Tao Te Ching, Chapter 53

It's been some time since I read the Tao Te Ching; however, today, someone wrote a comment at Daily Kos regarding Chapter 53. Here are several translations of this particular chapter:

The great Way is easy,
yet people prefer the side paths.
Be aware when things are out of balance.
Stay centered within the Tao.

When rich speculators prosper
While farmers lose their land;
when government officials spend money
on weapons instead of cures;
when the upper class is extravagant and irresponsible
while the poor have nowhere to turn-
all this is robbery and chaos.
It is not in keeping with the Tao.
S. Mitchell

"Once started on the great [lax] highway, if I had but little knowledge I should, in walking on a broad way, fear getting off the road.
On the main path (dao), I would avoid the by-paths.
Some dao main path is easy to walk [or drift] on, but safe and easy.
All the same people are fond, men love by-paths, love even small by-paths:
The by-path courts are spick-and-span.
And the fields go untilled, nay, exceedingly weedy.
They're content to let their fields run to weed.
All the while granaries stand quite empty and some exceedingly empty.
They have elegant, in clothes and gown to wear, some furnished with patterns and embroideries,
Some carry sharp weapons, glut themselves with drink and foods enjoyed beyond limit,
And wealth and treasures are accumulated in excess, owning far more than they can handle and use.
This is to [molest] the world towards brigandage, it's robbery as extravagance.
In the end they're splitting with wealth and possessions.
Wealth splits, tends to.
This cannot be a highway of dao (the way)."
Tormond Byrd

If I were suddenly to become known, and (put into a position to) conduct (a government) according to the Great Tao, what I should be most afraid of would be a boastful display.

The great Tao (or way) is very level and easy; but people love the by-ways.

Their court(-yards and buildings) shall be well kept, but their fields shall be ill-cultivated, and their granaries very empty. They shall wear elegant and ornamented robes, carry a sharp sword at their girdle, pamper themselves in eating and drinking, and have a superabundance of property and wealth;--such (princes) may be called robbers and boasters. This is contrary to the Tao surely!
J. Legge

What strikes me about this chapter is how closely it resembles today's conservative politics. The rich live in clean, sparkling homes, while robbing the livelihoods of the working class (the other 98%), leaving the farmlands untilled and granaries empty (akin to today's rape of corporate assets and theft from employees, such as their pension plans and federal entitlements). They dress well and own far more than they will ever need in today's life, yet live behind "sharp weapons" (the security forces in gated communities). Regardless of how your religious/philosophical beliefs run, they do not follow the dao.

It just goes to show that, despite 2400 years since the writing of the Tao Te Ching, the more things change...

America's "Arrogant Ignorance"

The following appeared in the November 19th edition of the Arizona Republic. I completely agree with Dr. Michael Crow's assessment of the situation in the United States. Dr. Crow mentioned the idea of Americans resting on their laurels; in my opinion, not only is this true, but the problem is exacerbated by many Americans' believing in "American exceptionalism." I can tell you that not only do other people around the world not believe in the idea of how "exceptional" the United States is, but that they are working as hard as possible to be better than Americans in all sorts of fields: education, commerce, industry, and so forth. Too many Americans would rather be fat, stupid and lazy, then complain about why the rest of the world is passing them by and taking "their" jobs. Dr. Crow's message should be a wake-up call to Americans that they need to rethink how American society should operate before the so-called "American exceptionalism" turns permanently into "American mediocrity." The United States is already on its way there.

More than 200 people at a Peoria conference got a jolt of reality along with their caffeine from Arizona State University President Michael Crow, who said a collective "arrogant ignorance" holds the nation back.

He cited an education system that's not innovative enough, a lack of awareness or acknowledgment of global competition and lack of long-term vision.

Crow, the morning keynote speaker Thursday at the city's second annual Positive Action through Civic Engagement conference didn't mince words in his hourlong address, taking on what he called the "800-pound elephant sitting in the room."

The state of the economy.

Crow said the country needs to work toward a common goal of economic success and global competitiveness, which would help achieve other goals of social, cultural and community development.

He outlined "realistic assessments" of the United States, often forcefully, thumping the lectern on stage at the Arizona Broadway Theatre.

The ASU president said the country is resting on its laurels, which is not enough to come out of the economic morass.

"We don't understand the rise and the development of the rest of the world as competitors; we feel it but we don't understand it," he said. "We are going to have to look ourselves in the mirror, pull ourselves together as a community and literally re-think many, many things."

Crow said looking to the federal government for all the answers is not the solution. He urged the audience, comprising business, education and community leaders, to understand that the solutions to problems come from communities.

"Communities and states are the laboratories of democracy," he said. "We are the means by which solutions will be derived, new pathways will be engineered."

Crow also criticized the K-12 and higher-education systems for being "insufficiently innovative," and stifled by the "model of the past."

He said the focus should be on how K-12 schools are doing, "not compared with the school down the street or the school up in Flagstaff," but with schools internationally.

"We're not where we should be," Crow said.

He took on his peers, other research university presidents, for thinking narrowly only of the elite students and educators. They must be more inclusive to better educate the country.

"The level of arrogance among these individuals and these institutions is beyond belief," Crow said.

He spoke of the need to think big, not in the narrow prism of growth within a city or company but regionally, to compete not with Tempe or Tucson but with Singapore or Shanghai.

For that, he singled out the need to think about growth in the context of the larger Sun Corridor in Arizona, one of 10 megapolitans identified as hubs for growth because of their collective infrastructure and resources. The corridor stretching from Prescott to Tucson, across Yavapai, Maricopa, Pinal and Pima counties, has a collective economy the size of Finland, Malaysia or the United Arab Emirates, he said.

To compete globally, leaders would have to take the long-term view and make decisions regionally.

Crow said it doesn't help to just focus on dealing with people who no longer have jobs and how to keep them going in the short-term with unemployment benefits. Leaders must focus on how the unemployed are being prepared for the jobs that need filled going forward.

"By being economically competitive, we can build from that the societies we want," Crow said.

The speech impressed several audience members.

AARP Arizona volunteer Virginia Correa Creager told Crow she would work to spread the word. "It's incumbent on us not to just listen to you today, not to just take notes from you today but it's incumbent upon us to reach out into the community and spread the message that you gave us today," she said.

The message of working collectively for the larger cause of economic prosperity hit home for Sandy Mendez Benson of Washington Elementary School District. She said that's something she works on at the local level, "trying to pool resources and ideas" between schools and the local businesses and community residents.

I Am Not Moving

"Hypocrisy has its own elegant symmetry."

Tintin and the Muslims

I was asked to comment about a blog post from June 2008 entitled "Europe" vs. "Western Civilization". The post is primarily a commentary about the Adam Tooze book, Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (with which I am not familiar), that has the unusual linkage of comparing Tooze's book to Hergé's comic book, Tintin in America (originally published in 1931). I will also admit to ignorance about Hergé's work, although I've tried to do a quick review about Hergé and the comic book in question.

The author of the blog post, "CPA," makes his primary argument in the following two paragraphs:

After reading Tooze's book, the answer I think is pretty plain: Nazism wasn't just about racism, it was also about Europeanism. In other words it was not just about making "Aryans" triumph over Jews, Roma, and other inferior races in Europe, it was also about making Europe as a continent triumph over rival continents. And by rival continents, the only one really in question was North America. One could even go so far as to say that the racism was instrumental to the "continentism"; that grinding inferior races in Europe into the dust was only a means to the end of keeping Europe the world's leading continent. What is so striking about this is how geography trumped race even in the strategy of the most justly notorious racists in history. How could this be?

Here is where Tintin in America comes in. To understand European fear of North America, one needs to understand the European image of America. Tintin's America is a gangster paradise, a land of skyscrapers and anarchy, of grotesque slaughterhouses and industrialized food, drunken sheriffs enforcing Prohibition while citizens have fun at a lynching parties, a land where oil companies routinely dispossess Indians, where you can go to sleep in a prairie one day and wake up in a traffic-jammed metropolis the next. Now, this is Tintin, and it is all fairly light-hearted. ... As Tintin leaves on a steamer back for Europe, he sighs, "Funny, and I was just starting to like the place." But make no mistake, America is not part of some "Western civilization" -- it is just as alien to Herge's European readers as Africa, the Soviet Union, or the Arab world and India, scenes for his immediately preceding and following Tintin volumes.

Now I bring up the stereotypes presented in the Tintin comic book because the specific request made of me was, "Do you have any thoughts regarding it [the blog post], perhaps on what it means on Muslim relations with America versus Muslim relations with mainland Europe?" Hergé's work seems somewhat similar in its "production values" (for want of a better term) to the current situation between Muslims in the United States and Europe.

In Wikipedia's article on the Tintin series (The Adventures of Tintin), it notes that Hergé did research on the people and countries to which Tintin traveled. However, one of the specific criticisms regarding Tintin in America is that "much of the sequence in the American West is less realistic, as it depicts the West as it was in the days of the Wild West, complete with cowboys and Indians", as opposed to the American west of the 1930s. (Much of the story takes place in Prohibition-era Chicago, with Al Capone being a character in the book.) So my thought is, what media was available to Hergé for his research at that time? Books, photographs and news accounts, certainly, but not much else. One wonders if the "cowboys and Indians" portion of the comic was influenced by Hollywood Westerns that had crossed the Atlantic into Europe in the 1920s and early 1930s. My point here is that with limited research materials, for Hergé and the rest of Europe at that time, was this a reason why there are the various European stereotypes of the United States as depicted in Tintin in America?

I would like to say that Muslim relations in America and Europe (indeed the rest of the world) follows along a similar vein, that the relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims depends upon how well non-Muslims know Muslims, not just Muslim society in general but individual Muslims personally. (For North America and Southeast Asia, I think this theory works pretty well, but I'm not as convinced for Europe. More on that later.) If a non-Muslim knows a Muslim personally, he or she should (in theory) be less likely to demonize Islam and Muslim society. One would hope that a non-Muslim who personally knows a Muslim or Muslims won't think of Muslims in general as a dangerous "other," but that they are like Muhammad who works in the office or Yasmin who presents the news on TV.

In North America (and the U.S. in particular), I think that most non-Muslims are terribly ignorant about Islam and Muslim society, and that this ignorance has driven most of the fear and myth-making. (Myths about Islam including, "Muslims want to dominate the world," "Muslims want to impose Shari'ah on non-Muslims," and so on. That sort of nonsense.) Some of the problems facing the American Muslim community include the fact that Muslims make up a small (but growing) percentage of the total population, and that Muslims have been largely invisible to the American public for most of the country's history. I think Muslims only started coming into the American public's consciousness around 1973, when OPEC punished the U.S. for supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Of course, since then, most reactions among Americans toward current events involving Muslims and Muslim countries have been negative (e.g., the Iranian Revolution and the Iran Hostage Crisis, hostages in Lebanon and the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, Israel/Palestine, Iraq before, during and after the two Gulf Wars, 9/11 and other terrorist attacks around the world, Afghanistan, etc.). Never mind the fact that the vast majority of Muslims in Western countries are peaceful, law-abiding citizens; never mind the fact that most non-Muslims don't recognize their own countries' actions as contributing to the Muslim world's problems. We're all innocent of any wrong-doing; don't you know? ("The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do." (p. 51 of Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations))

Another problem in America is simply that this type of behavior has a long history in the country. White Protestant culture has a difficult time accepting other people. The same problems Muslims face today have happened to the Blacks, Chinese, Hispanics, Jews, Gays, Catholics, and other groups, cultural, ethnic, religious, and so on. Racism and bigotry in America may have been tamped down in the 70s, 80s and 90s, but it never died out completely. It simmered on the back stove for several decades, and began to become unleashed once more in the 90s. Add to the fact that some Islamophobes have found fearmongering to be lucrative financially, and the lies began to be promoted much more strongly than in the past. The good news is that, in both the U.S. and Europe, people of good conscious have begun to fight back with the Muslims and other discriminated groups. Muslim projects such as the building of mosques in America have found supporters from non-Muslims.

In Southeast Asia, Islam has been a significant religion for centuries (roughly 900 years for Malaysia and 1,000 years for Indonesia). With majority populations in Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia, plus significant minority populations in the southern Philippines, Singapore and southern Thailand, most non-Muslims in this region are much better acquainted with Islam and Muslim culture than non-Muslims are in America and Europe. The problems that exist in the U.S. and Europe between Muslims and non-Muslims don't really exist in Southeast Asia. (Of course, there are other problems here between the two communities, but these issues don't seem to be as severe as in the West.) I think one of the key differences between America and Southeast Asia is that Asians are much more conducive toward tolerance between different groups. There are so many different ethnic and religious groups here that people are more willing to make a multicultural society work. (This is one of my complaints with Europeans who proclaim that multiculturalism doesn't work. Not true; it has and does in Asian cultures. Europeans just aren't trying hard enough.)

The question, then is, "Why aren't European non-Muslims more like Asians in their relations with Muslims? Why are they more like Americans?" On the one hand, you have a continent that is neighbors with the Muslim world and, in fact, has several distinct European Muslim communities within Europe itself (Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Macedonia). Likewise, the absolute numbers and percentages of Muslims throughout Europe are much greater than they are in North America. For example, the Pew Foundation estimated that there are 38.1 million Muslims in Europe, comprising 5.2% of the total population, whereas the total number of Muslims in the Americas (North, Central and South America) totals 4.5 million, or 0.5% of the total population. (Pew estimates that there were 2.454 million Muslims in the U.S., or 0.8% of the population.) So, theoretically, there should be more interactions between Muslims and non-Muslims throughout Europe, even in countries with smaller Muslim populations, which should lead to less ignorance on the part of non-Muslims. But, based on my observations from afar, that doesn't seem to be the case.

Which makes me wonder, could any or all of the following be part of the problem: 1) Economic insecurity - Are worries over Muslim populations in Europe due to the same sort of worries regarding "Polish Plumbers?" In other words, that the cheaper labor coming from Muslim countries will take jobs away from Europeans of a lower socioeconomic level? 2) Racism - Are Europeans worried that Muslims represent a "browning" of the European gene pool similar to the miscegenation fears of Germans intermixing with Jews through World War 2 (or between blacks and whites in the U.S.)? 3) Socioeconomic status of Muslims (and non-Muslim Islamophobes) – One of the known differences between the American and European Muslim communities is that the American Muslims tend to be richer and perhaps more educated than European Muslims. This is due in part to American immigration policy, which, like many countries, encourages people with wealth, high levels of education (normally a minimum of a graduate degree), and/or vital-skill jobs (e.g., IT, medical, education, etc.) to move there. The immigrant Muslim community in the U.S. was able to move to America because they had these qualifications. European Muslims, on the other hand, aren’t necessarily as rich or well-educated; many families, of course, immigrated to European countries due to either post-WW2 labor shortages and/or relaxed immigration rules for countries that were once European colonies. This issue might tie in with the first issue mentioned above, economic insecurity. Perhaps the lower socioeconomic levels of Muslim immigrants in Europe are too similar to that of the native population, leading to the economic and/or xenophobic insecurities? (This issue is less of a problem in the U.S., where Islamophobia tends to be driven either by xenophobia or ideology (hatred of Islam as an ideology/religion).) 4) Tribalism in European society – I’ve read enough European history to know that, deep down, Europe is just as tribal as many other “tribal cultures.” (In today’s vernacular, most tribal conflicts are described as ethnic disputes between two or more groups, or international conflicts in which nations composed of different ethnicities clash over various issues.) I wonder if conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims in Europe might be considered a form of tribal conflict; for example, between the Germans and Turks living in Germany or the French and Muslims who come from the various North African countries?

(I claim no expertise regarding the European relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims; this is based solely upon what I've read on the Internet. If Muslim bloggers from or living in Europe wish to correct me on this section, I'd be happy for their input.)



* * *
John Espinoza brought up several good points in a recent essay at Huffington Post. On the one hand, he writes,

…those that think the root cause of Muslim-West tensions is political are more likely to see it as avoidable. Those who see it as religious are more likely to believe it as unavoidable. Therefore, if the conflict is framed as "political," people are more likely to work to find a solution.

I agree with this, and perhaps this is a factor that should be considered for relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in America and Europe. (I don’t think a political/religious dichotomy is as apparent in Southeast Asia. Most people in this region, I think, recognize that tensions here are mostly political rather than religious in nature, even when the personalities involved are deeply religious.) I’m not able to judge how well the European non-Muslim population views their conflicts with Muslims between politics and religion; however, I do think that most Americans view conflicts with Muslims as being religious in nature instead of political. (This is ironic considering that the far right in the U.S. has begun to argue, fallaciously, that Islam is not a religion but a political ideology.) In fact, I would even go so far as to say that many Americans find it difficult to distinguish the political context for many conflicts. If a conflict involves groups with different religions, Americans will tend to define the conflict in terms of the religions involved instead of the political factions. This happens often with "Muslims vs. ..." whomever (Jews, Christians, Hindus, etc.), but also with conflicts that don't involve any Muslims (Northern Ireland in particular). The problem, of course, is that while religious beliefs may play a part in the conflict, other factors are often involved that have nothing to do with religion (e.g., conflicts between ethnic groups, calls for self-determination, control of natural resources, economic inequalities, etc.).

Esposito provides potential solutions that Muslims offer to help improve relations with non-Muslims:

Majorities of Muslims expressed their deep concerns about this lack of respect but they also offered positive solutions: stop desecrating the Quran and religious symbols, treat Muslims fairly in the politics that affect them and portray Muslim characters accurately in popular media.

The problem is, I doubt that even these simple solutions can be performed by non-Muslim society. There is just too much profit (figuratively and literally, as I mentioned above) to be gained from not improving relations between non-Muslims and Muslims.

Update: Quarkstomper wrote a very good comment over at Street Prophets, where I had cross-posted this diary, regarding Hergé and his research:

Hergé did a great deal of research for his later Tintin stories, but not at the beginning. His first one, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, was based on material from a book about the Soviet Union that his editor gave him. (The paper Tintin originally appeared in was a Catholic one with a strong conservative and anti-communist slant). His second one, Tintin in the Congo, was likewise written at his editor's request and was an embarrassing pro-colonial apology. After that, Hergé was permitted to write pretty much what he wanted, which was to take Tintin to exotic places that captured his imagination. Like America.

After Tintin in America and The Cigars of the Pharaohs (taking place in Egypt and India), Hergé announced that he would next take Tintin to China. He received a letter from a Roman Catholic priest asking him to please take care to portray the country accurately. The priest introduced him to a young Chinese student from his school named Chang. The young man became Hergé's assistant for the next story, The Blue Lotus, and provided him not only with factual information and calligraphy, but also a bit of cultural understanding. The Blue Lotus gave a much more sympathetic view of China and the Chinese people than was common in western media at the time.

After The Blue Lotus, Hergé took the lesson about research to heart, and his later adventures were all meticulously researched.

Update #2: Quarkstomper has expanded upon his comment, and has written the diary Hergé and Tintin, which gives a brief biography of the cartoonist and the cartoon strip. I've also cross-posted this essay over at Daily Kos (glutton for punishment that I am ;) ).

Are Muslims Organized to Resist Bigotry?

There was an interesting comment over at Daily Kos on a diary that discussed the Cordoba House community center and mosque (the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque"). Here is the original comment:

I wish Muslims were organized to resist bigotry
I don't think they realized the importance of political engagement or are simply unprepared to deal with this level of discrimination that came after 9/11. It is time they learned from the civil rights movements and get very active. The fact this bigotry is tolerated demonstrates how much bigotry our media is willing to propagate at the expense of those who don't loudly resist.

And this is my response:

It's not that Muslims aren't organized to resist bigotry or that we don't realize the importance of political engagement. On the contrary, there are several organizations that engage in both of these aspects every day, including CAIR and MAS among others. Could these organizations do a better job than they are now? I'm sure they would say "yes," along with a request for more manpower and money.

But let's be realistic here: the real issue is not the Muslim community's level of organization vis-a-vis bigotry, it's the level of bigotry among non-Muslims. And the real problem there is that these types of attitudes, once set, rarely change. There are a number of Islamophobes here at Kos who one might think would change their opinions and attitudes toward Islam and Muslims after participating in so many discussions on these topics, but I have yet to see any evidence that those attitudes have changed at all. They have had the opportunity to learn about Islam and the Muslim world, they have discussed Islam and the Muslim world with a number of different Muslims here at Kos, but there is no change. They continue to sputter in their rage against Islam.

If the 2008 presidential campaign and the Obama presidency have shown anything, it is that racism never died out. The success of the civil rights movement may have caused racists to lower their profile in the 70s and 80s, but their attitudes never went away. They were the true sleeper cells within American society. Muslims have been doing their part to resist bigotry and to organize politically, but I don't ever expect Islamophobia to ever go away in American society. For that to happen, American would need to revert en masse to Islam. Not that that couldn't happen; it's done so with a number of different cultures before, but I'm not holding my breath until that time.

Good Riddance, Y'all

The New York Times on the fall of the South in terms of its influence on national politics. Insha'allah, this will truly come to pass. I hope to write a few more posts on this topics soon, insha'allah.

What may have ended on Election Day, though, is the centrality of the South to national politics. By voting so emphatically for Senator John McCain over Mr. Obama — supporting him in some areas in even greater numbers than they did President Bush — voters from Texas to South Carolina and Kentucky may have marginalized their region for some time to come, political experts say.

The region’s absence from Mr. Obama’s winning formula means it “is becoming distinctly less important,” said Wayne Parent, a political scientist at Louisiana State University. “The South has moved from being the center of the political universe to being an outside player in presidential politics.”

One reason for that is that the South is no longer a solid voting bloc. Along the Atlantic Coast, parts of the “suburban South,” notably Virginia and North Carolina, made history last week in breaking from their Confederate past and supporting Mr. Obama. Those states have experienced an influx of better educated and more prosperous voters in recent years, pointing them in a different political direction than states farther west, like Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, and Appalachian sections of Kentucky and Tennessee.

Southern counties that voted more heavily Republican this year than in 2004 tended to be poorer, less educated and whiter, a statistical analysis by The New York Times shows. Mr. Obama won in only 44 counties in the Appalachian belt, a stretch of 410 counties that runs from New York to Mississippi. Many of those counties, rural and isolated, have been less exposed to the diversity, educational achievement and economic progress experienced by more prosperous areas.

...

Less than a third of Southern whites voted for Mr. Obama, compared with 43 percent of whites nationally. By leaving the mainstream so decisively, the Deep South and Appalachia will no longer be able to dictate that winning Democrats have Southern accents or adhere to conservative policies on issues like welfare and tax policy, experts say.

That could spell the end of the so-called Southern strategy, the doctrine that took shape under President Richard M. Nixon in which national elections were won by co-opting Southern whites on racial issues. And the Southernization of American politics — which reached its apogee in the 1990s when many Congressional leaders and President Bill Clinton were from the South — appears to have ended.

“I think that’s absolutely over,” said Thomas Schaller, a political scientist who argued prophetically that the Democrats could win national elections without the South.

The Republicans, meanwhile, have “become a Southernized party,” said Mr. Schaller, who teaches at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “They have completely marginalized themselves to a mostly regional party,” he said, pointing out that nearly half of the current Republican House delegation is now Southern.

Merle Black, an expert on the region’s politics at Emory University in Atlanta, said the Republican Party went too far in appealing to the South, alienating voters elsewhere.

“They’ve maxed out on the South,” he said, which has “limited their appeal in the rest of the country.”

Even the Democrats made use of the Southern strategy, as the party’s two presidents in the last 40 years, Jimmy Carter and Mr. Clinton, were Southerners whose presence on the ticket served to assuage regional anxieties. Mr. Obama has now proved it is no longer necessary to include a Southerner on the national ticket — to quiet racial fears, for example — in order to win, in the view of analysts.

Several Southern states, including Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee, have voted for the winner in presidential elections for decades. No more. And Mr. Obama’s race appears to have been the critical deciding factor in pushing ever greater numbers of white Southerners away from the Democrats.

8 Years Later

Vote!

The Fall of the American Republic

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.
-- Anonymous

I was unaware of this quotation until a few days ago when I read it in the back of a magazine. I find it of interest, even though the provenance of the quotation is very much in doubt (see below). The second half of the first paragraph, where the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, strikes me as the cornerstone of Republican fiscal policy, originating with the "voodoo economics" of Reagan's supply-side economics through McCain's "Bush-Plus" budget plan. One wonders when a Republican will "go the distance" and make the suggestion to eliminate taxes altogether.

Personally, I think that American culture currently falls somewhere between "from complacency to apathy" and "from apathy to dependence."

Note: The above quotation is old, but apparently not as old as it is often attributed. Most people have attributed it to Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee (1747-1813), a Scottish attorney and writer, although it has been attributed to several other men as well. Research suggests that the quotation is relatively modern; it first began to be published back in the '50s; however, no one has been able to determine who the real author(s) is/are. (As a result, I've attributed the quotation to "Anonymous.")

For several interesting discussions on the quotation, see:

Snopes.com: The Fall of the Athenian Republic

The Mythical Alexander Tyler and His Theory of Democracy

The Truth About Tytler

Crazy, Old, Desperate, Goony, Erratic, Republican - John McCain

HT: WTF Is It Now?!?

Lee Iacocca: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

Amen! This is an excerpt from Lee Iacocca's book, Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, 'Stay the course.'

Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!

& someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions.

That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?

I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have.

I'm going to speak up because it's my patriotic duty & I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young folks who say they don't vote because they don't trust politicians to represent their interests. Hey, America, wake up. These guys work for us.

Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them — or at least some of us did. But I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship, not a democracy.

And don't tell me it's all the fault of right-wing Republicans or liberal Democrats. That's an intellectually lazy argument, and it's part of the reason we're in this stew. We're not just a nation of factions. We're a people. We share common principles and ideals. And we rise and fall together.

There was a time in this country when the voices of great leaders lifted us up and made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone?

On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. & That was George Bush's moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And what did he do when he'd regained his composure? He led us down the road to Iraq — a road his own father had considered disastrous when he was President. But Bush didn't listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father. He prides himself on being faith-based, not reality based. If that doesn't scare the crap out of you, I don't know what will.

So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.

But when you look around, you've got to ask: 'Where have all the leaders gone?' Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo? We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.

Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina & Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing & Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry ...

Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope. I believe in America. In my lifetime I've had the privilege of living through some of America's greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crises ... If I've learned one thing, it's this: You don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm raising in this book. It's a call to action for people who, like me, believe in America. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's ... go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had enough."

HT: Oroville Mercury-Register.com

State Rankings by Social and Economic Liberalism/Conservatism

This is an interesting graph showing where the states in the continental U.S. rank in terms of social and economic liberalism vs. conservatism. The data used to make this graph is somewhat old (from the 2000 election season).

Here's a graph of the 50 states (actually, I think Alaska and Hawaii are missing), showing the average economic and social ideology of adults within each state. Each of these is scaled so that negative numbers are liberal and positive are conservative; thus, people in Massachusetts are the most liberal on economic issues and people in Idaho are the most conservative:


West Virginians are on the liberal side economically but are extremely socially conservative, whereas Vermont is about the same as West Virginian on the economic dimension but is the most socially liberal of all the states. Coloradans are economically conservative (on average) but socially moderate (or, perhaps, socially divided; these are averages only).

Read the rest of the post here.

HT: Economist's View

A question that would interest me is, by how much do states shift in terms of their economic and social beliefs over time? One would think that they do to a degree, but not by that much. However, a recent article in The Economist (The Big Sort), discusses how Americans are segregating themselves into geographical areas by political beliefs:

Americans move house often, usually for practical reasons. Before choosing a new neighborhood, they drive around it. They notice whether it has gun shops, evangelical churches and “W” bumper stickers, or yoga classes and organic fruit shops. Perhaps unconsciously, they are drawn to places where they expect to fit in.

Where you live is partly determined by where you can afford to live, of course. But the “Big Sort” does not seem to be driven by economic factors. Income is a poor predictor of party preference in America; cultural factors matter more. For Americans who move to a new city, the choice is often not between a posh neighborhood and a run-down one, but between several different neighborhoods that are economically similar but culturally distinct.

...

Because Americans are so mobile, even a mild preference for living with like-minded neighbors leads over time to severe segregation. An accountant in Texas, for example, can live anywhere she wants, so the liberal ones move to the funky bits of Austin while the more conservative ones prefer the exurbs of Dallas. Conservative Californians can find refuge in Orange County or the Central Valley.

Over time, this means Americans are ever less exposed to contrary views. ... Americans were the least likely of all to talk about politics with those who disagreed with them.

Intriguingly, the more educated Americans become, the more insular they are. ... Better-educated people tend to be richer, so they have more choice about where they live. And they are more mobile. One study that covered most of the 1980s and 1990s found that 45% of young Americans with a college degree moved state within five years of graduating, whereas only 19% of those with only a high-school education did.

There is a danger in this. Studies suggest that when a group is ideologically homogeneous, its members tend to grow more extreme. Even clever, fair-minded people are not immune. ... Republican-appointed judges vote more conservatively when sitting on a panel with other Republicans than when sitting with Democrats. Democratic judges become more liberal when on the bench with fellow Democrats.

Residential segregation is not the only force Balkanizing American politics, frets Mr Bishop. Multiple cable channels allow viewers to watch only news that reinforces their prejudices. The Internet offers an even finer filter. Websites such as conservativedates.com or democraticsingles.net help Americans find ideologically predictable mates.

And the home-schooling movement, which has grown rapidly in recent decades, shields more than 1m American children from almost any ideas their parents dislike.

...

Voters in landslide districts tend to elect more extreme members of Congress. Moderates who might otherwise run for office decide not to. Debates turn into shouting matches. Bitterly partisan lawmakers cannot reach the necessary consensus to fix long-term problems such as the tottering pensions and health-care systems.

America, says Mr Bishop, is splitting into "balkanized communities whose inhabitants find other Americans to be culturally incomprehensible." He has a point. Republicans who never meet Democrats tend to assume that Democrats believe more extreme things than they really do, and vice versa. This contributes to the nasty tone of many political campaigns.

This last paragraph also helps to explain why most non-Muslim Americans are so Islamophobic and xenophobic: Not knowing any Muslims they are more susceptible to believing the lies spread by the haters.

The War Prayer

An animated film of Mark Twain's The War Prayer. The animation is a little long (run time: 14:21), but well worth watching.

The Messenger who speaks aloud the second part of the Minister's and congregation's prayer for victory reminds me somewhat of the Parable of the Companions of the City (Ya Sin; 36:13-32), especially ayah 36:30:

Ah! Alas for (My) Servants! There comes not an apostle to them but they mock him!

Why, Yes, We Are Hypocrites...

...why do you ask?

HT: Advertising is Good for You

Good Fathers Read to Their Sons

One of my sisters mailed me a copy of Jim Trelease's book, The Read-Aloud Handbook, originally published in 1979 and now in its sixth edition. Trelease's thesis is that by having parents -- including fathers -- read stories or books aloud to their children, that the child's reading comprehension and academic achievement will increase dramatically. The book is well researched (the following passage alone contained five footnotes, which I've omitted), but many of the facts presented are eye-opening -- and disturbing -- to say the least. The problem is that many American families have placed the burden of the parent reading aloud to their children on the mother. Not that this is completely surprising; after all, mothers are the primary care givers to children under five, regardless of whether she works or not, and he almost always is the primary bread-winner. But that doesn't mean that he can abdicate all responsibility toward his child's intellectual development. There are ways a father can encourage his child or children to read. One of my brothers-in-law, the husband of my sister who mailed me this book, takes his four children to the library once a week, every week. My own father was another bookworm who often read for pleasure, whether it was fiction or non-fiction. As a child, I remember my mom telling us kids (on numerous occasions) that dad wasn't going to wake up soon because he had been reading until two a.m. And, of course, my sisters and I were always encouraged to read. (As a teenager, I often read from our World Book encyclopedia or its various yearbooks for pleasure. Yeah, I know, I was a strange kid, but I've never lost while playing Trivial Pursuit either, so there! ;) )

The following passage comes from a section entitled, How do I convince my husband he should be doing this with our children? (pp. xxii-xxiv of the Introduction). What's surprising and scary is how much American boys have slipped behind girls academically since 1970. For years, we've read articles about how the number of female students has grown in American universities, but usually within the context of a single department or degree program (e.g., law school, medical school, etc.). But apparently the problem is much more widespread. Even looking at my own university's data (Fall 2006 statistics), female students outnumber male students for both undergraduates (53%-47%) and graduates (54%-46%). (For the Honors College, the gender ratio is the same as the graduate students' ratio, 54%-46% in favor of females.) So if you parents want your sons (and daughters) to do well at school, start reading to them now... even if they're teenagers.

The second change is a huge gender gap among American schoolchildren. Since 1970, there's been a steady gain in female achievement, accompanied by a steep drop in male performance. ... In 1970, male enrollment in college was 59 percent, female 41 percent. Three decades later, it's almost completely reversed -- 57 percent female, 43 percent male.

The top 10 percent of high school classes is 56 percent female, 44 percent male; among high school graduates who maintain an A average, 62 percent are female, 38 percent male. Three out of five high school National Honor Society members are girls, and they outnumber boys 124 to 100 in Advanced Placement (AP) classes. As recently as 1987, boys had outnumbered girls in those classes. ...

We know what caused the rise in the girls' scores -- their mothers' value systems about education changed thirty years ago. Mothers now expect more of their daughters intellectually. But how do we explain the nosedive on the part of the boys since 1970? Is it a coincidence that in that same year, 1970, we saw the birth of a national TV phenomenon called Monday Night Football? Prior to that, Madison Avenue pretty much thought it was a waste of time trying to advertise to men late at night -- they were all asleep in their La-Z-Boys. Then along comes MNF and they've got millions of guys doing high fives on their chairs at 11 p.m. It didn't take long for the networks to catch on that sports at night could bring in a boatload of advertising dollars and thus was born ESPN, then ESPN2, followed by channels for golf, rodeo, NASCAR, wrestling, extreme sports -- you name it, all sports, all the time, 24/7.

The impact on the young male of seeing his dad worshiping daily and nightly at the altar of ESPN, has to have played a damaging role in male attitudes about school. Girls read and write; guys hit, throw, catch, shoot, and fish. By 2000, moms were "taking their daughters to work," but dads were still taking their sons to the stadium.

The father who can find his way only to ball games with his kids is a "boy-man," whereas the father who can find his way to a ball game and to the library can be called a "grown man." Unfortunately, we have a growing shortage of grown men in America today. Once I asked members of an audience in Decatur, Georgia, if they thought they'd ever hear a president of the United States make a statement like that to the American people, and a woman replied, "Yes -- as soon as she's elected!"

The strange thing is that this "dumbing of Daddy" seems to affect families at all education levels. In a study comparing poverty-level families and university-educated families, fathers in both groups read to the children only 15 percent of the time, mothers 76 percent, and others 9 percent. That could change if we publicized studies like one conducted in Modesto, California, which showed that (1) boys who were read to by their fathers scored significantly higher in reading achievement, and (2) when fathers read recreationally, their sons read more and scored higher than did boys whose fathers did little or no recreational reading. When the dads were surveyed, only 10 percent reported having fathers who read to them when they were children.

Where Does the Anger Come From?

Classic. Chris Britt's editorial cartoon for March 19th at the Springfield Journal-Register:

Tennessee's Finest

After watching this video, it sorta makes me say to myself, "Thank God I wasn't raised in Tennessee," ya know? Parochialism at its "finest."

A)I don’t want a man that’s going to use the Koran to be sworn in as President instead of the Bible.”

Q) Where did you get this information that Barack Obama wanted to be sworn in on the Koran?

A) From one of our Church members that’s keeping up with what his comments are and you know he wouldn’t even do the Pledge of Allegiance. He refused.

HT: Crooks & Liars

Chinese Pity

This is one of two quotations at the beginning of Tom Friedman's book, The World is Flat (Chapter 8) that I thought is an excellent commentary on the state of American politics today:

"Chinese pity comes from their belief that we are a country in decline. More than a few Chinese friends have quoted to me the proverb fu bu guo san dai (wealth doesn't make it past three generations) as they wonder how we became so ill-disciplined, distracted and dissolute. The fury surrounding Monica-gate seemed an incomprehensible waste of time to a nation whose emperors were supplied with thousands of concubines. Chinese are equally astonished that Americans are allowing themselves to drown in debt and under-fund public schools while the media focus on fights over feeding tubes, displays of the Ten Commandments and how to eat as much as we can without getting fat."
-- James McGregor, a journalist-turned-businessman based in China, and a former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, writing in The Washington Post, July 31, 2005

Catholic Naked Jogging

Odd news story out of Colorado. The incident actually took place back in June, but this news report is as of December 20th. One would think that if he "sweats profusely if he wears clothing," then he needs to move further north... say, Alaska? Then he should be able to do nude jogging in the wilderness (and be a feast for the mosquitoes) to his (and their) content.

GREELEY, Colo. - A Catholic priest charged with indecent exposure after being accused of jogging naked in the pre-dawn darkness has pleaded not guilty and asked for a jury trial.

The Rev. Robert Whipkey was arrested June 22 in Frederick, about 25 miles north of Denver, after an officer saw him walking on a street naked at 4:35 a.m. Whipkey told police he jogged naked because he sweats profusely if he wears clothing, according an arrest report.

Whipkey did not speak at a hearing Tuesday, and neither he nor his attorneys would comment afterward. His trial is scheduled for March.

Whipkey served parishes in Frederick, Mead and Erie but was placed on administrative leave by the Archdiocese of Denver in August.

The archdiocese said Whipkey was investigated for "inappropriate personal behavior" more than eight years ago when he was a pastor in Sterling. The archdiocese said that incident did not involve "physical or sexual contact with another individual," but it gave no other details.

Update to "Physician, Heal Thyself"

My blog post from the other day, Physician, Heal Thyself, got a mixed reaction. Personally, I felt it was one of my better posts in quite some time. And initial reactions were quite positive. Being selected for Ijtema was an honor, being the first time they had noticed me. And then, when I cross-posted the diary over at Street Prophets, it was quickly promoted to the "front page," which happens for noteworthy diaries (and was another first-time honor for me). Moreover, my essay inspired another man to write the diary, Can America Respect Islam?, which also generated a lot of comment.

However, when I posted this essay over at Daily Kos, the diary was largely ignored. I'd like to say that this was because I posted it at the wrong time of day (during the middle of the night over in the US), but the next diary posted after mine got well over 500 comments and immediately made it to the "Recommended Diaries" listing. C'est la vie.

What I wanted to do here was to highlight three sets of comments between myself and others from both Street Prophets and Daily Kos that I thought were of interest. The first comment was by StarWoman on Street Prophets, who wrote:

Cultural arrogance, alas, has long been part of American culture.

The real problem is not that American needs to promote its own values and cultures to the world, but that the world needs to promote its values and cultures to the U.S.

Amen to that.

Do you have any suggestions as to how the rest of the world can do that?

My response:

Start with TV

In S'pore, we have documentaries and TV series that focus on different parts of the world. Two weekly programs that my wife and I watch every now and then are "Japan Hour" and "Dynamic Korea." (In fact, I caught the tail end of this week's "Dynamic Korea" about an hour ago.) These are programs that focus on cultural aspects of these two countries; "Japan Hour" is primarily about food and inns, while "Dynamic Korea" covers a broader variety of topics. Now the distance between Singapore and these two countries is about seven hours' flight, which is exactly how long it took me to fly from NYC to Switzerland back in 2001. So, although it's all part of eastern Asia, it's still a considerable distance from here (like crossing the Atlantic).

Of course these are only two programs. Much of the news here focuses on the arc of Asia from Pakistan to Japan, occasionally from the Middle East and Australia. The BBC World Service gives the British perspective, CNN the American, CNA (Channel News Asia) the Asian. With respect to sports, S'poreans prolly have a better knowledge of the placement of teams in the English Premier League and the Spanish Primera Liga than they do of their own teams in the "S League." I catch sports broadcasts for cricket, rugby, badminton, table tennis, billiards, and several other sports, in addition to the traditional slew of American sports. (About the only American league that's not shown here consistently is the NHL, although the broadcasters will show the Stanley Cup finals. Also, I got really upset this summer when the Tour de France wasn't broadcast, which I've watched every other year here.)

So if I were going to expand American horizons by showing them the world, I'd start with TV first.

The second set of comments was started by "DreadWolf" at Daily Kos, who wrote:

I've worked with Muslims for many years and have mutual respect for those I know personally.

I think you are actually contributing to the problem, though perhaps unintentionally. For most Americans who do not work with Muslims, all they hear from the Muslim community is cries of victimization. Though there is certainly much America can do, I notice you do not mention anything the Muslim world could or should do to address the discord. Sadly, that one-sidedness is the common theme that usually comes through quite clearly from Muslim advocates.

For example, your main message is that Americans should try to learn more about Muslim/world values and culture, but you preface it with "we're not necessarily interested in yours".

Whether intended or not, that comes across as an air of superiority, and Americans pick up on it quite well. It only reinforces the existing perceptions.

My response:

...I notice you do not mention anything the Muslim world could or should do to address the discord. Sadly, that one-sidedness is the common theme that usually comes through quite clearly from Muslim advocates.

I believe the "one-sidedness" only appears that way because American culture is so self-absorbed. The rest of the world is plugged into all of the world; we frequently know what's going on elsewhere and not just at "home." American culture is mostly plugged into America, with a little bit plugged into western Europe and Japan. Take the news, for example. Most Americans get their news from American networks: CNN, Fox, the three primary networks. How many news networks do they get from overseas? I live in SE Asia; I get CNN, BBC and Channel News Asia (plus two business news networks, plus a couple other stations/minor networks). The Asian networks normally cover everything that happens from Pakistan to Japan, plus the Middle East and Australia on occasion. You'll be lucky if you find that coverage on CNN. The Muslim world discusses the "discord" fairly frequently; one of the local TV channels here often discusses social problems among the local Muslim community, such programs being aired during prime time. The problem isn't that the issues aren't being discussed locally or internationally (ever catch the Doha Debates?), it's that Americans don't pay attention - and that makes it seem "one-sided."

For example, your main message is that Americans should try to learn more about Muslim/world values and culture, but you preface it with "we're not necessarily interested in yours".

You must remember, the rest of the world knows far more about America and American culture than the typical American knows about what it's like in the rest of the world. They've already been able to judge American culture and values, and have largely found it lacking. (A lot of Americans find their own culture lacking; I'm sure I don't need to provide you with any examples.)

Whether intended or not, that comes across as an air of superiority, and Americans pick up on it quite well. It only reinforces the existing perceptions.

This as to, say, all the Americans telling the rest of the world how superior American culture and values are to their own? The Muslim world in particular tends to view everything with a moral lens. The ends and the means. It's not so difficult for the rest of the world to see American culture for what it is: shallow, vapid, arrogant and ignorant. L.C.D. The point of Kaplan's argument was that Americans used music (jazz and rock) to help smooth out their differences with communist societies. "Hey, those Americans can play really good jazz, no? They can't be all bad." Today, Muslim society - and the rest of the world - get an extremely steady stream of American culture - in all forms of media. And having viewed that stream of culture with their moral lens, they have to question the type of values that produce that culture. It's as if Americans were saying, "Hey, come be decadent with us." Why would Muslims want to debase themselves to the American cultural level? If that comes across as an "air of superiority," then that's a good thing.

The last set of comments was started by "pico," who was reviewing the post as part of the "Diary Rescue" the Daily Kos staff do every day (highlighting noteworthy diaries that might otherwise be missed by the "Kossack" community; there are so many diaries being published on Daily Kos every day that it's quite easy to miss some of the better ones):

...[W]hile I agree with much of what you say, here's one point of disagreement:

[America] perhaps even needs to tone down the amount of "culture" it bombards the world with.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that, since there's no monolithic America that exports culture: what goes around the world goes via individual artists, groups, and companies. Are you suggesting, for example, that bands agree not to tour as much? Otherwise I'm not sure what you mean.

My response:

You're right when you say there's no "monolithic America" when it comes to culture. Much of the culture exported comes in drips and drabs (the individual artists and groups), and that's not going to ruffle too many feathers. It's the corporations, acting singly and together, that can cause problems.

For example, when I lived in Korea, there was a law at the time which stated that foreign films (read, "Hollywood") could only have x% of all movie showings. The law was put into place to help protect the Korean film industry, which has been growing over the decades and now produces some quality films. However, the government wanted to make sure the Korean theaters weren't overwhelmed with the numerous Hollywood productions that could otherwise flood into that country's cinemas. Hollywood had been trying to lift that restriction for some time (I don't know if it's been lifted since I left there).

The practical benefit to the Korean public was that they got to watch the better movies made in America. Hollywood wasn't going to waste their percentage of theater showings by sending over schlock; they sent over the better movies. Hollywood still made a significant chunk of change from the film rentals; they just didn't make as much as they would have wanted. And the Korean film industry was given some breathing space, which has helped the industry to grow. (Hopefully, Korean movies are making their way to the US because some of them are quite good.)

TV is in a similar situation, in which you have large, powerful corporations that are able to sell broadcasts of many TV series. However, that problem is somewhat muted in that American networks aren't able to dominate, say, Asian TV as much as Hollywood can dominate the theaters in that there are significant numbers of native-language networks that broadcast here as well. Still, you could easily spend all day watching American television (and movies) here in Asia. And that's the problem I find when America bombards the world with its culture.

Pico's response:

Fair points

Although it seems the scaling-back effort still has to come from other nations, right? I can't imagine how one would ask film producers not to market their films overseas: but you've given a good example of how a nation can stem the flow of Hollywood into its theatres.

"Physician, Heal Thyself"

Fred Kaplan at Slate has an article that asks the question, "Can American culture make Muslims love us?" Most of the first page of this two-page article meanders, but Kaplan gets to the point on the second page:

So, again, here's the question: What does America have going for it now? What could we send out to the world that might have the same impact on, say, Arabs and Muslims today that rock, jazz, and B-movies had on Russians and Europeans during the Cold War?

It may be, as Hughes (and both women who preceded her in the job) concluded, that there are no answers. The roar of Abu Ghraib, water-boarding, and military occupation—or even the quieter but still teeth-gnashing encounters with rude officials at U.S. embassies and airports—drowns out, or infects, our most engaging art forms and most strenuous attempts at public diplomacy. Even in its heyday, the U.S. Information Agency could do little to counter the clear "message" transmitted by the war in Vietnam. In that sense, policies do trump culture.

But let's say the next president begins to readjust American policy. It's not clear that anything in our culture might help restore our image.

First, the case of Cold War Europe might hold few lessons on how to mold the hearts and minds of current-day Arabs and Muslims.

Many people under Communist rule hated their governments. Since the world was divided into two blocs (the American-led West and the Soviet-led East), those who hated the East were predisposed to like the West. But today, in a world of dispersed power, people have many models from which to choose; Saudis or Egyptians who despise their autocratic regimes are more likely to find solace in Islamic fundamentalism than in any Western beacon.

During the Cold War, information was also divided in two: the Communist organs on the one hand, the BBC World Service and Voice of America on the other. The choice was stark and clear. One appeal of jazz and rock, especially in times of intense crackdown, was their forbidden status. Now, with satellite dishes and the Internet, everything is accessible. The challenge of sending out a message isn't that the foes are jamming the signal; it's that the channels are cluttered with so many other messages.

Once more, then: What is to be done? What should—what can—the next president do to improve America's image in the world?

There are some obvious measures. Train immigration and customs officials to lighten up; there are ways to stay on alert while making ordinary tourists feel welcome. Send speakers on foreign tours, even if they're (within reason) critical of U.S. policies. Translate more classic American books and documents, and make them available at foreign libraries. (Another way of putting these last two ideas: Bring back the U.S. Information Agency—an independent bureau, separate from the State Department, that promotes American values and culture, not an administration's policies.)

But what else? If you were president, or chairman of this revived USIA, how would you promote our values and culture? Quite apart from changing foreign and military policy (that's the subject of another column), how would you make America more appealing or at least less hated?

I had been thinking about this article for a couple hours when I mentioned it to Milady. "Are we [Muslims] supposed to hate them?" she asked.

I then explained that this is what Americans have been thinking since 2001, repeating that obnoxious line, "They hate us for our freedoms."
Milady laughed. She doesn't keep up with American politics as much as I do, for the obvious reason. "That's so narrow-minded," she said. Then, after a few seconds, she said, "If anything, I hate them for their ignorance."

And I would agree. On the one hand, if you want to improve relations with the Muslim world, changing foreign and military policy is the best thing the U.S. could do (NOW), starting with Iraq and Palestine. But if you want to focus only on soft issues like values and culture, I'd say that communications is the key. But not just a one-sided dialog, the United States to the Muslim world, as is currently happening, but with the United States also willing to both listen and learn from the Muslim world (and the rest of the world, for that matter).

Too many Westerners are well-meaning but ignorant fools who think, "If only Muslims would be more like us." That's not going to work. We Muslims have our own values and cultures, thank you very much, and we're not necessarily interested in yours. "But if only you knew what American culture is really like." Sorry, that's not really the case. As an American, I'm all too familiar with American values and culture, but I've been to Europe and Asia and have seen how pervasive American culture is around the world. Yes, granted, much of it is "Hollywood," and sometimes non-Americans take the wrong impression away from watching American films and TV shows. (I knew a Muslim woman who often watched the "woman in danger"-type movie that was prevalent on the Lifetime channel, and she was more or less convinced that that was how everyday life was like for American women.) Regardless, even with the distorted image, I think most non-Americans understand American values and culture fairly well. The problem then isn't so much that America needs to promote its values and culture to the world, but that it perhaps even needs to tone down the amount of "culture" it bombards the world with. American culture, especially in the form of music, movies and television, but even through the Internet, is extremely pervasive. I live literally on the other side of the world from where I was born, yet eleven of the twenty cable TV channels I receive are American.

The real problem is not that America needs to promote its own values and cultures to the world, but that the world needs to promote its values and cultures to the U.S. Most Americans are terribly parochial and ignorant about the rest of the world. What makes matters worse is that, in addition to the well-meaning but ignorant fools, you also have the malicious but equally ignorant fools (witness the recent "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week"). Many of the suggestions Mr. Kaplan made are fine, in and of themselves, but the single most important recommendation I could make to him would come from the Bible (Luke 4:23): "Physician, heal thyself." Instead of spending money seeking to change others, spend your money on trying to change yourselves. Educate yourselves on what the rest of the world is like. Those decades worth of dusty National Geographic magazines obviously haven't done much good in teaching you all about foreign lands and cultures. Instead of seeking foreign college students to attend American universities, hoping that they will be favorably impressed with the U.S., send American college students abroad for at least one year to see what the world is like. (And don't make this program only for those students whose families can afford this; set a goal of, say, 10% of all American college students to study abroad.) Tone down the missionary attitudes and seek to understand how other cultures work the way they do. Often there's a logic that not only makes sense, but may be a superior method for problems common to all of us. Work to tamp down the misinformation being spewed by the malicious but equally ignorant fools. Muslims know the score; relations will never improve as long as Islamophobia runs rampant through the U.S. We can see the obvious historical parallel between today and the antisemitism of Nazi Germany. And last, but certainly not least, please just accept us for the way we are.


Updates:
One, be sure to visit my update to this post.

Second, this post was linked to the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy. (Thanks to John Brown!)

And, third, I noted in my web statistics counter that someone at the U.S. State Department visited this post early Tuesday morning (Washington DC time). I hope that this administration will take some of these suggestions (in both this post and in my update) to heart. We are all concerned about the relationship between the U.S. and the Muslim world; let's open the doors of communication and keep Clausewitz and his theory on war ("war is simply a continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means") in the closet where he belongs.