We're All Machiavellians Now

(The following is an essay I wrote for my "Morality and Politics" course at the University of Texas at Austin. The prompt I responded to was as follows: "The term “Machiavellian” is typically used to mean someone devious; that is, both clever and wicked. Based on what we read in the Prince, does this word, as we now use it, accurately capture Machiavelli’s teaching? Why or why not?" The only work cited is the Second Edition of "The Prince" by Niccolò Machiavelli, as translated by Harvey Mansfield.)

              To rewrite a quote from Richard Nixon- one of the most infamous descriptions that history can bestow is the title of Machiavellian. That I should start this essay with a reference to the 37th President is appropriate, given Nixon's status as perhaps the greatest "Machiavellian" figure of modern times. The original quote, taken from his first inaugural address, was that "the greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker"- an honor that President Nixon claimed to aspire to with regards to America's then ongoing war in Vietnam. Over the course of the next several years however, Nixon would secretly, and at times illegally, escalate a war he knew that the United States could not win, merely in the hopes of gaining a "decent interval" between US withdrawal and South Vietnamese collapse so that his administration could save face. Such willingness to end human life for the sake of one's reputation has come to be the distinguishing characteristic of the "Machiavellian" politician- clever, deceitful, and willing to do whatever it takes to gain power and a name for toughness. But does the contemporary image of Machiavellianism conform to the actual teachings of Machiavelli himself, or has his name taken on a life of its own over the years that distorts his original teachings and inaccurately paints him as a "teacher of evil?" A close and objective reading of The Prince reveals it to be the latter. Far from being a "teacher of evil," Machiavelli was a man who merely spoke the truth of the events of the past, and described the means that must be employed if one is to have realistic hope of achieving desired ends. Most importantly however, "the desired ends" that Machiavelli himself sought in his writings, and that the application of his ideas ultimately achieved, was a world infinitely freer, happier, and more honest with itself than the one he lived in- a world where a taming of "fortune" and an acknowledgment of reality would render the harsh measures he recommends no longer necessary, and where the prosperity and security of the people would be assured as a result.

            In Chapter 15 of The Prince, often described as the most important chapter of this most important work, Machiavelli makes explicit that which should have already been obvious to anyone who had read his treatise to this point by declaring his break with the idealism and deliberate omission of the truth that characterized the writings of previous thinkers:

"...Many have imagined republics and principalities that have never been seen or known to exist in truth; for it is so far from how one lives to how one should live that he who lets go of what is done for what should be done learns his ruin rather than his preservation. For a man who wants to make a profession of good in all regards must come to ruin among so many who are not good. Hence it is necessary to a prince, if he wants to maintain himself, to learn to be able not to be good, and to use this and not use it according to necessity." (61)

This passage is often cited in support of the argument that Machiavelli is a "teacher of evil," who gave his readers the green light to "be able not to be good." Such an interpretation however ignores the rest of the passage, in which Machiavelli stated quite clearly why it is sometimes necessary to not be good- the fact that the world is and always has been inhabited by people "who are not good." By giving license to fundamentally good people to not be good when necessity requires it, Machiavelli is not making life easier for people already inclined to be bad (they would hardly need his endorsement to convince themselves "not to be good"), he is giving good people the means by which to oppose them. For as he says in Chapter 18:

"...There are two kinds of combat: one with laws, the other with force. The first is proper to man, the second to beasts; but because the first is often not enough, one must have recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary for a prince to know well how to use the beast and the man... And if all men were good, this teaching would not be good; but because they are wicked and do not observe faith with you, you also do not have to observe it with them." (69)

This is not a repudiation of the desire to be good; conversely, it is a brave acknowledgment of the truth that only a fool would expect all people to be good at all times; and in a world in which so many are not good, anyone who realistically hopes to accomplish anything in the world must be willing to "not be good" if and when those who oppose them decide likewise. If this acknowledgment makes Machiavelli a "teacher of evil," then the acknowledgment on the part of biologists that predators, such as sharks, prey on weaker species, such as minnows, must make them the same.

            Proponents of the "Teacher of Evil" school however, argue that Machiavelli was not just acknowledging that sharks prey on minnows- he was encouraging them to do so. Indeed, passages from The Prince such as Machiavelli's seeming adulation of figures like Agathocles and Severus [praising the former for his "virtue" and "greatness of spirit" (35), and the latter as "a very fierce lion and a very astute fox" (79)], if taken at face value, do his apologists no favors in their attempts to refute this view. The problem, however, lies in the very act of taking such passages at face value, and failing to put Machiavelli's words into the proper context of the extremely cruel and harsh times in which he lived, as well as his broader mission in writing The Prince of creating a new political order that takes account of this reality and, by doing so, is more secure and less needful of such cruelty. Machiavelli was not imploring his Prince to make a habit of slaughtering his potential political opponents in cold blood and without provocation as Agathocles did, or of oppressing his own people as Severus did- rather, he was once again acknowledging that these things sometimes happened in the cruel and vicious world of pre-modern politics. Agathocles and Severus had to use the means that they did if they were to succeed in accomplishing their ends (which they did). If the "new prince" that Machiavelli writes for is to accomplish any of the weighty tasks that his instructor has assigned him (such as, "to seize Italy and to free her from the barbarians," as the title of the final chapter of the book not-so-subtly declares), he must be similarly prepared to resort to harsh measures as well. But in order for Machiavelli's readers to be satisfied that the ends he seek justify the rather brutal means that he is prepared to resort to, we must first know what those ends are. The answer to that question is the only thing that can settle the issue of whether or not Machiavelli is a "teacher of evil" who deserves the infamy that his name now implies.

            Taken out of context, much of The Prince is extremely easy to interpret as the amoral precepts of a man advising the strong on how to dominate the weak. On the contrary however, Machiavelli explicitly and repeatedly advises his new prince to found on the people rather than the great, because according to him (using moralistic language rarely found in The Prince), "the end of the people is more decent than that of the great, since the great want to oppress and the people want not to be oppressed" (39). Indeed, only taken in full can The Prince be appreciated for what it is- far from a celebration of cruelty and deviousness, it is a mandate for those in positions of authority to use that authority to destroy the cruel, old order that reigned supreme in Machiavelli's time, using the harsh means that sustained that order against it when necessary, and to build in its place a new one founded on the people, based upon reason, and exemplary of "humanity and munificence:"

"A prince should... show himself a lover of the virtues, giving recognition to virtuous men, and he should honor those who are excellent in an art. Next, he should inspire his citizens to follow their pursuits quietly, in trade and in agriculture and in every other pursuit of men... But he should prepare rewards for whoever wants to do these things, and for anyone who thinks up any way of expanding his city or his state. Besides this, he should at suitable times of the year keep the people occupied with festivals and spectacles. And because every city is divided into guilds or into clans, he should take account of those communities, meet with them sometimes, and make himself an example of humanity and munificence, always holding firm the majesty of his dignity nonetheless, because he can never want this to be lacking in anything." (91)

Sound familiar? The world that Machiavelli is describing as the ideal sounds eerily like the one that we live in today- one that he played a decisive role in creating, and is infinitely happier than the one that he himself had to endure.

            Only in the light of the world that Machiavelli was trying to create can the darkness of some of the earlier chapters of The Prince be illuminated and seen for what they are- a frank acknowledgment of the harsh measures that would be (and ultimately were) necessary if ever the task of reforming the corrupt political system that reigned in the Europe of Machiavelli's time was to be undertaken. "...It appears to me that so many things are tending to the benefit of a new prince," Machiavelli wrote, "that I do not know what time has ever been more apt for it" (102). Only through a frank acknowledgment of the cruel measures that often succeeded in the past however, could this "new prince" succeed in taking the proper measures to tame the "violent river" (98) of fortune and chance, and provide security against it- thus creating the world of peace and harmony in which we now live. It is increasingly easy, removed as we are in the 21st Century from the harsh measures that had to be applied in order to grant us the freedom and luxury we now enjoy, to fault Machiavelli for the brutality of some of his recommendations. My suspicion however, is that if we people today were somehow given the option to press a "reset" button, and undo the harsh measures that had to be undertaken in order to create the modern world, we would find to our surprise that, to rewrite another popular Nixon quote, we're all Machiavellians now.*

*- The original quote, popularly but erroneously attributed to Nixon, is "We're all Keynesians now." The true author of the quote was Milton Friedman.

The War That Needs To End

Read an excellent piece by my idol Fareed Zakaria tonight on the gap between American hopes in Afghanistan, and the reality of the situation there. Zakaria argues that the US's approach in Afghanistan and other Asian countries we've gone to war in over the past several decades (Iraq and Vietnam, for instance), is fundamentally flawed, and based on the premise that we can force modernity on a country that is simply not ready or able to adopt it:

"We need to come to terms with Afghanistan’s realities rather than attempting to impose our fantasies on it. That means recognizing that the Afghan government will not magically become effective and legitimate — no matter how many cellphones we buy or power lines we install. Because they represent many Pashtuns, the Taliban will inevitably hold some sway in southern and eastern Afghanistan. More crucially, we will not be able to stop Pakistan’s government from maintaining sanctuaries for Taliban militants. And no guerrilla movement that has had a set of sanctuaries — let alone the active help of a powerful military like Pakistan’s — has ever been eliminated."

To me, there really seems to be no legitimate excuse for America's continued involvement in Afghanistan, particularly in the wake of the controversy over American soldiers' accidental burning of Qurans, which has resulted in the deaths of four American soldiers, two of whom were killed in Afghan government offices. Though I understand and am sympathetic to President Obama's reasoning behind apologizing for the Quran burning, given his primary objective of preventing the loss of further American lives, I also can't help but find myself in some agreement with the sentiment expressed by Newt Gingrich over the past week, that the controversy over what is really a very trivial and unimportant event has been far overblown by Islamic fanatics in Afghanistan, who have been shamelessly pandered to by a corrupt Afghan President in Hamid Karzai that owes his government's very existence to the same US military whom he now scapegoats. I argue this point endlessly with my fellow leftists, but it irritates me to no end that so many people (particularly on the left) are so willing to be understanding rather than outraged by such bad behavior on the part of the fundamentalists. If the US military burnt some Bibles because they had become a means of communication between terrorist POW's who were writing secret messages in them, and some Christian fundamentalists reacted to this by killing American soldiers, would the big story be the Bible-burning, or the soldier-killing? Which offense is really graver- carrying out your duty as a soldier by halting communication between prisoners via their sacred text (it is a violation of Sharia law to write in a Quran, by the way), or murdering innocents in cold blood because one of their comrades incidentally had to burn a Quran to carry out their aforementioned duty? It's a no-brainer. Afghanistan is not going to enter modernity any time soon. Al-Qaeda is effectively dead, and as long as that remains the case, let the Taliban have Afghanistan. In the era of drones, there is no reason for our men and women in uniform to be getting killed for such trivial offenses, when the Taliban in and of itself poses no threat to American security, and the organization that its fostering of motivated our invasion in the first place is on life support. Bring the troops home, President Obama. 11 years is quite enough.

The Guilt of a Nation

(The following essay was written for my "Germany Since Hitler" course at the University of Texas at Austin. The prompt for the essay was "Germans Under Hitler: Victims, Perpetrators, or Accomplices?" My response was the latter. The works cited are "Survival in Auschwitz" by Primo Levi, "Nazism and German Society" edited by David Crew (the course instructor), and "The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949-1968" edited by Hanna Schissler)

            As the dust settled at the conclusion of the Second World War, Europeans had little time for reflection on the traumatic and horrifying events of the past several years. With the United States and the Soviet Union's mutual threat of Hitler obliterated, and their armies occupying the respective western and eastern halves of Europe generally and Germany specifically, the two new superpowers were far more concerned with their present conflict with each other and their desire to enlist the portion of Germany they were occupying as an ally in that conflict, than they were with delivering justice to former collaborators of the Third Reich and insisting that the German people take responsibility for the crimes of their former regime. Following the conclusion of the Nuremberg Trials, the victors of the Second World War were ready to move on to new things, as were most of those Germans who had managed to survive the past twelve years under their murderous former government and the World War that it had started. The Nazi regime's crimes against humanity however, were far too heinous and widespread to ignore or forget, so instead of doing so, many Germans remembered, "a history peopled with innocents in which a handful of zealous Nazis had deluded good Germans" (Moeller, 94 in Schissler). Such a history though, while surely more comforting than one in which ordinary German people are held accountable for the actions of a regime that they overwhelmingly either supported or at least approved of during its moments of greatest perceived successes, simply does not square with the historical record. The truth of course, is that while Germans certainly did not act as a monolith, all those Germans who lent legitimacy to the Third Reich as a popular regime, whether through their political support, military service, acquiescence, or failure to resist in any way, must take some responsibility for that regime's actions, and be considered an accomplice to its many crimes.

            In Survival in Auschwitz, author Primo Levi reflects on his time as an inmate in a Nazi concentration camp and argues that the perpetration of the Nazis' crimes was the work of a force inherent in human nature, a force which generally (and thankfully) lies dormant in civilized society, but which had been released in full force in the culture that produced the Nazi regime:

"Many people- many nations- can find themselves holding, more or less wittingly, that 'every stranger is an enemy.' For the most part this conviction lies deep down like some latent infection; it betrays itself only in random, disconnected acts, and does not lie at the base of a system of reason. But when this does come about, when the unspoken dogma becomes the major premise in a syllogism, then, at the end of the chain, there is the Lager. Here is the product of a conception of the world carried rigorously to its logical conclusion..." (9)

In this sense, it could be said that every German who in their hearts or words pinned all of their country's lingering problems in 1933- a devastated economy, defeat in World War I, and the Versailles Treaty- on Jews or other ethnic, political, or religious minorities, was guilty of creating a toxic environment in which National Socialism was not only politically acceptable, but ultimately allowed to become the dominant political force in their country. Of course, as it has been said countless times, it is true that the Nazis never won a majority in any election prior to their rise to power in 1933. It is also true however, that when Adolf Hitler finally did take power, it was not through a coup or violent overthrow of the previous government- it was entirely through legal maneuvers, and the acquiescence of the other political parties. Given those parties' half-hearted or nonexistent opposition to Hitler's claim to dictatorial power following his installation as Chancellor, it must be inferred that these more moderate forces in German society at the very least agreed with "the major premise" of the new Führer's syllogism, even if they were not ready, as he was, to carry it "rigorously to its logical conclusion." But then, once Hitler's rise to power was complete and his program was put into effect, if these forces remained in opposition to the lengths to which Hitler was willing to carry his fanatical racism, their actions utterly failed to prove it.

            Hitler's popularity only continued to increase over the course of his first decade in power, falling only when the tide turned in his war with the Soviet Union. Even then though, most Germans had so fallen under the spell of the Führer's charisma that not even the war's conclusion and its leaving Germany a politically divided and obliterated wasteland, was able to convince many members of German society that the Nazi movement and the man who led it had always been wrongheaded and evil:

"...Around one in two Germans in both the American and the British zones... thought that National Socialism had basically been a good idea, badly carried out, and were far more favorably disposed to it than to communism... As late as 1950, 10 percent of a nationwide opinion survey sample in West Germany regarded Hitler as the statesman who had achieved most for Germany- second only to Bismarck. In summer 1952, around a quarter of the population had a "good opinion" of Hitler. A tenth of those questioned thought that Hitler was the greatest statesman of the century, whose true greatness would only be recognized at a later date, and a further 22 percent thought that, while he had made "some mistakes" he had nevertheless been an excellent head of State." (Kershaw, 210 in Crew)

Germans who responded to these polls with a favorable opinion of Hitler and Nazism in the abstract, must have mentally differentiated between what they perceived as the Nazi state's triumphs, which they listed as "good social conditions, good living conditions, full employment, unified State and government, and order and security" (Kershaw, 210 in Crew), and that which they found shameful, namely the atrocities that it committed against Jews and other victims of the Holocaust. Such a distinction however, ignores the fact that everything the Nazi state did, whether perceived as a "success" or a failure by those it left behind, was motivated by a concept of racial struggle that always sought as its highest aim the elimination or subjugation of inferior races, and Aryan domination of the Eurasian landmass and the world. Everything else, including and especially those things which motivated ordinary Germans to support the Nazi regime, were merely a means to that end, an end whose horrifying pursuit could never have been possible without the German peoples' acquiescence:

"The plebiscitary acclamation which could always be mobilized by Hitler provided him with an unassailable base of popularity, and as such offered the regime legitimation both within Germany and in the eyes of foreign powers, allowing the scope for further mobilization and a gathering momentum of Nazi policy. The massive popularity of Hitler, recognized even by enemies of the regime, formed therefore a decisive element in the structure of Nazi rule in Germany." (Kershaw, 203-204 in Crew)

            But while some Germans supported the Nazi regime for what they considered to be its services to the nation, still others participated enthusiastically in the culture of National Socialist fear and repression for more individualistic, selfish reasons. This phenomenon played out most notably in the operations of the Gestapo, the Nazi state's secret police. Long thought of as "omnipotent, omniscient, and ubiquitous" (167 in Crew), Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Gerhard Paul demonstrate that in reality the Gestapo was an understaffed and overwhelmed organization that never could have fulfilled the functions it was assigned, had it not been for the enthusiastic assistance it received from the German people:

"Denunciations were the key link in the interactions between the police and the population...they were among the most important factors that kept the system going... This viewpoint, in turn, in which Germany no longer appears as "the first occupied territory" and the gestapo is no longer seen as a foreign institution imposed upon the population, but rather as one rooted in German society, requires a real change in the paradigm which has guided research until recently; instead of the image of a state capable of (almost) perfect surveillance of the whole population we need now to see a society that produced mass denunciations." (188 in Crew)

This is not to say, however, that the many Germans who produced denunciations were all enthusiastic Nazis (no doubt some of them were). Rather, for the most part, "ordinary Germans used the Gestapo to settle scores with neighbors or relatives, to rid themselves of inconvenient spouses or to acquire Jewish property" (Crew 166). This example illustrates a theme which one encounters time and time again in studying the German peoples' relationship with the Nazi regime; while the "ordinary German" was not motivated by the same fanatical obsessions as Nazi leaders were in their support and participation in the National Socialist regime, they were no less guilty of lending the support and legitimacy necessary to the Nazi leadership for it to pursue genocidal policies.

            This is no less true of the German woman who lends her support to the Nazi cause through her establishment of a comforting home environment for her SS husband following a day of killing Jews, than it is for the one who denounces her husband to the Gestapo in the interests of getting him murdered so she may find a new one. Though the former's motivation of nurturing a man whom she loves (even if he is a monster) may legitimately be more understandable and forgivable than the sociopathic motivations of the latter, the practical reality is that the former was considerably more responsible for creating an environment in which Nazi soldiers could slaughter millions of innocent people without facing the social consequences such a repulsive action should warrant. Adelheid von Saldern notes:

"At first glance, it appeared that nothing had changed in the private sphere in comparison with the preceding decades. But, in fact, a great deal had changed. The Nazi state which many women tolerated was a barbaric system, a system made possible by the passive acquiescence of the overwhelming majority of the German people. The continued existence of a seemingly intact private sphere made it easier for the Nazi system to wield power... People's behavior did not have to change: although behavior in the private sphere may have remained "the same," its impact changed as an automatic consequence of the transformation of the public-private sphere" (150 in Crew)

Allowed to retain some attachment to the realm of acceptable human behavior in the form of their homes and families, Nazi soldiers and SS officers could perpetrate their crimes against humanity assured that their wife was no more likely to end her relationship with him on account of them, than the German people were to end theirs with the Third Reich for the same reason.

            Study of the Nazi period presents as difficult a challenge as there is to anyone who likes to keep an optimistic view of human nature. The period represents nothing less than the near-unanimous consent, whether tacit or overt, of a people considered civilized, towards a regime whose policies were more odious and reprehensible to any notion of civility than any other before or since. As a victim of that regime, Primo Levi reflected during his time in Auschwitz whether grosser acts of indecency than those perpetrated by the Nazis were even possible:

"We became aware that our language lacks words to express this offence, the demolition of a man. In a moment, with almost prophetic intuition, the reality was revealed to us: we had reached the bottom. It is not possible to sink lower than this; no human condition is more miserable than this, nor could it conceivably be so. Nothing belongs to us any more; they have taken away our clothes, our shoes, even our hair; if we speak, they will not listen to us, and if they listen, they will not understand. They will even take away our name: and if we want to keep it, we will have to find ourselves the strength to do so, to manage somehow so that behind the name something of us, of us as we were, still remains." (26-27)

If such senseless cruelty had been committed by an individual rather than a state, it would be universally expected that anyone aware of such a crime who did not do everything that they reasonably could to stop it from going on, would be held accountable for their responsibility in allowing the crimes to continue. That such a standard was not applied to the countless Germans who were complicit in the crimes of the Nazi state, was due not to any innocence on their part, but to the sheer impracticality of prosecuting so many people. While justice cannot demand the prosecution of an entire nation though, it can and must demand that this nation should tell the truth and acknowledge its complicity in the crimes of its former government, begging forgiveness from those whom it watched be persecuted, tortured, and murdered for twelve long years.
© Joey Sorenson, 17 February 2012

Contraception "Controversy"

Hello bloggers! It's been a while I know. It's probably time I just admit that I'm not going to be able to post every day (let alone multiple times every day) while I'm in school. Just a fact of life. Let's just say I'll do it when I can. ;-) Don't let that discourage you from visiting the page often though! Let's generate lots and lots of traffic so that Joey gets noticed! :)

At any rate, I read a very interesting and thoughtful piece by Steven Mazie on Bigthink.com about the unbelievably overblown contraception mandate "controversy" the other day. I'm still getting over the stir this mandate has caused- the last time I checked, the use of birth control was as mainstream as the use of hand sanitizer, and wasn't controversial with anyone but a man in Rome who's taken a vow of celibacy, as well as the sheeple that accept his word as the Gospel truth... even when it conflicts with the spirit of Jesus's teachings on tolerance and love of neighbor, y'know... the actual Gospel truth. Mazie writes:

It would be very difficult to portray the Health and Human Services guidelines as anything but neutral and generally applicable.  The mandate provides that every new health insurance plan must include preventive care for women, including disease screenings and contraception, free of charge.  Whatever else you might say about these rules, there is no lurking agenda here to insult the Catholic Church.  The impact on Catholic institutions is incidental... And in this case, the impact is less than negligible: no individual Catholic is required to prescribe, or provide, birth control to anyone and (according to Obama’s announcement on Friday) no Catholic institution will be asked to spend a penny on these services.  The mandate requires only that women who work at Catholic institutions be provided with benefits that include preventive health services... The Health and Human Services guidelines serve important public health goals and threaten no defensible concept of religious liberty.

Couldn't have said it better myself, except maybe for a rebuttal to the very lame, recent argument by some Catholic leaders that they are still violating their consciences by having to pay insurance companies to provide birth control for their employees. The fact is that every day, each one of us funds (indirectly) causes which are antithetical to our beliefs- such is the nature of an interdependent economy. For Catholic bishops to say that their funding insurance companies which provide birth control is tantamount to directly funding birth control itself, is as ridiculous as saying that anyone who buys gasoline produced with Saudi oil is guilty of supporting the Saudis' barbaric policies towards women (except, unlike the use of birth control, the Saudis' violent sexism actually is something worth objecting to). In an interdependent economy, we spend money for goods and services, and whoever receives that money then is free to use it for whatever they wish- that's just the way economics works, and it's about time the US Conference of Catholic Bishops makes peace with that. In the interests of President Obama's re-election prospects though, one can hope that they don't until after November- because if this election is a somehow a referendum on the accessibility of birth control (which it very well could be if Rick Santorum somehow won the Republican nomination), Obama's got it in the bag.

The Big Game

Happy Saturday everybody! I'm aware that I've missed a few weeks on my playoff pics, but looking over my original predictions this morning in preparation for making my Super Bowl prognostication today, I found that I really did pretty well this playoff season. Went 3-1 on Wildcard Weekend, with the Broncos upset over the Steelers my only mistake. In the Divisional Round, I likewise went 3-1: predicting the Pats and Ravens to make it out of the AFC, and the Niners and Packers out of the NFC (was very proud of my 49ers upset being correct- I would have never predicted the Giants to beat the Packers though). Went 1-1 in the Conference Championship Games, with New England conquering Baltimore as I expected, and the Giants continuing to surprise with a win in San Francisco. As a Cowboys fan, I suppose this means I should feel a little less bad about the fact that my Boys lost twice to the G-Men down the stretch, denying us a playoff berth and a chance to have our own spot in this game for the first time since 1995. C'est la vie, I suppose. At any rate, and then there were two...

The Giants actually beat the Patriots 24-20 in Foxboro earlier this season, but New England has caught on fire since then, winning 10 games in a row, including their playoff wins over Denver and Baltimore the past two weeks. They also have the memory of their embarrassing Super Bowl XLII loss to the Giants four years ago, a defeat you better believe Tom Brady and co have been looking to avenge ever since. On paper, the Giants probably should win- but the Patriots have a big time advantage in intangibles and will to victory. Prediction: Patriots 28, Giants 24

The Dirtiest Word in American Politics

One of the most astonishing and frustrating things about American politics to me is the false pretense on which we talk about the varying levels of partisanship in the two major parties. Whenever one dares to condemn conservative Republican hyperbole and demonization of Democrats, it can be rest assured that within a matter of seconds some well-intentioned but blinded person will, under the facade of moderation, remind us that "it's equally bad on both sides"- except the fact that, well, it's not. Not only are solid Democrats not as aggressively partisan as their conservative counterparts, but they're afraid of even being called by their rightful name: liberal. It was on account of my undying frustration and bewilderment at this fact, that I was overjoyed when I stumbled across this video on YouTube a couple years ago:

I've never really watched the "West Wing" unfortunately (many of my friends have recommended it to me due to my love of politics), but this was a video worth re-sharing. I gleefully posted it on my Facebook page and shared it on the wall of a couple of misguided conservative friends of mine, overjoyed that some writer for that show (that turned out to be MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell) had so perfectly and eloquently expressed the very sentiments that I had been feeling all along. Why in the world are liberals ashamed to be called by their rightful name? Liberals are responsible for almost everything good that's ever happened in this country! Granted, Ronald Reagan was a great president in certain respects but otherwise American conservatism has a long track record of ignominy and shame- from John C. Calhoun's articulation of a "states' rights" theory of federalism designed to protect slavery and make secession possible, to Herbert Hoover's refusal in the face of the Depression to do anything to make the American peoples' lives any easier, Strom Thurmond's attempted filibuster of the Civil Rights Act, all the way down to George W. Bush's doctrine of preemptive invasion and staunch opposition to even basic rights for gay people such as myself.

Last night on his show, Lawrence O'Donnell made note of the wide circulation on Facebook of the headline photo for this article, and devoted the closing "Rewrite" segment of his show to explaining the quote, and his commitment to "rewriting" what the word 'liberal' has become in American politics. But aren't the conservatives the ones who have been doing the "rewriting"? Liberalism is and always has been the philosophy of freedom from arbitrary rule- whether that rule be by an absolute monarch, a Pope, a corporate baron, or a Soviet commissar. Indeed, liberalism is a coherent and timeless political philosophy, the core of which has remained the same for the past 300 years- unlike conservatism, often painted as its equal and opposite, though in reality it's more of a personality disposition hostile to change and/or new ideas than it is a coherent and consistent ideology like liberalism. The base purposes of these two schools of thought can be found in their very names- the word 'liberal' coming from the Latin word liber for freedom, while the word 'conservative' comes from the verb conservare, which means "to preserve." Liberalism stands for the principle of freedom- a principle which, though understood imperfectly and not applied universally by the earliest liberals (such as the American founding fathers) means freedom from arbitrary rule, government coercion, and to pursue one's passions and talents in life without fear of poverty or malnourishment for doing so- the latter of which is (or, rather, should be) guaranteed by a welfare state and education system funded by taxes collected in large part from those whom the liberal society has already benefitted beyond all imagination (i.e.- Mitt Romney). Conservatism, on the other hand, is merely centered around preserving the existing status quo- but such a principle is hardly universal in the same sense that freedom is. In the 18th Century, the things being "preserved" by conservatives were absolute monarchy, taxation without representation, and mingling of church and state. In the 19th Century (at least here in America), it meant guaranteeing the "rights" of slaveholders to keep their fellow human-beings in bondage. In the 20th and 21st Centuries, among other things, it has meant protecting the new aristocracy that has been created by capitalism, from being taxed or regulated- oh yeah, and denying people like me the right to get married. In the end though, I sleep easy at night, knowing that conservatives are just as sure to ultimately lose the battles they fight today, as they were to lose all those they've fought since liberalism arrived on the scene in the 18th Century Enlightenment- for ultimately, liberalism isn't the opposite of conservatism: it's its superior. Whereas conservatism only seeks to 'preserve'- an activity which will have very different ramifications depending on what exactly is being 'preserved' in the time and place you live, liberalism stands for the furtherance of certain universal principles everywhere, not merely a religious devotion to upsetting the status quo in the same way that conservatism seeks to defend it (the euphemism "progressive" though, does have that very connotation- one of the reasons that it absolutely infuriates me that American liberals often use that word rather than its more noble alternative). Liberals stand for freedom- to believe what you want, say what you want, and do what you want in life. It's about damn time we stop being ashamed of it.

Brunch please!

(Photo courtesy of Poboys.com)

Good Sunday morning, folks! About to head in to work, but a fun little article on Yahoo! News about the best brunch locations in America caught my eye, and I thought I'd share. I've always loved Sunday brunch, though I don't get to indulge in it nearly enough (maybe when I'm rich and famous I'll make it a weekly tradition ;-) ). Unfortunately, I've never visited any of the restaurants listed in the article, but when reflecting on the best brunches that I've personally ever had, two places come to mind (both of which are in hotels, strangely enough)- the La Fonda in Santa Fe, and Marty's Bistro at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles.

I'm extraordinarily lucky in that I was blessed throughout my childhood and adolescence to get to go to Santa Fe multiple times every year, as my father Jack Sorenson is a Western artist whose paintings are sold exclusively at Joe Wade Fine Arts in Santa Fe, necessitating a trip on Dad's part to Santa Fe every month to deliver paintings. Two or three times a year on such a journey, he would take me and Mom along for the ride, and we always had a really wonderful time. I have a lot of good memories from those trips, many of which happened while eating breakfast or brunch at the La Fonda. If you're ever in the area, stop by and get the Eggs Benedict- no joke, by far the best Eggs Benedict I've ever had (and with a Santa Fe flair, to boot).

As for Marty's Bistro, I was only 13 years old the one time I ate there, so who knows if it's still as good as I remember, or if it really was as amazing as my 13-year old self thought it to be, but I remember having the most pleasant of Sunday mornings with my parents and my recently graduated brother Jacob (we were in LA for his graduation ceremony from UCLA), partaking of a brunch buffet that included the usual suspects- bacon, eggs, pancakes, etc., in addition to more exotic fair with a uniquely Californian character (my Mom also let me have several sips of her mimosa, making my day).

Well now that I've gotten myself all hungry, it's off to work. Brunch on, readers! :)

Movie Review: "The Iron Lady"

Theatrical release poster, courtesy of the Weinstein Company

For the first time in much too long, my umbilical chord to the UT campus was cut this evening as I FINALLY went to go see "The Iron Lady," after weeks of having a burning but, until now, unsatisfied desire to do so. My first thought after seeing the film is the obvious one: Meryl Streep, to quote one of Lady Thatcher's advisors in the film, "looked absolutely magnificent." I would be hard-pressed to think of an actress more vibrant and capable of capturing the truth of seemingly any character that she sets her mind to portraying, than Streep. If you had told me after I saw "Julie and Julia" that it was physically possible for Meryl Streep to ever pull off an even more convincing performance (portraying a much more divisive and complicated figure than Julia Child, no less), I would have dismissed you with Thatcher-esque certainty of myself, but pull it off Streep does nonetheless, and she very well could (and should) win her third Academy Award for it.

My opinion of the film itself, like that of the Prime Minister whose story it tells, is more complicated- due in no small part to its choice of what was probably an over-complicated plot device: that of an elderly Thatcher who is battling senility and seeing visions of her deceased, beloved husband Dennis, letting the audience in on her story in the form of flashbacks almost reminiscent of ABC's "Lost." The film's makeup department delivered a pitch-perfect performance in transforming Streep into an octogenarian in the scenes set in the present, but some of the flashbacks felt out of place and, particularly in the film's beginning, almost confusing (not at all unlike "Lost"- well, except for the fact that there was no actual time travel or a smoke monster that eats humans involved).

The film's treatment of Thatcher also feels contradictory at times- she is neither heroine nor villainess. Which Thatcher should I take away from the film- the obviously devoted and loving wife and mother, or the supremely ambitious, demanding, and sometimes cruel political taskmaster? The answer isn't clear, but it rarely is in life, is it not? Almost no one is pure evil or pure good, and I actually appreciate the film for refusing to attempt to pigeon-hole a figure as complex as Thatcher into either category. True, less ambitious viewers than I might fault the Iron Lady for placing such a high priority on her career and conviction that it was her destiny to have a "life that matters," but as someone with political aspirations myself, I was sympathetic to (or at least understanding of) Thatcher's sureness of herself, and her conflicting emotions at having to sacrifice some of the joys of private life in exchange for a shot at public greatness and making change in the world. It's a fascinating story, and one worthy of Streep's always masterful performance. Three and a half stars out of five.

Trouble in the Twitter-verse

(Photo courtesy of metamodernism.com)

Very disappointed to read yesterday that social media giant Twitter is willing to throw its whole reputation as an agent for change (and, in the case of the Arab Spring, revolution) away to please authoritarian bureaucrats abroad, by taking down users' tweets if that user's government doesn't like them. Somini Sengupta from the New York Times explains:

Twitter explained the change in a blog post on Thursday: “We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld.” 

In principle, that could apply to a message promoting Nazi ideology in Germany, a critical remark about the monarchy in Thailand, or perhaps even lines from “The Satanic Verses” in India, where the 1988 book remains banned.

The announcement has already provoked protest from Twitter's millions of users worldwide, including Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei, who posted "If Twitter starts censoring, I'll stop tweeting." Between this and the recently defeated (thank God) SOPA Bill, it's quite alarming to see that the idea of censoring the internet seems to be "trending" among corporate elites and their government lapdogs in this country and beyond.

Oscar Time!

Oscar nominees were announced today, and I was very pleased to see that "Hugo" led all films with 11 nominations. Last year offered several really fantastic movies, so I hesitate to go out on a limb with which particular one was my absolute favorite- but "Hugo" would definitely be near the top of the list. It was uplifting, beautiful, entertaining, everything that a good movie should be. To be completely honest, the only Scorsese film I had ever seen before was "Good Fellas," which I felt lacked substance and was horribly overrated, so I was pleasantly surprised by the degree to which I enjoyed "Hugo." "War Horse" (which I previously posted a review of on this blog) was likewise nominated for Best Picture, as was "The Help," "Tree of Life," "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," "The Artist," "The Descendants," and "Midnight in Paris"- all of which I'm sorry to say I wanted to see but have not yet done so, with the sole exception of "Midnight in Paris," which I absolutely adored. Though I have not yet seen it, I was a little disappointed to find that "The Iron Lady" was not nominated for best picture. The trailer was so captivating I almost feel that it could be nominated itself for best picture, lol. Planning on going to see it this coming weekend with my cousin Anthony here in Austin. On a side note, I am pleased to find that the Academy is continuing a trend of nominating more audience-friendly films for Best Picture. I recall a very boring ceremony a few years ago in which it seemed that "No Country For Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood" swept up all the awards- two films whose appeal is, to say the least, limited (though "No Country" is a fantastic movie- even if it does have a crappy, unsatisfying conclusion. I've never seen "There Will Be Blood," though I hear that it is an excellent film as well). Nice job this year, Academy. Looking forward to the ceremony.

An Update...

Hey blogosphere, sorry for my prolonged absence these past several days. I started back to class on Tuesday, and being able to blog multiple times a day (or even once a day) with a full course load has proven itself a far more formidable task than I had bargained for. It's a pity too- there were SO many things I wanted to talk about this week: the whole SOPA protest on Wednesday, Pope Benedict's latest homophobic ramblings, Newt Gingrich's upset in South Carolina, the NFC/AFC Conference Championship Games, the absolutely brilliant "Glee" episode from last week, etc. Unfortunately though, every time I sat down to do some typing- my mind raced to the million other things I had to do that were related to school, work, or other more immediate concerns. The difficult thing about being a blogger, particularly an amateur one who is going to school full-time, is that the business of writing is always important... but it isn't urgent. It's far too easy to just put it off until tomorrow morning, then put it off until after class, then put it off until after work, until before you know it, it's been almost a week and you haven't posted a blog entry. I'm aware of this, and I am sorry for it. But- having become re-accustomed to the pace of college life, and having my course schedule now finally set (Ooooohhh!... I've got some good one's this semester too!- "Morality and Politics," "America as a Global Power," "History of Modern Science," and "Germany Since Hitler." I look forward to posting about the interesting things I learn in each and every one of them), I should feel somewhat freer to spend some time blogging over this coming week. I might not be able to post many long pieces again for a while (at least not during the week), but I wanted to get my followers up-to-date on why I haven't posted in a while, and what my plans are going forward. My passion for blogging and my desire to blog has not lessened at all, but the time I have available in which to indulge that desire has. I'll do the best I can going forward. :) Goodnight all.

Media Misogyny?

The following trailer has a lot of my Facebook friends buzzing today:

Upon watching it, my first reaction was moral support for the overarching message and purpose of the film, mixed with an apprehension about some of its more conspiratorial overtones which prevent me from giving my full-fledged endorsement. As a gay man- a group that I would argue is targeted and stereotyped as badly as any by the mass media- I have first-hand knowledge of the harmful psychological effects that negative media imagery about a group can have on a person, especially a person trying to come to terms with their own membership in said group. Without getting too mired in stereotypes myself, I've always considered myself a pretty ordinary guy in most respects- almost all of my friends from preschool to high school were straight guys who I'd do typical "guy things" with- play sports, play video games, watch superhero movies, etc. I knew that I felt a certain way about men that they seemed to feel about women, but I convinced myself that this fact didn't make me gay. How could it? I didn't act like the guys on "Will and Grace," and had no desire to. I have absolutely nothing against real-life flamboyant gay guys- they're just being themselves the same way I am and God bless them for it- I'm just not one of them, and the fact that the only portrayal of gay men I ever found in the media for most of my childhood and adolescence was a hyper-feminine caricature made my self-acceptance as a masculine gay man a much longer, more difficult process than it had to be. But is the media targeting gays and, as the above trailer demonstrates, women, out of a personal vendetta, or because it sells? This is where I break with the message of the video.

Conspiracy theories get people riled up and motivated to take hasty action, but they are very rarely (I mean close to 0% of the time) true. It disappoints me that people with a good, powerful message so often resort to such a cheap propaganda technique to gain followers. As anyone who's ever had any interaction with corporate big-wig, Gordon Gekko-types knows, such people have little principles outside of their desire for money and, sometimes, fame. Such is the nature of capitalism- a system which comes with both great benefits and terrible consequences. The culture in which the new technology that allowed mass media was born was one which had been dominated for thousands of years prior by straight white men, who thought a certain way about women, gays, and other groups, and rewarded those media programs that projected a vision consistent with their ignorant prejudices with their viewership and money. The problem lies not with the mass media, an unthinking actor that merely gives its audience whatever it wants, but with the cultural attitudes held by a people who reward such dreadful imagery and ask for more.

But there is hope- for the racist, sexist, and homophobic culture that capitalism and mass media came out of contained the seed for its own destruction. My main beef with the trailer for this film was that it got so carried away in its completely justified outrage at the media's portrayal of women, that it almost argues that the existence of mass media itself is a bad thing. On the contrary, the only reason we are conscious of the problem of sexism, homophobia, etc., in our culture, and at last have hope that we can combat and defeat those last traces of barbarism, are because we have a mass media at our disposal which has created a much more open and honest world. Dirty little secrets are an endangered species, my friends. Some of Western civilization's dirtiest were the very issues raised in this trailer and blog posting: racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. We are self-aware of them and can confront them only because it is now acceptable and possible to talk about them in the open. That could have never happened in the absence of mass media, which is precisely why underdeveloped societies in the third world still often have big time problems with those same issues. The way to eradicate these problems is not to destroy the only effective weapon we have at fighting them, but to use it to change the hearts and minds of the people who it markets to- a mission that I hope this film and its trailer continues to succeed at.

The Joy of Reading

I have a confession to make- I have never been the avid reader of books that my friends and acquaintances often assume me to be. Don't get me wrong- I love to learn and to read, but I probably only read an average of 6 or 7 books per year on my own volition.  Most of the knowledge I've acquired about the world has come from words not printed in books, but posted on the internet. As much as I might like for it to have, my intellectual journey did not start by my reading one of the "Great Works" by authors like Plato, Shakespeare, or Milton, but by my having an open mind, an abundance of curiosity, and access to the internet (and, more specifically, Wikipedia- which I will vociferously defend against attacks on its reliability to this day). The consequences of the fact that my generation and each one after us will grow up with easy access to pretty much any information we want will continue to play out over the course of the 21st Century, for better or worse (I for one think that more information and openness is almost always a good thing), but it is a fact for which I am most grateful and appreciative. Had I been born even twenty years before I had, and come of age in a world devoid of the world wide web, I probably never would have made the effort to figure out the answers to questions as simple but important as "why did Europe go from being almost all monarchies to almost all democracies?" or "how did we go from being almost entirely farmers living in the country to having all the diverse occupations we have today and living in cities?", and would have spent my life in some mediocre and boring existence rather than the exciting one I have chosen today as an aspiring writer and public intellectual.

Now before it seems that I am telling my fellow young people that it's okay to not read books and only look things up on the internet, I want to clarify myself: while my journey didn't start with books and I still don't read as many of them as I would like, I made the one's that I have chosen to read count. Over the past four years, I've read Dante's Divine Comedy, Joyce's Ulysses and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the great dystopias Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World, The Great Gatsby, Reflections on the Revolution in France, The Federalist Papers, and of course all the books that I mentioned in my previous post which were assigned to me in my "Theoretical Foundations of Modern Politics" course last semester. Reading those books exponentially deepened the knowledge of politics, history, and even basic and timeless issues dealing with the human existence like love, that I had first gained and found a passion for on the internet.

Two days ago, while on my return flight back from Amarillo to my collegiate life at UT-Austin, I picked up a book (it was Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, from the aforementioned Theoretical Foundations course) for one of the first times since I left college for Christmas break six weeks ago. I don't know why it's so easy for me to allow my passion for reading books to atrophy when the reading is not assigned to me, but atrophy it does, and my mind suffers for it. This year, taking the "baby-steps" approach, I hope to increase my reading output to no less than one book every month, with an eye towards increasing that number to two books a month in 2013. While the internet is fabulous and I'm obviously a big fan, there are just some things that you get from reading a book, taking notes, and underlining important passages from it, that you can't get online. The sooner my generation (myself obviously not excluded) realizes that fact and acts on it, the sooner we demonstrate the internet's true potential- it's ability to get people's feet wet with knowledge, so that they might feel comfortable wading into deeper sources of it.

"The Birth of Our Brains"

(Portrait of Niccolò Machiavelli by Santi di Tito)

With Christmas break almost over, I have been scrambling the past few days (hence the absence of a new post yesterday) to get all of my affairs in order prior to returning to my beloved University of Texas at Austin on Sunday for a new semester. Much like the dawn of a new year, the dawn of a new semester always give me reason to reflect back on everything that I learned and accomplished in the previous semester and the many ways in which I hope to build upon that foundation in the new term. Last semester, one such foundation was perhaps my favorite and, probably, most intellectually stimulating course I have taken to date- "Theoretical Foundations of Modern Politics" with Dr. Devin Stauffer. In reading The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli, Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, The Second Treatise of Government by John Locke, The First and Second Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, the class- to quote Professor Stauffer- "witnessed the birth of our brains." Accustomed as we are to living in 21st Century civilization, we take for granted such concepts as democracy, checks-and-balances, commercialism, the natural equality of human beings, and tolerance of differing world views, and seldom give pause to consider the fact that there was a time when those ideas, far from being accepted as self-evident, were violently suppressed. The free and prosperous world we live in today, a world we too often bitch about rather than enjoy, emerged out of a very different, more pious, submissive, and impoverished world- a world in which reason was shunned for faith and superstition; a world in which equality was despised, while the divine right of kings and aristocrats was extolled; and one in which freedom was stifled and pious submission to arbitrary authority was the norm.

Certainly, our current system isn't perfect and has many failures (foremost among them, that it fails to educate we lucky people who live in this age just how well we have it compared to those who suffered under the yoke of the medieval system that preceded ours), but I consider it one of my greatest duties in life to remind everyone just how well we have it. Say that our world is empty and materialistic, I might agree with you. Say that it is lackadaisical and that people today don't know commitment or exertion, I might agree with you. But say that those who lived under the system of religious tyranny and oppression that preceded ours knew better, and I will oppose you most vigorously. The very fact that we can casually comment on the failures of our current system is a testament to one of that system's greatest successes- that it is open to change and adaptation, and has an open mind to its shortcomings. The same could not be said for the Medieval matrix that governed Western civilization until the rebellion against it began with Machiavelli's The Prince in the early-16th Century. Do you like free speech? Then you shouldn't like theocracy. You enjoy the wealth, comfort, and choices that come with a free market? Then you shouldn't like theocracy. You appreciate being able to believe what you want to believe, without being persecuted? Then you shouldn't like theocracy; for there are a lot of religions in the world- chances are pretty high that if one of them is officially adopted by the state at the expense of all others, yours won't be the one chosen.

Professor Stauffer's course, in many ways, taught me what I already knew deep-down; but it also taught me  why I believe it, and what historical developments and events led men like Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Nietzsche to come to the conclusions that they did, and why Western civilization took aspects of their thought as its own. I don't have time in this short post to elaborate on the sophisticated and unique worldviews of each of these individual thinkers and why it's so important that the average person gain a better understanding of them than they currently have- successfully taking on that formidable task will require a good portion of my career, let alone one little blog posting- but what I can say for now is that we each should be grateful to those thinkers for what they gave to the world, and that anyone who hopes to look outside their window and with any clarity understand why they see a more-or-less egalitarian, commercialistic, compassionate, scientific, and economically prosperous society instead of a cruel, paternal, repressed, and ignorant one, should familiarize themselves with these thinkers and their Great Works.

The Enduring Influence of "The Iron Lady"

(The Trailer for "The Iron Lady," which opens this Friday nationwide)

From the moment I saw the above trailer for the new Margaret Thatcher biopic "The Iron Lady," I was immediately anxious to see it as soon as it hit theaters- not only because Lady Thatcher is portrayed by Meryl Streep, a true master at her craft and someone I've adored in every film I've ever seen of hers, but also because the former Prime Minister is an utterly fascinating and magnetic historical figure, regardless of what one might think of her politics. Being a convinced leftist in a 21st Century political culture still characterized by a debate over the consequences and legacy of the policies instituted by Thatcher and her ideological counterpart Ronald Reagan here in the States, it might seem odd that I am so entranced and fascinated by the Iron Lady. As her biographer Charles Moore told Jill Lawless of the AP though, "You have to be over 40 to hate Mrs. Thatcher. Young people just want to know about her."

Reagan and Thatcher- Photo courtesy of the Daily Mail

I find myself in a similar predicament oftentimes with regards to President Reagan. If my interest in and study of the politics of my lifetime have made me sure of anything, it's that Reagan's policies have been pushed much too far by his current-day disciples and have had quite a pernicious influence on the economy and, more fundamentally, the mindset of my native United States. However, it's hard not to wonder sometimes whether or not said policies, while having outlasted their welcome in 2011, were not exactly what the country needed in 1981 when Reagan took office. Given that I was born in November 1991, nearly three years after Reagan left office and only a month before the Soviet Union finally dissolved, I can't fully appreciate the dichotomy between pre-Reagan America and post-Reagan America, any more than as a student of history. Even in that context though, it would be hard for anyone to say that he didn't leave his country in better shape in 1989 than he found it in 1981. An economy wracked by inflation and unemployment in 1981 was vibrant and expanding in 1989, while a United States scared and embarrassed by the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1981, stood as the confident, preeminent power of the world in 1989. Of course, a lot of luck on Reagan's part was involved in his successes- the former transformation took place in the context of compromises made between Reagan and Tip O'Neill's Democratic Congress, while the latter one could never have occurred if not for Reagan's presidency of the United States occurring at the same time as Mikhail Gorbachev's premiership of the Soviet Union, but history shows that great leaders have a way of falling into good luck.

Don't get me wrong, Reagan had some faults and some big ones- he helped to create a culture of carnivorous greed and empty materialism, in which it's considered acceptable today for his followers to shout things like "Let him die!" when a candidate from his party is asked a question about what the government should do about an uninsured man with a terminal disease. Moreover, his legacy will forever be tainted by the cardinal sin he made of legitimizing and empowering the Religious Right in this country as a powerful force in the Republican Party and, by extension, American politics. To what extent Reagan did this in order to pander for votes, or because he genuinely believed that religious fundamentalism and government policy should be mixed together is uncertain, although, as Christopher Hitchens pointed out in a rather harsh critique of Reagan for Slate, our 40th President "used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the "End Times" foreshadowed in the Bible."

On this front, history will remember Lady Thatcher much more kindly than her American counterpart. In an interview with Movie Fone, Meryl Streep notes that the Iron Lady would likely be ostracized by the American conservative movement today for her surprisingly moderate views on social issues and healthcare:

"I was very surprised to learn that she didn't try to dismantle the National Health [Service], she thought that it was right to have the National Health [Service]... she was Pro-Choice, I went to Washington recently and spoke to somebody who was in the room when she took Dan Quayle and President [George H.W.] Bush down for using [abortion] as a political football... She had people in her cabinet serving very high, close to her in her staff, who had big homosexual scandals, and she would say, 'You stand right next to me, all day, that's how we'll handle this.' She didn't care about that stuff... She would be drummed out of the American conservative party, there would be no question."

At any rate, Thatcher and Reagan are both likely to continue to be controversial figures for some time to come. But while the extent to which, if any, either or both would approve of the mischief caused by modern-day conservatives is in doubt, their lasting influence and impact on the Western world in the late-20th Century into the present, is beyond question.

Showdown in New Hampshire

(Photo courtesy of Sunshine State News)

The second major contest of the 2012 Presidential Election goes down tonight in New Hampshire, where frontrunner Mitt Romney should be a lock to win by a relatively large margin. Unlike in Iowa last week, the drama tonight will be as to who comes in second- a distinction likely to go to either Ron Paul or Jon Huntsman. In the past few days, I had planned on writing a post on this blog endorsing Huntsman for the Republican nomination (I even had a title picked out- "He Blinded Me With Science," for Huntsman's lonely refusal to pit himself against the scientific community on evolution and climate change, as most or all of his other Republican comrades have done), though I highly doubt my endorsement would mean much to Huntsman or any Republican considering voting for him, given that I'm a staunch liberal and will enthusiastically support President Obama over any current Republican fighting for their party's nomination. The latest polls have had Huntsman and Paul neck-and-neck for the past few days, at right under 20% each (both behind Romney, who, as usual, hovers in the 30-40% range). Given how wrong I was in predicting a Paul victory in Iowa last week, I hesitate to go out on a limb tonight, but I would hope that New Hampshire voters would be smart enough to go with Huntsman over Paul. Romney's going to win of course (I predict with around 35%), I think Huntsman comes in second with around 20-25%, giving him enough of a boost to stay in the race, while Paul gets third, just as he did in Iowa, at just under 20%. Next stop- South Carolina on January 21, which is sure to be the most interesting of the early contests, given that it will be a must-win for both Santorum and Gingrich (neither one of which is likely to be much of a player in New Hampshire) if they are to have any chance of stopping Romney.

"Hitch, You Glorious Bastard"

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

(This send-off to Christopher Hitchens, a personal hero of mine, was originally posted on my old blog on the night of December 17, 2011, two days after Christopher's death was announced. As Hitch continues to be on my mind, I figured it was an entry worth reposting here.)

One might find it odd that a practicing Catholic and a liberal such as myself would ever come to take as an idol a man with a background as seemingly offensive to both of those sensibilities as the great Christopher Hitchens, who left this world a much drabber and intellectually deficient place when he parted our presence Thursday evening. "Hitch", as he preferred to be called by his friends (and though I never met him I deeply regret to say- I almost feel that I can count myself among them due to my having read his columns, essays, and books, I daresay, "religiously," for the past couple years), began his career as a writer and journalist in the 60's as a radical leftist (a Marxist Trotskyite, to be exact) as relentlessly critical of the inhumane totalitarianism of Stalinist Russia as he was of the ruthless exploitation of the working classes in the capitalist West. Over the span of his long and illustrious career though, the three things that Hitch became best known for, indeed the things which finally made him famous long after he deserved to have been, were his stinging rebukes of figures as diverse and seeming innocuous as Princess Diana, Bill Clinton, and Mother Theresa, his outspoken support for the War in Iraq as one front in what he saw as the global struggle between the liberal, democratic and secular humanist West against the forces of "Islamofascism" (a term he coined), and his undying atheism. Hitch's 2007 magnum opus God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, and the following debate tour he undertook to promote the book, catapulted him into the limelight and exposed him to a much wider audience than he ever had before, an audience including yours truly.

I remember the first time I heard the name Christopher Hitchens. It was in connection to his attacks on the doctrines and hierarchical structure of my own religion of Roman Catholicism, most especially his attacks on Mother Theresa. Good Catholic schoolboy that I was, I was horrified by what I heard (how could anyone not like Mother Theresa???), and vividly remember wanting to run as far away from such a heretic as I possibly could. Tonight, I write to tell you that I am very happy and much intellectually richer for the fact that I did not. If I had, I never would have been exposed to one of the greatest writers (the greatest contemporary columnist and essayist in the English language, in my opinion) and most intelligent and best-read political and cultural commentators of our time. As I pried more and more into the life and works of Christopher Hitchens, I was pleased to find a man who attacked religion, not out of malice or misanthropy, but out of what his fellow atheist Bertrand Russell called "unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind," and the role that Hitch felt religion played in prolonging and aggravating that suffering. In all of Hitch's countless columns that I have read and debates that I have watched over the past two glorious years that I have known of him, though I have never been swayed to adopt his atheism, I have rarely, if ever, disagreed with the premises on which he attacks organized religion. The God that Christopher railed against (and tragically, the one which those who claim to be God's most loyal followers promote) "creates his children sick and then commands them to be well," despises honest inquiry and free thought, wishes blind submission to his will and eternal adulation, and has such little respect for the intelligence of human beings, supposedly the highest expression of the life he willed to exist on this planet, that he handed down a book to dictate forevermore how, conscience be damned (literally), we should live our lives- a book that says, among other horrific things, that it is an "abomination" for the millions of gay people of the world (including the author of this column) to physically express their love to their soulmate, if that soulmate happens to be a member of the same sex, as they must be if you are gay. Such attacks on religion by Christopher never bothered me or weakened my faith, because such a God would not be worthy of my love, let alone my worship, and is as far from the God that I know and adore, as night is to day. The God that I love, pray to every day, look forward to meeting, and am confident embraced and welcomed Christopher into his arms the second the old gadfly left the realm of the living, desires the freedom and happiness of his children, relentless pursuit of truth and knowledge on their part, and would be just as amused and breathtaken by Christopher's incomparable wit and sense of humor, as well as his vast ocean of literary and historical knowledge, as I was. The God that I know would never have created me to be gay as a cruel joke, or willed me to live my life in misery and romantic isolation. Indeed, the God that I know comforted me in my time of greatest need this summer, as I gathered the courage to come out to my family and friends and at last reconcile myself to a truth that I had struggled with my entire life. The God that I know broke the mold the day he created Christopher Hitchens, and has eagerly anticipated reunion with him.

Shortly after the news came of Hitch's passing the other night, film critic Mary Pols tweeted her goodbye to Christopher with the following succinct but suiting adieu: "Mr. Hitchens, you glorious bastard, thank you for your gift of savagely smart writing." I felt that such a salutary send-off perfectly encapsulated the humor, wit, and irreverence that so characterized Christopher's beautiful writing style and personality, and, despite our never having met, the affection that I feel for him on account of it. Earlier this year, sensing that Hitch's time on this earth may not be long, I felt the urge to write him a letter letting him know how much his life's work meant to me, and the large role it played in convincing me to pursue a career as a writer and public speaker myself. It is with deep regret to say that I never succumbed to this desire, and Mr. Hitchens died having no idea how much he inspired me. But, regardless of whether Hitch was right or I am with as to the question of an afterlife, I know this- Christopher Hitchens lives on in his riveting corpus of work, both literary and oratorical, and in the hearts and minds of those of us who, I daresay, were blessed to encounter such a brilliant and beautiful mind, and the graceful pen that it wielded. Rest in peace, Christopher.