Rational Philosophy

I have been stirred from my cave by reading a piece of Spring madness by David Brooks. With the catchy headline The End of Philosophy Brooks turns out a column of such ill-reasoned sophistry that it roused me from my long hiatus.

In the first two sentences Brooks manages to diss Socrates while he incorrectly describes what Socrates was all about. That’s unforgivable for someone writing for the Times and I wonder what his editor was thinking in publishing it.

In the tradition of all good sophists, Brooks’ real target turns out not to be philosophy nor Socrates but rational morality. Brooks argues that morality derives from subjective impressions, myriad emotional responses to the many situations we encounter that all add up to judgments of good and bad.

But it’s not until we reach the last paragraph that we find out just why Brooks has embarked on this particular Op Ed assault.

“Finally, it should also challenge the very scientists who study morality. They’re good at explaining how people make judgments about harm and fairness, but they still struggle to explain the feelings of awe, transcendence, patriotism, joy and self-sacrifice, which are not ancillary to most people’s moral experiences, but central.”

(Emphasis mine.)

Ah, so you don’t have to explain things as long as you feel them.

This is not an attack on philosophy or rational morality, it is an attack on reason, an attack on science, and, by association, an attack on the man who leads our country, Barack Obama, a man of intellect and reason who has declared that he will return science to a rightful place of prominence in our decision making.

Brooks’s piece is good-old American conservatism masquerading as learned philosophical analysis.

Brooks says that Socrates believed “moral thinking” to be “mostly a matter of reason and deliberation.” Well, yes, that would be moral thinking wouldn’t it. Moral feeling would be something else, right? A nice sophist twist.

But what did Socrates really do that Brooks is so afraid of? Socrates tried to encourage people to examine their feelings as a way of understanding whether they were really valid feelings, or just learned biases and prejudices. Isn’t this essential to living as a conscious and sensible human being. If not, we could just defend any action or moral judgment by saying “that’s what I feel, I don’t need to examine it.”

I don’t disagree that we tend to judge and act from an accummulated store of moral impressions, but that ignores the fact that moral strides, great and small, come through reflection and bold conviction. The person who reflects on his or her past actions and decides that he must change. The activist who speaks out in eloquent defense of a new morality (e.g., abolishing slavery) and persuades people to the reason and rightness of his cause.

Moral code is painted in broad brush strokes. For the most part we agree on the way these strokes are painted. But we can only disagree or change our moral code by engaging in a rational debate, either with ourselves or as a society.

Finally, morality as a concept, which Socrates encouraged people to seek for themselves, does indeed have an objective basis. Whether we like it or not, our fundamental moral objective is to continue to persist as individuals, as a society, as a species, and as an integrated part of the universe. As we progress morally over time we tend to come closer to this objective standard.

UN Ambassador Andrew Young

I am sure that many have cried at some point since 11pm last night. My own tears caught me by surprise. I was emptying the dishwasher this morning as I listened to NPR. Ambassador Andrew Young, the first black ambassador to the UN, (who witnessed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr) was speaking in calm, measured praise of Obama and the weight of the history of Obama’s accomplishment. I’m not black, but in the upsurge of emotion that brought my tears I felt suddenly, immediately aware of what this moment meant historically in a country with such a poor record of racial discrimination, both overt and covert — it was a mixture of relief and joy.

This joy is in part the very pure philosophical joy of a good thing happening, a thing that will change the future. In Andrew Young’s words: “a victory of grace over greed, of vision over violence.”

Can change really happen and if so how?  This is the country that twice elected George W. Bush. Many who voted-in perhaps the worst president in the nation’s history, twice, must have decided to vote for Obama over McCain. So are we a conservative nation simply disillusioned by a lousy president, or are we a nation newly and differently inspired, a changed nation?

Barack Obama Victor

I can’t know the answer. I can only give an opinion based on what I see and hear.  Obama and his campaign team have wrought change by reaching out and engaging people with new ideas. These ideas have rubbed up against old, automated, reactive ways of thinking. Obama has spent the last couple of years asking people why we should see the intractable problems of the country as hopelessly intractable. He’s also stood and overtly and covertly challenged people to find him wanting because of the color of his skin, or the unamericanness of his name, or the power of his rational intellect.

Many failed to meet this challenge. After all 47% of America voted for McCain, or against Obama. That’s tens of millions of people who have proven themselves insusceptible to a force for powerful, positive change.

The world is now a different place. Obama’s skill and insight in his campaign promise great things for his presidency. Thank you, Barack.

“False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil,” Socrates

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a lie is 1. A false statement deliberately presented as being true, or 2. Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression. This, ironically, makes lies a lot more concrete than the truth, philosophically speaking, which is a much harder quantity to pin down.

McCain Campaign Lies

Why has John McCain, the self-annointed “straight talker,” resorted to lying? It’s a simple question and one that’s impossible to answer without some inside information. But if we’re to have any hope of understanding McCain and guessing his future actions it’s worth trying to figure it out.

If you’re interested in knowing what McCain is accused of lying about, the Democratic Party has established “Count the Lies” a chronicle of “independent, nonpartisan” fact checks “debunking John McCain’s lies and distortions.” Even some conservatives have tutted at McCain’s recent stoops. Even Karl Rove (!!), as reported in the Christian Science Monitor, of all places, has said that “McCain has gone, in some of his ads, similarly one step too far in sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the 100 percent truth test.” If you’re a Republican presidential candidate and Karl Rove is accusing you of distorting the truth, you know you’re a big fat liar… or a pawn in another one of Rove’s despicable schemes.

John McCain with President Bush

(This is a bit of a digression, but the Salon published a very interesting piece back in January asking why in all of the election coverage of John McCain’s losing primary bid in 2000 no journalist had mentioned who it was that smeared John McCain so successfully that he lost. The answer, of course, George Bush and Karl Rove…)

Perhaps we can find in our children the unadulterated origin of the impulse to lie. My son, now 4-years old, has just begun to lie. His reasons are transparent: He lies either to get something he wants (usually cookies, candy, or toys), or to avoid something he doesn’t want (typically to take responsibility for a transgression). McCain’s lies seem to fall squarely in the first category. As a “maverick, outsider” it suited him to talk straight. But as an establishment insider, it’s much more effective for him to lie. He’s always wanted power and success, and now that lying seems to offer the best path to victory, he’s adopted it with the same zeal he once reserved for honesty. The tactic is all the more successful because, in Obama, he seems to be up against a candidate who has some genuine integrity — a terrible handicap against smear tactics.

What does this tell us about the kind of president McCain would make?

Politicians the world over resort to lies, many of them relatively successful leaders. Lying in itself isn’t a guarantee of poor government and lousy leadership. Although Bush has overused and abused this privilege, the security of a country, for instance, relies to some extent on the ability of its government to keep secrets from its enemies, which also means keeping secrets from its people.

In order to understand the degree of concern we should have about McCain’s lies, we really need to consider what his goals will be as president. We can then assume that he will lie to achieve them.

And given that McCain has dropped most if not all of his firmly held political beliefs in order to gain the highest office, one can only assume that his primary goal as president will be to consolidate his power and popularity — in other words, he’ll lie in order to keep the conservative political base as happy as possible. That’s a scary thought.

Footnote - What about Palin?

What about Palin? She’s a big fat liar, too, and a scary character in her own right. The Times has an extensive piece on her political MO. Not a pretty picture. Here’s a quote from Laura Chase who was Palin’s campaign manager during her first bid for mayor:

“I’m still proud of Sarah,” she says, “but she scares the bejeebers out of me.”

Related posts from around the web:

McCain Lies Again - But McCain is still airing ads telling the same lie. He has also still not retracted his lie on The View when he point blank said that Palin has refused all earmarks as governor. I cannot remember a candidate for president telling such …

Romney: McCain Lies - So Rove has declared McCain’s campaign overly harsh and Romney has declared it deceitful. I honestly have no idea how that sort of criticism from those people is possible to recover from.

Obama Campaign Launches Ad Hitting McCain’s Lies As “Dishonorable” - We’ve been waiting for it, and here it is: The Obama campaign launches its first ad hitting McCain for his lying and his mendacious adver-sleazements and slamming his campaign as “disgraceful” and “dishonorable”: …

McCain Lies About Obama’s Health Plan- JUST THE FACTS! - In our ongoing efforts to expose Senator McCain’s lies about Senator Obama’s policies, we need to look at the McCain campaigns lies and then provide some “straight talk” about the facts. McCain claimed that Obama’s health care plan …

John McCain on The Daily Show with John Stewart

Last night, as I watched a TiVo’d John Stewart skewering delegates on the last day of the Republican convention, I wondered what it is about small town values that the Republicans love (but can’t define) and that seems to keep America stuck in the mire of bad politics.

If you didn’t see it, Stewart’s convention crew walked around with microphones asking Republican delegates what ’small town values’ meant to them. With big smiles on their faces and earnest willingness to answer the delegates came up with such laughable answers as “real people, real values,” “traditional marriage,” “fishing,” “church.” (The video is posted on the Daily Show website - highly recommended.)

But even those of us who distrust and disagree with the sentiment with which republicans freight the term, we all seem to understand that the essence of ’small town values’ might mean something genuinely appealing and good. So what is this essence, and how has it become distorted and misused.

Block Island, Rhode Island

I spent the bulk of the summer on Block Island with my family. Block Island is essentially a small town with a lot of tourists. (And these are mostly east-coast tourists from New York and Connecticut.) It’s easy to distinguish the tourists from the islanders. The tourists are in a hurry. They’re often nervous and rude. They lock their cars. They expect to get screwed over. They complain about stuff. The islanders understand that there aren’t that many places to go on the island, and everywhere is pretty close. You can trust people because for the most part, there’s nowhere for them to escape to. You couldn’t steal a car and get it off the island (which is car-accessible only by ferry.)

Block Island is a great lens through which to observe that the essence of small town values means enforced responsibility through enforced community.

It’s a lot easier to be rude or unfair to someone if you don’t know them and if you’ll never see them again and don’t have to rely upon their personal contribution to the community you live in. In a small town, people do know one another and rely upon one another and society functions very much as it has done for millions of years. The inherent rules of small social groups therefore tend to operate without the need for too much overt oversight and enforcement. What’s not to like about that?

But this is the problem: The rest of the country is made up of places where that kind of reinforcement can’t be relied upon. And this is the other part of the problem: Conservative Republicans wrap a whole lot of crap into the concept of small town values that has nothing to do with the core function of a mutually-reliant community (such as traditional marriage, fishing and church.)

And this is why ’small town values’ have become the political ruin of America. So much hog-swill passes for the reasonable subject of informed debate under the auspices of what small town folk care about. Every Republican candidate dives in or gets sucked in to the vortex of endless political distraction of the conservative agenda. And this means the every Democratic candidate gets sucked in, too, for fear of committing political suicide.

Other advanced Western nations don’t waste political time endlessly rehashing abortion statutes, gun control, separation of church and state, the teaching of creationism. ‘Small town values’ are the concrete boots of American politics, and until we lose them we won’t have an effective political process that will allow the nation to move forward and solve the very real problems of war, alternative fuel sources, and climate change.

Related Posts from Around the Web:

Small Town Values? I Gotz ‘Em - I’m from a small town in New Jersey, and I’m politically progressive in every possible way. Watch this clip from The Daily Show, in which people attending the Republican National Convention spoke about their views on small-town values. …

The Small-Town Values Palin Didn’t Mention - From The Seattle PI By John Kelso Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s touting of the wonders of small-town values in her acceptance speech reminded me of my ride in a red convertible a few weeks ago while serving as the …

Small Town Values? - You can’t cherry pick values. If you claim to be the party of small town values, you have to take the good and the bad.

The New Yorker has a long history of offending people with its notoriously tasteless and offensive output of low-brow hackery. Obama spokesman Bill Burton rightly dismisses the magazine’s latest outrageous cover cartoon: “The New Yorker may think… that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama’s right-wing critics have tried to create,” Burton says, before he draws a fiery breath, “but most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree.”

We agree, indeed. What else would we do, applaud the New Yorker for tackling head-on the kinds of issues that all other publications skirt?

Satire has no place in an enlightened society. After all, to appreciate satire one must simultaneously understand the direct impact of the satirical object as well as its indirect object. Surely we shouldn’t be expected to hold opposing or divergent concepts in our minds at one time, that’s just barbaric! This is one nation under god, godamnit!

I sympathize with Barack Obama or Bill Burton, or whoever it was who most felt the affront of the New Yorker’s tasteless and offensive campaign. Getting to be president is a sensitive business and one must protect one’s thin skin if one is going to successfully attain the office.

Republican opposer — John McCain — no stranger himself to satire, limped nimbly to Obama’s support, declaring: “New York can go take a hike! Oh, wait a minute, there aren’t any decent hiking trails around New York. Come to think of it, the only place you can even safely fire your gun in New York is from the roof of a New York City housing project, and who would want to set foot in one of those places…”

(McCain may be old but his mind wanders beautifully.)

So, when you get your hands of a copy of the current New Yorker, be sure to set it on fire and toss it into the grate as quickly as you can. At least, tear off the cover and set fire to that… we’ll decide later what to do with the rest of it.

But before you toss the cover, take a quick look at the cartoon: See how Blitt has cunningly distorted Obama’s face so that it seems confident, unperturbed, wily even. What a scam, what a ruse.

Related posts from around web…

Mika: New Yorker Obama Cartoon ‘Dangerous’ - True, the Danes had nothing to do with the New Yorker’s publication of the Obama cover. But what more time-honored locale to protest an irreverent cartoon of a figure adulated with religious fervor? Mika has condemned the New Yorker …

Obama New Yorker Cartoon Cover Outrage! - Have you heard about Tina Brown’s provocative New Yorker cartoon magazine? Well, some wacky kids in Georgetown claim to have found some rejected Barack Obama cover illustrations, such as this one, showing the Maoist basketball Soviet …

New Yorker Cover - Both Barry Blitt, the cartoonist, and New Yorker editor David Remnick responded to the immediate outcry on Huffington Post. The Obama campaign called the cartoon “tasteless and offensive.” Remnick insists the cartoon “hold[s] up a …

On Obama’s political promise and compromise, Kripalu’s spiritual economics, and a country’s declared intent.

“The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.”

- Sir Winston Churchill

The New York Times editorial board today criticizes Barack Obama, saying that he’s already slipped from his bold promises to eschew big money contributions and stand up to special interest groups. The editorial board’s concerns seem to be valid in some respects, but not in others: Yes, Obama has allowed himself to be persuaded that it’s OK to take lots of donor money. Yes, Obama has reversed his earlier position on telecom company immunity re wire-tapping for no good reason. And yes, Obama has begun pandering to religious groups in an alarming way by promising further erosion of the separation of church and state.

But the editorial board also criticizes Obama for his right of center positions on gun control and the death penalty. I can understand the board not liking these of Obama’s positions, but they reflect a consistency in his opinion rather than a divergence. Obama seems a bit of a social conservative when it comes to certain issues. Here’s what he says in The Audacity of Hope: “While the evidence tells me that the death penalty does little to deter crime, I believe there are some crimes — mass murder, the rape and murder of a child — so heinous…that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment.”

While this opinion on the death penalty reflects a moral weakness that disturbs me (outrage is enough of a reason to kill people?) Obama can’t be said to have conveniently changed his mind.

Even the boldest and strongest politician (and it’s yet to be seen whether Obama is one of them) feels the tug of interdependence. How crucial is it to hold onto one’s views and beliefs if they seem sure to hurt your chances of election? Of what use is a politician without office?

“What are the needs of the market, and what are the needs of society?  What we’re looking at is what will someone pay to take a vacation to do.” So says Ila Sarley, president of Kripalu Center for Yoga And Health. The description of the Kripalu back office sounds every bit as spiritual as the booking office for Ringlings. But despite and within the commercial mundanity that the center’s bureaucracy has become, there still exists, I imagine some room to kindle the kind of healing work that started the whole thing. The instructors come. The students come. The classes happen. And spirits are lifted, muscles stretched, minds opened.

To reach more people, the independent acts of teaching and growing become dependent on the commerce of marketing, sales and management.

The original “fair copy” of the Declaration of Independence, the one present on July 4 when it was passed, hasn’t been seen since. But there are a couple of dozen printed copies (containing slight variations) still at hand. And then there’s the ‘official’ copy that sits in the National Archives behind bulletproof glass. But this is a later copy that was post-dated.

Even something as fixed and seemingly concrete as a manuscript can’t alwats be genuine. So what hope the intent, inspiration and concept of such a manuscript?

As we enter the twilight years of the American domination of global commerce, which brought with it a political domination backed up by an insurmountably powerful military, we begin to see how fleeting and frail the concept of independence can be. Once wielding a big stick when it came to oil prices, for instance, the US now doesn’t have much say, and we’re left suffering at the pump. As China and India forge ahead, we’ll soon be just another alsoran, looking to find ways to leverage where we can.

This isn’t necessarily a failure, nor a position to lament. Independence is always in tension with interdependence. We exist in a universe in which all things fundamentally result from different arrangements and forms of energy bound together in a single universal instance of space and time.

What matters is that we’re aware of this tension, that we don’t try to deny it or defeat it. Not that Obama should shed his convictions for reasons of political expediency, but if he does shed some along the way, let’s hope he does it with full awareness of the sacrifice he’s making. Likewise those trade-offs faced in every life and pursuit, from Kripalu retreats to the trajectory of nations.

Related posts from around the web…

Obama’s private funding: what does it mean? - By opting out of public funding, Obama has already reformed campaign funding, more than campaign-funding crusader John McCain ever has. Obama has said that he’s in favour of far-reaching reform of federal campaign funding; by making his …

Obama: Religion can be used in charity hiring, firing decision - CHICAGO | Reaching out to evangelical voters, Barack Obama is announcing plans to expand President Bush’s program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy — support some …

Obama, Telecom Impunity, and Critical Immunity - MoveOn believes Obama should be held to his word and is thus conducting a campaign urging Obama to do what he promised– support a filibuster to stop the enactment of telecom amnesty. You can email Burton here to demand that Obama comply …

Finding a Spiritual Place in Galilee - I was taken aback by the commercialism, but I am having a wonderful time. But, let me tell you, there is not much free time. Tomorrow we are off to Jerusalem. So excited! I hope to have a chance after dinner to post some photos of our …

Self-Improvement - It was during the early twentieth century, and after the industrial revolution in the previous century, that self-improvement and success became immensely popular words, alongside growing commercialism. Books dealing with the “how” of …

On exciting brain research, insightful psychological studies, and the latest shocker from the ill-thunk war on terror.

Quotes of the day:

“I can’t speculate on previous decisions that may have been made prior to current D.O.D. policy on interrogations,”

Lt. Col Patrick Ryder, in reference to the Guantánamo interrogation training chart repurposed from 1950s Chinese torture methods that elicited false confessions.

“All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.”

H. L. Mencken US editor (1880 - 1956)

Using structural and functional brain imaging, scientists now have unprecedented insight into the mechanisms of thought. Writing in the Public Library of Science, Liza Gross cites the ‘form follows function’ edict of architect Louis Sullivan, which itself echoed Aristotle’s essential philosophy of form, in describing the findings of Patric Hagmann, Olaf Sporns, and their colleagues. Hagmann and Sporns found that a dense set of core neural pathways acts as an interconnection hub to the brain’s cerebral cortex the home of higher cognitive thinking and self awareness. The elegant, symmetrical spread of pathways — like the branches of a tree extending from the trunk — correlates to the brain’s seamless processing of information on different levels and in different ways. (Gross’s use of computer technology analogies I find unhelpful. The brain is not like a computer, after all, a computer is, somewhat, like the brain.) Interestingly, the hubs correspond to a recently reported neural system that shows increased activity levels when we are at rest.

Psychologists seem to have uncovered where we aim some of that resting activity — self rationalization. (”The duality of virtue: Deconstructing the moral hypocrite.” Piercarlo Valdesolo and David DeSteno. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, in press. “Moral Hypocrisy: Social Groups and the Flexibility of Virtue.” Piercarlo Valdesolo and David DeSteno. Psychological Science, 2007.) The researchers devised cunning experiments to lure subjects into choosing an easy chore over a hard one while maintaining that they’d been acting fairly in leaving the harder chore for someone else. In the abstract, the subjects understood that choosing the easy chore wasn’t fair, but in practice most of them chose it anyway. But the true genius in the research came when the researchers asked the subjects to hold a sequence of numbers in their heads while they judged the fairness of their choice. All of a sudden they judged their actions just as harshly as anyone else would.

So, what kept them from admitting their unfairness wasn’t a failure to recognize it, it was a failure to admit to it. And the act of hypocrisy required considerable brain cycles.

Interrogation experts should take note. If you want to extract an honest answer, break out the Sodoku puzzles rather than the water buckets and manacles.

Since form follows function, it is no surprise that the form of the administration’s war on terror has evolved into a horrifying, amorphous mess. The New York Times reveals that the interrogation chart used as a training device for interrogators back in 2002 derived from a 1957 article entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War.” Albert D. Biderman, a sociologist working for the Air Force, had put together the chart to document interviews with American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators falsely confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities (Chinese Torture Techniques - See page 4 of Biderman’s original report).

So, let’s see if I have this straight: In 1957, Biderman set out what Chinese interrogators did to obtain false confessions.  The army then used this to help them train the next generation of American soldiers so that they could avoid providing false confessions. And a few generations later the DOD used the same material to train interrogators on how to extract (false) confessions…

The only change made to the chart used at Guantánamo? The trainers dropped the original title: “Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.”

No, that wouldn’t look good at all would it, using “communist” coercive methods.

Here’s the opening sentence of Biderman’s 1957 report: “The United States Air Force has expended considerable effort to get a full, accurate and meaningful account of what happened to its personnel who were captured in Korea.”

Related posts from around the web…

Better Brain Map - This is basically an outline of the wiring connections between neurons in the brain’s outer layer. This is the most complete mapping of the interconnected brain nodes to date. Apparently this is one of the first maps of the human brain …

Brain Mapping Initiative Reaches Core Of Human Brain - What is known of neural fiber connections and pathways has largely been learned from animal studies, and so far, no complete map of brain connections in the human brain exists. In this new study, a team of neuroimaging researchers led …

Moral hypocrisy emerges from deliberative processes: Study - … graduate student of psychology at Northeastern University. This study highlights that moral hypocrisy is controlled by a dual-process model of moral judgement, in which the prepotent negative reaction to the thought of fairness …

Are We Kidding Ourselves? - “Hypocrisy is driven by mental processes over which we have volitional control,” said Dr. Valdesolo, a psychologist at Amherst College. “Our gut seems to be equally sensitive to our own and others’ transgressions, suggesting that we …

US used communist Chinese torture techniques at Guantánamo - NYT: The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart … copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain …

Unconscionable - I’ve seen lots of commentary on the revelation that Bush administration torture techniques have been modeled on the work of the ChiComs but not much specific focus on the fact that the main purpose of these Chinese torture techniques …

Barack Obama vs. John McCain, Robert Mugabe vs. Zimbabwe, Abu Ghraib detainees vs. US interrogation contractors.

“We don’t bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don’t dress well and we’ve no manners.”

- George Bernard Shaw

As the presidential campaign continues, the exchanges between the Obama and McCain camps have honed in on the relative patriotism of the two candidates. Retired General Wesley Clark, speaking on CBS’ Face The Nation and acting, we are told, as a mouthpiece of the Obama campaign opined that “I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.” Meanwhile, over on ABC’s This Week, Minnesota Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty said, “I think Barack Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope perhaps should be retitled ‘The Audacity of Hypocrisy.’ ”

Not surprisingly, Obama wishes to steer the campaign away from a contest over who is the more patriotic. He’s smart enough to know that patriotism is a double-edged sword, and principled enough to want to avoid hollow pledges of undying allegiance to the idea of a country. McCain, the ultimate ironist, knows that he will always win any such contest, not just because of his war record, but also because he can claim undying patriotism with sufficient earnestness to convince those who care.

But it seems that we have some philosophical distinctions to make before we can decide whether Obama or McCain is the better patriot. The media loves the stereotypical definition of patriotism, the flag-waving, ’til-death, America-the-greatest kind of patriotism. McCain understands this and allows himself to be adorned by that mantle.  Privately he understands that the people who inhabit the rest of the world might beg to differ. Nevertheless one can imagine that if he had to choose a preferred country, McCain wouldn’t hesitate to choose America.

Obama’s patriotism comes from a different bottle. Obama believes that we can and should put our allegiance somewhere; that we should invest our hope in the potential of a thing or place or person. Obama’s patriotism acknowledges and mourns the shame, faults and frailties of the country, past and present, and he resolves that we can and should do better. America, the land of freedom, Obama understands, is the land of slavery, segregation, rendition, invasion and torture. McCain understands this, too, but he’s not about to ruin his chances of election by pointing it out. For the many millions of Americans who believe in America the way that an apple believes in gravity — as something inevitable and unswervingly sure — Obama’s patriotism inspires suspicion, ridicule, and fear.

Is Robert Mugabe patriotic for defining Zimbabwe and constraining it to his definition? Morgan Tsvangirai, who withdrew as the opposition candidate because of violence and intimidation by Mugabe’s thugs, would doubtless argue he’s not.

Unfortunately the conceptual ground of patriotism rests in the drawing of distinctions between ourselves and others. We measure the qualities of our own country in opposition to those of other countries. The aim and end of patriotism must be to inspire in us the assurance that we live in the best country there is. As soon as it moves beyond a benign, feel-good, group hug (and it always does) patriotism becomes corrosive and dangerous.

Today several Abu Ghraib detainees filed suit (here in the US) against the government contractors they say tortured them. Surely we won’t find a better example of patriotism’s failures and illusions. The Bush administration, the face and fist of American foreign policy for the past seven years, repeatedly ignored, twisted and refashioned international conventions and US law in its treatment of the detainees. Official investigations naturally failed to find and attribute fault to any but the most lowly and least culpable offenders. And now the detainees have turned to the American civil justice system to seek recompense.

Contorting our national pride to find a silver lining even in this sad cloud, Susan L. Burke, of the Philadelphia law firm Burke O’Neil, had this to say about the suit: “These men came to U.S. courts because our laws, as they have for generations, allow their claims to be heard here.”

Related posts from around the web…

Thought for the Day, from George Bernard Shaw - “Liberty means responsibilty. That is why most men dread it.” George Bernard Shaw.

On Patriotism to counteract Fourth of July rhetoric - George Bernard Shaw, [Irish dramatist (1856 - 1950)]. Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate [or perhaps oil] above principles. George Jean Nathan, US drama critic & editor (1882 - 1958)

John Lumea: The Conspicuous Silence At The Heart Of Obama’s … - Indeed, the attempt to cast Obama himself as a closet Muslim — as if being a Muslim were somehow un-American — lies at the deepest, darkest heart of the most persistent attacks on his patriotism. Whatever else Obama did with his …

Text of Obama’s Patriotism Speech - “The America We Love” - And at the beginning of a week when we celebrate the birth of our nation, I think it is fitting to pause for a moment and reflect on the meaning of patriotism – theirs, and ours. We do so in part because we are in the midst of war …

Asked If He Questions Obama’s Patriotism, McCain Doesn’t Directly … - This is noteworthy: Asked directly at today’s presser whether he questioned Obama’s patriotism, McCain actually didn’t give a direct answer. Here’s the exchange:. Question: “Do you question at all his patriotism and secondly do you …

Mugabe: The Anti-Mandela - South Africa’s leaders remain shamefully silent and impotent regarding their northern neighbor’s recent ruthless power grab.

MUGABE IN OUTBURST, SWEARS AT UK JOURNALISTS - The amazing scenes came on the first day of the two-day gathering of African leaders who are under pressure to find a solution to Zimbabwe’s political stand-off after Mugabe was sworn in for a sixth term last Sunday following a disputed …

Ex-Abu Ghraib detainees sue military contractors for torture - [JURIST] Four former Abu Ghraib detainees filed lawsuits Monday against two private US military contractors and three of their employees, alleging torture, war crimes and civil conspiracy. The former detainees said that employees of …

Abu Ghraib Detainees Sue Contractors - Attorney Katherine Gallagher, stated bluntly: “Private military contractors and the individuals they employ cannot act with impunity. Contractors must act within the bounds of law and must be held accountable.” …

Former Abu Ghraib Detainees File Lawsuits … Thank You, SCOTUS - Former Iraqi detainees sue US military contractors. By Daren Butler. ISTANBUL - Four Iraqi men are suing US military contractors who they say tortured them while they were detained in Abu Ghraib prison, according to lawsuits being filed …

Lawyers who filed a class action on behalf of those who purchased the computer game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas have been surprised and disappointed that the class of those offended by the hidden sex scenes is very small. The scenes themselves, a legacy of pre-release versions of the game, weren’t even completed, and could only be accessed with special hardware or software. Of the many millions who bought the game only a couple of thousand have expressed interest in the settlement. The lawyers, on the other hand, stand to recoup fees of $1.3M if the settlement is approved by the court. Makers of the game should perhaps consider recouping these fees in turn by designing a new game called Grand Theft Lawyer.

This odd situation of the lawyers so misjudging the shrug factor of the game players when it came to the hidden sex scenes seems to highlight a curious matter of our perspectives on sex in general.

A new report on the safe, or unsafe, sex practices of New Yorkers tells us that people in the city have a fair bit of sex and that many of them don’t wear a condom when common sense would say they should. But it’s the comments on this story that quickly become provocative. Alongside people talking frankly and straightforwardly about the difficulties of dealing with desire and pleasure and the practicality of condoms, we have this creepy and passionate post: “burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful and receiving their dues… ”

Sex is something we’re set up to do, something that comes naturally, something that non-conscious creatures have no hang-ups about. So how and why did sex become such a tricky topic when humans developed consciousness?

I’ll hypothesize that there may be several reasons:

1. We realized that sex is a high-stakes activity — It can end up with children and long term responsibility, and it decides the future of our group.

So, when people figured these things out it became important to establish social rules and conventions that would prevent problems in the coupling business and ensure the best survival rate for the society.

2. We became aware that the act of sex and the state of desire change our perception of ourselves and the world around us. We became conscious of a diminishing sense of self control when we were aroused, of the strength of the sex impulse, and of the tug of certain stimuli (erotic triggers).

Being conscious of these things tended to bring us into conflict with another gross effect of consciousness — self-control. The tension between the two led inevitably to self-consciousness about sex, and, in the extreme, feelings of shame and embarrassment.

(These ideas are supported by the varying degree of openness about sex in different cultures.)

One woman who purchased the Grand Theft game for her fifteen year old son had this to say when asked whether she would have bought the game if she’d known that it allowed players to kill police officers: “Well, I think he does have games with violence,” adding that she would have “possibly” bought such a game — though not one that contained sex scenes like those in San Andreas.

And the beat goes on…

On Bear Stearns executives charged with deception, a military lawyer’s defense by attack, and Bush’s call for an end to the 27-year old ban on off-shore drilling.

Ralph R. Cioffi and Matthew Tannin managed two risky Bear Stearns funds that ultimately collapsed early in the subprime market tumble. The investors lost all their money. 100%. Federal prosecutors have now charged Cioffi and Tannin with deceiving investors while protecting their own interests. Cioffi and Tannin knew that the funds were losing value rapidly and could collapse, but presented a confident picture to investors. Meanwhile Cioffi moved $2M (of $6M) of his own money out into a lower risk fund.

Ranked on impact, Cioffi and Tannin’s deception falls at the far end of the deception spectrum. But if every business person who deceived were to be subject to criminal prosecution, America (and most everywhere else) would be out of business. In practice, crime becomes a matter of degree. Small, unremarkable lies go unremarked. Medium lies maybe wrinkle your reputation. Big lies with real impact get you shunned. And maybe a huge lie with devastating business impact will get you an indictment.

The concept of crime requires the concept of law. And the concept of law rests on the idea that we can codify certain acts as wrongdoing. Society identifies behaviors it doesn’t want to tolerate and enacts laws so that people can be punished for such behavior.  Cioffi and Tannin may have broken a codified law by lying (we’ll have to see what the courts say) but for sure they broke an uncodified law; they lied big and the people they lied to lost a lot of money.

Military lawyer Lt. Cmdr. William C. Kuebler has been going on the offensive in his defense of a Canadian, Omar Khadr, who has been charged with lobbing the grenade that killed an American soldier in Afghanistan in 2002. Kuebler has publicly and repeatedly attacked the military court system by which his client is being tried. Devoutly religious and ultra-conservative, Kuebler might seem like an unlikely activist. But he’s a stickler for fairness. It seems likely that Khadr isn’t an innocent party — he has the pedigree of a terrorist, and he wasn’t in Afghanistan sight-seeing. But Kuebler defends his aggressive defense tactics. “If we’re not advocating against the process,” Kuebler says, “we’re not competently representing our clients.”

Another way of reconciling Kuebler’s philosophy would be to say that if a society must have laws it should have some tension balancing the enactment and enforcement of those laws against the protection of its members against arbitrary, unjust or inappropriate indictment and punishment under the law. If not, the laws will inevitably become arbitrary, unjust or inappropriate.

Ironically, those who make law — politicians — are often some of the most deceptive and corrupt members of society. This, I expect, is no coincidence. Politicians have a feel for matters of rightness and wrongness because they identify with the urge leverage any advantage for their gain. And, as we’ve seen with Elliott Spitzer, they’ll be no less zealous for their empathy with the perpetrator of the crimes they seek to prosecute.

I’m trying to get to the idea of whether such a thing as natural or fundamental crime exists or is merely fabrication. In Plato’s dialogues Socrates pushes and pulls his interlocutors in an attempt to have them break free of the idea that something is right or wrong, good or bad, because we feel it is so. You can get many or most people to agree on whether some things are a crime. Other things tend to be more difficult to gain consensus on. But the ground of wrongdoing, if such a thing exists, must find its feet beyond human judgment.

The only pertinent to existence is whether it continues to exist. As human beings we feel this same urge. To continue to exist, to persist. And if we examine our feelings about right and wrong we find that they tend to stem from a judgment about whether an action will contribute to the persistence of a person or group or not.

A former co-worker asked me in an e-mail today whether consciousness, through the potential for personal growth, doesn’t offer in itself some goal or reward outside the persistence of humanity and existence. Valerie, a frequent commentor to this blog, coined a term ‘the evolution of consciousness’ which puts me in mind of the same idea.

I am tempted to subscribe to this idea. After all, why must consciousness be subordinate to material existence just because it came after and through material existence?

This may explain my disgusted reaction to George Bush’s grandstanding about oil drilling. I don’t even care whether he’s right. I just don’t like the idea that someone with so little integrity and such narrow thoughts could hold so much sway. If consciousness does have an independent evolutionary trajectory, we can only hope that the Bush’s of this world will one day be no more than fossils in the museum of intellectual history.

Related posts from around the web…

About those Bear Stearns prosecutions - … even if you weren’t convinced that was a certainty before? Or, like Bear Stearns hedge fund managers Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, do you instead steel yourself for eventual federal prosecution, complete with camera-ready perp walk?

The Chilling Effect Of The Bear Stearns Prosecution - But this case seems likely to make those discussions too dangerous to hold. The prosecution of these two Bear Stearns executives offers a bad lesson for Wall Street: If you have doubts about your strategy or returns, never put it in an …

When Military Justice Departs From The Bush Administration Script … - (1) Someone forgot to give Guantánamo tribunal judge Army Col. Peter E. Brownback III the memo about how his job is just to quietly produce convictions. Either that, or someone did a lousy job of vetting him before they made him a …

Pentagon Manual: OK to Destroy Gitmo Interrogation Notes - The Guantanamo “war crimes” trials took another shameful turn yesterday when the Navy lawyer representing Canadian-born Omar Khadr revealed that a 2003 Pentagon manual encouraged interrogators to destroy their hand written notes made at …