A Happy New Year and the Common Good

Wednesday December 31, 2008

Since we are once again embarking upon a new year, and since this is a time people stop and look forward to what they would like to see in the new year, I will do likewise, and venture my hope that we as individuals and as a nation come to see ourselves as something other than just individuals doing our own thing. My hope is that in the coming year, we begin to renew our commitment to the common good as the limit on individual liberty.

A Critique of Chomsky's Radical Critique

Wednesday December 17, 2008

Last week we reviewed the main tenets of Noam Chomsky's radical political theory, based as it is on a conception of human nature as creative and on a premise of universal and equipollent principles of liberty and equality. Today, we aim to examine those premises, along with his conclusion that the most just state is the libertarian-socialist one.

Chomsky's Radical Critique of Government

Wednesday December 10, 2008

Last week, I suggested that, given President-elect Obama's complete snub of liberals in filling his cabinet posts, we begin to develop a deep critique of the form and function of our current system of democratic government. Today, I would like to begin that process. We begin with perhaps one of the most radical critiques of government today, which comes from the MIT philosopher and linguist Noam Chomsky.

Obama's Actions Show the Need for Real Change

Wednesday December 3, 2008

Three weeks ago, I did a commentary warning liberals to be nuanced in their euphoria over Obama's electoral victory. In that commentary, I stated that Obama was going to fill his administration with Democratic right-wingers, and that progressives should look forward only to disappointment. And so it has happened. Obama has yet to choose even a centrist for his administrative posts, let alone a true liberal. How might we response to all this disappointing news? Rather than follow the liberal lamentations over being slighted by Obama, I suggest that we start right now to become deeply critical of the very democratic republican structures of government itself.

Do Supreme Court Justices Understand Equality?

Wednesday November 26, 2008

There is a very interesting case concerning religion that began in the Supreme Court last week. It is interesting both in itself as a test case for this Court's interpretation of freedom of religion, and also for what it has revealed so far about the Justices understanding of equal freedom of religion.

Gay Civil Rights

Wednesday November 19, 2008

This past weekend, tens if not hundreds of thousands of protestors nationwide took to the streets to protest California's passing of Proposition 8. Many said that Prop 8 passed because of the religious beliefs of those who supported it. But if religion was in the background, the public arguments used in favor of Prop 8 were all utilitarian. So those who are battling against support of Prop 8 have three fronts on which to attack bigotry against homosexuals: first, there is the religious bigotry which thinks that God has condemned homosexuality; second there is the intellectual failure to distinguish between uncomfortable consequences that might result from an action, and what justice requires; third, there is the moral failure that comes from not seeing that justice requires inclusion, not exclusion; in other words, that justice requires equality.

Progressives, Beware of Premature Euphoria

Wednesday November 12, 2008

Cornell West, the philosopher from Princeton, said it best: "I will vote for Obama on November 4, and then be his harshest critic on November 5." I follow that line of reasoning. One should never give a pass to the President or President-elect, especially when they are poised to spurn half of the voters who voted for him. This is the case with the Obama presidency, for the following reasons.

President-Elect Obama

Wednesday November 05, 2008

Barack Obama is now President-elect. With the Obama victory, African-Americans are now truly coming of age, and will be in the position of demonstrating to the world, as Jackie Robinson did to the world of baseball, that not only can blacks play politics with whites, but that they can play the role of clean up hitter, and get the values of liberty, equality, and fraternity home from the bases on which they were stranded by the Bush administration's poor batting average. My suggestion is that President Obama stand firm in the batter's box of solid American values, and swing with the knowledge that these values are the source of your power.

The March toward Totalitarianism in America (Part II: Unconstitutional Practices; Corporate Rule)

Wednesday October 22, 2008

Last week we began to demonstrate the march toward totalitarianism by reviewing the federal government actions of putting American army troops in positions to patrol the streets of the United States. Today we continue our review of the most recent events in Washington from the past week or two which pushes the U.S. toward totalitarianism.

The March toward Totalitarianism in America (Part I: Martial Law)

Wednesday October 15, 2008

The news this week was chilling. There are now troops back from counterinsurgency operations in Iraq that are being stationed and readied for action within the territorial boundaries of the United States. In addition, this past week we learned of more abuse of spying by the FBI on innocent American citizens, and of yet another power grab by the Department of Homeland Security. What is going on here? I am calling it the last Bush-led march toward totalitarianism in America. In this and in next week's commentary, I would like to make clear why the reasons for this observation.

Are We Ready for the Revolution? (Part II)

Wednesday October 08, 2008

Last week, we made an argument that we are now seeing fascism as the reigning political philosophy in America, given the giant taxpayer bailout of corporate America, among other issues. This week, we need to discuss what we can do about it. Let us begin with where we frequently begin these commentaries, in the philosophy of democracy that formed this republic. We begin then with John Locke, since he was widely acclaimed by our Founders as one of their primary influences.

Are We Ready for the Revolution? (Part I)

Wednesday October 01, 2008

About six months ago, I did a commentary equating what was happening in American government today to what Mussolini did in Italy in the 1930's. Given the events of the last two weeks, I would like to reiterate my argument that we are now crossing the threshold from democracy to fascism in this country.

The Beginning of the Crash

Wednesday September 24, 2008

In the 1980's movie Wall Street, Michael Douglas plays a ruthless corporate executive who, in a speech to his cronies, says "Greed is good." That was the mantra of the Reagan revolution, and remained the mantra of Wall Street and of every president and Congress since then. The cry for deregulation and making money in any way one could grab it replaced the philosophy of equality and civil liberties. Last week, this decades-old philosophy of allegedly laissez-faire capitalism crashed head first into a wall of bankruptcy, with the collapse of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, and AIG. The resulting crash has let the drivers of the vehicles escape without injury, while putting their passengers, the U.S. taxpayer and the U.S. economy, into critical condition. In this commentary, we will outline in brief why it happened, what solutions are possible, and conclude with an analysis of the solutions offered by both McCain and Obama.

Sarah Palin and the Age of Reason

Wednesday September 17, 2008

By now we all know the big fuss that has been made of John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. We all know about her radicalism when it comes to creationism, abortion, sex education, Iraq, Russia, global warming, and oil drilling, to name but a few issues on which she has made herself clear. But the most disturbing thing about her candidacy is not just her radicalism on the issues, but the philosophy of radicalism that underlies it. What even the informed media commentators have missed, as they drift from one radical Palin opinion to another, is that the underlying philosophy of such radical opinions is both irrationalism and authoritarianism.

The Seventh Anniversary of 9/11

Wednesday Spetember 10, 2008

Tomorrow we celebrate the seventh anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. While the mainstream media might wax melancholy about this day, I thought I would offer a differing viewpoint from the mainstream, to commemorate this anniversary.

A Time to Fight Back

Wednesday September 03, 2008

Over the past two weeks, we have deconstructed contemporary liberalism, the living of which I have referred to as "old guard liberalism." Old guard liberalism focuses on liberty and individuality while diminishing or neglecting social responsibility, and has shown itself to be ill-equipped to deal with the very serious threat to democracy posed by radical conservatism. It's the radical conservatives, those who espouse corporate control of government for their own sake, that now control the government of the U.S. Their use of liberal values against liberalism has caused liberals to go on the defensive, or worse, to retire into caves and do naval gazing instead of fight back. What we have to do is not only retune our values, but we have to prepare for the mother of all battles: the battle for taking our government back from corporate, conservative interests.

The Problems of Liberals "Framing" and "Packaging"

Wednesday Augut 27, 2008

Prominent liberal advisors tell Democrats that they should frame and package their candidates differently. But if liberals accept this idea that framing is all there is to winning in November, then they will lose every major election in the years to come. That is because thinking in terms of packaging or of framing, while an ingredient in a plan to return liberals to power, is nowhere close to the substance needed to do so. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that, by focusing on packaging their candidates, liberals succumb to the main thrust of conservatism, and that is to just package values, not debate them. If liberalism had anything truly different to offer, it could debate instead of sell, and in that way pull the campaigns back onto their own turf of substance. The way to regain liberal dominance in the political spectrum is to refocus on the substance of what liberals claim they believe, not to accept conservative values by packaging themselves as just like conservatives, but with a heart.

The Loss of True Liberalism: (Part Two of a Three Part Reflection)

Wednesday August 20, 2008

Today I would like to continue to defend the thesis we began last week, that liberalism as a movement has really run its course, and run out of steam, predominantly because it has become morally bankrupt, and that is why conservatism rules with impunity today. This moral bankruptcy is seen in the way many liberals live their values, and this may be examining three contradictory sets of values: self-interest versus fraternity; power versus equality; individualism versus the common good. The liberal elite and many individual liberal-thinking people, both locally and nationally, have chosen the former values over the latter. The result is that liberalism no longer offers a vision for a better tomorrow.

Socrates and Callicles: (Part One of a Three Part Reflection)

Wednesday August 13, 2008

The great philosopher Plato wrote a dialogue that allegedly occurred between his beloved teacher Socrates and a young, brash kid named Callicles. Callicles maintained that virtues such as equality and justice are for the weak and cowardly; that only inferior persons maintained such things. For Callicles, the best political activist is one who uses populist rhetoric to attain their desires. This practice of individuals using lofty-sounding words to obtain the power and status that they want, without any substance behind their words and only self-aggrandizement behind their actions, is still with us today. We can see it locally as well as nationally. Alarmingly, it has crept its way into liberalism. We can see it in the people who claim to be liberal but use that liberal moniker as a basis for fulfilling their own interests in power, pleasure, and/or social status. In other words, liberalism has succumbed to the basest of human inclinations, and in the process has surrendered the one thing that distinguished it from competing political positions: its moral grounding. Our liberal leaders, both nationally and locally, have gone the way of Callicles, and left Socrates behind.

John McCain and Liberal Turncoats

Wednesday August 06, 2008

If you have been reading poll numbers concerning how the people of this country intend to vote during the November election, you have noticed a very strange anomaly in voter comments during the past few months. Surveys consistently shot that many of those who voted for Hillary Clinton in the primaries have pledged to vote for John McCain in the presidential election.

I will set aside the obvious question concerning why someone would vote against their own interest or their country's good just for malice. Rather, for those who have pledged to support McCain to spite Obama for Hillary's sake, or for McCain supporters in general, let us underscore some serious issues concerning John McCain.