Letter #67 to friends and familiares: why I went third-party this year

Like most people, I suspect, I am counting the minutes until the day after the election, when FaceBook returns to normality. In truth, I have voted and cast my ballot for Governor Gary Johnson and the Libertarian Party. Had I been in a contested state – and with a 60%-to-36% lead for President Obama in Maryland, I am not – I would likely have voted for Governor Romney.

That admitted, I do not hold the President in contempt; he is one of the finest men to occupy the White House. Even the best of people have their flaws. Both men are essentially decent and subject to extraordinary pressures; the President more so as the incumbent.

Nevertheless, President Obama’s usurpation of Constitutional powers at our expense and in the name of security as well as his arrogation of decision-making to pick out assassination targets leave me bewildered. His economic policies have proven to be as unsustainable as they are unimaginative. Finally, the President has at times resorted to demagoguery, plainly playing on the politics of envy.

Like it or not, Governor Romney’s proposed budget numbers do not add up; his condemnation of sequestration leading to cuts in defense spending, together with his curiously furious attack of Obama-Care (apparently modeled after his plan in Massachusetts) make clear his preference for empire over welfare (not the policy but the commonweal).

On the positive side, President Obama has kept us from widening the conflict in the Middle East with an attack on Iran and has, apparently, been able to persuade restraint on the part of Israel. Governor Romney has shown a lot more courage by not retracting the ‘47%’ comment, which he wishes he had better articulated (and likely would have if someone had not taped a private conversation without the Governor’s consent).

Not retracting this remark took a great deal of courage because Governor Romney had stumbled onto the REAL third-rail of American politics: a growing underclass and a culture of conditioned response to poverty strengthening over several generations. Ironically, only President Clinton, a Democrat, had been willing to take on this issue. Pretending this under-class does not exist condemns millions to lives of welfare.

In other times, I would not be sympathetic with the views of many Republicans of minimizing resources to the poor. Distributive justice will always have its proper place in my heart – it is the consequences of the actual policies that count; whether resources redistributed foster human dignity (i.e., working, focusing on a family unit, etc.) or reinforce a behavior of dependence through generations of it. Of course now, the question is becoming moot with our country’s impending insolvency.

Normally, I would have gutted it all out and voted for Governor Romney based on some overlap of politics or, perhaps, President Obama based on the overwhelming decency of the man himself. For many years, I have believed in our two party system because it does a better job of providing stability of leadership in times of crisis.

Under the parliamentary systems in Europe, political parties depend upon coalitions, which means consensus, which often is exactly what is (and, perhaps, should be) absent in times of crisis. Thus cabinets fall right when the cabinets ought to be strong, except in those rare cases where humanity is blessed with a statesman for all time (e.g., Prime Minister Churchill).

In the United States, on the other hand, coalitions largely depend on the political parties. That invites but does not require consensus. That means the same leadership is in place even if a certain voting bloc in the coalition is displeased; we call these coalition members ‘constituencies’. In times of national perplexity – like 1856 and 1860 – the two party system falls apart and realignments (i.e., new pre-election coalitions) come into place, amid widespread anomy, conflict and/or political turbulence.

My vote manifests my belief that the United States is in or damn near to another time of national perplexity, when old beliefs seem hollow, traditional allegiances obsolete. Running to the middle is what people did in the 1850s and eventually there was no middle left to woo, at least in the terms of the time. That is why we are seeing these days what seems like a clearer choice that seems to evoke more poison than passion.

My essay is not to show inventiveness of my thinking but the simplicity of my voting. Governor Johnson is neither as bright as President Obama nor as enormously successful as Governor Romney. Governor Johnson has something the other two lack: a certain humility to place principles ahead of personalities or popularity. 

The Libertarian Party, for of all its ‘lunatic fringe-binge’ associations, is the only group to address seriously what I sense are the key questions facing the Republic that, like slavery, do not lend themselves to enduring compromise:

1. a disturbing drift toward tyranny;
2. a brutalization of American culture; as well as,
3. an unsustainable fiscal, defense procurement and monetary policy.

Beyond the stasis of craziness in which we drift in dread, there is something far more important going on in this election. It is a pervasive climate of fear and increasing despair. At home the middle class wonders who hijacked their dreams; overseas, Pax Americana is nearing its end.

Our citizen soldiers have been ground down and, all too often, out; they have been on battlefields two-to-three times more than their grandfathers of the greatest generation were. In what seems like a menacing world, we see potential adversaries – many of our own making – everywhere, delighting in the coming end of the American Century. In short, fear is making people do and say ugly things.

An uneasy sense that the American Century is not only concluding but is already history is, for now, more damaging than the more obvious political toxins of excess monies from the wealthy in political action committees, voter restrictions devised and applied as well as partisan vitriol that erases distinctions between ethics and tactics, between inspiration and innuendo.

Certainly, near term poisons require redress and yet, I suspect, this larger perplexity will not leave us. Only Governor Johnson (that I know of, since I have not looked at the Green Party or the Constitutional Party or others) gets it.

We are in a time of profound change and our beloved America is acting like the kid at the top, in that childhood game of ‘King of the Mountain’, kicking, pulling hair, punching, resorting to almost anything to remain on top. That guarantees a harsher fall. So, as a people, I submit that we are perplexed. Pax Americana is no longer sustainable. Simply said, we lack not will but the infinite resources to keep 5% of the world in the driver’s seat.

Our growing pains are not unique. Other empires have had their difficulties adjusting to their post-peak worlds. Most empires adjust either because they lose a war aimed at keeping their position intact; win a pyrrhic victory and limp away from world war, exhausted; or, implode due to internal convulsion. Perhaps we are perplexed because we are exhausted from trying to control outcomes we cannot and failing to restrict our behavior to where we can, within the limits set by our rule of law (i.e., a contemporary way of saying an “empire of laws, not men”).

As such, the two leading candidates really are not schnooks here. They are all of us writ large. Again, Governor Johnson ‘gets’ this and so does Representative Ron Paul. Besides ‘King of the Mountain’, I am reminded of another struggle, reading E.F. Schumacher’s A Guide for the Perplexed. Someday I will read the original by Maimonides. I would refer me and other perplexed Americans to a third 'Guide for the Perplexed', one the proceeded the great rabbi by seven centuries and preceded the great economist by two.

That is the U.S. Constitution. Without the Bill of Rights, the Constitution is just another contract that can – and is being – manipulated into tyranny. Without the Constitution, the Bill of Rights is a recipe for anarchy for man is truly “neither angel nor brute…and he who would act the one becomes the other….” Together, however, they create a living, breathing document, one that can adapt to changing times and deserves our respect and allegiance.

Even the most successful of many imperial presidents, President James K. Polk, did all that he did with Texas, Oregon and Northwestern Mexico while conforming to the Constitution. It was such a pain in the neck that President Polk likely met his early grave at least in part because of it. Yet he understood the necessity we no longer seem to. (A great book that Charlie Goldsmith, former Peace Corps bud, gave me describes that ‘near-great’ president well, A Country of Vast Designs; thank you Charlie!)

The reason I revere the Constitution is not because it is larger than life, but its entire body of obligations, limits and rights that capture human life so wisely. The contractual part was an instrument born of the folly of too much human power or too little. It was designed to curb man’s inhumanity to man. The Bill of Rights celebrated the dignity of man’s community with man. If we follow the Constitution closely during this time of apparent national decline, I firmly believe that we will have the inner fortitude to grow through this painful transition, this necessary loss.

Our emergence need not be into the chronic grief of an imperial 'has-been' but with a far more fulfilling – a far more exceptionally American – role in the kindly courage that long underlay the idea of America as the land for the free, the home of the brave and a haven for hard-working immigrants from the world over. Ironically, we will return to the greatness of character and national aspiration that ‘winning above all else’ has seduced away from us.

Besides, life will be easier without the crushing responsibility that keeps us in a torpor of unaccountability excused as national security and humanity cheapened to hit-lists and baseball cards. Let a Pax de China keep the emerging super power super busy.  We have some re-tooling to do, right here, right now. We can live and prosper in peace without such burdens, contributing to the harmonious progress of the planet toward a better life, as we have in the past. 

And so I close with Vince Lombardi’s famous quote: “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” Were that Iron Horseman alive today, I am sure he would shake his head wistfully and say to me, “Listen, son, I was talking about something like fifty or sixty fellows, fighting over an acre and change of land for two or three hours on a Sunday afternoon…Get some perspective!”

Route-66 to friends & familiares; The you-tube fuss & Benghazi

This letter home responds to an interesting article that I encountered on FaceBook and an interesting e-mail I received a month ago from a friend of almost five decades. In that e-mail, my friend said, eloquently:

In all the coverage and noise surrounding the tragedy in Benghazi, I haven't heard an answer to one question. I'd like to ask you, as someone with personal experience in Islamic nations. (I know Iraq isn't exactly close to Libya, but you're my expert.) Do people in countries like Libya and Iraq understand that (a), the government can't stop Americans from publishing anything, including hateful crap, and (b), that the idiots who created this mess haven't broken the law in the U.S.?

The article, from a lovely F.B. friend, living in the Middle East, is sympathetic to the Muslim view.
http://www.eurasiareview.com/22092012-freedom-of-speech-insults-incitement-and-islam-oped/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+eurasiareview%2FVsnE+%28Eurasia+Review%29
In this note, I would rather focus on the dis-connect between the U.S. right to free speech and the seeming disregard that these protests imply for that freedom. Now that we know that the attack was a pre-meditated murder does not change the heart of this thought.    

This discussion is difficult to keep concise since these initial questions raise other, deeper topics. Please excuse the superficial treatment of these answers. Justifying every point I make would take a series of books – one for each topic. Lastly, I am surely no expert and my perspective is that of a U.S. citizen angered by the murder of an unusually gifted diplomat and, more painful, four fine human beings. The ‘you-tube’ video, thought to have sparked this crime, was repugnant.

The Middle East is a misnomer for an ‘Islamic belt’ that stretches from Morocco across to Pakistan, up to Turkey and down to Somalia (as Michael B. Oren hints in Power, Faith and Fantasy). While differences – often murderous ones – exist between peoples within this expanse of different ethnicities or variants of Islam, there are certain concepts that Islam instills in each of its faithful. These tenets, as I perceive them, answer the dis-connect perceived by my friend.

Nevertheless, at the very least, educated people from this ‘belt’ understand this distinction of secular freedom and religious belief since either they or relatives have travelled to, or lived in, the West (i.e., much of the Americas and Europe plus parts of Africa and Oceana) and are exposed to these concepts underlying human rights and, as detailed in the article, codified globally.

Additionally, with the diffusion of Western film and television (principally from the United States) and inter-net connectivity throughout the world as well as the profusion of satellite dishes everywhere, I have difficulty believing that less cosmopolitan Muslims are completely unaware of these concepts. With the evidence of assassination, not mob violence, being central to the murders of Benghazi, one can view these demonstrations across all Islam as spontaneous expressions of that right for free expression and speech.

The problem is that Muslims, at least in a large part of that Islamic belt, do not buy that separation of church and state. Derived from the Holy Qur’an and the recorded thoughts of the Prophet, Sharia Law makes no such distinction as Western democracies do. In fact, the article linked to this essay, though penned by an Englishman, displays that Islamic cultural tension between reason and obedience.

Starting out with a logical argument about international law and human rights, the author seems to revert to type by articulating standard grievances and apologies of frustrated Muslims. Here is my take on why the distinction between legally permitted versus personally approved forms of speech may not work among many Muslims, educated and unschooled, good and malicious alike.

The worst, literally mortal, sin among Muslims is apostasy, as most frequently expressed through blasphemy.  Sharia Law makes no distinction between secular and canon law.

Taking this doctrine to a rigid extreme, one can argue that tolerance of a blasphemer is a tacit form of apostasy; thus, the Western societies are not perceived merely as anti-Islam but also rejecting faith in, and obedience to, God.

Most Muslims obviously do not believe in mass killings of Westerners for this asserted collective, tacit apostasy. Yet a very few extremists (as few as 5,000 around the world) do practice this rigid application that makes their ‘jihad’ a ‘just war’.

Sharia Law, while apparently simple is actually unclear since Islam has had no central religious authority after the Mongols shattered a civilization seven centuries ago by trashing the caliphate of Baghdad.

That decentralization ends up creating a thousand different divergent versions of Sharia Law. Put starkly: if our parish priest, local rabbi or lay deacon instructed us to kill Muslims for whatever theologically explained reason, would we do it? No.

Then again, we have not grown up in, and cannot grasp, this truly alien culture. Trying to “think” like a Muslim only goes so far and, when done by Western policy-makers, often leads to duplicity, disaster or both.

The Arab Spring has been here for seven years and will persist for another generation or two. In this case, liberty is being taken to heart by violent peoples long suppressed by cultures of power. The transition will not be easy but should prove, in the end, to be worth the effort. We are not engaged in a clash of civilizations but one of values, with an unfortunate license to kill.

What the West needs to do, especially as we now know that Ambassador Stevens was assassinated by Al Qaeda or some other cell with easy access to very lethal weaponry, is to empower moderate Muslims. These people are as decent, perhaps better, than most of us outside the faithful. While they understand the complaints animating the militants in their midst, there is no reason to believe that they endorse any and all means.

America started the Arab Spring, which was the right thing to do after 9-11 and will, with time, prove to be of enormous benefit to all peoples. With time. Until then, try as the West might, these moderate Muslims will have to make the first step toward outright repudiation of these bullies. That repudiation, as one can imagine, will not be easy to do and will require great courage. So progress will be incremental.

Which brings us right back to the demonstrations and tragedy in Benghazi. There are signs of hope that such a consensus is beginning to enter the minds of our higher-minded counterparts across the Islamic belt. Widespread demonstrations in Libya against these attacks may plant the seed for similar acts of courage by other Muslims to repudiate terror and the murderers who practice it. Only time and, perhaps, more Western blood will tell.

Until then, a policy of aggressively pursuing energy independence and progressive detachment from the region may induce these moderates to reach out to us. During that time, I would recommend that the U.S. appeal to the core of any of these societies: the women. That appeal would complement a mixture of our absence from meddling with a steady stream of information asking women if they have buried enough sons, brothers and fathers and if they are ready to make their own empowerment a catalyst of the Arab Spring across Islamic countries.