The Supreme Court and Judicial Activism: An Unsolvable Debate

“Ultimately I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” – President Obama, 4/2/2012

Judicial activism is the idea that judges are “legislating from the bench,” essentially crafting new laws that run contrary to the will of the people, as represented by Congress and the President. Arthur Schlesinger coined the term in 1947, but the idea of judicial activism has been present from the beginning of US history. Arguments over the role of the courts stretch back to John Marshall greatly expanding the role of the federal government shortly after the founding of our nation, through Roger Taney  concluding that African-Americans could not be citizens in the Dred Scott Decision, and into the modern era with FDR battling the Court over initiatives in the New Deal. Today, we see its fruits in the ongoing conservative fight to roll back the Roe v. Wade decision and, of course, the current attacks from the Obama administration against possible judicial activism concerning the healthcare act. The idea is not new and both sides of the aisle have used it in their political arsenal.

Edward Lazarus, in his 1998 book Closed Chambers concerning the modern Supreme Court, makes the point well:

Partisans on both sides wage a destructively misguided war against what they deride reflexively as judicial activism. For liberals, this judicial overstepping takes the form of every recent decision that has cut back or overturned a Warrenesque ruling of the past. Meanwhile, conservatives cry foul at every decision in which a federal judge finds the police or prosecutors to have violated constitutional rights or those that impinge on favorite political causes such as school prayer. (516-517)

These “convenient charges” clearly reveal that “activism is in the eye of the beholder.” But Lazarus continues: “judicial ‘activism’—of the right or of the left—is no sin unto itself….The sin is not judicial activism, which may be warranted and healthy, but judicial activism bereft of persuasion and its crucial ingredients: reason, consistency, and principle.” (517)

I agree that judicial activism is not a sin unto itself. However, I would go further and argue that these sins are bound to occur, there is little we can do to stop them, and they are simply the symptoms of schismatic political philosophies. The system of appointing judges in the US is extraordinarily partisan. Especially when it comes to the Supreme Court, presidents tend to pick appointees who are as far to their side of the aisle as possible who will still be able to win Senate approval. The vast majority of these appointees have demonstrable records as judges in lower courts, or at least significant evidence revealing their political predilections. Why would anyone assume that once the appointees attain the bench that they will drop all of these prior beliefs at the door?

Like many people, especially those who work in government, these judges hold fundamental political beliefs deeply. While some justices have changed political beliefs during their time on the court, this is not the norm, which is why it is often fairly easy to predict the votes of many justices on politically polarizing issues. Once someone has come to believe strongly in certain fundamentals, they are unlikely to be swayed without repeated, strong undermining of their positions. And these justices are much too intelligent to be logically undercut on a regular basis. Justices tend to stick to their existing political beliefs because they think they are true, not because they have a malevolent plan to rule by decree from the bench. Conservative justices are likely to strike down laws that expand the federal government because they legitimately believe the federal government largely gets in the way of liberty. In contrast, liberal justices are more likely to uphold laws expanding the federal government if they believe such expansion expands the freedom of less-privileged groups.

These views stem from more fundamental understandings of freedom. Conservatives tend to view freedom as “formal,” that is, a lack of limitations on doing something. Liberals on the other hand tend to view freedom as “effective,” that is, the provision of a feasible means for doing something that is desired. So in the case of healthcare, conservatives view our current system as free – anyone can buy health insurance and no one is stopping them. Liberals, though, do not see the system as free because many people cannot feasibly pay for coverage due to its high cost. These are fundamentally different understandings of freedom, and justices who hold one or the other view are not likely to suddenly become enchanted with the other.

Thus, what many label judicial activism I would simply label as sticking to your guns. People have different opinions; disagreement is bound to occur. A vote against the healthcare act is not a sign of ignorance; neither was a vote against Citizens United. Both examples merely showcase the justices’ varying political philosophies. Deciding whose political philosophy is best is in fact the ongoing experiment of any democracy, an experiment that will never end.

Source: http://www.economist.com/node/18557594

Last year The Economist ran an interestingly article that discussed how parole boards were much more likely to grant prisoners parole immediately after breaks for food (see chart on right). Clearly objectivity is an illusion. Not even science can be purely objective, as the act of observation affects the observed (as we know from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle) and greater precision is always possible.

Human psychology is extraordinarily fickle. We are pulled to and fro by forces beyond our recognition. As the overly objective Ebenezer Scrooge suggested, even a tiny bit of bad potato can have an outsized effect on the mind. Of course accusations of judicial activism will continue, but they are seldom warranted. The bulk of Supreme Court votes seem to align with logically thought out philosophical positions, even if we don’t always agree with them. And in the end, while judicial decisions can delay or speed the application of what most of us consider to be just, it seems that, at least in the US, justice has the upper hand in the long run anyway.

How to Spot a Lie: Chain Emails and Facebook Shares

“Congratulations! You recently filled out an entry form for a contest to win a three day, two night Caribbean cruise for two, and you have been selected to receive the cruise! This cruise to the Bahamas, featuring beautiful white beaches and clear blue water, can be yours if you just enter your social security number into the keypad now!”

Click.

It’s pretty easy to spot the lie in a spam phone call – I know I certainly did not fill out any such entry form recently – and we are all used to dismissing out of hand anything the phone call has to say. But information from emails, Facebook, Twitter, and other websites is perhaps a little trickier. I mean, we trust our family and friends to only pass on information that is actually valid, right? Well, unfortunately, even the most well-intentioned person will often be duped by a well-constructed but erroneous email or post, especially if it validates their views on politics or religion. So here are my quick and dirty tips on how to spot lies in emails and Facebook posts.

Honestly, if you just follow the first rule in each section, you’ll be fine. You might miss out on the occasional true story, but at least you won’t believe all the outrageous refuse that circulates on the internet. But one rule isn’t nearly enough fun, so I’ll provide several more.

Email

Rule 1: If it is a chain email, it’s false.

I think this may actually be true 99% of the time. And I feel no need to share any examples of this one because chain emails are so common. The valid chain email is so rare, that if the next one you receive is actually true (and verifiable), I’ll buy you a coffee, provided you live in DC. If you don’t like coffee, too bad.

Rule 2: If it has vertical lines on the side of the email, it’s false.

This means it has been forwarded way too many times, which of course means it is false, according to Rule 1. Here is an example:

Oh yeah blue line! It’s especially bad if it has more than one line, the spoor of indiscriminate forwarding, like the following example:

No one who is actually sending you important information would allow such a hideous format to blight their email. (Yes, I said “their,” and I know it’s wrong, but I just don’t care.)

Rule 3: Just because it has links at the bottom doesn’t mean it’s true. In fact, it’s probably false.

I once received a chain email about how halal food (similar to kosher but for Muslims) was forcing a Muslim takeover of America. Anyone scanning through would have seen a lovely little array of blue links at the bottom, which of course lends instant credibility to any email. After all, we all know that if it has been published on the internet, it’s true. In this case though, the links were to a variety of sites that dealt with poetry, publishing, and related topics – NOT halal. Just to be sure, (and after having checked that my anti-virus software was on the most intense setting), I clicked on one of the links. Yeah, that was stupid, I know, but how could I bash an email without verifying that it was bogus (this one happened to not be on Snopes)? Sure enough, the link I clicked was a real site, and it was really about poetry. And while I’m sure there is some lovely poetry about halal food, this site contained none of it. Next time I write a paper for school, rather than citing real sources, maybe I’ll just put links to websites on quail hunting.

On a related noted, the first example above claims to have checked the info on Google – this is another surefire sign that the email is false. Anything that is actually factual should be verified by a third party site, not just the author of the email.

Rule 4: IF IT IS WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS, IT’S FALSE.

The New York Times commonly publishes entire stories in all caps; so does the Washington Post. So does every other reputable news outlet. OBVIOUSLY!

Rule 5: If the font size or color changes periodically throughout the email, it’s false.

See above example.

Rule 6: If it refers to an African royal, especially from Nigeria, it is….TRUE!

Guess what?? You have an obscure cousin forty times removed who is crown prince of Burundi and he wants to give YOU $10 billion! YES! Just send him your bank account number and you can buy your own private island in the Caribbean. While I know the response to this email is obvious, I’ll still spell it out: you send the guy your bank account number.

Who doesn’t want to own a Caribbean island?

 

Facebook

Rule 1: If a post has been shared many thousands of times, it’s false.

It is especially true if the post mentions a political figure of any kind, for instance, “Obama is a communist, look what he’s doing to our country,” or “Bush is a fascist, look what he’s doing to our country.” This rule will work probably 90% of the time, which, in my opinion, is good enough. But if you really must be more specific, continue to my other rules.

Rule 2: If it seems too crazy to be true, it probably is.

A few weeks ago, there were severe storms across the southeast that produced a number of tornadoes. Almost instantly, this picture was being shared thousands and thousands of times on Facebook:

The caption was always something like “Tornado last night near Rome, GA.” Ok, it is funnel-shaped, but when have you ever seen a tornado like that? Tornado pictures are everywhere, and never, ever have I seen one like that. But I have seen photos of volcanoes that look an awful lot like that, like this one, which is obviously a volcano when the full picture is visible:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/05/photogalleries/volcano-photos/

It seemed too crazy; it was too crazy.

Rule 3: If there is no link to the original picture, it’s probably false.

This was true of the volcano/tornado picture, but there are more believable photos and stories on Facebook. For instance, another popular story a few weeks ago (and actually, still today, as I just found it again!) concerned a Christian pastor in Iran, Youcef Nadarkhani, who is indeed being held by Iran for being a Christian and has been sentenced to death. But reports were circulating that he had been executed already, and were being shared many thousands of times over, as usual (don’t forget Rule 1!). All of the stories were (and still are) accompanied by this photo:

But actually this was not Youcef Nadarkhani. Instead, it was a convicted killer (though I’m not judging his guilt or innocence – I know very little about the case) who was hung in 2011. http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=13395157#.T3PCpPW6SuI

Of course, the real story had no chance against the fake one, and if you search for him today on Facebook, you’ll still find huge rumors circulating – enough, in fact, to prompt the American Center for Law and Justice to confirm just yesterday that he was still alive, which he is: http://www.christianpost.com/news/youcef-nadarkhani-still-alive-execution-reports-prove-false-72125/

If no link to the original story is available (or if the link is to a sketchy site), don’t trust it.

Rule 4: If the post has commentary like “God is punishing _________ with this tornado” or “This is the start of the apocalypse,” it is false.

Unless, of course, you look out your window and everything is on fire, in which case I will admit my guide has misled you. My bad.

That’s it for my rules. The one thing I will never understand is exactly why someone would start these rumors to begin with. But my default explanations always depend on rationality, and I suppose it is entirely possible that the people who start such rumors are not rational, or maybe they just find pleasure in deception. But that is a problem for another day. I hope you find the tips useful; please comment with additional ones if I left out anything obvious!

Happy phishing.

Kony 2012 Revisited: Too Much Negativity

Maybe agreement was too much to ask.

The vitriol has just kept coming. From the start I thought it was clear that some of the critiques of the viral Kony 2012 video were valid, but never did I expect them to continue with such unabated intensity and even personal hatefulness (to the point of driving Jason Russell, the maker of the video, to an apparent mental breakdown). Today, another critique has been making the rounds. The article in The Atlantic by Teju Cole, “White Savior Industrial Complex,” is an exposition on a series of tweets he posted as the Kony video was gaining momentum. The tweets, reprinted in the article, critique the apparent neocolonialism and hypocrisy in the video and are reproduced below:

1. From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex.
2. The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.
3. The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.
4. This world exists simply to satisfy the needs—including, importantly, the sentimental needs—of white people and Oprah.
5. The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.
6. Feverish worry over that awful African warlord. But close to 1.5 million Iraqis died from an American war of choice. Worry about that.
7. I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.

-Teju Cole, in The Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-white-savior-industrial-complex/254843/1/

These are all standard claims that others have made, and there is some merit to them. Aid efforts from the West to the developing world have done considerable harm in the past and will certainly continue to do harm in the future, but that doesn’t mean they only do harm. After some thinking, I believe the critiques have quite simply gone too far and overlook several positive elements.

Earlier this week, my international development class met for the first time since the Kony 2012 video was posted. The topics for that class did not specifically deal with anything related to Kony, but it’s not every day that a development issue goes viral, so we took some time to discuss the matter. To kick off the discussion, my professor asked a prescient question, and one I would not have thought of myself: “How many of you had heard of Joseph Kony and the LRA before this video?” To my surprise, several classmates, maybe a third of the class, raised their hands. This is among aspiring development practitioners! These are people who want to go to Africa and help the poor, people who have already done Peace Corps, people who keep track of things like the LRA. Or so I thought.

But upon further reflection, I realized that the only reason I personally knew about the issue is because of exactly the same group that had just informed my classmates: Invisible Children. As I mentioned in my earlier post summarizing some of the arguments from the Kony 2012 debate, Invisible Children came to UGA when I was an undergrad, and they showed a video with some of the same footage as that used in the most recent incarnation to inform us all about the LRA and Joseph Kony. But if they had not come to UGA or if I had not attended the viewing, it is perfectly plausible that I would never have heard about Kony and the LRA until this recent video did the rounds. This realization, more than anything, woke me up to the reality of the discourse on development, or, more accurately, the general lack of any discourse on development among the US public. This leads to my first point on why the video has done more good than harm.

1) It’s not every day a development issue goes viral.

• I already stated this, but I think it deserves repeating. The Kony 2012 video was unbelievably successful in spreading the news about a problem that does matter. And it was an issue that few people would have ever heard about otherwise. For all its critics, the video does a tremendous job of raising awareness. True, as I myself pointed out, it does not identify the root problems, it does not propose a plausible path for remedying those problems, and it does present a simplified version of reality. But as my professor pointed out, every NGO has its niche. Invisible Children has one too – the LRA and Joseph Kony – and it has clearly shown it has one particularly strong skill as well – raising awareness using social media. This explains why so much of IC’s money goes to awareness rather than on-the-ground efforts, which, in my opinion is fine. At least they are honest. And more importantly, their funds clearly effected results, which is more than can be said for many agencies who spend 90% or more of their money on the ground. Awareness is in important piece of the puzzle and should not be attacked just because it occurs in the US.
• More than anything, Kony 2012 has shown to the world just how much attention can be brought to an issue – any issue – if social media are properly harnessed. Even if you disagree with IC’s goals or methods, you have to acknowledge that this is probably the first time any issue related to development has been so high up on the minds of so many people at once. Such efforts do not solve the problem, but knowledge must come before action. And when something is so successful in spreading the news about an issue, critiques are quick to point out possible factual issues (as is extremely evident), hopefully leading to a net gain of important information on a worthy topic. Unfortunately, in this case the critiques seem to have gone so far as to possibly reverse any gains of knowledge achieved by the video, leaving instead a sense that those who want to do good in the world might as well just stop trying. Somehow I don’t think that will help.

2) Norms governing US foreign policy will only change one step at a time.

• Cole and others claim that it is hypocritical to call for interventions like this one when US foreign policy in general does so much harm: “If Americans want to care about Africa, maybe they should consider evaluating American foreign policy, which they already play a direct role in through elections, before they impose themselves on Africa itself.” Unless I’m mistaken, what the video called for is for Americans to evaluate American foreign policy, trying to push it toward an issue that has received little attention in the US – and by the same means that Cole suggests, namely, by putting pressure on our elected officials.
• But disregarding the slight confusion in Cole’s statement, I presume his intention was to promote reevaluation of the general principles of US foreign policy, but such a goal is simply not pragmatic. The norms of US foreign policy will not change overnight just because we want them to. The way we interact with the world has been built up over centuries and strongly reinforced by the ever-present desire to view the world in the anarchic, self-help way that realists have always done. If we are ever to break free of this mindset, it will only happen with slow, small steps, and this video calls for one such step.  It calls for the US to redirect effort towards something that is based quite heavily on moral obligations (even if the depiction was slightly naïve), obligations which have been recognized by the rest of the world (the ICC’s number one most-wanted person is Joseph Kony). Most foreign policy experts will tell you that from a strategic perspective, sending troops to help catch Kony was not in the US’s interests as generally conceived – something else was operating here. Could it be the beginning of a new norm in foreign policy? Could the US actually make decisions based on what it can do to help others, legitimately, not to help itself?

Many will be skeptical that such an outcome is ever possible, saying instead that the world would be better off if the US did nothing abroad at all, but I’m optimistic. I think it is possible for major powers to do good in the world, though it is very difficult. Perhaps Libya was a good example? As I’ve argued in the past, I think the US should have acted in the cases of genocide in the 20^th century, but it did not. If the norms changed such that acting on behalf of others became both normal and accepted, maybe the US (and other major powers) could actually become an undisputed force for good in the world. And maybe this video is a small step in that direction. Maybe.

Nothing New Under the Sun: “New” Ideas Are Actually Old

 

In Neal Stephenson’s Anathem (which is a fantastic book, but I won’t even attempt to summarize it – you can check out its Wikipedia page if you are interested), there are a variety of secular monastic orders, and one group, called the Lorites, believes that every possible idea has already been thought. Thus, they dedicate themselves to knowing history and constantly revealing as “old” any “new” idea that others propose. This is an issue that is surprisingly close to reality. In a recent post I discussed the importance of “knowing the literature” as a means to establishing our arguments (especially critiques) in a developed stream of thought. This helps us avoid the pitfalls that commonly occur when we try to base arguments on experience alone, ignoring the vast troves of wisdom already available which have tackled similar issues in a systematic way. However, a recognition of the wisdom that has come before also reveals that very few ideas today are truly “new.” That is not to say that we are not generating new information. Particularly in the sciences, new information is discovered all the time. But questions that get at the most basic elements of existence—Why are we here? What is the fundamental nature of reality? What is truth?—all seem to have been answered and re-answered in the same ways down through the ages. In many ways, there is nothing new under the sun, which, of course, was known in the 3^rd or 4^th century BC – how much more so today.

I recently stumbled upon a great example of this phenomenon. Postmodernism is assumed by most to be one of the most current philosophies, given its name (though there is also now Post-postmodernism). Postmodern thought (and offshoots like constructivism) centers around a rejection of objectivity, instead suggesting that reality is socially constructed, and thus, subjective. Reality is dependent on context, and no one “reality” can ever be said to be truly real. In fact, the most radical postmodernists would say we cannot be sure anything exists, and no scientific enquiry will ever fix that. Coming as a refutation of positivism (which has also dictated the entire educational process in the West for centuries), postmodernism does indeed seem radically new. But its ideas have actually been proposed by philosophers since at least the 4^th century BC.

Hume do you seek?

Let’s work our way backwards.

David Hume (1711-1776), a Scottish philosopher, is the first step back into history. In his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (section XII), Hume thinks through whether or not we can actually be sure that, for instance, the table in front of us is real or if we only perceive it to be real:

It is a question of fact, whether the perceptions of the senses be produced by external objects, resembling them: how shall this question be determined? By experience surely; as all other questions of a like nature. But here experience is, and must be entirely silent. The mind has never anything present to it but the perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any experience of their connexion with objects. The supposition of such a connexion is, therefore, without any foundation in reasoning.

In other words, we cannot be sure that what we perceive is at all connected to reality. We assume that an object we perceive with our senses does in fact have some physical reality, apart from our sensation (would the table still exist if no one was there to see it?), but there is no way to really know.

But Hume built upon ideas already propounded by George Berkeley (1685-1753) thirty years earlier in Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. In this case, a summary of Berkeley’s thoughts captures what we are after:

If, says Berkeley, our knowledge of the material world consists in the ideas of it we have in our heads, what reason is there for supposing that anything other than the ideas exist?…Berkeley abolishes matter and declares the world to be a creation of the mind. Everything is ‘really’ mind.

- From the Introduction to Schopenhauer: Essays and Aphorisms, p. 16

Berkeley, like the most radical of postmodernists today, didn’t think matter was really there.

Now let’s jump way back to ancient Greece. Pyrrho (c. 360-270 BC), whose views were recorded by his student Timon (c. 320-230 BC), was the source of the ideas later leading to Skepticism (the general philosophy we are discussing here). Eusebius (c. 263-339 AD) explains Pyrrho’s main thesis:

…[Pyrrho] reveals that things are equally indifferent and unstable and indeterminate…for this reason, neither our perceptions nor our beliefs tell the truth or lie….For this reason, then, we should not trust them, but should be without opinions and without inclinations and without wavering, saying about each single thing that it no more is than is not, or both is and is not, or neither is nor is not.

- Accessible at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-ancient/#EarFigPyrTim

There is no truth, just perception. Nothing can be said to be in existence any more than it can be said to not exist.

In some ways, these ideas all go back to Plato and his theory of forms, which suggested that true reality existed outside of the world we perceive (as shadows in a cave, illuminated by the light from the “true” reality). What we see is not as “real” as what we do not see on the higher plane. The same ideas are also present outside of the Western tradition. In India, Jainism also promotes the stance that all truth/reality is subjective, depending on the point of view, and no viewpoint can be said to be completely true. In Islam, al-Ghazali (1058-1111 AD) embraced a form of skepticism which led him to conclude that nothing in this world is causal, and all causation comes from God instead (i.e., even though we perceive that fire is burning something, in reality that is not happening – God is burning it, and thus reality is disconnected from perception). This thought is not all that different from the Christian view explained by the Apostle Paul in Colossians that in Christ “all things hold together,” which suggests that what we understand as cause and effect is illusory – without God, no cause or effect would occur. And of course Platonic dualism (mind/body, good/evil, this lower world/pure forms) had a huge influence on the Christian understanding of the current world we inhabit versus the higher world to come. While many Christians would like to disconnect Christian theology from Platonism, still most Christians conceptualize this world as something to be escaped, at least in part because it is less real than the world to come (though I do not think Jesus actually taught this form of escapism whatsoever).

So there you have it. Postmodernism, so modern that it is beyond modern, is actually anything but. It is merely a restatement of questions that philosophers have been asking for millennia. But there is nothing wrong with bringing up the same questions over and over again. Every generation needs its own thinkers to frame a debate in modern terms, to re-expose good ideas to contemporary society so that the ideas are not forgotten (or expose “new” arguments as old ones that were refuted long ago). There is no shame in repetition. There is nothing new under the sun, but many things are not directly exposed to the light because of the impeding detritus that builds up over time. Removing these impediments is one duty of thinkers and readers in every generation.

Revisiting the 2nd Amendment – Evidence from the Arab Spring

A little over a year ago Gabrielle Giffords was shot by a deranged man in Tucson, Arizona, kicking off a firestorm of debate about political rhetoric and, that perennial favorite, guns. At the time, I wrote a blog about how the right to bear arms, which was intended as a check against tyranny, can actually promote tyranny at a personal level (as exercised by gunman Jared Loughner over Giffords and the other victims last year). But I wrote that article before the Arab Spring, and I think with that history as a lesson, revisiting the topic is worthwhile.

Let me rehash my main point from the other blog:

When passed, the 2^nd Amendment was intended to guarantee the freedom of each state through the maintenance of a militia, and…to protect the ability of a citizenry to rise up and overthrow a tyrannical government….But gun rights advocates tend to ignore one very important difference between then and now.  War is no longer fought the way our Revolution was fought.  In the late 18^th Century, wars were still predominantly fought by men on foot, the primary weapon being the rifle.  Without men and rifles, wars simply could not be won.  And when rebellions were squashed, the government required men and rifles too.  So as long as you could overwhelm an armory here or there and get some cannons, a group of citizens trying to overthrow a tyrannical government would be fairly evenly matched with the government in terms of weaponry.

Today, the same is not true.  The primary weapons of war are no longer guns – they are missiles, jets, bombs, tanks, helicopters, etc.  Sure, guns are still important, but when it comes to overthrowing tyranny, guns are not going to do much against nuclear weapons.  Military technology has come so far since the Revolution that the 2^nd Amendment provides much less protection from tyranny today than it once did.  And since we are not about to let people start buying jets, nukes, and other weapons of war, we need to recognize that the argument that more guns help protect against tyranny may not be tenable today.

I would like to first point out that the comparison with nuclear weapons was probably unnecessary, since there is no precedent (or expectation) of a government using a nuclear weapon to put down internal rebellion. However, my main point still stands, and I believe it has been strongly reinforced by the events in the Arab world over the last year.

Evidence from the Arab Spring:

1) Overthrowing tyrants today often depends on undermining the tyrant’s legitimacy.

• The forces that toppled autocratic regimes in Tunisia and Egypt came down to protest by the masses undermining the rulers’ legitimacy, forcing them to make concessions and eventually step down. In both of these cases, weapons were of practically no value in comparison to the force of public pressure. In fact, the largely peaceful protests probably helped the movements bring about change as quickly as they did because the government was unable to justify military crackdowns in the face of overtly non-military threats.

• Rebellion has always been about political grievances, but today, ideas and information have an amplified power thanks to modern technology which can spread the grievances far and wide, infecting huge numbers of people internally and around the world. A government cannot rule effectively, even through force of arms, when such grievances infiltrate their own militaries (as happened in Egypt). The ability of regimes to contain information and control discourse is waning rapidly, and it has changed the way rebellion occurs in much of the world.

2) Small arms cannot topple a murderous regime on their own.

• In Libya, military pressure was necessary to overthrow Col. Qaddafi. However, even in this case, the force of arms needed to end Qaddafi’s rule went well beyond small arms. A no-fly zone and NATO attacks involving thousands of bombs were essential to ending the Qaddafi regime. Even if every rebel soldier had an AK-47, Qaddafi would have retained power without the intervention from an outside force bringing substantial firepower to the conflict. And why exactly did NATO get involved? Again it comes back to public pressure and Qaddafi’s eroded legitimacy. Outside intervention is only possible (because, again, of legitimacy issues on the world stage) when a local majority calls for it. But today, outside intervention is probably the only way by which governments willing to kill thousands of their own citizens can be overthrown – a right to bear arms will have little impact.

• In Syria, we are seeing exactly the same situation. Assad and his army have too much firepower for the local rebels to effectively challenge him. This is why some are now calling for outside intervention. Of course, world politics and other factors (like the size of Syria and the distribution of population within it, as well as the lack of unity among the rebels) call into question how effective even outside intervention would be in this case. But the point is, small arms are not good enough for overthrowing tyranny. In Syria, the presence of small arms will only have the desired effect if they allow the rebels to hold out long enough to either turn the military against Assad or bring outside military intervention. In both of these scenarios, however, small arms only act as a means to achieve the more important goal of undermining Assad’s legitimacy and bringing international pressure to bear on the regime.

Living in the country with the most powerful military ever known, Americans should not deceive themselves into thinking that if everyone owns a pistol or shotgun that we could stand against a murderous regime. So I don’t buy this argument, which I hear so frequently. There are other reasons to think the guns may be beneficial. Many claim that guns in the home provide protection against thieves, and at the very least, the evidence I have seen suggests that increases in gun ownership in the US does not increase violence. However, there is reason to question US gun policy because of the flow of weapons abroad, particularly automatic weapons which end up in the hands of drug cartels and other violent groups. Actions taken in the US inevitably have an impact abroad, and we ought to consider these effects more than we do currently (as a nation). But this issue is too lengthy to get into right now. So in summary, I believe the evidence shows that the right to bear arms is of little importance today when it comes to protection against tyranny. This was a valid concern when our country was founded, but technology has changed the face of rebellion. Small arms cannot defeat a military, but public opinion can.

Libraries Part I – The Private Library

Recently my wife has been strategizing about the best way to increase our apartment’s book capacity. We hope to mitigate the problem with new shelves à la Ikea over the summer, but that will only do so much. Our apartment absolutely groans with books – three tall bookshelves out front in the living room, several more in the library/office, heaps and mounds on the desk, mighty stacks on the bedside tables, a line of culinary works in the bay window, and even a few boxes more in our storage unit in the basement that didn’t fit in our apartment.

Storing one’s personal library has always been an issue for bibliophiles. In fact, this was a conundrum of such importance that one of Britain’s great prime ministers, William Gladstone, took to the task personally. Anne Fadiman’s fantastic book about books, Ex Libris, fills us in on Mr. Gladstone’s passion: “Mr. G. calculated that a library twenty by forty feet, with projecting bookcases three feet long, twelve inches deep, and nine feet high…would accommodate between eighteen thousand and twenty thousand volumes,” that is, provided you use his special method.

Unfortunately, this ponderous chamber would be bigger than our entire apartment (can you imagine the glories of having an 800 ft² library?). Nor, despite my love of books, can I claim to have a library of such monumental size. I think we have bested 1,000, or somewhere thereabouts, through the generous help of our local libraries’ used-book shops (both here in Arlington, and before in Roswell, where excellent finds often cost no more than $1). It is one of my greatest aspirations to eventually have a library on the scale of Mr. Gladstone’s.

But why? After all this is the digital age. E-books are generally cheaper than physical books and are certainly easier to store. And anyway, surely no one could read all those books, not in a lifetime. This is true, at least for me. Given the types of books I read and the speed at which I read them, I would be lucky to finish 2,500 books in my next 50 years, probably less (in any case, a far cry from 18,000-20,000). CS Lewis once wrote in a letter that “your book bill ought to be your biggest extravagance,” but perhaps technology has finally undone the bookish wisdom of Mr. Lewis.

And yet I still believe having a large personal library is a worthwhile venture. Umberto Eco provides an important point in his aptly named essay, “How to Justify a Private Library.” He was apparently often asked if he had read all the books in his own rather large library. The answer (that he had not) was to him so obvious that he never actually says it outright in the essay, only implying it. When trying to understand how anyone could actually think he had read so many books (or at least, why they would ask), he muses about his interrogators: “It could be said that they are still people who consider a bookshelf as a mere storage place for already-read books and do not think of the library as a working tool.” And herein lies the answer. The library is not a cemetery of finished books, it is a working tool. Of the total number of pages in our library, I have probably read somewhere around 25-30%. But of all the books in our library, I have read sections or consulted probably at least 80%, and the bulk of the ones I have never opened came from my wife’s pre-Waldroupian collection. The personal library provides a method for expanding our horizons, even within the confines of our own homes, as we stumble upon new and timely work or rediscover old pieces that won our hearts in the past. It is a tool for advancing our learning and our pleasure.

Most importantly, for the curious-minded, having a library at your fingertips greatly enhances the ability to dive into a topic that suddenly strikes your fancy. I have always been one to go through passions cyclically. For a few months, I want to know everything there is to know about evolution, then it fades away and is replaced by a burning passion for medieval literature, which also passes after a time, to be succeeded by an ardent need for the Russian greats, and so on, ad nauseum. While the internet and the Kindle can certainly aid in these pursuits, you would be amazed by how many books are still not available on Kindles (a few of my recent reads that fall into this category are, surprisingly, Easterly’s White Man’s Burden and Sachs’s The End of Poverty, as well as the Umberto Eco book from which I quoted above, How to Travel with a Salmon). And when context is needed, a book will always provide more depth than an internet article.

But besides the practical benefits of having a library of actual books, there is certainly an emotional side as well. Maybe I haven’t had mine long enough to judge it appropriately, but I really don’t see myself forming a serious bond with my Kindle the way I have with certain books. Even though until recently I very seldom reread books in their entirety (particularly fiction), I still have very strong memories attached to certain physical books. For instance, (get ready, I’m about to reveal my massive nerdiness) over one summer during college, I read the book A World Lit Only By Fire, a fascinating work about the transition in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. I was staying at my ancestral homestead (aka my parents’ house) at the time, and I would get home from work every day and head straight up to my room to read this excellent book. To this day I still pull it out from time to time, flip through the pages, and remember the stories and the wonder of the topic. I don’t expect to ever “flip through” an old book on my Kindle, not only because flipping is not very easy, but also because there is no particular reason for an old book on a Kindle to catch my eye, lacking the physical features necessary to do so.

I am no Luddite – I have enjoyed my Kindle immensely so far and plan to use it ever more in the future. But I could keep going on about the benefits of physical books (their unique smells, their varied densities, which evoke all kinds of diverse emotional responses, the ease of writing in their margins, the urgency that comes from the inescapable knowledge of your location with respect to the beginning and end of the book, etc.), and I seriously doubt I will ever stop collecting them. Sure, e-books are the way of the future, but physical books are the way of joy.

 

The Shower – Birthplace of Good Ideas

Often when I’m about to finish a shower, I find myself unsure if I have washed my hair or not. My mind wanders and, like many rote tasks, the shower just happens. I am not a particularly frugal man compared to many, but I still hate to waste anything, and it eats at me to think that if I inadvertently wash my hair twice, I am wasting both shampoo and, more importantly, time. To not wash my hair, though, is also daunting. (Suffice it to say that my hair is naturally very oily.) I measure opportunity cost in books and articles, and when I decide to wash my hair (again?) just in case, I lose roughly one article in the NY Times. Sadness.

Or is it sad? Pico Iyer recently had a column in the NY Times (ironically) in which he reflects upon the importance of silence, of disconnecting: “The urgency of slowing down — to find the time and space to think — is nothing new, of course, and wiser souls have always reminded us that the more attention we pay to the moment, the less time and energy we have to place it in some larger context.” But while this insight is not new, it has become ever more difficult to slow down in a world where staying up-to-the-minute on news and events (view Twitter, Facebook, and all the rest) has become a nearly religious obsession for many (myself included, at times). To Iyer, quiet is necessary to recover from the tensions laid upon us in day-to-day life, as well as to put life in its proper perspective – to make sure we are valuing what is valuable.

I couldn’t agree more, though I think the refuge Iyer seeks at a quiet monastery can be found in many ways: music, long strolls, even showers. While Iyer focuses on the link between quiet and quality of life, he also brings up something else that I think is extremely important:

A series of tests in recent years has shown, [Nicholas] Carr points out [in his book The Shallows], that after spending time in quiet rural settings, subjects ‘exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory and generally improved cognition. Their brains become both calmer and sharper.’ More than that, empathy, as well as deep thought, depends (as neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio have found) on neural processes that are ‘inherently slow.’ The very ones our high-speed lives have little time for.

Disconnecting is not only important to remain sane, it actually makes us think better.

***

Along with my proclivity for ignoring the importance of actually cleaning myself in the shower, I also sometimes come to my senses and realize I am humming a tune (or, more likely, “Scooby-dooing” a tune, whereby each note is either a “scoo,” a “by,” or a “doo,” and not always in that order, which makes for great excitement). As many of you know, I am intensely passionate about music (mostly classical), and recently I have begun to notice that there is in fact almost always a tune playing in my mind, just below the surface. Sometimes it suddenly erupts onto my conscious mind and rudely prevents me from pursuing my previous thought to its conclusion.

I’m no expert in psychology, but I believe Freud would say that these lingering tunes are in my preconscious, which consists of things that are known and accessible, but not currently in the conscious mind (like most memories). In my experience, I find that it is precisely when my conscious mind has been turned off, as it were, that my preconscious gets to serious work, throwing bits and pieces of previously gathered material at my conscious mind like a mental Jackson Pollock. Last semester, most of my school papers were brought into reality in such an unconscious way – in the shower, on the trail, or on the couch with my headphones on. In fact, for me it is much more common for good ideas (at least, I hope they are good) for papers, blogs, activities, or whatever to come into my head when I am not actually trying to think about them. Perhaps this is what Iyer is referring to when he says our brains become “sharper” after rest. When we shove out the conscious mind and allow the “inherently slow” neural processes to occur, we give ourselves the chance to come to deeper, more significant thoughts than we could otherwise.

It seems that many great ideas arise when disparate thoughts are suddenly brought together in a cohesive whole, often unintentionally. Whether myth or not (and I think the evidence is on the side of it being real), the story of Isaac Newton’s discovery of gravity from observing an apple fall from a tree is just one common example. Newton’s preconscious held masses of scientific information, and he only needed a contemplative mood and a fortuitous event to spark one of science’s great ideas. Perhaps if Newton had been working frantically in a lab rather than relaxing, drinking tea in the garden, gravity would have had to wait a bit longer to be discovered. Einstein too said that “a new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way. But intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience.” Here we see the same point again – what seems to be a new idea popping into our heads is actually built upon thoughts we’ve previously had (the preconscious). But our brains need time to process that information, which is much easier when we make time for quiet.

Our minds were not built to be constantly inundated with the diverse and intense streams of information that they constantly encounter in the internet age. While the mind has amazing plasticity, sometimes it needs a rest. And in fact, it seems that these rest times provide a chance for the mind to sift through all the information it has been collecting and produce novel ideas. For those of us who work in the realm of ideas, research, and the like, such retreats from the daily flood of information are all the more crucial. Not only do they provide respite, perspective, and joy, as Iyer explains, they also sometimes provide greater insights than we would think of consciously. For the average harried American, doing nothing is simply not a waste of time. So maybe next time I’m in the shower, I’ll wash my hair twice intentionally.

 

*For a longer reflection on quiet from Iyer, see his piece “Chapels” in Portland magazine, p. 50, and for an interesting take on how “slowness” can improve many aspects of our lives, see Honore’s In Praise of Slowness

Knowing the Literature – A Lesson from “Why I Hate Religion but Love Jesus”

David Brooks recently wrote an article describing the viral video “Why I Hate Religion, but Love Jesus” and how it relates to counter-cultural movements. Despite the huge popularity of this video, its creator, Jefferson Bethke, was quickly turned from his own views by cogent arguments against him. He admitted that his views were essentially “experience-based” rather than logically based, in this case, in the teachings of Jesus and his disciples.

Brooks then gets to his point:

For generations people have been told: Think for yourself; come up with your own independent worldview. Unless your name is Nietzsche, that’s probably a bad idea. Very few people have the genius or time to come up with a comprehensive and rigorous worldview.

If you go out there armed only with your own observations and sentiments, you will surely find yourself on very weak ground. You’ll lack the arguments, convictions and the coherent view of reality that you’ll need when challenged by a self-confident opposition. This is more or less what happened to Jefferson Bethke.

As much as I want to disagree with Brooks, he is right. I have recently had this point hammered home in grad school. Many of my professors endlessly emphasize (or at least imply) that what we have to say on our own is simply not good enough in the scholarly world. Last semester, one professor in particular would get onto us nearly every week about supporting what we said with “the literature.”

At first, I admit, this annoyed me a little. One of the reasons I am going to grad school is to test out my own ideas, to see how I could apply personal observations from the world to specific questions and challenges. But more often than not, when I attempt this method, my classmates, but especially my professors, easily punch gaping holes in my arguments. If I respond to a question using the literature, though, I am standing on much firmer ground, because the literature has already been tested, critiqued, and found worthy of wider dissemination. That does not mean the literature is perfect, it’s just more likely to be logical than the thought that popped into my head thirty seconds ago.

Scholars spend their whole lives thinking, dissecting arguments, challenging the status quo, and this has been going on for millennia, from the time of the great Greek philosophers or earlier. Strong arguments for nearly every philosophical position imaginable have already been made, and we would be wise to take advantage of these developed streams of thought. That is why one of my professors last semester, when discussing how so many students (both undergrad and graduate) never read the material they are assigned, labeled the phenomenon a “crisis” in education. At the time I thought his statement was a bit exaggerated, but after having reflected on it, I think he was right. If students today only form arguments from their own experience, we are doomed to a future of mediocre thought. We ought to be gleaning constantly from the wisdom that has come before, at least as a starting point.

On top of the tendency to “think for ourselves” without knowledge of the existing literature, a parallel problem is the growing trend of relativism. As I have pointed out in another blog, truth is indeed often relative, depending on the perspective taken. But the existence of relative truth hints at the complementary notion that some ideas are truer than others (the use of the word relative suggests that we judge truth in relation to other truth). Truth is not only relative based on perspective, but also relative along some scale, ranging from unsubstantiated lies to fully corroborated truths. Any truth (regardless of its degree) will always be truer than unsubstantiated lies. The fact that Obama is an American citizen is fundamentally superior to the belief held by some that he is not, since the former can be corroborated with evidence, while the latter is unsubstantiated. But many have thrown out this continuum altogether, accepting the first aspect of relativism (based on perspective) while ignoring the second (truth in relation to other truth/lies), such that lies and truths are now considered equal. This is a huge problem. And it is much easier to fall into this trap, accepting lies as truth, if we base our understanding of the world entirely in our own experience.

Thus, despite the somewhat mundane sound of the suggestion, knowing “the literature” is extremely important. Experience alone will not always lead to fruitful arguments or a better understanding of truth, even though the growing popularity of relativism continues to encourage these notions. Brooks specifically uses his argument to talk about promoting counter-cultural views (such as those espoused by the Occupy movements), but I think that knowing the literature is equally important for supporting either mainstream or out-of-stream movements.

The lesson I take from this is that reading, and reading widely, is essential to a vibrant life of the mind. Even the most brilliant person on earth will not think of everything, so we all benefit by learning over the course of a book or two what may have taken a lifetime for one person to develop. Thus, if we see problems in the world, as Bethke did, and want to change them, we should remember that “effective rebellion isn’t just expressing your personal feelings.”

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Kony 2012: Reality Check

Facebook, Twitter, and even the mainstream news outlets have been inundated over the past few days with discussion of the Kony 2012 video from Invisible Children, which advocates for a new push to capture Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army in central Africa. The LRA has for decades been kidnapping children and using them as child soldiers and sex slaves. Late last year, the Obama administration sent 100 military advisors to Uganda to help local militaries in the search for Kony. The new video is trying to raise even greater awareness to make the sure the job is completed this year.

You should know up front that I have supported Invisible Children with a small monthly donation for several years now. I was first moved by their mission when they came to UGA showing a similar movie when I was an undergrad, I believe in 2007 or 2008. That being said, the new effort to capture Kony and the accompanying viral video are neither unmitigated good (as many on Facebook would have it) nor unabashed neocolonial outrage (as many in the blogosphere would have it). Here is my assessment of the video and its attendant issues, though I will say it’s skewed toward the negative.

Pros

1) Joseph Kony is a monster and ought to be brought to justice.

• I have read Easterly, Moyo, Escobar, and the rest of the crew who say that aid does more harm than good in developing countries, and I believe they make a very strong case. But I think it is untrue that all aid efforts provide nothing but bad outcomes for developing countries. If that were the case, I would not be trying to begin a career in development myself. Just because much development work fails does not mean we should ignore moral atrocities. Enough attention to any given issue will increase the chances of a solution AND simultaneously provide greater accountability, which will hopefully help prevent the bad outcomes so often discussed in development circles. I cannot help but be for any effort that works to bring justice in good faith.

Cons

1) The video ignores the root causes of the conflict

• As an interview on NPR with a Ugandan reporter points out, it is fairly likely that even if Kony is caught, the LRA will remain and continue to perpetrate atrocities. Similar to killing Osama bin Laden, taking out the figurehead of the LRA will do some harm to the group, but it will not solve the original problem. Another commander will likely just take over. The reporter places the blame for the whole problem on inequality. I would add state weakness, whereby states in the region are unable to control their entire territory effectively to root out groups like the LRA. In any case, it is a valid criticism that stopping the LRA’s activity will take more than just capturing or killing Kony.

2) The video does have neocolonial tendencies.

• For one example of this argument, see this blog. One of the most common points made by the critics of development is that Western aid groups tend to ignore the people on the ground. Plans are made and carried out without ever accounting for what the local people actually want or really determining how a plan will affect them. Another article by a Ugandan makes the point that much has already been done in Uganda to deal with the LRA, which is no longer active in its territory. And the video’s focus on getting Western celebrities and politicians to sign up for anti-Konyism completely ignores the importance of working with people in Uganda and surrounding countries to stop the violence and reintegrate former victims (child soldiers). While this author is positive about bringing awareness to the problem, his point is valid that such efforts MUST involve the locals, who will live and breathe the consequences of any action taken on the ground.

Other points

I think the points made above are the key ones to consider in deciding to support or not support the effort. I certainly don’t think the answer is clear cut. But there are a few other significant things to consider when viewing the video and thinking about this problem.

1) It is my opinion that bringing awareness to one issue, like Joseph Kony, detracts from other important issues. The public can only focus on a certain number of issues with any significant amount of attention. (In fact, I would be amazed if more than 25-30% of people who talk about the Kony 2012 video have actually watched the whole thing, being that 30 minutes is a long time to focus for most Americans, particularly on the internet.) Awareness is a zero-sum game to some extent. So focusing on Kony will detract attention from other important problems, like, for instance, the growing threat of famine in the Sahel in Africa as well as the displacement of more than 100,000 from fighting in Mali. The West has consistently responded to famine in Africa too late, often leading to millions of deaths. According to Oxfam, “more than one million children in the Sahel region are at risk of severe malnutrition. In parts of Chad, Oxfam says, some villagers are digging up ant hills to gather grain that the ants have stored.” Perhaps 13 million people in total could be affected by the possible famine. Then there is the war in Syria, tension with Iran that could lead to war, and innumerable other problems in the world. Kony is terrible, but the question will always remain, could we be mobilizing to fight problems that are even bigger? Or more importantly, because as I’ve noted Kony does need to be stopped, will focusing on Kony make us stand by while millions suffer from, for instance, a famine, just because we didn’t notice?

2) This leads to my second general point, which is that while all aid/development work should focus on mutual humanity, and thus entails some degree of emotion, directing national momentum from one topic to the next solely on the basis of emotion is not a sustainable way to solve problems around the world. Emotions are fickle. Even the video points out that there is a short window for action, and if that window expires before catching Kony, it is likely that he will remain at large indefinitely. Fixing the larger problems of poverty depend on longstanding commitment. This of course entails a focus on the local, as I mentioned earlier, and a strategy of partnership and ownership in local communities, rather than a top-down approach that swings wildly depending on what video has gone viral most recently.

If the video really tugged at your heart, don’t just sign up for a one-time donation. Get involved, both with Invisible Children AND with other efforts on the ground that aim to fix the root problems. I, of course, need to listen to my own advice, but that is why I’m trying to start a career in development. Kony 2012 represents a palliative project with emotional value. Capturing Kony would be great, but much, much more needs to be done to solve the problem and there are other problems in the world of equal or greater importance. Solving problems like the one addressed in the Kony 2012 video begins by recognizing that reality cannot be captured in a 30 minute promotional video, and that the West should not be attempting to solve the world’s problems on its own anyway.