Enemies are often allies beneath the skin.

In the wake of the recent murder of Americans in Libya, the demonstrations in Cairo, and the growing unrest in other Islamic countries, the truth of this is becoming clear.

As I write, there doubts have emerged about links betweenthe killings in Libya and the “film” that has made the rounds on the web thatinsults Islam.  The events in Cairo seem a direct response to it, as do the spreading demonstrations.

More revolting: the makers of the film may have intended to invoke this reaction. 

Why? One can only speculate, but speculation isn’t hard in this case: the image of mobs of Muslims attacking U.S. citizens and property plays into the image of Islam as a religion of intolerance and hate.  Rather than the film saying anything directly, it invokes a response that is far more effective in making the case than the film itself.

So, radical Christians vs. radical Islamicists, right?

 

The more I think about it, the less I think that’s the way we should see it.

The Economic Equivalent of War

"The Moral Equivalent of War" is one of William James’s best known essays (much more so than his “A Culinary Equivalent of War,” a meditation on Mother James’s appallingly bad meatloaf that William and his brother Henry suffered through as children).


In it, James notes that war is horrific, despicable, sinful, and evil, as are most of the things it brings out of people who participate in it directly or indirectly. But it also elicits bravery, sacrifice, and a commitment to something greater than the self.

How wonderful it would be, mused James, if we could do away with militarism altogether, but find something that could elicit the selflessness and will to collective action that war did.

Even James, a psychologist of the first order, had difficulty coming up with a concrete vision of what a moral equivalent of war would be. Perhaps we’ve made some steps in that direction with the Peace Corps and Teach for America, but James’s search continues.

A more modest quest we might have more luck with is to find an economic equivalent of war.

A few weeks ago as I drove home after work, I listened to a gentleman on the radio railing against what he saw as the mistaken economics of John Maynard Keynes (and, by association, the Keynesian aspects of Obama’s economic policies).

This wasn’t Rush, Hannity, or any of those guys. Oddly enough, it seemed to be some church service. At any rate, the preacher/economic guru was talking about what a mistake it was to praise the ideas of Keynes (specifically the use of government spending to spur the economy) as what lifted the U.S. out of the Great Depression. With a great deal of self-satisfaction, he said something along the lines of, “Perhaps those who think government spending was the solution should pay more attention to their history. After all, the nation didn’t truly come out of the Depression until late 1941. This might be news to some folks, but that’s when something called the Second World War started. And the government wasn’t spending money paying government employees or creating ‘infrastructure.’ No, America was equipping G.I.s, building tanks, planes, and ships to fight fascism.”

This line drew appreciative cheers and applause from the congregation, apparently sincere.

I found it a bit hard to take this all with much seriousness. From a purely economic perspective, what, I wondered, were G.I.s, but government employees? What would you call tanks, planes, and ships if not infrastructure? Heck, the Manhattan Project was the biggest “make work” government investment in history.

Among those who like denigrating FDR’s fiscal policies during the Great Depression, it’s taken as an article of faith that it was WWII that actually brought the economy back. What these people seem not to realize is that to the extent this might be true, it’s true because it radically expanded and accelerated government spending beyond FDR’s wildest dreams.

There is nothing magical about spending money to kill human beings that makes it more economically stimulating than spending money to heal, educate, house, or feed them. To the contrary, war is inherently (and obviously) destructive. You’re building stuff that won’t be used for anything other than to obliterate things and people.

Take a moment to imagine what the world might be like if the United States (and everyone else involved in WWII for that matter) had been in a position to spend all the money that was spent on bombs, bullets, and planes on things like houses, trains, roads, power plants, medical research, etc. What if we’d managed to take the Great Depression as seriously as a threat to the national welfare as we did Pearl Harbor?

We’d have had the post-war “boom” without the war, without the destroyed cities, without so much brainpower spent on ways to kill rather than heal, without the tens of millions of human beings killed. Talk about a peace dividend.

I’m no economist myself, but it seems a difficult argument to make that government spending is a boondoggle, and use as proof of this is the fact that massive government spending in the fighting of WWII was what “really” got us out of the Great Depression.

Unfortunately, just as it’s difficult to evoke the degree of bravery and self-sacrifice from an individual as one finds in war, it’s also difficult to evoke the commitment to collective investment in our national well-being as one finds in war.

More’s the pity.

Peace.

Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize/Goad

I just heard about President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize.




My first thought was, “Wow! Cool!”



My second thought is, “I hope he earns it.”



In the five minutes it’s been since first hearing the news, the few comments I’ve heard, both in pro and anti Obama camps, is puzzlement about why the president would receive this award after being in office only a few months.



I’ll throw out one possible answer, one that I think makes some sense.



I suspect the award is meant more as a goad than as a reward. Obama’s vision for the world and America’s place in bodes well for a move toward a more peaceful planet where even the most entrenched enmities might be transcended. At the very least, we can hope that we try for such transcendence before relying on the half-measure of compromise or the utter failure of war. Peace is no longer a dirty word, as it often has been in this country of late.



Having said that, Obama is considering ramping up troop levels in Afghanistan. The occupation of Iraq continues. Abolishing nuclear weapons is something that’s talked about, but hasn’t been done.



A few months into office, Obama is now having to make the actual decisions that will determine whether the reality of his presidency lives up to the rhetoric. I think the Nobel Prize committee knows this. By giving him the award, the committee also has placed a heavy burden on Obama’s shoulders: to live up to the epithet “Nobel Peace Prize Winner.”



While not impossible, it will be harder for “Nobel Peace Prize Winner” Barack Obama to send more combat troops to continue an occupation of a foreign country than it would for merely “President Obama.” It will be harder for “Nobel Peace Prize Winner” Barack Obama to cave in to pressure to deploy expensive and pointless weapons systems around the world than it would for “President Obama.” It will be harder for “Nobel Peace Prize Winner” Barack Obama to turn a blind eye to extraordinary rendition and torture than it would for “President Obama.”



To those who think that this prize is givens way too early, I agree insofar as the prize is meant to reward past actions. But if we see this action for what (in my opinion) it is, a persuasive act aimed moving Obama to fulfill the promise of peace he’s spoken about, I think the award, coming at just the time when the rhetorical rubber is hitting the road of reality, potentially does more to foster peace than it would if given for actions done five, ten, or twenty years ago.



Peace.

Of Whale Watching and Navel Gazing

So I did it. I watched an episode of “Whale Wars” on the Discovery Channel.

I tried not to. I avoided it for almost a year. But on Saturday, I got sucked in.

You might ask, “Who cares, and what does this have to do with rhetoric or peace or anything like that?”

Well, for starters, I promised myself that I’d make an effort not to have this newest blog not just be pseudo-academic or faux-pundit stuff, but actually require some self-reflection on my part, and an attempt to integrate abstract stuff with personal observations.

Plus, my favorite academic-y blogs are ones that blend the academic and the personal. Ideally, these shouldn’t be two different worlds. If you want a sample, one I like a lot is “Bitch Ph.D.,” which is worth a click just for the photo in the banner.

When I was a tyke, one of the books my dad would read to me at bedtime was one called “All About Whales” by R. C. Andrews, the guy who supposedly was the inspiration for the character of Indiana Jones.

From at least that time on, I’ve been fascinated by whales and repulsed by the notion of whaling. When I read Moby Dick, I was rooting for the whale.

So I knew if I watched “Whale Wars” (about a group that harasses Japanese whaling ships in an attempt to save whales) I knew I’d get worked up.

As the episode unfolded and I saw a grenade-tipped harpoon fired by a gun into a whale, obliterating its internal organs, but not killing it outright. For more than 20 minutes (thankfully shortened by editing to just a couple of minutes of screen time), the doomed whale thrashed and struggled, suffocating on its own blood, as whalers repeatedly shot it with a rifle.

And sure enough, I found my heart pounding.



I remembered the daydreams I had as a child. They went something along these lines: some eccentric billionaire environmentalist would purchase a WWII-era surplus submarine and scour the earth for a crew of kids who had just the right combination of passion, smarts, and moxie to crew this sub on its mission of disrupting illegal whaling across the seven seas. This rag-tag bunch of scrappy do-gooders would force whalers to strike their colors and abandon ship, allowing them just enough time to board life boats and radio for rescue before sending the blood-soaked kill ship to the bottom.

And since this was my daydream, after all, you can guess who was the kid looking through the periscope calling the order to fire a salvo of Mark IV fish into the side of the whaler.

I’ve sometimes thought of turning these childhood fantasies into a young-adult novel. And since I know there are writers among you, let me simply say it’s MY idea!. All rights reserved. Patent Pending. Copyright 2009, Remingtomes Books. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

But watching the show and doing a sort of self-inventory of the feelings it brought up reminded me of the tension between self-righteous anger and the desire to get along. Neither of these drives, in my mind, is good or bad. There are situations when almost the only rational response *is* anger—or at least the drive to take action to remedy the situation. And when being peaceful becomes nothing more than passivity, it ceases to be a virtue.

The trick is knowing where this line is. If one grants that whaling is a gruesome, immoral act, to what lengths should one go to end it? Taking violence against human beings off the table as self-evidently and categorically wrong, what about violence against property? What about causing fear?

I don’t know.

Obviously the issue of whaling is a metaphor. The larger issue is one that we each encounter on a nearly daily basis. Or at least I do.

The situations aren’t anywhere near as dramatic, but let me give you an example of what I mean. I believe passionately that in a country as wealthy as ours, it is morally inexcusable to not have guaranteed, affordable healthcare for every citizen. I’m not alone in this. As a matter of principle, polls consistently show that the majority of Americans want universal healthcare and would even be willing to personally pay more taxes if that were necessary to make it happen.

But of course not everyone agrees, and even those who agree in principle often balk when a specific plan is proposed. The minority who opposes it on ideological grounds will seize on specifics (real or imagined) that they feel will persuade those who *do* favor universal coverage to not support the given plan.

That’s why you don’t hear many against healthcare reform arguing that universal healthcare isn’t a worthy goal, or even arguing that the government shouldn’t be involved in providing healthcare. Instead, you get silliness like “death panels” and suggestions that instead of your doctor making healthcare decisions with you, some faceless “government bureaucrat” will call the shots (as if we weren’t ass-deep in bureaucrats making healthcare decisions for us; I don’t know about you, but I have pretty good insurance and I still get told what doctors I’m allowed to go to and what procedures I can have done).

So, I believe strongly in this issue—it’s one that directly affects the well-being of me and my fellow citizens. The case seems so self-evident to me as to almost need no defense—every moral and spiritual code I can think of is on the side of caring for those who are sick.

Yet I’m keenly aware that many people—including people whose intellect and morality I respect, people who are devoted followers of one or more of the moral codes that seem so self evidently on my side—aren’t in agreement with me.

Part of me thinks, “Well, not a one of us has access to objective Truth in its totality. I have my point of view; others have theirs. Can’t we all just get along?”

But another part of me, the part that is still that little kid who dreamt of confronting merchants of death on the high seas in the name of a transcendent good, feels compelled to challenge, critique, and attack what I perceive as ignorance, moral blind spots, narrow-mindedness, etc.

When it comes to public officials, there’s obviously no conflict—expressing oneself is fine and dandy, as long as one isn’t impinging on the rights of others.

But what about when you’re dealing with friends, family, colleagues? Is the drive to engage in debate—even friendly debate—with such people a good thing or a bad thing? A sign of sincere desire to search for the truth, or just a pathetic need to engage in rhetorical one-upsmanship? If I see an someone on Facebook approvingly post a screed by Ann Coulter or make a factually inaccurate argument about Obama’s “socialism,” is my nearly-reflexive desire to provide the other side, to “correct” them, to explain why their point of view is so disturbing and (to my mind) damaging to our collective world . . . is that desire coming from a good place or a bad place?

Again, I dunno.

One of the things I’m hoping to work toward in my own mind is a concept of rhetorical engagement which transcends the idea of “argument” in the narrow sense of being pro/con. There’s already been some work on that done (e.g. “Rogerian” argument), but it still has a long way to go.

In the meantime, I’ll keep dealing with my conflicting desires—the one to jump aboard my discursive Zodiac boat and aggressively harass those who would seek to harpoon the Truth as I grasp it (in my admittedly limited way), and the part of me that thinks it would be more congenial and decorous to simply lie on the beach and have another Mai Tai.

Peace.

Let the Healing Begin

So, it's been a while since I've done any serious blogging. I've had a few false starts after a long run on The Counterpoint, but the lack of any single controlling theme, as well as having a growing number of academic and other duties, including writing of various sorts, kept me from getting into any sort of groove.

That's changed at least a bit. An general issue that's becoming increasingly important in my intellectual and spiritual life is peace/nonviolence studies.

Hence, this current blog. It will be political, but rather than simply being an exercise in debunking highly bunkable arguments by various public figures, I will be making an attempt to use this space as a place to think through some ways in which the issues of rhetoric and nonviolence intersect. (There is, believe it or not, a surprisingly small amount of work being done on that topic.)

It might seem contradictory, but my plan is that this will also be a spot for me to do some personal reflecting on issues of nonviolence in a general sense, particularly how I might bring notions of conflict resolution (or, better yet, avoidance) in the classroom.

So while this blog has a fairly specific raison d'etre, my plan is for the subjects to vary more broadly than previous efforts, ranging from rather abstract philosophizing to a reflection on what went on in my class that day.

More than anything, this is a place for personal experimentation with thoughts and words. I welcome any thoughts or insights you can share.

Oh, and as my first move in my attempt to explore the intersection of politics, rhetoric, and my own life, I'm going to "friend" Mark Hyman on Facebook.

Yes, that Mark Hyman--the subject of The Counterpoint, and the guy who called me an example of "failures in higher education" (before being forced to retract his statements a few days later).

This might seem like a longshot, but I was encouraged to do so by my sister, who happens to be a nun. So, to quote the Blues Brothers, I'm on a mission from God.

I won't guess what Hyman's response will be, but I think the gesture will be worth it in any case, and I'll certainly keep you posted!

Peace,

Ted

PS. If you want a rundown of my previous experiences with Mark Hyman, you can get it in my "manifesto" that was published in Kairos a while back.