ameritecture

American Empire (?): The Way Forward

2011-12-27T14:15:00.000-06:00

The great American experiment that began more than 200 years ago is looking a bit weary as 2011 draws to a (welcome) close. As a relatively oddball group of historians who apply mathematics to history will tell you, when viewed through the lens of cliodynamics, the empire of America is already past its sell-by date. The average lifespan of great powers over the last 3,000 years is 215 years. It has been 223 years since the ratification of the US Constitution. But these kinds of analyses, especially those that appeal to our preference for simple dichotomies – live or die, good or evil, rise or fall, win or lose – seldom foretell outcomes that often fall outside the boundaries defined by carefully crafted pseudoscientific models. Clio, the muse of history for whom cliodynamics is named, would undoubtedly find such exactitude quite whimsical; a reason to pluck her lute with a wry smile. Nevertheless, the current crisis facing the US and much of the Western world is worth considerable contemplation as the consequences of ignoring what is going on might very well end American power as we have come to know and enjoy it.

By most accounts 2011 was a big disappointment. Outside of giving bin Laden his due most events were forgettable and regrettable rather than notable or laudable. The annual lists of best and worst expanded geometrically in 2011, mostly due to an increase in worsts. The economy remained anemic, our politicians were (at best) a source of painful entertainment, and the social fabric of society was torn by the realization that the pursuit of the American dream is a rigged game: fewer will get there and the few who do will act – often aggressively – to prohibit others from joining them. During 2011 ‘political will’ became an oxymoron, unless you count extremists in Congress who believe intransigence is virtuous. Since the current economic crisis began in August 2007, we have made steady progress in the wrong direction. Our economic crisis has become a political crisis and now, just in the last few months, the ‘Occupiers’ have made the case we now also have a social crisis. Most of us watched Greece burn in civil unrest without being able to dismiss the news with our usual effete indifference; our own profligacy has made us wonder how far the pain will spread … how long before it arrives here? Unfortunately, 2012 looks like more of the same in both Europe and the US, no real progress has been made to affect change in the legacy systems that lock us into a dangerous status quo that shows debt and entitlements overwhelming GDP.

While recent declines in the unemployment rate have been promoted by feel-good aspirants as the beginning of a new economic day, upon closer inspection they look as phony as the smiling politician who claims he or she has our best interest at heart. The declines ignore the fact that the chronically unemployed are no longer counted. Nevertheless, turning the tide of expectations from negative to positive is not all bad even if delusional, and nascent evidence suggests the beginning of a decoupling of US security markets from the woes of Europe might be possible. Meanwhile, China, which aims to diminish American power, is beginning to realize how growth presents a whole new array of economic, political, and social challenges. However, even if these nascent indications do herald more bullish markets for US securities it is likely a temporary condition, at best a respite from the messy progression toward full globalization where no one, or two, or even a few nations predominate; and which punishes those who have forgotten the value of savings and investment. Within two or three years our own debt issues – left to bloat – will put us in the same place as Europe and the world will begin to turn away from the dollar as the preferred reserve currency. A post-dollar world will be devastating to Americans unless it is choreographed by the US to affect a soft landing. However, if there is a respite in 2012 it will offer Americans one last chance to preserve the US economy and our relative position of power in the world. The way forward is what I will characterize as a great work-around. We must challenge legacy thinking and entrenched regimes. We must negotiate a new narrative to assure a better future. We must find new pathways around the systems and rules that endanger our future. Fortunately, out of inspiration or desperation, many are thinking this way and many more may join them soon. Game changers are being actively pursued by the best and brightest among us. Follow me.

The biggest ‘work-around’ – already underway – emanates from beyond our shores but may make landfall in the US soon. It is what Robert Neuwirth of the journal Foreign Policy calls “The Shadow Superpower.” It is the $10 trillion global black market that he claims is “the world’s fastest growing economy.” Technocrats, bureaucrats, and aspiring plutocrats take note: much of the developing world and even some of the developed world are finding ways to avoid your negligent tutelage that too often lines your pockets with wealth produced by the enterprise of others. Neuwirth calls this “unheralded alternative economic universe … System D.” Two years ago the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development revealed that “half the workers of the world – close to 1.8 billion people – were working in System D: off the books, in jobs that were neither registered nor regulated, getting paid in cash, and, most often avoiding income taxes.” Neuwirth suggests these enterprises are “ruled by the spirit of organized improvisation.” As we look at the hideous leadership we have today in the US, and face the struggle of making financial ends meet, how long before the model of System D (which is not too far removed from how we currently use eBay, Craig’s List, or Etsy) becomes a prevalent modality of commerce in the US? Although it will undoubtedly be labeled illegal by those charged with protecting the status quo, will it be considered immoral or unpatriotic? Once a tipping point of adoption is reached and such organized improvisation becomes the norm, how would the rutty-faced enforcers employed by the Fed ever rein in such a tsunami of renewed independence and self-reliance? Will there be a Shadow America?

Following in the modality of organized improvisation are what have become known as flash mobs that are also spawning what I will call flash capitalism. Neighborhood thugs who wanted to tip over a C-store to sate their appetite for Twinkies and cigarettes were the first to apply the flash mob model. Like al-Qaeda that first demonstrated the power of asymmetric networks, flash mobs have villainous origins. However, digital communication certainly allows spontaneous collective action and can also be used for good. Such was the case in the revolutions in many Arab states in 2011. It can also be used to more productive ends to both entertain and fund enterprise. My favorite feel-good flash mob is ‘Deck the Halls’ filmed at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. Another more recent example of this digital collectivism that fits into the modality of organized improvisation is a new online venue to raise funding for creative projects and entrepreneurial startups called kickstart. Tune in, hear the pitch, and decide if you want to support the venture. Since traditional lending has dried up largely due to commercial banks finding they can make better returns by using government bailout funds to trade exotic securities to assure their year-end bonuses, kickstart has created what is in effect flash capitalism. While fewer than half of the solicitors reach their funding goal, that is substantially higher than what traditional private capital markets achieve, which exclude most ideas and entrepreneurs without ever hearing the pitch.

The last idea I will share here is the biggest, most promising, most challenging, and frankly most inspiring idea I heard (and then studied) during 2011. It is the mother of all work-arounds. It is Jeremy Rifkin’s Third Industrial Revolution. I first heard Rifkin’s ideas on the Diane Rehm radio show, and you can listen here. Once you listen, you may want his book, which is available here. Rifkin’s work-around is of the energy complex, which he persuasively argues is at the center of humankind’s future and, I would argue further is the keystone in the arch holding up America’s future as a world power. He identifies five pillars that must be radically changed to produce a new narrative that defines our future. The first pillar is the shift to renewable energy. The second is essentially a re-conception of where energy comes from; in his thesis it comes from every building, which are turned into “micro-power-plants to collect renewable energies on site.” The third pillar is on-site storage of unused or intermittent energy utilizing hydrogen technologies. The fourth pillar is to utilize an Internet model to form smart energy networks that distribute energy in an “energy-sharing intergrid.” Finally, the fifth pillar is the transformation of the entire transportation fleet of vehicles into “plug-in and fuel cell vehicles that can buy and sell electricity on a smart, continental, interactive power grid.” The old energy model, which is highly centralized owing to a design that collects energy from a few places and transports it to a distant end user, is rendered obsolete once energy is collected, used, and shared from an infinite number of locations. This changes the whole power structure of the world – both energy and political – to a lateral and highly distributed model that will create thousands of jobs and – pun intended – pulls the plug on governments and despots who control energy as an insidious form of repression. (And yes, I include Western democracies here.) As Rifkin points out in his book, Europe is well ahead of the US in adopting his ideas. The EU has given them a full embrace. But, as mentioned above, we may have a respite in the US that allows us to catch up and surpass our friends in Europe. However, we have got to stop indulging the “drill, baby, drill” bunch and invest in the long term. That means no pipelines from Canada, among many other things. It means, in short, blowing up the status quo and having the confidence to form a new identity around our old values of independence, self-reliance, and innovation.

As leadership advisor Mike Myatt recently wrote in Forbes, leadership is many things, but it is mainly pursuit. It is the “pursuit of excellence, of elegance, of truth, of what’s next, of what if, of change, of value, of results, of relationships, of service, of knowledge, and of something bigger than themselves.” If 2012 is anything; I hope it is the year we each start to lead-by-pursuit. Forget the elections and other political sideshows, just lead, baby, lead! If we do, we just might overcome the legacy systems that protect the status quo and ensure a much better future for America and the world.

Happy New Year.

Our Real Economic Problem: The Decapitalization of Wealth

2011-11-13T11:54:00.001-06:00

As many economic pundits will tell you today, our current economic crisis was a long time in the making. Some point to over-consumption, others to the accumulation of debt, and still others point at a broken regulatory system, government spending, and political gridlock. However, the fundamental issue is none of these things, although each is a symptom of, or a by-product of, the real issue: the decapitalization of wealth.

The value of capital is the utility that can be realized from it. Economists generally define utility as the measure of ‘need satisfaction’ realized by a consumer in the consumption of a good or service. Extending this concept to capital, the utility of capital is the measure of economic goods and services created through its deployment. Wealth deployed as capital that produces economic goods and services creates healthy economies with low debt, low inflation, and low unemployment. Unfortunately, much of the wealth created over the last twenty-five years or so has flowed to low capital utility venues. This process has accelerated over the last decade.

So what are these low capital utility venues? Wealth deployed for war making is a classic example. Anyone who has taken an introductory course in economics can probably remember the guns vs. butter analysis. Money invested in death and destruction is obviously not a creator of economic goods, and the US has spent more than $2 trillion in this manner since 2003.[1] Financial bailouts also have low utility. As we have seen, we may have stabilized the financial system with the massive bailout of too-big-to-fail banks, but we have not created economic goods in the process, and the bailout funds are now trapped in the balance sheets of banks; idle dollars producing little to no utility. Our tax system, which is at least partly to blame for the inordinate concentration of wealth in the top 1% of our citizens, is also responsible for decapitalization. Wealth concentrated among the few means that capital has flowed to idle reserves – in low risk, low velocity trust funds. Dusty money is not happy money. Speculation and financial ‘engineering’ is also responsible for decapitalization. Currency manipulation, which amounts to more than $3 trillion in transactions per day worldwide, does not produce economic goods. Nor do the billions of dollars invested in credit default swaps that produce no more capital utility than dollars dropped into slot machines on the Vegas Strip. Another classic example is government spending and investment. When the Pentagon spends $6,000 on a coffee pot or the White House blows $500 million on Solyndra, it is clear that government bureaucrats make lousy purchase and investment decisions, regardless of party affiliation. Debt service payments and sovereign debt bailout funds are other examples. By now you get the idea: most of the places our money ends up today are venues of decapitalization. That must change.

In a recent article by the Washington Bureau Chief of The New York Times, David Leonhardt, argued that our current crisis might actually prove to be worse than the Great Depression due to one central difference: during the Depression, invention, production, and investment in public infrastructure continued at high levels. Leonhardt suggests, “The most worrisome aspect about our current slump is that it combines obvious short-term problems – from the financial crisis – with less obvious long-term problems. Those long-term problems include a decade-long slowdown in new-business formation, the stagnation of educational gains and rapid growth of industries with mixed blessings, including finance and health care.”[2] “Mixed blessings” here means finance and health care are relatively low capital utility investments. When we see job growth in these private, and almost any public sector categories, we must refrain from patting ourselves on the back. They produce little more than single-round economic effects.

Correcting this problem is not easy, but it is doable. As you can see from the above list, one may even argue that decapitalization accelerates in an insidious manner, spawning more and larger venues of low utility. We need look no further than our own economic history to see that many of these venues, except war making, are relatively new developments in our economic system. Fiscal policy and, to a lesser extent and effect, monetary policy should both be oriented to direct wealth away from these venues. Financial system regulations and tax policy can also be changed to affect this. Education, research and development, small business development, and yes, liberal trade and immigration policies can also help stem the tide of decapitalization.

Creating wealth requires a relentless focus on capital utility. When capital works, it produces economic goods; when idled or addled, it leads to dire economic effects. Decapitalization is the overarching problem. Until we recognize this we have little hope of pulling our economy out of the ditch.

[1] This excludes the $600 to $700 billion the US spends annually as a baseline expenditure for national defense.

[2] David Leonhardt, “The Depression: If Only Things Were That Good,” October 8, 2011,The New York Times, www.nytimes.com.

Re-imagining America

2011-09-28T14:37:00.000-05:00

In my last post, “The Best in Us,” I argued that a breach of character – specifically the loss of honesty and humility – was at the center of our political, economic, and social problems in America. Bringing honesty and humility back to our discourse and decision-making is indeed elemental to the recovery of America. The lunatic fringe who stand on ideological and religious fantasies, and who spew invective that is void of any credible or durable ideal must be marginalized. Obama has tried, although addled by his own Socratic disposition and by the virulent and racist attacks against him, whereas a guy like Governor Chris Christie might have a better chance. Christie doesn’t appear to cotton to stupidity, and he seems to have the honesty thing down. His disposition and, lets face it, his ethnicity, may be more appropriate for the crisis we face. The last part, as repugnant as it is, is a sorrowful reality. That said, once we heal our character – in our leaders and ourselves – we must also move forward to re-imagining America. This requires a holistic makeover of American identity.

Now, before you go running around with your hair on fire accusing me of being an unpatriotic _________, let me be clear: the basics do not need to change. Independence, self-reliance, and innovation remain core values in a re-imagined America. But other myths, dispositions, preferences, and behaviors, which have found their way into our identity since the end of the Cold War twenty years ago, must change. Unfortunately, the end of the Cold War made us dumb, and 9/11 made us dumber. It is time to get things back on track. The “end of history,” which was hubristically claimed by Francis Fukuyama in 1992, was actually the beginning of our self-inflicted decline, which hit warp speed after 9/11. The post-evil-Soviet-empire era did not result in a prophesized thousand years of peace and prosperity; when coupled with digital technologies it simply created new ways to compete, mostly asymmetrically. Meanwhile, we Americans gorged ourselves on nothing-down ponzi schemes instead of doubling-down our investment in the things that made us great, most notably all things related to intelligence. Here are four things we need to re-think.

The Power Trap. The United States won the hard power game based on brawn. Meanwhile, the rest of the world came up with new pathways to power that are soft, generally based in intelligence. China has focused on education and economics. Russia has focused on resource power, principally oil. Brazil has focused on agriculture, energy, and demographic power. India is growing a well-educated middle class faster than any state in the world. Germany kept their debt low and invested in industry and trade. Ireland welcomed immigrants and entrepreneurs. But, the United States kept playing the old game: bigger weapons systems and odious domestic security schemes financed with debt and founded in fear. We are trapped in Cold War power narratives. Americans need to wake up to the new world and start thinking brains over brawn.
The Wealth Myth. Since the Peace at Westphalia in 1648 that gave rise to the state-centric international system, wealth has been the denominator of power. The more land, resources, people, and money a state had determined its power in the world. Wealth is still important, but as argued above, intelligence (which is not always closely correlated with wealth) is now more important. However, there is another dimension to the wealth myth that needs to be considered anew. Wealth does not always mean we are better off. Affluence can actually weaken civil society. We need look no further than the last twenty years of American history. Even before the current recession began, depression was up, test scores and graduation rates were down, poverty and homelessness was rising, and the number one threat to our health was not some incurable disease, it had become self-indulgent obesity. All this occurred as the United States hit the pinnacle of its wealth and power in 2000. If we are going to succeed in facing the current crisis, we need to shift our focus away from wealth to well-being. We need to practice self-restraint and summon compassion. We must prefer austerity to audacity. We need to focus on those things that make us strong and content. Dignity, respect, resilience, and, moreover our core values of independence, self -reliance, and innovation do not come from wealth, they come from strong bodies, agile minds, and whole hearts. They come from well-being.
Our Growth Obsession. The orthodoxy of growth – that more is better – may be fatally flawed. We are reaching resource limits and facing environmental impacts that suggest we better get on the less-is-more bandwagon. As Herman Daly, a former member of the World Bank recently argued, “In an empty world, growth is good. But that is not the world we inhabit. We live in a world that is full of us and our stuff, a world that is finite in terms of the economic activity it can sustain.”[1] All of our current financial models call for growth. It has become the wicked requirement of affluence and the only relatively painless way out of overwhelming financial deficits. However, what if we rejected that orthodoxy and, with a steady eye on well-being, conceived plans that aimed at contraction? What if we designed our lives and attendant expectations around less, not more? I will further suggest contraction, not growth, is the more reasonable way to survive the current crisis and to transcend the many maladies of affluence realized over the last twenty years. It may seem antithetical, even heretical, when considered through the lens of our current American identity, but it just may be exactly what our future identity requires.
The Piety Preference. May we please retire piety from the political sphere? Until the 1970s religion was in the private and public sphere – at home and in church. It crept toward the political sphere during the 1950s as a point of differentiation with “godless communism,” then lurched further forward during the civil rights movement and anti-war demonstrations on the left in the 1960s, only to be met by even more fiery rectitude from the far right after Roe v. Wade in 1973. Since then, faith-based rectitude has produced more division – and violence – than at any time in US history. When I hear politicians and despots summon their faith I cannot help but wonder what Jesus, or Moses, or Mohammed, or Buddha, would say to them. In America, where most politicians claim Christianity, I seldom witness even the slightest correlation between what politicians say and how they behave with the teachings of Jesus Christ. The fiber of diversity is what made America great, not the twisted interpretation of scripture for the projection of political power. To those who are elected to lead, please respect our differences by leaving your piety at home. We are a nation of laws, not prophecy.

It is time to think differently to save our future. As argued before, we must heal our character, but we must also re-imagine America. Old orthodoxies that served us well twenty, fifty, or one hundred years ago will not work today. They may even work against us. Our core values remain: independence, self-reliance, and innovation. But, the paradigms we employ – how we think about the world and our role in it– must be reconsidered. Things will likely get even worse before they get better, but the sooner we start the conversation about re-imagining America, the sooner we will all be better off.

[1] Interview of Herman Daly by Martin Eirman, September 5, 2011, “We need a Crisis, and a Change of Values,” http://theeuropean-magazine.com/356-daly/357-the-end-of-growth.

The Best in Us

2011-09-11T15:38:00.000-05:00

It is often said that the worst times bring out the best in us. As I reflect on 9/11 and the decade that followed, I oscillate between anger, sadness, and disgust. At times my jaw is clenched, while at others the tears well up. Then, too often of late, I just hang my head in disbelief. As an historian it is impossible for me to avoid comparing 9/11 to other moments of crisis in America, to other ‘worst’ times. The run-up and aftermath of the American Revolution, Civil War, and Great Depression and World War II are obvious candidates for comparison. What I find is that the significant markers that define the beginnings of these crises are characterized by both grave challenges and collective determination. Americans come together and address the crisis with a high sense of resolve, responsibility, and sacrifice. Our character is lean and strong. During this period of comparison there are many more similarities than differences. It is in the ‘out’ years, roughly three years and beyond the initiation of crisis, when more differences are found, and where prospects for the future are defined.

Our initial response to 9/11 was similar to other crises. Flags were everywhere and while a few people behaved in a manner unbecoming an American, most of us kept our cool and rallied around our leaders with compassion for those who lost loved ones, and a determination to seek justice. In the out years, however, we lost our composure by compromising two things: our honesty and our humility. Ideological bullies like Vice President Dick Cheney began by lying about weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda in Iraq. Inside the Beltway of Washington DC they call it ‘politicizing intelligence’. I will call it what it is: lying. The lies enabled a call to action that has cost us at least two trillion dollars and, across the world, the loss of tens of thousands of lives. Once our honesty was lost, what little humility remained since we had become the world’s sole remaining superpower after the collapse of the Soviet Union was vanquished by our hubristic response to 9/11. Once our humility was gone, our national character – our identity – was lost as well. We were all sucked into a charade that has proven catastrophic. The promises of the Cheney bunch – of cheers, bouquets, and new democracies – were never realized and now we are stuck in a quagmire without a clear exit. The tally of blood and treasure lost is far from over.

Dishonesty, and moreover, arrogance, appear to be the primary products of the out-years after 9/11. Now we behave at home the way we have abroad. Our leaders in Congress swagger about with Cheney-esque anger and certitude. Ideological bullying has become the norm. Meanwhile, our president hides in the White House like a prom king who has just realized the student body doesn’t love him so much after all. What courage he had has been overcome by his naiveté. No, President Obama, the old white pudgy boys in Congress are not enamored with a young fit black man in the White House. They want you out and they will do anything possible to bring that about. It is time for you to fight for our future and forget about a second term. Use the rest of your term to be the best one-term president ever. If you do, who knows, you might even have a second term.

As I watched the tears shed by the children remembering their loved ones at Ground Zero on this tenth anniversary, I couldn’t help but also wonder about all the tears shed by the children of those who have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan. As I watch Wall Street prosper, I wonder why we can’t do the same thing for main streets all over America. As I watch the middle class rise across all of Asia, I watch and wonder why we tolerate its decline in the West. As I watch students across Scandinavia and Asia excel at levels significantly higher than our own kids, I wonder how we expect to remain a superpower. As I watch our security, health, and environment decline from our dependence on fossil fuels, I wonder why we don’t launch a massive public initiative to produce new fuels and new distribution systems.

Many wonder these days if Karl Marx was right; if capitalism will produce its own demise. It is an interesting question given our current circumstances. I conclude, however, that capitalism and democracy are not the problem, character is. We must regain our sense of honesty and humility to face the many challenges we face. Once our character is lean and strong again we will have the courage to do what we know is right. We will not allow those we elected to serve us to continue serving themselves first. We will, once again, summon the best in us.

The Neverwillbe Reagans

2011-09-02T13:53:00.000-05:00

As the Republican presidential hopefuls gather at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library this coming Wednesday evening, there will be (no doubt) a number of attempts to borrow the alchemic allure of President Reagan as each candidate seeks to channel his homespun American exceptionalism. However, the top-tier, including Rick Perry, Michelle Bachman, and Mitt Romney, have very little in common with Reagan. They are the product of an angry and twisted exceptionalism steeped in religious certitude, nationalistic fear, and elite entitlement. Perry espouses state’s rights and secession in a manner not heard since Southern Confederates used the same arguments to preserve the institution of slavery. Bachman suggests we deserved our earthquakes and hurricanes as a rebuke of our evil ways, while Romney claims that corporations are people too. At its core, their exceptionalism holds a contempt for Americans – especially for those who do not look like or believe as they do – and for the liberal ideals of the Founding Fathers. Furthermore, while hope is a dirty word for today’s Republicans, commonly derided in the phrase “hope is not a strategy,” hope is exactly what Reagan brought to America. (While President Obama tried too, he has – so far – failed.)

Reagan gave Americans access to a special grace that his predecessor Jimmy Carter couldn’t or wouldn’t offer; largely due to the fact Carter was locked in his evangelical revivalist trinity of sin, redemption, and salvation. Where Carter admonished Americans to sacrifice in order to alleviate a “crisis of spirit,” Reagan simply offered Americans absolution. Reagan’s theological innovation was transferring the concept of original sin from the individual to the institution. On the domestic front, Americans were good, while government and its bureaucracies were bad. In foreign relations, the Soviet Union was evil, but Gorbachev (the human) was worthy of Reagan’s respect and consideration. Reagan exalted Americans regardless of their race, religion, ethnicity, or even Party affiliation. Reagan’s ire was reserved for communism, not Americans, which he saw as the principal threat to God’s gift to humankind: freedom. Reagan’s America was the chosen land inhabited by chosen people who had a responsibility to the world: to establish a divine imperium of freedom. While Reagan did battle with his political adversaries like Speaker of the House Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, when the day was done they would share a drink, a story, and a song.

As charming and effective as Reagan was at attracting political support, it is easy to find fault with his presidency. Besides his promises, government got bigger, deficits swelled, and illegal activities were conducted from the desks of the National Security Council. Reagan never delivered on the social agenda of the Religious Right, although that should have surprised no one; as Governor of California, he allowed abortion to be legalized and he supported gun control. He was often heralded as a great communicator, but he was also a lousy executive. He lived in his own world where too often fantasy trumped fact; where reason was set aside for faith. But, Reagan gave Americans something that the dismissive angst spewed by today’s field of Republicans will never accomplish: Reagan made Americans feel better about themselves.

It is a long road to the election in November 2012, and America is indeed in dire straits. Things might get better by themselves, although right now I’d bet on worse. But, we’ve been here before; there have been many dark days in our history. What’s required now is a humble sense of self, a platform of mutual respect, and above all, the courage to do right by our founders and our children. Reagan’s alchemic American exceptionalism may not be the answer today, but believing in each other and taking personal responsibility to make the country and the world a better place while setting aside certitude, fear, and elitism would honor his legacy in the most worthy manner. Less than one hundred yards from where the Republican candidates will debate Wednesday night is Reagan’s tomb. Above it, carved in granite, reads, “I know in my heart that man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph, and there is a purpose and worth to each and every life.” Reagan loved his God and his country, and he loved Americans. That is a message the Republican candidates would do well to heed.

At the Edge: Survival Tips for Baby Boomers

2011-08-09T09:41:00.000-05:00

For the remainder of the typical Baby Boomer’s life the United States will likely be in decline, which will put Boomers – much more than others – in a very precarious position. But, that does not mean one cannot survive and prosper, although it may require re-defining your life and a whole lot of work.

Following the Federal debt debacle, the subsequent market sell-off, and the downgrade of U.S Treasuries by Standard & Poor’s, I received a Friday evening email from a financial consultant (to “Our Valued Clients”) that implored their valued ones to avoid panic. They (all much younger than I) wrote: “We urge clients to take a deep breath, relax, and not react emotionally to what we are seeing in the market.” While I was nowhere near panicking – perhaps because I have come to accept devaluation due to systemic risk (and because I’ve already changed my own investment strategy) – it struck me that if they were concerned enough to send out such an email after-hours on a Friday in August, then maybe I should panic.

The markets after all, like Mother Nature, are incapable of emotional irrationality. They are the final arbiter of value and instantaneous purveyor of consequence. They are the highest expression of our collective expectations. They reveal the (stubborn) truth that is (finally) piercing the veil of denial embedded in the advisor’s call for calm. Panic may actually be a rational choice for a Boomer who is facing this truth. After all, the timeframe for capitulation and recovery may exceed the Boomer’s lifespan. Indeed, the market meltdown that followed on Monday suggests panic may be the new norm. Of course, many financial analysts and pundits immediately rolled out their feel-better rhetoric claiming what we had seen was an aberration or ‘disconnect’, which is their unwitting acknowledgment that they have no idea what is happening. One thing is certain, however: leaving your money in their hands is in their best interest.

The truth the markets have expressed can be summed up as follows: while most of us know what the right thing to do is (setting aside those addled by ideology, misplaced faith, or engaged in modern-day piracy), we lack the will to do it. This is and has always been the case for Americans. As Winston Churchill once observed, “The Americans will always do the right thing... after they've exhausted all the alternatives.” The most glaring historical example is slavery. The Founding Fathers – evidenced by their own writings – knew that slavery was inherently wrong, yet they did nothing about it (notwithstanding presidential aspirant Michelle Bachman’s twisted historical interpretation). It took nearly one hundred years to breach the legal threshold and emancipate slaves, then another hundred to leap the moral threshold and get rid of the racist work-arounds like the Jim Crow laws.

What is required to clean up the financial and political mess in the United States is relatively easy to identify, but impossible to execute. There are four things that must be done. We must make at least $4 trillion in expenditure cuts including restructuring Medicare and Social Security, endure increased taxes in the near term, overhaul/simplify the tax code, and redesign Congress (starting with term limits). Failure to do all of these things will accelerate the precipitous decline of the United States as the wealthiest and most powerful state in the global system, but none of these things will be accomplished – at least not as a matter of will. The consequences of this are dire and probably worth panicking about.

Today’s obvious and unbelievable stupidity displayed by our elected representatives is no different than the stubbornness that protected slavery and segregation, except this time we all – not just slaves – will suffer.[1] It would be ahistorical and irrational to believe we will act better or more quickly in dealing with our financial woes than we did when committing prior sins or facing crises. While democracies are arguably inherently good, they are not designed to exalt morality or pre-empt crises. Our lesser selves do not assure better governance via aggregation. In open systems, the best one can hope for is that crises will produce creative destruction, which is what is happening now. There is, however, an alternative for Boomers to limit their exposure and preserve their long-term well-being.

Boomers must re-imagine and restructure their lives. Succeeding generations have less baggage to shed and are (sigh) more attractive to employers. The winning strategy since World War II has been to align one’s self with big companies, big governments with big militaries, and big markets. Get a job with a large enterprise – public or private – and climb the ladder. Invest in big money-center financial markets and count on a 7% after-tax return. Expect the government to provide healthcare and a financial safety net beginning at age sixty-five. That strategy is not only dead; it has become dangerous because of its exposure to systemic risk. Now is the time to simplify, disconnect, and sustain.

Simplify. Get small and remain flexible. Reduce your footprint and keep your running shoes nearby. Eliminate stuff; sell it or give it away. Invest in yourself first, especially your mind and body. Get things right in your head and heart: smart and content. Next, invest in things you control. Then, invest in companies that play at the edges – that rely on their own balance sheet to fund their future and which are highly adaptive. Leverage wisdom. Avoid the whiz-bang dreamers. Boring companies make more money, longer. But remember: it’s not about wealth; it’s about well-being. Take time to appreciate nature, art, music, and literature. From simplicity comes peace-of-mind and well-being.

Disconnect. Minimize your exposure to systemic risk. Focus on the quality of your connections and relationships, not the quantity. Size and scale are no longer de facto advantages. De-leverage your own balance sheet as much as possible. If able, move to a town that has a history of self-reliance; where services are few but the basic stuff works, and Boomers are still employable. If you must live in a large city, form small communities (actual or virtual) within the city or within your neighborhood, but do not be constrained by geography or borders. Whenever possible, leverage technology to create your own reliable world. Alliances are still important, but choose your cohorts carefully. Large collectives will be unable to avoid systemic risk. Again, think small to evade collateral damage.

Sustain. Within means and with respect. Channel your inner hippie. Feed your soul. Embrace an ethos of sustainability. Ask yourself when making large and small decisions: is this option sustainable? Am I using resources in a manner that respects their origin? The so-called “permaculture movement” is worth exploring to identify ways to support sustainable agriculture and urban food gardening. “The ethic of permaculture is the movement’s Nicene Creed ... care of the earth; care of the people, and a return of surplus time, energy, and money, to the cause of bettering the earth and its people.”[2] This may sound a bit squishy until you realize sustainability is essentially what our grandparents called self-reliance.

The foreseeable future in the United States is grim. We lack the will to do the right thing. Our system of collective action is broken. But, we can always act on our own to re-imagine our lives, form new alliances, and make a new future for ourselves.

[1] While many deplore Congress but like their own representative, I am not among them. My Congressman, Michael Burgess, stood with the Tea Party before he bowed to Boehner, and his most recent claim to fame is authoring an amendment to legislation to preserve the production and sale of 100-watt incandescent light bulbs. I’m sure the electric company and both employees of Light Bulb World are thrilled.

[2] Michael Tortorello, “The Permaculture Movement Grows From the Underground,” The New York Times (July 27, 2011).

The Next Americans

2011-07-03T09:31:00.000-05:00

I love the American story. I admire tales told by old-timers, especially about hardship, redemption, and survival. I am inspired by listening to young people express their dreams of how they intend to leave their mark, especially when I reflect on the fact that in many places in the world their peers are still unable to have many dreams, let alone express them. The Next Americans, which I will loosely suggest are the under thirty-five crowd, are today forging a new identity that will change America forever. My generation (Baby Boomers), ambitious and rapacious as we can be, is largely irrelevant in defining what it means to be a Next American. I accept this reality with a gulp of humility, a slice of regret, and a pinch of sadness. Yet, I believe in the Next Americans the same way my peers and I received the confidence of our predecessors: with a transcendent sense of hope.

The Next Americans have an unusual opportunity. While American identity constantly evolves and stalwart values like freedom, individualism, and self-reliance are often squeezed in the vice of circumstance, and at other times manipulated to the point of obscurity, periods of crisis offer the greatest opportunity to redefine the American story – to establish a new identity. For Next Americans, crisis is good. Every eighty years or so America comes full circle and is faced with a crisis. The American Revolution, Civil War and Reconstruction, and the Great Depression and World War II comprise the first three. I have posited that in the interregnum between crises America follows a dispositional progression starting with objectivism where unity, reason, inclusion, pragmatism, tolerance, and self-reliance mark discourse and behavior. Then, slowly, we move into a period of radicalism when we begin to reject the status quo and are attracted to narratives of liberalism, activism, inspiration, and intuition. We reject standardization in favor of differentiation while we accept, if not expect, our government to play a larger role in society. This is followed by a period of über-idealism that establishes a dialectic synthesis of objective method and “settled” radical ideas and values. Hyper-exceptionalism is projected on an unwilling populace, both domestic and foreign. Grandeur reigns. Conspicuous consumption, speculation, deregulation, class inequalities and high religiosity are normative. The timber of humanity that Immanuel Kant suggested was ever crooked is at its gnarly apex during this period. Then, as if the laws of physics hold a bias for self-correction, crisis returns, generally characterized by both severe economic stress and war. Notwithstanding the requisite humility of an historian – that history is at best an imperfect predictor of the future – it seems more than plausible that we have entered another period of crisis, more or less on schedule. It may be several more years – accompanied by even greater peril – before we move into the next period of objectivism. Meanwhile, American identity is once again up for grabs.

Who we are as Americans is the common denominator of every major issue we face today. The role of government, immigration, fiscal and monetary policy, foreign policy, social services, healthcare reform, education reform, the role of unions, taxes, and deficit reduction battles, all contribute to the debate of what it means to be an American. During every crisis we wrestle between diversity and inclusion on one hand, and the impulse toward uniformity and exclusion on the other. We decide who is worthy and who is not, often based on bigoted parochialism. We engage in incendiary discourse and watch old assumptions collapse under the weight of new realities. Adversaries and advocates both conjure (often) bizarre interpretations of what the Founding Fathers must have meant when they scribed our original documents. Those who feel threatened by dispossession from their historical position in social order become a danger to all, most of all to themselves. But, out of the chaos, ugliness, and pain, a new American story is born. Old threadbare myths gain new fiber from the churn of discontent, like a recovering addict with a new hymn in his heart, we form new narratives that stagger forward toward the future.

Many suggest that our problems are strictly economic. President Clinton’s campaign strategist, James Carville, is famous for his admonition, “It’s the economy, stupid!” I agree with Carville, if your job is to manipulate a political outcome in the favor of your candidate, but I would argue this is otherwise a false premise. The economy and the danger of current and future Federal deficits are indeed deeply concerning. As a former student of economics I give them their due respect and, like many who view the facts in a sober and clear fashion, I see no immediate solutions that avoid extraordinary pain. However, I also recognize that our economic consequences are an effect rather than a cause; there are more substantive objectives we must pursue if we are to assure the future of this great nation. I offer three.

First, we must strengthen what I call our operational code. What we have lost during the last several years is our capacity to reliably predict the behavior of leaders who we have come to rely on, whether they are political, business, judicial, or religious leaders. Ethics have traveled beyond situational to vaporous. What some call our “rule of law” has been twisted to such a degree that we are now unable to form reasonable expectations. We behave at home and abroad as if the rules only apply to those who are subject to our power. The result is a collective social dissonance that may even slip toward civil insanity. We must fight to re-establish a clear operational code and force, as necessary, compliance therewith. Leaders must be accountable to their respective constituents, shareholders, employees, laws, and faithful. If we do not, chaos, while tolerable and even beneficial in small doses, may become endemic.

Second, we must commit to the development and application of creative intelligence. Teachers are a treasure, not a burden or a scapegoat. They should be paid as if we treasure them to assure the best Next Americans train brighter and more creative American minds. Furthermore, basic research and development must be the focus of rebuilding a prosperous and resilient nation. For example, big and ambitious public projects must be undertaken immediately to invent/innovate how we produce, distribute, and consume energy. Our security, health, and wealth depend on it. Second-rate creative intelligence will assure us of becoming a second-rate nation.

Finally, humanity matters. We must, again, take responsibility for each other and ourselves. We must reject the ethos that suggests a government or other institution is responsible for our welfare. The health of our relationships by and between members of families, communities, generations, races, ethnicities, and religions must honor differences first (to establish empathy) and second, identify common interests to produce mutual benefits. For millennia we have formed collectives to assure security and prosperity. In the last several years, however, we Americans have grown selfish and jingoistic. We cannot afford to face globalism with the insular and bellicose chauvinism that has become the clarion call of phony patriots. If we continue to allow this to be part of our story we will lose.

I am pleased to know many people who are the Next Americans. They prefer diversity and inclusion. They realize that zero-sum orthodoxy is more often wrong than right. They reject rational choice constructs that are an artifact of twentieth century scientific prejudice. Ideas and relationships matter beyond the calculus and confinement of worn methodologies. For them, cooperation carries as much gravitas as competition. Well-being trumps wealth as the primary ambition. They see the world as a complex matrix of interdependencies and reject the exclusionary and judgmental simplicity of the Manichean imperative that condemns those who embrace unfamiliar traditions or worship a different God as agents of evil. The Next Americans will do as we all have: they will fail their way to success. In the process they will define a new America. They will determine our new identity. I am grateful they will be the next to call this great country their own.

Happy Independence Day.

Steding's Unverified Theory of Strategic Inversion

2011-05-24T16:18:00.000-05:00

In August 2008, I made a presentation to a money management firm in Dallas to attempt an explanation at what I then saw as an impending upheaval in the financial markets that would bring to question the very models of investment strategy that had existed since (at least) the Great Depression. One month later, Lehman Brothers collapsed, and by the end of October 2008 trillions of dollars in wealth had evaporated from the balance sheets of the world. (If you want an entertaining telling of that calamity see HBO’s Too Big to Fail, based on Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book of the same title.) What I saw, and what is now evident not only in financial systems, but in political systems around the world (particularly in the Middle East), is the danger of employing old thinking and models of risk management in a world where complexity compounds thereby exacerbating disequilibria created by fraud and oppression.

My argument was posed as Steding’s Unverified Theory of Strategic Inversion (SUTSI). SUTSI argues that as complexity compounds, enabled by technology and as manifested in globalism, the distribution of data points – of actual results – represented by the bell curve flattens. Rather than complexity validating regression toward the mean – the center axis of the bell – it produces a greater number of outliers – those events nearer the rim of the bell such that the principle of regression is moot. In the investment world, I argued further, old portfolio allocations and holding periods might be ineffective, and Federal tax policy may need to be flipped. For example, investment strategies that target the 0 to 20% returns (‘long’ positions – the area immediately to the right of the center axis of the bell) or the 0 to -20% returns (‘short’ positions – the area immediately to the left of the center axis of the bell) actually accept greater risk due to a relatively smaller number of results within that range. The better strategy is to play the edges, which now include a greater number of data points, taking both long and short positions, not so much as a hedge, but in pursuit of absolute gains. Nassim Nicholas Taleb has most forcefully made this argument in his book, The Black Swan: the Impact of the Highly Improbable.

In this investment strategy scenario I suggested that perhaps a strategic inversion was warranted:

· Rather than a portfolio allocation of 50% equities, 30% bonds and 20% cash, maybe one should have 50% cash, 30% bonds, and 20% in equities.

· Rather than holding investments for the long term – the traditional investor strategy – one should look at short term investments, more of a guerrilla investment strategy.

· Rather than being highly diversified one should have fewer positions, mitigating risk by having only 20% of wealth ‘exposed’ in equities (and much less leverage but more due diligence).

· Rather than having a tax policy that penalizes short-term gains at high tax rates (35%) maybe we should swap them with long-term rates (15%) as a better way to support the creation of wealth?

These suggestions fell on polite but mostly deaf ears in August 2008. Today, you can find many investment strategists arguing for variations of these suggestions. Since 2008 we have witnessed a bumper crop of Taleb’s so-called black swans, not only in financial markets, but also in political systems. (Although politicians are even slower slow to catch up than financial managers.)

In the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs, Taleb, together with Mark Blyth, Professor of International Political Economy at Brown University, apply these same notions of complexity and risk in “The Black Swan of Cairo: How Suppressing Volatility Makes the World Less Predictable and More Dangerous.” Taleb and Blyth argue “both the recent financial crisis and the current political crisis in the Middle East are grounded in the rise of complexity, interdependence, and unpredictability” where linear models and a preference for stability – what I have called ‘staring at the mean’ – may actually be the most, not least, risky (p. 34). What may be called for in foreign policy may mirror the strategic inversion we have witnessed in investment strategy. The “illusion of control and action bias” that are traditional hallmarks of US foreign policy, may in fact produce greater instability and reduced security (p. 39). The US may be much better off playing less often, and at the margins, where the black swans live.

Three years after penning my theory and making my presentation about the prospect of strategic inversions to the investment world, it seems at least one thing is clear: compounding complexity requires new modalities of inquiry that reject the linear traps inherent in conventional thinking. While I am not ready to strip "unverified theory" from the title, changing it to Steding's Rule of Strategic Inversion (SRSI), I'm getting closer every day.

The Reagan Echo: Donald Trump

2011-04-19T11:23:00.000-05:00

In my forthcoming study of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, tentatively titled The Disciple and The Alchemist, I wrote about Reagan that,

He was a transcendent optimist – a spokesman-as-leader – who employed alchemy and soaring rhetoric to obviate contradictions. He stood, as appropriate at any given time, near either Democratic or Republican mirrors to reflect and project his appeal through a libertarian prism, matching the prevailing mood of the electorate. From the threat of communism, to fatigue of government intervention, to the embrace of an evil enemy, he knew how to change the angle of the camera and strike an appealing pose for his audience.

As I observe the improbable candidacy of Donald Trump for president today, I cannot help but hear echoes of Reagan’s appeal and alchemic modality. And, the electorate seems to be just as depressed (or angry) today as it was in the latter stages of the Carter presidency.

The comparisons are eerie. While Reagan espoused the “Gospel of Prosperity,” Trump promotes what David Brooks of The New York Times has labeled a “Gospel of Success.” Meanwhile, Obama speaks of self-restraint and sacrifice the same way Carter spewed jeremiads of sacrifice-based redemption. Like Reagan, Trump also believes in American exceptionalism based on overt power, projected for the benefit of Americans first. Notwithstanding missteps, like Vietnam before Reagan, and Iraq/Afghanistan before Trump, for Trump Americans remain the chosen people in a chosen land, the new Israel. Meanwhile, Obama, like Carter, tries to re-identify America as a force for moral good, waging humanitarian wars (Libya) and preferring cooperation to competition. I can’t remember ever hearing Trump (or Reagan) utter the word ‘cooperation’. Reagan’s Hollywood-styled past and Trump’s New York/Atlantic City slick-shtick (and multiple marriages) also place them in stark contrast to the Obama/Carter image of up-from-nothing populist purity. Furthermore, I can easily see Trump reeling in the Religious Right the same way Reagan did with his “I know you can’t endorse me … but I can endorse you”; especially with either Palin or Huckabee at the bottom half of the ticket.

Trump has also taken a page out of Reagan’s early campaign playbook in his attempt to de-legitimize the President. Reagan questioned Carter’s strength, patriotism, and decisiveness, while Trump has pounded the birther issue with the conviction of a Klansman. Trump will easily get the angry white vote, and if he can co-opt the Religious Right (now Christian nationalists) with whitebread exceptionalism, he’s halfway there. Trump’s next target will be to add the other half – fiscal conservatives – to his electoral coalition. He’ll question Obama’s fiscal toughness in the face of huge deficits and the recent S&P outlook downgrade on US securities. Trumps own fiscal follies will no doubt be recast as the scars of experience in a Hobbesian world. He will ask the Reagan question: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” and will couple it with “Who would you rather have at the negotiating table, a nice guy, or a winner?” He might even say to Obama: “You’re fired!”

Reagan’s appeal resided in its simplicity; he pulled on American’s sense of patriotism and desire to “stand tall” again. He re-imagined America’s special destiny as a “shining city on a hill.” In a complex world full of nuance and strange alliances – one that calls for an Obamaesque mind and demeanor – Americans may decide they’d just like to feel good again. They may prefer illusion to reality. If they do, Trump’s orangish hair (like Reagan’s) won’t matter. Some say Trump’s anger will do him in; this may prove to be wishful thinking by Obama supporters. After all, aren’t we all angry? Trump should summon his inner Reagan, and Obama better not make the same mistake Carter’s advisors did when they hoped they’d face Reagan on election day.

Obama’s Doctrine of Ambiguity

2011-03-29T11:18:00.000-05:00

As one who studies US foreign policy, I am not a fan of presidential doctrines that are generally crafted by the press out of a line or two of a president’s speech. The Monroe Doctrine may have actually been the only true doctrine, defined by its namesake, and even it proved susceptible to gross misinterpretation and expansive misapplication. Moreover, in an age of complexity, doctrines, or grand strategies, seem less appealing or relevant than the flexibility ambiguity allows, which is clearly why President Obama favored ambiguity in his recent address on Libya. We live in an age of supervention, where seemingly disconnected and anachronistic events have effects, which is an inexorable reality of complexity. The larger problem however, is not about US foreign policy and its strategic design in a complex world; it is about American identity; it is about how we Americans view our role at home and in the world.

Obama’s address about the US/NATO intervention in Libya (March 28, 2011) left those wanting to define the Obama Doctrine dissatisfied; there was (purposefully, no doubt) nowhere to hang one’s doctrinal hat. Ben Smith of Politico probably summed this best when he wrote, “The doctrine is there is no doctrine.” And while others like Mark Halperin of TIME lauded Obama’s address as “strong” even he underscored the ambiguity by suggesting, “George W. Bush could have delivered every sentence.” When Obama and W sound the same on foreign policy, the case for ambiguity is unambiguous. However, as attractive as the flexibility ambiguity provides is, we must also look at the sustainability of an open-ended policy of either adventurism (W) or interventionism (Obama).

The US has now witnessed two expensive effects of having an unassailable lead as the predominant military in the world: natural competitors find other ways to compete, and allies become dependent on US military power. China has chosen to compete with the US by investing in their economy and protecting their currency (virtually all their military is deployed in-country to protect the authoritarian government). Other non-state actors, like al-Qaeda, compete with asymmetric terror strategies that are difficult if not impossible to assail with a behemoth (US) military. Meanwhile, as we have seen with Libya, US allies and their collective security system, NATO, are unable to provide the command and control platform to launch or sustain an intervention. Therefore, the US, in its superpower/super-cop role, is caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place; it must continue to fund its super-military for the benefit of friends, while its natural competitors gain in power through other means. The result, unfortunately, is now and will continue to be the decline – perhaps even accelerated decline – of US power and well-being.

Obama could have at least started to halt this unsustainable trajectory of superdom, but he chose ambiguity. He has missed an opportunity to recast US identity. In so doing, he has (perhaps unwittingly) elongated the deleterious effects of Eisenhower’s warning about a military industrial complex, and reduced our capacity to invest in better long-term bets like education, alternative energy, and economic innovation. Lest we forget, we have enormous financial deficits. The US will likely be better-loved by both allies and competitors for Obama’s post-W retooling of exceptionalism and lofty aims, but such love is an unsustainable luxury. As Americans we must demand a refocusing on our own strength, resiliency, and well-being. We can afford neither adventurism nor interventionism. Prevailing on the “shores of Tripoli” may feel good today, but also puts our future at open-ended risk.

'Dithering' Might Have Been Better

2011-03-25T13:30:00.000-05:00

While Sarah Palin criticizes President Obama of ‘dithering’, maybe that is exactly what we should be better at when it comes to foreign interventions like the recent one in Libya. Here are some observations/questions I recently offered in a US foreign policy group I belong to, to, in part, stimulate discussion about US involvement in Libya.

Analogies are dangerous. Rwanda was not Bosnia & Kosovo, and neither are any of them Libya. The events associated with each are born from different places, times, people, governments, cultures, economies, and laws. Still, our memories of them are powerful, and in the last several days the interpretation of each is and has been projected on Libya. As historians we have to interpret the record associated with each while we place a huge warning label on our analyses that reads ‘This Will Never Recur Exactly As It Has Here’. (A sort of historian’s caveat emptor.) In critical ways, each event is different. Richard E. Neustadt’s and Ernest R. May’s Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers warns us of the danger of analogies. Their study shows many cases of the misapplication of history, operationalized in policymaking through analogies, that cause us to ask, years later, why in the hell did they do that? In most cases speed is a factor, and the simple enormity of what decision makers have to deal with, all the complexities and scale. Analogies simplify and justify; they are the fuel of dispatch. However, if we do in Libya what we should have done in the Balkans or Rwanda, will we do what is correct for Libya? If we begin with the premise they are different, then how is doing what we believe we should have done in Bosnia or Rwanda even logical?
We must be careful what we wish for. Or, asked otherwise by Catherine Ashton, the EU’s representative for foreign affairs and security, ‘And then what?’ Qaddafi (Q) didn’t become a mass murderer overnight, in fact, where is the evidence of ‘slaughter’? Obama hung his case on Q’s psychobabble rhetoric, where Q claimed he would show ‘no mercy’, to justify intervening to stop Q short of Benghazi. I can only conclude there was no evidence of slaughter by Q’s troops on the way from Tripoli to Benghazi, otherwise Obama surely would have hung his argument on something more than Q’s ‘no mercy’ pledge. (I reflect on much of Reagan’s rhetoric in the 1980s and find Q’s nearly childish.) Q clearly had the rebels on the run, but genocide? Q has a long history of violence, like other despots (we ignore), but I am unaware of any history of genocide. Yet, we have committed tremendous resources to a nebulous task of ‘protecting Libyans’ who will now likely face a long ground war with a desperate despot. Many would have likely died, and now many likely will. Where is the victory in that? Moreover, when a conclusion is declared – however nebulous – then what? Who will rule? Whom will they rule and how? Perhaps we should watch Egypt (an arguably much more stable and developed state) to see if freedom and human rights prevail over what looks like a government that will likely be controlled by the military and the Muslim Brotherhood. Time will tell, but maybe we should let it do exactly that.
In the meantime, American identity is slowly changing, but politics are still politics. The debate in the US on this issue, when you cull out the relevant pronouns, is really about the role of the US in the world – about American identity. Involvement by the US in world affairs swings to and fro – from isolationism to overt exceptionalism. Absent the pronouns, when you compare today’s debate to the days of Woodrow Wilson’s battle with Congress after World War I, there is an eerie echo. We may be seeing Obama facing the same thing today. Perplexingly, Obama seems a better fit for an advocate of a more restrained America, yet the facts (Afghanistan and now Libya) belie my perception of his intellectual disposition. Then again, maybe it is just the primacy of politics. After all, 2012 looms. Both humor and pain can be found in the push and pull between the White House and the Congress (under the veil of legal issues like the War Powers Act). Each is trying to create a position where, in the end, they can claim they were right. So, ambiguity wins again!

Leading from the Soul (Part 4 of 4)

2011-02-23T10:53:00.000-06:00

Part IV: Moral Purpose

The final element of leading from the soul is moral purpose. There is a terrific book on this issue by consultant Simon Sinek, titled, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action.[1] Sinek argues that while most of us and the organizations we work for can readily articulate what we do and how we do it, all too often there is confusion or even no understanding of why. Why provides the beliefs and convictions that direct the what and how. If the why is missing, everything else is the product of randomness and, even more troubling, its absence provides a vacuum that will be filled by divergent interests and nefarious actors. As Sinek points out, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., had a dream, and he shared it on August 28, 1963 with 250,000 people on the mall in Washington DC. People gathered from all over the United States without having received an invitation by way of Facebook, Twitter, email, or cellphone. The three most prevalent phrases in King’s speech are “I have a dream,” “Let freedom ring,” and “Now is the time.”[2] King left us no doubt what he believed, nor of the urgency of his purpose. Like King, Steve Jobs of Apple also has a why. Jobs’ why, is to place the power of computing in the hands of every individual in the world. Today that might not sound impressive, but when Jobs started his quest in 1976, it was patently absurd; computers were never envisioned for use by anyone unless they were employed by a large corporation that would buy them from a company called International Business Machines. Jobs and his partner Steve Wozniak were determined to change all that, and in so doing they, like King, changed the world.

The search for why may be the single most important and illusive challenge we face in our lives, but it is also a challenge that must not be ignored, however frustrating it may be at times. Why are we here? What is our purpose in life? What gives our life meaning? And, perhaps the most perplexing question, how do we know what we know? We can and must ask ourselves these questions, as well as ask them of others — especially our leaders. I study presidents and foreign policy. The what happened and how it happened are usually self-evident. The why is a much more difficult question. Why did George W. Bush believe there were WMD and al-Qaeda in Iraq when there were not? Why did Bill Clinton wait so long to support action in the Balkans while the evidence of genocide was obvious? Why did Reagan decide he could trust Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of an empire he claimed was evil? Why was Carter compelled to seek peace in the Middle East, or give the Panama Canal back to Panama? I’ll offer you a methodology that works with presidents and can also be applied to your own lives: look for integrity by and between the what, how, and why. If there is a pattern of consistency — if the three are aligned — you probably have identified the why. I can tell you with presidents the ‘public’ why they offer seldom reconciles with the facts of what and how. There is usually a ‘private’ why that emanates from what I call their unique “cognetic profile,” which is somewhat analogous, in this context, to their soul. If our own answers or those of our leaders do not reconcile — if they do not have internal integrity — we must demand of ourselves and our leaders that they do.

To say that these are difficult times is a gross understatement, but there may not be words adequate to describe the challenges that face us, individually or collectively, as citizens or a nation. What we can do, however, is take a step back, take a deep breath, and remind ourselves that solitude is powerful, transcendent courage is essential, and that each of us must find our why and honor our moral purpose. If we do, we will regain our capacity to lead from the soul.

[1] Simon Sinek, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (New York: Portfolio, 2009).

[2] The text and video of King’s speech is available at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm.

Leading from the Soul (Part 3 of 4)

2011-02-17T09:25:00.002-06:00

Part III: Transcendent Courage

The next element of leading from the soul is transcendent courage. Courage is the spine of character; it is the synaptic command and control system for all other virtues. We are all familiar with courageous acts; the firefighter who rescues the child from the burning building, the soldier who throws himself in the path of danger to save his comrades, or the passengers who uttered “Let’s roll” and gave their own lives to protect other innocent Americans the terrorists intended to kill at their target in Washington DC on 9/11. There is no question these acts are heroic and worthy of significant praise, even reverence. Are they born from courage? Panic? Desperation? Are they reflexive or triggered from a deeply-wired sense of personal responsibility? Is courage inherited or learned? Are courageous people attractive, intelligent, wealthy, or prophetic? Do they attend church every Sunday? Do courageous people necessarily perform heroic acts or is courage a state of being that may never be overtly expressed?

The etymology of courage, found in The Oxford English Dictionary shows that the word has been used to describe the “quality of mind,” heart, spirit, disposition and nature of a person which “… shows itself in facing danger without fear or shrinking…” (emphasis added). This history of usage indicates a much broader notion of courage which is revealed by perilous circumstances of life; circumstances that by their very nature are not within the control of the courageous. 9/11 pilot Mohammed Atta, who committed a horrific act when he flew American Airlines flight 11 into the north tower of the World Trade Center, is heralded as courageous in many parts of the world. Dutiful? Absolutely. Brave? Perhaps. Fearless? I doubt it. Courageous? I don’t think so. But what if Mohammed Atta had flown his plane safely to an airport and freed the passengers? What if others who are ordered to act in a manner they know is wrong face their circumstances by acting contrary to those orders? They are still taking action. There are still perilous circumstances they do not control. And, they are doing so, consistent with what I will call their truth: which is the first dimension of transcendent courage as a state of being.

The truth in transcendent courage is based in the simple reality that we know what the right thing is to do; the difficulty comes in listening to and honoring our sense of truth (allowing its transcendence) against the pressures of competing influences. These influences take many forms and have many origins. They may be internally generated, like greed; or, emanate from the pressure of peers, family members, superiors, or clergy. Consequences imposed by these influencers, positive or negative, act to tether or suppress our truth. A person possessing transcendent courage however, has immediate and undeterred access to their truth. They do what they believe is right without regard to competing influences. They are the most innocently (or unapologetically) honest among us. They live in their truth all day, every day.

The second dimension of transcendent courage is the capacity to subordinate consequence to the importance of action; consequences are inconsequential. Fears are faced down. The prospect of immeasurable burden is accepted with grace and dignity. Physical pain, ridicule, even death are accepted as the inevitable partners of a courageous life; one which, above all, honors its truth. Many arrive here through their faith in God. Others believe that actions taken consistent with their truth will mitigate the severity of consequence, in time. I will suggest there is simply no other honorable way to express freedom. If we hesitate to do what we know is right in the face of consequence, we are forever shackled by our own chains. We abdicate our freedom.

The third dimension of transcendent courage is selflessness. Selflessness enables us to honor our truth and readily accept consequences. Many people define their lives by their service to others. They measure their self-worth by the extent to which they make others smarter, healthier, happier, and safer. Teachers, doctors, clergy, police, firefighters, paramedics, military, and community volunteers come readily to mind. By their very nature or life choice, people who spend their time serving others have a significantly greater propensity to possess transcendent courage. Service to others teaches us the intrinsic value of selflessness. It isolates the influence of adoration and remuneration from consideration. It gives us the opportunity to embrace our humanity and feel connected to community while enhancing our self esteem. Selflessness produces that warm feeling many call peace. Selflessness is the liberation of the soul from the oppression of our desires. Think of those who have served you well in your life…who have enriched your life. Are they profoundly successful, high profile, and wealthy, flamboyant people? Maybe. I’ll bet they are quite the contrary; quiet, unassuming, self-assured, and humble.

The fourth dimension of transcendent courage is self-acceptance. Are you comfortable in your own skin? Do you like you? Have you resolved with yourself who you are? People who have access to transcendent courage accept who they are and live lives bounded by dignity and imbued with grace. They are at peace with themselves, in the present. Only when self-acceptance has occurred can our consciousness turn to the needs of others; only then are we open to leadership through service … only then is transcendent courage a natural state of being.

The fifth dimension of transcendent courage is the transmission of strength. I’d like to tell you about Sara. I met Sara at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas at the Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders where she was being treated for an aggressive form of leukemia. I was a volunteer there for several years helping out with everything from restocking the shelves of videos in the infusion room to comforting patients who were having spinal taps to access bone marrow. I also spent a fair amount of time supporting the parents of patients; trying to help them make sense of the cruel hand they had been dealt.

Sara was five when she started her treatment and like most five year old girls Sara liked everything as long as it was pink, purple or somehow related to Barbie. Sara had pale, crystal-blue eyes and strawberry-blonde hair, always gathered with a satin, clip-on bow. She loved to have her nails painted and preferred patent leather shoes. Soft and shiny was her style which meant that both silk and fleece could be mixed in the same outfit without offending her aesthetic sensibilities. Sometimes she looked like a kid who had dressed herself while standing in her closet, blindfolded. Everyone who spent just five minutes with Sara loved her, including me. Sara is the most courageous person I have ever known.

During Sara’s three years of horror battling leukemia I never saw her cry out, whine or complain. I will never forget the last few days before Sara’s death. Sara was the first one to accept what was coming. She helped everyone else through the painful anticipation of losing her. She smiled every moment she was awake. She never expressed concern for herself. She only wanted to make sure her mother, father, and little brother would be okay. Sara’s legacy is the strength she transmitted to those around her. Her courageous behavior made anyone who was in contact with her a better and stronger person. This is the fifth and final dimension of transcendent courage. Those who act courageously enhance the lives and behaviors of everyone around them. This is the true evidence of transcendent courage.

Leading from the Soul (Part 2 of 4)

2011-02-08T11:34:00.001-06:00

Part II: The Power of Solitude

Leading from the soul can only occur if we practice solitude. As former Yale professor of literature, William Deresiewicz warned us, today we seem to be intoxicated by “celebrity and connectivity,” where the “great contemporary terror is anonymity.”^[1] However, we know that the act of being alone — of practicing solitude — has produced great work. In literature solitude gave us Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Jane Austen; and more contemporary talents like Maya Angelou and David Foster Wallace. In music it gave us a range of brilliance from Mozart, to Coltrane, to Hendrix. In science solitude found in laboratories and garages gave us street lights, vaccines, and microprocessors. Some of the greatest thinkers of all time, like Isaac Newton, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and Freidrich Nitzsche never married and lived alone most of their lives. In leadership, solitude gave us the aforementioned Lincoln, Gandhi, and King.

As Deresiewicz further argues, solitude is “ the arena of self-discovery, a voyage of the interior realms.”^[2] Solitude is the path to our soul, where our soul is not some deific gift, but rather the core of our being that draws on both the conscious and subconscious. Solitude allows us to think deeply in search of threads of thought and method that allow us to make sense of the world before us. It allows our imagination room to roam. As wonderful as technology is, it can rob us of solitude. There is no time for deep reading or deep thinking; no time to argue with ourselves, to hone our capacity for critical thought such that we can know what we know and share it with others in a clear and concise manner. The digitation of everything has made us mental skaters on thin ice, always trying to move to the next link, or app, or text, or email, before the ice gives way. According to John Freeman in his book The Tyranny of E-Mail, by the time it takes you to read this sentence three hundred million emails have been sent and received.^[3] We are just one ringtone or chime or chirp away from the next distraction. In this sense we are romantics, always wondering if there is a better place to be than in the present, with ourselves. In the process our ability to concentrate and think critically, so necessary to the creation of original ideas, is severely compromised.

Now you may say, but what about collaboration? Or, Facebook caused the recent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt! And, the Internet is a fantastic tool! I love the Internet too, but the Internet does not produce original thought and does not solve complex problems. People do. The revolution in Tunisia was not caused by Facebook, the precipitating event was the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi, a despondent fruit-and-vegetable peddler whose death moved a nation of oppressed Tunisians to finally raise both their voices and their hands in unity.^[4] The uprising in Cairo, while facilitated by Facebook and Twitter, was based in similar defiance of years of oppression. Facebook carried the story and allowed people to organize, not unlike the pamphlets distributed by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine that helped foment the American Revolution. As for collaboration, yes, it can also be very effective, as long as it starts with every participant bringing something to the discussion that is original and adds value. Too often collaboration is simply a forum for the status quo to receive validation; for old ideas to be given a new wrapper; and for the re-homogenization of that which has already failed. In too many cases, it becomes a place for people to seek the celebrity that Deresiewicz warned us about; to allow those, who are so disposed, to be a pain in the ass. So far, the promise of innovation from collaboration by way of the Internet has largely proven to be an empty hope. The Holy Grail of social networking — yet undiscovered — is how to transform it from its wide and shallow profile to a web of deep integrative exchange.

As British historian Edward Gibbon wrote, “Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius; and the uniformity of work denotes the hand of a single artist.”^[5] I am not saying that every work must be done by one pair of hands as Gibbons seems to suggest, but I am claiming that each hand must bring its own work. I also agree with columnist David Brooks who suggested to remain competitive, “America will have to be the crossroads nation where global talent congregates and collaborates.” But, he also argued, “people are most creative when they collaborate face to face.”^[6] To collaborate effectively, each of us must spend time in solitude. We must take time for sustained reading of great works, to conduct primary research, and to allow for long periods of reflection, such that our soul has a chance to speak — creating original thoughts that produce new solutions.

^[1] William Deresiewicz, “The End of Solitude,” The Chronicle of Education, January 30, 2009.

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] John Freeman, The Tyranny of E-Mail (New York: Scribner, 2009).

^[4] See Roger Cohen, “Facebook and Arab Dignity,” The New York Times, January 24, 2011, www.nytimes.com.

^[5] Edward Gibbon in Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self (New York: Balantine Books, 1988), p. ix.

^[6] David Brooks, “The Talent Magnet,” The New York Times, January 24, 2011, www.nytimes.com.

Leading from the Soul (Part 1 of 4)

2011-01-24T15:54:00.003-06:00

Part I: Introduction

When I think of great leaders I think of people like Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. They were people whom against all odds and, moreover, against popular opinion, led society to places it would have never gone without them – to places that established new norms and higher expectations. Their ideas and convictions were asserted thoughtfully and courageously and they never wavered from their purpose: to improve the lot of humanity. These leaders spent a great deal of their time alone, reading and deliberating. These leaders took risks that elevated everyone. These leaders had a humble sense of self and a clear sense of mission. When the history books are written about the early 21st century, I believe it will be claimed that while we suffered from economic malaise, global warming, terrorist acts, etc., the cause was not a housing or capital markets crisis, or an addiction to fossil fuels, or declining test scores, rising federal deficits, or even a broken healthcare system, it was rather a debilitating scarcity of leadership. Leaders today show little, if any, of the characteristics of Lincoln, Gandhi, and King.

Affluence has had much to do with this dearth of leadership. For the last twenty years or so, since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, we frankly have not needed much leadership. If a difficult question remained unanswered, the consequences were few. Prosperity assured enough slack in the system that mistakes could be absorbed with little pain and no devastation. Evolutionary pressures that might have selected for capable leaders were largely absent. Foreign affairs columnist for The Financial Times, Gideon Rachman, writes that the post-Cold War days of optimism are over, replaced by a new “Age of Anxiety” that portends a “zero-sum future.”[1] The so-called “Great Recession” that started in August 2007, and the turmoil of a global rebalancing of power that calls into serious question the future of America’s superpower status, means that whatever slack existed in the system is now gone. Roger Altman and Richard Haas outlined the brutal details of American profligacy and declining American power in the journal of Foreign Affairs where they claimed, it was a lack of political will at home, as opposed to imperial overstretch “that threatens American power and security.”[2] The fact is everything has a consequence again, and leadership is essential.

Historians may also conclude that besides affluence, technology — in spite of all of its many benefits — played its own insidious role in the decline of leadership. They may find that those digital conveniences we have come to love and dare not live without, which have forced upon us an incessant need to be connected, has pushed leadership aside in favor of distraction and trivialities. Technology has produced a conversation that is fast, short, and shallow. It has fooled us about friendship; convincing us we are just a click away from adding a new so-called friend. Research has been Wiki-fied, which has led to a diminished capacity to search, contemplate, hypothesize, test, reconsider, conclude, and start the search again. In the process we have lost our sense of method. Debates – once like symphonies – have been reduced to sound bites and video snippets. Solving complex problems is no longer the goal; increasing “click-throughs” and “going viral” is all that matters.

These future pages of history can, however, be avoided if we take care to reclaim our capacity for solitude, courage, and moral purpose. This requires that we shift our behaviors to those that produce depth of thought and origination – that we have the discipline to disconnect. It requires that we become transcendently courageous and that we focus on the ‘why’ of what we do. It means that we each must become our own Lincoln, Gandhi, or King. We can begin by leading from our soul and embracing a conscious discipline of self-restraint and introspection, so that we may regain our purpose and our will. The process starts with practicing solitude so that we may know ourselves; then summon the courage of our convictions; and remain steadfastly committed to our purposes.

[1] Gideon Rachman, Zero Sum Future (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011).

[2] Roger C. Altman and Richard N. Haas, “American Profligacy and American Power,” Foreign Affairs, 89, no. 6 (November-December 2010): pp. 25-34.

A Time to Lead

2011-01-09T11:50:00.000-06:00

The events in Tucson this weekend illustrate all too painfully what has become of leadership in America. The events themselves raise many questions that can and are being debated with (mostly) appropriate vigor. But what led to the murderous act of Jared Lee Loughner, concerning as it is, is unlikely to produce a clear evaluation of the state of leadership in America. What will, however, is the careful observation of what comes now: the response of our elected officials. The early results are not promising.

The conservative Republican response was framed Sunday morning by Congressman Trent Franks of Arizona on Meet the Press, who made three basic claims: this is an act of a lone degenerate; we must not allow him to quell our freedom of speech; and, if we would all just turn our face to God, all will be well. In other words, it’s not our fault, and we must remain both stubborn and righteous. Shame on you, Mr. Franks. Demagoguery, however carefully coded, is not leadership.

One thing is known about unstable persons like Mr. Loughner: they are easily led. In fact, their instability is in itself a cry for leadership. The good news is they can be led in most any direction – for ill or better. But, we must – all of us – take care to lead, to tip them in the direction of better. For the most part, leaders today are followers who masquerade as leaders. They wait to see which way the herd is headed then run fast to get to the front to claim they’re the ones being followed. This inevitably produces what we see in Congress today and what happened in Tucson on Saturday: a nation at war with itself.

The leadership this country needs now must have the intellect, courage, and moral purpose to move people in new directions; to acknowledge that where we are is dire, where we are going is disastrous, and that what we must do will be as painful as it is necessary. Running to the front of the herd and spewing demagoguery won’t do it. Pushing the unstable toward violence is itself culpable. It is time to transcend such foolishness and retire the political jesters who are leading our country closer to the abyss every day.

America's God Problem

2010-12-13T10:47:00.001-06:00

There is a fine line between tonic and toxin and many Americans have crossed it during our climb from Puritan hardship to sententious abundance, perhaps most of all in our contemplation of God. What follows is not a harangue about religion and faith; I have neither the conviction nor explicatory skills of renowned atheists like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, or Sam Harris. To me, neither theists nor atheists have made their case; my head and heart remain open to discovery. Whether religious or not, however, we Americans had better come to understand both the virtue and vice of our religiosity. Projected beyond the self, let alone beyond borders, piety creates predictable yet preventable disasters. And the final victim may be the stability of our republic.

As philosopher Robert Wright observes in his study, The Evolution of God, belief in the supernatural has been with us since primordial times, initially as a way “to explain why bad things happen … and offer a way to make things better.”[1] Since then religion and faith have been expressed and reinterpreted in both monotheistic and polytheistic ways, but essentially fit within the definition offered by psychologist William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, as “the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.”[2] The evolution of God in America has taken its own particular course, dominated by Christian sects and quite unfortunately without consistent regard to James’ concept of harmonious adjustment to an unseen order.[3]

In 1630, just before arrival on the shores of what would later become the state of Massachusetts, John Winthrop gave a sermon of sorts to his shipload of anxious pilgrims aboard the Arbella. He borrowed from Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount and offered both prescriptions and proscriptions. He said, “the Lord hath given us leave to draw our own Articles” and that “he ratified this Covenant and sealed our Commission [and] will expect a strikt performance of the Articles” that if neglected in any way would cause “the Lord [to] surely breake out in wrath against us” but if we set the example of His Word, “hee shall make us a prayse and glory… for we must Consider that wee shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us.”[4] Winthrop set the stage for what became a broad new interpretation of America that is alive and (too) well today. America was a new land that could set its own rules and, as long as Americans abided by them, and set the example of “His Word,” they would live as a “City upon a Hill” that the world would look to for guidance and inspiration. In Winthrop’s relatively few words, America became the new Israel, and Americans were God’s chosen people.

What followed was the development of a special American identity expressed in many new and different ways, from notions of “manifest destiny” to several presidential ‘doctrines’ that all contemplate a role for America, divinely ordained, as the purveyor of Truth to the world about both seen and unseen order.[5] In the process the world became America’s province. Meanwhile, religion ebbed and flowed to and from the political sphere in America through wars, so-called “great awakenings,” and other exigencies, becoming firmly ensconced in political discourse by the mid 1970s. Along the way, intoxicated by the certitude of evangelism and honed against the anvil of godless communism and modern-day terrorism, Americans neglected their own “Articles” and compliance with “His Word” and have exchanged the role of exemplar for zealot, sliding further still toward dispensing condemnations and even waging preventive war while caught in the mystical allure of the “City upon the Hill.” Today, the prospect of the Lord’s wrath Winthrop warned of has been reassigned to non-Americans and, moreover, non-believers. James’ notion of “harmonious adjustment” has been long forgotten.

The results of such zealotry now lay at our feet: a country that has lost much of its respect (and yes, power) around the world, and that is now attacking itself from within. The tonic of freedom our Founding Fathers fought so hard to preserve in both word and deed has been poisoned by the toxin of righteousness. Virtue has yielded to vice. What is called for now are the better religious values of humility, tolerance, and sacrifice; but what we hear from too many religious leaders, and by pols and pundits masquerading as theologically pure, is ever-increasing righteousness and venomous condemnations. It is upon this altar our republic will either be lost or renewed, but as columnist Lisa Miller recently pointed out in Newsweek, the religious right have hardened their resolve to make the elections in 2012 about “God’s own special country” and remain furious advocates of “fear and domination.”[6]

I remain convinced that the next few years in America will prove as important as the first few some two hundred thirty years ago. The way we behave now, toward the world and each other – whether or not we corral the perversions of Christian nationalism – will largely determine the fate of the republic. As we gather this holiday season to celebrate our various traditions, family, and community, I would encourage each of us to address America’s God problem, summoning our better selves by setting aside bigotry and isolation in favor of tolerance and inclusion.

[1] Robert Wright, The Evolution of God (New York: Little Brown & Co., 2009), p. 27.

[2] William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Penguin Press, 1982), p. 53. (The original publication date is 1902.)

[3] I recognize, as Robert Wright did, that the mere suggestion of evolution and God in the same sentence, let alone the “evolution of God,” would seem heretical to many. So be it. The historical record is all anyone needs to demonstrate the gradual and certain variance that develops into seemingly new cognitive iterations of God over time. The most historical Christian document, the Bible, was written in many languages by many people at different times and has contributed mightily to the evolutionary dynamism of God.

[4] John Winthrop in Conrad Cherry, (ed.), God's New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny (Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 1998), p. 40. For more of Winthrop’s writings see his Modell of Christian Charity in volume II of his works at The Massachusetts Historical Society, www. Masshist.org/books/Winthrop.cfm.

[5] Among the more important so-called presidential doctrines are the Monroe doctrine, which began as a hemispheric caution to the Europeans; then the Teddy Roosevelt ‘corollary’ that gave Monroe’s concept an expanded imperial tone; then the Truman doctrine that was directed principally at the Middle East; then the Reagan Doctrine that addresses essentially the entire world; and, more recently, the Bush doctrine that promulgated preventive war.

[6] Lisa Miller, “One Nation Under God,” Newsweek, December 9, 2010, www.newsweek.com

Technium Delititis

2010-11-11T10:05:00.001-06:00

One of my favorite columnists, Roger Cohen of The New York Times, recently wrote a rant of lamentations regarding the velocity of change where he questioned if we are really better off with all that has occurred in the last fifty years; in other words, is progress really progress? He argues,

Before identity theft, when nobody could steal you, before global positioning systems, when we were [often happily] lost, before 24/7 monitoring and alerts by text and email, when there was idleness, before spin doctors, when there was character, before e-readers, when pages turned, we did get by just the same.[1]

Personally, I love my digital conveniences – at least when they work. However, I must also admit a growing concern I have for, among other things, our capacity for self-sufficiency when batteries fail or networks collapse. Will we even be able to find our way across town, complete a transaction, or write a real letter … in cursive? Is our new digital economy sustainable on bits and bytes? Should we be concerned that toddlers’ favorite toys are often an iPhone, or that Google is developing a car that drives itself?[2] In 1995, techno-futurist Don Tapscott wrote about the dawn of networked intelligence and its impact on a “new world (dis)order” and settled optimistically on the conclusion that while perils exist, technology will likely end up “freeing us, stimulating us, and relaxing us” as long as we join the emerging digerati elite.[3] Fifteen years later, I am willing to endorse his claim of stimulation, but freedom and relaxation are debatable, and the perils may be more insidious than expected.

The perils collectively contribute to a chronic condition I’ll call technium delititis: the slow but certain degradation of our capacity for self-sufficiency and, moreover, our sense of self. The fundamental question is, as life gets better through advances in technology, are we better at life? There are (at least) five deleterious effects of technium delititis I have observed in others and myself. (I do not claim immunity.)

1. Lack of presence. The digitally enthralled are seldom mentally where they are physically. While it’s unfair to call it digital daydreaming when our minds are elsewhere – we may be collaborating via a Google tool on the generation of new alternative fuels – we are nonetheless absent. Those who are in our midst can count on us for nothing, whether companionship or warning us that our hair is on fire. This can damage relationships upon which we rely for our own general well being. Perhaps those of us who are digitally engaged should hang a sign around our neck that reads “Not Here.”

2. Inability to self-edit. This problem began with the fax machine. As the speed of communication increased the requirement for getting our words right the first time decreased. When it took days to get a letter across the country, we spent much more time with our words and sentences, editing and polishing them to perfection. Today, we write in incomplete sentences and even incomplete words, and most of us think syntax is a government tax on cigarette and liquor purchases. The result of speedy transmission is too often lousy communication.

3. Rising narcissism. There may be value in social networking, I just haven’t figured out what it is yet. I really don’t care what hundreds of so-called friends had for dinner, or how a store clerk treated them. Astonishingly, Facebook and Twitter operate on the assumption that we do care, and they are clearly winning the argument given the millions who participate. The ether in their proposition is narcissism; we are led to believe by those who claim us as friends that such trivial mundane activities are indeed important to others – that we do matter. Social networks, at least in their current form and use, are (at best) ego-smoothing pacifiers that foster self-delusion. Worse, they take time away from developing real relationships that have depth and durability. As sociologist Malcolm Gladwell recently claimed in The New Yorker, “social media are built around weak ties.” It is unlikely that the next revolution or innovation will claim Twitter as its inspiration, notwithstanding the millions who are addicted to 140-character discourse.

4. Decline in critical thinking. Critical thinking begins with research … original research. Google and Wiki don’t count. They function as filters and organizers that may exclude better answers to important questions. They are clearly easier to use, but easier is not always better. If we are going to deal effectively with the problems we face today – and they are enormous – we better get back to real research including the kind of basic research we did in the 1950s and 1960s (before all-things-digital). Otherwise, we’re just re-stirring the same soup, even though it does arrive on our PCs and Macs in .8 seconds.

5. Speed isn’t always good. We are a society hooked on speed. We believe that faster is better – and it usually is. But, in many cases, using more time creates higher value. Thinking a while longer – perhaps even overnight – can be better than clicking send. Taking one’s time allows improvement in quality of thought as well as precious moments for self-editing. On this point, I reflect on a lesson I learned as a student at the National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander, Wyoming. The first lesson in wilderness first aid – when faced with a crisis – is to wait. Obviously, this seems counterintuitive until you learn that decisions made in the first few minutes are the most important ones and, therefore, must be made with careful analysis of all the variables. This lesson from the wilderness applies to the digital world too. After all, variables – whether digital, analog, physical, economic, environmental, scientific, political, etc. – are still just variables. We don’t need to always go as fast as technology allows.

Our first challenge is to at least think about these effects. Surely, the cavemen who started the first fires and later rolled the first wheels learned quickly about singed beards and the virtue of speed control. The next challenge is to take control of our gadgets and their usage to assess if a life improved by technology makes us better at living life. We have daunting challenges ahead of us in America and the world. We must maintain our capacity for self-sufficiency, self-restraint, and thoughtful deliberation. We need to keep the effects of technium delititis in-check.

[1] Roger Cohen, “Change or Perish,” The New York Times (October 4, 2010).

[2] See Hilary Stout, “Toddlers’ Favorite Toy: The iPhone,” The New York Times (October 15, 2010); and, John Markoff, “Google Cars Drive Themselves in Traffic,” The New York Times (October 9, 2010).

[3] Don Tapscott, The Digital Economy, (New York: McGraw Hill, 1995), p. 4, 34.

Two Cups of Tea

2010-10-31T09:46:00.000-05:00

With just a couple of days remaining before the midterm elections many people, including me, are bemoaning what appears to be a new low in political discourse that suggests a complete abandonment of America’s position as the standard-bearer of liberal democracy. If the evidence of yelling, screaming, head stomping, and complete disregard for the truth is any indication, on Wednesday, November 3, we could be facing a new Congress that is likely to turn the rotunda of the Capitol into a cage-fighting ring to settle petty political scores. And to be fair, neither party is innocent here. There are nasty people on all sides. It bears remembering, however, that American democracy has always been a messy and chaotic business and extremism is nothing new. Furthermore, extremism, like that which marks much of today’s Tea Party rhetoric, has a way of becoming diluted over time while offering new leaders a springboard to interpret underlying principles in more attractive ways.

Princeton historian, Sean Wilentz provides evidence of this phenomenon in his recent article “Confounding Fathers” (The New Yorker, October 18, 2010). He details an historical review of the John Birch Society and its tight parallels with today’s Tea Party. Wilentz argues that the extreme rhetoric of Beck, Palin, Limbaugh, and their many followers/imitators, is simply an update of the 1960s incendiary fodder produced by Robert Welch (founder of the John Birch Society) and Willard Cleon Skousen (founder of the All-American Society and philosophical mentor of Glenn Beck). In essence, today’s tea is Birch Tea. As the 60s moved forward, the Birchers experienced a straightening and redirecting of their principles by cooler and more astute minds like that of William F. Buckley, Jr. As Wilentz points out, Buckley’s biographer John J. Judis, observed, “Buckley was beginning to worry that with the John Birch Society growing so rapidly, the right-wing upsurge in the country would take an ugly, even Fascist turn rather than leading toward the kind of conservatism [his] National Review had promoted.”

Buckley and other more practical conservatives asserted the principles of right-wing extremism sans the bombastic bravado. I can still hear Buckley intoning his arguments on Public Television with sharp wit and rhythmic cadence without bludgeoning his political adversaries. He had a sense of decorum absent in the practices of Beck, et al. In time, he also had a candidate for president in the governor of California, Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s brilliance resided in his profound interpersonal intelligence. Historians have roundly criticized him for his lack of analytical skills and interests, but one thing he knew was how to connect with people. He used soaring rhetoric to be sure, but it was always a shade or two less hot than the Birchers. He also knew the difference between rhetoric and policy. He invited the support of social conservatives by embracing their passion against abortion and for school prayer, but knew better than to use his power as president to assert government control over what he viewed as personal liberties. He was a rhetorical conservative and a pragmatic libertarian.

In a recent interview I completed with Reagan’s son, Ron, he suggested his father would be a poor fit in the Republican party of 2010. Ron believes his father would be barely conservative enough on today’s scale to make “center-right.” What is also clear, however, given this reading of history, is that our concerns of the day shall pass. Brighter and more reasonable minds will prevail. The rough and garish will realize that enduring power, like that which Reagan enjoyed, is won not just through coercion and fear, but also optimism and yes, hope. Reagan believed in American exceptionalism more than any politician in contemporary history. While it did not always serve him well, it did allow him to favor inclusion over division, and optimism over fear. He was a compassionate exceptionalist, able to condemn communism as an “evil empire” while befriending its leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. Together, they set the stage for the end of the Cold War and an unprecedented period of economic prosperity.

Birch Tea won’t last, but it will provide elements to cull from its leftover leaves, which, when combined with more mild herbs, will offer a less bitter cup of tea. Perhaps it will be called Reagan Tea.

The Age of Apaté

2010-10-10T11:12:00.000-05:00

In the last fifty years, the American experience has hurtled forward from Kennedy’s Age of Camelot, to the Age of Aquarius, and now the Age of Apaté (a-pat'-ay), named for the Greek goddess of deceit whose evil spirit was released once Pandora opened her box. The lid on Pandora’s mythical box (actually a jar) was loosened by the alchemy of Ronald Reagan and the ambition of Mikhail Gorbachev that ended the Cold War. When Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika-styled reforms slipped perilously toward revolution the Soviet model imploded. However, what was once widely considered a great victory over godless communism – the collapse of the Soviet Union – quickly became affected, or perhaps more accurately infected, by the spirit of Apaté. Hubris and deceit were easier and, let’s face it, more fun than humility and honesty. With the Soviets out of the way, we Americans were free to assume a wide berth of exceptionalism to expand our reach and reign. And, we did it on the wings of Apaté.

Today, many debate today whether we have entered another Great Depression, or just a Great Recession, but it may be more accurately considered a Great Deception. From WMD, to credit default swaps, to non-reform reforms and unreal reality shows, we Americans have elevated the art of deception from a hapless wizard deceiving a dream-addled girl from Kansas, to a metastasized algorithmic ethos denominated in fraud. We face unimaginable deficits while we continue to ignore their obvious causes lest a noisy constituency or moneyed lobbyist objects. We wage war without a clear objective and no exit strategy to, among other things, protect our access to a source of energy that compromises our health and security while slowly but surely killing the planet on which we live. We are re-writing our history books to expunge our liberal heritage in favor of Christian nationalism – a crown of thorns to replace Uncle Sam’s top hat – as we elbow both reason and tolerance out of the public square. Bigger lies and more hate are essential ingredients in contemporary narrative.

Jonathan Franzen’s new book, Freedom, may indeed be the defining period piece of the era. As Charles Baxter aptly points out in his review of Freedom in The New York Review of Books (9/30/10), “the noble lie serves as the pivot point around which almost everything in Freedom turns.” Alas, at least all elements of American culture, including politics, economics, religion, literature, and entertainment are aligned – albeit around an axis of deceit.

Fear not, we will find our way out of this sticky web of deception; or perhaps more likely hurled into the stubborn certainty of a reality based in truth. The fanciful altered state of the last twenty years is coming to a painful end. As with most empires that vanquish their enemies, the last and greatest challenge is in facing itself. This too is America’s final imperial test. Our future rises or falls on our capacity to see things as they are under the blinding light of truth. We may or may not be different than the fallen empires that preceded us, but we will most certainly fail if we continue to indulge Apaté’s nefarious ways.

Waging Legitimate Dissent: the Rise of the LDs

2010-09-14T11:19:00.000-05:00

At the center of freedom lies dissent: the capacity to reject the opinion of the majority and/or contemporary orthodoxy. Dissidents who founded the United States also passed a Bill of Rights to protect those who wish to express dissent. Among other things, dissent is what made America what she is. Great American dissidents include people like Frederick Douglas, Susan B. Anthony, and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. By definition, those who dissent take unpopular positions and risk both their social and political membership and, at times, their lives. Dissidents often say what others are thinking but who are silenced by fear. Dissidents who prevail in their dissent – whose opinion or position succeeds in overcoming the status quo – are the engines of social and political innovation. They allow society to lurch forward toward a better future. Today, we suffer from those who masquerade as dissidents as well as those who chant “Yes We Can _____!” or “No We Can’t!” It is time to replace this noisy charade with affirmative and legitimate dissent.

Tea Partiers (TPs), or, if you prefer, True Patriots (TPs) are those who rail against our government for spending too much money and infringing on our liberties. Several rallied in August in Washington DC with the self-ordained Reverend Beck, and last weekend with Dick Armey’s “FreedomWorks” bunch. Most TPs want all spending cut or eliminated as long as it doesn’t affect their own benefits, entitlements, or patriotic impulses. Medicare, Social Security, and Defense spending are sacred – so much for cutting spending. And, forget about raising taxes, that’s unpatriotic too. As for liberties, those who know God in the same way they do will enjoy their liberties; those who don’t, won’t. For TPs, liberty has prerequisites. In essence, TPs are not dissidents they are conformists. They are the self(ish)-righteous.

The Blanks are the folks who chant “Yes We Can _____!” The blank is where the who, what, where, how, and why go. But, they leave it blank. (Psssst! President Obama … this is your constituency! It’s time to fill in the blank!) Their proposals amount to little more than feel-good platitudes of liberal institutionalism that lack any semblance of specificity. They’re like the dog that finally caught the bumper of the car it’s been chasing down the street for years, and are suddenly faced with the grim reality of answering “Now what?” Moreover, they can’t understand why the driver doesn’t stop to congratulate them … and why their fellow canine packmembers aren’t cheering. While they may have great ideas that might prove helpful, they have yet to realize that dissent is hard and painful work that requires courage, fortitude, and the sacrifice of fame.

The Dolts are the “No We Can’t” crowd – the negative dissenters – who mockingly sit on their uncallused hands at the local Men’s Social Club and practice harrumphing in between declaring “No!” Picture Senator Mitch McConnell here. They wear expensive suits to cover a well-earned paunch and haven’t had an original idea since they introduced Everclear into the punchbowl at a Nixon/Agnew campaign party. The last time they embraced progress was when Viagra hit the market. Before that it was Velcro. To Dolts, smartphones are for people without staff. “Reform” is an inherently socialist concept that will forever justify the concept of filibuster. America is great and will remain so as long as we practice regression. The hope-y change-y bunch is little more than a seasonal nuisance, like having to put one’s seersucker away after Labor Day. Dogmatism is just an appetizer before an entrée of certitude. Dolts are happy to have the old John McCain back. That ‘maverick’ stuff annoyed them.

So, where does that leave us? Fortunately, the TPs, Blanks, and Dolts leave plenty of room for legitimate dissenters (LDs) – for those who dare to face reality and offer substantive solutions. An LD’s campaign speech may sound something like this:

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight. I can assure you that once I’m done speaking you will have heard several things you don’t like. Once I’m done speaking you will have many reasons to vote for my opponent. When you go to vote, you may even circle my name on the ballot and write in the margin "Anyone but that guy."

I’m not here to tell you “yes we can, or no we can’t.” I’m not here to argue with you about the Constitution, or the Bible, or the Quran. What I am here to share with you are five things we must do to secure the future of our children and grandchildren – to preserve their opportunity to pursue their own life, liberty, and happiness.

1. We must terminate Medicare. Only then will entrenched interests who benefit the most from this unsustainable system be brought to submit to true reform. Only then will we be able to provide access to healthcare for every citizen at a reasonable cost. Let me begin by pledging that I will not accept government provided healthcare if you elect me as your Congressman.

2. We must terminate Social Security. Only then can we have a new conversation about how to deal with our aging population and redress the role of family and community in America. Let me begin by rescinding my own entitlement to Social Security payments in the future.

3. For the foreseeable future, everyone's' taxes must go up. Even if we terminate Medicare and Social Security and replace them with sustainable programs, we must reduce our current liabilities to a much lower percentage of our GDP. I will share that burden with you.

4. We must withdraw all troops, regardless of their designation – ‘combat’, ‘security’, ‘training’, etc. – from both Iraq and Afghanistan, immediately. Iraq and Afghanistan are ventures which have failed and for which there is no reasonable alternative to withdrawal. Furthermore, we must abolish the myth of America as the global policeman, and forever suspend our imperialist impulse to recast the world in our own image. This too is unsustainable.

5. We must immediately launch a Manhattan-project styled program to produce alternative fuels and new distribution systems to eliminate our reliance on fossil fuels. Not reduce our reliance, eliminate it. We must completely reinvent our orientation toward energy.

There are many other things we must do to make America strong in education, immigration, infrastructure projects, etc. But unless we get control of our expenses, our foreign exposure, and our energy needs, we will never be able to address anything else in a reasonable, let alone sustainable manner.

If you want to ‘stay-the-course’ vote for my opponent. There are those who insist if the captain of the Titanic had just rammed the iceberg head-on, rather than turning to take a glancing blow, the Titanic would have stayed afloat. To those who continue to embrace false-choices like that I respectfully, and dare I say, legitimately dissent. I affirm that the iceberg is on the horizon, but I prefer that we chart a new course before it’s too late. If you agree, please vote for me.

Thank you for listening.

We have witnessed many times throughout history that conformity is dangerous; that there is no such thing as the wisdom of crowds. (Remember the tulip bulbs.) As author David Rieff recently wrote in The New Republic, the current political crowds “are studies in the lowest-common-denominator subordination of the individual to the collective and of the thought to the slogan: in short, complexity to simplicity.”[1] Or, as Albert Einstein said, “He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.”

Each of us has a duty to think for ourselves and to reject the comfort of conformance. We must summon the courage to chart a new course and accept the consequences of our prior foolish choices. We must reject the sloganeering and invective of popular noisemakers and wage legitimate dissent. If we do, we will preserve the promise of America.

[1] David Rieff, “The Unwisdom of Crowds,” The New Republic, September 6, 2010, www.tnr.com.

Out of Crisis, A New US

2010-08-22T16:00:00.003-05:00

Every seventy-five years or so America endures a period of crisis that lasts from twelve to seventeen years. They include both profound economic and security effects that put the country at leviathan levels of risk. The founding of our country was itself a period of crisis; later was the Civil War and Reconstruction, and in the twentieth century the Great Depression and World War II. The current period of crisis in now three years old – marked by the date our capital markets began to realize they were standing in the quicksand of credit default swaps secured by vapor and hubris. I would argue we are far from seeing the depth of the current crisis, nor are we even near a midpoint. It would be ahistorical to predict otherwise. We have yet to even see the axe of conflict fall. No, 9/11, Iraq, and Afghanistan don’t count – at least not yet, although they probably provide the framework for much wider conflict with many more actors involved. I remain convinced that our capacity to start and perpetuate war far exceeds our ability to end it. The preposterous realization that we are unable to even define what a ‘win’ is, is all the evidence anyone needs to defend that claim. Be that as it may, my intent here is not to debate the dilemmas that face policymakers and provide fuel for Gadarene punditry today; rather to explore what historians will later observe with the crisis behind them, as they write the inevitable story of how American identity was changed forever (or at least until the next crisis in around 2095). If we are smart, we will write a different future than historians might expect. But we better wise-up soon.

As we stumble our way by fit and spasm toward the future, we have choices about how we reckon with a world that, in the words of columnist Thomas L. Friedman is “really unusually uncertain.”[1] Those choices are largely formed based on our cognetic disposition: a combination of intellectual capital and cognitive traits, which allow us to simplify the world and make decisions. Our cognetic dispositions are formed through the processes of education, experience, socialization, and indoctrination. We also forge relationships with those similarly disposed – of similar cognetic disposition – and wage confrontation with those who differ. In America today, four major groups have formed that dominate socio-political discourse. They are: the Angry Patriots, the Faithful Followers, the Elite Globalists, and the Transcendent Epistemists.[2] Each group competes with and between the others in elections, boardrooms, classrooms, media, and the streets. Besides wrestling over resources, rights, power, and wealth, the larger and more important long-term battle will be over American identity. This battle will determine the answer to “What does it mean to be an American?”

The Angry Patriots (APs) are perhaps the most familiar, given to the volume with which they assert themselves in the media. They are a boisterous bunch – Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, et al. The process of experience, as opposed to education, socialization, or indoctrination, dominate development of their cognetic disposition. They claim they are a product of the “school of hard knocks.” They are the torchbearers of American exceptionalism. Fear is their currency of persuasion. Mostly Republicans and Tea Partiers, they are publicly pious, although theologically shallow. God is on their side by entitlement, but while they claim humble abidance to religious proscriptions and secular law, they often behave as if their pockets are filled with dispensations. Their principal aim is to return America to the “good ol’ days” when they were on top of the socio-political pecking order in a world that (to them) is inherently hierarchical. Knowledge is nice as long as it is rooted in common sense, but loyalty is more important. Reason is often subjugated to muscularity; bigger bombs and bigger walls are more dependable than intelligence. Signs or documents written in any language other than English are an attack on their sense of patriotic purity; language is symbolic – not about communication or understanding. When challenged or threatened they favor isolation from the world. Free trade or other theories of economic specialization can only cost Americans jobs. Diplomacy is for sissies. For APs, the first clause of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State” has no bearing on the second clause, “ the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Mosques are monuments to terrorism even while Christian churches are not so to the murderous Crusades, nor are Catholic churches to pedophilia. APs employ a fair amount of libertarian rhetoric, as long as their entitlements remain – especially Medicare and Social Security. Their mantras are “America first!” … “Not on my watch!”… and “Not from my pockets!”

Faithful Followers (FFs) see the world through the lens of religion. They find grace, solace, and power in their faith. America is great, but God is supreme. The Bible is the inerrant word of God, whose greatest witness was Jesus Christ. Their cognetic disposition was predominantly formed through the process of indoctrination. The Reverends Pat Robertson, Joel Osteen, and John Hagee are FFs’ speakers of ‘truth.’ Evangelism is not only good, it is a biblical duty. A day of reckoning is coming; God is on your side as long as you remain fearful of his wrath. Faith trumps reason in a world that is scary and dangerous. Sin is everywhere and can only be ameliorated by sacrifice to affect redemption and salvation. And, while FFs are certain of their faith, their own self-esteem requires the frequent condemnation of others. Certitude and rectitude are their dominant modality – ‘unknowns’ are obviated by faith. Proselytizing, judgment, and damnation are paradoxically both liberating and oppressive. Zionists are their theological and political allies. They share a common belief in Eretz Israel, occupied only by Jews, at least until Christ returns and then the Jews had better see the light – fast. FFs have come and gone from the political sphere throughout history, but today they are firmly entrenched. They believe America is a Christian nation and advocate a revisionist history that casts the Founding Fathers as devoted and pious Christians. If they had their choice, there would be one political party: the Christian Nationalist Party, but they most often settle for Republican candidates who pledge allegiance to their ‘family values’ dictates. “Thou shalt not kill” is a situational commandment, which does not apply to murdering homosexuals or doctors who perform legal abortions. Nor does it apply to Muslims. FFs don’t see the relevancy of the question “Should we bomb Iran?” They wonder why we haven’t. Men are the dominant gender among FFs; they run the world, while women are caretakers of the home. Like the APs, fear is the prevailing currency of persuasion for FFs. If they had a ‘crossover’ candidate to share with the APs, it would be Sarah Palin. Social order is non-hierarchical. It is (mostly) flat. There is God, and then there is man. While race, ethnicity, and heritage matters to many APs, religion is all that matters to FFs. If one has (a Christian) God, they have everything. They have one mantra: “Praise God!”

Elite Globalists (EGs) are the too-cool bunch – the rising technocrats. Socialization is the primary process for the development of their cognetic disposition. The world is their oyster. Borders and convention are irrelevant and technology can solve virtually anything. EGs are actually quite engaging people if you can get them to put down their smartphone and quit talking about themselves. Thomas Friedman (cited above), who drives his Toyota Prius to and from DC from his energy-gluttonous, 11,400 square foot mansion just up the road from the Bethesda Country Club (where he is a member), is an EG patriarch.[3] Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are spokespersons. If not for grooming issues, Michael Moore would be too. Hip is important, pretty is essential. Celebrities are the diplomatic ambassadors of EGs; knowledge and intelligence are defined by camera angle, not IQ. While APs might call EGs lawless liberals, EGs see themselves as caretakers of liberty and the font of social invention. FFs see EGs as interlopers who will be vanquished in the Rapture. EGs look down on APs as pre-Mad Men-era carnivores, and see FFs as homespun curiosities who provide fodder for film festival documentaries. Neither APs nor FFs will make an EG’s Facebook ‘friends’ list, unless accepted as a matter of charitable impulse. No ideas are too big, or too grand to EGs. America is limited only by its ability to re-imagine itself. If it can be designed, it can be realized. The United Nations, and both non-governmental and governmental institutions are good, and corporations are bad – unless an EG happens to own or run one, in which case it is assuredly ‘green.’ The institution of marriage is also important to EGs, if only for their homosexual friends. Balancing a checkbook has never been a priority for EGs. Public debt is a nebulous, transient, and essential component of economic development. Religion is an inherited and quaint historical artifact that provides seasonal shopping opportunities, but is otherwise an archaic, albeit powerful source of conflict and oppression in an African nation they’ve never been to. EGs who claim a relationship with a higher being describe it as spiritual, rather than religious. God is love, not power. While EGs eschew ideology and orthodoxy they are ardent subscribers to their own; and, they love their obscure, narrow special interests, which define who they are. EGs want to be left to their own devices – and they have lots of them. Social order is amoebic in the form of multi-dimensional integrated networks. In other words, there is no social order. EGs can be a powerful political block, and demonstrated as such when bound by hope and technology by team Obama, but by design they lack cohesion beyond their common fantasy to one day be on the cover of Vanity Fair. They are confident, bright, quirky, self-indulgent, and bi-coastal. They do not set their feet farther than 25 miles from either coast unless they are skiing in the Rockies. If they’ve been to Kansas City, it was because their flight was diverted, and they will claim they never deplaned. Their mantras are elongated monosyllabic exclamations like “Cooool!” and “Niiiiice!” and “Reeealy?!”

Transcendent Epistemists (TEs) are the (usually) quiet intellectuals whose cognetic dispositions are formed by education, which is a lifelong commitment. AGs like microphones, FFs like the pulpit, EGs the spotlight, and TEs just like books. The eldest among them are described as “wise” and comprise the portion of the “Greatest Generation” who have not been co-opted by the purveyors of fear among the APs or FFs. TEs live by the lyric of Lyle Lovett, “I live in my own mind / Ain’t nothin’ but a good time.” They abhor certitude and cope by transcending the rabble of humanity where they can contemplate that which is not yet known. Conversations about who, what, and how bore them. They want to talk about why. They view faith as the crutch of the common man. TEs are areligious – mostly agnostics who have yet to hear a compelling argument by either theists or atheists. Like Christopher Hitchens, they will not allow themselves to be ‘saved’ on their deathbed when that day comes. They indulge APs, FFs, and EGs regrettably, although they are at times both humored and terrified by each. Their least favorite days of the year are holidays, when their focus on epistemology is interrupted and they are forced to endure the banality of socialization. They don’t do Facebook. They are inelegant, or worse. Lousy guests, and lousier hosts. Like EGs, they see the world as a borderless seamless system, and though they embrace the ideals of Immanuel Kant, they find the world is often better explained by the lessons of Thomas Hobbes and Niccolo Machiavelli. They read the columns of fellow TEs like David Brooks and Fareed Zakaria, but know that knowledge seldom wins in the development of public policy. They understand that to move the masses Dante’s sins must be teased and tweaked –titillation is essential. But, they won’t descend into the muck to do it. TEs are fiscally conservative and socially liberal, so neither today’s Republicans nor Democrats should waste their time with them. TEs have few if any contemporary heroes in government; they simply view America’s liberal democracy as an experiment that has been hijacked by venal charlatans. TEs believe entropy is inevitable, and even healthy. They are, however, ironically optimistic. They believe every question will be answered someday, and that today’s problems are absolutely solvable – if everyone would stop screaming and start listening. They arguably ‘get it’ better than APs, FFs, and EGs, but have no audience who’ll listen because of their unwillingness to subscribe to popular myths and contemporary orthodoxy. Their silence is both contemptible and potentially tragic for America. Their mantras are, “Question the givens” and “Leave me alone.”

These groups will shape the narrative that emerges from the current crisis – that defines a ‘new’ America. On first take, simply as a function of exposure, the battle appears to have already been won by the APs. They are also likely to bring a large portion of FFs with them in their quest to ‘save’ America. But their message – denominated principally in fear – may not prove durable in the long run. Fear seldom is. And, they do not appear to have a prospective leader that can attract a majority of Americans to the polls. Palin already didn’t. Another question is will whomever occupies the White House matter anyway? My guess is they still will, if not for policymaking, for the symbolism that plays its own significant role in identity. EGs are probably too self-interested to come together again soon as they did behind Obama, unless of course Obama regains his voice. Which leaves the TEs. They may find their own voice when and if the fear-mongers fade, or the depth of crisis forces them from the sidelines and people become desperate enough to shut up and listen. Knowledge is a far superior basis for decision making than fear or celebrity. Meanwhile, we do indeed stumble forward toward a new America, whether we like it or not. Individually, all we can do is be careful who we listen to and exercise the best judgment possible in our own decisions. And, every once in awhile, tug on the sleeve of the quiet ones and ask them what they think.

[1] Thomas Friedman, “Really Unusually Uncertain,” The New York Times, August 17, 2010.

[2] This is far from an exhaustive taxonomy. There are many smaller groups, and most people don’t fit neatly into just one. But, these are the big ones who will form allegiances of convenience or necessity to assert power during the current crisis.

[3] See Garrett M. Graff’s feature on Friedman, “Thomas Friedman is On Top of the World,” Washingtonian, July 1, 2006.

The Fear Response

2010-07-29T17:26:00.000-05:00

There are numerous theories about why societies rise and fall, proffered by even more numerous scholars who attempt to connect the dots of evidence and massage them with nuance into coherent narratives. Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jeremy Black’s Great Powers and the Quest for Hegemony, and Cullen Murphy’s Are We Rome? offer some interesting and varied approaches to the question. They are each well researched and include reasonable arguments to a complex question. However, in my seemingly endless search for simplicity – to understand the American condition – I have settled on one question, ignored by most studies, that I believe explains a great deal about how societies “rise and fall.” The question is: How do they respond to fear?

The “fear response” is related to Stephen Flynn’s theory about resiliency as a measure of national power: “a society that can match its strength to deliver a punch with the means to take one makes an unattractive target.”[1] But resiliency has at its core a cognitive component that emanates from societal IBCs (ideas, beliefs, and convictions), which contribute to our collective character. It is this character, which evolves continuously, that determines how we respond to fear like the attacks on Pearl Harbor in 1941, or the Soviet’s launch of Sputnik in 1957, or the attacks of 9/11. It is fair to say that fear brings out the best and worst in a society no matter how strong the collective character is at any particular time.

After Pearl Harbor, American society demonstrated both its cohesion and determination in defeating Hirohito and Hitler, but it also interned Japanese Americans. After Sputnik, Kennedy committed the United States to sending a man to the moon, but he and his successor, Lyndon Johnson, also over-imagined the Soviet and communist menace and nearly started a nuclear war in the Caribbean and did, unfortunately, convince Americans that if we didn’t stop the communists in Vietnam, a ‘contagion’ would spread that would threaten the lives of every American for generations. After 9/11, American flags waved from anywhere we could attach them, but our fear produced the ‘worst’ of us as American Muslim mosques were burned, and our leaders became willing fear mongers engaged in falsifying intelligence, and even color-coding fear for systemic consumption. And, while the jury is arguably still out on Iraq and Afghanistan, I’ll go out on a limb and suggest if we had a chance to do it over we wouldn’t have troops in either place today. The more interesting question, however, is what tips our fear response from ‘best’ to ‘worst’?

This is admittedly a tricky question, but the ‘worst’ fear response appears to have an inverse relationship with prosperity, measured by wealth and power; that is, the more prosperous we have become, the more likely a ‘fear event’ produces the worst of us. In the three events mentioned above, our fear response was best when we were the least prosperous in 1941, and significantly worse in 2001 when America’s power and wealth were at an all-time high. This seems counter-intuitive; after all, isn’t a wealthy and more powerful nation less fearful and more cohesive? Apparently not.

Wealth and power provide their own toxic effects. In 1941, fear inspired patriotism and produced self-sacrifice, discipline, diligence, and enterprise. In 2001, our patriotism expired even before the flags faded; fear spawned hatred, jingoism, isolation, and hubris. We have lashed out at the world and stand divided and vengeful at home. We want to build walls at the border and persecute those who don’t think like we do, worship our God, or even look and speak like us. And, we wag our fingers at each other and our government demanding our unfair share of what pie remains. In our relative prosperity we have become poor of character. FDR was correct in his day to claim, “all we have to fear is fear itself.” Today, all we have to fear is ourselves.

I would like to argue, as Tom Brokaw has, that the “Greatest Generation” – those who stood tall after Pearl Harbor – were possessed of an intrinsically generous and courageous character, but I see too many of them screaming into the microphone at anger rallies today. Their well-shined image has suffered with the rest of us, subject to the same toxicity of prosperity. To add a further irony, our current national security complex is the largest most extensive security system ever developed with “1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies [that] work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.”[2] Yet, we feel less ‘safe’ than ever.

Maybe it’s not prosperity’s fault. Maybe prosperity isn’t about wealth and power. Maybe its about humility, responsibility, and self-restraint. Maybe it’s about respect. One thing becomes clear: if America is to retain its position in the world, we cannot afford our current sense of entitlement and certitude. Personal responsibility and mutual respect for each other and the precious resources we enjoy deserve our better selves. We must face fear with resolve, not color-coded fear mongering, lest we allow our worst selves to prevail. It’s time to turn off the noise and recapture our greatness. It’s time to stare in the mirror and ask more of ourselves. The path we’re on will otherwise produce an unwelcome and painful poverty of economy, power and dignity. It is time to rebuild our collective character.

[1] Stephen Flynn, The Edge of Disaster (New York: Random House, 2007), p. xxi.

[2] Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, “A Hidden World Growing Beyond Control,” The Washington Post July 19, 2010.

Contrarians & Outlaws

2010-07-10T10:35:00.000-05:00

Our future is, as our past informs, in the hands of contrarians and outlaws (C&Os). Quantum breakthroughs start with breaking rules and venturing in the opposite direction of conventional wisdom. This is not hyperbole; it is reality. If you don’t believe me, please name one great idea, invention, product or service that was born by doing the expected according to the existing norms of the day. You will quickly find that it is much easier to identify the greatness of the C&Os – of those who thumbed their nose (or other singular digit) at the world and pursued a belief, passion, or wild hair at their own peril. By doing so C&Os benefit us all, and we sooner or later accept their feat as a new norm.

C&Os are not defined by gender, race, ethnicity, heritage, or religion. They may or may not be handsome, elegant, or even well educated. Their common bond is one thing: they reject the status quo. They question ‘the givens’. They foresee lives made better by re-imagining the world in which they live. Then, against the advice of ‘experts’, they pursue their vision with reckless abandon. Jesus Christ was a C&O, so was Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. From Galileo to Einstein and Edison, C&Os consistently rejected what everyone knew for sure and ended up changing our world. Remember, a couple of thousand years ago, the world was flat, until Aristotle et al noted the spherical shadow of the earth as it passed across the moon. Humans weren’t ‘meant’ to fly until Orville and Wilbur Wright – against the odds and the gods – proved otherwise. Computers were supposed to be for governments and large corporations, until guys like Gates and Jobs – both college dropouts – put them in everyone’s pockets.

We could use a few more C&Os today. Our so-called leaders have been ground into submission by conventional thinkers and know-it-all do-nothings. They have fallen prey to what novelist and coffee-shop-philosopher Tom Robbins called tunnel vision.

Tunnel vision is caused by an optic fungus that multiplies when the brain is less energetic than the ego. It is complicated by exposure to politics. When a good idea is run through the filters and compressors of tunnel vision, it not only comes out reduced in scale and value, but in its new dogmatic configuration produces effects the opposite of those for which it originally was intended.[1]

Our future will not be secured in such tunnels. It will perish in the darkness of overdone egos that play within the rules according to conventional wisdom. The ‘right’ suits and conforming lapel pins do not define the fashion of innovation. If we are to survive and prosper we must ignore their dictates, break the rules, and define new spheres of knowledge. We must turn our backs on those who have forgotten how to dream – who have been compromised by convention – and forge a new world. We must each summon our inner C&O.

[1] Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker (New York: Bantam Books, 1980), p. 117.

Our Messy Independence

2010-07-02T20:47:00.000-05:00

The independence struck by our Founding Fathers was a chaotic, random, and messy thing; struck against the anvil of uncertainty, while scribed with the certainty of death on their minds. They were suspended precariously between the end of their proverbial rope due to British oppression, and the aspirant ether of self-rule. To a great extent theirs was a leaderless coup d’état. Their spokesmen were neither statesmen nor politicians by volition, rather merchants, farmers, and products of apprentice-styled servitude. Most importantly, they provided a model for our next, and-again messy independence.

Our collective oppression today is the product of a weird entropic abdication of duty and responsibility by those we have trusted with our votes and tax dollars. While the best no longer serve, the better-than-good have proven worse than expected. They have quickly become courtesans of the loud-mouthed and/or moneyed jesters of paper democracy; the furtive face of Benjamin too easily exchanged for the soul of democracy.

What lurks around the corner from this Great Abdication (and Great Recession) is an even Greater Tuneout followed by the next messy independence. Anger and withdrawal – the current popular modus operandi – will turn to disengagement, then re-imagination, and rebirth. The next leaderless coup d’état is coming soon – probably sooner than later – due to the velocity of technology. The dissonance of disservice will come home to roost. People will take control of themselves, their families, neighborhoods, communities, cities, states, and country. Bottom up. Washington DC will be designated a superfund site – so much toxicity in such a small place.

Weirdness will not win, people will. Inspiration, empathy, and enterprise will rise again. Cries of complexity – the politician’s shill for do-nothingness – will yield to elegant simplicity. And, our penchant for independence will prevail.

Looking for Leadership

2010-06-21T06:54:00.003-05:00

At the center of our current crisis is not the recession, or terrorism, or an oil spill in the Gulf, as challenging as each of them are. It is a dearth of leadership. While our president struggles to find his voice, it is unlikely, given the election cycle and a news cycle that assures his shoes will be covered with tar balls for months to come, that he will regain his mandate for hope and change. And Congress has already proven its own hopelessness addled by anger, pettiness and rectitude. It only leads in ineptitude. That leaves only one other branch of government with both the authority and aptitude to lead: the United States Supreme Court, and the prospects there are fading too, suffering under the pall of partisan homogenization.

This week’s number is 160,000. That’s the number of pages of documents – mostly emails – the White House has released to reveal the essence of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s mind. The early analysis provided by the Washington Post[1] is that there is hardly anything controversial or alarming in either her past or her mind, leaving little for Congress to bicker about. She is a benign product of an intellectually and liberally ambitious middle class family. She is highly educated and has most of the politically correct boxes ticked on her resume. She’s hard not to like; assuming one could know her well enough to have an opinion. I expect her childhood classmates are not particularly surprised she is where she is today – just after they answer the question Elena who? Unless there is an undisclosed tawdry tale or militant link to Roe (and not Wade), Kagan is a shoe-in for confirmation on a court populated exclusively by Ivy League alumni. Therein lies the problem.

Once Kagan is sworn in, all of our justices will have been reared and educated in a corridor of thought defined by the same few but highly contentious issues that have been debated from the Back Bay of Boston to the boroughs of New York to the hunt clubs of the Potomac for generations. As much as Kagan will likely disagree with Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Kennedy, and Scalia, and more often agree with Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, the larger issue is one of human context, which is now as narrow as the differential of predictable 5 to 4 decisions. While deliberations of the new court will likely have all the luster of the great marble walls of the Court, they will also lack the grit, blemishes, and fractures that make Americans both gloriously unique and at times, unseemly. They will be formed in an ivy-covered vacuum where every argument is as worn and frail as the texts that support them. Many will find comfort in this – many will argue courts should be so boring. But maybe it’s time for the judiciary to lead. It has before, as Justices like Earl Warren (Cal-Berkeley), Thurgood Marshall (Howard University), Warren Burger (William Mitchell College), and Sandra Day O’Conner (Stanford) led the nation from the bench by both deed and judgment. In their day, the nation not only survived, it progressed.

This country needs leadership. What we face today is a court of no new ideas or inspirations; notwithstanding the occasional juvenile power impulse of the majority, as we saw in the Roberts/Alito judicial coup, which restored the corporate cash drawer to an electoral status it hasn’t enjoyed for more than 100 years. Kagan’s nomination may assure confirmation, but it falls well short of the spirit the Founders hoped to find in the our halls of justice where ‘We the People’ is best served by including the largest human context possible. It’s time to shake the place up – to speak up and out about the future of the nation. The only folks doing that today are far from qualified – unless selfish anger is a prerequisite for brilliance. If we are to honor the motto on our Great Seal – E Pluribus Unum – ‘out of many, one,’ we better preserve the ‘many’ so as not to suffer the narrow context of the few, however inoffensive they appear in tens of thousands of pages of emails. If we quash leadership at every opportunity the majestic marble halls of Washington DC will become the antiquities of tomorrow – auctioned off to the plutocrats of Wall Street as quaint memorabilia of a great society that died of systemic indifference.

[1] Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “Kagan Unscathed After Revelations From Past,” The Associated Press in The Washington Post, June 19, 2010.

The Arc of Transcendence: From Fear and Loathing to Renewed Prosperity

2010-06-14T16:08:00.002-05:00

As world order teeters between financial stress, the prospect of widespread war in the Middle East, and an acute sense of betrayal between voters and their elected representatives, we must – individually and collectively – look past the prevailing and perversely popular noise and move forward to secure our future. This is not the time to sit idly by hoping that the actors and conventional thinking that combined to produce the current crises will somehow also magically produce their melioration. Ironically (and thankfully however), the macro factors that are causing crises and disorder also reveal new modalities that promise pathways to higher levels of well-being – to renewed prosperity. But we must learn to make them work for us instead of against us.

In a recent jeremiad by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, wherein he calls for a miracle rebirth of personal responsibility, he also identifies contributing factors of emerging disorder while– perhaps unwittingly – illuminating promising avenues of success. He wrote,

Since the end of the cold war and the rise of the Internet, we’ve lost the walls and the superpowers that together kept the world’s problems more contained. Today, smaller and smaller units can wreak larger and larger havoc — and whatever havoc is wreaked now gets spread faster and farther than ever before.[1]

All true, but small units behaving virally is also how we will produce the innovations and form the necessary relationships to create a new future. Small units that wreak havoc can also organize intelligence, resources, and authority in new paradigms that might far exceed the values and wealth we fear are slipping into the abyss of current crises.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: creative intelligence is everything. The same technology that enables the Internet and fosters the organization of small units in a seemingly organic fashion also enables the geometric rise of intelligence. As Richard Ogle illustrates in Smart World, idea-spaces, formerly limited to what was in our heads and constrained by proximate resources, are now unbounded thanks to technology. This allows our imaginations to “leap out ahead of knowledge and the path of analytical reason” toward new, seemingly unfathomable, realities.[2] The great news is we have it within our existing capabilities and resources to create new paradigms, identities, and networks to not only survive our current crises, but to achieve a higher state of well-being. We must, however, become very aggressive in asserting our will.

First, the naysayers, merchants of venom, and those who are unable or unwilling to think or operate beyond conventional paradigms must be isolated. They only make the bad worse. This requires more than simply ignoring them; this requires exposing them, confronting them, and silencing them. The time for tolerance is over. At every opportunity, they must be told to “Shut up and get out of the way!” Second, while we must acknowledge our current circumstances for what they are – to get past the denial trap – we must just as swiftly set them aside to avoid being addled by their grave narrative. Third, we must re-imagine the world, unbounded by convention, to establish a new vision of who we are, what we want the world to look like, and most importantly, why? As Richard Ogle argues, “to think intelligently is to create webs of meaning about how the world might be, and this is the work of imagination.”[3] Fourth, we must attract and connect spheres of intelligence to produce new missions and mandates. Finally, we must pursue our new vision with every ounce of energy and persuasion we can muster. We must allow our creative intelligence its full expression.

Let’s prove Thomas Paine right again by showing we do “have it in our power to begin the world over again.” Let’s start by unshackling ourselves from old ideas and those who wallow in self-interest, find power in fear, or promote disrespect. If they win, we lose. The arc of transcendence requires us to re-imagine our future, and align new spheres of intelligence, resources, and authority, to realize new levels of well-being. It is not only possible, it is imperative.

[1] Thomas L. Friedman, “This Time is Different,” The New York Times, June 11, 2010

[2] Richard Ogle, Smart World: Breakthrough Creativity and the New Science of Ideas (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2007), p. 51.

[3] Ibid., p. 72.

Israel's New Soviet Union (Iran) and Why Christian Americans Just Don't Get It.

2010-06-06T13:06:00.002-05:00

Recent events in Israel and Gaza are certainly troubling, not only as to the violence and loss of life involved in the interdiction of aid ships by Israel bound for Gaza, but also for the fragile coalition of mostly western allies (that includes Turkey – the homeland of those killed) whose aim it is to corral Iran’s nuclear ambitions. As with all things in the Middle East, there are multiple consequences that originate from singular events. Too many people of too many races, ethnicities, and religions on too little land assure it. It is also troubling that Israel’s closest ally – the United States – continues to tolerate Israeli behaviors that compromise U.S. interests in the region. Under the watchful eye of the Israel-can-do-no-wrong American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), every U.S. president starting with Harry Truman has pledged his unwavering support for virtually anything Israel desired. However, there is more than political power at work here, there is also a fundamental lack of comprehension among predominantly Christian American policymakers about Israeli-Jewish identity, which routinely produces poor interpretations and decisions that form U.S. foreign policy. AIPAC’s power combined with passive ignorance – however innocent – is a dangerous combination.

Understanding Israeli Jews is really not that complicated, but it requires setting aside Christian history and, in particular, the New Testament, while considering specific historical events and Hebrew Scriptures. It is also worth realizing that while the Middle East is obviously rich in Christian history, few Christians live there today. Lebanon has the largest Christian population of around 30%; the rest of the Middle East, including Israel, is less than 5%. In towns of founding Christian history, like Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth, Christians account for less than 3% of the population. The Middle East is a Judeo-Islamic region, not a Christian one. In short, the New Testament doesn’t get much playing time there. Think Kings, not Disciples. The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the Holy Qur’an establish history, morality, and law – and they are founded on a contested inheritance since they both claim the heritage of Abraham. Among other things, these historical texts condone a different morality than the Western Christian world professes today. Violence, retribution, slavery, torture, and polygamy are not necessarily immoral. So, Christian Americans who want to understand why things are the way they are must start by erasing their own Christian indoctrinations. They do not apply.

Historical events and Hebrew Scriptures have produced five fundamental ‘truths’ held by Jews that the Western polity must come to understand. First, all the land from the Dead Sea and the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea was bequeathed to the Jewish people included in the territory of Greater, or “Eretz” Israel. They are God’s chosen people in the Promised Land.[1] This includes the long-contested West Bank and Gaza. Second, “Never Again!” is a mantra that every Jew everywhere in the world understands and will never forget. It is a sorrowful maxim to never allow another Holocaust. Third, God is power, not love, as is the Christian interpretation from the New Testament. Fourth, peace is security from the enemy, not some ethereal contemplation of a just, harmonious, or serene coexistence with non-Jews. [2] Furthermore, security is defined by who has the most weapons and controls the most borders. It is not the absence of threat, it is the constant vigilance required to control existential ever-present threats. Finally, ‘trust’ is inconceivable between Jews and non-Jews, especially Muslims.

Given these ‘truths,’ after the Holocaust Jews established their homeland in the Promised Land and adopted an “Iron Wall” strategy to produce their peace (security).[3] They have never, nor will they likely ever, consider that a just and lasting peace – of the Western Christian variety – can be made with their Muslim neighbors. Their source of peace/security is an exclusive relationship with a powerful state – a patron – not neighborly relations. In the beginning, this relationship was with the British, now it is with the U.S. The “Iron Wall” strategy requires that conflict be sustained to maintain a fully pressurized system to attract resources from the patron; ‘peace’ is little more than a rhetorical exercise. In other words, peace and prosperity (in the traditional sense) could be profoundly destabilizing for Israel. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union played well the role of existential threat and kept the U.S. closely tied to Israel. Oil reserves in the Middle East also bind the U.S. to Israel (although this often cost the U.S. when Arab states and OPEC used oil prices and embargos to punish the U.S. for its allegiance to Israel). Today, Iran is cast by Israel in the role of the former Soviet Union, which is why provocative interdiction of ships bound for Gaza by Israel, which has strained relations with Turkey, may not be unintentional. Threats – perceived or real – must be maintained. They are critical to Israel’s “Iron Wall” strategy.

It is unclear if the current frosty relationship between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu portends a fundamental change in U.S.-Israel relations. I would never bet against AIPAC and its capacity to control U.S. policymaking in the Middle East. However, there are signs of divergence between a hardening, militaristic, right wing led by Netanyahu in Israel and a more liberal American Jewish community.[4] For the time being, I expect the U.S. will continue to endure condemnation in the Arab world for its support of Israel – including terrorism aimed at U.S. targets – at least until new sources of energy are produced, and new boogey-man states like Iran no longer grab headlines. These factors may change, but the ‘truths’ that undergird the “Iron Wall” strategy of Israel, formed in a Judeo-Islamic non-Christian context, will never change. Christian Americans take note.[5]

[1] For an excellent summary of this “Promised Land” theology, see Irvine H. Anderson, Biblical Interpretation and Middle East Policy (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005), p. 10-15.

[2] After reading hundreds of pages of declassified documents from the Carter Administration, my own revelatory interpretation regarding these different definitions of ‘peace’ were formed. Carter nearly always characterized peace as a “just and lasting peace” where enemies were transformed into friends. Prime Minister Menachem Begin, on the other hand, seldom mentioned ‘peace’ without framing it in terms of security. I found no evidence either of them ever acknowledged the difference.

[3] The “Iron Wall” strategy is comprehensively studied by Avi Shlaim in The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2001).

[4] See Peter Beinhart, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” The New York Review of Books, June 10, 2010, p. 16-20.

[5] Among members of ‘Christian America,’ I exclude Christian Zionists who have formed their own theological alliance with Israel. See Victoria Clark’s Allies for Armageddon: The Rise of Christian Zionism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).

Waging Peace

2010-05-30T11:57:00.000-05:00

Memorial Day has always been troublesome for me. While it is good and right that we honor those who have given their lives for our country, we must also reconcile the inherent contradiction of waging war to make peace. We must honor our warriors without celebrating our wars. We must find a way to accommodate both our better and lesser selves. We must indulge our heritage at the same time we question it, so that we might forge a new legacy.

The United States is a nation born from war during the American Revolution and waged its most deadly war against itself in the Civil War. Victory in World War II made the U.S. a superpower. It is natural then that war has been encoded on the DNA of American identity. There is no nation on earth that wages war more effectively than the United States; but should this be a source of pride, or evidence of a national character flaw? While many argue passionately and forcefully that a strong military makes a strong nation, and that our fathers fought so we wouldn’t have to, the last fifty years or so reveal a different picture, raising important questions of morality and intelligence.

There is no question that taming the Kaiser, defeating Hitler, and victory over Hirohito’s Japan were great accomplishments. The conquests of madmen must be put down. However, since World War II, our wars have too often been waged on faulty theories of dominoes and contagions (Vietnam), and politicized intelligence (Iraq). Waging war has become, for too many, preferable to waging peace. It has become too easy to start, and nearly impossible to finish. When Osama bin Laden’s small band of terrorists attacked us on 9/11 the immediate reflex was war. And, while there was no enemy state to wage war against, we quickly adapted to our predisposition by calling it a “War on Terror.”

We are now realizing how difficult it is to wage war against a tactic. Our profound differential power advantage – using more troops with bigger and better weapons – has proven surprisingly ineffective against organic and asymmetric networks whose greatest weapon is virulent mysticism. I wonder how much better off we might be today if the fallen towers in New York had been cordoned off as a crime scene, instead of becoming a springboard to war seven thousand miles away? I wonder if we might object more loudly if we reinstated a compulsory draft? I wonder if we shouldn’t require citizens to spend one month each year in service to their country? I wonder if we shouldn’t endure more than wasted time and minor indignities at TSA checkpoints to awaken our better selves? Might we get smarter faster?

The War in Afghanistan is now officially America’s longest war. Our men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan deserve both our support and our courage. In this case, the courage to bring them home. It is time to rethink what we are doing, how we are doing it, and, most importantly, why? What do we possibly think we can accomplish by sacrificing more blood and treasure? Are villagers in the Swat Valley really a threat to our homeland? Do we really believe bin Laden will invade America or conquer our allies? When will we stand up, summon our common sense, and declare this war absurd?

On this Memorial Day, as we honor those who died in service to our country, let us also refrain from romanticizing the wars America has fought. Let us never forget the horror that war visits upon those who fall in its path. War produces many more victims than heroes and paves an uncertain road to stability and prosperity, let alone peace. Both the victor and the vanquished are seldom better off. I look forward to the day when we can drive by a cemetery on the last Monday in May and see fewer flags and fewer tears. I hope that someday we not only honor the fallen, but we also celebrate our new differential advantage: our capacity to wage peace.

The New Realities - #5: Sovereignty, Anarchy, & Creative Destruction

2010-05-24T10:39:00.000-05:00

If you are someone who enjoys chicanery, volatility, and a world without rules, the needle on your ‘happy meter’ will remain pegged for the foreseeable future. The world Daniel Suarez creates in his techno-thriller Daemon and its sequel Freedom seems to be more real than fantasy as unexplained ‘flash crashes’ and debt-induced ‘contagions’ threaten to destroy our many efforts to construct durable institutions to suppress endemic anarchy in the international system. Suarez may prove to be as prescient as his predecessor of Americano angst, Tom Clancy. Alas, anarchy appears to be gaining the upper hand – as Machiavelli’s adherents would argue it always has. Our stubborn invocation of sovereignty ensures it. Our rapacious leaders in both D.C. and Wall Street exploit it. It is simply antithetical for humans to stick much more than a toe into the Rubicon’s waters of civil transformation before withdrawing; there are few Caesars among us.

However, while we wring our hands over the effects of market mayhem and cringe at the timidity of our political leaders who wilt under kliegs supplied by hyper-partisan (so-called) news bureaus, we can also find solace in the uncertainty and upheaval that allows creative destruction to do its thing – to purge the system of bad ideas and incompetent leaders. Anarchy amps our turpitude but it also makes room for reinvention – for new ideas and leaders to take the stage. Many (relative) innocents will be hurt, but we must embrace this Darwinian moment and adapt our own behaviors and expectations to new realities. We must avert our eyes from headlines crafted by Chicken Little hacks and dig deeper into human activity. When we do, we realize that we are one major ah ha! away from an explosion of innovation. For example, last week’s announcement of the ‘proof of concept’ of synthetically driven cell production means creative destruction is underway. Next-gen Edison’s remain busy while entitled malcontents who capture headlines hurl stones in Athens’ public square.

Moreover, predictions based on ‘watersheds,’ ‘contagions,’ and ‘dominoes’ are seldom, if ever, realized. More often, they are used to perpetrate a political slight of hand, like we must fight in Vietnam to stop the contagion of communism; or, if we establish a democracy in Iraq it will produce liberal domino effects throughout the Mid-east. Or the latest: if Greece goes under the global financial system will collapse. The reality is that factors that produce effects in one place at a point in time seldom propagate. Variability of both factors and outcomes is much more probable. And, we humans have a distinct advantage. As Matt Ridley points out in The Rational Optimist, humans have mastered the practice of exchange and specialization allowing wealth and intelligence to metastasize across our global civilization.[1] This means most of us will be okay – as we always have been – notwithstanding enduring the hue, cry, and anger of fear-mongering politicos, displaced non-adapters, and bigoted extremists.

Social order is changing, forced by crises – real or perceived. Sovereignty will become a personal claim, not just a claim of state. Anarchy will prevail both inter, and intra state. Eventually, new structures will emerge based on new norms and narratives. Myths will be written anew. Collective action based on intelligent exchange and specialization will prevail. A new ‘normal’ will be revealed. This dialectic phase will end and a higher truth will emerge, just as it has throughout the history of humankind.

[1] Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (Harper Collins, 2010).

The New Realities - #4: It's All About the IBCs.

2010-05-09T14:28:00.000-05:00

Human progress is marked by the transition from one socio-economic modality to the next, each reflecting man’s principal means of satisfaction. Historians and anthropologists call them ‘ages.’ The Stone Age was followed by the Bronze Age, Iron Age, Agrarian Age, Industrial Age, Technology Age and most recently the so-called Information Age. Over the last century or so, during the industrial, technology, and information ages, science and engineering dominated allowing massive industrialization and gains in productivity and wealth. During this period epistemological activity was marked by the scientification of everything. Wealth defined success. The framework of the prevalent modality during any given ‘age’ is manifested in all aspects of human interaction. For example, to wage a credible argument and earn the respect of peers in the academic world since the early twentieth century, one had to be able to identify independent and dependent variables and replicate results, ceteris paribus. This gave rise to a number of new ‘sciences’ including political science, economics, and sociology, which have worn their scientific wardrobe with neither consistent appeal nor comfortable fit.

Today, we are realizing the limits of our science-centric modality, especially as we attempt to navigate our way through current crises. It appears economists have had it mostly wrong most of the time. Political scientists and sociologists are having equal difficulty explaining observed phenomena. The result is that Ideas, Beliefs, and Convictions – the IBCs – are on the rise as a locus of analysis. Not since the period of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, when we moved away from the mystical to the rational, has the swing of the pendulum toward empiricism been arrested. This shift back toward IBCs signals a subtle but critical transition in our socio-economic modality from the information age to the cognetic[1] age. What and how are being replaced by why as the central question.[2] Scientific method is being rebalanced with a reconsideration of the arts, philosophy, religion, and history as we attempt to make critical decisions – hopefully in time to save our fragile social order.

As we have both benefited from and endured the scientification of everything, the time has come to rebalance our analytics with an equal or greater consideration of why things are the way they are, not just what and how we do what we do. In my doctoral research, I study why presidents do what they do in foreign policy. I search for the threads of influence and thought that result in decisions that affect millions of lives. In the process, I build cognetic profiles that include the intellectual capital and cognitive disposition of presidents drawn from an historical examination of their education, experiences, socializations, and indoctrinations. What I have found is not earth shattering, but is also nearly universally ignored by scholars in this period of scientific preference. The principal driver in presidential decision-making is not empirical data, logic, or even politics; it is the intellectual capital and cognitive disposition that form a president’s cognetic functionalities. ‘Facts’ only become so by permission – granted by IBCs. Asking why allows us to both explain and predict decisions. It gives us a sense of meaning that empirical data never does, which produces a more coherent model to understand and explain our world.

Shifting our search to why – toward a cognetic age where IBCs matter again – will also impact how we measure success. Wealth, or net worth, may be replaced by ‘net well-being’ as we shift our preferences toward things that have meaning, not just utility. This has profound implications for how we live our lives and form relationships toward people and their organizations. If you have a company focused on what and/or how, you better start thinking about why. If you counsel people about their investments, well-being may be a more appropriate framework for quarterly reviews than net worth. If you are charged with the task of defeating terrorism, IBCs may be much more important than economic aid or nation building, and much more effective than frisking grandma at the airport. If you are a teacher, make sure your students also search for meaning while they are identifying, articulating, and calculating the whats and hows. And, if you are President Obama, you had better stick to your why – “Hope & Change” – even in the face of sophomoric ridicule and partisan intransigence. That’s why you were elected.

IBCs matter, perhaps more now than they have in many decades, and may just unlock some powerful solutions to seemingly insurmountable challenges.

[1] Cognetic is used here as simply meaning ‘thought into motion’ or the operationalization of IBCs where IBCs are as meaningful, if not more, than empirical/scientific data. It is borrowed from the definition provided by Lt. Colonel Bruce K. Johnson, USAF, on “Dawn of the Cognetic Age: Fighting Ideological War by Putting Thought into Motion with Impact” accessed at http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj07/win07/johnson.html.

Johnson serves as Air Force Reserve chief of strategic communication plans at the Pentagon.

2 Marketing consultant Simon Sinek explains the connection between why and inspired leadership – and its importance over what and how at www.startwithwhy.com. You can also see his TED presentation at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA.

The New Realities - #3: Ultrapreneurism.

2010-05-04T12:31:00.001-05:00

My father’s generation created wealth through their corporate citizenship; join one and remain there for many years while vesting in a retirement plan and/or buying large cap stocks and holding on to them for just as many years. This was a very viable path to economic security. In 1979, upon graduation from college, I took a step in that direction by joining the marketing department of Pacific Northwest Bell, an AT&T regional operating company. But, to the unspoken vexation of my father, I left seven months later to strike out on my own in the media business. At my father’s memorial service in 1995, one of his friends who eulogized him said that my father never really understood what I did, but acknowledged that I seemed to like it so “so be it.” I was then thirty-eight years old and within two years would be ‘retired’ (financially self-sustaining) myself. I had become what was known as an ‘entrepreneur’ – creating wealth outside of, and often in spite of, the corporate world.

As social economist George Gilder celebrated entrepreneurs in The Spirit of Enterprise (the bible of Reagan-era entrepreneurs), he described them as those who “know that genius is sweat and toil and sacrifice and that natural resources gain value only by the ingenuity and labor of man.” He argued entrepreneurs “create the wealth over which the politicians posture and struggle … they sustain the world.”[1] Gilder’s is an over-romanticized celebration, but he aptly captured the spirit and sentiments of my generation of wealth builders. But we too are fast becoming obsolete, replaced by ultrapreneurs who are even less systemically connected and are quickly adapting to new market conditions marked by interdependence, complexity, and volatility; and who are producing new inverted strategies of wealth creation.

It is worth understanding the conditions that give rise to this new breed I call ultrapreneurs. Globalism has many effects, driven principally by the liberalism of trade and geometric acceleration of enabling technologies. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb successfully argues in The Black Swan the world today is best described as a “recursive environment” where an “increasing number of feedback loops … cause … snowballs and arbitrary and unpredictable planet-wide winner-take-all effects.”[2] As complexity compounds, the improbable occurs with greater frequency, which brings to question a number of things, especially investment strategies. In effect, the curve of distribution – the bell curve – flattens causing calculations of risk/reward to consider that the probability of outlier events (high positive and high negative returns) to be relatively more likely than they have been in the past.[3] And, if complexity accelerates even faster – without contemporaneous codification of rules and consequences – the curve could become inverted. Translation: playing within a standard deviation of the mean is no longer justified based on an assessment of relative risk and reward. Add to this the emerging reality that systemic market risk increases in a complex financial system that has yet to develop command and control mechanisms, and that now also includes systemic fraud risk, the question becomes not whether one should be in or out of the market, but how one operates away from the market. Furthermore, those who continue to chant the mantra of the “long run” are fools (or they simply don’t know how to interpret the short run). In a complex interdependent market staring at either the mean or the horizon actually exposes one to more, not less, risk. The better perspective is to view the landscape from a reasonable altitude, looking down, as events unfold, not out at the horizon.

There are a number of people who argue that the end is near – that social collapse is imminent (even secularists).[4] However, I would argue that Gregg Easterbrook is closer to the mark in Sonic Boom: Globalization at Mach Speed. Easterbrook claims that “job instability, economic insecurity, a sense of turmoil, the unfocused fear that even when things seem good a hammer is about to fall … are part of a larger trend, and no rising tide will wash them away.” But he also points out that globalization has positive aspects: “ease of communication, more freedom of speech, markets closely attuned to consumer demand, [and] rising education levels in the developing world.”[5] Adapting to this world requires a high degree of intellectual flexibility – an embrace of ideological agnosticism that produces a transcendent state of mind allowing creative reinvention. This is the mental mindset of the ultrapreneur. He or she is the ultimate free agent who has the same work ethic as an entrepreneur, but who remains as disconnected as possible from systemic risk and who prefers anonymity to fame. They are hyper-independent, stealth, and highly adaptive. They do not recognize traditional boundaries or conventions and find leverage in intelligence, not natural resources – and never debt. They prefer networks to formal enterprise and may even operate through multiple identities. They are a product of the natural evolution of social order in a complex interdependent world. Ultrapreneurs will be the winners in an increasingly risk-laden world.

[1] George Gilder, The Spirit of Enterprise (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), 18-19.

[2] Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (New York: Random House, 2007), xxii.

[3] Hedge funds are the early interpreters of this strategy. What killed many hedge funds was not investment strategy, it was leverage.

[4] See Joseph Tainter’s 1988 The Collapse of Complex Societies, or Niall Ferguson’s more recent “Complexity and Collapse” in the March/April 2010 Foreign Affairs.

[5] Gregg Easterbrook, Sonic Boom; Globalization at Mach Speed (New York: Random House, 2009), xii-xiii.

The New Realities - #2: Referential Power

2010-04-25T22:26:00.002-05:00

While mega-trends are producing hyper-freedom (see New Realties #1), the nature of power – how it is acquired and deployed – is changing as well. Traditionally, power has been viewed as exclusively coercive – primarily through negative induction – to serve what the Athenian leader Pericles called “the most fundamental of human motivations: ambition, fear, and self-interest.” Metrics of demographics, geography, and natural resources dominated. As Thucydides observed during the Peloponnesian Wars, “the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.”[1] Hard power dominated in a world considered ‘zero-sum,’ where every winner was matched with a loser. In the latter twentieth century, Harvard’s Joseph Nye introduced the concept of soft power that includes both positive and negative influence by non-matériel means in a plus-sum (win/win) interdependent world. Today, the world is changing further still, moving toward new processes that recognize the disaggregation and diffusion of power in a global, as opposed to state-centric, framework. At the center of this phenomenon are the relative decline of U.S. power and the rise of free agency that enables a third form of power: referential power.

The decline of U.S. power, even if only in a relative sense among other state powers, causes much debate and consternation. After the Soviet Union collapsed the U.S. stood as a ‘unipolar’ power, unrivaled in hard and soft power. Following 9/11, U.S. foreign policy entered a period of hubristic overstretch that caused a self-inflicted degradation of power. For many, even suggesting decline is profoundly unpatriotic and inherently foolish.[2] If we are smart, however, it should not matter. It is a waste of words and worry. The paradox of power is that both too little and too much prove to be undesirable. As foreign policy scholar Michael Mandelbaum recently illustrated, the “power problem” is similar to what economists call the “resource curse,” which occurs in countries that dominate a particular resource, like oil. They invariably, as do countries with too much power (like the U.S.), adopt policies that weaken the state by over-reliance on the resource, or pernicious use of their power.[3] But again, this should not matter if we recognize our errors and master the concept of referential power.

So what is referential power? As an admittedly exaggerated illustration, consider what it would be like if all NFL football players immediately became unrestricted free agents and were allowed to form new teams without the influence or control of the NFL, team owners, or the players union. Alliances and teams would be formed around particular interests and capabilities without the constraints imposed by the deposed oligarchy. Disaggregated and diffused ‘power’ in this sense would be recognized, accumulated, and realigned through negotiation by each player based on how they complemented each other’s skills and capacities – to win the next Super Bowl. Power in this sense becomes referential, granted by and between participants who rely on one another’s skills and capacities to realize the highest and best application of their own.

In a much more gradual and constrained fashion, referential power is being deployed in the global system today, negotiated by both state and non-state actors around specific objectives that may be targeted at security, economics, or other social aims. Actors are perfecting the art of coopetition, of competing to cooperate. China competes very effectively with the International Monetary Fund to cooperate with African political and business leaders on many industrial development projects. According to Howard W. French of The Atlantic they do so without the heavy-handedness of the U.S. such that they are perceived as “our friends” throughout Africa.[4] As the metrics shift from demographics, geography, and natural resources towards intelligence-based metrics, so does the nature of power. If the U.S. is to continue to enjoy a differential power advantage over the long term, our leaders must recognize this changing power paradigm. And, this model of networked, referential power can also be applied locally; you are your own free agent.

On the local level, following the mantra of “think globally, act objectively” one must reconsider how to align with resources and authority to accomplish cherished goals. Identifying like-minded people (through ‘relational’ networks) and forming a special-purpose, objective-specific network that defines the objective, designs the solution, and drives implementation is the basis of transcendent objectivism … ad-hoc, organically formed alliances where power is granted referentially and resources and authority follow the solution to its realization. Attraction – not coercion. Government in this process is not a ‘headliner.’ It plays a supportive role. Transcendent objectivism is a design that is scalable – up or down – locally or globally – among individuals or states. At its core is referential power.

[1] John Baylis, and Steve Smith (eds.), The Globalization of World Politics (3^rd ed.), (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 50, 167.

[2] For a recent argument against ‘the declinists,’ who question the enduring primacy of American power, see Josef Joffe, “The Default Power: The False Prophecy of America’s Decline.” Foreign Affairs, (September/October, 2009): 21-35. See also, Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987); and Jeremy Black, Great Powers and the Quest for Hegemony (London: Routledge, 2008).

[3] Michael Mandelbaum, “Overpowered: Questioning the Wisdom of American Restraint.” Foreign Affairs (May/June 2010): 114-119.

[4] Howard W, French, “The Next Empire.” The Atlantic (May 2010): 59-69.

The New Realities - #1: Hyper-freedom.

2010-04-19T14:20:00.000-05:00

The collision of two mega-trends is creating a new level of freedom unprecedented in history. The decline of state-centric social order – particularly in the global West – and the exponential proliferation of digital technologies means that boundaries and limits are rapidly disappearing. This has extraordinary implications for all of us, but most of all for those engaged in activism and/or entrepreneurship.

Our state-centric, government-based form of social order – of collective action – is facing imminent decline. While new, networked forms of collective action will replace governments and their bureaucracies – avoiding social collapse – there will be periods of extreme discomfort marked by social upheaval and occasional (and hopefully isolated) violence. The rise of Tea Party anger on the one hand, and emerging social networks like Facebook on the other, are harbingers of this transformation. The proliferation of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) is another. This is not an ideological-driven transformation, although battle lines will be conjured along ideological lines by political aspirants; it is the result of an overburdened and dysfunctional system – an induced failure. Government simply cannot and will not be able to continue to perform all the duties it has accepted via constitution and assumption.

In the United States, government’s structure, processes, and institutionalized corruption are rendering it obsolete. It won’t go away completely by any means, but the scope of its duties will narrow, and functionally it will offer little more than resources and authority. It can play a valuable, albeit limited, role. In the future it will rarely design or implement policy. It has lost those capacities. It will more closely resemble what the Founding Fathers intended. The most important thing for each of us is to be on the right side of the transformation. Those who scream at government, stoke hatred, or choose violence will lose. Those who embrace government’s new limited and redefined role – who view it as a precursor to hyper-freedom – will prevail. Freedom always has. Freedom always will.

Meanwhile, the promises of digital technologies are just beginning to be realized. The principal benefit: cheap and reliable connectivity that enables the communication of ideas from ‘alternate spaces,’ will produce previously unimagined alliances and solutions, operating at the margins of traditional or conventional institutions. In short, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The world that columnist Thomas Friedman calls (simplistically) “flat” is in reality a complex of layered and vertically integrated networks; neither hierarchical nor unordered. Advances in new forms of energy are just one area where hyper-freedom will be expressed. The advancement of economies, security, healthcare, and education in developing countries is another likely category. Intelligence-based security systems are a third. The dominant ‘natural’ resource in all of this is intelligence, created out of a velocity of idea convergence that will create metrics of productivity one can only dream about today.

The decline of government and the rise of technology do not change the nature of our issues or objectives, it simply allows us greater freedom through which to design and execute solutions. At the door of this new reality of hyper-freedom lay two fundamental commitments. We must first realize it is an opportunity, not a threat. Then, we must take the leap of faith and put ourselves ‘out there’ in this new connected world and share our ideas, resources, and talents. We don’t have to become digitized technocrats, but we must commit ourselves to new avenues of ‘work.’ Social activism and commercial opportunities must be pursued through professionally managed objective-specific networks, open to any worthy participant regardless of archaic qualifiers. Those who feel threatened will most likely characterize this as socialism – many already have. They will advocate policies of isolation. But this is not socialism; it is transcendent. It is a higher form of democracy, which echoes Abraham Lincoln’s “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Those who see it as an opportunity – as hyper-freedom – will achieve great things for themselves and for society. They will be the new stewards of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Which side will you choose?

Silence and the Space Between

2010-04-16T11:49:00.000-05:00

In the introduction of singer songwriter Natalie Merchant’s recent masterwork, Leave Your Sleep (Nonesuch Records, 2010), she suggests, “The poet’s work is putting silence around everything worth remembering.” For me, Merchant’s claim summoned the lesson I learned (the hard way) to ski in the steep and deep forests of the Canadian Rockies: once you quit looking at the trees and focus on the white spaces between them you can manage quite well – and appreciate the trees all the more. The poet’s silence and skier’s ‘space between’ are as important, if not more so, than the words and trees if we are to both navigate and enjoy an abundant life while making our particular contribution to our ‘place’ (however defined). Making room for silence and focusing on where we want to go (rather than what might be in the way) requires a discipline of calm and confidence. And, it opens our minds to new possibilities to face what may be unwelcome and unfamiliar challenges.

Over the next few posts, I will be offering what I believe are necessary adjustments in our perspectives and practices as Americans and citizens of the world. I’ll discuss collective action, will, complexity & risk, power & security, and well being over net worth – as well as whatever else reveals itself in the process. Tools to make sense of and maybe even succeed in a world that is presenting curious and perplexing risks. The underlying premise is that most great things happen as a result of one person who has an idea that collides with passion to cause unforeseen and unimaginable transformation. They are generally obscure no-names who become transformative leaders. People like you and yours. They operate in the silence and the space between until, as if by magic, they change the world.

Until next week …

The Real BFD

2010-04-09T14:34:00.002-05:00

I appreciate Vice President Joe Biden much the same way I do habanero sauce: in small quantities and few places. While it can make a meal, it can also ruin it. I expect President Obama shares my sentiment. Notwithstanding Biden’s (nearly) off-mic proclamation about the passage of the recent healthcare bill, there was a much larger BFD this week (than non-reform-healthcare-reform) with the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty II (START II). Those of you older than college age will remember this pesky thing we once called the Cold War, where our collective fears were frequently if not systemically stoked by the idea that the US and Soviet Union stood poised to annihilate each other with nuclear weapons. (Remarkably, and an obvious illustration of how time flies, those college age or younger were born after the collapse of the Soviet Union.)

The signing of START II is a BFD not so much by what it achieves, but by the relative ease with which it was accomplished and by the general lack of media attention it has received. Indeed, as Thomas Blanton and William Burr at the National Archives pointed out in an email to me today, “the new START treaty signed today in Prague represents ‘real’ but ‘modest’ cuts in strategic nuclear forces comparable to some Cold War alternatives but still higher than the most far-reaching proposals considered by Presidents Reagan and Carter.” But, of course, this one got signed. Having read the archived correspondence between Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev that surrounded the negotiation of predecessor Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty II (SALT II), I can assure you that these treaties don’t come easily. Correspondence and dialogue historically had all the trust and congeniality of an old married couple that have hated each other for the last forty years. The US and the Soviet Union lived with each other in a quasi-psychotic symbiosis characterized by institutional schizophrenia. Fortunately, the Soviet Union collapsed under its own internal contradictions, and as a result Medvedev/Putin and Obama live with less, or different, demons. If any president prior to Bush (41) had accomplished such an agreement in this manner, we would be witnessing a ticker tape parade similar to those that marked the end of World War II. Today, the launch of the iPad received much greater attention.

The larger issue of course remains: the ‘miracle’ of the Manhattan Project – nuclear weapons – remain in ample supply throughout the world and are the highest ambition of terror networks and unstable states. The next BFD is dealing with that reality. Next week, forty-seven nations will meet in Washington to sort out what might be done. As with his recent ‘re-conceptualization’ of the use of nuclear arms by the US, Obama deserves credit here too. Sam Nunn, former senator from Georgia and former security hawk, who now laments his support of nuclear arms development and heads National Threat Initiative (working to rid the world of ‘loose’ nukes) would like us all to view a new documentary, Nuclear Tipping Point (www.nucleartippingpoint.org). The message is chilling but credible: Will we choose cooperation or catastrophe? Will we allow terrorist networks and/or unstable states to turn our ‘miracle’ into further madness?

As much as we all wring our hands over domestic issues, and as much as they will decide short-term political futures, we need to take responsibility and attempt to put our ‘miracle’ back in the proverbial Pandora’s box. It is a BFD, and as impossible as it might seem, we must try, try, and try again.

One Ball. Two Games.

2010-04-06T14:34:00.001-05:00

After watching the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, I have decided that the game might have a future again – if it embraces its past as finalists Butler and Duke seemed to do. I had long ago given up on the sport even though it occupied many hours of my youth developing, among other things, a sense of discipline and self-respect. I remain convinced basketball is one of the most difficult and, if played properly, most artistic of team sports. In my admittedly passé and romantic contemplation of the game, I find the NBA’s version of the sport brutish, selfish, and inelegant. My criticism goes beyond the big money, and gun-toting, over-commercialized superstars. In the NBA they simply don’t play the game properly, but Butler and Duke (most of the time) did.

The critical difference is this: in the NBA the game ‘flows’ around one or two players. Offenses are designed to have the supporting cast (including the most important object: the ball) operate as subjects of the superstar who is the principal attraction. In the NBA defenses are designed to, well, they’re not designed as far as I can tell; they are exercises in random motion. To NBA players defense is what the team not in possession of the ball does to occupy their time until it’s their turn to play offense again. (The referee assures frequent transitions in possession and adequate protection of the superstar.) In the men’s NCAA championship game both teams played real basketball, where the flow of the game occurs around one object: the ball. And, they had obvious defensive assignments designed to interrupt the flow of the ball to affect possession. There were two teams playing as composite entities, not a circus-like exhibition by the guy with the most sponsorships.

At 13:02 left in the game, I declared (via text) that the game was over. It was clear to me Duke would prevail even though the game was and remained close to the end. Here’s why. Butler’s star player, Gordon Hayward, had been quiet most of the game; working very hard without the ball, playing defense, opening the game up for his teammates, but statistically quiet. At 13:02, Duke was up by a few points. Butler’s Coach Stevens called timeout. I certainly do not know what directions Stevens gave his players, but it marked the point in the game that Butler, obviously growing wary of the clock and inability to punch through Duke’s marginal lead, shifted their strategy away from real basketball toward the star-centered NBA version. As the clock wound down Butler played the rest of the game around Hayward – not around the ball. They gave it their all. They got close, but Hayward couldn’t beat Duke – only Butler could have. Butler has much to be proud of. But, as is too often the case, they may have beat themselves.

Coach Krzyzewski knows basketball. He will never leave college ball. He knows better. His players are routinely criticized for becoming failures in the NBA. They don’t know how to play that game because they play the real one – the one invented by James Naismith who was tasked with coming up with an indoor game to exercise otherwise rowdy students through the seasonal oppression of New England winters in 1891. The one made famous in the modern era by the Wizard of Westwood, Coach John Wooden at UCLA. If coaches like Krzyzewski and Stevens honor the tradition of the game, maybe, just maybe, basketball is back. In one small measure, America (and I) would be better off.

Happy Easter: Indict the Pope (!?)

2010-03-30T12:06:00.001-05:00

‘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:

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”?
If yes, were they more than “isolated or sporadic”? Were they “tolerated or condoned” by “a de facto authority”?
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?
Finally, is there a local, state, or federal court that can assert jurisdiction? For that matter, is there any court that can?
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

2010-03-21T15:56:00.000-05:00

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.

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.
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.
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.
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

2010-03-12T12:53:00.000-06:00

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

2010-03-01T13:00:00.000-06:00

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.

7 Unspeakable Truths

2010-02-21T13:52:00.002-06:00

Americans live in a state of deceit and denial inculcated by the insidious accumulation of entitled thinking that has reached a tipping point beyond which the destruction of social order and national power is certain. Like children without rules or boundaries we have become tempestuous and, in more cases every day, violent. We still have the capacity to identify the truth but lack the courage to speak it. Our leaders, including President Obama, will not speak these truths. I will.

There are seven truths – things I am certain of after significant study and deliberation – that America must face if we are to maintain our position in the world, even if only in relative terms.

The wars we have chosen to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan are unwinnable; we must move expeditiously to extract ourselves from the center of this quagmire and deploy a strategy of offshore balancing to contain terrorism while, at the same time, develop new sources and forms of energy to become energy-independent. If we don’t, we will find ourselves at the center of a much larger confrontation between Israel and Iran, which will begin within two years.
The obligations of our government to supply public goods, particularly Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, are financially unsustainable – even if we radically reform our healthcare system – which isn’t going to happen. Debt is not power.
Our critical national infrastructures including transportation, power grids, and water supply systems are rapidly approaching a period of catastrophic failure that will cripple our economy more than the current financial crisis. When ‘Main Street’ fails, it’s over.
Climate change is a reality, notwithstanding the unfortunate apocalyptic grandstanding by Al Gore and a few rogue scientists, but the orthodoxy of environmentalism is wrong. We must find new ways to conserve and produce energy that allow economic growth to be sustained. We must do this for the environment and, moreover, for our national interest … for our health and security.
Within twenty-five years the dollar will no longer be the world’s reserve currency. We must move expeditiously to begin the process, region-by-region, of migrating to a common currency – the ‘globo’ – to protect us from non-US currencies being used against us and to mitigate the inherent instability produced in a global financial system populated (currently) by 178 different currencies.
Our primary and secondary education system is broken. Today, we are maintaining our global ‘edge’ on the back of our superior universities. While our students ‘catch-up’ because they have access to college, unlike the developing world (especially China and India), this will change. We must immediately move to improve the quality of teachers and reduce the burden of unions and bureaucrats. Parents, teachers, and communities must wrest control of this system, which is in rapid decline.
The absence of a liberal immigration policy, which has always been the lifeblood of America’s capacity for self-renewal, will lower our ‘replacement rate’ and increase our ‘dependency rates’ to levels that will produce demographic-induced collapse. If you want a preview, look at Japan.

Rival interests do not defeat great powers; they collapse at their own hand. In America, we have the knowledge and the means to maintain our position in the world and to secure our future for many generations. If we do not face each and every one of these truths, we will fail. Let the real discussion begin.

Hijacking Jesus

2010-02-16T12:55:00.000-06:00

My fellow Texans have a longstanding and attractive reputation for independence and enterprise, complemented (unfortunately) by a penchant for delusion and ethno-phobic evangelism. The latter is on ugly display by a small group of fervent Christian fundamentalists who are hijacking Jesus to re-write American history and promulgate the primacy of White Conservative Protestants (WCPs). They are led by Don McLeroy, a dentist from Bryan, Texas, who was appointed chairman of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) by our governor-turned-secessionist Rick Perry. Their central argument – that the United States is a “Christian nation” – is the veil behind which they are attempting to codify the primacy of WCPs as the originators and preferred arbiters of American ideals, as well as the central actors of American history. Make no mistake; their agenda has little if anything to do with Jesus Christ. It is all about power.

There are no Christian values in their rhetoric. No Golden Rule from Matthew 7:12, or God’s love from John 3:16, or contemplations of enduring love from 1 Corinthians 13. Their arguments about America as a “Christian nation” amount to little more than mental parlor tricks performed with a blindfold to ignore the historical record. That’s not to say they haven’t worked hard to produce their arguments; delusion is not easy. It is that they require more leaps of faith than a tent minister whose pants are full of brimstone.[1] We can have hearty debates about their claim of a “Christian nation,” but that is not the issue. The question is, so what if it is, or isn’t? What difference does it make?

The answer is found in the substance of their proposals to the SBOE. Their agenda has little to do with Christianity and everything to do with maintaining a social hierarchy that places them at or near the top. César Chávez gets erased from textbooks purchased for Texas schools in favor of Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority. Ted Kennedy is replaced by Newt Gingrich. The Reverend Pat Robertson is nearly as important as the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. As McLeroy’s cohort and fellow SBOE board member Cynthia Dunbar reveals: “The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next.”[2] Re-writing history to highlight the primacy of WCPs is the pathway to enduring political power.

The aim of these Texans is to set a standard of citizenship that favors WCPs over people of color, or theological difference. African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans and Indians must join Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists in accepting an America founded in a Puritan-esque mystique that favors WCPs. They must accept their lot as second-class citizens marginalized by an ethno-phobic doctrine that fantasizes the historical record of America. Or, if they live in Texas, they can go to the polls on March 2 and vote people like McLeroy out. They can send a message of tolerance, inclusion, and compassion, consistent with the American ideals of liberty and justice for all. They can out-Jesus the WCPs.

[1] For a well-researched, comprehensive article on the WCP’s arguments and proposals at the Texas State Board of Education see Russell Shorto, “How Christian were the Founders,” The New York Times Magazine, February 14, 2010. For scholarly work on the religious heritage of America’s founding, see David L. Holmes, The Faiths of the Founding Fathers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) and Jon Meacham, American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation (New York: Random House 2007).

[2] Dunbar in Shorto’s New York Times article.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

2010-02-10T11:54:00.000-06:00

Mother nature has accomplished what reasonable people cannot: closing our federal government for the week. While our government’s effectiveness remains unchanged – nothing is getting done – at least the majority of pols and pundits are home-bound, awaiting the arrival of a lobbyist to deliver a Honey Baked Ham and shovel their driveways. Meanwhile, we have been granted a respite from the din of weak-kneed incompetence. If the current storm persists, we might even get the Olympics started before the Boehners and Pelosis can spray on their faces and return to the podium. (Maybe we can even get some of those new C-17 cargo planes the Pentagon doesn’t want to haul some snow from DC to Vancouver to finish grooming the freestyle course! Sigh … I digress.)

Reasonable, thoughtful people from many corners of scholarship and journalism are starting to seriously question the future of our government. James Fallows recent essay in The Atlantic, “How America can Rise Again” offers a lengthy survey of America’s strengths and weaknesses. He recounts America’s history of overcoming adversity, but laments that the system that largely enabled those victories is broken today. He argues, “That is the American tragedy of the early 21st century: a vital and self-renewing culture that attracts the world’s talent, and a governing system that increasingly looks like a joke.” He explores a range of options including “an enlightened military coup … a new constitutional convention … a viable third party … [or] hope for another Sputnik moment” to right the ship. In the end, he settles for “muddling through” over “starving the beast” as the best worst choice. Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig argues in The Nation, “if you want change, you have to change Congress” and solicits readers to sign a “change Congress petition” that calls for a new “Fair Elections Now Act” to subvert the insidious power of lobbyists. Still others, like Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone blame Obama for “ muzzl[ing] millions of followers eager to fight for his agenda” and effectively trading in his “Yes We Can!” pledge for a mockingly “No, we can’t” reality. In the end, what happened to Obama was simply stated by Clinton advisor James Carvelle: “Washington always wins.”

While many, including myself, can easily point at the government to assign culpability, the larger reality is that our government will not and cannot face its problems. Moreover, when you set questions of ideology, capability, and blame aside - turn off Obama’s teleprompter and wash the notes from Palin’s palms – and just look at the numbers, there is no chance our government can sustain its current or future obligations. Absent a series of syzygystic miracles, it will collapse under the weight of its own financial malfeasance. It is time, as Jacob Weisberg argues at Slate, “to stop blaming the rascals we elect to office and start looking at ourselves.” It is time to take the initiative – to quit staring at our government like an infant who has discovered his navel – and take our future back; one person, family, school, and community at a time.

Pepsi's New Populism

2010-02-05T17:26:00.000-06:00

Pepsi commercials will not be seen in the Super Bowl this year. After 23 years of Cindy Crawford, Britney Spears, et al, dating back to when the Giants beat the Broncos in Super Bowl XXI, Pepsi is opting to reorient its marketing platform to ‘be less about a singular event and more about a movement’ according to spokesperson, Nicole Bradley. Since the decision was made, Pepsi has poured more than $20 million into its ‘Refresh Project’ that allows participants to vote for community-worthy projects originated by regular folks who submit their ideas online. See www.refresheverything.com. The current leader board reflects an array of social aims including caring for troops, improving education, and several ‘green’ initiatives. Both for-profit and non-profit groups can apply. Pepsi is spawning its own network of civic entrepreneurs.

The execs at Pepsi aren't stupid, although as you might expect, Coke is stepping into the big game with a campaign on ‘open happiness’ (whatever that means). Pepsi has very adroitly measured the sense of populist discontent in the country and aims to capitalize on it while utilizing the convergence of people, media, and issues to extend their brand. Big $, big-bang media is giving way to an organic process of self-identification and self-executing regimes that produce empathic and objective-oriented networks, which effectively work around the epidemic of ineptitude plaguing our national, state and local governments. Maybe the follow-up campaign will be Pepsi is the Power of the People.

Pepsi is banking on marketing gains that are won referentially as a by-product of empowering people around ideas that matter and that have a high likelihood of frequent and enduring participation. This represents a more subtle and artful form of persuasion, but may prove to be much more effective (and efficient) than three million dollar thirty-second commercials performed by this year’s starlet. The new Pepsi Generation may usher us Boomers to the ash heap of history right along with our tie-dye shirts and pinstripe suits. Or, Pepsi may be right back next year, advertising in Super Bowl XLV, hosted by Mr. Jones at Jerry World on February 6, 2011 in Arlington, Texas.

A ‘Next Big’ Idea: Civic Entrepreneurism

2010-01-26T10:26:00.002-06:00

As I have argued in prior posts, crisis offers liberation and it is indeed time to reboot “We the People.” But, how do we do that? Does the combative divisiveness and invective of the Tea Party or Moveon.org provide any answers? Will Obama’s State of the Union address illuminate new pathways to what David Brooks calls “dynamic optimism?”[1] Is Sarah Palin poised to launch a campaign of patriotic renewal? I doubt it. Rebooting America will be accomplished one entrepreneur at a time. One of the ‘next big’ ideas is civic entrepreneurism.

Civic entrepreneurism embraces the retreat of government services in the face of economic decline. Its biggest markets are municipal, county, state (and eventually) federal programs. California – historically an entrepreneur’s dream – remains a golden state of opportunity. Civic entrepreneurs form for-profit, non-governmental organizations to provide essential services formerly provided by government. Their rewards are both social and economic. They are part mercenary, part altruistic; and they provide enormous opportunity for those displaced during the Great Recession and those looking for a long and productive career.

While some will no doubt argue against civic entrepreneurs as invasive privatization of the public sector, their arguments fall short given the reality of government’s necessary abandonment of such services. Civic entrepreneurs should take a close look at state and municipal government budgets to identify those ‘essentials’ that are now available to be filled by private enterprise. Existing infrastructure – built by government agencies – may even be available for purchase for cents on the dollar, and staff may be in place, or re-hired to launch the new service provider.

Tomorrow night, Obama will be announcing the ‘freeze’ of government expenditures on certain programs for three years. California’s woes are well documented. There are few, if any, states, counties, or municipalities that are able to meet their existing public obligations. It is time for entrepreneurs – the backbone of America – to step in and fill the void. ‘Public goods’ are the next private enterprise.

[1] David Brooks, ‘Populist Addiction,’ New York Times, January 26, 2010

Rebooting “We the People”

2010-01-22T11:27:00.002-06:00

“We the People” of the United States of America are in trouble. Our democratic experiment is in peril, dominated by demagoguery and corruption. The concerns of our Founding Fathers have come to fruition as ‘errant man’ has prevailed in the institutionalization of mercenary-grade rapacity. Congress continues to get nothing done (albeit at great expense), and our Supreme Court has now put the final nail in the coffin of our liberal democracy by ruling that our Constitution really meant to read “We the Corporations”. While liberty was once our common bond, anger has taken its place. Unless we find a way to reboot our democratic values we will soon enter the Pantheon of former superpowers.

While this may sound like a jeremiad, we have got to find a way out of this. Our government still has power and money, but no longer has its people; who have and always will be its principal source of strength. If anyone could have succeeded in rebooting our democracy, President Obama arguably had the best shot, but a wide mandate evaporated in the quagmire of Washington DC. Someday we may come to realize Obama was the canary in the coal mine; a sign that bright young leadership could no longer produce reform and renewal. The system is ungovernable. It now exists as little more than a host for parasites.

Smart people with big money – Goldman Sachs – have made their risk assessment and are deeply discounting the capacity of the United States government. While many rail against what they believe is a greedy behemoth, the reality is the folks at Goldman are simply doing a better job of pursuing their self-interest. And, they have made their bet: they don’t believe the government can do anything to govern them. They know what the rest of us are now realizing; our government – once a model for the free world – has a terminal case of constipation, which has immobilized its power. The partners at Goldman Sachs know they will always be able to out-smart and out-maneuver regulators in Washington.

There is a way out, however, thanks in part to new technologies that offer us new ways to form new modes of collective action. While our government may be entering a slow but certain period of entropy, we have the capacity to form new relationships and associations to solve seemingly intractable problems. The solution starts by taking a page out of Goldman Sachs’ game plan and learn to ignore our government. Turn our back and, to the extent possible, quit feeding/funding the monster it has become. Each of us must pick an objective – education, healthcare, alternative fuels, security, communication, technology, whatever. Set out to organize those with common interests – whether or not they too are Americans. When a solution is found, pursue its execution with all the energy and resources available – with or without government support or approval.

“We the People” can form more perfect Unions. The time to get started is now.