Aristocracy of Everyone

I finished reading Benjamin Barber's An Aristocracy of Everyone.  It was published in 1992, the same year I headed to college.  The context in which it was written- the emergence of multiculturalism, and reactionary criticism of "political correctness", brings back memories.

Barber tries to carve out a middle ground between radical and reactionary, and he does it in an interesting way.  He starts from the equation that Liberty = Education, and that a primary purpose of getting educated is to understand liberty and support it.  Barber is worried that we've lost our sense of "positive" liberty, the obligations we must accept to make self-government possible.  We're too infatuated with "negative" liberty, the right to do as we please without interference.  The latter without the former is impossible because we interact with each other too much, generally speaking we aren't hermits.

To the left Barber says that majority rule by itself isn't enough for good governance, that uneducated voters are no more than a mob waiting for their demagogue.  To the right Barber says that liberty for the masses is both possible and desirable, and implicitly they are flim-flam artists for wanting otherwise.

It's heady stuff and there's a lot of quotable material.  But it comes up short in in its prescription:  How do we educate people in liberty?  Barber's suggestion is to add a service component to undergraduate degree requirements.  This is inadequate on multiple levels.

First, as Barber ably demonstrates the problem of uneducated citizens isn't primarily a problem of youth.  The dominant systems students interact with- education, economy, culture- are largely controlled by elders.  The world outside of college is much, much bigger than the world inside of college.  Adding a service requirement won't change those systems or the incentives they create.

Second, what work does Barber envision students doing?  He means for work to be a component of education in democracy and its obligations, something more than charity.  What would he have students do?  Invert the question and ask how much does your company need a bunch of pre-interns who explicitly aren't actually working for you, but are instead guided by a goal of understanding democracy and its obligations?  Who, outside of non-profits, would even let them in the door?  I think the service requirement runs into a hard reality that most of our economy is private, it has nothing to do with democracy.

The answer to Barber's challenge has to focus on people who aren't students, on civic organizations that bring people together to pursue common interests.  Those interests might be political, such as with a political party, they might be local, as with a neighborhood association or PTA, or they might be issue oriented such as with advocating a cause.  What they have in common is
    • people coming together, working in concert and learning that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,
    • coming together on a public matter, not limited by class or education, and
    • doing it in their free time, as in not subject to anyone's direction but their own.  When people are at work they aren't free, they're guided by bosses or business requirements.  Liberty exists when we aren't a Teacher or a Welder or an Accountant, but when we act on our own as citizens. 

Learning about liberty means learning that what we do "on our own" in public matters, those actions define what is public. 

Book Review: The Activist

I picked up The Activist: John Marshall, Marbury V. Madison, and the Myth of Judicial Review as part of an informal study of American politics in the Adams/Jefferson years.  It was a much better read than I expected.  Ostensibly about the road to Marbury vs. Madison, Goldstone details the critical role of partisan machinations in early American politics. 

The Constitutional Convention was not expected to produce anything of significance and most participants attended meetings sporadically.  That the convention produced a new constitution reflected the skill and determination of a core of Federalists, particularly James Madison.  They had a specific agenda to strengthen the federal government at the expense of the states, there was nothing "bipartisan" about them.

Once the Constitution was passed it faced pitched ratification battles in the states, particularly in Virginia and New York.  Again those debates were anything but bipartisan, with anti-federalists striving desperately to derail the constitution or to approve it subject to amendment, which since it would require every other state to agree amounted to the same thing.

Nothing shows the role of partisan considerations better than the career of James Madison.  He bested Patrick Henry in debate and got Virginia to ratify the constitution.  In retaliation Henry blocked him from a Senate appointment and recruited Monroe to run against Madison for a house seat.  Monroe drew popular support with his call for amendments to the constitution, enough to pose a serious threat to Madison.  Madison had spent all of the Constitutional Convention and the ratification debate in Virginia fighting off such amendments, but now in order to earn a seat he flip flopped and embraced amendments himself.  He switched from being among the most ardent Federalists, writing with Hamilton and Jay the seminal Federalist Papers, to being an anti-Federalist and ultimately Jefferson's right hand man. 

Madison was truly brilliant, understanding first that popular disdain for the Articles of Confederation created leeway for an aggressively Federalist constitution, and then in betting correctly that the political center was shifting south and west and that expansion territories would not be Federalist.

Goldstone shows how narrow partisan interests were attached to broader conflicts over the role and strength of the federal government.  The Judiciary Act of 1801 for instance served a narrow purpose by allowing Adams to pack the courts with Federalist judges, but it also expressed a political view that the Federal courts should have broad authority and required a broad presence.  Jefferson attacked the courts both because they were federalist and because he wanted to disable federal courts so that state courts would take more responsibility.

This was the context in which the Federalist John Marshall confronted Marbury vs. Madison.  Had he ruled for Marbury he almost certainly would have been impeached.  He struck a balance by ruling against Marbury using a selective reading of the constitution as pretext, and using the opinion to excoriate Jefferson for not delivering the commission.  This was the high art of politics, incorporating partisan calculations and the broader principle of constitutional review.

Ruling the Judiciary Act of 1789 unconstitutional was certainly a means to an end.  But how strongly did Marshall believe in the concept of judicial superiority, and the idea that the court stood above Congress?  He never again struck down an act of Congress and it wasn't until Dred Scott that another court would do so.  A question for further reading.

Cumings' Korean War

I finished reading Bruce Cumings' Korean War this week.  This book is a thoughtful retrospective on what the Korean War means to Korea and the vast misconceptions that still define the conflict in the American consciousness.  It is not for the faint of heart, Cumings does not shy away from gory detail when he wants to make a point.  His views of North Korea are considerably more sympathetic than pretty much any other American author.  That was in fact why I picked up the book, dissidents may be right or wrong but they're almost always interesting.  I was not disappointed. 

Cumings describes a conflict that anticipates Iraq as much as it does Vietnam.  An ignorant and ill-prepared military occupation quickly followed by guerilla warfare, rampant atrocities against civilians committed by American troops and the Korean forces they empowered, and driving it all an arrogant belief in the inerrancy of American military power.  It is tragic that Korea is our forgotten war, there is a hell of a lot to learn in it.

Remedy and Reaction

I finished reading Paul Starr’s Remedy and Reaction.  This is an extraordinarily readable discussion of health insurance.  The book is worth getting for the first chapter alone, which summarizes reform efforts from the progressive era through Carter with enough detail to articulate why programs like Medicare succeeded versus the many others that failed. 

Starr then devotes chapter length treatments to the Clinton and Obama plans, describing why the Clinton plan ran off the rails and how Obama was determined to avoid the same fate.  I couldn’t help but walk away with much more respect for both men for their efforts.

Highly Recommended!

Book Review: Ghosts of Cannae

I finished reading Ghosts of Cannae. Very readable and enjoyable military history of the Second Punic War. Hannibal invaded Italy with enormous success, winning devastating tactical victories at Trasimene and Cannae. But he never translated those victories into strategic success, Rome stood undeterred. In a sense Hannibal was outclassed. Rome was not ruled by any warlord or Greek despot willing to make peace based on a rational calculation of interest. Instead it was already an empire with unmatched manpower and a Senate determined to win at all costs. If that meant sacking their own major cities like Capua then so be it.

Capua is instructive. They accepted Hannibal's offer to break off from Rome on the condition that they didn't need to contribute soldiers. That left Hannibal with the liability of protecting the city but no additional assets to do the job. An impossible situation, one quickly exploited by Rome. Hannibal couldn't win by being a mere warlord, he needed to make the conflict with Rome into a civil war instead of just a foreign invasion. That meant giving dissident latins something to fight for, they needed an ideology or an idea that was worth dying for. Hannibal couldn't just break up Rome, he needed to create an alternative. Instead, Rome created a new Hannibal in the form of Scipio Africanus and the rest is history.

The book references a provocative thesis I hadn't seen before: That the Republic fell because Rome couldn't meet its military challenges without powerful and charismatic generals, and that this was Hannibal's ultimate legacy. This seems a bit off- Rome did quite well isolating and marginalizing Hannibal without a superstar. The only way Scipio is necessary is if you think Rome would have run out of willing soldiers, and there's nothing to support that. How different would things be if Publius Scipio died at Cannae!

Book Review: Taney vs. Lincoln

I picked this up as a continuation of supreme court/federal history from the Marbury vs. Madison book. This wasn't as interesting. Cliff Sloan's history was a story of exploration and settlement as the court (and Washington DC) found their place in America. This is a story of their decline into irrelevance as they fought a futile campaign to preserve slavery in America. The Dred Scott decision was discarded in the north as soon as it was issued, the Prize cases were important not to America but to the British, and at the start of the war the Federal Government couldn’t even count on the loyalty of surrounding territory in Maryland.  The real action in this period happens not in DC but in the nation at large: fighting in Kansas, a revolt against the fugitive slave law in Wisconsin, the south's secession first from the Democratic Party and then from the nation.

Lincoln’s office was a product of the fighting in the country at large, and it is misleading to pose him and Taney in parallel. Their conflict was no more a match between equals then a speeding train hitting a car stalled on the tracks.

Scribbling the Cat

I’m not sure what to make of this book.  On the one hand it shed light on a place I know next to nothing about, southeast Africa.  On the other hand I came away with the distinct feeling that the less I knew about that place the better.  What must that have been like for the author, traversing the roles of contemporary american housewife and…  travelogue reporter going through one of the shittiest places on earth?

I want to make fun of it, to point out that there is something profoundly off about an African travelogue where the only characters that matter are white.  But doing that misses a key point- the characters are aware of that very fact, are aware that their story is somehow contrived and displaced, they know very well that they are screwed.  They are who they are, and there isn’t much they can do about it. 

Sometimes living requires accepting uncertainty and contradiction, even in ourselves.  What are we but a reflection of a world we cannot hope to understand?

Book Review: The New American Militarism

I finished reading The New American Militarism on the plane yesterday, great book and heartily recommended. Bacevich describes himself as a conservative critic of the Iraq invasion, which he sees as resulting from the institutionalization of militarism within American society. The book pointedly avoids blaming Bush or administration officials, instead looking at a series of broad cultural dynamics, both civilian and military. These include briefly,

• Conservative christians, who adopted a seige mentality in the wake of the cultural changes in the 60's.
• The idolization of the military in the 80's and 90's, in a generational reaction against perceived injustices in the 70's.
• The development of smart weapons and the broader seperation of military and civilian society, which made "clean" war seem like a possibility.

This resolves a problem I had with an earlier work, American Empire. There he argued for a fundamental continuity between the Clinton and Bush administrations, which I didn't buy. The discussion here implies a continuity of circumstance more then in the actions and initiatives of the presidents, and Bacevich states explicitly in the preface that

What is most striking about the most powerful man in the world is not the power that he wields. It is how constrained he and his lieutenants are by forces that lie beyond their grasp and perhaps their understanding. Rather then bending history to their will, presidents and those around them are much more likely to dance to history's tune.

Bacevich at the end offers a surprising reinterpretation of the last 30 years, where he adopts the neocon lingo of World War IV with a twist: instead of radical Islam waging war against a sleepy Western world he sees America fighting for political dominance of the broader Middle East, in a continuation of the western tradition going back to Alexander the Great. This idea is offered as a sketch, and I'd like to see him use another book to flesh it out.

This is good stuff with continuing relevance, particularly for those confused by why so little has changed under Obama.

UPDATE: I added this to the book review site with an addendum here.

Book Notes: Greenspan's Bubbles

I read Bill Fleckenstein's GREENSPAN'S BUBBLES: THE AGE OF IGNORANCE AT THE FEDERAL RESERVE. I started reading Fleck about 10 years ago, back then he had a pretty good column that just ripped the dot-com stocks and bubble. Greenspan was a constant villain, always acting to save the bubble from itself. This book is Fleck's revenge.

As analysis it's lacking, most of the book is diatribe and assertion. To it's credit the book contains numerous quotes from the FOMC meetings back in the day, they give some insight into why Greenspan was so ineffectual.

First he subscribed to a species of market fundamentalism, a belief that the masses could never be wrong (or at least not second guessed) even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. A bubble then could never be diagnosed in the present, it could only be seen in the past after the market turned and it deflated. This belief by itself wouldn't have hurt Greenspan that much, in effect it says the Fed should ignore the stock market. Unfortunately Greenspan extended this logic by assuming that if the market is always right, and people want to be happy, then the market should always be happy. If it's not, ie if there are significant declines across indices it implies an externality and Greenspan saw it as his duty to counteract it. In short, he completely misunderstood or ignored the necessity of creative destruction, that creating losers is as critical a market function as creating winners.

I'd recommend the book for those nostalgic for the dot-com days.

Book Analysis and Notes: Social Life of Information

I've added some notes on the Social Life of Information, by Brown and Duguid. I still don't really remember why my Dad recommended it. The book had a lot of goodness, showing how social context and interactions affect the absorption of information, and that the internet can't be all things to all people because of this. There is also a certain amount of jargon (deconstructing the 6 D's) that I didn't care about.

Mostly I felt a lot of nostalgia for the 90's while reading this- a time of near infinite possibility and no fear.

Book Analysis and Notes

I finished reading Afghanistan The Bear Trap. Excellent book, notes are here. I'm going to have to read Stephen Coll now to get the rest of the story.

How many lessons can be applied to Iraq?

1) The American supply operation was all about killing soviets. When they left, the arms flow stopped. Point: Will countries stop supplying Iraqi rebels if the U.S. withdraws?

2) 'Puppet' regimes are capable of living on their own, Najibullah stayed in power for four years after the Soviets withdrew troops. The Soviets continued, crucially, to provide arms. Point: Perhaps local forces are capable of acting more effectively in their own interest then foreign troops?

3) The Soviet response to the Mujahideen was incredibly lethargic. No strategy at all beyond Afghan borders, except to prevent attacks on the USSR proper. Point: Burying your head in the sand does not help the situation, it just makes it last longer.

4) The Soviets gave up when the Mujahideen got effective AA weapons. It took 7 years of conflict before they got them. Point: How many years will we be fighting in Iraq before someone gives the rebels good AA weapons?

Book Analysis and Notes

I finished reading Lhasa: Streets with Memories by Robert Barnett. My thoughts, such as they are, are here. I loved this book but had trouble writing about it. What appealed to me was the sociology of space, how time and events define the meaning of places, and how those meanings (and places) change over time and get re-written. I have little to add to such a discussion, and just nod my head.

I watched The Road Home last night, reading the subtext of that film I wonder if the experience of occupation/assimilation and confused identity are not typical of western China.

Book Analysis and Notes

Finished reading The Age of Fallibility, by George Soros. Some interesting ideas, and a certain amount of fluff. Expanded thoughts here.

Book Analysis and Notes

I finished reading Bruce Ackerman's Before the Next Attack: Preserving Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism. My notes are here. The book argues for abandoning war a response to large scale terrorist attacks, and instead declaring an adjusted State of Emergency (SEM). The SEM would permit large scale violations of civil rights, but only for short periods of time on the order of 6 weeks. Congress would have to reauthorize the SEM, with escalating super majorities required to continue it.

Ackerman is correct to discard war as a paradigm, President Bush has spared no effort in demonstrating it's flaws. But Ackerman then adopts a "domestic police action" as the paradigmatic response. That paradigm acknowledges that we face a threat, but not a threat to our survival as a nation. It permits extraordinary powers of detention, but only for a short time until the immediate threat has passed.

The problem is that such an action is temporary, whether it's weeks or months the SEM ends and everything goes back to normal. How reasonable is it to expect terrorists to abandon a proven technique, especially when they see American politicians saying "no problem." Whatever rules or laws are put in place to prevent terrorism have to be permanent in order to be effective.

Ackerman dodges this by assuming attacks will be infrequent, but I think that's overly optimistic. How long would it take for another hijacking if we began allowing box cutters on airplanes and took locks off the cockpit doors? Fine you say, we'll make those rules permanent but everything else like surveillance will be temporary. But if we can afford to make a rule temporary, then it must not be preventing attacks so we don't need it at all.

Ackerman jumped on a big problem, and I give him credit for the attempt. A lot more useful then gazing at Jack Bauer's navel.

New Book Analysis and Notes

I finished reading Paul Boyer's By the Bomb's Early Light. Notes and references here. The book describes a world of people scrambling to catch up with the changes they wrought. Quite relevant today. I don't necessarily recommend reading it straight through- a lot of material from the scientists and other fringe peace groups can be skipped. The best chapters are the first on public reaction and the last on government disinformation. Funny to see that Gen. Groves personally chose Dagwood as the official cartoon character of propaganda.

New Book Analysis and Notes

I read the essay by Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power. My extended comments are here. I can remember people lauding this as fine analysis. History has not been kind to it or the philosophy that backed it, and after reading it I see why.

New Book Analysis and Notes

Finished reading Every War Must End. My notes and analysis here. In short, the book is brilliant and everyone should read it.

The first follow up book I'd like to read is the Willis book referenced on the failure of British democracy during WWI. How relevant is that today?

New Book Review

I just finished reading the last essay in The Burden of Southern History, by C. Vann Woodward. Good stuff.

New Book Review

I finished reading a book by Andrew Bacevich on the plane coming home from Chicago, you can see my thoughts on it here.