Consensus and the Next Election

Consensus is general agreement. Concord is the main aim of any discussion, given an understanding of the formal nature of it. The party-affiliation tribalism infecting our political process at the presidential level is not effective, except in producing a majority winner in the population vote. (Taking into account non-voters, the electoral college, the Supreme Court and third party candidates, there may rarely be a majority win.) 

The presidential candidate of my making would campaign for a consensus on every issue. The candidate would choose to represent all the people. S-he would have no constituency based on personality or party. S-he would have a constituency of the office of the president emanating from his or her analysis of the consensus on each major issue. That makes the candidate of my making the discussion leader, utilizing all the very substantial, specialized group resources at the command of the president. The president’s policies would be the formulations from the consensus of coalitions built around each issue. The minority contributions would meld into the conclusions reached, and any acrimony of debate would be submerged by skillful leadership toward compromise to the satisfaction of all in the consensus. The predominance of special interests taking over the office of president may thus be avoided. 

That is how the presidential candidate becomes “presidential”. Think of the vast number of viewpoints the candidate must represent. Mind numbing, for one person to comprehend the totality!  How can s-he do that without appearing to be in the pocket of special interests? And when Congress is assembled to hear the State of the Union report, there will be no division of the house by right or left. They will sit alphabetically by last name, not by house or state. Why enshrine the tribalism as they do now? 

Grand utopian visions of outcomes is not the end. You get there, as the woman said, and there’s no there there. The only practical and immediate end is what makes our journey through time better for everyone.

A Political Future

The march of ideologies in our era can lead to a future of alternative destinations. The destination of the journey is — the journey. An endless loop, that. The journey must be made more peaceful and enjoyable and immune from exploitation by the few. By what means? Democracy and science. A secular, one-size-fits-all nation-state, hopefully among globally interdependent states, until we find that the world has achieved the same e pluribus unum.

Alexander the Great in Iraq

Alexander the Great, in the Iraqi part of the world, on the same terrain, defeated the warlords, brigands who swooped down from their mountain refuges to prey on the merchant trains along the roadways. He imposed the ideals of the Greek polis, leaving behind older veterans to police their development. But the tribes eventually reverted to their communal (tribal) order, as some became respected warriors in Alexander’s army. Alexander ultimately failed with the warlords and tribes. So it may be happening today.

As a sidelight, it is the marshes and wetlands of Iraq (Babylonia, Mesopotamia), filled each Spring by the Tigris and Euphrates, that bred the mosquito that finally took the life of Alexander the Great at 32 years, 10 months old. A vindictive Saddam Hussein dried up those wetlands that since have been restored. Our soldiers of the same age are being decimated by things that bite in the night, the sand flies and the stealth bullet’s flight.

Revolutions

Every “society” should fight its own revolution to achieve a government arising from its people. Think of the two and a quarter centuries in which the people of the United States have been building their ship of state, progress in progress. Think of the Iraqi millions having its government wiped off the face of the land, and being told, “Now you have until June 30th to acquire self-government.” Their present is unprecedented. The Germans had centuries of the ideology of “Das Volk”. Their first attempt at democratic society, the Weimar Republic, failed with Hitler’s success. Japan had much in common with German society, and they were natural allies (the “Axis”). Germany went through the stages of denial, etc., while Japan demoted the emperor after the war. Forbear! Forbear!

Nature of “Emergent” for Deliberative Minds

With acceleration in history, exponential growth and increasing technological complication, many more situations a society faces are emergent. That is, many facets of events can be unprecedented. The situation then becomes emergent, requiring rapid adaptation through efficient processes, because the past is not prologue anymore. (In one study I read, Eisenhower’s WWII planning techniques, the group discussion and debate process of all things considered, the hallmark of democracy, proved to be superior to Hitler’s ideological tactics, in the way they managed conferences among war planners.) The lack of planning for the end-game by the President may be evidence that he was inexperienced in war and we all now suffer the trial-and-error ways of his on-the-job learning. Foresight may have helped to deal with the emergent nature of warfare and saved some lives.

The analyses of Tom Friedman have yielded good empirical evidence, testifying to his credibility as a “reliable” “observer”, and constituting the intelligence needed to save us from ideological sink-holes. But who is listening? How many heard Charlie Rose on PBS interview Bob Woodward? How many heard Sen. Joe Biden spell out in detail a rather complete and constructive analysis of our international situation on CSPAN? Yeah, I thought so.

With each war, the dimensions of it change, until now, when the ideologues of terror have been driven underground. They are a cancer on the body politic that has metastasized and become so invasive that a cure is almost impossible without doing damage to healthy tissue.

It seems to some on the one hand that the healthy tissue must mobilize a coalition of all free societies in something like a “million-man march”. A therapeutic injection of more troops! Take charge by overwhelming the Iraqi nation with them. There would be more safety in numbers for the troops. Lock down Iraq. Close the borders. Shakedown, disarm the Iraqis. Out of the peace of that jail build the infrastructures and gradually convert the secular, political culture to civilized, peaceful problem-solving. More troops! Get them from every nation on earth. Go global! Admit the properties of global interdependence. Cost in resources is the one huge problem caused by previous tax policy, other than the problem of now “owning Iraq because we broke it.” There is enormous compassion for the troops working feverishly in the minds of most Americans; it drove the vote in November.

Or on the other hand, some say, get out, leave. As Friedman advised, give the Iraqi leadership a paper and pen and ask them to write down what they want, give it to the United Nations and we leave them in charge. Return the revolution to them. If there were a plan for extrication by the U.S. administration that was compelling, most of us would have little to talk about except to voice exuberant approval.

International Forbearance?

The velvet glove of democratic process worn on the iron fist of military might should now assist, not preempt a national development. Our role should be mature forbearance, patient restraint with infant democracies. We were fortunate to be able to develop our national character (our infant industries) protected by two huge barriers, a luxury most others do not have. This current disturbance of our international equilibrium may be necessary for the coming DECADES to secure our greater safety. No quick fixes here, though office-holders may promise otherwise. But Americans appear to me to be addicted to the drug-poppin’ quick-fix.

Middle-East Community v. Society

The world’s most populous religion should mobilize to conquer that evil element among its proponents. But they cannot! Their “national” identity has developed as a tribal authoritarian theocracy. That is a community marked by deindividuation, shared codes of communication and intolerance of outsiders, not a society marked by division of labor, differentiation among codes of communication, and tolerance of outgroups. In elevating the communal to the societal, both would be altered by having to reach, the one to the other. Otherwise, a nation would be formed around a community. And that is what the terrorists want, a theocracy on the order of the Taliban, and we have seen what that was. Can we afford to ignore communal nations? We didn’t ignore the phenomenon in Afghanistan.

The essential world conflict today is tribalism (community, country) against pluralistic civilization (society, nation). Different communities and sub-cultures within our society are managed by the laws of society and majority rule. The tribes (warlords) in Iraq are sovereign. Their present has ancient precedent, for a society is again trying to come alive and rise to power over the tribes.

On the other hand, Iran is having its struggle, an incipient revolution against the theocratic tribe. How should we assist that battle without preemptive action? What was really preempted in Iraq was the revolution Iraqis themselves should eventually have fought.

Gæa Hypothesis

Should the United Nations become the world’s immune system? What is the Gæa Hypothesis? Is it Mother Earth’s body wisdom? Has Mother Earth been saying, “There are too many people around for me to remain healthy, so I will contrive to rid myself of a good portion until I feel better”? Global warming is the disequilibrium of Gæa fighting back.

Big Government

Stop the ideology against government! “Get the government off our backs”, they say. Nüsse! Government is big, of necessity. Government is the power we “pray” to for the resolution of most of our problems. Without government in nearly every facet of our lives, there would be the anarchy of “rugged individualism”. No more frontiers for “elbow room”.

The Burden of Ideology

The eponym, “chauvinism”, signifies the operation of an ideology that seems to be a great part of people’s lives. One chauvinistic topic is “patriotism”, “super patriotism”, and now an act of Congress.

Ideology is a statement of “truth” based on the charismatic authority of the guru or of a “holy” text.

Do we accept a person’s claim of authority without verifying? Do we accept a traditional idea without some attempt at verification of its truth? Some people become upset when the questions put to the President become too probing. What kind of authority is he given to wield? What is unthinkable? What is unspeakable? What is unimaginable?

The distance is astronomical between most Americans and those terrorists who cut off the head of the American for a videotaped message to America. Are two ideologies butting heads? No. They were cutting off the head of America; there’s no longer the possibility of butting heads to answer, “What do you want?” It becomes our position to say what they want and sociological studies to determine who they are. They speak with the tongue of their atrocities, venom, hate, malevolence, cruel and inhuman evil. The terrorists did not find what they did unspeakable, unthinkable, nor unimaginable. On the other hand, we have American speakers on talk radio showing there are American terrorist counterparts to whom it would not be unspeakable, not unthinkable, nor unimaginable to carpet bomb all those A-rab nations.

Scientists surely should not become ideologues, for their statements should be verifiable (probable or improbable), but do scientists who “believe” in creationism suffer the cognitive dissonance in the conflict between their science and their ideology? If they seem to feel discomfort, as I think they ought, then what they do is go off and create “creation science”, a new ideology to resolve the dissonance.

An ideology is a contrivance of words, is a world that ignores so many other forces that constitute reality. Because the world is made to conform to the idea. The conclusion is given, and the evidence shall conform. The motives are legion. A verbally ordered world leads to the dysfunction of ideology. That world is contrived, not derived — ideology, not fact — a condition in danger of being contrary to fact. Figures don’t lie unless liars figure.

For example, we have had the Atkins “low evidence” (Nutrition Action Health Letter) “revolution”, the Atkins diet run amok among “true believers”, the passionate unknowing who have not adequately deliberated the issue. True believers (Hoffer) is what ideology creates from the statements of a demagogic “authority”. Demagogic, because he actually gave eaters an ideologically based permission to eat what they mostly craved. Demagogs say what the people want to hear. The Atkins ideology has now been discredited to a great extent. (My alternative is the science of Glycemic Load and the Glycemic Index. I am sure I “cured” my adult-onset diabetes with the help of assiduous attention to its prescriptions.)

One of the most notorious ideologies today is the absurdity of Al Qaeda, a mocked-up inner world of evil intentions terrorizing innocents everywhere. The ideology: We are ordered by Allah to destroy all infidels (non-believers). A proper critical apparatus containing the elements of its nature has not been devised nor applied to the phenomenon of the interaction between the ideology of Al Qaida and the principles in the constitutions of free nations subscribing to freedom of speech and religion.

We had World War I. (What ideology lay behind that war? The war to end all wars? What better war to inspire that notion. But they hadn’t seen anything yet!) We had WWII. (What ideology lay behind that war? There was on our side enough evidence in the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor to save that one from any ideology trap with a more benign ideology of righteous patriotism, making the world safe for democracy. However, the ideology of the National Socialists in Germany and among the sons of the Rising Sun and the Kamakazi in the East showed so much reckless, ruthless, fanatical and arbitrary power that many millions suffered and died.) We had Korea. (The ideology? A police action, still with us.) We had Viet Nam. Inherited. (The domino theory?) The gulf war. (Treaty commitments?). Which brings us to the catastrophe of “9-11″, followed by the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine. The Balkan area has settled a bit. The Middle East, with entities like the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, the Madrasas and the tribal order, appear to have much to do with the level of safety we have.

In Iraq, I believe that it is clear that the pretext for our entering that conflict was nothing but an expression of the instigator’s ideology. Pretext and post-text were not the same. Continental drift. Admitted that things change and come to light during a war, but there just had to be some substantive basis to begin with. We now know from Bob Woodward that the instigators did not know the definition of “fact”, but held to rigid, no-intelligence beliefs in a calling from on high, and they have never had doubts!

The boy stood on the burning deck,

eating peanuts by the peck.

The flames rose clear up to his chin,

but he kept cramming peanuts in.

Their’s was a dangerous ideology, having cost the loss of many young people’s lives. They should have written the last act first to have goal valence. But the instigators remain popular among the unknowing. I walk among ostriches and I cannot see their heads.

The Meaning of “Victory”

Victory was defined at the end of WWII, with “unconditional surrender” (the enemy lost) bringing about the cessation of hostilities, in 1945, in Europe and the far East. We also knew when the “cold war” was over with regime change and a replacement, or reformed ideology, with the physical removal of the Berlin wall and the advent of “glasnost” and “perestroika” by Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of publicity, openness and economic reforms. The Korean War halted with a cease-fire in 1953, but proceeds as a cold war with our troops stationed south of the 38^th parallel. The “conflict” in Viet Nam ended with the fall of Saigon in 1975. Our forces withdrew quickly. The enemy won. The conflict in Afghanistan continues with the resurgence of the Taliban.

The conflict in Iraq was a revolutionary war, defined as a people overthrowing an oppressive government, but this “revolution” was fought, not by the oppressed people of Iraq, but by the invading force claiming it to be a war of preemption. The invaders won quickly in an invasion and dash to the capitol. Now the overthrow has become a civil war.

Is there a rule of history that states that in every revolution lies hidden the makings of a civil war, that revolutions are generally followed by civil war? The oppressors are thrown out, but political factions that united to rid the country of the dictator, given a political vacuum, start fighting among themselves for control of the land. The American Revolution was followed by the Civil War that resolved internal issues the people inherited with their hard-won independence from an external totalitarian force.

So we must have “victory”, states the current ideology. Less than victory, success? Less than success, failure? Less than failure, defeat? Less than defeat, shame? They flail about. Go big? Go small? Go long? Go away? Go just over the horizon, watch and wait?

Victory has several degrees. Victory will certainly be less than unconditional surrender with the humiliation of the enemy and war crimes trials. Let us aim for the success like that which grew out of the cold war, a reformed ideology evolving with time from a people who have been given back the revolution that was taken from them by false intelligence and preemption.

The (Pootyparper) Democrats – A Future in Coalition-Building – Re-inventing Democracy

There are cycles in history. We have just seen a change of the party in power. A new cycle is about to begin with Democrats ascendant. A clean slate? Hardly. Let us hope it is not the tabula rasa of the new-born. The Democrats are on a two-year probation, and the executive branch is a lame duck, but the present, Republican-led Congress is not a dead duck, and the Democratic-led Congress may be a ruptured duck.What government needs is obvious.

First, it needs an iron-clad procedure for treating ethical lapses, reporting, investigating, and correcting, relative to a code of accepted behavior for all government servants, top down, what has been called an office of public integrity. The mlitary has its Articles of War, which I heard read to us many years ago. I have taken oaths. I have been sworn in. I have made pledges. Doctors have their Hippocratic Oath, “one of the oldest binding documents in history…. Written in antiquity, its principles are held sacred by doctors to this day.” (Which see: “The Hippocratic Oath Today: Meaningless Relic or Invaluable Moral Guide?” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/doctors/oath_today.html ) Codifying an ethical code and giving it an institutional existence that cannot be corrupted should be the first order of business.

Next, coalition-building. From a periscopic view, setting policy for future action can be a creative leap beyond the trenches of the present, a policy far-sightedness, across party lines. Any appetite for retribution, picking at the scab and breathing hard from years of frustration, should be overridden by the stronger desire for real progressive movement that might set the stage for coming out of probation into the next presidential election.

Why coalitions? Simply, the President, the cabinet and legislators are insufficient to the task, except as political leaders who can figurehead and present the results of discussion. Congresspeople and the President and the cabinet are insufficient as “generators” of policy. Take policy-making out of the so-called “smoke-filled room”! They are only sufficient to convene, support, and oversee coalitions and present results and introduce the legislation. They must have the deliberative mind.

Sources of the Coalitions. The most respected opinions are the authors of book-length emanations of deliberative minds. Some of them can be seen and heard on C-SPAN, Non-fiction Book TV programs regularly. They crowd the airwaves with comprehensive summaries of their scholarship and investigations concerning the problems facing life in the U.S. and on earth. Add to the mix all the scholars and researchers from our great institutions of higher learning who have published on the topic. A third component is the public input through the media and internet. The operations of all the coalitions should be in public. The co-chairmen of each problem-group should be a bi-partisan team from the Congress.

The gathering, in one room, of all those authors coalescing around one of the major issues confronting government could be charged with achieving consensus on the best possible solution to the problem on which they are experts. Democracy wasn’t invented by the United States, but it surely has been developed here to a high degree. That is the magnetic character of this society. But it is time to re-invent our democracy. Life on earth now has become more complicated than ever before. And acceleration in history has made it imperative to be efficiently discovering and implementing solutions. (The pendulum is swinging faster and faster. Growth and change are exponential.) The time is ripe for utilizing our intellectual resources for more than mere criticism of government. Their influence could be magnified a hundredfold through group decision-making and keep us ahead of exponential growth.

The President through the Department of State should be complementing those U.S. work-groups by building coalitions of nations on the topics being studied in the U.S. Those topics are the ones having a global import.

The Problems. The inherited situation is this: (1) U.S. involvement in extremely problematic wars in two Middle-Eastern countries; (2) for U.S., a gigantic budget deficit and an unfavorable balance of trade; (3) globally, the approach of a tipping point in the warming of the climate of earth, with drought and water shortages, deforestation, melting of the ice caps north and south; (4) nationally, natural disaster and environmental-pollution cleanups; (5) energy shortages; (6) pollution (in and from China and elsewhere, and our own); (7) globally, a radical, Islamic terrorist conspiracy to kill all the enemies of Allah; ( rogue nations developing atomic weapons of mass destruction; (9) the religious war between Palestinian Arabs and Iraelis; (10) sub-Saharan genocides, and the AIDS epidemic; (11) the U.S. borders unprotected against illegal immigration and drug cartels; (12) reformation of U.S. health and Social Security programs. There are many more anyone can denominate. (Comments?)
Models. A current example similar to this proposal– we wait with bated breath–is the Iraq Commission, or, Iraq Study Group (Baker and Hamilton). From that model we could build this new democratic invention. I was excited to hear the (now successful) candidate for governor of Colorado say in his campaign debate that he would become one chief executive to govern in just that way.

“If the world would come together and be willing to spend, say, $50 billion over the next five years on improving the state of the world, which projects would yield the greatest net benefits?” That is the question being asked for the convening of the Copenhagen Consensus Conference 2008 meetings. The ten challenges assessed at CC04 were: hunger and malnutrition, climate change, conflicts, financial instability, water and sanitation, subsidies and trade barriers, population:migration, communicable diseases, education, governance, and corruption. See the World Future Society’s, Future Survey, covering an abundance of topics on world problems such as these: a globalized NATO maintaining stability worldwide; the wealthy CEOs earning 350 times the average worker’s pay, up from 122 times in 1990; companies going green; promoting a new ethics for the 21st century; China’s grip on world trade; women’s movements for better treatment; struggles to create a sustainable world.

The Choice: From where I sit,  between the mountains to the west and the plains to the east, the choice is between staying the course with the Republicans on the flat lands to the east, or climbing with the Prograssives the mountain highs to the west.

Deliberative Language

Elected representatives in Congress do not have “conversations”. But they talk in those terms! A quarrel is not a debate. Gossip is not a discussion. An opinion is not evidence. A forum is not a bull session. A talk is not an address. A perpetrator is not a gentleman. A reporter is not a pundit. Argumentation is not quarreling. Conversation is not public speaking. Conversation is not discussion. Converstaion is not argumentation. Conversation is not debating. Conversation is not deliberation.Our government officials represent the will of the people and must be professional communicators. Business managers represent their organizations and must be professional communicators. Professionals subscribe to an organizational set of goals, procedures, and standards, and are masters of the criteria by which professional behavior is to be judged for competence in their field.

In the nomenclature of professional communicators are these words.

Converstions take place over cocktails in a social setting. Conversations are undisciplined, flighty, flying off at any point to a different point of interest. That’s not the place for deliberation!

Discussion is not conversation. Discussion is the heart of deliberation. Discussion is disciplined by a problem-solving process that, when mastered by a group of professionals, flies to a target straight as an arrow. Any conversational descent adds to the inefficiency. However, there are emotional components to a discussion that may sound “conversational” but which are not, which are really goal oriented. Masters (leader) of discussion will know any difference between a conversational and a problem-solving incident, and in any discussion there are many different sorts of leaders (masters).

Debate goes beyond discussion, but grows out of discussion. Debate is a part of deliberation. Discussion is not broken down by strong differences among proposed problem-solutions, but progresses to the need for debate, by which the log jam is cleared up. Debate involves argumentation, or, the phrasing of propositions and the handling of evidence demonstrating the possibility or impossibility of the proposed policy. The whole point is to resolve some problem and to get the group to move on to other problems.

One cloak all deliberators put on is that of the diplomat. “My esteemed colleague… “the honorable representative from …” “the gentlewoman of …” “my worthy opponent…” Such language keeps the focus on a civil tongue and mood and discourse. Differences are intellectual, among civilized people, not of the bloody mob. Conviction is shown in other manners of delivery.

I watched the dilatory Sen. Dole (the woman) talk over and under all her panel mates without regard to the moderator, the clock, the subject— she violated some principles of deliberative mindedness and alienated a substantial number of people. She made one outrageous statement that set alight a firestorm, she knew what she had done, and she began a cover-up, unstoppable tirade that became drowned out by the others. Decorum was lost, everyone was shouting. That from a senator!

The deliberative mind shows some experience with those basic elements of deliberation. Watch for the “deviates”. Honor (vote for) the adherants.

Noting Deliberative and Undeliberative Minds

Nondeliberative

• Sen. John McCain (president wannabe) dissembles and  generally keeps his moistened finger in the air.
• President George Bush. The deliberative mind does not lead to the truculence of “Bring it on!” nor to the boasting of having “read two Shakespeares”, nor to the bull-dog jaws clamped down on  “stay the course”.
• Any other nominees?

Deliberative

• Tom Oliphant applies history.
• Barack Obama applies  life-experience, articulateness and eloquence  (mixing intelligence and passion).
• Al Gore book-length statements on the most critical issue, the health of Gaia. Who better to lead at this time?
• Joe Biden, expert observer has been there, seen it,  knows what to do.

Examples of Deliberative Minds

There are some speakers who have appeared on the talking-heads shows on tv, in such places as Meet the Press, C-SPAN Nonfiction Books TV, etc., who evidence some of the qualities of the deliberative mind. There are some who are among the anti-, non-, un-deliberative mind set, such as all tyrants who keep whipping boys; yes-men, flatterers, or sycophants; cult leaders who rule by charisma and require the worshipful prostration of reverence (proskynesis); and demagogues who say what people want to hear, not what they ought or need to hear (my definition). I believe a president who is the creature of a clique of advisors belongs among the un-deliberative set. His solutions are those of a (self-styled) decider in chief. Solutions are popped out with only a minimal sense of the process that leads to the result.

Said: “the deliberative mind, which learns through effortful processing”

Said: “and the emotions will arise without the interference of the deliberative mind.”

The following are some examplars of the deliberative mind.
Said of Barack Obama:

Link to: “Analysts Discuss Iraq, Poll Numbers, Obama in 2008 (Originally Aired: October 20, 2006)

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:yq5GDTmqlUEJ:www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec06/sb_10-20.html+%22deliberative+mind%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=15

“Political analysts Mark Shields and David Brooks analyze … Democratic Illinois Sen. Barack Obama’s potential presidential run in 2008.

“JIM LEHRER: But summarize why you think this man is so extraordinary, at this stage in his…

“DAVID BROOKS: First of all, he’s the only person maybe in American politics with McCain who generates real excitement, real, real excitement. And Hillary Clinton, to all her credit, does not generate that excitement. So that’s important.

So why does he generate excitement? It’s because he has a deliberative mind. Whenever he sees an issue, he sees all sides of it, and then he works his way through.

“And, you know, I’ve had many conversations with him, and we disagree on most things. But you have a conversation with him, and you feel like he really understands your point of view. And he may differ, but he has a deliberative process that goes on in his mind. [Emphasis added.]

“And I think it’s because of his background. He comes from Kansas. He lived in Chicago. He lived in Hawaii. He lived in the Pacific. He’s got all these things coming through him in his life story, and he’s had to negotiate between them — poverty, Harvard Law School — and so he’s about negotiation.

“And he may be young, but if you have that process going on, I think you’ll be able to magnify the knowledge you have. There, I’ve just done my pay on (ph) to Obama. I mean…”

[NB: Brooks usually represents the Republican or conservative half of the discussion, along with Mark Shields for the other half.]

Said of John Yarmuth:

“He believes in fairness and openness and independence. He doesn’t assume he’s right every time, and he’s more than willing to listen to opposing points of view. He has a deliberative mind [Emphasis added], and he’ll change it if your argument is better. We’ve seen him do it.

“When John started LEO in 1990, one of the paper’s basic tenets was the need to listen to opposing views. To this day, LEO believes it’s important to publish opinions that run counter to our admittedly liberal bent. If we’re criticized in the process, that’s healthy.

”But this sort of thinking has gotten pushed out of our current political system. Anyone who shows an inclination to cooperate with someone from “the other side” pays a price from his or her “own side.” This creates a system that does not — cannot — work for the common good.”

Said of Ron Dellums:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California’s 9th district. Term of office: 1971-1998. Political party: Democratic Party. Born: November 24, 1935. Current Occupation: lobbyist, mayor-elect of Oakland, California.

“A creative, piercing, probing, incisive, thought-provoking, inspiring, charismatic, careful, considerate and deliberative mind [Emphasis added.]. The mind to stand up when others sit down. The mind to act when others refuse to act. The mind to stand even when you stand alone, battered, bruised and scorned, but still standing. Standing on principle, standing tall and standing for the people.”

“Illegal” Immigration

I don’t know if it’s “entrapment” or “complicity”. Those who would cross our national boundaries without the legal documentation have been enticed into doing an illegal act (1) by employers who will look the other way and hire them; and (2) by the U.S. government that eased the way for them to enter by not enforcing the boundaries set in law to funnel them into a legal port of entry. The employers and the government are complicit in the crime of illegal immigration. The federal government is the law-breaker by default. The differing economic conditions on each side of the border set up the conditions for entrapment. I have not read the covering law. Our representatives, legislative, executive and judicial, are our servants. It seems to me that we all share the guilt by proxy.

Is it both a form of entrapment and  complicity as well? Or one but not the other? Or neither?  What is the legalese answer to the use of those terms in this case?

Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation

In the book’s every paragraph, ammunition for the firing squad made up of all unbelievers, and a volley of withering fire to the body, head and heart of every Christian true-believer. (That’s a metaphor, son.) The davastation will all be in the mind and spirit of the true-believer evangelicals. Read it if you dare, Christian: Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation ( A small, short book, a quick read. N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. 91pp. $6.95)Can you imagine their disgust? Take away their salvation candy and eerie raptures, what remains? If they replace that with a pause between stimulus and response for the intellectual functions of deliberative thought, like reading that book, our body politic might generate citizens more capable of producing better leaders, an end to dysfunctional hypocrites, and people more attuned to the demands of a world growing in complexity. The writings of ancient “holy” men should not be elevated above our more informed contemporaries. READ THE BOOK!

I read it with a pbs video in mind, about black holes in the universe. Stand the devout Christian up next to the science that is generating that awsome view of the universe—my oh my, what a stark contrast between their 6,000 years and the astrophysicist’s 5,000 million years since the “big bang”, with 3,000 million years remaining to continue human evolution, before the “big crunch”. (Hawking) Just “a two seconds ago” (in time relative to the Earth’s age) the Catholic Church declared the Earth not flat.

Reform Campaign Ads

Reform of campaigning tactics that make allegations about an opponent is certainly in order. The election process has been corrupted. The character of winners in at least of two of the three three branches become suspect going in. How reform?

For each election, a bipartisan panel of investigators, equal numbers from each party, should be set up to review each proposed campaign ad, to verify the content for its “truth”. The substantiation for each claim against the opponent should be provided by the ad’s makers, along with copies of the sources referenced. It’s just basically the good scholarship that would be required of any junior high school “journalists” for their media. The proposed ad must bear the stamp of approval of the election-ethics panel before the ad can be given to the media.

The Deliberative Mind

I/we will be so happy to see the end, next Tuesday, to the elections. The attack ads have attacked us as well. The sad fact is, they say the ads work. Doesn’t that reflect shame on the electorate? The so-called “citizens” who can be driven by something other than a brain that has been prepared for making intelligent decisions? Yes. The “other” thing is probably an ideology impervious to reason, critical thinking, knowledge, and susceptible to demagoguery, prejudice, custom and habit.Two candidates for governor in Colorado debated the other day. I discerned a critical difference between them, and I hope others could see it as well.

The Republican candidate laid out his case. He was a good man, with a large family, tied to the state–he’d just bought his burial plots here. He was a dairy farmer and held many management positions in his business life, a horseman who believed he sat tall in the saddle and kept a tight grip on the reins. I saw the gist being he was a strong manager who would take that approach to the chief state executive’s office.

On the Democratic side, the candidate was also a good man with a large family of generations here. He is the chief attorney for the state and has prosecuted in thousands of cases. He said he would do what politicians must do, look to the future with the policies he would set and he would do that by consulting with the top brains in the state on each issue, and convene as many as he could find to discuss the problems confronting the people and government of this state and solve them.

The main function of leadership is seen in each portrayal from two different perspectives. Substantive differences of style, operational differences in procedures.

In my view, the contrast is the difference between progressive and conservative approaches. The one says I am a strong central manager, the chief decider, as I worked in business to be successful with my hands holding a tight rein. The other says we must all participate and deliberate and solve our problems working together toward a consensus (generally accepted agreement) on what policies will lead to a bright future for the people of this state.

That’s what I heard. I heard the basic autocratic approach up against the basic democratic approach.

The former will appeal to those who want to elect a person to do his job making decisions he thinks best for the people of this state and let me pursue my own ends. “That’s what we elect him for. Don’t bother me with all the details; just get it done. I have my own affairs that concern me.”

The latter will appeal to those who need to feel that we have a participatory democracy, who need to know the details of proposals, the problem analysis, the possible alternative solutions, the pros and cons of each, the best of all possible solutions, and how that conclusion will be implemented. And the whole process was originated and overseen by the best and brightest thinkers from all walks of life, as well as being reported to the mass media which will keep all citizens informed.

We have a president of the U.S.A. who behaved more as an autocrat, a (self-styled) decider-in-chief. The manager who calls all the “shots”.

In one parallel demonstration, the difference between Adolf Hitler and General Eisenhower (WWII) was detailed in one study I read concluding that where Hitler dictated to his generals and armed forces what they were to do, overriding much of their input, Gen. Eisenhower carried out top-level discussions among all his generals and their subordinates to settle the battle plans. The discussion method contributed to the defeat of the dictatorial method.

CONCLUSION

We must be certain to elect people who give evidence of having a deliberative mind, for that, to me, is the chief qualification for leadership.