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9/30/2022

Roughly 400 years ago, Copernicus and Galileo (and a few others) insisted that our (i.e. European culture’s) understanding of the cosmos was out of kilter with what they observed. The Biblical conception put the Earth as the starting point of everything. This “geo-centric” model was certainly consistent with that of other ancient cultures, but the Bible made it orthodoxy within the West of what we call the “early modern” era. There were some disputes over this new-fangled idea. The Catholic Church of that time was especially rigid, feeling the pressures from Luther and what we call the Protestant revolution of the 16-17C. Eventually, however, they came around to accept what was plainly observable and repeatable in terms of how planets moved and other astronomical phenomena. The only thing that made sense was that the Earth moved around the Sun. It wasn’t until later that astronomers developed theories and demonstrated how the Solar System fit into the Milky Way (18C) and that the Milky Way was part of something much larger (our awareness of things outside our galaxy is not much more than a 100 years old). As the picture illustrates, we now understand our (relative) physical location in the universe.

A bit over 200 years later, Darwin knocked humanity off its perch again, revising the model of how we fit with other plants and animals in the world. Again, we were no longer the starting point (as in Genesis), but were one of millions of species that developed (evolved) over millennia into our current state. One of the ideas that the 20C will likely be known for in the future is how various thinkers used “modern science” to revive ancient beliefs about the relation of humanity and the rest of nature. Once again, we were “ordinary,” just part of the bigger picture. We refer to the “Gaia hypothesis” and “ecosystems” to reflect our awareness that neither the universe nor the world is NOT just about us.

Other scientists in the first part of the 20C further torqued our understanding of how we fit. Einstein’s relativity theory (1905, 1915), Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle (1927), and Godel’s incompleteness theorem (1931) said, respectively:
* There is no fixed understanding of the universe; all our observations depend on where we are and how fast we’re moving.
* We can’t even measure both our location and our speed at the same time
* We can’t prove our way out of whatever epistemological box we’re in.

Even on the “social science” side, anthropologists, led by Franz Boas at Columbia, insisted that we (i.e., the dominant Western culture (again)) had to stop evaluating all other cultures by how they measured up to our practices, history, and values. Hmm, that means that we have to respect others and not look down on them because of their differences from us. Unlike physics and biology, this effort at de-centering is ongoing. Indeed, a fair amount of history work in the last few decades is all about looking at what happened (imperially, internationally, and domestically) without starting from a stance in which we (the dominant Western culture) are patting ourselves on the back. This old style (we call it “Whig History”), made for great self-congratulatory stories in which some combination of God, luck, hard work, and good breeding (don’t get me started) led more or less ineluctably to the present day on (what Churchill called) “the sunlit uplands” of civilization. Lately, when we look at the same series of events without the filters of self-righteousness, perhaps there is less to be smug about. Such are the perils of taking multiple perspectives into account. It’s all very disconcerting.

Wow! It’s no wonder we’re all in existential angst. Life was a lot simpler to understand when we thought we were the center of everything and we could rely on whatever we saw to accurately describe things. Of course, some folks continue to believe that the Bible is the literal truth and reject either its metaphorical power or its place in history (i.e. as the product of humans who wrote down what they understood at the time 2000-3000 years ago). Such is the power of coherence and narrative.

I am one of those who think that the world is understandable and, increasingly, understood; even if I accept the possibility that there may be some “divine” force who set things up. God, as they say, works in mysterious ways; and there’s no reason he/she/it can’t construct creation via evolution or gradually reveal the mysteries of life and the universe one step at a time and arrange for their publication in various scientific journals every month. A good child of the Enlightenment, I subscribe to Kant’s challenge: “sapere aude” (“dare to know”), even as I am aware that I (and Kant, too) am a product of a particular, highly contingent development of human events (aka “history”).

So, just as Einstein’s observer doesn’t have any solid place to stand, I, too, am floating. It’s not entirely comfortable. I have to tolerate relativity, uncertainty, and incompleteness. I have to go forth without the expectation of knowing more than I do now; and make the best of it.

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Beyond Left and Right

9/23/2022

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Human bilateral symmetry is about as embedded source of metaphor as we are likely to find: “on the one hand…, on the other hand….” So, it’s no surprise that many basic dichotomies of life and ideas beyond “black and white” revert to the pair of “left and right.”

In modern political discourse, the left/right framework has become standardized since the debates in the National Assembly of the great French revolution of the late 18C. There was no particular meaning associated with the locational choice; like-minded folks sat with their fellows. It so happened that those more oriented towards change sat to the left of the presiding officer’s chair and those more aligned with the embedded structures (King, Church, nobility) sat on the right.

The nomenclature of political parties (not to mention their policy predilections) as they emerged in the early 19C in the US, Britain, and France varied considerably and was complicated by the rise of socialist/worker/progressive parties later in the century. Globally, a sort of vague consensus emerged about the meaning of these terms, especially given the wide variation in national political histories and groupings around policies and personalities.

Currently, France continues its revolutionary tradition, with the workers/change parties sitting to the left of the President’s chair. However, in Britain, at least, the Government/majority party sits to the right of the Speaker’s chair regardless of party, while in the US, the Democrats sit on the left of the Speaker’s chair. So, we’re past the point of straightforward political geography.

Most of the world uses the left/right distinction as the principal ideological dichotomy, although the terms “liberal” and “conservative” (both words very much in quotes) are more common here in the US. It’s hard to figure out how to categorize “Democrat” and Republican” over time. Radical Republicans opposed slavery and championed the rights of former slaves in the 1860s, but by the 1930s, Democrats were the party of the underclass, pushing for more radical change.

Political groupings such as the “Green” parties (especially in Europe since the 1970s) have pressed for new angles of political classification. With the demise of Soviet Communism in the 1990s, traditional dichotomies in the West have faced (with limited success) the need to redefine themselves. All this occurred well before the Trumpian revival of US nativism/populism hollowed out the GOP to the point of using the epithet “RINO” (Republican in name only) as a dismissive against those who, twenty years earlier, constituted the heart of the party.

In the 21C, new modes of geopolitics, COVID, radical Islam and other terrorists, the incipient climate catastrophe, and dissatisfaction with politic-economic inequality have made clear that traditional labels and mental frameworks make less and less sense. Meanwhile, the media and political commentariat struggle to find the language to describe the positions of individuals and groups that can fit in a twenty-second sound bite.

Semantic chaos is one result. But, more fundamentally, participants, whether elected or electorate, are wandering and wondering how and where they might fit. “Big tent” political parties seemed the norm in the 20C (Rockefeller and Goldwater; Humphrey and Stennis (just to take a couple of pairings from the 1960s), but the tents of both Dems and GOPs are swaying and fraying pretty badly.
This lack of coherence is pushing an even deeper level of change. The idea of the “loyal opposition,” the implicit acceptance of shared political norms—what might be called the social glue of the political system—seem to be dissolving. “Opponents” (especially from the perspective of “Trumpians” (I don’t know exactly what to call them) seem to becoming “enemies.” As such, they are excluded from the tribe and subject to unlimited exercises of power by those who have it. This is a profound change in attitude in the history of US politics. It is redolent of the troubling analysis of Carl Schmitt, whose The Concept of the Political (1932), was an attack on the essence of modern (bourgeois, parliamentary, liberal) structures of domestic power. It’s no wonder Schmitt was aligned with the Nazis on many issues, or with Fascism more generally.

When we hear that “the US is a republic, not a “democracy,” from those of a Trumpish bent, therefore, we have to wonder what kind of distinction they’re trying to make and be wary about the status of those who are not in the “Republic.”

Schmitt’s amoral, free-floating tribalism depends solely on self-definition and the contingent amassing of power. It rejects both ethics and profitability as the basis of domestic order (the precarious balancing of which has been the mission of liberalism for 200+ years). Political parties (at least in the Western, contested, sense and distinguished from the one-party models of Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, and more recent authoritarians) thereby become irrelevant. The efforts of “principled” “Conservatives” (e.g., Liz Cheney, Bill Kristol) to salvage the old guard look to be washed away and even unprincipled conservatives (e.g. Mitch McConnell) are barely hanging on. They, at least, are aware of their problem. Kevin McCarthy and a host of current and wannabe Trumpian pols remind me of nothing so much as a gang of ideological zombies.

As noted above, it’s not as if these groupings had much vitality lately, anyway. Whether Trump stands by in 2024, runs and loses, or runs, wins, and dies; his grip on the GOP is of limited duration. It’s hard to see how it reconstitutes itself, especially since most of the folks with brains have been pushed out.

The Dems have a different set of problems, but they’re more “normal” problems: staleness, inadequate coalition building, and a dearth of leadership among them. Fifteen years ago, Obama came out of pretty much nowhere and solved these problems, at least for a little while. He has no obvious successor (although I kind of like a “Michelle-Buttigieg” ticket).

Whoever tries to stake a claim to leadership in the US will need to devise a new political language. Between frontal assaults and natural obsolescence, the old terms don’t cut it anymore. “Left” and “right” and a whole bunch of others can be consigned, in Trotsky’s phrase, “to the dustbin of history.”

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Journal of a Blog Year.2

9/16/2022

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Two and a half years into the plague of COVID and two years since the start of this blog project. Last year, I used Daniel Defoe’s “Journal of a Plague Year” title to riff on my reflections on the year then past.

By now, the writing of the blog as turned not into a burdensome routine, but a discipline of thinking and writing. Mostly, the mix of history, law, politics, and education has been the same; but I’ve had to pay increasing attention to not repeating myself. I apologize for redundancies (I hope at least for consistency), but with more than a hundred entries under by belt, I hope I may be excused for the occasional lapse.

By now, you are likely familiar with my wry/acerbic style, including a few quirks like using multiple phrases/separated by slashes/rather than commas and an aversion to spelling out “century.” These are benefits of not having a copy editor with a slavish insistence on the Chicago Manual of Style. I’ve tried to keep footnotes to a minimum, too.

One highlight of the year was my 50th high school reunion, which occasioned some serious thoughts about the pace and path of my life and on how I try to comprehend the passage of time—not in the abstract, but as the sum of me so far.

COVID has certainly demonstrated a variety of historical adages about uniqueness, contingency, and continuity. Putin’s misadventure in Ukraine has demonstrated (again) Hegel’s comment that “The only thing we can learn from history is that people don’t learn from history.”

Still, I hope we can learn from Historians!

I know I can learn from you, so keep the comments coming.

Here’s the summary of the year:

Date   Title: Subject
9/17/21   A Few Good History Books: 10 great reads for smart general readers
9/17   Recalling Democracy: Why California’s electoral recall system is a failure
9/24   Big Picture: Historical Frameworks
10/1   Names and Places: How geographic names are culturally imperialistic
10/8   The Pace of Science: Patience in an age of miracles
10/15   Me First: The “trickle-down” illusion
10/22   Monopoly Power: Regulating big business to keep the government in power
10/29   Existentialism: Coping under dire threats
11/5   America as an Empire: The limits of our adherence to democracy
11/12   Fragility and Sclerosis: Our precarious modern culture
11/19   US Mail: Improving the postal system
11/26   Western Civ: Why the old standby history course doesn’t work anymore
12/3   Welfare State: Who takes care of us?
12/10   Brexit II: UK shoots itself in the foot; surprised it can’t walk
12/17   Non-Geographic Districts: Where you live shouldn’t determine how you can vote
12/24   Lysistrata: Opportunities for radical action
12/31   Pascal’s Wager: You bet your life (everyday!)
1/7/22   Rights and Responsibilities: The need for social and constitutional balance
1/14   Age Expectancy and Horizons: Better health has changed how we see the world
1/21   Nationalism: The bugbear of modern politics
1/28   A Few Good SF Books: Some fun and provocative reads from the future
2/4   Elbridge’s Progeny: The apparent irresistibility of gerrymandering
2/11   Ungovernability: Do we take societal success for granted?
2/18   Biggest Problem: Where to start for constitutional reform
2/25   Ukraine: Putin’s evil folly
3/4   Construction Zone: Does nation-building work?
3/11   This Means War: How do we define war in the 21C?
3/18   Limits to Growth: Sometimes, more is less
3/25   Little Brother is Watching: A bigger threat to privacy
4/1   Middle Kingdom: China’s perspective on the world
4/8   Failed States: Why the European political model often doesn’t work
4/15   A History of the Future: The way we think about the future has changed over time
4/22   In the Shadow of History: Don’t just read the historical headlines
4/29   Social Darwinism: The abuses of good science
5/6   Revival of the Fittest: What’s worth keeping after the apocalypse
5/13   [omitted]: Blogus interuptus
5/20   Denial: Can we handle the truth?
5/27   The Meaning of 50: How to use a high school reunion
6/3   Sound Tracks: The music of your life
6/10   Public Opinion: How do we know what “the people” think (before polling)
6/17   Games Historians Play: Why I use games in history classes
6/24   The Meaning of 50 (Part II): Post-hoc reflections on the Reunion
7/2   Rights and Wrongs, Roe and Wade: Finding a solution to the uncompromisable
7/9   Inequality: How to read Thos. Jefferson
7/16   Inequality (Part II): How to read Thos. Piketty
7/23   Wonders of Modern Medicine: Gratitude and frustration
7/30   Precedential Seal: Why are we fixated on history?
8/5   Smith, Sieyes, and Darwin: 3 thinkers who created modernity
8/12   Outta’ Sight: What you can’t see can hurt you
8/19   Military Economics: War is (crazy expensive) hell
8/26   How is Now: My upcoming course on modernity
9/2   State of the States: Do we really need our 50 states?
9/9   Post-Boris: The UK is really Trussed-up

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Bye, Bye, Boris!

9/9/2022

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Well, the Brits don’t have Boris Johnson to kick around anymore. And, unlike Richard Nixon, the originator of the phrase, hopefully he will not have a comeback to plague Britain and the rest of the world again.

Yes, it’s time for my annual commentary on the state of the Union (aka the United Kingdom of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) cobbled together beginning in the 15C and teetering on the brink of dissolution.

In my post a year ago, I decried Johnson and the Conservative Party for the incredible feat of three increasingly awful Prime Ministers. The chain has now been extended to four, with Liz Truss stepping in. Even Boris had style and chutzpah and an Eton education. Truss seems to lack these and even what pathetically passed for integrity in the Johnson administration. Originally a “remainer” (i.e., anti-Brexit), she dutifully switched and, as Johnson’s Foreign Minister, has been as hard-nosed as most in the on-going effort at quasi-extrication.

Speaking of which, Brexit has proved to be a disaster, with the impact on the UK economy already running at 5% of GNP and no clear solution to the Northern Ireland conundrum, much less the bottlenecks in transport to France and a host of other bureaucratic SNAFUs. Johnson’s Brexit fudge (to pretend that he wasn’t de facto abandoning the loyal Northern Ireland Protestants who (for reasons unclear other than habit) would rather be with England than with the EU) would only work if the Brits kept quiet and let the Northern Irish continue their relatively successful economic integration with the Irish Republic. But no! Johnson (and Truss) have insisted on “principle,” baldly asserting that they would never cut off the Orangemen. So, they propose to unilaterally change the deal they signed with the EU and if the Northern Irish economy gets a further hit and Britain’s lengthy history as a champion of the rule of (international) law gets tossed too; so be it.

The broader economic impact of Brexit of being cut off from easy access to continental markets is a self-inflicted, unforced error has been compounded by COVID and the energy/food inflation which Britain now faces (much worse than ours). You might blame Putin and the little coronavirus buggies for these crises, bur Brexit weakened the country socially and economically (not to mention skewing the politics) to such a degree that the resilience that might have dealt with these externally-caused problems was already exhausted.

Underneath all this is the fact that Britain has been getting by on its history since WWII. Its long-term decline in politico-military terms has been well recognized for decades. At least their EU membership (1973-2020) helped keep the economy reasonably well-off and allowed for a graceful slide into a second-class “has-been” Euro status.

Fundamentally, the economic problem is quite pervasive and not really reparable. At the end of the day, all national economies rise and fall on their own productivity. For centuries, the British (as well as other Euros, the US, Russia, etc.) boosted their economies on the backs of the low-cost land, commodities, and labor of others (usually of a darker hue). The Brits spent a good chunk of their accumulated pile paying for WWI and WWII. Following which, being overdrawn morally as well as financially, they proceeded to dis-imperialize as well. Neo imperialism kept things going for a while, but now, fundamental economic factors such as factor convergence and the revival of the Chinese, Indian, and other Asian economies has left the Brits entirely to their own devices.

All of this is reasonably clear now, in the 21C. I recently came across, however, a rather prescient essay, written by none other than George Orwell in 1947. Orwell was plumping for a socialist integration of Europe, but in diagnosing the problem faced in the immediate post-WWII years, observed that “the European peoples, and especially the British, have long owed their high standard of life to direct or indirect exploitation of the coloured peoples.” But he noted, it was hard to see how British workers could enjoy the middle-class lifestyle to which they aspired “if we throw away the advantages we derive from colonial exploitation.” (He was vehemently anti-imperialist as well.) Whether “thrown away” or forced to divest their empire, the Brits ended up without and they’ve been scrambling ever since.

As I noted some time ago in this blog, this is the (or, at least one) meaning of globalization. Market integration mans that things will average out and the relatively luxurious lifestyle (on a global scale) of even “working class” people in the UK cannot be maintained under the pressure of this factor convergence. The same is true, broadly speaking, in the US also.

The British response has been a curious mix of trying to run away from the complications of globalization while maintaining the image/legacy of their former globe-straddling selves. The theory of Brexit was to reassert control; i.e. they wanted to be “big fish in a small pond.” But they’ve tumbled to two problems: 1) they can’t be the imperial masters anymore, even within the UK, what with Northern Ireland gravitating towards the Irish Republic and the Scots continuing to make noises about an independence referendum; and 2) their former economic advantages are evaporating even faster. The industrial revolution was kick-started with British coal and you can’t burn that in the 21C (even if the economics worked). Maritime trading empires are run from everywhere on (Greek or Liberian-registered) ships built in Korea, carrying Chinese goods and financed by global capital markets.

Beyond the strength of its cultural/linguistic inertia, England would be pretty much of a jumbo-sized Belgium (except even Belgium is in the EU). So, it doesn’t look good; although, to be fair, the Dutch have managed pretty nicely even though their global heyday was in the 17C.

We might wish Boris well, but the blond mop and fine phrase have worn out their welcome. The long-term problems are not the fault of the recent batch of Tories. Truculent Truss will have her day, but she’s got no clue how to get to 2025, much less figure out how to lead her people (or even her party) gracefully along a decline into ordinariness. Even Charles is gritting his teeth, since he is taking the crown just as it all comes crashing down. Hail Britannia! God Save the King!

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State of the States

9/2/2022

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Early last year (021921), I did a piece on “Democratic Federalism,” decrying the anti-democratic configuration of the Senate. It was part of my ongoing series of comments on the US Constitution. I argued that even though the States were an essential part of the history of the creation of the country, they are the wrong basis for choosing federal representation. Today, I argue that regardless of history and current national politics, they play an important role in our constitutional structure and need to be not only continued, but strengthened.

One of the great risks of modern civilization is the overconcentration of power in the government. Indeed, most of the 20C was taken up with fighting wars against two forms of totalitarianism: Fascism and Soviet-style Communism. A combination of bureaucratic inertia and accretion, technologically-driven scale economies, national security angst/paranoia and the attractions of the “welfare state” have made modern government increasingly powerful and intrusive in virtually all aspects of modern life. Just because many conservatives have gone off the deep end in terms of their opposition to big government doesn’t mean that their core concern should be discarded. George Orwell’s 1984 was an early warning of the tendency of most forms of the modern state (i.e. “state” in the generic sense of a polity, not the US flavor of a particular lower level government (for which I will use capitalized “State”) to converge. Orwell’s Big Brother” operated in similar ways in all three of the countries he described.

In the US model, our principal defense against this risk is the “separation of powers” and the deployment of governmental powers across three branches with “checks and balances.” But also embedded in the Constitution is the idea that the national government remains limited to the specific powers delegated to it by the document and that the powers not specified remain with the People and the (originally 13) States. Since the original Constitution was created by representatives of independent States, this makes sense: the people created the States and the States agreed to delegate a chuck of their authority to this new federal government.

200+ years of changes in how the world works has flipped this model. Lincoln and the Civil War stand for the proposition that it is the nation that is primary, not the States; and the nature of commerce, regulation, and global security issues have taken care of the rest. However, other than the overriding of the power of the States in the Civil War Amendments (13, 14, 15), we still have a Constitution that pretends that the States are in charge.

A better constitutional path forward would be to recognize the primacy of the federal government, but expressly preserve and enhance the powers of the States. This would provide not only a bulwark against over concentration of power at the national level, but would support one well-established benefits of our current structure: the States as “laboratories of federalism.” The benefits of getting new ideas generated from a variety of sources, and trying them out at a relatively small scale has been repeatedly demonstrated, whether in terms of taxes, regulations, or social policy.

The bigger challenge is to define the sphere of State authority and protect it from federal intrusion, even while ensuring the preservation of individual rights enshrined in the federal constitution. Some policy areas can be most effectively handled at the state level, adapting to local needs and circumstances. I don’t want to have to deal with Washington, D.C. when I have pothole on my street, or get a building permit, or figure out what should be taught in local public schools. Indeed, most of what States do now is in accordance with this approach. However, both education and housing seem to have been taken over by the national government without much clear benefit. Usually, the regulation comes in the form of conditions on a federal transfer payment, but the effect is the same. It would make sense to push the federal government out of much of the operational policy for these areas and, as well, cut federal taxes and let the people of a State decide how much to spend (and tax) in these areas.

Indeed, one insidious effect of our current system is that States have been able to get away with poor tax policies because they get an array of federal subsidies. This is bad economics and undermines the importance of State-level political culture.

It would be important to make clear that the delineated sphere of State responsibility would not be subject to federal intervention, other than to protect Constitutional rights. It would also take some work to clearly demarcate between the two jurisdictions at an operational level in whatever spheres were carved out.

From a theoretical perspective, instead of the current model we would have a system which recognized that the power flowed from the People to both the States and the federal government, not (as now) only indirectly to the federal government via the States.

Another interesting benefit would be in the configuration, administration and operation of State governments. Work-arounds, such as the Port Authority of NY & NJ show that our current metropolitan areas demand coherent management. The economic and cultural lives of people in Gary, Indiana, or Arlington, Virginia, or Vancouver, Washington, or East St. Louis, Illinois all attest to the deleterious effects of being stuck with our current state boundaries. Our current dependence on State configurations as the basis for Congressional representation has stifled the logical arrangement of the States in terms of meeting the needs of the population as it is distributed in the 21C. Splitting overly large States (e.g., California, Texas and Florida) and reconfiguring around our modern urban-centered way of life could also improve how States need the needs of their citizens.

All of this is interesting and radical and worth thinking about. But if we’re going to have an underlying constitutional arrangement that meets our needs, rather than those of our 18C predecessors, this should be part of the mix.

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Condemned to Repeat It --
Musings on history, society, and the world.

I don't actually agree with Santayana's famous quote, but this is my contribution to my version of it: "Anyone who hears Santayana's quote is condemned to repeat it."

Centric

Beyond Left and Right

Journal of a Blog Year.2

Bye, Bye, Boris!

State of the States

Condemned to Repeat It --Musings on history, society, and the world.

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Condemned to Repeat It --
Musings on history, society, and the world.