone from Puerto Rico and will remind you that he and Teresa are from Cuba, where he was a runner-up for the Jai-Lai championship thirty-five or forty years ago. Today, both of them proud Americans. And maybe one more couple, Charlayne, our pretty neighbor who lives in one of the hi-rise projects nearby and works at the local supermarket checkout counter. She is a single mother with two kids: Oprah, age 3, and a little boy named Thurgood, aged 4. And let’s add her boyfriend, Harmon, who works in her supermarket behind the deli counter and appears to be a very cheerful guy.

Now our dinner party would look like America, diverse, right? We’d have a few Jews, a few Protestants, a couple of Hispanics, a couple of Blacks, one or two Catholics, different national backgrounds. (Of course we’ve left out the Moslems, the Hindus, the Asians, Baptists, Southerners, etc. etc. Oh, well, nothing’s perfect.)

Now what do you think would happen to our entertaining dinner conversation, to that lively, enlightening, robust discussion. One of two things, either the first group would accept the four newcomers as equals and assume that they would freely engage in the discourse (after the usual introductions, of course), or they would treat the newcomers in a special way—different from the way the original group (strangers all) treated each other.

In the first case, if the original group treated the newcomers as equals, the conversation would develop as before, but the newcomers would remain silent for the most part—except, perhaps, for Alessandro who is used to speaking to the building management and to tenant-shareholders. For the most part the newcomers would not be able to process the speed, the fragmentation, and the foreignness of a casual dinner conversation among articulate people. Not because the subject matter is profound, or complicated, or derived from higher education. Kant would not be mentioned, nor “conspicuous consumption,” nor cogito ergo sum, nor the enlightenment, although there might be a reference to the new free production of Hamlet in the park.

In fact the dinner conversation would be superficial, disconnected, and non-serious, but the four newcomers would not participate much because of unfamiliarity both with the substance and the non-verbal style of the communications. Just as I feel unable to keep up with an informal fast-moving conversation in an Irish pub. Even though everyone is speaking English, I wouldn’t be able to catch references, accents, idioms, and attitudes. I would feel myself falling behind in the conversation and dropping out of it.

In the second case, in which the original group began to treat the newcomers as special guests out of tact, sympathy, guilt or a combination of all three, ordinary conversation would be markedly changed. There would be a slowing down and narrowing of the focus to the lives and experiences of the newcomers and an attempt to bridge some social gaps. The humor would probably diminish, because humor depends on the expression of socially acceptable amounts of aggression and when you’re unfamiliar with a sub-culture you don’t exactly know where the acceptable line is, so you play it safe. In any case the conversation, instead of being spirited, lively, and interesting, begins to feel formal, cramped, and dumbed-down.

If this large group met once or twice a week for the next three months, there might be some improvement in the quality of the discussion, but the basic trends would probably continue—the slow cramped newcomer conversation and the lively, fragmented conversation with only limited participation of the newcomers.

What does this tell us about the notion that racial diversity enhances discussion—any kind of discussion, educational or not? First, it tells us how stupid the idea is that there is such a thing as a Black point of view or an Hispanic point of view. Harmon does not have the same view of the world as Colin Powell, or Phil Ivey, the world class poker champion, any more than my white point of view is the same as my daughter’s point of view.

Secondly, capacity for discussion is largely determined by thinking, and articulation skills, not by race. Educated individuals are better at discussion because the process of education occurs by means of verbal communication. Different occupations allow individuals to practice verbal skills more or less—teachers more, farmers less. Some families encourage verbal skills, some encourage sports skills. But how can having Blacks, or Hispanics in a class enhance robust discourse, by virtue of their ethnicity alone?

The only educational courses in which uninformed opinions are welcomed, are what is known among students as bullshit courses—courses in which no education takes place because there is no tradition of knowledge that must be communicated to the student. All opinions are equal, all views are acceptable. These course are usually centered on some multi-cultural, or ethnocentric subject—Discrimination in America 101. Such courses will be greatly enhanced by testimonies of racial discrimination from Blacks and anybody else who feels discriminated against.

Any program or course that teaches a discipline that has a body of knowledge, a method, a set of principles, and a body of facts acquired empirically will not have “bullshit” courses in its curriculum. The teachers of such courses, if they are responsible, will be obligated to use class time to minimize discussion which is not focused on doing the job at hand—teaching the curriculum. Such teachers are not interested in a student’s opinions about the material, only that he or she understands it. Discussion in such classes exists for the purposes of clarifying the material, and only that.

Let’s take a course in neuroscience 101. The professor is not interested in the students’ opinion about the Amygdala (a part of the brain) but only that they understand that its function appears to be storing affective memories and the evidence for that currently accepted hypothesis. There could not possibly be any value in encouraging debate or discussion from the students about this matter simply because their opinions would not be informed opinions. Such a teaching attitude is not repressive, nor does it lead to crushing students’ imaginative or creative impulses. It is just common sense.

You wouldn’t want to learn about the way the brain works from your teenage son or daughter. You would want to hear the story from someone who really is well informed about it. And educational time is a precious commodity. The attitude of the professor of neuroscience towards robust discussion and disagreement is altogether different in a post-doctoral seminar on the Amygdala. There, free discussion is highly desirable, because the discussants are well-informed and the discussion occurs on the very cusp of what is now known.

The fact is that “higher education” is not very high. What passes for education in college is in reality an introduction to knowledge. Even in professional schools, like medical school, the student spends most of his or her time and energy in learning the most basic things in a vast array of clinical and non-clinical science. This is what a cancer cell looks like under a microscope. This artery is called the carotid artery. The signs and symptoms of inflammation are such and such. Baby medicine really. And there is not much room for robust discussion here either; you better know the stuff cold or you don’t get out of medical school—or if you just squeak by you won’t get an internship or residency. Or your colleagues won’t send patients to you. Real medicine starts when you start practicing. Nothing focuses the attention more than having a patient come to see you with a symptom you recognize is serious.

Now let’s turn to the University of Michigan Law School and their claim that racial diversity benefits the educational process by encouraging classroom discussion that “is livelier, more spirited, and simply more enlightening and interesting.”

Here is a description of the course in the law of property at the University of Michigan’s Law School:
“A basic survey of the law of property which examines the forms and methods by which property interests are held, used, and transferred, with emphasis on real estate. Includes present and future estates, concurrent ownership…. bailment, easements, promises respecting the use of land, water rights, control of air space, nuisance, adverse possession, gifts of personal property, vendor and purchaser, conveyances of land, land title insurance….”

A more spirited discussion on the law of easements? You must be joking. Clearly this is a survey course with much basic material to be got through in the time available, not much time for robust debate.

Now everybody who has seen the film “The Paper Chase” knows that one of the techniques in the teaching of law school is the Socratic method. The trouble is that anyone familiar with Socratic dialogues understands that the furthest thing from Plato’s mind in writing Socratic dialogues is a free flowing bull session in which every one’s opinion is equal. Students seek Socrates out to be enlightened, because he has the power to lead them from their error to his truth and wisdom. The same is true in law school. The professor has the right idea, and he engages the students in questioning to see if they have the right idea. And since some of the ideas are complex and subtle, many of the students must expose their ignorance or error in order to be corrected. The professor is not really interested in dinner party conversation, or even a more lively, spirited discussion by the students. He is interested in getting the basic ideas across, and if, in the bargain, out of his narcissism and exhibitionism he can present himself as being spirited, lively, and interesting, all the better.

The University of Michigan makes clear that the work of the first year of law school is the standard curriculum taught in most law schools. “Most of the work for the first year is required. There are several reasons for this. One reason is that there are some basic principles which any serious and thoughtful student would choose to study early in his or her career. The study of this fairly traditional material has become one of the experiences shared by almost all lawyers.”

And here is part of the Law School’s statement on the course in civil procedure: “This course is similar to the introductory civil procedure courses taught at most law schools for the last two or three decades…. In common with most courses, this course covers the basic institutions of civil litigation…. At least the rudiments of claim and party joinder and res judicata also are covered. Unlike most first-year civil procedure, however, this course does not cover any of the variety of topics loosely described as jurisdiction. Those topics have been moved into the upper level elective course in Jurisdiction and Choice of Law.”

The fact is that there is big chunk of basic learning that has to be accomplished in law school and there is little time or use for bull sessions—lively or otherwise. The classroom discussion is primarily for clarification, getting the concept right—not for spirited debate.

The basis for O’Connor’s decision was her unexamined acceptance of the idea that racial diversity in itself in some way has educational benefits. This notion is largely a sham, an empty suit, meant to disguise the same old, same old un-American social engineering practices, stacking the deck in favor of preferred groups—often made up of individuals who have never suffered discrimination—and against groups whose members may be innocent of discrimination themselves. Fairness requires getting rid of state empowered favoritism in all its forms.

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June 04, 2003

HORSEFEATHERS NOMINEE FOR THE 'GOOD MORNING STARSHINE' AWARD: DENNIS KUCINICH

        Horsefeathers has argued elsewhere that liberalism was once a body of serious ideas; from John Stuart Mill to Lionel Trilling, it appealed to the mind as well as the heart, utilizing reason to convince and persuade. At some point in the 1960's it veered towards irrationalism, celebrating emotion over intellect and dismissing intellectual debate in favor of attitude. A good contemporary example is the shared, self-flattering conviction that George Bush is an idiot, therefore it is not necessary to seriously engage in a debate of ideas. Denis Kucinich, more than most candidates for President, is the perfect embodiment of the new dumbed down liberalism that takes itself to be so, so smart--moronic banality leavened by new age yearnings.

        First the idiocy:
"Tell me, Mr. Bush, where are those weapons of mass destruction? I've seen those weapons, and I'll tell you where they are. Joblessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Hopelessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Let's bring back hope in America. Let's bring back jobs in America. Let's bring back workers' rights in America! Thank you."

And the New Age cant: "Kucinich took his message to Santa Cruz, Calif., this week, headlining a rally called "Imagine America" with lifestyle guru Marianne Williamson and healthy living author John Robbins, a political donor who, like Kucinich, is a strict vegetarian. Robbins also is national co-chair of Kucinich's campaign. .. .At a peace conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia, last year, Kucinich was more specific about his beliefs. He spoke about how the Eagle Nebula, a star-forming region that is 7,000 light years from Earth, reminds him of the relationship between stardust and the human spirit.

"The energy of the stars becomes us. We become the energy of the stars. Stardust and spirit unite and we begin: One with the universe," Kucinich said..."

        "Kucinich...is close friends with actress Shirley MacLaine, who is the godmother of his daughter. It was MacLaine who first introduced Kucinich to Griscom, whom MacLaine wrote about in her best-selling book, "Dancing in the Light." Griscom founded The Light Institute and Nizhoni School For Global Consciousness, both located in Galisteo, N.M., to teach people how to connect with their inner self, partially by helping them to remember their past lives. Kucinich donated $3,000 in speaking fees earned last year to Griscom's school, campaign finance reports showed.

        "He's a visionary and a statesman, and I am a visionary, so we've always gotten along," Griscom said. "

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April 28, 2003

STUPIDITY WATCH: MAUREEN DOWD DEPT.

        The oh so clever wordsmith, Maureen Dowd, courageously warns us of the "fedayeen"(formerly the cabal of neocons) among us:---"...the fedayeen of the Defense Policy Board — Richard Perle, James Woolsey, Mr. Gingrich, Ken Adelman..."

        Well Maureen, perhaps you might read an article by fellow NYTimes journalist Craig Smith to become acquainted with some real Fedayeen and their victims:

        "...Farris Salman is one of the last victims of Mr. Hussein's rule. His speech is slurred because he is missing part of his tongue. Black-hooded paramilitary troops, the Fedayeen Saddam, run by Mr. Hussein's eldest son, Uday, pulled it out of his mouth with pliers last month, he said, and sliced it off with a box cutter. They made his family and dozens of his neighbors watch.
        "I thought they were going to execute me," said Mr. Salman, sitting on the floor in his family's small house in a run-down neighborhood of the capital a week after being freed by a frightened prison warden as Americans took control of the city. "When one of the fedayeen said they were going to cut my tongue out, I said, `No, please, just kill me..."

         Do you think Mr. Salman and the thousands of other fedayeen victims might quibble with Ms. Dowd's use of the term?

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April 22, 2003

April 22, 2003

EVERYTHING YOU’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT DEMOCRACY BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK

Yale Kramer

Now that the United States and the Coalition have been brilliantly victorious in Iraq, the ideological assassins of the left have begun to sharpen their knives to ready the attack on the Administration’s next foreign policy aim, the plan to make the new Iraq a model for democracy in the Middle East. Their strategy will no doubt be to set the standard for what they would consider “a democracy” so high that if anything less is actually achieved it would be seen as a failure.

Most of us don’t really think too deeply about democracy as a concept. With all its faults, American democracy is still the best there is. So when we do think about democracy we think American democracy, the here and now democracy of USA 2003. Before we ask whether democracy USA 2003 is possible or even desirable in Iraq 2003 let's review a few hard facts about democracy.

Thanks to the non-profit work of Freedom House, www.freedomhouse.org, founded in 1941 to measure, monitor, and work toward democracy in nations around the world, we have a more or less accurate assessment of freedom in every one of those 184 member nations of the UN. Using a large set of political and civil rights characteristics—a rather expanded and sophisticated Bill of Rights—it rates each country on the degree of political and civil freedoms that are accessible to their citizens. (For anyone interested in the various checklists that are used, you can find them on the site.) These raw scores are then condensed for the sake of convenience to a scale of seven points—1 being most free and 7 being least free.

AND THE WINNERS OF THE OSCAR FOR FREEDOM ARE….

The countries with a 1.0 score are:
Andorra
Australia
Austria
Bahamas
Barbados
Belize
Canada
Cyprus (G)
Denmark
Dominica
Finland
Grenada
Iceland
Ireland
Kiribati
Liechtenstein
Luxembourg
Malta
Marshall Islands
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Portugal
San Marino
Sweden
Switzerland
Tuvalu
United States
Uruguay

TUVALU, THE LAND OF THE FREE, AND THE HOME OF THE LOW-KEYED

Since I had never heard of Tuvalu, I decided to make sure it was really as free as it’s cracked up to be. So I googled it and this is what I found…..

Tuvalu is probably the smallest and most remote free nation in the world. It consists of nine tiny coral atolls in the South Pacific, although Tuvalu in the Polynesian language means “group of eight,” which suggests that even a small remote people have deep and paradoxical mysteries. It is somewhere between Hawaii and Australia, perhaps a couple of thousand miles east of Australia. These nine tiny island atolls are spread out over 500 miles from the northwestern most island of Nanumea to the southeastern most island of Niulakita—as though the hand of some Polynesian God had flung these little islands away in angry disregard for their worthlessness.

If you gathered all the islands together and made one pile of them you might get a total mass of about one tenth the size of Washington D.C. Each of them is about a couple of miles long and a mile wide. They have no arable land, no permanent crops, no potable water—most water needs must be met by catchment systems with storage facilities. Fortunately, there are plenty of coconut palms and fish.

As many people may know, an atoll is an island made up of a ring of coral with a central lagoon of ocean. The part of the island that we would call land consists of the ring of coral and sand, and this can vary from a few yards to a mile or so in width. Each atoll is extremely flat; its highest elevation may be 15 or 20 feet. When living on an atoll you have the sense of being in the middle of the ocean on a very large raft. One may even feel endangered by the sea, but protected by the invisible coral wall that rings and creates the island. In all but the most dangerous storms—in Tavalu, between November and March—the sea outside may be raging but the water in the lagoon and the people of Tuvalu remain calm.

Although there is no crime or parking problem in Tuvalu, life is not without its worries for this remote nation. The government is concerned about the possibility of the sea level rising due to global warming and having to watch the nation disappear into the sea. Arrangements have already been made with Australia and New Zealand for a mass evacuation should this possibility occur. There’s trouble even in paradise, after all.

European traders started working these ancient islands in the nineteenth century. They finally came under British jursidiction in 1877—known then as the Ellice Islands—and about a hundred years later, in 1978, became the independent Nation of Tuvalu.

Tuvalu is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary democracy (although for the past ten years it has been debating whether to become a republic.) It has universal suffrage and any citizen 18 or over may vote.

The legislative branch consists of a unicameral parliament with 15 seats elected by popular vote for a four year term.

The chief of state is Queen Elizabeth II, but since she is busy with things on her own island the real power in Tuvalu resides in the head of government, the Prime Minister, who is elected by a majority of parliament. The current PM, Mr. Sopoanga, beat out his opposition by one vote last year, 8 to 7. There are no political parties, and no lobby or pressure groups of any kind in Tuvalu since there are no taxes, no military, and no labor unions.

The population, of about eleven thousand, mostly Polynesian, is scattered over the nine islands, although one in particular—Funafuti—is where the action seems to be. Funafuti Centre is the capital of the nation. It has no private cars, trucks, or public transit system because it is only about a mile long and half a mile wide, but it does have an air strip, a hospital, Government House where the parliament sits, and a philatelic center which prints and sells beautiful Tuvalu stamps to collectors all over the world—the country’s major export and a solid contribution to the national GDP.

Practically everybody speaks English in addition to Tuvaluan and goes on Sunday to the Church of Tuvalu, which is that most democratic of churches, Congregationalist. On the other days seventy percent of the population work, mostly as fishermen or sailors, but merely at a subsistence level.

Although remote, Tuvalu attracts about a thousand tourists a year who are looking to find a really low-keyed experience. A top of the line hotel goes for about $40/night and the best (fish) dinner will run you about $15 including tip.

You may wonder what the Tuvaluans do for fun. Well, besides singing, dancing, and wearing flowers in their hair on festive occasions they love to play their national game Te Ano which means “the ball.” Two teams line up facing one another and one member kicks off by throwing a heavy ball at the opposing team; they, in turn must hit it back without letting the ball fall to the ground. If it does, a point is scored for the other team. It’s kind of like a heavy version of volley ball without the net. Ten points wins the game. The game ends with the losing team performing a funny song and dance routine to bring the winner back down to earth. How do you think this would play on Super Bowl Sunday?

WHAT ABOUT THE 145 OTHER COUNTRIES? WHERE DO THEY FIT IN?

Good question. For practical purposes Freedom House has divided all the countries into three large categories: Free (with ratings from 1.0 to 2.5), Partly Free (3.0 to 5.5), and Not Free (5.5. to 7.0).

Most of the developed countries in Europe and Asia have ratings of 1.5: France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Estonia, Poland, Taiwan. There are about thirty of them. The countries rated 2.0, with freedoms that may not be as well functioning
are a group of about fifteen that include Bolivia, Chile, Greece, Israel, and Romania.

Slightly further down on the scale, there are twelve nations rated 2.5, such as Bulgaria, Croatia, India, Mexico, and the Philippines that Freedom House still considers free countries, but just marginally so. This means that about 40% of the world’s population, about 2.4 billion people, are more or less free. Some are very free like those in the United States and Tuvalu, some free like the Italians and Greeks, and some like the Mexicans. A wide range of freedom, to be sure, but free nonetheless.

And then there is 24% of the world’s population (1.4 billion) that is only Partly free. In this group (3.0 to 5.5) there is a very wide range of lack of freedoms—from Brazil and Nicaragua, through Kuwait and Turkey, to Russia, Singapore, and Zimbabwe. There are significant freedoms that can be found in each one of this group of 60 countries, all widely different, but none of them rise to a level of consistent and systematic freedom to be found in the group of Free Countries.

Finally, there are about 45 countries—36% of the worlds population—that cannot be called even partly free. They are all in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

…AND HERE ARE THE TEN MOST UNFREE COUNTRIES ON EARTH

With a score of 7.0—here are the countries with the worst civil rights and political records:

Burma
Cuba
Equatorial Guinea
Iraq
North Korea
Libya
Saudi Arabia
Sudan
Syria
Turkmenistan

DEMOCRACY IS NOT ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL

This brief review of the political facts of life suggests several important notions that will come into play as we undertake the transformation of Iraq. The first is that democracy is not a single quality, but a complex set of inter-related components that can be identified and even roughly measured, and it is possible for a country to be quite good in some of these components and not so good in others.

Furthermore, democracy is not a static concept; a democracy can lose freedom and become merely Partly Free. Sri Lanka and Colombia are recent examples of such Partly Free democracies. In other cases, countries that replaced military regimes with elected governments can have less than complete transitions to liberal democracy. Guatemala fits the description of this kind of Partly Free democracy.

Finally, the survey suggests that each nation has a unique pattern of the various components of democratic functioning that depends on its history, cultural values, religion, and economic situation. For example, the United Kingdom is extremely tolerant of all religious practices today (a fact that has not always been true), yet despite its religious tolerance it still does not accept the idea that there must be a separation of church and state. And universal suffrage was not established in the United States until the 1920s, one hundred and forty years after Jefferson wrote the Bill of Rights. Democracy apparently, like great wine, takes time, patience, and hard work to develop.

So it should not be surprising or deemed a failure if the Iraqi government that evolves in the next years will not look like America 2003. It will have been worth the effort if it rises from despotism to even a Partly Free nation.

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April 17, 2003

HORSEFEATHERS 'COLLATERAL DAMAGE' PRIZE

        Although our military strove mightily to minimize 'collateral damage' in Iraq, some occurred on the home front and it was quite welcome. Let us count the overblown reputations that were casualties of the war:

        1)Mainstream TV News. Will anyone ever believe CNN again following Eason Jordan's confession? Will anyone who witnessed it forget the stricken, ashen face of Judy Woodruff as she described the toppling of Saddam's statue? Or the eager, hopeful tone of CBS's Dan Rather reporting looting of the Baghdad museum by Iraqis as an event far more significant than our toppling a bloodthirsty tyrant and freeing tortured political prisoners.

        2)The NYTimes and New Yorker pundits--Apple, Dowd, Kristof, Friedman, Krugman, Klein, Hertzberg, Lemann and all their upper West Side acolytes. Their tut-tutting condescension to their presumed intellectual inferiors had them explaining why any action by George W. Bush constituted a rush to war and was doomed to fail, would land us in a quagmire, etc. Any successes were illusory, we must learn from our highly civilized French allies, blah, blah, blah. And, of course, there was Maureen Dowd's sly suggestion that Pat Buchanan was correct: war on Iraq was the product of a small cabal of Jewish neo-conservatives who pull the strings controlling President Bush

        3)Politicians: John-don't forget I fought in Vietnam- Kerry; Nancy Pelosi, whose fixed, plastic surgery smile, belied her worried words warning of impending disaster; Bill Clinton, explaining, for a fee, the superiority of his college bull session, talk, talk, talk, strategy for dealing with our enemies. Ted Kennedy and Howard Dean, reliving the glory days of Woodstock as they railed against corporate greed and had the vapors when contemplating military action against a tyrannical oppressor.

        4)The UN, exposed for all to see--a collection of primitive, thuggish autocrats and sly dissemblers bound together by their pathological anti-Americanism and hatred of Israel.

        5) The Hollywood left's herd of independent minds exposed as doltish fools whose stupidity is matched only by their capacity for condescension and self absorption.

        6) The retired TV generals, with the honorable exception of Fox's General Thomas Mc'Inerney, who was consistently right about the war and crystal clear in explaining its tactics and goals. The others seemed prepared to fight the Battle of the Bulge with several hundred thousand ground troops more than we actually needed.

        There is something especially satisfying about witnessing the moralists, with their revolting combination of sanctimony and condescenscion brought low. While open to other suggestions, Horsefeathers leans to awarding the prize to the Moral Arbiters: The Pope, for opposing an "immoral war", Jimmy Carter, who never met a dictator he didn't love, nor avoided an opportunity to morally condemn the United States., the various "reverends", from Al Sharpton to Desmond Tutu. Nelson Mandela is also a prime candidate in this category. He managed to condemn both the United States effort to topple Saddam and our one true Middle Eastern ally, democratic Israel. He did so while appropriating Jewish history for his own purposes when he said Mr. Bush wanted to "plunge the world into holocaust".
        Thus has the war to remove a 21st century tyrant cleared the air and exposed the hypocrisy of those who claim the mantle of morality.

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April 08, 2003

April 8, 2003

THE HORSEFEATHERS PLAN: WHAT TO DO UNTIL THOMAS JEFFERSON ARRIVES IN BAGHDAD

Yale Kramer

It is foolish to think that you can transform the values and mores of 1300 years of Arab culture in a few years of military occupation by imposing democracy from the top down.

DEMOCRACY FROM THE BOTTOM UP

A more realistic possibility for some degree of gradual change in Iraq in the direction of Western and democratic societies might be the creation of bottom-up institutions which give something valuable to the Iraqi people without taking too much of their old life away from them. The problem is that they don’t know that they yearn for liberty and freedom and that what has kept them enslaved for so long are their own tribal ways to which they are so attached, and which they must, sooner or later, give up or change.

After a period of military stabilization, during which the Coalition forces can mop up the regular and irregular forces left over from the Saddam regime, get rid of the WMD, identify who the good guys and the bad guys are, provide humanitarian aid, and repair some of the infra-structural damage, the HORSEFEATHERS PLAN will be ready for implementation.

FORT APACHE, IRAQ

It is a well known fact that after a war the victors establish a more or less permanent presence in the conquered land. The American Army and Air Force has had a garrison in Germany for almost fifty years, which until recently was welcomed by the Germans. We have a Marine/Naval base on a long-term lease in Guantonamo, Cuba, completely surrounded by our enemy. We have had a large Army base in South Korea protecting the demilitarized zone and the people of Seoul for forty years. These were and are important strategic points in our modern view of our place in the world.

What we should do is to remove our garrison from Germany, which no longer welcomes it. It was necessary during the cold war but is not important strategically at present. And we should remove our air base from Saudi Arabia. It has recently become an embarrassment for both the Saudis and us. The removal will enable us to deal with the Saudis more realistically, putting political pressure on them when it is necessary.

Instead we must establish a naval base in the south of Iraq, on the Persian Gulf, an air base in the north of Iraq to replace the Saudi base, and in central Iraq a large Army base. These bases would be a strategic asset for the Central Command if ever a military force is needed in the Middle East or South Central Asia. Their presence would not only stabilize the overheated politics of the new Iraq, but the whole region as well.

In addition, our forces would be able to guarantee the safety of the Iraqi people and their oil fields from incursions of hostile neighbors or terrorists. In a sense we would be a mercenary army and the Iraqi government would be our client. One major advantage to both the Iraqis and the U.S. would be that it would save the Iraqi government the great cost of raising its own army, and some of that saving might be used to defer the cost of running the U.S. garrison.

The semi-permanent emplacement of a U.S. military garrison in Iraq is the lynchpin of the HORSEFEATHERS PLAN. It supports and integrates the other components of the plan.

THE OIL, AH YES, THE OIL

In the old days they used to say “winner take all,” or “to the victors belong the spoils.” In fact, even today it is still true in the Arab world. But in the high-minded world of the Anglosphere, where Western values are dominated by Judeo-Christian ideals and politesse we still must disguise the use of power in the assertion of national interests as acts motivated by altruism—the ‘liberation of Iraq.’

Let me see, how can I say this without seeming…too…unilateral. Before the war we were accused by France of really being interested only in getting hold of Iraqi oil. It’s not surprising that France—the whited-sepulcher of all time—should say this, since its oil companies have been in a conspiracy with Saddam to steal oil assets from the Iraqi people for the last twenty years.

So let’s not be shy or shamed. We’re going to be fair to the Iraqi people for a change, but we’re going to charge them for reconstructing Iraq and for protecting them and their oil assets.

What’s most important, though, is that we must set up an Iraqi Oil Commission which will be chaired by the Americans and contain members of the coalition that actually sent men and materiel. The purpose of this commission is to administer Iraqi oil income so that it goes to the Iraqi people and not to despotic leaders or corrupt politicians. It will administer current assets and develop future assets.

But its two most important functions will be to maintain the unity of the country and de-Arabize oil in the Middle East.

Since the oil fields are not equally distributed in the country, but massed in the north and the south, the temptation is always present for the Kurds in the north and the Shia in the south to run off with these assets and secede from the country and finance their own independence. In our plan all the income flows through the Commission and is dispersed to each section on a per capita basis. Each sector will get its rightful share. This scheme guarantees national unity and the legitimacy of the Commission is in turn guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. military.

The second reason for centralizing Iraq’s oil assets and entrusting them to an independent Commission is to dissociate Iraq from OPEC, which has demonstrated, since its inception, a tendency to use the oil resources of the Arab world en masse as political weapons against American foreign policy. Up to now we have depended on our pseudo-friends, the Saudis, to protect us from OPEC. Now we can tell them to suck a lemon if they don’t like our policy.

A SWISS CONFEDERATION? YOU MUST BE JOKING

Remember Orson Welles’ famous speech in The Third Man, in which he says “…you know what the fellow said: In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed; and they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.”

It was a great line, but not quite true—at least not the part about brotherly love and five hundred years of democracy and peace in Switzerland. Nowadays we tend to think of Switzerland as stable as the Alps and the Swiss Franc, the symbol of peace and neutrality, and a country that runs like a clock without having to be wound. That’s not the way it always was. In fact until 1848 it was as warlike and unstable as the rest of Europe for the previous thousand years. It had constant wars with Austria, France, and Italy. It had countless internal and civil wars amongst its own cantons. Until 1848 its 26 cantons were sovereign states, each with its own currency, laws, customs, passports, etc.

Even today it can be divided into four distinct language sectors—French, Italian, German, and Romansh—twenty-six cantons, and within these, 3000 communes. Each of these is autonomous and Swiss citizenship can be conferred only by one or another of these communes.

The central government is relatively weak and controls tariffs, communications, transport, water conservation, the postal service, and the monetary system. The government is administered by the Federal Council, which is a seven member collegial board, an organization of equals with a rotating presidency, with each member presiding over a federal department. As though the U.S. cabinet administered the government without a president.

The real power over people’s everyday lives resides in the cantons and communes. They decide who votes, and for what; they decide on the criminal and civil code of each canton, and how much shall be spent and for what purposes.

When Napoleon conquered Switzerland he tried to impose French law on the Swiss. It was a complete disaster and lasted only as long as Napoleon. The Swiss are a stubborn, proud people and over the past 700 years have developed mores and values which they prize. And that is what the organization of the Swiss government reflects—a jealous guarding of the values and cultures they wish in their respective autonomous cantons, and an acknowledgment of some degree of central regulation as a necessity in a modern world.

One could do a lot worse than use a Swiss paradigm for the new Iraq. Four states—a Shiite state in the south, a Kurdish state in the north, a Sunni state in the center, and a religiously mixed state in the city of Baghdad. Each of these states would develop and control the political and ethical values of the citizens of each state without much influence from the central government. The people of each respective community would choose their communal leaders as well as those who would represent them in a central constituent body.

The central government would look after functions that require a nationwide purview—commercial codes, monetary system, water control, transportation and roads, etc.

MR. SMITH GOES TO BAGHDAD—ADAM SMITH, THAT IS

The next most important component of THE HORSEFEATHERS PLAN is to bring a free market to Iraq and to do what is necessary to encourage capital formation and entrepreneurship there. This must be understood as a long-term project—the creation of business institutions completely independent of governmental politics.

The array of instruments and institutions would be too numerous to specify here but some of the most important would be such things as a modern western central banking system that regulates interest rates, a code governing private property laws and liability, a uniform commercial code, incorporation and contract laws. None of these requires the formation of a specific form of elected government. These institutions would be regulatory agencies run by technocrats and bureaucrats. They would be the most important part of a central government but would have little or no political power over the federated states.

A FREE PRESS

We must support the installation of a free press—in all the media—by encouraging private enterprise through some degree of government subsidy. The Iraqis must have access to The Honeymooners re-runs, Law and Order, and Fox News if they are to understand America.

THE HORSEFEATHERS PLAN: DEMOCRACY FROM THE BOTTOM UP

1. An American military presence that guarantees regional stability, oil assets, and business development.

2. American administration of oil assets that prevents internal fragmentation and external incursion. It also de-Arabizes control over Middle-Eastern oil.

3. Creation of a government with a weak central administration and strong federated states that each determine their own culture.

4. Coalition encouragement of market and business oriented institutions, allowing democratic ideas to emerge from a prosperous bourgeois business community.

5. Subsidization of a private enterprise free press.

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April 03, 2003

April 2, 2003

THE MOTHER OF ALL OXYMORONS: ARAB DEMOCRACY

Yale Kramer

Just when I thought all the foreign-policy nonsense had been stuffed back in the bag—this thing pops out. Apparently, there is no end to the worldly mischief created by the tireless Imps of Idealism and Morality. They never rest, they never sleep. We must always be on the alert for their next noble plan, their latest high-minded proposal.

Somehow in the months-long struggle that the Bush Government has been carrying on with Old Europe over how to deal with the Iraqis, some of the Administration’s sound and realistic policies have come to be corrupted by the high ideals and chimeric visions of the past. A form of Utopianism is on the loose, a neo-Wilsonian urge to make the world safe for democracy again.

Early in the formation of Bush’s Iraq policy the aim was simple and militarily achievable—“regime change.” Then came “liberation of the Iraqi people,” and, finally, “the ultimate goal of regime change is liberal democracy.” It does not require the mind of a policy wonk to see that the idea of “liberating” the Iraqi people and transforming them into liberal democrats is a way of sugar coating the naked aggression that is implied in getting rid of Saddam. It represents a fear of our own power and of the assertion of our appropriate role of leadership in the world of nation states. Our enemies and rivals call this “unilateralism” or “imperialism.”

Like a guilt-ridden, frightened grownup who is afraid to assume his rightful responsibility lest his parents—“old Europe”—get angry with him and withdraw their affection and esteem, we make up rationalizations and fantasies that fly in the face of facts and history. So we have to tell ourselves and the hand-wringing appeasers of Europe that the Iraqis are waiting for us to liberate them, that they will dance in the streets when we arrive, that they are lining up to buy copies of the “Federalist Papers.”

Even now, after barely two weeks of war, the chimerical idea that the Iraqis are longing to breathe the free air of democracy is beginning to dissolve. The reports piling in, the pictures on our TV screen, are beginning to reveal a different pattern. It is clear that the non-Arab population in the north—the Kurds and their leaders—are our allies. At least until the war is over. They want Saddam out as much as we do, perhaps more, and they are willing to fight with us to achieve this common aim. And perhaps some but not all of the Shiites in the south are waiting to be freed from Saddam.

But everything else we see and hear suggests that a significant number of Iraqis do not feel oppressed by Saddam, and regard him as their rightful leader. There seems also to be a significant number of Iraqis who are politically unsophisticated and whose children are hungry and who would gladly kiss anyone’s hand that will feed them—George Bush, Saddam Hussein, or Sean Penn. The only Iraqi who appeared unambiguously anti-Saddam was the little chap on the first or second day of ground invasion who hammered away at Saddam’s poster image with his shoe as he grinned for the camera and danced an obsequious little dance in hope of a little baksheesh. We can’t seem to understand why there is still so much resistance to the fulfillment of our dreams—the easy toppling of this evil regime.

The images suggest an alternative view of the situation there. Perhaps there is no large un-ambivalent Iraqi populace waiting to be freed and turned into liberal democrats. Perhaps this number has been greatly exaggerated by the gurus and is merely wishful thinking in order to fit the rationalization that Iraqis are starving for democracy as well as food.

Most opponents of the idea of building a democratic nation in Iraq have also opposed the war to depose and replace Saddam. Horsefeathers does not oppose the war to rid the world of Saddam—in fact we would go even a little further, but more about that later—but only the plan to radically rebuild a nation in our own image that may not want to be changed. There are sound psychological and historical reasons for our view that democratizing Iraq is a fool’s errand.

ABOUT THE CHANGING OF HEARTS AND MINDS

As some of our readers may know Steve Rittenberg and I have been practicing and teaching psychiatry and psychoanalysis for a combined total of 75 years. We may not know a whole lot about many things, but about baseball and hearts and minds, between us, we know a thing or two. And I can tell you that it’s very, very hard to change hearts and minds. You can change behavior easily enough—all you have to do is put a pistol to somebody’s head and tell them to do what you want, and the chances are they’ll do it. But even with people who are very intelligent and highly motivated to change, it is extremely difficult to change a person’s basic attitudes (hearts and minds). Fortunately it can be done, but only after years of hard work on the part of a patient and a doctor—and most ordinary people cannot tolerate such frustrating circumstances. So only the most determined, the most unhappy, and those with a considerable amount of inner resources eventually achieve important changes in their lives.

What does all this have to do with post-war Iraq? Well, nation-building, bringing liberal democracy to Iraq requires changing the hearts and minds—the attitudes—of millions of individuals, most of whom are barely literate, unworldly, uninformed—or worse, misinformed—and happy to have an unskilled job, a roof over their heads and some food on the table. They are not unsatisfied by a life that a CBS journalist, or a Columbia University assistant professor would find boring or degrading—a regular job, a family that’s not starving, and Baghdad TV for a couple of hours every night. The only change they want is more of the same—a little more pay, a little more room, a little more food, a TV that works all the time. They already have a spiritual life—non-secular—that satisfies them. They are not interested in becoming multi-lateral or widening their spiritual horizons. The point is that most Iraqis live simple, unchanging lives and want them to continue that way. This is not to say that they are worse than people in other cultures. On the contrary, they are very much like people the world over. Most people do not want their lives to be transformed. They want to maintain the status quo. In fact people are probably hard-wired for it, the Constancy Principle, some call it. Please, no big changes.

So much for the psychology of it.

IN THE ARAB WORLD TRIBALISM TRUMPS ALL

In the last thirteen hundred years, only one Islamic country has become a democracy—Turkey. But in all that time there has never been an Arab democracy. And perhaps there never can be. Some would say that Arab ideals and representative democracy are incompatible, that in Arabic Islam state authority and religious authority have always gone together.

The majority of Arab states reached independence shortly after the Second World War. For thirty or forty years now the Arab states have been free to make whatever political or social arrangements they choose. Under the cover of some weird conglomeration of nationalism and socialism they all chose untempered autocratic power.

The reason is that the influence of fundamental Islam in the Arab world makes it deeply inhospitable to democratic and liberal principles. While the citizens of longstanding democracies accept a set of basic assumptions—the rule of law, majority rule, equality before the law, the idea of a loyal opposition, the separation of church and state—Arab societies lack such essential democratic concepts and instead vest authority in the word of Mohammed, his interpreters the imams, and the tribal leaders.

The essence of Arab societies is tribal identity, kinship networks, and conceptions of collective honor. These are what organize and regulate the relations of everyday life. In such a context democratic principles are meaningless and incomprehensible. How could a modern democratic bureaucracy function, for example, if officials remain loyal primarily to tribe or family? There can be no such thing as disinterested public service. Public office becomes a means of benefiting your family and harming your enemies, not applying rules fairly.

Modern working democracies developed in different ways. And although they all share the political values mentioned above, their respective governments can be quite varied—the United States, Switzerland, Singapore, the United Kingdom—all democracies and all somewhat different.

One thing that they all share though is a basic requirement of all functioning democracies: a class of people who have a strong devotion to and understanding of its principles—a professional bureaucracy. The more experienced and traditional the more robust and stable is the government. Iraq has no professional, public-spirited,bureaucratic class, nor has any other Arab nation. What substitutes for one in Iraq is the members of Saddam’s extended family and his cronies from Tikrit. In Saudi Arabia, of course, it is the 7000 Saudi Princes.

And experience with nearly a hundred newly independent countries all of which “intended” to become democratic suggests that only a tiny handful, those largely influenced by Western values—Chile, Poland, Hungary, Taiwan—show any real gains in this direction. The rest, from the Congo to Uzbekistan, suffer from endemic corruption, illegitimate elections and a wide array of political ills that derive from the absence of a modern professional bureaucratic class that values the basic democratic ideas that come only from being trained and educated in Western democracies.

WHAT ABOUT JAPAN?

One of the major arguments in the repertoire of those who propose democracy for Iraq is that we were able to transform Japan after the Second World War in less than a generation. There, they say, we entered a country as non-western and un-democratic as Iraq and eventually wrangled the Japanese people around to democracy.

What is overlooked by the proponents of democracy for Iraq is that Japan was a culturally homogeneous nation, unlike the contentious cultural jungle of Iraq, and that the Japanese people were, at least at that time, obeisant to the wishes of their Emperor, and that when he concurred with the Military Governor, MacArthur, in the new political changes his subjects went along uncritically.
But most important, according to Stanley Kurtz, in the Winter 2003 issue of City Journal, “In embracing democracy under American occupation, the Japanese drew on a long, if imperfect, democratic tradition.” Soon after Admiral Perry opened Japan to the outside world in 1853, Japan’s leaders started on a series of democratic reforms which resulted in an authentic constitutional system by 1889. Kurtz points out that these democratic reforms were encouraged by “…the ‘liberty and popular rights’ movement—a remarkable efflorescence of the liberal spirit that deeply and enduringly changed Japanese society. As early as the 1870s, this intellectual movement had disseminated such Western thinkers as Mill and Rousseau to the farthest corners of Japan, where their influence inspired the Japanese to demand democracy.”

Through these influences authentic national political parties developed, and “Western political concepts like that of a ‘loyal opposition’