By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 23rd, 2011 
I’ve been on the road this week, giving a public talk in Santa Barbara at Fielding Graduate University, and taking a break from a very hectic writing and teaching schedule. Returning to frigid New York, I feel cut off from my usual news sources and news gathering customs. As it happens I couldn’t read the paper version of The New York Times first thing, as is my morning custom, didn’t listen to Morning Edition and All Things Considered on NPR, and didn’t go from there to search the web for interesting under reported news and commentary. Instead I took a look at cable news, and found, to my dismay, that I really didn’t understand what had happened this week. This underscored Laura Pacifici’s point. Audiences consume “news products” that confirm their beliefs; news reporting and commentary are not informing. It struck me that this is the way that many people keep up with public affairs. I felt like I was in a fog. No wonder fictoids work! I was warmed by the Santa Barbara sun, chilled by “the lame stream media.”
Although I was on vacation, I managed to keep DC going, thanks to interesting posts by DC contributors. Will Milberg presented a very different account of the China – America relationship. I am convinced. The issue is less about currency valuations, more about economic practices of them and us. As Milberg succinctly put it:
“The key to the problem of global imbalances is to resolve them in an expansionary way rather than a contractionary way. In the wake of the crisis and a deep and widespread recession, we should be thinking about a reform of the international payments system that shifts the burden of adjustment from deficit countries (who are forced to contract their economies in order to reduce imports) to surplus countries (whose extra spending raises their imports).”
Gary Alan Fine, following up on his brilliant Jared Lee Loughner post, considered a fundamental problem in representative democracy, should we vote for representatives because of their personal qualities or principled positions. He makes . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Obama, no Lincoln, and a few other observations
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 9th, 2011
The massacre in Tucson, Arizona, is a worrying indication of fundamental problems in American society and in American political life. The overheated rhetoric of the right, with its violent imagery is the least of the problems, though much debated in the past 24 hours. I think that Vince Carducci presciently got to the heart of the matter in his reply to Martin Plot’s latest post. Vince agreed with Martin that the pursuit of complete security presents a fundamental challenge to democracy in America. I also agree, perhaps contrary to Martin’s expectation. Vince cites Orwell as one of the author’s who illuminated the problem. I believe that Orwell also reveals a connection between this general problem and the assassination attempt on Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the killing of six others.
Orwell in 1984 imagined in his dystopia a never ending war, such as the one in which we are now engaged, “the war on terrorism.” He depicted a language, newspeak, which concealed and manipulated, rather than revealed, such as the language we use. This kind of language is now broadly applied. On the legislative agenda this week is the bill to kill “Obamacare,” actually formally named ‘‘Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.’’ Newspeak is not only used to defend against hidden villains, foreign and domestic, but also political opponents who propose modest social reforms.
And as I am struggling to write this most difficult week in review, I came across a story that compactly indicates how bad things are. Two members of the House of Representatives, one Republican, Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, one Democrat, Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina, told Politico that they will be carrying guns to protect themselves in their districts. “You never think something like this will happen, but then it does,” Shuler said “After the elections, I let my guard down. Now I know I need to have [my gun] on me. We’re going to need to do a much better job with security at these events.”
Gun toting Congressmen meeting gun toting constituents at public rallies. Is that what democracy in . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: In the Wake of the Tucson Massacre
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, December 17th, 2010 
 Democracy, social justice, freedom, cultural refinement and pleasure, all, along with their opposites, are to be found in the detailed meetings and avoidances, engagements and disengagements, comings and goings of everyday life. The politics of small things has been our theme of the week.
Adam Michnik and I decided to try to organize our friends in a common discussion. Despite the workings of the security police and his jailers, and despite the hard realities of the cold war, we created alternatives in our own lives, and this affected many others. Although I am not informed about the specifics, I am sure that such things are now happening in China.
But I should be clear. I am not saying that therefore, the People’s Republic’s days are numbered, or that liberal democracy is just around the corner. Escalation in repression is quite a likely prospect. Michnik’s life after receiving our honorary doctorate did at first lead to a prison cell. Shirin Ebadi is in exile today, as was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn after his prize. But people continue to interact around the shared human rights principles to which these people dedicated their lives, and this has persistent effects, at least for those people, but beyond their social circles as well. As Michnik put it “the value of our struggle lies not in its chances for victory but rather in the values of its cause.” My point is that if people keep acting according to those values, they are very much alive and consequential.
And it is in this way that I applaud the Afghan Womens Soccer team and  understand its significance. That these young women manage to play their game despite all the horrors of war and occupation, despite the persistence of harmful traditional practices and inadequate implementation of the law on elimination of violence against women in Afghanistan (this was the subject matter of the UN report that Denis Fitzgerald referred to in his reply to my post) is their great achievement. We have to pay attention to such achievements, and . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: the significance of the politics of small things
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, December 10th, 2010 
 This has been an important week for us at DC. As we have been making new efforts to reach out to our audience and potential contributors, we also have been working on making the site more fully functional. I hope that long time visitors notice the improvements and that new visitors look around. Let us know what you think, and please join our discussions.
I think DC discussions this week were particularly interesting as we addressed the issue of the relationship between institutional and political practices, on the one hand, and ideals, on the other. We have been considering how our ways of doing things are related to our values.
Democratic Ideals versus Plutocratic Realities
In the ongoing debate provoked by Martin Plot, there is the question of what is wrong with American democracy. Scott, informed by my response to Martin, wants to underscore that it is not only, or even primarily, a systemic problem, it is more crucially a problem of action. He criticizes “factoid based media, money based politics and narrow interest based legislating,” which have inhibited informed political action.
Jeffrey Dowd, who also identifies himself as Jeff in his replies, seems to agree with Plot that the possibility of an open politics is gravely diminished because of the workings of corporate power.
Michael is deeply concerned that the pressing issues of the day are not being addressed as they are overshadowed by ideological conflicts.
This is a full range of judgment, the basis of alternative political positions. I think the different characterizations of the situation are informed by competing ideals. I respect these differences and am interested in the alternative insights and interpretations they suggest for accounting for what has happened in the past, but also as a way of orienting future actions.
If Jeff and Martin are right, we can expect one pro – corporate move after another in the coming two years, with Obama triangulating and doing the work of corporations, perhaps doing so more efficiently than Bush would have. (This parallels the far left’s account of FDR and the New Deal).
If Scott is right, the only way of avoiding this is . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Democratic Ideals and Realities
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, December 3rd, 2010 
WikiLeaks, Fictoids, and Plutocracy
Starting today, on Friday afternoons, I will present reflections on the deliberate considerations of the past week.
 The discussion about WikiLeaks at DC suggested the importance of looking at other dimensions of the problem, not only the issue of whether the release of official secrets serves or undermines immediate political interests, but also what it suggests about fundamental social problems, about the relationship between public and private in diplomacy, and in everyday life, and about what it means for “the big picture,” concerning the prospects for war and peace, and the success or failure of democratic transition from dictatorship and democracy.
I understand and anticipated the critical responses to the conclusion of my post. “I believe WikiLeaks’ disclosures present a clear and present danger to world peace.”
Esther expressed concern that the boldness of my judgment suggested a need to constrain the media. She, Scott and Alias agreed that the danger of the WikiLeaks “dump” was not great. Scott judged that “it’s rather unfair to assume that the US is the only country whose diplomacy can be duplicitous and shady.” And he criticized Alias’s summary judgment, based on the predictability of the revelations, “Oh well.” Scott noted that there are detailed reasons for not being so blasé and cites the possible complications in Afghanistan.
Perhaps I exaggerated, but only a little. Making public what is meant to be private undermines social interaction, whether it be in a family or in diplomacy or anywhere else. I understand why for specific reasons one would want to do that in a targeted way, if the family is dysfunctional and abusive, if the diplomacy is sustaining an injustice. But to reveal secrets just because they are secret makes little sense, since there are necessarily secrets everywhere. That is whistle blowing gone wild. It generally undermines the practice of diplomacy. Not a good thing, because the alternative to diplomacy in solving international conflict is war. And in the transition from dictatorship to democracy, as Elzbieta Matynia considered earlier today, transparency would have insured failure, i.e. the continuation of dictatorship, a violent revolutionary . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review
By Lauren Denigan, November 25th, 2010 From the staff of DeliberatelyConsidered, have a happy and safe holiday weekend.
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