A couple weeks ago, I was having a conversation with a friend. We got to talking about his trips through the Middle East, and how East Asians were treated there. "It's just weird," he said. "Not really," I replied, and brought up Turks in Germany, Koreans in Japan, and a few more examples from around the world. "They aren't weird, dude," I finally said to him - "we are!"
Well, vive le weirdness libre. The genius of the North American nexperiment is its ability to make nationality and citizenship more or less the same thing. The economic system creates opportunities for success, and by swearing allegience to an idea, you can come here and become a (Canadian/American) in the full sense of the term. That combination, plus a very open social system, allows anyone to come here and become a somebody - which is not easy in Europe, let alone the rest of the world.
That combination is a precious thing, worth protecting. All the more so because the rest of the world still doesn't really grok it. Alaskan Bulgarian makes this point with a recent story from his class in Bulgaria:
"I wrapped up that digression quickly, and pushed on to what I had been trying to get to. That despite the presence of "good" things to call them, black people, as well as whites, Turks, Bulgarians, and--as far as I know--the general population of the world, like to be called by their names rather than their physical and ethnic notation. If you know a guy named Ivan, who happens to be black, it's probably smart and kind to call and think of him as Ivan once you've met him. The class seemed to grudgingly accept this.
Plamen wondered what my heritage was. Was I an American-American? I took this as a good question and drew up on the board the German, Italian, and Swedish lines that make up my family tree.
"YOU AREN'T AMERICAN AT ALL!" Half the class shouted at once."
You really want to read the rest of this story. The discussion gets a lot hairier before the class ends, as Rob tries to explain something he had always taken for granted.
Wow, I had almost that exact same discussion with my students in Uzbekistan many times. I'd never read his blog before, but I could just tell that he's Peace Corps from that story.
It interesting how the perfectly natural loyalty to one's ethnic group (racism) can be twisted into unnatural loyalty to one's ruling State (nationalism) or one's country (patriotism.)
I find it very amusing when people think that Americans are special in that they've abandoned tribalism in favor of loyalty to "American values" like liberty, democracy, etc. It seems more likely that most Americans have just substituted one form of tribalism for another. When it comes time to sell out "American values" for the benefit of the nation-tribe (or worse, for the benefit of the State), most Americans do so easily.
Tribalism is an inherent human characteristic. It creates problems if it's the dominant organizing form in society, but attempts to expunge it entirely have been spectacularly unsuccessful and incredibly bloody. Starting with the French Revolution, and moving on to the Soviet Empire.
The idea of substitution is, I sumbmit, one more example of the intelligence of America's Founding Fathers and their heirs. Don't try to abolish political faction, expect it and design for it. Don't try to abolish tribalism, just pull a switch and make a new tribe called "America". Then people who used to hate each other become part of the same tribe, a tribe that can expand over time to cover new entrants and even correct original wrongs.
Unlike the alternative approach, this one actually seems to work. Of course, it does require maintenance - and part of that maintenance is understanding and appreciating the program.
Because we can't abolish tribalism (and may not even want to), it can show up in damaging forms unless members of the tribe have the link between tribal identity and the ideals of America reinforced. The Left's successful push for ethnically segregated dormitories on campuses is one concrete example of forgotten ideals leading to tribal atavism. The hypothetical scenario of America trading its freedoms for some promised security would be a different form of the same thing.
But the evidence behind your characterization is thin to say the least, and strikes me more as a prejudice than an argument.
If you're expecting a society that can run without maintenance, course corrections, and commitment from its citizenry, T.J., there is no such animal. And never will be.
T.J.,
Would it be better to stop articulating 'American Values', since we obviously can't live up to them all the time?
Or would it be better to continue holding out those values to the world even though we often fall short?
This next bit is going to sound simplistic to you. Please consider the arc of American history. Certainly we have not lived up to our ideals. Can you at least grant that, more often than not, we are getting better at it over time? Can you make even the smallest concession that progress can't be entirely ruled out?
It can truthfully be said that a cynic is a disappointed idealist. Americans have obviously disappointed you somehow. Human nature being what it is, this was bound to happen. I used to be like you... cynical all the time. It's the disease of the age. It's easy to be a cynic, always finding fault, always looking for the ulterior motive.
The real tragedy is that it blinds you to virtue. You refuse to recognize it even when it's right in front of you. The cynic always focuses on the selfishness of human nature, but that's only half of the truth. Human nature also encompasses the capacity of self-sacrifice and goodwill. Is this corny? Only to a cynic. It's too much to hope that you can become an optimist. But can you, somehow, open your eyes and see what I plainly see. There is good in the world.
TJ, I think the word you're looking for is "ethno-centrism." Race is a construct that is rapidly losing legitimacy, in my view. And rightly so.
I think the best hope for humanity is to steadily push out tribalism in favor of the rule of law. And I think that has been a steady focus of American foreign policy since WWII. and that's good.
I also like the fact that in the U.S. there isn't one class system--more like three of them. There is the dominant one, based on money, which is very fluid and constantly changing as families'--and individuals'--fortunes rise and fall. There is the one based on intellect or education, in which a Master's or Doctorate is a symbol of having arrived, and there is the old European-style system in which the history of one's family says the most, and "new money" can never mean as much as old money.
And there are, of course, a few other assorted ways people are snobby.
The point to all this is that each individual can decide what is important to him/her, and pursue success in whatever form it might take. It might not involve "class climbing" or money-making at all--and that's okay, too. No matter the goal, there are always others around who will respect it.
>>TJ, I think the word you're looking for is "ethno-centrism." Race is a construct that is rapidly losing legitimacy, in my view. And rightly so.
For good or ill, I'll let Le Griffe du Lion (sp?) and the guys at GNXP discuss this.
>>I think the best hope for humanity is to steadily push out tribalism in favor of the rule of law.
Indeed. This is why I have so little patience with all flavors of plunder and murder. People here complain about robbers and murders like Hussein, the Mullahs, Kim Il, Yasser, etc., and rightly so. My job is to remind people of the murderers and thieves that they support (hopefully inadvertantly) RIGHT HERE, since terminating support for such people is a substantially easier problem.
>>And I think that has been a steady focus of American foreign policy since WWII. and that's good.
If the instrument of foreign policy we're discussing is named Douglas MacArthur, your statement is correct. Otherwise it's a cruel joke. Do I really need to break out The List again? What does post WWII US policy in Indonesia, SE Asia, Central America, Iran, etc. have to do with the rule of law?
TJ
Indonesia - now democratic
SE Asia - mostly democratic
Central America - mostly democratic
Iran - a total clusterf*ck, but democratizing in spite of all
Sure, we've made plenty of errors. But the general rule of thumb is this: move countries from a Hobbesian world outside to a Kantian one. Looking at the Bush administration, it is not clear to me that they respect the latter part of the equation. One can only hope that they will come to their senses and realize that pique is not policy.
>>Would it be better to stop articulating 'American Values', since we obviously can't live up to them all the time?
You misunderstand me. I am passionately committed to most of what you refer to as "American Values." This is why I find the association built up in people's minds between these values and the USG to be so funny, tragic, and horrible, given the USG's role in subverting these values over the years. Yes, the USG is less horrible and awful than the Iranian government, the old Soviet government, etc. Railing against these distant states is an excellent excuse to ignore the evils of the local state which we might actually be able to fix.
As part of advancing these values, I've had to give up the illusion that most people share these values. Many claim to support these values, but are lying, both to themselves and others. This doesn't mean we should abandon these values.
>>This next bit is going to sound simplistic to you. Please consider the arc of American history. Certainly we have not lived up to our ideals. Can you at least grant that, more often than not, we are getting better at it over time? Can you make even the smallest concession that progress can't be entirely ruled out?
I view the situation as basically a long term struggle between the machinery of freedom and the machinery of control. Epic technological advances have furthered both sides in the past 200 years. In the US, we got lucky for a while in that our government's ability to hinder the machinery of freedom was limited relative to other states. (For various reasons, I don't think this will hold true much longer.) On the political front, some things have gotten better, some things have gotten worse. It's certainly not a simple situation.
>>Human nature also encompasses the capacity of self-sacrifice and goodwill. Is this corny? Only to a cynic.
I in no way find the actions of truly great heroes (who I've discussed at length here before) to be corny and futile. I am certain that most of the people here are sincere in their desire to advance the liberty of the species -- that's why I'm here.
I am equally certain that most of the people here have been snowed and are being used by the USG and other groups to support Ye Liveliest Awfulness. We need to go into this heroism business with our eyes open. We need to wake up and see that entities we were raised to respect (America, etc.) have sold us out. A realistic assessment of how badly we are outnumbered is important. We need to understand that God is NOT on our side. We need to know that most epic heroes die broke, unappreciated, and are quickly forgotten. Then we need to get up off our ass and Do What Needs To Be Done.
>>Indonesia - now democratic
SE Asia - mostly democratic
Central America - mostly democratic
SIDE ISSUE:
The hidden assumption here is that democracy is useful for advancing liberty. IMHO, democracy is closer to the Mencken situation where two wolves and a lamb vote on who's for dinner. I don't consider democratic plunder and murder any more legitimate or acceptable than any other kind of plunder and murder.
THAT SAID:
The USG has fought against democracy, civil liberties, capitalism, human decency, etc. in each of these places. The fact that the USG's actions and support of the epic murderers in these places have failed to totally crush the spirit of liberty there is indeed reason for hope.
>>Don't try to abolish tribalism, just pull a switch and make a new tribe called "America". Then people who used to hate each other become part of the same tribe, a tribe that can expand over time to cover new entrants and even correct original wrongs.
Indeed, this did decrease violence and theft within the US (once all the indigenous tribes had been "processed.") The problem comes when foreign policy decisions are made: people outside the country aren't members of the tribe and thus tend to be expendable. George Bush's favorite philosopher wouldn't approve.
The notion that incorporating everyone into a tribe promotes intra-tribal peace is one of the reasons I brought up the "insane" idea of annexing Iraq and Israel as a means of stabilizing these areas.
T.J.,
Please clarify. Who are the we? And who are the they that outnumber the we? What is that Needs To Be Done.Thanks. You've reassured me somewhat. At least you seem to have some kind of positve vision for the future.
>>Please clarify. Who are the we? And who are the they that outnumber the we?
WE are the people who wish to advance Liberty for Everyone. THEY are the people who are willing to advance the interests of their clan and tribe by robbing and killing THE OTHER.
THEY are most people. Most people don't give a damn about those outside their tribe. In the US, the population of the nation is the extended tribe, as Joe points out. Thus although interest groups here use the government to rob from each other quite extensively, they rarely plot to murder each other. This provides the illusion that we are surrounded by fundamentally decent and humane people. We are not.
Given the right incentives, which as Milgram discovered are not very great, the majority of the THEM will even torture obviously innocent fellow tribe members to death. Tribal authority has to but ask, and the vast majority will obey.
Milgram estimated that the percentage of people in the US who were unwilling to torture-murder their fellow citizens when asked nicely was around 35%. The problem with Milgram's studies is that the sorts of people who volunteer for psychological experiments tend to have substantially more initiative and capacity for independent thought than the general population. Hence the percentage of people willing to refuse active participation in Ye Liveliest Awfulness is probably closer to 15%, and that's with no coercion. Under even minimal coercion, I would bet that number drops to 5%. If the victims aren't members of the tribe, 1%.
This is why heinous atrocities happen. Tribal leaders order the tribe to kill members of adjacent tribes and take their stuff. 99% of the tribe goes along with it. WE are those people who work to stop this from happening.
Identifying who WE are is not easy. Ideology isn't a great predictor: John Rabe, the greatest hero in the history of our civilization, was a Nazi businessman and diplomat!
>>What is that Needs To Be Done.
WE need to advance liberty and fight oppression with whatever means are likely to be effective, and with an eye for the long term.
I should add that, lest us would-be liberators get too proud and too judgemental, we should remember the following Zen wisdom:
One day Shinran called one of his disciples to him and asked, ``Have you ever killed a person?''
The disciple said, ``No, I've never killed any person.''
Shinran asked, ``Do you respect me as your teacher? Will you do what I ask of you?''
The disciple said, ``Of course, I do.''
Shinran replied, ``Then go out and kill a hundred people.''
The disciple was frightened by this. He doubted what he had heard. He was quiet. Then the disciple humbly said, ``Even though you ask me to kill a hundred people, I cannot kill even one person.''
Shinran smiled and said, ``Why can't you kill even one person?''
The disciple was quiet. He couldn't find an answer. He wondered, ``Why can't I kill even one person?''
Shinran said, ``Is it because of your good will or your good heart or because you are a good person?''
The disciple still could not answer.
After a short silence Shinran said, ``It is not because you have a good mind or even a good heart or because you are a good person. You are fortunate because present conditions and situations do not allow you to kill even one person. Aren't you grateful that your present conditions and situations are such that you do not have to kill even one person? If the conditions and situations changed, you don't know what you would do.''
This is an interesting message, isn't it? You probably think, ``I'm not the kind of person who would kill even one person. I am a good Christian or I am a good Buddhist.'' You know not to kill is a Buddhist Precept as well as a Christian Commandment. But Shinran is saying you don't do heinous actions like killing a person, not because of such a mind or will, but because you are very fortunate that conditions and situations are not such that you would kill even one person.
--Sensai Ogui
T.J.,
This is interesting. Many practical questions come to mind, and I wrote out many before I decided simply to ask:
How do you propose the we should organize to further your goals?
A tough question. Here are some ideas which may or may not be workable.
A major objective should be to find ways to make fighting the evil more profitable. That way the THEM will go along with fighting the evil simply out of personal gain. To the extent that the free enterprise system actually exists, this is one of its great virtues: amoral people can be induced to benefit mankind through exchange and trade rather than murder and plunder.
The blogosphere is of course a major new tool for allowing the WE to organize. Like minded people naturally gravitate to certain blogs, yet communication with people of "adjacent" philosophies still occurs. A key objective should be protecting our ability to communicate and organize safely on-line, and extending this capability to other less-free regions of the planet. In the US, this means enhancing anonymous, yet verifiable communications. (So there can be only one T.J. Madison, but nobody knows who he is, for example.) Elsewhere, this involves assaults on government control and regulation of information technology. The destruction/circumvention of the Great Firewall of China is a key battle in this struggle.
Smuggling is a very important weapon. We need to find new ways to smuggle the means of survival and resistance into restrictive places like Iran, NK, and Cuba while smuggling the victims of these regimes out. This needs to be done in a decentralized way, by non-state actors. Blockades like those against Cuba and Iraq are/were utter madness. "We hate your government so much that we are going to cut off trade with you, the primary victims of your government. That way, after the hated government takes everything it wants from you at gunpoint, you will lack the necessary tools to resist it, or even survive."
Shall I continue?
T.J.,
Continue? Yes by all means. Do you have a blog so we don't have to tie up Joe's bandwidth?
It sounds like you are proposing to leverage the protection of existing Liberal states, like America, to further the cause of Liberty, while at the same time strengthening the protections for Liberty in these existing states. Is this what you mean? If so, then you must at least concede that America does a fairly decent job of protecting your liberty already. Do you agree?
Are you a big or little 'L' libertarian? Or an anarchist perhaps? I'm not trying to label your beliefs as much as attempting to find some shorthand to understand them. This can save a bunch of time. I am relieved to know that your cynicism is not universal....
Sadly, no blog yet. Hopefully soon my buddies and I will be able to deploy one.
>> If so, then you must at least concede that America does a fairly decent job of protecting your liberty already. Do you agree?
I would state that the USG does a relatively poor job of interfering with my liberty, but that it's getting better with practice.
I guess you could call me an anarchocapitalist, though that shouldn't be construed as disdain for non-coercive anarchosyndicalist projects, like open source, blogs, some kibbutzes, etc. My respect for the State™ especially at the national level has been plummeting in recent years. The last straw that finally moved me from libertarian to anarchist was when ABC News demonstrated that it could move DPU into the country without being noticed, two years in a row. That's when I finally concluded that the national State was of no use whatsoever except to promote mutual plunder. Decentralized local States are considerably better: the local police actually serve some purpose, and "voting with your feet" is much more practical.
IMHO what most people think of anarchism is actually a particularly inefficient form of feudalism, with roving gangs of bandits and murderers taking the place of one big gang of robbers and murderers -- not usually an improvement. The worst system, of course, is anarchotyranny, where the State acts to disarm the innocent populace, while leaving them at the mercy of local banditry.
So basically I consider Liberty and the State to be enemies. The USG I consider a net threat to liberty both here and elsewhere, though nowhere near as bad as most other states, of course. We should attempt to further hinder the USG's ability to murder and plunder. Many clever people, especially around here, believe that we can use the USG to smash other States which are worse, thus leading to a net increase in liberty. I am profoundly suspicious of this strategy (although if it works, hey, great!) I suspect such people do not understand the powerful institutional forces at work, and underestimate the great danger to liberty locally posed by an interventionist USG.
"I'm not trying to label your beliefs as much as attempting to find some shorthand to understand them."
Is that always the best approach?
T.J.,
You're still being interesting. Unfortunately, the world is not such that we can give up our state yet. The danger of domestic tyranny is real, but alas foreign tyranny is just as real, and may yet be the larger threat.
The reason I engaged with you is that over the span of many posts you've been coming accross as a total cynic and anti-American. It seemed to me at least that there must be more there, and happily, there is.
Be sure to publish your blog location to the usual places so I can find it.
Gary,
Since I was basically inviting T.J. to describe his own position, I don't feel guilty at all. Labels aren't always bad. They can even be accurate. If this can save pages of dialog, then why not?
The assumption here is that the domestic national state actually helps against foreign tyranny. Given the negligible conventional threat to US territory, I assume the foreign tyranny you refer to is Al Qaeda,
The current defense establishment here in the US costs upwards of 400 billion dollars per year. That's $400 B of industrial production put in a big pile and set on fire. This buys us the total inability to stop the flow of drugs, illegal aliens, and uranium into the country. If Al Qaeda was allowed to run rampant, they would have to really work to make a $400 B mess every year -- they'd need nukes or advanced bioweapons, which the present defense establishment probably can't block anyway. I'm not impressed, and I want my money back. Since there's no market accountability in these systems, I'm unlikely to get it.
Now if that $400 billion actually bought us something, like a functional missile defense (as opposed to the current fraudulent program), the ability to detect smuggled nukes approaching the country, powerful anti-biological weapons capability, etc., then the situation changes. But as it is, I'd rather keep my money and donate it to cancer research.
As to getting rid of the state, I agree it's not likely to happen soon. But if we keep hammering away at the dumbest aspects of it, maybe things will improve. Who knows, after we burn off 90% of the state we might find something worth keeping (NIH/CDC, perhaps?)
Lurker says: "Since I was basically inviting T.J. to describe his own position, I don't feel guilty at all."
I wasn't aware that "Is that always the best approach?" means, or even implies, "you should feel guilty."
"If this can save pages of dialog, then why not?"
Perhaps it's fine. But, generally speaking, it's only accurate to describe people in shorthand, and think of them in shorthand, if they themselves think only in shorthand.
By my observation, at any rate.