By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, November 10th, 2010
In an earlier post, I reflected on means and ends in politics as this theme related to the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Liu Xiaobo. Those reflections relate to the broader question of whether good ends ever justify undesirable means. Principled pacifists say no.
I remember struggling with this as a young man. Subjected to the draft during the Vietnam War era, being a very early and precocious opponent to the war, I tried to convince myself that I was a pacifist. I read the writings of Gandhi and A.J. Muste. I looked into the pacifist activities of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Although I realized that making the claim of being a Jewish pacifist would be practically difficult, I wanted to explore possibilities. But in the end, I gave up, because I couldn’t convince myself that I wouldn’t fight against Hitler, and I recognized then and see now that there are many other instances where I cannot oppose military action as a matter of absolute conviction.
I was not an enthusiastic supporter of either the first war in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan, for example. It was not clear to me that a military response to either crisis was the appropriate one. But on the other hand, I couldn’t in good conscience oppose either war. The slogan “No Blood for Oil” rang hollow. America was attacked from bases that were protected and developed in the Taliban’s Afghanistan, and Saddam Hussein was indeed a brutal dictator who worked to create a totalitarian order, as Kanan Makiya, ably demonstrated in his gripping book, The Republic of Fear.
But, on the other hand, means do have a way of defining political action whether or not the ends are justified. The way we have fought the wars, and the way our allies have ruled, have undermined the arguments for the war in Afghanistan. And indeed the way the Gulf War was fought and the lessons that were drawn from the war cast into doubt its initial justification, especially as this was utilized for the George W. Bush’s war . . .
Read more: Can I be a Pragmatic Pacifist?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, November 2nd, 2010
As we go to the polls today, there is the likely outcome, a significant Republican victory, and there is the possibility of the surprise finish, more muted Republican gains. Times are tough, and people are thus looking for changes in their political representation, but despite this, indeed, because of it, to the end, Obama fought against the apparently inevitable. In the climax of his fight, he explained his position:
“Around the country I’ve been trying to describe it this way. Imagine the American economy as a car. And the Republicans were at the wheel and they drove it into a ditch. And it’s a steep ditch, it’s a deep ditch. And somehow they walked away.
But we had to go down there. So me and all the Democrats, we put on our boots and we repelled down into the ditch. (Laughter.) And it was muddy down there and hot. We’re sweating, pushing on the car. Feet are slipping. Bugs are swarming.
We look up and the Republicans are up there, and we call them down, but they say, no, we’re not going to help. They’re just sipping on a Slurpee — (laughter) — fanning themselves. They’re saying, you’re not pushing hard enough, you’re not pushing the right way. But they won’t come down to help. In fact, they’re kind of kicking dirt down into us, down into the ditch. (Laughter.)
But that’s okay. We know what our job is, and we kept on pushing, we kept on pushing, we kept on pushing until finally we’ve got that car on level ground. (Applause.) Finally we got the car back on the road. (Applause.) Finally we got that car pointing in the right direction. (Applause.)
And suddenly we have this tap on our shoulder, and we look back and who is it?
AUDIENCE: Republicans.
THE PRESIDENT: It’s the Republicans. And they’re saying, excuse me, we’d like the keys back.
AUDIENCE: No! (link)
D.C. reader, Eric Friedman, reported in a reply to my last post that his son heard these words on the Midway at the University of Chicago and found . . .
Read more: After Sipping on a Slurpee, Republican Victory Still Likely
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 29th, 2010 More than ever, cultural context informs the political scene, from late-night comedy to a recent Supreme Court ruling.
Sometimes the solution to theoretical problems become apparent not through careful research or close reading of important texts, but in the course of thinking about everyday life, in the course of leading a reflective life. You have an everyday encounter. You give it thought, and a major intellectual problem is solved.
I had such an experience and revelation at a lunch in Berlin in November of 1994. I remember the discussion. I remember the setting, an Italian restaurant in the leafy outskirts of the city. But I have only a vague recollection of my lunch partner, a female German scholar.
I was in Berlin in 1994 on a leg of a United States Information Agency sponsored lecture tour in Europe. The main event was in Poland, where I helped inaugurate a short lived American Cultural Center there. Following my stop in Warsaw, I flew to Berlin to speak in the well established American Cultural Center there about my book The Cynical Society, but also gave a talk at the Free University about my other relatively recent books, Beyond Glasnost and After the Fall. The first Berlin talk was about my work on American political culture, the second on my work in Central and Eastern Europe. After the second talk, I had a lunch with my hostess. We engaged in the normal small talk. No doubt, we discussed the presentation I gave and the reaction of the audience. The details escape me except for one exchange. It went something like this:
Jeff – “I think that it is not at all clear that Hitler’s crimes were qualitatively different than those of Stalin.”
Hostess – “No! Hitler was unique. The intentional project of modern industrial genocide was unprecedented, uniquely evil, something that must not be forgotten.”
We went on and discussed this, I, as an expert on the Soviet bloc and its democratic opposition, she as a German scholar. The conversation was warm, not at . . .
Read more: Cultural context is crucial in identity politics
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 24th, 2010 
As we are critical of the paranoid style of politics, as I am concerned that the worst elements of the American populism and demagoguery are being mainstreamed in our political life, I recall that this is a reaction to a major trend that many of us have experienced directly and meaningfully, including me.
 Even as we are bombarded by crazy assertions that the American President is not an American citizen and that he is a secret Muslim, we need to recall that this sort of paranoia is reactionary. It’s a response to an American triumph, the American people elected an African American, Barack Hussein Obama, to be President of the United States. Even as his popularity waxes and wanes, he is our President. We elected him by not succumbing to fears and hatreds, revealing our better selves. This triumph goes beyond our evaluation of President Obama’s job performance. It stands as a challenge to those who work to revive a politics of fear of the different. It challenges those who speak about “taking their country back.”
I came to know the dimensions of the triumph, along with my fellow citizens, on the night of the Iowa Caucuses and the day after. Obama won in an overwhelmingly white state. The previously excluded was chosen, and the seriousness of Obama’s candidacy was clearly revealed.
The next day when I went for a swim at the Theodore Young Community Center (link), I saw how my African American friends, the whole gang, but especially the center of the social circle, Beverly McCoy,  finally came to believe that I wasn’t crazy in thinking that Obama had a chance. In our community center, we started thinking differently about our country. I stopped being the naïve Jewish Professor. Perhaps, I was instead a realist. Together, we realized that we may live in a better country than we had imagined the day before. I think that we started looking at each other differently. We more openly spoke about race, about our fears and hopes, about being black and white, Jewish and Christian, . . .
Read more: Against Paranoia
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 19th, 2010 
The political right has been successful in swaying the general public for the time being, but American intellectuals remain unconvinced: are there any serious conservative intellectuals?
I am not worried that the universities are dominated by tenured radicals, as one right wing ideologue or another regularly discovers. While the political center of American academics is significantly to the left of the center of the public at large, I see no reason to be particularly upset by this. Career soldiers are probably to the right of the American consensus and this too doesn’t put me up in arms. Better not, I guess. The experience of particular vocations informs political judgment, and people with common world views make common career choices.
But I do worry about the absence of intelligent conservative commentary and criticism in American intellectual life. It does seem to me that almost all serious thought these days is to be found on the left, and I don’t think that this is a good thing. The conservative tradition contributes too much for it to come down to this. And given the swings from left to right in the public mood (which I do regret, all I am saying is give leftists a chance) it would be a good thing if there were a sensible right.
Ideologues of the right, of course, do exist, those who know that there is a clear and present danger, and we must be vigilant, these days against “Islamofascism. “ I think that’s what they call it. But these use fantasy and fear to empower their arguments, not reason and careful observation. How else can you find a liberal Sufi cleric to be a terrorist sympathizer?
And there are those who cling if not to their guns and religion, to their absolute dogmatic beliefs and their assertions of the moral high ground, while fearing actual moral inquiry and debate. Better to worry about the attack on Christmas. And also those who know with certainty that the market is magical, and condemn government waste and inefficiency, who never met a tax cut they didn’t like, won’t ever concede that tax increases . . .
Read more: Where are the Conservative Intellectuals?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, September 29th, 2010 Barack Obama gave a campaign speech yesterday on the campus of the University of Wisconsin. I knew about the speech through an email from Organizing for America, emphasizing the need to get behind the President in the upcoming elections. I was alerted that I could watch it at NYU, down the block from the New School. While I was attracted to the idea of watching the speech with a group of like minded supporters, I decided to watch it at home, near my computer, so that I could easily make this post.
When I went to the television to watch the speech, I was surprised to see that only CNN was broadcasting it, and even they cut it. They skipped the opening remarks when the President thanked the notables present (significantly including Russ Feingold who was missing from Obama’s last full throated partisan address in Milwaukee on Labor Day), and broke off from Obama after about fifteen minutes into the speech so that their regular talking heads could analyze his remarks and the latest political gossip, proceeding with their usual nightly opposing talking point exchanges. I quickly ran to my computer to watch the remainder of the speech, which I found to be an impassioned and reasoned account of why it is important to vote for the Democrats in the upcoming elections.
Transcript
I was surprised the speech wasn’t covered by the news programs. I guess it was deemed to be too partisan, but it was strange. Fox was going on about why Obama is obsessed with them, celebrating the fact that a President has made negative remarks about their one-sided coverage. MSNBC commentators were continuing to fight last summer’s intra-party battles, exploring how the President had not adequately confronted Republicans, caving into Lieberman on the public option before it was necessary, getting less on healthcare as a result, and CNN turned to a Republican operative to balance the President’s partisan remarks. Instead of highlighting the political position of the President, as he carefully presented it to his supporters, the politics of the day was reduced to endless bickering from three different political angles.
. . .
Read more: Coverage of Obama’s Recent Speech Disappoints – Again
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, September 24th, 2010 
In my previous research, I’ve examined how local arts movements can have a big impact on regional politics.
There was an interesting article in The New York Times last Sunday about a poetry salon in Damascus, Syria. It reminded me of the theater movement I studied in Poland in the 1970s. Both the theater movement and the poetry salon are examples of constituted free zones in repressive societies. I think they demonstrate the possibility of re-inventing political culture, the possibility of reformulating the relationship between the culture of power and the power of culture.
The secret police are present at Bayt al-Qasid, the House of Poetry, in Damascus today, The Times reports, but it is also a place where innovative poetry is read, including by poets in exile, politically daring ideas are discussed, a world of alternative sensibility is created. Not the star poets of the sixties, but young unknowns predominate. The point is not political agitation nor to showcase celebrity, but the creation of a special place for reading, performance and discussion of the new and challenging. The article quotes a patron about a recent reading. “‘In a culture that loathes dialogue,’ the evening represented something different, said Mr. Sawah, the editor of a poetry Web site. ‘What is tackled here,’ he said, ‘would never be approached elsewhere.’”
Cynics would say that the Polish theater and the Syrian salon are safety valve mechanism, through which the young and the marginal can let off steam, as a repressive political culture prevails. But in Poland, the safety valve overturned the official culture, even before the collapse of the Communist regime, as I explained in my book Beyond Glasnost: the Post Totalitarian Mind.
I don’t want to assert that this happy ending is always the result of such cultural work. Clearly, it’s not. But I do want to underscore that the very existence of an alternative sensibility in a repressive context changes the nature of the social order. Poland was not simply a repressive country then, and Syria is not simply repressive now. They are . . .
Read more: In Syria: Poetry Salon Provides Release, Freedom
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 23rd, 2010
As Obama was elected to the United States Senate and with talk about his Presidential prospects going beyond our family circle, my wife, Naomi, and I became early and enthusiastic supporters. He made us believe that there was an alternative, another, better America which he could represent and lead, and in which we wanted to be active. We made early modest financial contributions to his campaign, and in turn the campaign identified us, and recruited Naomi in December of 2007to go to the city of White Plains, New York, near our home, to collect signatures to put Obama’s name on the ballot for New York Democratic Primary. She spent an afternoon and collected around 20 signatures. It was hard work. A cold afternoon, people were not yet focused on the election, and those who were did not think that Obama had a chance, nor was he their choice.
Remember Hillary Clinton was our popular Senator. Naomi particularly remembers one African American man who practically laughed in her face that she thought Obama had any chance. Although she did good hard work, I thought I could more easily get as good results at a nearby community center where I swim, and I did.
Our county, Westchester, is a residentially segregated. Renown for wealth, it is actually quite diverse (40% of the population is non white), with significant immigrant neighborhoods and concentrated African American sections, one of which is served by the Theodore Young Community Center. Most of the staff and the patrons of the center are African American, but many other people, Latino, Asian and white, also use the Center, for many different activities. For years, I went to swim. I didn’t socialize. I would put in my mile or two, two or three times a week, without making friends and barely having acquaintances. I worked out and went home, that is, until I decided to try to match Naomi’s collection of signatures, doing so in less than an hour before and after a mid day swim.
In a way, it wasn’t as easy as I had expected. Many of the staff . . .
Read more: Talking about Race in a New World
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 23rd, 2010
Like many others, I first became aware of Barack Obama as a national figure when he, an Illinois State Senator, gave his now famous 2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address. He inspired a nation by identifying his idiosyncratic personal story, father from Kenya, mother from Kansas, named Barack, with the highest hope s and dreams of America.
 My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or ”blessed,” believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success. They imagined — They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren’t rich, because in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential. I heard about the speech from my son, Sam, who was then living in Obama’s neighborhood, Hyde Park, as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago. I was teaching in Krakow, Poland that summer, and in a phone conversation, Sam confidently instructed my wife, Naomi and me that we had to listen to the speech. We had already read about the speech. Sam predicted that Obama would be the next President of the United States. We had our doubts. He was prescient. For Sam, the prospects of an African American President didn’t seem as extraordinary at it did for Naomi and me. We came of age during the height of the civil rights movement. We remember when overt racism was on ongoing part of daily life. Young though we were, we remember the March on Washington and the “I Have a Dream” speech. We remember the slain civil rights workers. We remember the urban riots, the urban decay, and the fear on the city streets that followed. We remember the golden age of television, when black and white were the color of the images but not of the people on the screen. We lived through many firsts for African Americans and women, but the first we couldn’t imagine in our lifetime seemed to Sam to be likely, given Obama’s talents. His world, the world . . .
Read more: The Wisdom of Youth
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