Happy Easter: Indict the Pope (!?)

‘Petty gossip’ or crimes against humanity?  You be the judge.

            As Pope Benedict begins his celebration of the holiest days on the Christian calendar he is dogged by public opinion and accusation that may finally bring decades of horror and abuse to the full light of day.  Or not.  The world community – both sacred and secular – wants answers and justice.  Yet the pontiff continues to dismiss the history of abuse by Catholic priests, which is being slowly and painfully revealed, as ‘petty gossip.’  His avuncular scowl is reminiscent of Dick Cheney’s teeth-grinding claims of WMD and Richard Nixon’s famous assertion, “I am not a crook!” – persuasive to true-believers but deeply disturbing to the rest of us.

            While international law will once again prove powerless to wage justice, trumped by politics and powerful religious toxicants, it is the regime to consider the disposition of such issues.  And, paradoxically, it needs to try and fail to continue its development as an essential and durable institution in a world where borders are melting while belief systems – in this case formed by religion – are becoming the new framework of social order. These belief systems – ideologies – are becoming the sticky tendons in the web of social order.  Those that do not comply with international norms and laws must be exposed and made to bear responsibility.  If not, the endemic anarchy of the waning state-centric international system where sovereignty assured impunity for privileged criminals (heads of state) will live on.  Human rights will continue to be distributed unevenly.  Systemic conflict will be the new norm.

            Crimes against humanity as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum,

“are particularly odious offences in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority. Murder; extermination; torture; rape and political, racial, or religious persecution and other inhumane acts reach the threshold of crimes against humanity only if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice.”

So, the questions for the Pope, the Catholic Church, and you as judge are these:

1. Do we have a crime against humanity?  Does sodomy and rape qualify? Are they “particularly odious offences” resulting in the “degradation of one or more human beings”?
2. If yes, were they more than “isolated or sporadic”? Were they “tolerated or condoned” by “a de facto authority”?
3. If yes, can we identify those involved? Who did it? Who “tolerated or condoned” it? Who enabled or concealed the crimes – who are the accessories?
4. Finally, is there a local, state, or federal court that can assert jurisdiction? For that matter, is there any court that can?
5. If none can be found, we have only the International Criminal Court (ICC) to look to, as a court of last resort. But, fortunately, the ICC does have authority to prosecute crimes against humanity (together with genocide and war crimes).  That’s their job.

            Here’s where it gets tricky.  Generally the United Nations refers cases to the ICC after using their investigative resources to form the case.  The Vatican, which is recognized as a sovereign state that happens to be located in Rome, Italy, is not a member-state of the ICC. But Ireland and Germany are, where known victims reside, diocese exist,  and offenses took place (the U.S. is not a member).  Ireland and/or Germany would have to refer the case to the ICC.  The chances of Ireland doing so are nil.  Germany, however, where church members are lined up to resign their membership in the Catholic Church at government offices (a requirement in Germany) and from whence Cardinal Ratzinger – cum – Pope Benedict hails, just might.

            The real court in this case will likely not be the ICC, although justice may yet be done.  As members resign and coffers are drained, somewhere in the Catholic Church the stark brutality of the crimes will be exorcised.  My guess is members of Opus Dei are already contemplating how to save the Church.  To survive and prosper in a world where religion is achieving a renaissance of power will not be lost on its stakeholders.  There are so many more converts to seek, so many more baptisms to perform, so much more power to be had.  In the mean time, I wouldn’t expect Pope Benedict to be traveling far beyond the sovereignty of the .2 square miles of Vatican City.

H.naturals and Destiny

 Natural law – those rules and conditions that are validated by nature and resistant to human manipulation – suggests that the destiny of any civilization is determined within an impervious web of complex variables, which interact in a rhythm beyond the sensory capacity of man.  Among other things, they suggest we control much less than we believe we do.  But, there are some natural laws that include us as actors and offer guidance (if not inspiration) as to how we might succeed.  Ironically (and also naturally), they are ignored under the weight of egotism during times of prosperity, only re-emerging during crisis.  This group of Homo-natural laws (H.naturals) includes a navigational set that offer clues as to how we might better set a course toward success. They include maxims like “You are what you eat,” Your bike, car, motorcycle, plane, (etc.) will travel in the direction you are looking,” and “You will become what you talk/think about.”  They are the fiber in our concept of will.  

            As the current political, economic, and social crisis unfolds, those who understand the H.naturals will do well.  Those trapped in the egotism of yesterday will fail.  What we consume, where we set our sights, and our prevailing narrative will define an identity that will ride H.naturals to a new destiny.  As orator and perennial Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan claimed, “Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved.” Notwithstanding its inherent Homo-centrism, Bryan’s claim recognizes the role man plays within the reality of H.naturals.  He offered these words in the late 19^th century when America emerged as a player on the world stage – after another crisis: Civil War and Reconstruction.  Like then, H.naturals will prevail today; and they apply to all of us, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, or national allegiance.  In other words, H.naturals don’t play favorites; the myth of American exceptionalism provides no surety of success.  Those societies who understand this will be the next great powers.  Those that don’t won’t.

            It is critical then that we Americans consider carefully those matters that define us – that will conflate with H.naturals to set our course.  Here are some suggestions to consider as we re-design our future ... our ameritecture.

1. In the future, national power will be gained referentially; attraction will prevail over coercion.  The United States has the sole capacity via its military might to destroy any and every adversary.  This is a good thing, as long as we don’t use it – as long as we protect the myth behind the curtain of Oz.  Given this perception – cum – reality, it should not be surprising that our adversaries will choose alternative modalities to compete.  As we have seen, some will continue to choose violent means, albeit asymmetrically, through terrorist networks using improvised explosive devices and suicide bombers.  Others will buy our debt and subvert quasi-American institutions by offering more attractive alternatives to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Still others will look to exploit the weakness of our critical infrastructures through cyber-warfare to compromise our communication, power, and water systems. ‘Boots on the ground,’ ‘bombs in the air,’ and ‘nation building,’ will not defeat these efforts.  Ironically, through our predominance, we have rendered them obsolete.  Today’s threats must be met by new means of power.  We can succeed if most of the world sees America as its advocate – as a critical factor in its success.  What Harvard’s Joseph Nye calls ‘soft power’ must be applied through what I have termed ‘enlightened altruism’ to defeat our adversaries. The people, from Xinjiang, to Naypyidaw, to Peshawar, to Abuja, to Caracas must all believe their future is better assured by having a positive relationship with the United States.  They must have a basis of attraction to grant power to America referentially. They must be our new advocates – they must have a vested interest in our security.  Every time we destroy another village, temple, or city our effective power declines and our national security is compromised.  This is not peacenik talk. This is the new global realism.
2. Government is not the answer, people are.  Reagan had it half right: “government is not the answer,” but neither is it “the problem,” unless we allow it to be.  We make it the problem by the abdication of personal responsibility.  We ask it to do for us what we should be doing for ourselves.  Government’s role should be re-cast – limited – to providing basic public goods like security and the rule of law; to protect us from external threats and internal mischief.  While some government programs are arguably public goods, they diminish and at times subvert people and their communities.  And, they collapse under the corruption of government operatives.  Moreover, too many laws protect civil predators like health insurance companies and Wall Street grifters.  We must reject the constellation of false choices partisanship promotes. For example, healthcare is neither a right nor a privilege; it is a public good. We are all better off when our neighbors are healthy too.  But, it is a public good that is fiscally unsustainable under the legacy structure imposed by our government.  It is a prime example of a failed distribution system – one that can be fixed only if our leaders muster the political will to breakup the cartel that is strangling families and communities and return the power of choice to the people.
3. Openness and inclusion is the soul of American liberty; fear is the tool of tyrants. America is the most open society in the world.  Both our beauty and warts are on display for all to see.  Notwithstanding frequent embarrassments, this allows a fluidity of ideas and opportunities unmatched in the global system.  We must fight to maintain this virtue in the face of those who seek to curtail it for their personal political, economic, or social benefit. Today, many extremists from many venues are attempting to close our society invoking fears of security, religious subversion, and racial or ethnic conflict.  As with all bullies, fear is their weapon, currently amplified in an environment of crisis.  They use glittering generalities and moronic simplicities while twisting historical fact to gain influence and serve themselves.  They claim they are patriots, but like the wolf in a sheep’s headdress, they are the enemy within.  They must be identified and exposed for what they are; they are America’s biggest threat.  Common targets for their ire are immigrants, although race and religion may be their true concerns.  While all historical data suggests immigrants are the lifeblood of the American system, these extremists would like to slit America’s throat with their jingoistic, ethno-centric, fear-based, vitriol.  Each of us must stand up to sit them down.
4. If we do nothing else well, we will succeed if we do education well. In a global system intelligence trumps geography, demography, and natural resources.  Intelligence is everything. But, we must acknowledge there are different types of intelligence, each making their particular contribution to civil success.  Currently, there is significant and justified hand wringing over test scores in math and science as well as painful cuts in resources due to our financial crisis.  But if we compromise our capacity to generate future intelligence – comprised of both critical and creative skills – we will lose our competitive advantage and fail.  Budget cuts today are reflexively aimed at non-quantitative, non-analytical courses as if math and science is enough to face future competition in a global economy.  This is a potentially tragic mistake, especially considering our legacy-advantage of invention and innovation.  Many nations perform better at math and science, but none exceeds the United States in the creative application of intelligence.  We don’t need to be like everyone else.  We need to be like us.  We need to continue to invest in the engineer and the artist.  It is through both these skill-sets – the analytical and creative – that America will continue to lead the world.  We must apply both competition and cooperation – ‘coopetition’ – to leverage our intelligence and assure our future success.

          We can’t control H.naturals, but we can make wise decisions on crafting our identity to maximize the likelihood of civil success.  We can summon our heritage of liberty and diligently protect our capacity to out-innovate the world if we take care to suppress those who have succumbed to fear and oppression.  We must understand that the world changes every day and that our old methods – particularly in the projection of power – may not serve our future interests.  Above all, we must take personal responsibility, possessed of both courage and humility, to make our world (however large or small) better every day. Our destiny depends on it.

           

The Next Neo: Neo-fascism

Fascism is characterized by three core elements: concentration of power, hyper-nationalism, and right-wing conservative political and social views.  Fascists consider every domain of social order – security, economics, education, religion, and politics – as malleable in whichever direction supports the imposition of their will.  Coercion is the lifeblood of fascism. Whether accomplished through overt violence or oppression of any modality, individualism – human and civil rights – are its enemy.  Identity is imposed, as a reflection of the values of elite ideologues who seek power in what they view as perilous times, when social and political trends are threatening their nationalistic disposition.  Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini were perhaps the world’s most famous fascists, but a few radical American neo-conservatives appear to be leaning toward the fascist model more and more everyday, led by Dick and daughter Liz Cheney, John Yoo, and William Kristol. 

            This new small group of emerging neo-fascists, might be easily dismissed as a sideshow that should be considered as little more than fodder for the entertaining rants of late night, quasi-news programs like Jon Stewart’s Daily Show except for the fact they are intelligent and highly connected to the existing political apparatus of this country with plenty of sympathetic followers in the media.  In addition, they have the support of Christian nationalists (aka the Religious Right), akin to Mussolini’s relationship with the Vatican in the run-up to World War II.  In short, they have a huge head start over what Hitler and Mussolini had, and like these ideological predecessors, they are rising at a time of political, social, and economic instability. We ignore or dismiss them at our peril.  And, as they incite fear at every opportunity, they will no doubt gain support from the disaffected and dispossessed whose numbers are increasing at an increasing rate, and whose principal interest is to recapture their position in an ever-organic social order that appears to be selecting against them.

            While the content of Dick Cheney’s legacy is being revealed slowly, concealed by a steady invocation of national security, the nature of his legacy has been cast.  His incessant summons of fear, support of executive power, affinity for war, and disregard for legal rights and the rule of law are his corner posts.  Recently, his daughter Liz, joined by William Kristol, in  (Dick) Cheney-esque style, called for the identification of those attorneys in the Department of Justice who previously had represented Guantanamo detainees.  Labeled the “al-Qaeda Seven” by Liz Cheney, she characterized them as Osama bin Laden sympathizers in an attempt to ‘out’ them reminiscent of McCarthyism in the 1950s.  John Yoo is the inscrutable legal counsel who penned the rationale that twists the Constitution in favor of a ‘unitary executive’ by employing abstractions of narrowly selected founding history to offer absolution to his neo-fascist brethren.  As Mickey Edwards at The Atlantic characterized them, “they are statists, pure and simple, dismissive of law, dismissive of the Constitution, dismissive of freedoms. They love power, not freedom.” 

            There is little doubt in my mind that several of us will raise our voices in opposition to this rise of neo-fascism.  Many conservatives and neo-conservatives, as well as centrists, libertarians, and liberals already have.  But, I also have witnessed things in my life I never thought would come to pass – some good, some bad.  During times of instability and disaffection voices must be raised to quell those who covet power over liberty and represent the real threat to our great nation.  Because sometimes the bad guys win.

The Caffeine Debate

Irish playwright and socialist George Bernard Shaw warned, “Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.” Accepting his thesis requires an assessment of our individual and collective effort to deserve better; or, at least better than we currently endure. Historian and editor of Newsweek, Jon Meacham, echoed these sentiments recently when he argued the “broad indictment of the capital and its culture too often fails to include government’s co-conspirators: We the People.” Two responses to this challenge have formed over the last year, both populist but otherwise diametric opposites: the Tea Party (teapartypatriots.org, teaparty.org) and the Coffee Party (coffeepartyusa.com).

          Most of us have heard about the Tea Party, although a little research suggests we have to be careful to ask, which tea party? Teaparty.org requires strict compliance with their “non-negotiable core beliefs” that include to “honor God” while condemning illegal aliens, belief in a strong military and the sanctity of gun ownership, together with strict fiscal limits on a government that “must be downsized.” Tea Party ‘Patriots’ appear to be a bit more benign – frankly less threatening and more populist. Their mission is “to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize our fellow citizens to secure public policy consistent with our three core values of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets.” While differences certainly exist in those who adopt the Tea Party flag, their ideology and cultural profile are not. They are right, white, Christian, and armed. They believe in American exceptionalism – cum – triumphalism and prefer walls to bridges where ‘free’ markets are where only American products are available for sale. They are angry and ready to fight anyone who differs in either appearance or ideology.

          More recently, another movement has formed, equally populist and committed to saving America, but their approach is collaborative rather than combative. The Coffee Party was formed by Anabelle Park, a Korean immigrant and documentary filmmaker from Washington D.C. Their mission is:

To give voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government. We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans. As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.

They don’t want to throw all the rascals out, just bring them to heel. Unlike their tea party counterparts, they include all ethnicities, religions, and age groups, and most probably don’t even know how to load a gun. They are the ‘brains over brawn’ bunch. And, curiously, they smile in their photographs. No growling here.

          Both parties seem to acknowledge Shaw’s warning; they just have very different ideas about getting the government they deserve. Both are emblematic of American’s growing disdain for all-things-Washington. One conservative, interested in re-establishing the mythic of a muscular Norman Rockwell America, while the other aims to reinvent America in the image of an Obama election night party. It is unclear which will have the largest, if any, impact. Tea has the early lead and loudest presence, but Coffee might attract more with a more inclusive and less angry platform. Coffee appears to have a greater grasp of organic networks and the nuance of political progress. Whichever group proves more effective, one thing is for sure: Americans are no longer willing to sit back and take it. 

          Hooray for caffeine.