Looking for Leadership

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.

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[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

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.

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[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.

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]

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[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).