Can we regain our mojo?

I like Thomas L. Friedman's style of patriotism. Here he is on Obama clinching the Democratic nomination.

Every once in a while, America does something so radical, so out of the ordinary — something that old, encrusted, traditional societies like those in the Middle East could simply never imagine — that it revives America’s revolutionary “brand” overseas in a way that no diplomat could have designed or planned.

I just had dinner at a Nile-side restaurant with two Egyptian officials and a businessman, and one of them quoted one of his children as asking: “Could something like this ever happen in Egypt?” And the answer from everyone at the table was, of course, “no.” It couldn’t happen anywhere in this region. Could a Copt become president of Egypt? Not a chance. Could a Shiite become the leader of Saudi Arabia? Not in a hundred years. A Bahai president of Iran? In your dreams. Here, the past always buries the future, not the other way around. …

Yes, all of this Obama-mania is excessive and will inevitably be punctured should he win the presidency and start making tough calls or big mistakes. For now, though, what it reveals is how much many foreigners, after all the acrimony of the Bush years, still hunger for the “idea of America” — this open, optimistic, and, indeed, revolutionary, place so radically different from their own societies.

In his history of 19th-century America, “What Hath God Wrought,” Daniel Walker Howe quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson as telling a meeting of the Mercantile Library Association in 1844 that “America is the country of the future. It is a country of beginnings, of projects, of vast designs and expectations.”

That’s the America that got swallowed by the war on terrorism. And it’s the America that many people want back. I have no idea whether Obama will win in November. Whether he does or doesn’t, though, the mere fact of his nomination has done something very important. We’ve surprised ourselves and surprised the world and, in so doing, reminded everyone that we are still a country of new beginnings.

Perhaps China won't take over after all.

Edge has received notice from the publisher that acquired PRC Chinese language rights to What Is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable that the book 'can't be published in China because some content is not accordant to Chinese regulations, for example, some content about religious, soul.' [sic]

Alan Wolfe's review of Jean Bethke Elshtain's Sovereignty: God, State, and Self

Here's how Alan Wolfe begins his review of Jean Elshtain's Sovereignty: God, State, and Self.

Who gets the final say? This simple question is at the heart of religion, politics, and psychology. If I am a believer, God's decisions are authoritative: If he says that I shall not kill, I am obligated to follow his commands, fallen into sin though I may be. Political leaders, by contrast, claim that their word ought to be the last word: If I receive a tax bill from the government, pay it I must, or I risk going to jail. No to both, says the radical individualist: Modern psychology teaches that I am the captain of my own ship, quite capable of steering it in any direction I choose.

Elshtain thesis is apparently that we have moved first from letting God be in charge to letting the state be in charge and then to insisting that we are autonomous beings. Elshtain claims that we would be better off letting God be in charge. Wolfe criticizes Elshtain's arguments, claiming that she paints too rosy a picture of life when God was in charge and too dreadful picture of life when we think of ourselves as autonomous.

What surprises me is that Wolfe doesn't mention the possibility that this isn't a choice. If there is a God then God is in charge whether we like it or not. Since as far as I am concerned there isn't, this isn't an option for us. Whether or not to let the state be in charge is also not an option. Deciding to let the state be in charge is a decision of an autonomous being. So it's still the individual who makes the choice. Wolfe apparently got so carried away with Elstain's distorted (according to him) view of history that he missed the main issue. (If the review accurately reflects the contents of the book, then Elstain appears to have missed it also.)

Iran vs. Israel

Thomas Friedman has a way of putting things. Here are parts of his column comparing Israel and Iran.

In the first quarter of 2008, the top four economies after America in attracting venture capital for start-ups were: Europe $1.53 billion, China $719 million, Israel $572 million and India $99 million, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. Israel, with 7 million people, attracted almost as much as China, with 1.3 billion. …

Iran has invented nothing of importance since the Islamic Revolution, which is a shame. Historically, Iranians have been a dynamic and inventive people — one only need look at the richness of Persian civilization to see that. But the Islamic regime there today does not trust its people and will not empower them as individuals.

Of course, oil wealth can buy all the software and nuclear technology you want, or can’t develop yourself. This is not an argument that we shouldn’t worry about Iran. Ahmadinejad should, though.

Iran’s economic and military clout today is largely dependent on extracting oil from the ground. Israel’s economic and military power today is entirely dependent on extracting intelligence from its people.

Israel’s economic power is endlessly renewable. Iran’s is a dwindling resource based on fossil fuels made from dead dinosaurs. [Emphasis and paragraph break added.]

Cult of Deception

Normally I find Maureen Dowd too predictable. But I like the way she introduces her discussion of Scott McClennan's book in today's column.

Although his analytical skills are extremely limited, the former White House press secretary — Secret Service code name Matrix — takes a stab at illuminating Junior’s bumpy and improbable boomerang journey from family black sheep and famous screw-up back to family black sheep and famous screw-up.

How did W. start out wanting to restore honor and dignity to the White House and end up scraping all the honor and dignity off the White House?

It turns out that our president is a one-man refutation of Malcolm Gladwell’s best seller “Blink,” about the value of trusting your gut.

Every gut instinct he had was wildly off the mark and hideously damaging to all concerned.

It seems that if you trust your gut without ever feeding your gut any facts or news or contrary opinions, if you keep your gut on a steady diet of grandiosity, ignorance, sycophants, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, those snap decisions can be ruinous.

Put a Little Science in Your Life

Brian Green has a nice piece in today's NY Times.

The reason science really matters runs deeper [than cellphones, iPods, personal computers, the Internet, CT scanners, M.R.I. devices, pacemakers, arterial stents, stem cells, genomic sequencing, personalized medicine, longevity research, nanoscience, brain-machine interface, quantum computers, and space technology].

Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding [paragraph break and emphasis added] in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable — a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional.

To be able to think through and grasp explanations — for everything from why the sky is blue to how life formed on earth — not because they are declared dogma but rather because they reveal patterns confirmed by experiment and observation, is one of the most precious of human experiences. [paragraph break and emphasis added] …

Like a life without music, art or literature, a life without science is bereft of something that gives experience a rich and otherwise inaccessible dimension. …

As every parent knows, children begin life as uninhibited, unabashed explorers of the unknown. From the time we can walk and talk, we want to know what things are and how they work — we begin life as little scientists. But most of us quickly lose our intrinsic scientific passion. And it’s a profound loss. …

[One of the most important reasons for this loss is that] in teaching our students, we continually fail to activate rich opportunities for revealing the breathtaking vistas opened up by science, and instead focus on the need to gain competency with science’s underlying technical details.

In fact, many students I’ve spoken to have little sense of the big questions those technical details collectively try to answer: Where did the universe come from? How did life originate? How does the brain give rise to consciousness? Like a music curriculum that requires its students to practice scales while rarely if ever inspiring them by playing the great masterpieces, this way of teaching science squanders the chance to make students sit up in their chairs and say, “Wow, that’s science?” …

Science is the greatest of all adventure stories, one that’s been unfolding for thousands of years as we have sought to understand ourselves and our surroundings. Science needs to be taught to the young and communicated to the mature in a manner that captures this drama. We must embark on a cultural shift that places science in its rightful place alongside music, art and literature as an indispensable part of what makes life worth living.

My question is whether most people will really respond to science as Prof. Greene thinks they will. If you ask, "Where did the universe come from? How did life originate? How does the brain give rise to consciousness?" my guess is that most people will either fall back on a religious answer or say that it's too complicated to think about — and what difference does it make anyway.

I teach a course on computer ethics. Most students don't seem to be interested in such questions as: How should we approach intellectual property? What are the responsibilities of software developers? What is privacy? How much privacy do we want to ensure? Can we ensure it, and if so at what price? What if we can't? Is it every ethical to break into a computer system? Should we fear developing computers that are smarter than we are? or even the more general ethical issues like: Is it ethical to kill one innocent person to save 5 innocent people?

These are not science questions—in fact science stays as far away from these questions as possible. But they raise fascinating issues. Yet in class there is often very little interest in discussing them. This sort of response shows the same lack of intellectual curiosity as I suspect most people have toward the big questions of science.

I'm afraid that Prof. Greene over estimates most people's inherent curiosity. Too many of us are more like George Bush the incurious than Brian Greene the knowledge seeker. (I give George W. Bush credit for one useful achievement, the popularization of the word incurious.)

Is it okay to break the law if the President says it’s okay?

From the ACLU.

That’s the outrageous proposition at the heart of a new spying “compromise” that Republican Senator Christopher Bond is pushing on Capitol Hill.

His goal: to let off the hook telecommunications companies that willfully cooperated with illegal spying.

Senator Bond wants to bury lawsuits filed against telecom companies in a secret court. And, when they get there, he wants cases dismissed if the companies can show that the President gave them a note saying his request for customer information was legal.

He just might get away with it, unless we can convince Congress to reject his proposal.

Tell your representative: Just because the president says it's legal doesn't make it so! Take action now.

Not to mention that we are presumably governed by laws not royal edict.

A Stroke Leads a Brain Scientist to a New Spirituality

There's a nice story in the NYTimes on Jill Bolte Taylor, the brain scientist whose stroke enabled her to experience her right brain almost in isolation. (See also my earlier post about her.) She has become quite a celebrity. Here are some extracts.

“I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world, and the more peaceful our planet will be.” …

Dr. Taylor shows the less mystically inclined … that this experience of deep contentment “is part of the capacity of the human mind.” …

Although her father is an Episcopal minister and she was raised in his church, she cannot be counted among the traditionally faithful. “Religion is a story that the left brain tells the right brain,” she said. …

Her message, that people can choose to live a more peaceful, spiritual life by sidestepping their left brain, has resonated widely. …

On Web sites like evolvingbeings.com and in Eckhart Tolle discussion groups, people debate whether she is truly enlightened or just physically damaged and confused.

A discussion among people seeking enlightenment debating whether Taylor is "truly enlightened or just physically damaged and confused" strikes me as particularly ironic. Taylor's whole point is that it's possible to stop forcing one's view of the world to conform to such rigid left brain categories.

On Misleading Claims That Congressional Budget Plan Calls For "Largest Tax Increase In History"

From CBPP

The President’s [2001 and 2003] tax cuts expire in 2010 because their supporters deliberately designed them that way … Supporters of those measures opted to “sunset” the tax cuts before the end of the ten-year budget window, partly to avoid recognizing the cost of permanent tax cuts. Now, a few years from the tax cuts’ expiration, some of these same supporters are acting as though the tax cuts are already permanent and that any proposal to offset any portion of the cost of extending them is a “tax increase.”

To extend the tax cuts without paying for them — and to attack those who simply seek to require that Congress at least partially pay for any extension of the tax cuts — further heightens the irresponsible fiscal nature of the original actions.

But then we already knew that Republican lie.

The right to marry? What does that really mean?

In the ACLU's newly re-titled "Blog of Rights" Matt Coles, Director, ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & AIDS Project writes the following

From a constitutional lawyer’s standpoint, [the California Supreme Court gay marriage] decision is just about everything we could have hoped for. The Court rules—in general—that sexual orientation is not a legitimate reason to treat gay people differently. In lawyer’s jargon, the court held that sexual orientation is a “suspect” classification, just like gender and race classifications.

The Court also holds that even though history is important in deciding what a fundamental constitutional right is, courts should not respect traditional restrictions on who got to exercise the right in the past.

The Court puts these rulings together and says that since the right to marry is fundamental, denying it to any group of people is highly suspect. Moreover, the Court says, since the law denies gay people the right to marry, this particular exclusion is highly suspect.

I certainly am pleased with the court's decision and have always favored allowing gays to marry. But this reasoning raises a number of questions for me. (I don't have time to read the decision, which might answer my questions.)

What does it mean to say that the right to marry is fundamental? What does the right to marry mean? To which pairs of people is it available? What qualifications, if any, must people satisfy to be permitted to marry? Can any two adults marry? Other than the polygamy restriction, are there any pair of adults who are not now permitted to marry?

What obligations does marriage entail? What rights does it provide?

Basically I'm wondering whether this position says that marriage has nothing at all to do with love and that any two people who choose to enter into the legal marriage relationship have a "fundamental" right to do so?

Why should that right be fundamental? What is so fundamental about it? It is different from any other "right?"

I'm not necessarily objecting to that position, but is that the position of the court? If so, it makes marriage even more of an administrative and legal relationship and removes it even further from notions such as having a sexual relationship, emotional pair bonding, and families.

Do any two people who find the legal relationship of marriage to their advantage have a right to enter into it—in the same way that any two people who find any other legally acceptable contractual relationship to their advantage have a right to enter into that relationship?