Thursday, November 11th, 2010 
Today, on Veterans Day, I am happy to introduce my friend and US Army veteran: Michael P. Corey. Michael is a New School PhD with a special interest in the Vietnam War and collective memory.
The terms “means” and “ends” bring to mind relations among self-centered nations competing with one another. “A mean to an end.” “The end is worth its means.”
 It is one way of looking at the international political situation. This world looks very different from the top looking down and from the bottom looking up. For many policy makers, it involves judgments made in the name of national interests and security; and in more recent years additional concerns have been about international interests and security. From the bottom looking up, especially among combat veterans, the major concern is simply survival.
In 1927, Carl Schmitt in The Concept of the Political wrote, “The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy … The friend, enemy, and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. War follows from enmity. War is the existential negation of the enemy.” About 100 years prior to Schmitt, Carl von Clausewitz observed, “War is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse with a mixture of other means.” These, the view from the top down.
A perspective from the bottom looking up is a passage by William Broyles, Jr. in his often quoted 1984 essay, “Why Men Love War,” “War is ugly, horrible, evil, and it is reasonable for men to hate all that. But I believe that most men who have been to war would have to admit, if they are honest, that somewhere inside themselves they loved it too, loved it as much as anything that has happened to them before or since.”
These perspectives pose challenges for veterans of all sorts and for those who have either antiwar or pacifist beliefs. War is a tool of politics, and it has consequences. Alternatively, the unwillingness to use war as a tool also has consequences.
Veterans Day sparked some remembrances . . .
Read more: On Veterans Day: A Reflection on Means and Ends
Wednesday, 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?
Tuesday, November 9th, 2010 
I present an analysis of the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear,” seeing the controversies around it as being about the status of fact and fiction in our politics, and making a call to action to DC readers.
I was enchanted by the idea of the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.” I have enjoyed Stewart’s and Colbert’s shows. Especially during the worst years of the Iraq war, I watched them to maintain my own sanity. In their rally, they accurately highlighted the strength of their satire, looking for sanity in insane times, using the form of the day, the great Washington Rally organized by cable television. I have principled problems with this new form of “Media Events,” but such is the world we now live in. Stewart and Colbert claimed that theirs wasn’t a response to the Glenn Beck organized event, but it clearly was. There is irony in their satire, which challenges political clarity but for good cultural reasons.
I was pleased by the turn out. It seems that more people attended the Stewart Colbert satirical event, than attended Beck’s earnest rally to restore honor. I appreciated that “we” saw ourselves as outnumbering “them,” and it felt good. But was there any more to it than that?
There indeed was concern in this regard. The ambiguity of the event’s meaning led to significant criticism after the fact, most vividly expressed in Bill Maher’s response.
The left and the right are not equally insane, the critics point out. The problem is not in the media portrayal of our politics, something that Colbert and especially Stewart seem to focus on, but the politics itself. The event energized a part of the public, but didn’t lead to specific political action. This, of course, just before the midterm elections which promised to lead to broad Democratic losses and Tea Party gains, and which proved to be the case. The only person to even allude to the elections was Tony Bennett in his closing performance, calling out to people “Vote!” after singing “America the Beautiful.” It was a political event about . . .
Read more: Fact versus “Fictoid” in the Age of Cable
Monday, November 8th, 2010 
 Remember the South African miracle? That peacefully negotiated –for the most part — the end of the apartheid system, and the hope it conveyed to people not only in African predatory states, but in so many other parts of the world as well? Yes, dictatorship, even of the most vicious kind, could be dismantled peacefully, people could gain both rights and dignity, and plan a better future for their kids. This began almost 20 years ago.
Remember TV’s incredible bird’s-eye views of people standing in miles-long lines to vote? Remember Mandela with his awe-inspiring gravitas undiminished by TV lights, bringing a new humanity to our living rooms? Remember our admiration for the South Africans hammering out what was clearly the most progressive constitution in the world?
I am not going to tell you that this is all gone, because it is not. But even if it seems to have gotten reinvigorated, democracy here, like any new democracy, whether in Eastern Europe, Latin America, or anywhere else, is still fragile, and today it faces a major test.
Ironically there is a well-advanced effort by the ANC government to introduce a new piece of legislation that would dramatically restrict media freedom , and that — in an uncanny echo of Orwellian doublespeak — has been given the name Protection of Information Bill. The bill endows the ruling party with the power to decide what information is “unfit” for consumption by the larger public. This launch of censorship, which for many reeks of the apartheid era, is effectively designed to stop any state information that could be classified as harmful to the “national interest,” which, as both media and public know, includes potentially embarrassing information about both past and present. If one reads the proposed bill it becomes clear that there is hardly anything in South Africa that could not be defined in terms of national interest. Moreover it is up to politicians to decide what should be defined as a national secret. This legislative initiative is coupled with a newly proposed Media Appeals Tribunal “to strengthen media freedom and accountability,” which recommends draconian penalties: e.g., from 3 to 25 years for . . .
Read more: In Johannesburg: The Struggle for Democracy all Over Again
Sunday, November 7th, 2010 
The Tea Party reminds me of political movements I have been involved with and studied in the past. The development of this movement well illustrates my conception of “the politics of small things,” a very real and powerful element of political life.
Jimmy Stewart in Frank Capra's 1939 political drama "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (Columbia Pictures)
When people meet each other and speak and act in each others presence based on shared principles about common concerns, and develop a capacity to act in concert, they create political power, a kind of power highlighted by my favorite political thinker, Hannah Arendt in Between Past and Future. I saw this in the alternative cultural movement in Poland, and later in the democratic opposition in Poland and around the old Soviet bloc in the 1970s and 1980s.
People on their own, many my friends, reinvented their political culture, and the unimaginable and the hopelessly naïve became the realistic and the practical. Solidarnosc was born. The Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Empire imploded. These opposition figures changed commonsense. They presented an alternative to newspeak as a public language. The unimaginable became the real. I wrote of many of these issues in my book, Beyond Glasnost.
In the anti-war movement, the Dean campaign and the Obama campaign, the same power was evident. In the aftermath of the patriotic wave and mass support for the policies of the Bush administration, those who dissented started talking to each other, meeting, talking and developing a capacity to act in concert. At first, this was accomplished by utilizing meetup.com and supported by Moveon.org. A dense network of conversation and common action was developed. The man naming himself as the candidate from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean, changed the discussion among Democrats. They lost the election, but then won big, in 2008, very much propelled by the social support that was generated by the politics of small things.
Their great success, I should say our great success, was viewed very skeptically by a significant portion of the population. After all, while Obama won decisively, 45% of voters chose . . .
Read more: The Tea Party Goes to Washington: Now What?
Friday, November 5th, 2010
In my state, New York, thanks to the Tea Party favorite, Carl Paladino, Andrew Cuomo’s election as Governor was never in doubt. In Delaware, thanks to Christine O’Donnell, Chris Coons easily became Senator, when it seemed that he was likely to lose against a mainstream Republican. In Nevada, the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who started and finished with low approval ratings, managed to be reelected, thanks to the Tea Party candidate, Sharron Angle. On the other hand, Marco Rubio in Florida, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin and Rand Paul in Kentucky each impressively were elected to the Senate, assuring that there will be a discernable taste of tea in that great deliberative body.
As Paul put it,
“They say that the U.S. Senate is the world’s most deliberative body. Well, I’m going to ask them, respectfully, to deliberate upon this. Eleven percent of the people approve of what’s going on in Congress. But tonight there is a Tea Party tidal wave and we’re sending a message to ’em.
It’s a message that I will carry with them on Day One. It’s a message of fiscal sanity It’s a message of limited, limited constitutional government and balanced budgets.” (link)
The language is ugly, but clear. The political discourse of the Senate is about to be challenged, and this is the body where the Republicans are in the minority. It will be even louder and clearer in the House, which I admit I find pretty depressing, both from the political and the aesthetic point of view. It’s going to be harder to actually deal with our pressing problems, and it’s not going to be pretty.
Indeed, it is in spheres of aesthetics and discourse that the Tea Party has been most successful. It’s not a matter actually of how many races Tea Party politicians won or lost. They won some and lost some, but from the beginning the Tea Party’s great success has been how it changed the public discussion about the pressing issues of the day. In my next post, I will discuss this more fully, comparing the Tea Party with the Solidarity Movement in Poland, . . .
Read more: Rand Paul and the Tea Party go to Washington
Thursday, November 4th, 2010 
 For the Republicans, the election returns indicate a clear mandate, the repudiation of the policies of the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress. This was boldly expressed in the joint press conference of Representative John Boehner, Senator Mitch McConnell and Governor Haley Barbour. For the Democrats, the results of the election are humbling, indicating the need for bi-partisanship, as the President spoke about yesterday in his press conference. Was this just opposing tactical responses to the returns? I don’t think so. In fact, I believe that it is the President who is responding to the change the voters believe in, while the Republicans are misreading the election results.
The Republicans were combative:
Senator Mitch McConnell:
We’ll work with the administration when they agree with the people and confront them when they don’t. Choosing — I think what our friends on the other side learned is that choosing the president over your constituents is not a good strategy. There are two opportunities for that change to occur. Our friends on the other side can change now and work with us to address the issues that are important to the American people, that we all understood. Or further change, obviously, can happen in 2012.
Governor Haley Barbour:
On behalf of the Republican governors, while governor’s races may be thought of as being separate or very different from what’s going on in Washington, in this case, even in governor’s races, this election was a referendum on Obama’s policies. And the policies of the Obama administration, the Pelosi-Reid Congress were repudiated by the voters.
Representative John Boehner:
Listen, I believe that the health care bill that was enacted by the current Congress will kill jobs in America, ruin the best health care system in the world, and bankrupt our country. That means that we have to do everything we can to try to repeal this bill and replace it with commonsense reforms that’ll bring down the cost of health insurance.
The President was conciliatory:
Over the last two years, we’ve made progress. But, clearly, too many Americans haven’t felt that progress yet, and they told us that yesterday. And . . .
Read more: Voters have Demanded a Change, Again
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010
The Republicans won. The Democrats lost. Obama faces a significant challenge to his leadership. The Tea Party has come to town. Politics in the Capital are about to become very interesting. The political scene has changed. Now we must deliberately consider: what the play will look like, who the actors will be, what will be their roles, how will they play them, and are we in for a comedy or tragedy. Some initial food for thought using Alexis de Tocqueville as our guide.
Tocqueville in the 1830s described two types of political parties, great political parties and small political parties. He explained:
“What I call great political parties are those that are attached more to principles than to their consequences; to generalities and not to particular cases; to ideas and not to men. These parties generally have nobler features, more generous passions, more real convictions, a franker and bolder aspect than others. Particular interests, which always plays the greatest role in political passions, hides more skillfully here under the veil of public interest…
Small parties, on the contrary, are generally without political faith. As they do not feel themselves elevated and sustained by great objects, their character is stamped with a selfishness that shows openly in each of their acts. They always become heated in a cool way; their language is violent but their course is timid and uncertain. The means that they employ are miserable, as is the very goal they propose for themselves. Hence it is that when a time of calm follows a violent revolution, great men seem to disappear all at once and souls withdraw into themselves.
Americans have had great parties; today they no longer exist: it has gained much in happiness, but not in morality.” (link)
Tocqueville thought that the fundamental principles of American political life were established in the great debates between the Democratic – Republicans and the Federalists, between Jefferson, Hamilton, et.al, and that once the order was set, politics would be of a more mundane sort about dividing the spoils and . . .
Read more: The Results Were Expected
Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010 
 Nothing is decided yet. This is Election Day and what people do now will determine the results. We’ll soon know for sure, perhaps already when you read this. But it, nonetheless, seems likely that today’s election will be a good one for the Republicans, bad for the Democrats. The polls, the pundits and public expectations are all in agreement. The Democrats will lose the House and probably keep the Senate with a much diminished majority. With this general prognostication, we start the debate now.
What Happened?
There will be all sorts of explanations to account for the election outcome, most of them connected to the limitations of Obama as a political actor, most of them, also, not really serious. In the past two elections, the Democrats gained a large number of seats in traditionally Republican districts, and thus they were not particularly solid, and when times are tough, as they are now, it is not good for incumbents in marginal districts. I have nothing particularly to add to this. I recommend an excellent, realistic election preview of the likely post election storytelling by Bendan Nyhan, which I think gets it right.
Why?
But beyond the outcome is its meaning. Although Nyhan and other election realists are surely on target when they underscore that the old slogan “it’s the economy stupid” goes a long way in explaining the results, the results’ meaning will be less clear and more important as we proceed.
While I’ve suggested in my most recent posts that the power and limitations of Obama’s speech-making will be revealed by the voting, I don’t think that this is of crucial importance in understanding the meaning of the elections. That was how the battle looked on the ground, as Obama tried to maximize his and the Democrats’ advantage. Now there is the question of where the country is at this moment and where it’s going. The Republican victory does reveal Democratic failures, which need examination, which I hope we discuss here at DC in the coming days and weeks.
I think that the primary issue is commonsense. I have long maintained that Obama, and the Democratic . . .
Read more: Today is a Good Day for the Republicans
Tuesday, 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
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It is one way of looking at the international political situation. This world looks very different from the top looking down and from the bottom looking up. For many policy makers, it involves judgments made in the name of national interests and security; and in more recent years additional concerns have been about international interests and security. From the bottom looking up, especially among combat veterans, the major concern is simply survival.
