Cynicism, government, and subsidiarity

I cross-posted my piece on "Penny-wise and (Rand) Paul Foolish" on RIFuture.org yesterday.  The article below is a response to a commenter, who raised 2 points:

1.  Given the functioning of our public school system in recent decades, isn't my call for universal public pre-k overly optimistic, if not misinformed

2.  Rather than giving the IRS more authority -- since government does very few things well anyway -- should we just simplify the tax code? 

First, your point and mine with regard to the IRS aren't incompatible.  I'm all for simplifying the federal tax code.  It would cut down on abuse, and make enforcement easier.  Unfortunately, pols from across the political spectrum share the responsibility for having made the code so immensely complicated.  


Suzanne Mettler has a really important article in the latest issue of the Washington Monthly, in which she points out how tax expenditures and credits have essentially substituted for other forms of policy in recent decades.  My sense is that my fellow liberals are particularly guilty of this.  Unable to win the argument politically for a stronger and more expensive social safety net, or more authoritative regulations, tweaking the tax code seems to have become the apparently 'cost-free' way to make policy that liberals, moderates and many conservatives can agree on.  The problem, of course, is that writing the tax code with a dry erase marker means that someone else can re-write it...and when regs and codes get re-written, it is usually to the benefit of the privileged, outside of the light of public scrutiny.  The tax code is also an awkward and often inefficient tool for making social policy.

 If we simplify -- and lord knows there are lots of ways to do that -- we can return the tax code to its primary purpose, which is of course to raise revenue.  I don't think all purposeful taxes are bad, far from it (I like the estate tax, and a carbon tax, and many others), but simpler would be better...as long as the system retains its progressive nature.  Right now, in terms of actual taxes paid, the American tax system (federal income, payroll, state, property) has lost most of its progressivity.  This is in part responsible for the massive expansion of inequality in this country in recent decades.

Second, your cynicism about government (can we pull off public pre-k; govt spending is nearly always wasteful) was precisely what I was aiming at in my post.  I see the same sentiment from all sides of the political spectrum.  I think that kind of cynicism about government is factually inaccurate, politically dangerous, and -- to be frank -- intellectually lazy.  I don't want to get into public education too much here, but one gets a little tired of the constant laments about the poor quality of the system from liberals and conservatives alike.  The fact of the matter is that the system works well for the vast majority of American school kids.  Where it falls short is in the education of the poor, and students of color.  While obviously some of that is connected to flaws in how we've structured school governance and finance (particularly in cities), as much if not more of it stems from the fact that we have a lot of child poverty in this country, and that we geographically concentrate so much of that poverty, particularly among people of color.  The failures of our public schools are failures of political will, more than they are failures of government as such (in other words, the 'public' part of 'public schools' isn't the issue).

So much of our public discourse has shifted in this direction in recent decades.  One consequence, which I lament even if you don't, is the virtual elimination of liberalism from mainstream political reality.  Another, which we are discovering right now on the debt ceiling, the deficit, the Great Recession, global warming, etc, is that we have rendered ourselves incapable as a nation of grappling with the biggest issues we face.  Other than Obama's health care bill, I find it hard to name any large-scale issue that our federal government has fully addressed since the early 70s environmental legislation.  My point, in the end, was that people across the political spectrum should be able to agree on a basic point (one finds this consensus in other wealthy countries):  that government has certain basic responsibilities, and that progressive forms of taxation are the best way to pay for them. 

Personally, I'm one of those rare left-liberals who finds the Catholic notion of 'subsidiarity' convincing.  American conservatives often argue that subsidiarity is simply a call for smaller government, and more room for the marketplace.  I'm no theologian (I'm not even Catholic), but I think this is a misunderstanding.  It does insist that as many decisions as possible should be left to the local level, where citizens are more likely to be directly engaged.  But at its core is an ethical imperative for communal, institutional or governmental action to create the social conditions necessary to the full development of the individual, family and community.  That means larger and more interventionist government where its appropriate, with a preference for decentralization...but only if that best serves the ethical imperative. 

If American conservatives want to criticize poor government, fine -- I'm with them on that.  But when it slides into criticism of governance itself, they lose me. 

Wisdom on inequality from the belly of the beast

This, from Bloomberg today:


Federal Reserve Governor Sarah Bloom Raskin told the New America Foundation that economic inequality, caused by stagnating incomes for most Americans and rapid growth in wealth for the richest 1 percent, is hindering the U.S. economic recovery. She described income inequality as "destabilizing," because it "undermines the ability of the economy to grow sustainably and efficiently." “Finding ways to help more Americans safely grow their incomes and net worth in real terms arguably diminishes the destructive influence of income inequality by giving everyone a more secure footing in the economy and the same kind of flexibility and choice available to the more affluent,” Raskin said.


Raskin is hardly the first mainstream economist to see a connection between inequality and today's economic stagnation (Raghuram Rajan got there first) but she is the first one in a policy-making position that I've seen. Wage stagnation, income inequality and economic insecurity have of course dominated the lives of most American families for decades now, long before the Great Recession.  Indeed, one could argue (as Rajan and Robert Reich have) that the inequality may have played a major role in causing the economic downturn.  There is little doubt, however, that it continues to hamper our ability to get out of it.


Unfortunately, the best responses to the effects of inequality and income stagnation on economic demand -- Keynesian fiscal policy, a strengthened safety net, a revived labor movement, and so forth -- are unavailable in the present political environment.  The Fed can do little on its own, though one hopes that Raskin's clarion call is heard over on Capitol Hill...and in the White House, as the days tick down toward debt ceiling day.

Penny-wise, (Rand) Paul foolish -- or, why government often matters

It appears, at times, that American conservatives seem to even deny the possibility that government spending or regulation might actually save money -- either save the government money (a secondary consideration) or save the country money (presumably, the primary goal).  As I noted yesterday, there is now ample empirical evidence that environmental regulation (along with Medicaid) has decreased infant mortality; for decades now, scholars have argued that the 1944 G.I. Bill more than paid for itself as well.  Spending large sums of public money on high quality universal pre-school would reduce all sorts of other economic and social costs, both for the government and for the nation as a whole.  There are, of course, far too many other examples to recount here.

It should be said that cost-benefit analysis should not be the only rubric for measuring whether a government program, tax or regulation is worthwhile.  Take the estate tax, for example:  as Andrew Carnegie and Theodore Roosevelt argued early in the 20th century, the goal was in large part to break up concentrated wealth.  "The man of great wealth owes a particular obligation to the State because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government," Roosevelt told Congress in 1906.  "The prime object should be to put a constantly increasing burden on the inheritance of those swollen fortunes which it is certainly of no benefit to this country to perpetuate."  The revenue it generated was a side benefit.  It is important for liberals to continue to stress that in most cases, most of the time, government works.  Post-New Deal liberalism was founded on 2 core ideas, both of which made sense to many Americans who came of age in the 30s, 40s and 50s:

1)  that disaster (economic, natural, medical) can strike any of us at any time, so we should be willing to share or pool risks; and

 2) that we can and should collectively build and maintain common institutions and goods through the instrument of government.  Like American liberalism more generally, these two assumptions are as conservative as they are liberal -- this explains much of their appeal, in fact.

While one can translate those two core ideas into a purely economic calculus, I think this misunderstands them.  More to the point, it ignores the fact that there are other justifications for government action that are valid as well:  justice, for example.  Public or common goods must be created, protected and enhanced, since private action is unlikely to do so.  And this must be done even if we cannot sufficiently calculate or determine a monetary benefit.  There is a danger, a slippery slope for liberals (and the country) in arguing that only a 'return on investment' constitutes a valid rationale for state action.  For one, if a healthy return cannot be demonstrated, it feeds public resentment of taxation (see my taxaphobia post of a few days ago).

One result has been a surprisingly bi-partisan denigration (and de-funding) of the IRS over the past decade or so.  Little money has been or can be saved by trimming the IRS budget.  Indeed, one can convincingly argue that a big chunk of the present deficit could be erased simply by beefing up IRS capacity, so it can go after individuals and corporations that aren't paying their fair share.   The Government Accounting Office (GAO) recently estimated that approximately $330 billion in federal taxes had never been paid as of the end of fiscal year 2010.  A good chunk of the tax evaders are individuals with "substantial personal assets" including multi-million-dollar homes and luxury cars, the GAO reported.   For every dollar the IRS spends on audits, liens, and property seizures, the government brings in more than $10.  If we spend less on IRS enforcement, as Republicans demand (and to which Democrats too often acquiesce), it costs us.  Obviously it costs our government revenue, but there is another cost, too:  it slowly undermines public faith in the rule of law.  Surely this is an odd position for conservatives to take.  A society that cannot tax itself, and that undermines popular belief in the effectiveness of government, will generate a politics that slowly devours itself -- like an autoimmune disease.  We have certainly reached this point now, haven't we?

The common assumption that any dollar spent by government is inherently wasteful simply flies in the face of evidence, historical and contemporary.

In keeping with this theme, Steven Benen of Washington Monthly usefully points us toward an exchange between Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) earlier this week, during a subcommittee hearing on funding the existing Older Americans Act.  Sanders made the point that spending $2 billion to prevent hunger among the elderly should be considered an investment, because it would ultimately save money (for the feds, and overall) on health care and nursing home costs.

Paul was incredulous that any federal program or regulation could be considered an investment.  "It's curious that only in Washington can you spend $2 billion and claim that you're saving money.  The idea or notion that spending money in Washington is somehow saving money really flies past most of the taxpayers."

The brief exchange is worth watching:

how inequality reproduces itself, and why policy matters

Nancy Folbre, economist at UMass-Amherst, has a thought-provoking piece on yesterday's NY Times Economix Blog, "Born to Lose: Health Inequality at Birth."

In the post, she summarizes some of the work by Princeton's Janet Currie and others, on the relationship between health disadvantages at birth, and future economic well-being and educational achievement.  


One of the most fascinating and important interdisciplinary research agendas of the last decade has been the effort by economists, sociologists and epidemiologists to understand how inequality is reproduced in the developed world, and how/why inequality matters.  To the extent that I have any optimism left about the possibility of a more just America, it is based on my reading of this literature.  Of course, as a theoretical and empirical matter this question (inequality) is hardly new; the reproduction of capitalist class relations has generated some of the most insightful intellectual work of the past 150 years, starting with Marx.


But this work -- typified for me by the vital work of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in Great Britain, and James Heckman, Thomas Shapiro/Melvin Oliver, and Annette Lareau in the US -- is different.  It isn't theoretical, at least not primarily.  Rather, it seeks to understand how inequality is partly rooted in such things as pre-natal and and infant health, the environmental factors shaping cognitive development, social capital, nutrition, exposure to violence, the correlation of all of these things with place, and the overall income and wealth inequality in the society in which children are raised.  It acknowledges the vital importance of resources, of course (family income and wealth), and the power that shapes their distribution.  But it also attempts to show us why and how a lack of wealth and income matters -- how it shapes places, families, bodies, minds, and ways of seeing the world.  In the context of the US, as I have argued elsewhere (and will argue further here in the future), the ubiquity of racial and economic segregation also appears to profoundly shape all of these things, and thus the distribution of primary social goods.  It is (and will be) my contention that untying the knot of metropolitan segregation is likely to unravel many more things.  But more on that later.


I see 3 absolutely vital (and interrelated) insights coming from this stuff:
1.    International comparisons (see Wilkinson's work with Kate Pickett) reveal that income inequality within  developed societies tends to have enormous impacts on health, culture and quality of life for all citizens, not just the least privileged.  In other words, citizens living in societies with great inequalities of income tend to have worse outcomes in terms of mental health, obesity, social trust, exposure to violence, life expectancy, and social mobility.  The statistical correlations are simply too strong and consistent not to be at least in part causative.  The graph below comes from Wilkinson and Pickett, and can be found on their website.  Note the strong relationship between income inequality and infant mortality, which appears to be recursive -- in other words, inequality leads to high infant mortality rates, which tends to reproduce inequality, etc.





2.  Policy matters, because those developed nations with less inequality (and the improved quality of life that seems to stem from it) are more equal because they have chosen it -- its not culture that matters here, or economic growth.  And just as the circle of inequality is vicious, the circle of equality is virtuous:  in so far as a society chooses to be more equal, it tends to be more willing to make decisions (even sacrifices) that will benefit the collective good.

Stories from the Kitchen Table

The US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, chaired by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), gathered some fascinating testimony yesterday.

As part of an ongoing series of hearings on "Stories from the Kitchen Table: How Middle Class Families Are Struggling to Make Ends Meet," Harkin gathered together experts and ordinary folks to talk about the economic insecurity dominates the lives of so many American households.

You can watch the testimony (its about an hour long) here, and get written versions of the testimony.  The testimony of Jared Bernstein (Joe Biden's former economic adviser) is particularly worthwhile -- its one of the best short and sweet summaries of the economic predicament of the American middle class I've seen.

Conservatism, taxes and the defense of inequality

As Ezra Klein points out today, GOP leadership in Congress continues to stubbornly resist tax increases as a legitimate part of any bi-partisan deficit reduction package.  "President Obama needs to decide between his goal of raising taxes, or a bipartisan plan to address our deficit," said Senators McConnell and Kyl in a joint statement. 


One wonder where all of this will wind up.  The GOP appears to be wrong on both the politics and policy. Polls consistently show that most Americans accept that any deficit reduction package will have to include cuts and revenue increases -- with the overwhelmingly majority of them favoring increased taxes on the wealthy.  It is hard not to think that the GOP's baseline position is defined not by fiscal austerity or a philosophical commitment to small government, but by opposition to wealth redistribution and the desire to protect the economics interests of the privileged.  


In a must read article in Democracy, Jonathan Chait dug deeply into the 'taxophobia' that seems to uniquely define American conservatism in this historical moment.  The conservative movement's 

embrace of taxophobia is probably the most important development in American political life over the last three decades. It is the one quality that most distinguishes American conservative elites from conservative elites in other countries. They’re more likely to question climate science, more sanguine about people dying for lack of health insurance, and less xenophobic (which is rather nice). But above all—far above all—they hate taxes.

Political science research indicates that this taxophobia has been the prime driver of the growing partisanship on economic and redistribution issues among our political elites.  More profoundly, Chait argues, conservative taxophobia has redefined the terms of the political debate.  Democrats are the new fiscal conservatives, while the old fiscal (Keynesian) liberalism stands at the fringes of our economic discourse.  Despite three decades of evidence contradicting supply-side economics, its hold on the Republican Party has only strengthened.


Chait again:

The Republican Party inhabits an otherworldly new realm that even the staunchest right-wingers of a generation before could scarcely have imagined. As the two parties trade power back and forth, the ideological basis for economic policy ping-pongs between the old right and a loopy kind of far-right. Periods of Republican governance have grown increasingly disastrous, while periods of Democratic governance are largely consumed with staving off fiscal collapse.

Clearly taxophobia in the GOP persists despite the empirical evidence.  Outside the rarified air of the Republican leadership, there is little questioning of the role that tax cuts have played in getting us to this point.  As Lori Montgomery wrote when analyzing the component parts of our shift from surpluses to deficits, "the biggest culprit, by far, has been an erosion of tax revenue triggered largely by two recessions and multiple rounds of tax cuts. Together, the economy and the tax bills enacted under former president George W. Bush, and to a lesser extent by President Obama, wiped out $6.3 trillion in anticipated revenue."  Simply letting the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule (or paying for any portions that policymakers decide to extend) would stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio for the next decade.  The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities provides us with this useful chart:

 


Clearly, there is a political and ideological commitment to taxophobia in today's GOP, quite distinct from whether there is any evidence for its effectiveness as policy -- indeed, policy may very be irrelevant.  It is hard for anyone with even a basic knowledge of the economic history of the US in the past 3 decades to maintain -- as the GOP does today -- that tax cuts will both generate revenue and put a cap on government expenditures.  So why the taxophobia?  Other than in the early 80s, perhaps, one cannot argue that pure vote pandering is the cause, particularly because the sorts of tax cuts the Republicans have consistently favored (and enacted) have been heavily skewed toward the top of the income ladder. 

the Cry Wolf Project

If you haven't heard about this yet, I strongly suggest you check it out:  The Cry Wolf Project is a network of advocates, researchers and scholars dedicated to demonstrating that, in fact, conservatives and business groups are only "crying wolf" to delay, prevent and weaken important and common sense regulations that save lives, clean our environment and make our families more secure.  The Project is assembling an amazing data bank of historical quotes from opponents of regulatory reforms and social justice measures.  As a historian, I can tell you that many of the fallacious arguments one hears today have a long pedigree; knowing this, and familiarizing oneself both with historical counter-arguments and evidence, is vital to creating a more just and equal America.

Good news for American workers

Some welcome news yesterday from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), courtesy of the AFL-CIO Blog:  the Board released proposed changes in the way union representation elections are conducted that it says will “reduce unnecessary barriers to the fair and expeditious resolution of questions concerning representation.”


The changes are minor, of course.  American labor law desperately needs to be updated, with card check and other reforms.  Recent events in Wisconsin and elsewhere have made it abundantly clear that the decline of the American labor movement over the past 3 decades has not been the inevitable result of structural and global economic shifts, though these things have played a part.  Rather, it has political (and legal) roots.  One has only to look at union density numbers for other wealthy nations to see this.  While many other countries have experienced declines too, the drop has been particularly sharp in the United States.  Canada, which has different labor laws than we do, retains a union density of over 30%.  And union density closely correlates with rates of income inequality...which is itself strongly related to other seemingly unconnected social measures like infant mortality, life expectancy, mental illness, violence, social capital, obesity, and so forth.


But for those of you on the left who continue to insist that there is little daylight between the two parties, yesterday's rule changes should make it clear that the occupant of the White House matters enormously.  Where do you think the countervailing power to financial capital is supposed to come from?  Bloggers?

30 years of stagnation in 2 minutes

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich sums up the implosion of the American Dream in two minutes...

My hovercraft is full of eels

Looking forward to using an Italian version of this phrasebook on our trip...

No 'El Bulli' for me, alas

The World's Greatest Restaurant, Barcelona's "El Bulli," will apparently close at the end of July.

I've never eaten there, and apparently never will.

For me this is somewhat akin to the Beatles breaking up, before I was old enough to see them.

C'mon, Ferran Adrià -- just a year or two more?

Ah well. At least I can watch Anthony Bourdain at El Bulli:

Peter Gabriel, me, and the anti-apartheid movement

I will be joining my best and oldest brother Dennis at a Peter Gabriel concert next Friday. Gabriel is of course an enormous talent, but no song has meant more to me than 'Biko.' Biko, as you may know, was a black nationalist student activist in South Africa. He was killed by the apartheid regime in the late 70s.

As a college student in the mid/late 80s, my life was consumed by the anti-apartheid movement. My friends and I struggled mightily to get my school -- Vanderbilt University -- to divest from companies doing business in apartheid South Africa. We built shanties; I addressed the Board of Trustees; I went on a hunger strike; we raised money for the ANC. While we failed, subsequent events proved us right.

During my junior year, I had the good fortune to be a student delegate to an anti-apartheid conference at the United Nations. There, I gave a speech about the student movement. I ended it with a quote from Gabriel's song "Biko":

You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher

Enjoy!

Countdown to our European trip!!!!

The Santows will be departing for Europe in less than 20 days!

In the meantime, a little teaser:  Bologna!

Crowding out the Confidence Fairies

David Dayen wrote a nice -- and depressing -- piece on the state of our national economic discourse this past Monday in the American Prospect, I Ruined the Economy and All I Got Were These Lousy Tax Cuts.


The takeaway:
“Curtailing the one major consumer [the federal government] that is continuing to consume—it’s just a terrible idea, especially when you have a major demand gap,” says Michael Linden of the Center for American Progress.  Unfortunately, Dayen concludes, the Obama administration seems to have conceded that terrible idea; what remains is a negotiation over how 'terrible' to make it.


When the debt ceiling deal is done (or even if it isn't), it appears we are about to disappear into a Japan-style economic black hole.  One possible result of this might be a political re-alignment that brings to the foreground all the critical issues about our political economy that we have neglected for so long -- sustainability, inequality, etc.  A more likely outcome is that the American voters will respond by giving more power to those portions of the GOP that dug the hole in the first place, and who promise to keep digging.  The Democrats will promise to dig with a smaller shovel.  The shovel will be sold by an American corporation, but manufactured abroad.  We will buy it with a credit card.


The GOP leadership routinely uses the phrase 'job-killing government spending,' claiming that that spending crowds out private investment, thus destroying jobs.  Obviously the flip-side of this argument is that employment will soar with massive cuts in public spending -- essentially giving us the Republican position on the debt and deficit at the moment.  Of course, it is entirely reasonable for conservatives to question the size of government.  They believe that there is an inverse relationship between big government and individual freedom (and a robust civil society).  While I think this view is ill-informed in a modern economy -- it misunderstands the material preconditions of both individual liberty and community viability -- I don't want to dispute it here.  Clearly the conservative view creates a predisposition against public spending.  That predisposition plays a valuable role in public discourse.  Indeed, one hopes that people from all parts of the political spectrum desire government intervention to be efficient, effective, and only as big and enduring as is necessary.


But what is going on right now is not a debate about the size of government.  It has been said many times that budgets are philosophical documents; embedded within them are assumptions about both 'is' and 'ought,' and a path from one to the other.  David Leonhardt puts it well:

The goal of deficit reduction can’t simply be arithmetic. It has to be philosophical, as well. In what ways is the private sector incapable of planting the seeds of future economic growth — and what, therefore, must the government do? What’s the least amount of spending needed to ensure a decent life for even the most vulnerable citizens? Who is in the best position to pay that money? 

As I argue below, I think the present emphasis of our political elite on reducing the deficit is misplaced, particularly if we refuse to understand its sources, the logical remedies, and the vital role that addressing the present downturn aggressively must play in future deficit reduction.  Republicans are making a series of empirical claims that are demonstrably false.  Democrats -- the White House in particular -- has failed to challenge these claims.  Leonhardt makes a useful distinction between the "deficit we have" and the "deficit we imagine."  The one we 'imagine' is a deficit caused by "waste, fraud, abuse, foreign aid, oil industry subsidies and vague out-of-control public spending."  This view is fueled by the hyperbolic (and false) claims of the Tea Party wing of the GOP that President Obama has massively expanded the size of government, threatening the very existence of American capitalism.  The 'deficit we have' is caused by the world’s highest health costs (by far), the world’s largest military (by far), irresponsible tax cuts — and "to pay for it all, the lowest tax rates in decades."  One might also add in decades of wage stagnation for most American families.


The end result is that we continue to avoid the philosophical issues raised above, relying instead on demonstrably false assumptions about government spending, taxation, job growth, and the relationships between them.


Of course, we could just do nothing, too, couldn't we?  Take a look at the CBO's long-term budget outlook, below:





If Congress lets the Bush tax cuts expire (or offsets their extension in some way), implements the Affordable Care Act as scheduled, and makes or offset the Medicare cuts prescribed by the 1997 Balanced Budget Act — which CBO calls the “extended baseline scenario” — the national debt will be totally manageable, as Ezra Klein points out.  If Congress extends the Bush tax cuts with no offsets, repeals ACA and its cost controls, and protects doctors from Medicare cuts without making up the savings elsewhere (the 'alternative fiscal scenario'), then the national debt goes out of control.


Is government spending killing jobs, as Rep. Boehner and others assert?   If public spending were financed by large tax increases or high interest rates, this position might be reasonable.  But the Obama stimuli have involved deficit spending, with interest rates up against the zero-bound.  Given that, there is no reason to think that government purchases of equipment (or labor) destroy jobs, while private purchases don't.  As Alan Blinder has recently pointed out, business investment in equipment and software has been booming, not sagging.  While real GDP grew only 2.3% over the last 4 quarters, business spending on equipment and software jumped 14.7%.  There is no 'crowding out.'  Indeed, the more reasonable position -- take a look at the retraction of spending at the state and local level -- is that in the present environment, budget cuts are killing jobs.  In this environment, the 'crowding out' argument isn't relevant; it seems to be based on ideology rather than evidence.  Worse, the budget cuts open for discussion at the moment tend be from those (discretionary) parts of the government with the best track record of "turning today’s spending into tomorrow’s economic growth," as Leonhardt puts it.  But if one assumes that all public spending is wasteful, we force ourselves to wait (how long?) for some other force to magically generate economic growth.


Republicans argue that cutting the deficit in the near term (exclusively through budget cuts, it appears) will cue the Confidence Fairies, spurring investment, economic growth and job creation all by itself.  Of course, there are plenty of good reasons to doubt this ”expanding by contracting” theory.  David Cameron's Britain cut $180 billion from its budget last year; the economy shrank, and real household income dipped to its lowest level since the 1930s.  We don't have to cross the Atlantic for case studies, however.  Just take a look at our state governments, most of which are forced by their constitutions to maintain balanced budgets.  As study after study has indicated, state-level layoffs and cuts have deepened and prolonged the recession, overwhelming Obama's inadequate stimulus.  At a time when government at all levels needs to jump into the demand breach -- or at least not exacerbate it -- we have seen nothing of the kind.  Dubious GOP complaints of a massive expansion of government under Obama notwithstanding, our problem is very much the opposite.


Bond trader Bill Gross of PIMCO -- hardly a liberal -- essentially made the same case the other day, in a mid-month note to his investors.  Gross criticized the “anti-Keynesians” in both parties who believe “that fiscal conservatism equates to job growth.”  The truth, he says, is just the opposite. “Fiscal balance alone will not likely produce 20 million jobs over the next decade. The move towards it, in fact, if implemented too quickly, could stultify economic growth.”  What is needed, rather, is for government to "temporarily assume a bigger, not a smaller, role in this economy, if only because other countries are dominating job creation with kick-start policies that eventually dominate global markets.”  Deficit reduction "can wait for a stronger economy and lower unemployment. Jobs are today’s and tomorrow’s immediate problem.”


Deficits matter in the long run, but first we must survive the short run.  As Keynes once put it, "in the long run, we are all dead."


One wonders where the GOP thinks employment will come from?  Presumably we can all find work drowning the government in Grover Norquist's bathtub?  Perhaps this is what Schumpeter meant by 'creative destruction.'  Let's burn down the house, and groove on the ruins, man.  Sometime I wonder if they hope that the economic apocalypse that may result from debt default will itself stimulate demand, by causing all of us to party like there is no tomorrow in anticipation of the impending (Ayn) Randian rapture...


Sadly, the Obama Administration appears to have swallowed the idea that the Austerity Angels will soon descend, if only we give them the proper burnt offering.  Last week, several White House officials, including Director of the National Economic Council Gene Sperling, stressed deficit reduction as the primary component of their economic-growth strategy, and repeatedly claimed that reducing the deficit would generate “confidence."


It isn't entirely clear how 'confidence' is supposed to lead to job creation -- particularly when business surveys leave little doubt that hiring is presently limited by a lack of demand, not fears of regulation, taxation, and government spending.  The most recent National Federation of Small Business Confidence Survey starts out like this:

“The proximate cause [of the decline in small biz optimism] is the fact that 1 in 4 owners still reports weak sales as their top business problem. Consumer spending is weak, especially for “services,” a sector dominated by small businesses.”

Dayen usefully points out that since Larry Summers left, Obama's economic team is now fully controlled by financiers and political operatives.  The former, not surprisingly, fear bondholders more than they fear voters; the latter seem to view debt and deficits through a moral lens (rather than an empirical and long-term one), and believe that independents will only respect Democratic administrations that model 'toughness.'  I believe it was Groucho Marx who once described politics as "the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies."  Obviously we have profound long-term deficit and debt issues.  It is unclear to me how near-term austerity -- which will assure us anemic economic growth for years, while limiting our ability to investment in infrastructure and human capital -- can address this.  Indeed, cuts now will make it harder for us to address these issues, not easier.


I still maintain that this crisis has presented us with a great opportunity, a chance to plant the seeds for a new political economy, one that is sustainable in every sense (economically, political, ecologically, morally).  There’s a lot of slack in the economy and borrowing costs are historically low -- if the government financed this borrowing at the 30-year TIPS rates, we’d be looking at an interest rate of 1.79% as of last Friday!


What would those 'seeds' look like?  I'll say a lot more about this in a future post, but for starters:


*  Massive investment in public, universal and high quality early childhood education
*  An infrastructure bank, as Senator John Kerry has proposed
*  Investment in and modernization of our public health infrastructure
*  Real financial reform (see Simon Johnson and Elizabeth Warren)
*  Using tax incentives, regulations and the federal purse to expand the rental and cooperative sectors of the housing market
*  Moving away from sprawl, and racial/economic segregation in our metropolitan areas 


Do you hear that crunching?  That's your political elite, eating your seed corn.

Can capitalism be re-imagined? Or only undone?

William Greider edited a fascinating series in the most recent issue of The Nation, on "Re-imagining Capitalism."  Many of the entries are in keeping with Greider's work in his book The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy.

I'll have commentary on some of the entries in a bit.

FDR and the moneychangers

For my first blog post in 7 years, I am more than happy to give the first word to Franklin Roosevelt.  Above you will find an excerpt from a speech given at Madison Square Garden on the eve of his landslide 1936 re-election.  That year (and in his 1944 2nd Bill of Rights speech), FDR came as close as any major presidential candidate ever has to articulating social democracy in an American idiom.  Of course, he then followed it up with the austerity measures and budget cutting that caused the 1937 'Roosevelt recession,' a mistake President Obama appears to be making too.  FDR then learned his lesson.  Will Obama?

You might also enjoy FDR's June 27th, 1936 speech accepting the Democratic nomination.  It was given at Franklin Field in Philadelphia, just a block or two away from my old digs at Penn:
FDR, Acceptance Speech, June 27th 1936, Philadelphia PA

Two Cheers for Liberalism (August 2007)

The article below was originally posted on The Public Humanist, a blog published by Mass Humanities. I am an infrequent writer on the blog. Enjoy!

So what is American liberalism, and how (if at all) has it changed since the 60’s? Is it truly as irrelevant to our times as the "re-branding" of Senator Clinton and others would seem to indicate? In its broadest meaning, the classical political liberalism that emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries – based upon constitutional government and individual rights – is an intellectual heritage shared by liberals and conservatives alike. It was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, heralding the emergence of corporations and the rapid expansion of wage labor, when today’s liberals and conservatives began to part ways.

The essential difference revolved around their approach to what was called the “social question”: what is to be done about the poverty and insecurity generated by the new economic and social order? Or, to put it somewhat differently, is the unequal distribution of economic power a threat to liberal government? Future conservatives thought freedom was best protected by property rights, contract, and a limited government, and generally denied the existence and relevance of the whole idea of “economic power.” Pushed by social movements as well as theological developments (the Social Gospel for Protestants, and the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum for Catholics), future liberals began to articulate a broader definition of effective freedom, a more robust conception of power, a moral need for social solidarity, and a new role for government.

Modern American liberalism came into its own under Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the thirties and forties. The commonly told political story is that liberalism triumphed in 1936, and in the post-war era shaped a politically dominant “consensus” that wasn’t shaken until the late sixties, liberalism’s “high water mark.” Liberals were never really as dominant as people think; conservatives had limited liberals from the very beginning of what’s understood as the liberal/conservative dichotomy, not suddenly in the 60s. The New Deal coalition patched together by Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 was limited from its inception by the political and racial conservatism of the apartheid South, as well as by a conservative business class that became increasingly active politically in the Cold War era. The ability of liberalism to grapple with the two central dilemmas of 20th century American life – the social question, and race – was severely circumscribed by steady opposition from the very beginning. While one can certainly criticize the limits of liberalism’s reach on these two issues (particularly the latter), one must also properly understand the limits of its grasp.

Pushed by the reborn labor movement, Franklin Roosevelt provided American liberalism’s answer to the social question. Liberalism borrowed its moral sensibilities from the seemingly “unliberal” notions of solidarity and interdependence, but deployed them in the service of liberalism’s essential concern: freedom. Because of the Great Depression, Roosevelt argued, “we have been compelled to learn how interdependent upon each other are all groups and sections of the population of America.” This interdependence convinced Roosevelt that “true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence,” because “necessitous men are not free men.” In an economy dominated by “the often intangible forces of giant industry,” Roosevelt argued in 1938, a person’s “individual strength and wits” cannot guarantee security or freedom any more. More than anything else, Roosevelt argued, Americans want “work, with all the moral and spiritual values that go with it; and with work, a reasonable measure of security” for them and their families. Modern freedom required an opportunity to make a decent living – not just enough to live by, but also “something to live for,” in Roosevelt’s words. American liberalism was a public philosophy of both individual freedoms and social solidarity. Not only were these things not mutually exclusive; they depended upon one another.

The imbalance of economic power in American society, Roosevelt insisted, had led a growing number of citizens to believe that liberty was no longer real. Government must do more than just protect the right to vote; it must also “protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live?freedom is no half-and-half affair.” This would not deny individual responsibility; rather, it would define it in a way that seemed reasonable and fair to people in the real world. Freedom from desperate conditions – security – was thus an essential supplement to political freedom. This was an old idea, deeply rooted in the nation’s founding. It was based on the old republican notion of freedom as "self-government," as articulated by Paine, Jefferson, and many others. The needy lack the independence and security to be self-governing, and thus they are not free citizens.

Roosevelt’s answer to the social question became the centerpiece of a powerful public philosophy that dominated American liberalism into the 1960s. Indeed, throughout the developed West (and Japan) in the decades after World War II, the notion of a “social contract” that democratized wealth and opportunity became widespread, contributing to economic expansion and the growth of a stable and prosperous middle-class. Welfare states were established, embodying a generation’s hopes for universal economic security and protection from the worst of life’s hazards. In the US the G.I. Bill typified this use of Hamiltonian means to Jeffersonian ends, helping to spark a massive expansion of home ownership and college attendance. Economic, tax and social policy, investments in infrastructure (highways, education, and especially housing), and the growth in collective bargaining, were primary factors that helped to broadly distribute the nation’s unprecedented prosperity. This, in turn, provided widespread access to property ownership, education, and mass consumption for millions of white Americans.

Today, liberalism no longer concerns itself with the "social question." Indeed, it has not done so for decades now. It is this, as much as anything, that lends credence to many of the criticisms directed at liberals from all sides. It isn’t that liberalism lacks any kind of moral core, as conservatives assert; nor is it overly individualistic and rights-based, as more friendly critics contend. For much of the 20th century American liberalism was a public philosophy grounded in social solidarity and a moral (and even theological) critique of inequalities of power.

There are many reasons why the social question has dropped out of American political discourse. One could argue, for example, that the institutional and geographic underpinnings of social solidarity have greatly eroded in recent decades, as white Americans decamped to the suburbs, our older cities imploded under the pressure of economic change and racialized neglect, and unions lost their radical edge and then their membership. Only a militarized patriotism seems capable of successfully evoking solidarity today. One could argue that the inability (and frequent unwillingness) of liberals to overcome white resistance to a solidarity that fully included black Americans generated a chastening backlash against all active government. The growing political power of corporations has also played a role, joining with conservatives to fetishize “free” markets and deny that government has any meaningful role to play in shaping the material preconditions of effective freedom.

Historian Robert Dallek cites a comment someone made to Eleanor Roosevelt shortly after her husband’s death: “I miss the way your husband used to speak to me about my government.” Government, even metaphorically, is not the enemy; it is, after all, “our” government. When Senator Clinton runs away from liberalism, she runs away from this bit of hard-won political wisdom. A politics that dissolves the personal connection between citizen and government in favor of an adversarial one threatens to undermine our capacity for discussing and meeting common needs. Like an autoimmune disease, an unreflective hostility to government threatens to turn the protective forces of the body politic against the body itself. As Franklin Roosevelt eloquently put it in 1936, “better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.”

A military draft, part 2

I have received lots of email responses to my previous post, on whether we should consider a military draft. below, i've tried to put together my reaction -- incorporating objections, tweaking arguments, and reconsidering some things. thanks, all of you.

thinking about this issue is tying my moral intestines (and to some extent the real ones) in knots. i did say in my piece that a bush victory (or electoral theft) in november changes things for me with regard to the draft and iraq. as i read emails from others like yourself, i'm beginning to move toward the position that there should not be any kind of draft whatsoever for THIS particular conflict -- but that when it is over (or when the US is out), we've got to have some kind of public reckoning, a real discussion of why this war happened, and how we want to orient ourselves to the rest of the world in the era of terrorism. a draft has to be a part of that discussion, i think.

my great fear with the draft (and part of why i'm so conflicted over it) is that the idiocy of patriotism will just make the draft a source of more cannon fodder for the continuation of the same policies. if our leaders are bent on empire, and they are good enough liars and manipulators of political symbols and the reins of government to fool the American people into drafting its children for more wars of pre-emption and messianic destruction, then all a draft will do is accelerate our journey as a nation and a democracy down into the wormhole. I guess i'm betting, hesitantly, on the American people not being so gullible. or, i'm betting on the ability of those who love peace to persuade those who think peace isn't possible. if we have a draft (or even a public discussion of one), it will vastly increase the pressure on our political figures before, during and after any military adventures. and it won't take years, like it did in Vietnam. information from around the world is too readily accessible today, and far more Americans have a built-in skepticism of war, foreign policy, and our 'elected' leaders today than was the case during Vietnam. Congress is not some Solon-like deliberative body; it is, in the main, a group of rich white cowards. they do understand votes, however. for libertarian reasons alone, the possibility of an impending draft will cause the political sh*t to hit the fan, right quick...

and i do want to address a point a number of folks have raised -- do i have the right to discuss a draft as a possibility, when i am past draft age (i'm 37), and my present and future children haven't reached it yet? well, a future draft would certainly touch me in a concrete way: i spend most of my waking hours with young men and women between the ages of 18 and 24 -- hundreds of them every academic year. I become very fond of many of them; remain in touch with many of them, years after they've left school. they babysit my kids; they provide me joy (and frustration!), and give a great deal of meaning to my life. i'm not blind to the human costs of this. but i feel like we who love peace, and who care to trouble those who would rule over us, are stuck between a rock and hard place. if we have to have a military, and must occasionally go to war, how do we do it? Iraq provides us a ringingly clear example of how NOT to do it. how do we avoid future Iraqs?

i do want to be clear that i am not advocating a draft because i think it will end this war, and thus i'm willing to sacrifice the lives of others for this purpose. I have read some people in the anti-war movement who will bluntly argue for the draft as a means to this end. i do happen to think, from observing american history and american politics, that the launching of future wars will have a totally different process (and may not even happen at all, or as frequently) if war automatically triggers a draft. my reasons for considering a draft really have to do with one question: how should a democracy, with a civilian-controlled military, involve itself in modern war? how can we make war a very last resort for our political leaders, and for those american citizens who like their patriotism drenched in the blood of others? how can we ensure that when we do go to war (or fight to defend ourselves), that the reasons for doing so are publicly considered, and that the burden of doing so isn't placed on the backs of the working-class alone? how can we ensure that their deaths don't become anonymous (they won't even let us see the coffins, for god's sake)? or that the actions they take in places halfway across the world are not taken in our name and again anonymously, inspiring hatred of America that blows back to us years down the line, ensuring the repetition of this cycle of death again?

one of the unintended consequences of even discussing a proposed draft is that it might broaden the realization among americans of just how dangerous, unfeeling, and unaccountable this administration is. i can only hope that we can have that debate, and remove him and cheney from office, without actually having to implement a draft. but while i do see some form of draft in the long-term as something we need to consider, if this Administration is re-elected, and it somehow convinced Congress to initiate a draft to continue its prosecution of the war in Iraq, and its policies of pre-emption and empire more generally...well, i'm going to jail, somehow. in vietnam, LBJ and Nixon continued to throw our young people into the volcano long after they knew we couldn't stop the eruptions. we know we can't stop the eruptions in iraq already, before we even have a draft. it would be morally abhorent to initiate a draft while this president is in place, and without a drastic change in policy. but in the future, we DO need, i believe, to have an open and honest conversation in this country about our role in the post-cold war world, and the place of the military within it.

the larger question that we still have to address somehow is this: if we assume, as i think we unfortunately must, that this nation will fight wars in the future (most of them unjustified, if history is a guide), how can we ensure that the decisions are made democratically, that the full moral cost of a possible war is discussed and considered, and that the burden of war isn't carried by a small, unrepresentative, and relatively powerless minority, as it has been in the past? how can we minimize the frequency of American wars, and increase the possibility of solutions to world problems that are peaceful, just and multilateral? i honestly don't know the answer -- or i should say i don't really like the answer i come up with, which is a draft. how does a democracy keep a civilian controlled military, and fight modern wars when necessary? we can't keep on the way things are going now. something has to change. maybe the answer lies outside of all this -- in campaign finance reform, in building alliances between the peace movement and movements for economic justice, in revolution? i'm desperate. we're desperate.

what answer do i really want to give? that i don't accept the premise of the inevitability of war. but realistically, unless and until people like Dennis Kucinich are running this country, i just don't see that happening. we are a long, long way from the kind of cultural and moral transformation in this country that would be needed for us to choose peace, always and everywhere. i don't think a draft is a magic bullet to stop this war, or any other one. we must keep on writing, talking, marching, and going to jail to prevent our leaders addiction to the use of military force to solve all problems from holding sway. i just think that an equitable draft -- even if it is just a possibility -- will force all of us to decide: do we REALLY want to send our kids abroad to kill and die, because our leaders tell us it is patriotic to do so? if there is inevitably a burden to be carried, who should carry it? most Americans seem to be comfortable allowing a volunteer, professional military carry it, and our politicians to keep us blissfully unaware of the moral costs of that burden. but we can't go on like that. i don't know if a draft will stop it, but a public discussion of it might.

peace

The draft, Iraq, and the role of the military in a democracy (2004)

On the possibility of a draft:

I just came back from hearing a talk by Jonathan Schell, capping a day-long conference on peace and justice sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee here in Providence. the draft came up in virtually every session, and its got me thinking...

as an opponent of the war in iraq, and as a man of the left who is deeply, deeply suspicious both of the viability of military means in pursuit of peaceful and democratic ends, AND of this Administration and its goals at home and abroad, i find myself very conflicted on the issue of the draft.

on the one hand, if it appears (as it does presently, under Bush/Cheney) that the purpose of instituting a draft next year is to better enable the execution and expansion of 1) the policy of pre-emption, and 2) policies based on the assumption that only an American monopoly on global military force (empire, in other words) can provide security and peace...then i will oppose it with every bit of energy, passion and intellect i can muster. 'Starve the beast' may have to take on a different flavor here. Both #1 and #2, as i'm sure everyone reading this knows, are the formally stated pillars of American foreign policy under the current Administration. we might have to somehow throw a monkey wrench into the machine (stop the draft, don't give them the cannon fodder), before it grows too large and inaccessible to be 'monkey-wrenched.' or try to make sure that when the draft does takes place, Bush isn't there to determine how and when our young people will be asked to kill and die...

then again, in an op/ed piece i wrote back before the war started, i argued for a draft.

i have had this discussion with a number of military friends and acquaintances, and all of them have opposed the idea of a draft. why? basically, because they believed that modern war is complex, and should be fought by the 'pros' -- that green draftees will just create a gigantic training headache, making our military cumbersome, instead of quick on its feet (i read 'quick on its feet,' cynically, as a codeword for 'unaccountable to people not in the military').

in the end, i believe that the creation of a professional, all-volunteer military has been bad for American democracy, bad for our foreign policy, and thus bad for countless millions of people around the world who are subject to that policy. in the wake of the vietnam war, when the draft was the focus of so much protest and controversy, many well-intentioned people in Congress and the anti-war movement believed that having a volunteer military would make wars less likely.

this of course has proven disastrously wrong. it has not made American involvement in war less likely. what it has done instead is

1. made American involvement in war more secretive, less transparent
2. greatly strengthened the Imperial Presidency, rather than weakening it
3. removed the decision to go to war from democratic deliberation
4. essentially provided an unaccountable army awaiting its Caesar (who has now arrived)
5. militarized American foreign policy, by weakening public oversight and concern
6. encouraged our leaders to carry out some of their overseas objectives by creating, funding and supporting non-state military actors to do our bidding (Al Qu'eda in Afghanistan being the best example), who have come back to bite us in the butt
7. encouraged our leaders to privatize and outsource military and even diplomatic tasks to private companies beyond the reach of Congress, who are essentially war profiteers -- mercenaries, criminals, really
8. created what is basically an army of economic conscripts, repeating all the errors of the Vietnam-era draft (a class and race skew) without any of the benefits of transparency and public discussion that a wartime draft tends to encourage. do you want to see Bush/Cheney's policy for the working poor? You'll have to travel to Iraq and Afghanistan (and the dozens of other places around the world where our young people are serving) to see it.

one of the things a draft does (theoretically) is ensure that decisions about foreign policy and war take place out in the open, in the bracing air of public deliberation. under a democracy, as long as equality under the law and open access to power exist, citizens do have an obligation to contribute to the common defense (my belief). as long as the draft is fairly administered (as it was not for most of Vietnam), i believe that in the modern world, a draft is an essential part of a civilian-controlled military, which in turn is an essential part of democracy (the 'civilian-controlled' part, that is).

does it rub our libertarian tendencies the wrong way? sure. ironically, however, a universal draft may be a better way to preserve those liberties in the end than a volunteer, professional military, accountable to no one -- other than to Congress, of course, which presently hears only strident and well-funded lobby groups (AIPAC), and defense contractors, on foreign policy and military issues. If millions of Americans are under arms, members of Congress will have little choice but to consider a broader cut of public opinion. can you imagine Congress rolling over as badly as it did in the build-up to this war, if we had a draft (at the time, or in the works)? i can't. at the very least, hearings would have been held to validate or debunk the Administration's case for war, allowing for a real public discussion of whether Bush's radically new plan for American empire is something we want or need. the reality of a draft might have made Bush actually tell the truth from the beginning about the war, or seek international legitimacy for it, or better yet, not launch it at all.

and just in case anyone thinks Vietnam is a counter-example to what i'm saying here, it isn't. popular pressure to pull out of Vietnam was in large part a direct result of the ubiquity (and possibility) of military service among the American middle and working classes. Tom Hayden and Abbie Hoffman didn't force a change in policy. churchmoms, WWII vets, and ordinary Americans worried about the lives of ordinary Americans, and about their own lives, did (and the Vietnamese themselves, of course). a draft doesn't always stop our Presidents from lying about why we need to go to war, but it does make it more likely that the truth will win out eventually.

World War II is an interesting example. while there were some class biases in the draft in World War II (and in the south, racial biases), by and large it was equitably implemented. i submit that widespread participation among the male population in the military during WWII and the decade or so after, had profound (and largely positive) effects.

if you count the peacetime and Korean War drafts, it provided two generations of American men with important experiences that shaped our culture, our foreign policy, and our military in positive ways. the experience of war for a substantial portion of our male citizenry helped to shape broad-based support for the internationalism of American foreign policy during the Cold War, which sought to contain communism, rather than 'pre-empt' it (the former worked eventually; the latter would not have worked, and won't now). It also provided millions of Americans with first-hand knowledge of other countries, other ways of living.

George Carlin once said that 'war is God's way of teaching Americans geography.'

it is of course a truism that those who have seen war will be less likely to support it in the future, but it has some basis in fact. the age group that was consistently most critical (according to polls) of US involvement in Vietnam in the 60's? the WWII generation (not 18-24 year olds, who supported the war in larger numbers than any other age group). the experience of service broadened minds, engendered a sense of national obligation, and encouraged generations of Americans to feel that voting and democratic participation was both their birthright and their obligation (those born in the Twenties, Thirties and Forties vote in higher percentages than any other age group). it also, after the desegregation of the armed forces in the late 40's, gave many Americans their first and only sense of our national diversity -- but also of our commonalities, across lines of race, ethnicity and religion.

the universal draft in WWII played a critical role in the creation of the modern American welfare state, and the post-war middle class. how? by helping to create a sense of common risk and common obligation, it encouraged FDR and Congress to fund the war equitably (through progressive taxation), and to provide returning veterans and their families with some measure of economic and social security upon their return (the GI Bill, creating the first real home-owning, college-educated middle class in American history -- a middle class under siege presently).

when the Iraq war started, we heard a lot of talk of 'supporting the troops.' the premise, of course, was that we lost Vietnam because of noisy dissenters at home, and anti-war protests this time around would lead to the deaths of soldiers, the destruction of military morale, and defeat. that is an inaccurate understanding of Vietnam, but it is also a very limited understanding of the word 'support.' Supporting the troops, at the very least, has to mean not only initiating a public debate and following Constitutional mandates with regard to the declaration of war -- it also means preparing the nation as a whole to join with the soldiers in equally and justly sharing the burdens of a democratically declared war. This means to me, among other things, following past precedent (World War II) and initiating economic and fiscal policies that do this. This would decidedly NOT include a series of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and punishing budget cuts in the programs which provide social and economic security for the American working and middle classes -- who provide most of the soldiers, and build most of our weapons. It also shouldn't mean publicly opposing the use of affirmative action -- a policy that while limited, has been incredibly successful in providing equal opportunity for women and minorities. Our military, disproportionately made up of people of color, is the single greatest institutional example of the effectiveness of it. Apparently it’s OK for W to send lots of minorities to kill and die, but it’s not OK to send them to the University of Michigan.

Supporting our troops also means seeing to it that they have jobs, and the means to re-adjust to civilian life upon their de-mobilization. Where will the compassionate conservative support for our troops be in a few years time, when they come back home, and seek employment, a union contract, a safe workplace, a living wage, a labor market and system of higher education free from racial discrimination? History (as well as W's budget) tells us the support of our troops will fall somewhat short of this. Can this still happen to vets if we have a draft? of course. is it less likely? i believe so. social and economic policies to help vets would then become broadly supported, not just temporary assistance to a specialized class. compare the support for Social Security, which virtually all Americans are entitled to, to the support for welfare, which goes to a small, means-tested and largely invisible group that is powerless to affect policy, and to make convincing arguments for a common interest in their lives.

so i think an argument can be made for instituting a draft, both as a means to other good ends, and as an end in itself. we are fast reaching a point of no return in this country.

we can choose empire, or we can choose democracy.

we can't have both. if democracies are going to fight wars, as occasionally they must, they must have a means of waging war that bears some resemblance to the fundamental values and institutions on which democracy is based. as imperfect as it is, a draft is the best means we've come up with.

war, as jimmy carter said, is sometimes a necessary evil. but it is ALWAYS an evil. the decision to engage in it must be made democratically, not by a small group of people in Washington, with a messianic religious bent, and a fundamental lack of intellectual curiousity, moral humility, and respect for the rule of law.

"On Patriotism," a talk presented March 26th, 2003 at St. Al's church at Gonzaga University

"On Patriotism," a talk presented March 26th, 2003 at St. Al's church at Gonzaga University, Spokane WA

A 12 year-old school girl in Maine wrote the following essay last year for her 6th grade class:
“The American flag stands for the fact that cloth can be very important. It is against the law to let the flag touch the ground or to leave the flag flying when the weather is bad. The flag has to be treated with respect. You can tell just how important this cloth is because when you compare it to people, it gets much better treatment. Nobody cares if a homeless person touches the ground. A homeless person can lie all over the ground all night long without anyone picking him up, folding him neatly and sheltering him from the rain.

School children have to pledge loyalty to this piece of cloth every morning. No one has to pledge loyalty to justice and equality and human decency. No one has to promise that people will get a fair wage, or enough food to eat, or affordable medicine, or clean water, or air free of harmful chemicals. But we all have to promise to love a rectangle of red, white, and blue cloth.

Betsy Ross would be quite surprised to see how successful her creation has become. But Thomas Jefferson would be disappointed to see how little of the flag's real meaning remains.”

As an opponent of this war, and an American historian, I have spent a great deal of time recently agonizing over what patriotism demands of us. Like millions around this nation, my acts of protest before the war began have inspired accusations of disloyalty; even within the anti-war movement, many have said that all protests must stop once the first shots are fired – that patriotism demands that we support the troops, and unify behind our leaders and our soldiers. I do not agree. Or, at the very least, I do not share the same definition of patriotism, nor of ‘support.’ Indeed, it is my patriotism that drives me to speak louder now that the war has begun. The logic is simple. If it is right to oppose a wrong when it is being publicly contemplated, how much more important is it to do so when it is in the process of commission? “When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice,” Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart.”

It is not those who protest the war who need to justify themselves. The burden of proof is on the makers of war. As former President Jimmy Carter said recently, “war is sometimes a necessary evil. But it is ALWAYS an evil.” I’d like to share my thoughts on war, patriotism and support of the troops with you this morning. This will not simply be a plea for peace; it will also be a plea to stop THIS war. I can’t help that. I apologize if this talk will seem strident to you, but I believe it is important for those who support this war, and those who oppose it, and those who aren’t sure, to understand how much in common we share.
Why do I oppose this war? There are many reasons, but among the most important is my belief as an American in the rule of law over the rule of force. Under the new Bush Doctrine, a bold military strategy of preemptive attacks–including the possibility of a unilateral nuclear first strike– is intended to prevent any state or group of states from challenging our preeminent role in the world. The war in Iraq is the first application of this doctrine. Preemptive war, however, is unequivocally illegal. This prohibition was incorporated into the United Nations Charter after WWII as the basis for a new system of collective security in which no state retained the unilateral right to attack another–with two specified exceptions: self defense and Security Council authorization.

All of us should consider whether this radical new strategy is good for our country and the world, and whether it best represents what this nation stands for. What would happen in a world stripped of the very laws designed half a century ago to protect humanity from the carnage of unrestrained force? Can pure military might really defend us from evil and secure our freedom at the same time? The passage of the USA-Patriot Act should tell us no.

Before it is too late, we would do well to heed Sir Thomas More’s advice on the rule of law in the play “A Man for All Seasons.”

And when the last law was cut down and the devil turned around on you,
where would you hide, the laws all being flat? Do you really think
that you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?

Why do I believe that it is a patriotic act to protest against this war? There are two visions of America, I believe, with deep roots in our history. One precedes our founding fathers and finds its roots in the harshness of our puritan past. It is very suspicious of freedom, uncomfortable with diversity, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous of personal autonomy. It sees America exclusively as a religious nation. It views patriotism as akin to allegiance to God. It secretly adores coercion and conformity. Despite our Constitution, despite the legacy of the Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of Americans and threatens our freedom, in peace and wartime.

The other vision finds its roots in the spirit of our founding revolution, and in the words of the Declaration of Independence. It loves freedom, encourages diversity, embraces reason and affirms the dignity and rights of every individual. It sees America as a moral nation, neither completely religious nor completely secular. It defines patriotism neither as blind obedience to government, nor as submissive worship to flags and anthems, but rather as love of one's country and one's fellow citizens (all over the world), and as loyalty to the principles of justice and democracy.

The admirable obligation human beings feel to their neighbors, their loved ones, and their fellow citizens, all too often becomes confused with blind obedience to government. Most of the evils in world history have come from obedience, not disobedience; from conformity, not from dissent. Unity, stability and order are not the only desirable conditions of social life, even in wartime. There is also justice, meaning the fair treatment of all human beings, the equal right of all people to life, liberty and prosperity. Absolute obedience to law may bring order temporarily, but it may not bring justice. And when it does not, patriotism may require us to disobey the law; and citizens may protest, may rebel, may cause disorder, as the American revolutionaries did in the eighteenth century, as antislavery people did in the nineteenth century, as Chinese students did in the last century, and as anti-war protesters are doing now.

It is this second vision which is my vision, my patriotism. It is the vision of a free society. We must be bold enough to proclaim it, and strong enough to defend it against all its enemies, even during wartime. When he spoke out against the Vietnam war, Martin Luther King explained his protest simply: “I criticize America because I love her. I want her to stand as a moral example to the world.” If we do not speak out in protest, King continued, “we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.” With Dr. King, I claim, without pretense or apology, a place in the long and honorable tradition of those who demand that American ideals apply to all and oppose the efforts of those, from whatever quarter, who try to reserve them for privileged groups and ignoble causes. The most effective way to love our country, I submit, is to fight like hell to change it. Through most of U.S. history, this brand of patriotism was indispensable to the cause of social change. As the poet Langston Hughes wrote, "Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed. Let it be that great strong land of love where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme; that any man be crushed by one above."

Given this vision of patriotism, what does ‘support the troops’ mean to me? First, supporting the troops means preparing the nation as a whole to join with the soldiers in equally and justly sharing the burdens of a democratically declared war (though this is not, as of yet, a ‘declared’ war). This should include an ongoing public debate over the rightness, the wrongness, and the feasibility of this war. This means to me, among other things, following the precedent of WWII and initiating economic and fiscal policies that call on all of us to sacrifice, and that support the troops and their families. This would decidedly NOT include a series of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and punishing budget cuts in the programs which provide social and economic security for the American working and middle classes -- who provide most of the soldiers, and build most of our weapons.

Second, Supporting our troops means seeing to it that they have jobs, and the means to re-adjust to civilian life upon their de-mobilization. Recently, the Republican majority on the House Budget Committee voted for $25 billion in cuts in the Department of Veterans Affairs budget, and a $204 million cut in the Impact Aid program that supports the education of soldiers' children. 163,000 veterans of the Gulf War continue to suffer from largely unaddressed illnesses from exposure to the fall out from destroyed chemical weapons, ammunition depots, oil fires, depleted uranium and experimental drugs. I question where the compassionate conservative support for our troops will be in a few years time, when they come back home, and seek employment, a union contract, a safe workplace, a living wage, and a labor market and system of higher education free from racial discrimination. History (as well as the President’s budget) tells us the support of our troops will fall somewhat short of this, unless we speak up for them. Supporting the troops doesn’t mean abject silence. It means seeing them as real human beings, with families, with fears, with rights, with opinions, and with moral consciences which will be stretched to the limit by the nature of modern war. And as human beings who will hopefully live long lives upon their return.

Last, and most important: supporting the troops means speaking up on their behalf, and demanding that our elected representatives do so as well. The men and women in our armed forces are duty-bound to follow the orders of our commander-in-chief. That is their job; it is their citizenship duty, and they should be honored and respected for fulfilling it, in an age when too many of us see democracy as a spectator sport. I salute them for their sacrifice on behalf of our nation. I thank them for their willingness to risk their lives. Even as I praise our servicemen and women, however, I regret that the President of the United States has ordered them to start a preemptive war fought without international support. A preemptive, unilateral war is unworthy of the honor and tradition of the U.S. military. Our armed forces should not be invading and occupying other countries. In a democracy, it is we the people that send them to war; it is we, the people, who choose when to bring them home. They die in our name, and they kill in our name. To attempt to cut off public discussion once the war starts – or even to question whether the public has any legitimate say at all – both undermines our essential values, and jeopardizes our soldiers far more than any protest ever could. We cannot shirk this responsibility, nor can we allow others to fulfill it for us. We must speak up for the soldiers, regardless of what we think about the war itself. Do you want to know how to support the troops in wartime? Do not be a cheerleader. Be a citizen. Speak up for them, in all their diversity. When we silence any of us, we silence them as well.

The idea of 'support our troops' is troubling for those who oppose this war, because it is being used by many to hammer dissenting voices into silence. Given my definition of support above, I intend to get louder, not quieter, once the war begins. It is my patriotic duty to do so.

I would like to conclude with the words of Mark Twain:

“Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catchphrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country- hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.”