Out of Poverty

I believe that the model of extractive economic growth has more than run its course. It is overwhelming the environment limits of a finite world and creating institutions that destroy the social fabric of community. In his book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond traces the disappearance of societies to their inability to adapt to catastrophic environmental change, often abetted by political corruption and hostile neighbors. The single most important factor was overpopulation relative to the environment’s ability to support human life. The lesson for today’s world should not be lost on us.

In search of an alternative way of living, many have turned to reviving local communities, practicing sustainable food and energy production, and focusing on the quality of our lives. A recent report on “The 10 Poorest Countries in the World” reminded me that it’s not that simple.

Nine of the poorest countries are in Africa and the poorest of all is Haiti. Six have per-capita incomes under $1,000 a year – in Congo people live on 63 cents a day. Several countries have or had rich natural resources – from Zimbabwe’s now-ravaged land to Sierra Leone’s diamonds to Equatorial Guinea’s oil and gas. Yet the bulk of the people rely on subsistence agriculture, which is not the romantic yeomanry that many of us like to envision, but a way of life that ravages both the people and the land.

We do need a new path forward, but for the 135 million people in the 10 poorest countries, that path may not be into the past.

In His Own Words

“My dad . . . was the governor of Michigan and was the head of a car company. But he was born in Mexico, and, uh, had he been born of, uh, Mexican parents, I’d have a better shot at winning this.” Mitt Romney’s rather lame effort to make rich donors laugh comes from the same talk he gave in which he asserts that 47 percent of Americans “will vote for the president no matter what” because they are dependent upon government, believe they are “entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. . . .And the government should give it to them. . . .These are people who pay no income tax. My job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Acknowledging his remarks were “not elegantly stated,” Romney is standing behind their substance. And well he should, as the image he paints of a nation in which almost half the people are freeloaders being carried by the half who produce the wealth is a dominant, if sotto voce, theme in his campaign.

As David Brooks points out in this morning’s column, the comments betray Romney’s ignorance of America. Most government beneficiaries are the elderly poor, disabled veterans, the unemployed, and the working poor – who do pay payroll taxes. Romney’s campaign increasingly reveals a party for whom a united nation has become as much of a pariah as the United Nations.

Whether Mr. Romney is himself part of the 47 percent, we do not yet know.

Tragedy of the Commons

What does it mean to denigrate someone’s religion? This is not a rhetorical question. In the last few days Barack Obama has admonished us not to do so, while the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood has demanded “criminalizing assaults on the sanctities of all heavenly religions.” Meanwhile a foundation in Iran has again raised the bounty on Salman Rushdie’s head, and Igor Stravinsky’s “Rites of Spring” is preparing to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of its opening, which brought howls of (non-murderous) protests for its pagan theme.

While every religion wants its beliefs and practices respected, it seems that only the fundamentalist wings of the three Abrahamic religions demand their beliefs be held sacrosanct in the public arena. Never mind that half the things those people say offend my religion, which is a combination of spiritualism, rationalism, humanism and optimism – a singular religion, to be sure, but one I have a first-amendment right to espouse.

I think of the world as a commons that we all share and for which each of us is responsible. Right now two things most endanger the commons. One is hate, which drove the production of “Innocence of Muslims.” The other is fear, which is driving the reaction to those who violently protest a film most haven’t even seen.

Hate poisons the commons. Fear closes the commons – as surely as fear of being mugged keeps us out of a park. The best way to protect the commons is to stand up to those who would claim it for themselves, even if they put a bounty on your head.

Stumble of the Week

Amendment 1: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. The First Amendment did not stumble this week, as the U. S.  government took an appropriate and principled position by (1) strongly condemning the attack on our Benghazi consulate, (2) deploring the content of the film, “Innocence of Muslims,” whose trailer allegedly ignited the deadly riots, and (3) explaining why it could and would not prevent the film’s production and distribution. Never did our government waver on the issue of First Amendment rights nor excuse the murderous actions that followed.

The First Amendment is our most difficult amendment. It is also the most important. It is no coincidence that the first rights totalitarian regimes strip from the people are those it enumerates. Consequently, those rights must be safeguarded above all others. It is pretty easy to protect the right of people to say things we find harmless or agreeable. It is when someone says something stupid, obnoxious or uncomfortable that we need the first amendment most.

The “Innocence of Muslims” trailer is obnoxious. (One reader called it “cyber bullying, with tragic consequences.”) But above all it is stupid. In fact, it is so puerile and badly made that it is hard to understand how it could evoke any reaction but derisive laughter. That it invoked, instead, deadly retaliation is truly frightening.

Beyond Benghazi

Mitt Romney’s responses to the fatal attacks in Benghazi were predictably appalling in both their timing and their content. In his desperation to be president he has become a two-dimensional man: one dimension toadies to the Republican Party’s major donors and immoderate base; the other attacks President Obama with unfiltered ferocity. After being pummeled by the neo-conservatives for not mentioning Afghanistan, Iraq or our troops in his convention speech, Romney was quick to get his saber out yesterday, and his first target was the president:

“It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”

The accusation is untrue, its timing disgraceful, coming before the facts were clear and on the heels of the deaths of four American diplomats. That was a time to come together.

In his effort to extricate himself, Romney dug deeper: "It's a terrible course for America to stand in apology for our values. It’s never too early for the U.S. government to condemn attacks on Americans and defend our values.” Which is what the administration did.

And what are those values? This is a question few address lest they be accused of disloyalty. But for me this election is about values, about what kind of a country we want America to be. I believe our values of compassion and community, of standing up to bullies and for human rights, of protecting the earth and looking out for each other, are in greater danger of being derailed by what is happening here than what is happening elsewhere.

9/12

I write this with deep respect, but most of the people who died on 9/11 were not heroes. They were victims, and we should never forget that – or them – because there but for fortune went you or I. Many people behaved heroically that day and after: those who rushed the cockpit of Flight 93 over Shanksville; the first responders; the volunteers who came to the site in New York and put themselves at risk; and those who performed anonymous acts of bravery and kindness as they were trapped in their burning tombs. I think a lot about those people and the terrible horror of their last hours. By calling heroes those whose lives end tragically, often at the hands of bad people, we risk turning human beings who were murdered into icons . . . and turning 9/11itself into a day of national idolatry, rather than one of painful remembrance. We may not all be heroes, but we are all humans.

Writing this was made more difficult by yesterday’s events in Libya, where the U.S. ambassador, Christopher Stephens, and three aides, were killed by a mob enraged over an anti-Islamic film made by a California real estate developer and promoted by Terry Jones, the Gainesville preacher who set off riots of his own when he threatened to publicly burn the Koran two years ago. Ambassador Stephens had knowingly put himself in harm’s way and was deeply respected in Libya for his knowledge and courage, both during the revolution and as ambassador. He was a hero.

Note: The rainfall map failed to load on yesterday’s emails. I apologize. . . but it does give me a chance to plug my website, www.jamesgblaine.com, where you will find it.

Oil, Food and Water

This is a rainfall map of the United States taken from Wallace Stegner’s fascinating book, Beyond the 100^th Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West.

In one way, neither the map nor the story of the West have changed much in the 20 years since the book was published or the 150 years since the story unfolded: the defining difference between the country’s two halves remains water. But that water has become much scarcer, and the pressures on its use and its allocation among users have increased dramatically.

For the first time in history, my son Jake wrote me recently, electricity produced from natural gas exceeds energy produced from coal. To many, that is a good thing because gas burns “cleaner” than coal, and America has a lot of it. But also for the first time in history, we use more water to produce energy than we do to produce food – and nowhere is that change more critical than in the arid west, where we grow most of our food and produce most of our energy.

Hydraulic fracturing uses enormous quantities of water, particularly in the drilling stages, and scientists have raised significant concerns about the chemical contamination of the groundwater from “fracking.” Now, with a searing drought throughout the west, the oil companies are willing to bid a thousand times what farmers can pay for water.

“The West’s cardinal law,” wrote Marc Reisner in Cadillac Desert, is “that water flows toward power and money.”

Conscience of a Conservative

The four columns that David Brooks wrote during the two conventions continue to fascinate me. The New York Times columnist is a conservative in the old sense of the word: a believer in small government and free markets, one who values the continuity of institutions and the traditions of a community. The Republican Party is Brooks’ natural political home. But he does not seem at home in this one. He praised the GOP convention for its celebration of “the striver, who started small, struggled hard, looked within and became wealthy.” But in the end, he wrote, today’s Republican party cannot govern because “its commercial soul is too narrow.”

He was disappointed with Obama’s speech because he believes that a country that has lost its way needs a leader with big ideas and the audacity to push for big change. Romney cannot do that. Obama has yet to show he will.

I agree. This election is about two men playing it safe, appealing to a narrow wedge of voters without offending their base. The way to do that apparently is to go negative . . . to show why the other guy is a worse choice than you.

If this election turns on who can be meaner, more partisan, more negative, we will all lose. And that is the direction in which the campaign is headed. Barack Obama is the only candidate who can rise above that and offer the communal vision this country needs. I hope he does.

Stumble of the Week

Note to self: How could Richard Nixon not make my list of least favorite presidents? Because . . .

#5 Andrew Jackson, the president of the people with an unfortunate whiff of Pol Pot. He opened the White House doors to the “common man” while he threw merit out the window by awarding government jobs solely on patronage – all of which pales beside the “trail of tears,” the forced and deadly relocation of all southeastern Indian nations to Oklahoma.

#4 Rutherford B. Hayes shouldn’t have been president at all. Samuel Tilden won the popular vote and led by 19 electoral votes, with three southern states in dispute. A commission, voting along partisan lines, gave their 20 votes to Hayes. The price? The removal of federal troops from the South, the collapse of Reconstruction, and the lethal ascendency of Jim Crow.

#3 Ronald Reagan’s folksy demeanor masked a divisive presidency. His image of the welfare queen in a Cadillac signaled that the poor – at least those who were urban and black – were not just getting what they deserved. They were getting more than they deserved. His pronouncement that trees cause pollution signaled that know-nothingism was a legitimate response to environmental destruction.

#2 James Buchanan. Pennsylvania’s only president spent four years doing nothing while the nation moved with increasing violence toward civil war.

# 1 George W. Bush. After going on vacation for the month of August, he returned just before September 11^th . . . to which his response was to tell us to go shopping while he launched two disastrous off-the-books wars, legitimized torture, and instituted tax-and-spending policies that led to the worst recession since the 1930s and left the country in shambles.

Just for Fun

As election season kicks off, I offer you my five favorite presidents (at least for now). #5 Dwight D. Eisenhower. Surprised myself with this one. Despite some huge mistakes (like overthrowing the government of Iran), Ike appointed Earl Warren Chief Justice of a court that ended school desegregation; dispatched federal troops to integrate the schools in Little Rock, Arkansas; and warned of the dangers of the “military-industrial complex.”

#4 John Quincy Adams. Defeated by Andrew Jackson after only one term, he immediately gained election to Congress where, for the next 17 years, he led the anti-slavery movement and became a tireless national spokesman for emancipation.

#3 Thomas Jefferson. Although a slaveholder, Jefferson gave America its dominant myth of the small farmer and independent craftsman, even as the Industrial Revolution was preparing to crush the reality. The most intellectual of presidents, he produced the Declaration of Independence, supported the separation of church and state, and advocated both liberty and equality.

#2 Franklin D. Roosevelt. The “traitor to his class” who protected American capitalism from its worst excesses, FDR led us through both the Great Depression and the Great War. The New Deal is looking particularly good – as the Tea Party seeks to dismantle it – because much of the national infrastructure we built then we still use now.

#1 Abraham Lincoln combined a poet’s sensibility with a horse trader’s cunning to hold the nation together through its bloodiest war and to end its most shameful institution. Ridiculed by his many foes, he had a transcendent dignity.

That’s my list: two Republicans, two Democrats and a Whig. Three served in the 19^th century, two in the 20^th.

Tomorrow we might stumble onto the five worst.

A Food Community

I think of Michelle Obama as the First Lady of Nutrition, the most environmentally aware person to yet occupy the White House. In March 2009 she planted an organic vegetable garden on the White House lawn to give her family homegrown food, to provide at least a topic of discussion at state dinners, and to create a place where children and teachers could learn about healthy food.

And they need to learn. It seems incongruous that the richest country suffers from such poor nutrition: most American children eat far fewer fruits, vegetables and whole grains than they need, and far more salt. They drink more soda than milk. More than a third of Americans – and half of all African-Americans – are obese. They are overweight and underfed – a combination that seems unfathomable to those of us who equate skeletal images with starvation. But it is real.

Michelle’s efforts brought a blistering response from the food lobby. Organic gardens were elitist, while corporate agriculture could feed the world. The lobby poured millions into fighting taxes on sugary sodas and persuading Congress to declare pizza a vegetable . . . just like catsup.

Nutritional issues are most severe in our inner cities, where the absence of decent markets makes the residents captive to both high prices and unhealthy food. One response is the emergence of community gardens on vacant urban lots. Detroit has over 1500 such gardens. They are small, often isolated. But what a difference they could make if they joined together to grow – and to demand – healthy food for the city's poor.

Obama’s America

In an interview on NPR, noted conservative scholar Dinesh D’Souza discussed his documentary, 2016: Obama’s America, which is playing in over 1,500 theaters around the country. D’Souza argues that Obama is intentionally implementing policies that will weaken America as he pursues the anti-colonialist dream of his Kenyan father. In the interview, D’Souza said that, in his autobiography Obama explicitly laid out his view that the key to a more equitable post-colonial world lies in diminishing the domination of the West and expanding the opportunities of the developing nations. D’Souza seems bent on recasting “birtherism” in intellectual dress – unlike the less subtle bumper sticker I recently saw: “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for the American.” But inadvertently or not, he raises important questions: How will we integrate a planet of 7+ billion people who are in constant and deadly conflict over limited resources? How will we close the global gap between rich and poor?

The current model is based on continual economic growth and resource extraction in the belief that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” It is also based on fear, symbolized by our obsession with fences, walls and gates – with us on the inside trying desperately to keep them on the outside. Those two components contradict each other. Yet as the doctrine of unending growth appears to have run its course, those who have benefited most from it build higher fences, thicker walls and more heavily guarded gates.

We need to make more universal Ronald Reagan’s demand that we “tear down that wall.”

2,000

With our national debt at $16 trillion (and our combined public and private debt at $56 trillion); with the world’s population in excess of 7 billion; with the current presidential campaign estimated to cost $6 billion, 2,000 seems like a very small number. It is the number of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan in what has become America’s longest war. You wouldn’t have known that from the Republican convention last week, nor from the party’s platform, which mentions the conflict only once – in a paragraph almost at the end, criticizing the Obama administration for making military decisions based on political calculations but saying nothing about what a Romney administration would do. The platform also firmly opposes the reinstatement of any form of draft, including universal service, which means that a small minority of Americans will continue to fight in our conflicts . . . which is why we do not have the protests we had when everybody’s children were eligible.

I have little hope the Democratic convention will do better. Like much else that he has faced over the last four years, Obama inherited two off-the-books military quagmires from the Bush administration. But he early on made Afghanistan his war – the 2008 party platform promised to “win in Afghanistan,” by sending in “at least two additional combat brigades.”

That was then. Now the United States is again in a war whose objective has become to bring the troops home without losing too much face. For the families we have sacrificed to that end, 2,000 is not a small number at all.

Stumble of the Week

To no one’s surprise, organized labor stumbled in Tampa this week, as the Republican Party approved a platform aimed at dismantling the American labor movement, with a particular emphasis on public unions. I have no illusions about what the people who wrote the platform and the enormous money behind them want, which is to break, not just unions but the countervailing power of labor itself. That would enable “the malefactors of great wealth” (to use an old Republican’s term) to make even more money with even less regard for the conditions of the workforce. It’s almost like kicking a dead horse, thanks to the moribund nature of a labor movement in which under 12% of the workforce is unionized – and less than 7% of the private sector.

It may be cathartic to blame the bosses, but labor itself has much to answer for. In too many cases, it has stifled innovation, protected its power, and encouraged infiltration by the mob. It has been silent or recalcitrant on some of the most critical matters of the day. Its sole emphasis on jobs and wages has often made it antagonistic to environmental issues that may have more long-term impact on the workforce. It has reflexively opposed innovations that might improve public education. And it has offered little to the desperate plight of the inner cities, which once supplied the bulk of its membership. Labor needs to reform itself so that it can provide a broader vision to America's workers.

David Brooks

Several of you mentioned David Brooks’ column in Monday’s New York Times, and one even suggested I write about it. My initial response, of course, was that I will write about David Brooks’ column when he writes about mine. But on deeper reflection, it occurred to me that David has better things to do. I, on the other hand, do not. For those not familiar with him, Brooks is the Times’ conservative columnist and the right-of-center counterpoint to E.J. Dionne on NPR and Mark Shields on PBS. Hired by William F. Buckley at The National Review, he later wrote for The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard. Brooks, like his intellectual hero Edmund Burke, is a sober, thoughtful, intelligent, and insightful spokesman for moderate conservativism – a movement so diminished in today’s GOP that the Times later hired Ross Douthat to speak for the hard right.

Brooks has written admiringly of Obama, and while he speaks out against his policies often and forcefully, his criticisms seem born more of disappointment than dislike.

In Monday’s column, Brooks, writing in an unusual satiric tone, sought to parody the media’s depiction of Romney as rich, aloof and shallow. The piece was so out of character for Brooks and so edgy about Romney, however, that in lampooning the pundits, he also roasted the candidate.

David Brooks’ ideal candidate is one who is pragmatic, thoughtful and represents a conservatism that builds on the best traditions of the past – one like the old Mitt Romney, the governor of Massachusetts. But, whether in jest or not, that is not the Romney he presented on Monday.

Conventional Wisdom

The big question for many this week was whether the wrath of Mother Nature would pound down on the Convention of the Angry God. For now, at least, it appears that Hurricane Isaac is content to stay to the west and probe the levees built in the wake of Katrina – a reminder of the most expensive and one of the deadliest natural disasters in American history. Meanwhile, nature is sending another message from the north, as the volume of sea ice in the arctic has hit a record low. These reminders of the need to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, the desperate plight of the urban poor and the clear evidence of climate change have so far gone unnoted in Tampa. But after all, the reason people go to Florida is to get away from the ice and snow of winter. What disruptions there have been to the carefully orchestrated Republican convention have come from the mouths of Ron Paul’s delegates, who yelled loudly each time his votes were ignored in the official tally. With the big networks limiting coverage to both conventions, the wonderfully ribald process of political horse-trading, rousing speeches and brokered conventions is a thing of the past.

Maybe the process wasn’t any better back then, but it did have more surprises. The results were not so clearly pre-ordained nor were the candidates so programmed to stay on message. Politics perhaps has never been pretty, but it used to be more fun.

Radio Talk

I was driving back on Sunday afternoon from a wedding between one man and one woman, channel surfing on my car radio, when I landed on a talk show station that had just broadcast a long interview with Mitt Romney. The station had asked Laura Ingraham to do a post-interview analysis of the speech and preview this week’s Republican convention in Tampa. Ingraham, the host informs me, is the most ”listened to” woman on the radio. She got right to the point. The interview, she said, had shown a man of strong principles and deep faith who is comfortable with himself. This humanized Romney could now focus on the state of the economy, a subject his opponent desperately wanted to change. All the Democrats have to offer, she said, is “higher taxes, more aborted babies and gay marriage.” That, she concluded, was not a winning agenda.

Now, I don’t often find myself in agreement with a Fox commentator, but I think she’s onto something. If that’s all Obama’s got, he is in trouble.

As I thought about Ingraham’s trifecta, it occurred to me it was actually the mirror image of the GOP platform, which calls for constitutional amendments on taxes, abortion and marriage. That’s a lot of fundamental changes to a document we are told has been sacrosanct since 1789.

Wouldn’t it be simpler to create a fair tax system that recognizes our obligations to each other and to allow each of us to make personal decisions based on our needs rather than the dictates of the state?

“We Came in Peace for All Mankind”

Neil Armstrong died unexpectedly on Saturday, 51 years and one month after becoming the first person to walk on the moon. With over half the world’s population not yet 30, the moon landing is ancient history. And it does seem a different era. The Apollo Program, which fulfilled President Kennedy’s challenge to land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s, was the culmination of an intense space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, with the backdrop of the Cold War and fears of a science gap, which would lead to nuclear weapons inferiority, a destabilized world and a withering war.

So it is not surprising that Armstrong planted an American flag on the lunar soil. But unlike conquistadors of old, Armstrong did not claim the moon as American territory. In fact, not far from the flag, he and Buzz Aldren laid a plaque that read simply: “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”

With private companies gearing up for the commercial opportunities of space travel, with others thinking about exploiting the resources out there and colonizing new planets for when we have destroyed this one, with space itself increasingly littered with human debris and weapons of war, the words of that plaque are worth remembering.

With the exception of those doubters who insist he was actually in Arizona, Armstrong’s “small step” electrified the nation. Conceived by a president and built with public funds, it’s a reminder of what we can accomplish when we dream together.

Stumble of the Week

• As if it weren’t dead enough, bipartisanship stumbled this week when Judge Robert Simpson of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court refused to block the state’s voter identification law. Such laws may appear benign and reasonable in their wording, but at least in this case the intent was “to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” That’s not me speaking; that’s Mike Turzai, the Republican Majority Leader who sponsored the legislation. A recent study found 27 instances of voter impersonation in 197 million votes cast across the country from 2002-5. To swat that gnat, lawmakers are eager to disenfranchise as many as 9 percent of the state’s eligible voters.

• Tolerance stumbled again in Tampa when the GOP platform committee added a draconian plank on immigration to go with its call to end abortion with no exceptions. Explained Kris Kobach, Kansas’ Secretary of State, “If you really want to create a job tomorrow, you can remove an illegal alien today,” oblivious to how many more of our jobs are going to Asia than to immigrants. I can’t wait to see the convention’s civil rights plank.

• Now that Larry Ellison has bought the Hawaiian island of Lanai, archrival Bill Gates has apparently set his sights on Rhode Island. Asked his opinion on buying a whole state, presumptive GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, “I am in favor of privatization . . . especially of states whose electoral votes my campaign wrote off months ago.”

Basic Goodness

Like many people, I have long struggled with the conflict between individualism and community – between the quest to be a distinct, whole and individuated person and the desire to be an integral part of a group. I admire the person who stands up to the crowd, who sets off alone on the open road, who thinks for himself and speaks what he thinks. And yet I also get the need for community, not for companionship only but to be part of something larger than yourself. We suffocate in communities; we starve without them. In his New Year’s address to the Shambhala community in Halifax, NS, sent to me by my brother Walker, Sakyong Mipham talked about “basic goodness,” saying that it “is not just a personal experience, it is also a social experience.”

“It is not just about me,” he continued; “it is about humanity . . . this notion of human nature is the most important global issue. What we do to our planet, what we do to ourselves, how we relate to our own minds, how we make decisions, and how we relate to the world is all coming from this notion of basic goodness. It is up to us.”

Basic goodness, as I understand it, does not require us to submerge our hard-won egos into the group, but it does ask us to see our interconnectedness with all living beings in a world filled with violence and anger – and to note that the path to building a peaceful world begins with being at peace with yourself.