Book Review: The dogs are eating them now - Canada at war

Graeme Smith: The dogs are eating them now. Alfred A Knopf Canada, 2013; 283 pages, index, photos, maps. Weak points: no references, chapter notes or bibliography.

          An admirable piece of reporting which stimulated a lot of mixed feeling: always a good sign! - shows the author is challenging old paradigms of thinking.. Anyone interested in West / Muslim geopolitics, Canadian foreign policy or Third World "development" ought to put it on their reading list.

         Dogs is good reading and NOT. Smith writes rather well for a journalist (who, after all, are time pressed people). His message, though, is disconcerting for those who still believe in "traditional Western values", particularly those political values originating in the Enlightenment: reason, rights and representative government.

         Dogs tells the story of Canada at war in Afghanistan following the World Trade Center, New York city, attack of September 11, 2001. Smith was sent to cover the war for the  Toronto Globe and Mail. Apparently, he fell in love with the country and its people for he has left journalism to work for the NGO, International Crisis Group in Kabul.

         Dogs is a rather disturbing book for several reasons. The author's style is transparent, he is rather bright and very curious (a real news ferret - especially dirty news ferret). He appears to be a straight-up dude who tells it like he sees it. The fact that he has chosen to work for the reconstruction of  Afghanistan - despite the personal risks - indicates he is writing from the right place: he cares for Afghanistan's people. (One may disagree with his analyses but at least he is writing from the right place.. which is the essential condition for truth.)

        The central "theme" I take away from Dogs is the incredible - unconscious and unconscionable - hubris of the West. I use this term in both senses: 1- narcissistic arrogance and 2- "transgressive" (knowing no bounds or limits). Stunningly, these attitudes underlie so much of what we did in Afghanistan - so much of what the West does everywhere in the world! - even when we imagined ourselves to be acting selflessly and doing good for Afghans.

        The war started off so good and then began to rapidly unravel after initial victories against the Taliban. What happened? Analyses - post mortems - are difficult: human societies are complex with many "variables" interacting simultaneously. Post mortems will always finger "the" reasons a mission failed but perhaps a better question to ask is "how do we learn to avoid disaster in the first place or, at least, learn to read the signs of impending disaster so we can change our course of action before it is too late?"

        I'm not sure if I did discover much of an answer to that question in Dogs (except, perhaps, in the reconfirmation that Western hubris has once again blinded us to signs which, if we were wiser or humbler, could have warned of future difficulties). But I knew that anyway, I knew we are hubristic; Afghanistan's just worse than I imagined..

        By June 2006, the Afghan Taliban, who had sheltered the terrorist movement Al Queda, appeared to be on the run. Al Queda was held responsible for the 9-11 atrocities against the US and now Al Queda had been successfully expelled from Afghanistan. Likewise, it's Taliban host had been ousted and dispersed into the hinterlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan. A suitably pro-Occident government had been set up in Kabul. Foreign "reconstruction" money poured in. Roads were paved or built. Girls, whose education was forbidden by the fundamentalist Taliban, now went to new schools which were being built at an incredible pace. Or so it seemed, following the self-laudatory Western press. The schools for girls were especially touted in Canada since Canadian contractors built many of them. Only later did we learn that corruption and unpredicted funding cutoffs ruined many worthwhile projects (schools, hydraulic works..) Some were simply shoddily built. Failed development projects, falling apart, unused or abandoned, dot the landscape. In some cases, compensations were woefully, insultingly, inadequate. One farmer Smith interviewed had his multigenerational family farm confiscated to build a road needed for economic development in the region. The farmer accepted the need for the road but not what he was payed: a lump sum settlement of $350 for a farm which produced $2500 annually and had been in the family for many generations! The following link provides access to four articles on failed Canadian aid projects in Afghanistan which appeared in the Globe and Mail, July 14 to 25, 2012.

http://rogerannis.com/canadas-failed-aid-in-afghanistan/ 

         Less than two years later, by March of 2008, things were going amazingly badly. The "insurgents" - the Taliban and "sympathizers" - were recapturing lost territory. Corruption seemed worse than ever. Suicide bombers were sowing havoc with a new wave of attacks, often against supposedly secure or "hardened" targets. One can cite multiple brazen jailbreaks at the Kandahar city prison, liberating many suspected Taliban along with common criminals. Some degree of inside assistance to the insurgents - even within the civilian population of the neighborhood of the jail - must be assumed. "Foreigners" were so unpopular that, prior to one jailbreak, Taliban fighters actually went brazenly door to door warning people in the prison's neighborhood to be out of town when the shooting started. And none of those people bothered informing the authorities of the impending jailbreak! Meanwhile, the drug trade in opium and heroin boomed as never before, fed by lots of loose foreign money and a nascent local consumer culture (electronics, SUVs, gated communities.. for the emergent Western-style bourgeoisie).

          In conclusion, Smith lists four general errors or misconceptions committed by NATO forces:

1- Afghanistan is a tribal society. The war against terrorism, on Afghan soil, tended to degenerate and dissipate into tribal feuding, actually exacerbating traditional cleavages and feuds. "Those connected to the rich foreigners showered patronage on their own clans, while the excluded groups jealously fought for their share." (page 202)

2- Airstrikes feeds insurgency. "Technology" is the magic bullet, we think. The Vietnam Conflict had a 50 : 1 kill ratio due to the technological superiority of Western forces. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the kill ratio was over 100 : 1. Such lethal asymmetry makes war palatable for Western publics. Just enough allied dead to strike patriotic chords but not enough to impel bloodthirsty mobs to set up guillotines on the White House lawn for a regime change. But, as we have learned elsewhere, "there is no free lunch, kid!" There are hidden costs (externalities) of high tech war. Most obvious is "collateral damage", civilians killed in error, either in targeted drone hits or in more conventional bombing and strafing runs. Worse, Afghanistan is an "honor culture": familial honor is sacred, dishonor requires revenge. "Afghans saw the international forces as cowardly when they called fire power from the sky. When civilians died, whole families felt a need for revenge" (page 204)

3- Opium is a cottage industry. Dissatisfied with his access to sources, Smith tried an experiment. He sent a trusted confidant to interview Taliban and insurgent sympathizers, always asking the same set of 20 questions. 80% of the interviewees admitted to growing opium (for the cash, since they were poor and the war wasn't helping..) 50% claimed to be be victims of opium eradication programs. Interestingly, the insurgents claimed that, if they could make money other than by growing poppy, they would prefer to do so. They recognized the social and moral issues involved in opium cultivation: criminality, addiction, production of a crop which injures others.. The first question which comes to my mind here: why, 70 years after World War II, are countries like Afghanistan still "economically depressed and technologically backward"? Have we spent our money badly, on arms rather than on small scale, participatory, sustainable development? On investment in large scale cash crop monocultures to the exclusion - even detriment - of social infrastructure like schools, hospitals, old age pensions, family planning / birth control / abortion, female education, child support (for education)..? It's obvious we've done something wrong! "As a man sows, so shall he reap" - Jesus (but also the Buddha and other world Teachers)

Here is the link to Taliban interviews conducted for the Globe and Mail by Graeme Smith and colleagues:

http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/talkingtothetaliban/ 

4- Perhaps most surprisingly, the Taliban are nationalistic - or patriotic - reactionaries who want to expel the morally, spiritually corrupting influence of the West. They do not appear to be "international terrorists", they just want foreigners out of their country. (Other groups, of course, can and do, promote international jihadism which raises the question: are we fighting the right war in Afghanistan? It was supposed to be about fighting international terrorism..) 

         Will we learn from our past mistakes? In Iraq and Afghanistan many of the errors of Vietnam appear to be repeated. Can democracy be imposed by war on a society with little or no democratic tradition? So far, one must admit, the results aren't too promising.. 

Book Review: Zealot - a cautionary tale for our times?

Reza Aslan: Zealot, the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth (Random House, New York, 2013), 272 pages, index, bibliography, copious and excellent chapter notes, chronology, map of the Holy Land, diagram of the temple of Jerusalem.

Biblical quotes, unless noted otherwise, are from the New King James Version, Thomas Nelson, 1992, Nashville, TN

              Professor Aslan is a biblical scholar of secular persuasion (and a bit irritatingly cheeky about it at times - one of the few weak points of the book). In Zealot, he searches for the "Christ of the humanists" below centuries of theological accretion and "elaboration" of the original Christmas story.

           On a purely novelistic level Zealot is a quite good read. It recounts the partisan struggle of the "Israeli National Resistance Movement(s)" against the occupying Roman army and Rome's local allies: the priests of the Jerusalem temple, the hellenized bourgeoisie engaged in the profitable "Mediterraneanized" trade (the Romans' version of globalization). The Pax Romana - the Roman Peace - was a feeble pre-echo of Pax Americana, scaled down to shoebox size to fit into the then known world.

 

                                   The dying Gaul, Roman statue, 1st century ce

            The poorer Palestinians of Christ's time deeply resented the Roman occupation and many messianic leaders rose to stir the population against the occupiers. Groups like the Zealots and the "daggermen" (sicarii) carried out targeted assassinations and random acts of violence against "collaborators". Compared to modern suicide bombers, the rebels' technology was barely adequate to the job yet sufficed to raise Roman ire and fear. In 56 ce, about 25 years after Christ's execution by crucifixion, daggermen murdered the high priest of the Jerusalem temple, the sacred heart of Israel. No one who served the foreign master felt safe any longer..

            Jesus of Nazareth was born poor. Prof Aslan argues he was probably illiterate and from a numerous family (those numerous references to "brothers and sisters", some named, which have troubled Virgin Birth theology for centuries). ( See footnote 1). Aslan speculates that Jesus and his brothers were employed by the rich landowners of the larger towns of his region (Galilee). There, he learned to detest the foreign master and their servile collaborators. At some point he realized he had a divine mission to cleanse the land of foreign rule and institute God's Kingdom on earth as promised in the the prophetic teachings.

"He who sacrifices to any god, except the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed." Exodus 22:20

 

                          the ancient temple of Jerusalem, sacred heart of Israel

The question of biblical miracles. While some rationalists might disagree, Prof Aslan wisely sidesteps the issue of the "reality" of biblical miracles. Miracles were simply part of the world view of the age. 

Augur: (Latin) A diviner who predicts the outcomes of human activities from natural "signs": storms, behavior of birds, "meteorological" phenomena like meteors, comets, solar or lunar eclipses. These priest-diviners were employed by all ancient civilizations as far as I can tell: Rome, Greece, Egypt, China, new world civilizations..

"Sign": precursor events believed to reveal future events in a symbolic manner. Physical causality, as we understand the term in modern physics, was not - strictly speaking - involved except, perhaps, in a secondary, derivative sense: as the means by which a symbolic connection between two events manifested itself. (For the ancients, it was often the perceived symbolic connection which was more important than the actual physical processes that manifested the connection. See, for example, psychologist Carl Jung's notion of synchronicity.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity 

           Court astrologers in ancient Egypt, Rome, Greece, China, India.. constructed birth charts of royal children to discern their destiny. The biography of the Buddha gives a striking example of the practice and the importance attached to it. Animal sacrifices with divinatory analysis of the liver - hepatoscopy - were conducted prior to Roman military maneuvers. 

 

                                          divinity Mithras sacrificing a bull

           Healings in Christ's world could be interpreted as exorcisms of evil spirits. Thus we read in Luke 9: 38 -43:

"Suddenly a man from the multitude cried out, saying 'Teacher, I implore you, look on my son, for he is my only child. And behold, a spirit seizes him and he suddenly cries out; it convulses him so that he foams at the mouth; and it departs from him with great difficulty, bruising him..' Then Jesus answered and said:..'Bring your son here." And as he was still coming, the demon threw him down and convulsed him. Then Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the child and gave him back to his father. And they were all amazed by the majesty of God."

             The point here is that such beliefs were part of the ancients' picture of "reality", just as our modern beliefs (or disbeliefs) are part of our modern "reality". I guess reality just ain't what it used to be..

               There is a corollary to the above observation: to project our beliefs back onto the ancients' world and judge their behavior by our belief systems is a wee bit anachronistic (not to say unfair!) If you lived in ancient Palestine would you be "smart" enough to diagnose the child as epileptic? And even if you managed to dream up some modern notions of "central nervous system lesions" as causes of epileptic seizures, what treatment could you possibly offer to that boy and his father? Prof Aslan wisely accepts the biblical stories as offering indices of how Jesus and his mission were understood by those followers who lived after his death and recorded his life.

             Since I have an above average interest in comparative religion and - to a lesser degree - biblical times, Prof Aslan's book held no major surprises of historical fact or scholarly interpretation. I suspect, though, that many who have not reflected on the Christmas story since their childhood Sunday School will find much to surprise, even shock, them in Zealot. I especially appreciated Aslan's copious and most excellent chapter notes which present the alternative - even opposed - views of other scholars. Of course, much of the history of those poorly documented times will always remain subjective and interpretive (unless, of course, someone invents a practical time machine so we can see for ourselves..) In the final analysis, the final judgement must be the credibility the reader accords to the author. Aslan's Christ is, at least, plausible.

              Resistance to foreign military occupation in biblical Palestine  resembles the movements of resistance to empire seen in our own equally troubled times. The term temporal resonance popped into my mind several times during my reading, suggesting an inner "resonance" between our age and that of ancient Palestine and Rome. It is if the two epochs - despite the evident differences - somehow "marched to the same drummer". Perhaps, they share a common socio-political or spiritual dynamic, a "common constellation of forces" acting to produce similar - or analogous - events.

              In this "parallel history" reading, modern America becomes Nova Roma, once again dominating the Holy Land. Today's Arabs could replace the biblical Hebrews as a colonized nation. The Islamic State (or ISIS) and other jihadist sects could be seen as modern Zealots and "daggermen" (sicarii):

"Zeal implied a strict adherence to the Torah and the Law, a refusal to serve any foreign master.. and an uncompromising devotion to the sovereignty of God.. Many Jews in 1st century Palestine strove to live a life of zeal.. But there were some who.. were willing to resort to extreme acts of violence if necessary, not just against the Romans and the uncircumcised masses, but against their fellow Jews, those who dare to submit to Rome. They were called Zealots." (Zealot, page 40)

              Interestingly, we note that the majority of the victims of modern Zealots, the jihadists, are fellow Muslims just as most of victims of the Zealots and daggermen where fellow Jews.

               Like modern jihadists, the Zealots (and followers of messianic rebels in general) can be see as Utopians. The Kingdom of God on earth will be a true paradise. Oppressors will be punished in the name of God. This message rings clearly from the prophetic books of the Old Testament:

"You shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child.. If you afflict them in any way and they cry at all to Me, I will surely hear their cry [God is speaking directly]; and My wrath will become hot, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives shall be widows, and children fatherless." Exodus 22: 22- 24

               In concluding my reading of Zealot, I read the Epistle of James, recommended by Aslan as a particularly pure representation of the teaching of the early christian community of Jerusalem. James is generally accepted as a brother of Jesus. James assumed leadership of the community after his brother's crucifixion in 30 - 33 ce by the Roman occupation troops. Christ was duly crucified by the Romans as a rebel; worse, he was a self-proclaimed messiah.

              Christ's execution brought no peace though. The three decades following the crucifixion witnessed numerous messianic contenders - ancient competing jihadist sects, one could say - who tested the mettle of the occupying Romans. (The parallel - "temporal resonance" - with today is obvious: competing Jihadist sects carrying out terrorist campaigns against the West, whom they consider as a humiliating occupier.) 

              Revolt succeeded revolt: 36, 44, 46, 57 ce. Murder succeeded murder, in retaliative echoes. The high priest  of the temple of Jerusalem was murdered in 56 by a daggerman assassin. James, the brother of Jesus, was murdered in 62 ce because he was a troublemaker. Then, from 66 - 70 ce, the Great Revolt. The Romans, roused finally to action, retaliated - as was their wont - massively and barbarously (note 2). The temple of Jerusalem, sacred heart of ancient Israel, was razed - "not a stone shall remaining standing atop a stone" as the New Testament (retrospectively) "prophesies". The Zealots were liquidated: their last stand, the siege of the fortress of Masada where the defenders, rather than capitulate, committed suicide. Jews today still revere those Zealots who "fell for religious freedom".

                          ruins of the ancient fortress of Masada, Israel

              The ancient state of Israel was effectively wiped off the map by the Roman retaliation. Thus began the Great Diaspora of the Jews over the world. The modern state of Israel was only re-established after World War II, nearly 1,900 years later. (Another "temporal resonance": Israel and the great temple of Jerusalem did not exist for 1900 years, now they do - once again..)

                So what does this story tell us? Different readers will draw different inferences, of course. But one possible set of lessons or interpretations relates to empire and the hubris it breeds, about the human spirit and resistance. The story reminds us, too, that we have not evolved much - not morally anyway - over the past 20 centuries..

               The story of Jesus the Zealot also speaks to deeper values and aspirations. What is the good life? What is the good society? In the limit: what is the meaning or purpose of our life, if any?  Like our modern globalized, free market economy, the Roman Empire was both a time of increasing generalized wealth and a spreading gulf beween the rich and poor. It is of this gulf that the Epistle of James - Jesus' brother and leader of the Jerusalem church - speaks most eloquently.

             Responding to an early intra-sect dispute over the relative value of "faith" versus "good acts" which split the Jerusalem church from the churches following Saint Paul, James stresses the necessity of good actions in the community:

"What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food and one of you says to them, 'Depart in peace, be warmed and filled', but you do not give the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead."  Epistle of James 2: 14 - 17

               Likewise, more than any other writer, except perhaps the Jesus speaking to us in the Gospels, James excoriates the rich for their inequity in their dealings with their fellow Jews. In words which pre-echo Karl Marx:

"Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you!

.. Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts. You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury; you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter. You have condemned, you have murdered the just, he does not resist you.

Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and the latter rain. You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand" James 5: 1 - 8

               I finished this excellent book feeling I had been through some kind of a time warp.

   

 

                                     contemporary Sicarii - "daggermen" 

Update: comparison of the inequity of opportunity and access to resources (physical, cultural, spiritual..) in the ancient Middle East and the modern global economy. The spreading gap between the rich and the poor. Our world indeed reflects the economic, political and social conditions of Christ's world, but on a much larger scale. One percent of the world's population now controls 50% of it's wealth, a much greater imbalance than existed under the Roman Empire!

http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2015-01-19/richest-1-will-own-more-all-rest-2016 

            What did Jesus have to say? Matthew 9:24

"And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."

            Bizarrely and ironically, many conservative "christians" in North America consider wealth - and the power over others it naturally confers - as a "sign of election", a token that God has predestined them for heaven. Their wealth is, so to speak, a foretaste of eternal future happiness in the next world. What a pathetically transparent self-serving dogma serving as a rationalization for social injustice (which biblical prophecy also often excoriates..) LOLOLOL!

            Mathew, chapter 5, the famous "Sermon on the Mount", presumably contains the core teachings of Christ (highlighted by red print in my King James bible):

"Blessed are the peace makers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven."

            "Jesus" - or the school who spoke in his name - were both proposing a utopian social scheme (The Kingdom of God on Earth) and "prophesying" what such a world could look like (if we had the wisdom to chose to go that way).

           Today, one may argue over whether Jesus was a true "universalist" or not. Was he out to start a new universal world religion? Various New Testament texts don't support this view: "Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophet. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill" (Matt 5:17) Likewise, many modern scholars reject the end of the gospel of Mark, 16: 9 - 20, as a late addition to the original text. However, this "late addition" marks a charge to "go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature" (Mark 16: 15) In effect, we may say that the "Jesus sect" was rejected by most Jews: Zealots, after all, did provoke the Roman reprisals which destroyed the temple and the ancient Israel state! In reaction to rejection, some followers of the "Jesus sect" turned to proselytizing the pagans (most notably Saint Paul and his controversial "mission to the Gentiles").

          A "universalist mission" cannot, however, be easily thrust aside even if we do conclude that Jesus was addressing fellow Jews only. The prophetic - Old  Testament - tradition that Jesus refers to does, in fact, present an idealized Israel that shall be a beacon for all nations, a standard of righteousness and justice for all wo/men.             

         On a larger, ecosystemic level of analysis, our unsustainable economies - based on non-renewable (hence depleting) resources - are plundering, polluting and destroying the natural world which sustains all life on earth, including humanity. We are making the ideal of God's Kingdom on Earth even harder to realize. We are headed in the wrong direction, totally..

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/29/earth-lost-50-wildlife-in-40-years-wwf

         Here is a "Zealot" re-interpretation of early Christian (or proto-Christian) history just found on the Internet. It dates from 10 years before the publication of Prof Aslan's Zealot!

http://www.eclectica.org/v7n3/rogers.html 

          

notes:

1- Other scholars disagree and cite texts in which Christ is depicted teaching in synagogs and reading sacred scrolls. They also take the term "rabbi", applied to Christ by interlocutors literally, implying that he had religious instruction.

2- I suppose one could draw a parallel with the attack on the World Trade Center in New York, September 11, 2001. 3000 people died in the original attack. The following war against Iraq killed - conservatively - 300,000, yet Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the 9-11 atrocity in New York City! Romans, old or new, don't change their ways so easily..

(Classic) book review: The American Political Tradition by Richard Hofstafter

 Richard Hofstadter: The American Political Tradition (Vintage Books, NY, 1948, various reprints), 456 pages, index, chapter notes, biographical essay (on sources consulted)

abbreviations used in this article:

APT - The American Political Tradition
FDR - Franklin Delano Roosevelt
RH - Richard Hofstadter
SMM - Self-Made-Man 

            Richard Hofstadter (RH) was a gifted (if somewhat prickly) American historian and public intellectual whose heritage was cut short by premature death at age 54 from leukemia. In later years RH referred to The American Political Tradition (APT) as "a young man's book" yet this work of youth served to break American academic history out of the Left-Right ideological ruts into which it had fallen during the war years and the subsequent rise of communism. It initiated a more empirical, evidence based, mode of doing history whose influence is still felt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hofstadter

            RH's book filled a gap in my understanding of that most important of nations, the United States of America. (Nineteenth century prophets like Marx, Darwin and Jules Verne saw that the 20th century would be the "American century". The new century is following in the wake of the last though it is becoming more and more evident that "Nova Roma" has entered a Time of Troubles with unknown issue..)

            Although I was raised in the US, large areas of the American national character and history remained opaque. How could a people, so enamoured of their Founding Principles - Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, oppress their black fellow citizens? What did they think could be accomplished? Why did the people of my town support European colonial rule? - America, after all, fought a democratic revolution in order to free herself from colonial rule. I was puzzled..

           APT helped me answer some of these questions or, at least, understand better the nature of these questions and what they might actually signify.

           To illustrate the growth and evolution of the APT, RH picked ten federal political figures, presidents or contenders, spanning 150 years from founding father Thomas Jefferson to Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). 

            

 

           In my retrospective reading, sixty six years after the first edition, RH reveals two powerful, often opposing, drives at the heart of the American soul: Personal Liberty and Greed. The former is often / usually expressed as "property rights" while the latter is acquisitiveness, particularly the pathological form: acquisition for its own sake or as an ostentatious display of personal "worth".

           In the early days of the American republic, at the turn of the 19th century, democracy was generally restricted to land owners. This democracy was the vehicle through which Personal Liberty (conceived of as property rights) and Greed (which includes Power Lust) acquired and defended turf. Or rather, various classes and groups of people, motivated by these dominant culturally reinforced drives, contended for turf.

           While America began as a colony of craftsmen and landholding farmers, (proto-)industrial modes of production began to appear in the early 19th century. Industrialization shaped the ways in which Personal Liberty and Greed developed and conflicted. Industrialization favored large scale production, mass markets, large capital expenditures and high finance. These trends concentrated capital - hence political power - into fewer and fewer hands.

          Opposing these "concentrative" trends: the great American mythic hero, Self-Made-Man (SMM). He is the little guy who, through determination, integrity and ingenuity "makes it", that is, "proves he is a man", acquires status and worth in the social hierarchy. A particularly romanticized - and moralized - vision of  the oppressed yet noble SMM rose in the southern states in reaction to a perceived power imbalance between North and South. The agrarian, slave economy of the south was, in the long run, no match - economically, politically, demographically or culturally - with the emerging industrial states of the North. Ironically, slave-holding southern plantation owners saw themselves as Davids fighting the Goliaths of northern high finance. To embitter things, northern abolitionists decried slavery as moral evil before the face of God, heightening southern feelings of social and cultural inferiority. One suspects that much of the paradoxical nature of American society today is rooted in the foundational paradoxes of those early dramas and the stresslines and fracture faults they created.

           Over time, the first pole of the American psyche, the thirst for Personal Liberty, has degenerated due to the need of corporations to constantly expand markets to gain profits (their raison d'être). The Late Industrial Age culture that has evolved over the last century is characterized by a narcissistic, anomic and atomistic individualism (or perhaps pseudo-individualism). (See footnote 1)

           To maximize production, hence profits, people are "programmed" from birth - TV ads! - to consume! consume! consume! Today much, if not most, of our consumption in industrial societies is way beyond subsistence levels required to hold body and soul together. Consumption beyond mere subsistence is not in itself a bad thing, of course. Culture, in any "sophisticated" sense of the term, depends upon social surpluses being generated which are then canalized into non-subsistence (optional) activities. But today, profit driven consumption generates social, ecological and climatic pathologies. We, and our world, are sick - literally - from overconsumption. We are constantly encouraged to consume way beyond elemental biological needs, way beyond our personal needs for "self expression": books, tools, skills..  

            Our self-expressive drives - "programmed" by our evolutionary history - function, in part, to establish our "worth" or "rank" within our social matrix. This is simply basic Primate Politics as they express themselves through human beings, human hands, human voices, human thought..  So what makes modern consumer culture "pathological"? What went wrong?

             One problem: overconsumption or hyperconsumption is now taken as a sign of value, not the skills, values or truth that were discovered or expressed by the consumer. Consumption is no longer a necessity or a socially sanctioned compensation for services rendered to the community. The act of consumption itself becomes a sign of worth or rank: I am worth more than you because my car is worth more than yours.. In the final stage of alienation, the work of art is not appreciated for its own sake (or even the pleasure it provides) but for the price tag that indicates our personal (quantitative) "worth" relative to those who could not afford it. Such a culture of ostentatious, rank-assigning consumption necessarily invites competitive consumption all the way down the social hierarchy. Everybody consumes as much as they can to show their superiority over those father down the pecking order. In the (pathological) limit, our sense of worth is totally driven from the exterior, we have no center. This state of being - or lack of Being - is undoubtedly reflected in existentialist observations that we moderns lack "authenticity". 

             Many people in industrial countries do lead dull lives of drudgery where no fulfillment is found in the stultifyingly repetition of the assembly line or checkout counter. For these "wage slaves" (Karl Marx), as well as for the rich, consumption has become a (futile) act of self-affirmation: I consume, therefore I exist! But like all drugs, the fix wears off quickly and the craving soon returns hence we consume! consume! consume! - even if it is killing us. Like Alice in Wonderland we run madly to hold our place..
 

             Even the scale of modern industry makes it hard for SMM to achieve the autonomy and entrepreneurial ability his agrarian or artinasal ancestors took for granted. Aside from increasingly rare exceptions, the American Dream has become a lie and, at some level of consciousness, everyone knows it. Hence the hostility and fanaticism burning so intensely at America's core these days should surprise no one. (note 2)

            AS RH understood, SMM reached the natural limits of growth, or rather, competence sometime in the 19th century. The entrant entrepreneur was now no longer on a level playing field with his larger, long established corporate competitors. Indeed, as corporations devoured one another in periodic merger mania feeding frenzies, power and wealth become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The little guy was left with the scraps. Thus many of the higher paying industrial - and now, increasingly, white-collar - jobs are shipped overseas as multinational corporations strive to maximize profits by reducing labor costs in globalized market economy. The results: middle class (especially lower middle class) economic stagnation, Mcjobs, increasing job insecurity, industrial "rust belts", urban dead zones, self-employment and contract labor, anomia (and it's evil twin, fanaticism)..

internal blog link:

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2014/10/climate-change-is-threat-multiplier.html

              From my recent forays into world history and political theory, I conclude that "history" is a dynamic, evolving process, generating both transient and long lived entities. Humans are short lived. The "Institutions" of society like the State, the Church, markets, the political and economic systems,.. tend to be relatively long lived, lasting centuries without substantial change sometimes.
 

            Political theory is the attempt to generate a mental model of the Historical Process that we live as "society" at the present point in time. Political theories are only as good as they are useful at a given place and time.

              Political theories are not, however, passive, merely descriptive labels we attatch to "things" out there in the real world. Mental models of society also form and shape - to some unknown degree - the issues and processes they hope to elucidate. It's the old chicken or egg riddle: society creates political theory which then shapes the society that created it.. Once created, political and social "forms" (tensions, patterns, Institutions, values..) tend to acquire a life of their own and evolve according to poorly understood "laws" (some hard scientists - physicists and chemist especially - doubt that there are any "laws of social evolution" to be discovered, that societies are, in principle, too complex to be comprehensible in terms of law-driven behaviors and processes, the usual objects of science..)

              Idealists who associate the USA with democracy, civil rights and personal freedom will be surprised to see the degree to which democracy and socio-economic equality were really feared by many of the Republic's founders and their political inheritors. Many state and federal politicians, sons of ruling elites, openly or covertly feared the "mob". America's political elites have been and still are, on the whole, conservative - even reactionary - in their fundamental values regardless of their nominal political affiliation: Democrat, Republican, Liberal, Progressive.. After reading APT, I now understand that often repeated neocon proverb: the American Revolution was different from those in Europe and elsewhere, it was conservative revolution, fought for conservative values..

           Reform-minded presidents like FDR (his New Deal of the Great Depression years, 1929 - 1939) came from moneyed elites. Such reformers, RH argues, did not act from any real sens of identity with the common man but from general moral and ethical principles. They held and, to some degree, acted upon a Protestant - and Enlightenment - ethic of "good works" and "Progress". They did not really want radical change in the dominant socio-economic "System". They simply wanted to round off it's rough, discordant edges which offended their moral sensibilities (worse, the System's injustices provided ammunition to the Enemy, the radical socialists and the communists). American reformers were really social engineers not revolutionaries: the furthest they went was to label themselves "Reformers".

               Since APT's first printing in 1948, the Protestant Work Ethic with its emphasis on personal integrity has been deeply eroded and replaced by more reactionary "Social Darwinist" ideologies: Ayn Rand's Objectivism, Libertarianism, Neoconservatism.. (note 3) In a blatant fashion these new social philosophies move personal self interest, selfishness, greed and narcissistic status flouting front and center. Lip service is still given to SMM, the great American hero and idealized self image, but he is now a morally hollowed figure. The primary function of his cult today is to justify policies which "make the rich richer and the poor poorer", regardless of their relative merit or any real positive social contribution. Thus, funding is cut to the public school system while well-to-do parents move their kids to private schools. The expected result occurs of course: the public schools degenerate which, of course, "justifies" further cuts in the poorly performing public system.. (note 4)

               Published less than a century ago, APT already merits the title "classic". Like a good wine, it has aged rather well. RH's writing remains fresh and engaging, he makes history a page turner, a rare gift in an academic historian! His analyses of the historical evolution of the American political process remain valid though the final stage he described  (consensus politics) has long since been replaced by the contemporary phase of ideological gridlock. (note 5)   

                I recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the great nation and power that is America and above all, some of those puzzling paradoxes that mark her social and political life.

notes:

1- rise in the culture of narcissism: scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory in the USA among college students have increased 30% from 1979 - 2006:

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/brad.bushman/files/TKFCB08A.pdf

          Former Le Monde environmental reporter, Hervé Kempf, has studied the pernicious effects of a greed driven society on the environment:

http://mecteam.blogspot.ca/2008/04/herv-kempf-how-rich-are-destroying.html

2- American Dream: from wiki:

"The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States, a set of ideals in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, and an upward social mobility achieved through hard work."

          Over the last 4 decades, neoconservative ideology has radically cut social services and social goods because anything having to do with the public sector (except the police and the military) is bad, evil, wasteful, counterproductive, inefficient, etc. Result: the social "playing field is less level" than it used to be. The initial advantages provided by familial wealth grow stronger over time, upward social mobility declines. SMM will not get as far in life as he was taught to believe he could. The American Dream, if not dead, is at least on life support.. 

The American Dream, a lie?

If the American Dream is defined in terms of upward social mobility (reward for competence and personal initiative), then, at the present moment, the Dream is more alive in Scandinavia than in North America!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility

3- Social Darwinism: The idea is simple: social and economic classes correspond to some general notion of "genetic fitness". Curtly - the poor are not oppressed, as Marx would have it, they are just inferior. Such views function, in practice, to rationalize or justify current social injustices. Darwin, to his credit, pre-emptively rejected such interpretations of his work on natural selection. For him, as is now accepted by legitimate scientific inquiry, natural selection favored co-operation and mutual aid between humans, not oppression. Thus he argued that the amount of co-operation in "even the most primitive human cultures far exceeded that seen even among the great apes", our closest living relatives.

  

4- American student performance relative to other countries:

Not good, not good..
 

http://educationbythenumbers.org/content/top-us-students-fare-poorly-international-pisa-test-scores-shanghai-tops-world-finland-slips_693/

5- Consensus history: While Hofstadter did not invent consensus history or politics, he became a major spokesperson and popularizer of the position, particularly after the publication of APT. This approach to history and politics downplays class or group struggle and seeks to define the common values that define and structure the American political process. Hofstadter argues that political opponents tend to face off over "peripheral" issues while sharing a common set of core values: belief in democracy, property rights, free enterprise, the Protestant Work Ethic,..

Pandora's box: to open or not to open..

 conclusion of previous article: Left wing populism in Québec?

              Straw polls in the Province suggest strongly that the population at large supports the PQ charter of values. In playing the populist card the PQ may have played cleverly - but did it play wisely? Qui vivra verra - time will tell..

             Even though the charter is only a "proposed" piece of legislation, many voices are rising to claim that the cure is worse than the illness (and what, exactly, was the illness that needed treating anyway?) 

             PQ Minister for Democratic Institutions, Bernard Drainville, claims that a priority is to affirm the equality of men and women in Québécois society. Fine! but if the religious headgear is banned then many Muslim women working in day care centers will either lose their jobs or be forced to conform to a law which insults thir religion. How is equality of sexes being promoted when women will, most likely, be affected more than men?

              The PQ like wisely claims to favor integration of the immigrant into the host society and its values. Fine! but the Muslim women - and there are not a few - who work in day cares and risk losing their jobs are, at least partly, integrated already. How will firing them, forcing them into social isolation (and perhaps welfare) improve their degree of integration?

             The more one looks at the charter proposals, the flakier they seem - strengthening the hypothesis that this is an electoral ploy on the part of the PQ.

             Case in point. Jewish professionals in universities and hospitals are used to wearing the kippah. These upper middle class professionals aren't going take the headgear ban lightly. En passant, middle class professionals are one of the traditional target groups the PQ tries to appeal to and recruit from. What was Madame Marois and her team thinking? Did they think - before shooting themselves in the foot?

             Thus hijab wearing Muslim women, kippah wearing Jewish men and turban / kirpan wearing Sikhs are all antagonized by the proposed legislation. Cross bearing christians could be too - if the law were to be equitably applied. A ban on "ostentatious religious signs" in public institutions seems a simple enough proposition but the devil is always in the details. And there are lots of devils and details in this one to go around liberally..

             Case in point. Headgear is out but what about beards worn as a religious sign? How, exactly, do you tell if a guy wears a beard out of religious conviction? Do we start measuring beard lengths as well as crucifix width to determine if they are ostentatious or not? The link below examines some of the confusing potential ramifications of the proposed charter.

 religious symbol police?

              There is also a seeming hypocrisy in the ban: religious signs in public spaces are  out but not the crucifix in the Assemblée Nationale itself -!sic! - because of its "historical" value. Stooping to splitting hairs like this is not a good sign, definitely not good for social harmony. Sophistry is often a sign of intellectual or moral decadance.

             And it gets weirder: representatives in the Assemblée may end up being exempt from charter provisions and free to wear religious signs at work, yesss..

              In short, the charter promises to generate more problems than it solves (this is my personal issue with the legislation). It muddies the waters of social interaction and pits one social group against another. 

              Case in point. Some institutions are allowed to opt out of charter provisions - why? Such arbitrariness is a sure path to social strife and corruption. It is a generator of bureaucratic Red Tape, the same Red Tape our neo-con inspired leaders are so keen on cutting (when it comes to safety regulations or programs to assure social equity for the disadvantaged..) The proposed law says that wo/men are not all equal before it. This is in violation of our sacrosanct principle of Universal Justice. In the long run, stupid or arbitrary laws are unenforcable and breed contempt for the law: the best law is the simplest!

             In defense of the PQ. Their actions are understandable if one considers the situation of Québec in North America: a francophone island in an English speaking sea: no better way to cultivate a streak of latent pranoia in the collective psyche. Québec is by nature a defensive or guarded - some say inward looking - society. In practice, such traits do not make for a closed or hostile society; they merely favor closure and hostility but do not assure them. Coming to Québec from outside, I have found Québécois society (generally) a bit less xenophobe than the anglophone surround, more open on gay and gender issues. Being demographically challenged, though, does establish an increased need to defend boundaries, physical, linguistic, cultural. These "personality" traits will remain as long as Québec continues to exist.

            In addition, some "reasonable accomodations" have been abusive and require remediation: Sikhs refusing to wear a hard hat on construction sites (because of the turban). I contend that such an accomodation is not reasonable because of the (foreseeable) consequences: society will end up paying for the keep of brain damaged vegetables injured by refusal to wear legally required safety gear. Friction and conflict between groups is inevitable but is the charter of values a sensible way of addressing it? Is the cure worse than the illness it purportedly treats..

           As a sociological experiment, the PQ charter of values project is fascinating (if disquieting). It is turning out to be a stunningly divisive issue. One could not have predicted the variety or the intensity of divisiveness.

1- Everybody has a fairly elaborated opinion, rare enough in these politcally apathetic (or cynical) times  

2- Opinions are passionate and, interestingly, highly polarized. Nuancers exist: those who want stronger, more universal restrictions on those who are different or moderates who want weaker, more circumscribed restrictions. But even the nuancers are relatively passionate..

3- Most fascinating: one can be either for or against the charter, no matter where one stand on the politcal spectrum! This is quite an accomplishment - a sort of "uniting Left and Right in their disunity".. :-0    

              I fear, not so much the charter itself, as what it may be saying about our society. Have we engaged ourselves on a slippery slope to a very bad place?               

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/bloc-kicks-out-mp-who-spoke-against-quebec-religious-symbols-ban/article14273942/ 

internal blog link: 

left-wing-populism-in-quebec?

Left wing populism in Québec?

             In its desire to promote Québec as a "distinct society" in North America, the governing Parti Québécois (PQ) has sure found a way to stir the pot a bit. A proposed "Charter of Québécois Values" will, if passed in the Assemblée Nationale (Québec City), severely restrict the display of "ostentatious religious symbols" in many public offices and institutions: provincial government offices, universities, colleges, hospitals, day care centers..

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/09/11/f-vp-fitz-morris-quebec-charter.html 

             What to make of this? In the old Québec, before the Liberal "Quiet Revolution" of the 1960s, the Roman Catholic Church was responsible for providing or administrating various social services: education, health, orphanges.. The Quiet Revolution was a wave of modernization and reform which brought the modern liberal welfare state to Québec. The province secularized with a vengeance, religious attendance plummeted, churches were sold off and converted into condos, we became the shack-up capital of North America and among the first in North America to legalize abortion on demand and gay marriage.. Québec separatist sentiments switched from the Right side of the political spectrum to the Left and gained support from the young, relatively affluent, educated Boomers. The PQ held out the promise of a social democratic secular paradise for an independant République du Québec. The sixties and seventies were heady times!

            Under the center Left / moderate Left policies of the PQ, living standards rose. Higher education became accessible to the masses. Literacy levels rose sharply. The salary gap between Anglos and Francos in the Province shrank. Speaking French was no longer a shame or a liability but a point of pride. The downside: it is hard to make a revolution if there is little evidence of the oppression wich feeds revolutionary fervor. Separatist ideologues were reduced to massaging economic statistics to "prove" that Québec would be better off without the Rest of Canada. Federalist ideologues, meanwhile, massaged the same set of states to "prove" it would be better to remain in the Canadian federation. The rise of the neo-con ideology has not helped either: narcissim is hardly compatible with self-sacrifice for the common good..

               Whatever the causes, one has the impression that the separatists movement has stagnated in support for the better part of quarter century, perhaps longer. The PQ can still win elections - they are in a minority government since September 2012 - but few today speak with real conviction of the "Mission": secession from the Canadian union. If they do, it is lip service to a vaguely envisioned Second Coming, not a battle cry to raise the troops.

              Recognizing the existential - and ontological - thiness of their position, the PQ seems to be searching for a means to reconnect with and engage the public. They seem to be searching for relevance, for the old creative spark. They want to return to the days when they could rally the People beneath the Big Tent, before the two defeated referenda (1980, 1995) relegated the independance dream to the dustbin of failed political dreams. One commentator recently observed that the PQ, in the first year of its mandate, tried various themes to revive interest and fighting spirit: the environment, the economy, protection of the French language.. None caught the public's attention for long. To speak truthfully, the PQ did not so much win the last election, rather the public decided to throw out the corrupt provincial Liberals. The PQ "won" by default. The public however, remained unresponsive and somewhat surly toward the new elected PQ who, generally, appeared to waffle and drift aimlessly without a fixed direction. Until now - the proposed charter of values has, at least, the virtue cutting through the apathy.. It is rare, I think, that a proposed piece of legislation manages to offend so many people in so many different ways.
   
             Unfortunately, with the proposed charter of values the PQ seem now to have turned toward populism as a means of currying favor with the electorate. This is a very dangerous move as the racially and ethnically motivated nationalistic movements of the 20th century tragically demonstrated.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/the-horrific-plight-of-hungarys-roma/278955/

           Many people are honestly confused by the current "secularity" debate in the Province, both its content and its timing. What problem is the charter of values intended to resolve? For example, "reasonable accomodations" with orthodox Jews in the Montréal region have existed forever: zoning regulations variations, for example. Friction arises between communities from time to time but usually blows over in a climate of general tolerance and goodwill.

          The last few decades, though have seen the arrival of increasing numbers of immigrants from non-traditional sources: Vietnamese boat people, Muslims, Haitians, black Africans.. New, more demanding, "reasonable accomodations" were sought with the host community: hospitals found Muslim women refusing examination by male physicians. Worse, in the backlash of 9-11, the Muslim community was stigmatized with the suspicion of haboring terrorists, oppressing women, brainwashing children and - in several notorious cases - carrying our "honor killings" against women who had become too occidental in dress and morals. The background level of latent fear and hostility between communities began to rise.

           Into this increasingly tense situation, the PQ decided to venture with its inflammatory charter of values. Are they cracking open the lid of the box of populist hatred, oblivious to the consequences? - like that Greek gal, Pandora..