More on the topic of tolerance, which I suggest is the core animating principle of the U.S. Constitution in my working book, "Toward a More Tolerant Constitution - Of, By, and For the People"....
From Walter Isaacson's much-lauded new biography on Albert Einstein (another on my holiday wish-list of books):
“[Einstein's] success came from questioning conventional wisdom and marveling at mysteries that struck others as mundane. This led him to embrace a morality and politics based on respect for free minds, free spirits, and free individuals. Tyranny repulsed him, and he saw tolerance not simply as a sweet virtue but as a necessary condition for a creative society. ‘It is important to foster individuality,’ he said, ‘for only the individual can produce new ideas.’…"
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query more on tolerance. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query more on tolerance. Sort by date Show all posts
Monday, December 31, 2007
Sunday, December 30, 2007
On Tolerance: Christopher Hitchens and "God is Not Great"
The title of a book I'm currently working on is (something like) "Toward a More Tolerant Constitution - Of, By, and For the People" basically arguing that governmental TOLERANCE of individual rights is a (if not the) core animating principle of the U.S. Constitution.
In a related context, Christopher Hitchens hits the nail on the head in his 2007 National Book Award finalist, "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" (one of my holiday wish-list books):
"[T]he mildest criticism of religion is also the most radical and the most devastating one. Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did. Still less can they hope to tell us the 'meaning' of later discoveries and developments which were, when they began, either obstructed by their religions or denounced by them.
And yet - the believers still claim to know! Not just to know, but to know everything. Not just to know that god exists, and that he created and supervised the whole enterprise, but also to know what 'he' demands of us - from our diet to our observances to our sexual morality. In other words, in a vast and complicated discussion where we know more and more about less and less, yet can still hope for some enlightenment as we proceed, one faction - itself composed of mutually warring factions - has the sheer arrogance to tell us that we already have all the essential information we need...."
"[F]aith ... is the beginning - but not the end - of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning - but by no means the end - of all disputes about the good life and the just city. Religious faith is, precisely because we are still-evolving creatures, ineradicable. It will never die out, or at least not until we get over our fear of death, and of the dark, and of the unknown, and of each other.
"For this reason, I would not prohibit [religious faith] even if I could. Very generous of me, you may say. But will the religious grant me the same indulgence? I ask because there is a real and serious difference between me and my religious friends, and the real and serious friends are sufficiently honest to admit it. I would be quite content to go to their children's bar mitsvahs, to marvel at their Gothic cathedrals, to 'respect' their belief that the Koran was dictated, though exclusively in Arabic, to an illiterate merchant, or to interest myself in Wicca and Hindu and Jain consolations.
"And as it happens, I will continue to do this without insisting on the polite reciprocal condition - which is that they in turn leave me alone. But this, religion is ultimately incapable of doing. As I write these words, and as you read them, people of faith are in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all the hard-won human attainments.... Religion poisons everything."
How, then, does this passage from Hitchens' new book relate to my own book project? It relates in that the U.S. Constitution was specifically designed as nothing more than a device to prevent others, who claim to know everything under the guise of governmental authority, from destroying all "the hard-won human attainments," whether they be matters of religious freedom of the sort Hitchens speaks, or, more broadly, other precious individual liberties. As Justice Brandeis said in 1928, “The makers of our Constitution … conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.”
In other words, so long as my beliefs and actions cause no direct harm to others, the Constitution requires the government to "respect" - i.e., to tolerate - those beliefs and actions; in short, any law, regulation, or other government action that fails to so tolerate me and my beliefs and actions is unconstitutional.
The religious focus of Hitchens' book is relevant as well in light of the increasingly dominant - and inappropriate - role religion has come to play in American politics. For evidence, we need only look so far as the disastrous courses on which our evangelical president has steered the nation largely on the basis of his own religious dead-reckoning; and sadly, if the groveling comments toward the religious right of most of the current presidential candidates are any indication, it appears the situation is not soon to change. If this is so, it will be all the more incumbent upon ordinary Americans to speak out loudly and forcefully in protection of the hard-won constitutional liberties.
In a related context, Christopher Hitchens hits the nail on the head in his 2007 National Book Award finalist, "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" (one of my holiday wish-list books):
"[T]he mildest criticism of religion is also the most radical and the most devastating one. Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did. Still less can they hope to tell us the 'meaning' of later discoveries and developments which were, when they began, either obstructed by their religions or denounced by them.
And yet - the believers still claim to know! Not just to know, but to know everything. Not just to know that god exists, and that he created and supervised the whole enterprise, but also to know what 'he' demands of us - from our diet to our observances to our sexual morality. In other words, in a vast and complicated discussion where we know more and more about less and less, yet can still hope for some enlightenment as we proceed, one faction - itself composed of mutually warring factions - has the sheer arrogance to tell us that we already have all the essential information we need...."
"[F]aith ... is the beginning - but not the end - of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning - but by no means the end - of all disputes about the good life and the just city. Religious faith is, precisely because we are still-evolving creatures, ineradicable. It will never die out, or at least not until we get over our fear of death, and of the dark, and of the unknown, and of each other.
"For this reason, I would not prohibit [religious faith] even if I could. Very generous of me, you may say. But will the religious grant me the same indulgence? I ask because there is a real and serious difference between me and my religious friends, and the real and serious friends are sufficiently honest to admit it. I would be quite content to go to their children's bar mitsvahs, to marvel at their Gothic cathedrals, to 'respect' their belief that the Koran was dictated, though exclusively in Arabic, to an illiterate merchant, or to interest myself in Wicca and Hindu and Jain consolations.
"And as it happens, I will continue to do this without insisting on the polite reciprocal condition - which is that they in turn leave me alone. But this, religion is ultimately incapable of doing. As I write these words, and as you read them, people of faith are in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all the hard-won human attainments.... Religion poisons everything."
How, then, does this passage from Hitchens' new book relate to my own book project? It relates in that the U.S. Constitution was specifically designed as nothing more than a device to prevent others, who claim to know everything under the guise of governmental authority, from destroying all "the hard-won human attainments," whether they be matters of religious freedom of the sort Hitchens speaks, or, more broadly, other precious individual liberties. As Justice Brandeis said in 1928, “The makers of our Constitution … conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.”
In other words, so long as my beliefs and actions cause no direct harm to others, the Constitution requires the government to "respect" - i.e., to tolerate - those beliefs and actions; in short, any law, regulation, or other government action that fails to so tolerate me and my beliefs and actions is unconstitutional.
The religious focus of Hitchens' book is relevant as well in light of the increasingly dominant - and inappropriate - role religion has come to play in American politics. For evidence, we need only look so far as the disastrous courses on which our evangelical president has steered the nation largely on the basis of his own religious dead-reckoning; and sadly, if the groveling comments toward the religious right of most of the current presidential candidates are any indication, it appears the situation is not soon to change. If this is so, it will be all the more incumbent upon ordinary Americans to speak out loudly and forcefully in protection of the hard-won constitutional liberties.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
"Radicals In Their Own TIme" - Introduction & Selected Excerpts
I've just posted here the Introduction and excerpts from three chapters in my forthcoming book (Cambridge University Press), "Radicals in Their Own Time: Four Hundred Years of Struggle for Liberty and Equal Justice in America," on my Berkeley Press Selected Works page (http://works.bepress.com/michael_lawrence/).
Here are the first few paragraphs from the Introduction:
In teaching history, there should be extensive discussions of personalities who
benefited mankind through independence of character and judgment.
-Albert Einstein, 1953
America in the twenty-first century exists in a perpetual Dickensian sort-of “best
of times, worst of times” state when it comes to putting into practice the sacred principles
of liberty and equal justice. On one hand, the once-unthinkable occurred in November
2008 when the nation – a land that had permitted and promoted human slavery for more
than half of its four hundred year history - elected an African-American man president.
The symbolic importance alone of placing Barack Obama at the pinnacle of power in the
United States, given its sordid past practices, cannot be understated. Yet, on the very
same day, a majority of voters in the most populous state in the union, California, voted
to deny thousands of their fellow citizens, gay Americans, the equal right to marry. The
California experience is only one of numerous legislative-judicial struggles beginning to
play out on the issue of gay marriage in other states around the nation.
Taking the long view, if history is any guide (and it is), there is little doubt the
discriminatory laws against gay marriage will eventually end up on history’s scrapheap.
The current battles will soon go the way of those of some fifty years ago involving
interracial marriage, during which one Virginia trial court, in upholding the state’s antimiscegenation statute, reasoned: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference
with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he
separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” Most Americans
today would view such language with a mixture of shock and disbelief - but it was not
long ago that legislative majorities in sixteen states gave official voice to such ignorant
biases.
Fifty years from now, the current arguments against gay marriage will seem
similarly archaic. As the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. limned, “the arc of the moral
universe is long; but it bends toward justice.” For all its faults, the United States
Constitution has, over time, provided a one-way ratchet toward greater, not lesser, liberty
and equal justice – every constitutional amendment but one (the eighteenth, itself
repealed by the twenty-first just fifteen years later), for example, has, if anything,
expanded Americans’ freedoms.
America’s story is remarkable: a Nation, sprouting from the seeds of
Enlightenment principles where “tolerance was a moral virtue, even a duty; no longer
merely the prerogative of calculating monarchs, but a fundamental element of the ‘rights
of man.’” For the first time in history a people - coming together toward the common
goal of liberty and equal justice, and clearly cognizant of human nature’s split personality
between good (freedom) and evil (tyranny and oppression) - created a government
explicitly designed to resolve the tension in favor of freedom.
That is the myth, anyway. But all is not well in the land of milk and honey; for
America’s constitutional structure has failed to thwart government’s moves to the darker
side: its shameful history of slavery and apartheid; its past oppression of women; its
systematic subjugation of Native Americans in violation of sacred treaty promises; its
pervasive discrimination against immigrants and homosexuals; and, among other currentday
repressions, its curtailments of civil liberties and inexcusable use of torture in the ill-considered “war on terror.” Consider also American geopolitics of the last hundred years: World War I Censorship (Congress’s and President Wilson’s 1917-1918 Espionage and Alien Acts imposing egregious punishments on political speech); World War II Nativism (the President’s authorizing the military to force 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of them American citizens, from their homes and to quarantine them in internment camps for nearly three years; Cold War McCarthyism (powerful committees of both the United States Senate and House of Representatives conducting modern-day witch-hunts of thousands of American citizens accused of having communist sympathies); and Millennial Cheneyism (the executive branch aggressively
exceeding long-accepted constitutional limits on its power - even while operating in a
system that separates powers in order to provide checks and balances on each co-equal
branch).
In each case, prejudice, greed, and political expediency took hold before being
beaten back – for the time being. It is a constant struggle. As much as America has
accomplished in advancing humankind’s perpetual quest for greater Freedom, it has
never completely lived up to its own promise, for whatever reason – whether because of
bitter class wars (Howard Zinn), its economically-motivated Constitution (Charles
Beard), or some combination of these or other factors.
Which viewpoint more accurately describes the true America - the mythic
common-interest pursuit-of-equal-liberty view; the grittier class-warfare explanation; or
the more cynical economic-interest rationale? The reality is that there are elements of
accuracy in each. And it is useful to keep them all in mind: Lest we become swept-up in
misty patriotic myth, we should recall America’s ignoble history of injustices and
intolerance; or, conversely, lest we lose hope, we should remember that the myth and
partial reality of America as beacon of freedom has for centuries truly inspired millions
around the world. In the end, the goals represented in the positive myth are worth
fighting for, both idealistically and practically, for they advance our individual and
collective humanity – and offer a model of ambition, idealism and hope for future
generations.
...
Here are the first few paragraphs from the Introduction:
In teaching history, there should be extensive discussions of personalities who
benefited mankind through independence of character and judgment.
-Albert Einstein, 1953
America in the twenty-first century exists in a perpetual Dickensian sort-of “best
of times, worst of times” state when it comes to putting into practice the sacred principles
of liberty and equal justice. On one hand, the once-unthinkable occurred in November
2008 when the nation – a land that had permitted and promoted human slavery for more
than half of its four hundred year history - elected an African-American man president.
The symbolic importance alone of placing Barack Obama at the pinnacle of power in the
United States, given its sordid past practices, cannot be understated. Yet, on the very
same day, a majority of voters in the most populous state in the union, California, voted
to deny thousands of their fellow citizens, gay Americans, the equal right to marry. The
California experience is only one of numerous legislative-judicial struggles beginning to
play out on the issue of gay marriage in other states around the nation.
Taking the long view, if history is any guide (and it is), there is little doubt the
discriminatory laws against gay marriage will eventually end up on history’s scrapheap.
The current battles will soon go the way of those of some fifty years ago involving
interracial marriage, during which one Virginia trial court, in upholding the state’s antimiscegenation statute, reasoned: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference
with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he
separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” Most Americans
today would view such language with a mixture of shock and disbelief - but it was not
long ago that legislative majorities in sixteen states gave official voice to such ignorant
biases.
Fifty years from now, the current arguments against gay marriage will seem
similarly archaic. As the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. limned, “the arc of the moral
universe is long; but it bends toward justice.” For all its faults, the United States
Constitution has, over time, provided a one-way ratchet toward greater, not lesser, liberty
and equal justice – every constitutional amendment but one (the eighteenth, itself
repealed by the twenty-first just fifteen years later), for example, has, if anything,
expanded Americans’ freedoms.
America’s story is remarkable: a Nation, sprouting from the seeds of
Enlightenment principles where “tolerance was a moral virtue, even a duty; no longer
merely the prerogative of calculating monarchs, but a fundamental element of the ‘rights
of man.’” For the first time in history a people - coming together toward the common
goal of liberty and equal justice, and clearly cognizant of human nature’s split personality
between good (freedom) and evil (tyranny and oppression) - created a government
explicitly designed to resolve the tension in favor of freedom.
That is the myth, anyway. But all is not well in the land of milk and honey; for
America’s constitutional structure has failed to thwart government’s moves to the darker
side: its shameful history of slavery and apartheid; its past oppression of women; its
systematic subjugation of Native Americans in violation of sacred treaty promises; its
pervasive discrimination against immigrants and homosexuals; and, among other currentday
repressions, its curtailments of civil liberties and inexcusable use of torture in the ill-considered “war on terror.” Consider also American geopolitics of the last hundred years: World War I Censorship (Congress’s and President Wilson’s 1917-1918 Espionage and Alien Acts imposing egregious punishments on political speech); World War II Nativism (the President’s authorizing the military to force 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of them American citizens, from their homes and to quarantine them in internment camps for nearly three years; Cold War McCarthyism (powerful committees of both the United States Senate and House of Representatives conducting modern-day witch-hunts of thousands of American citizens accused of having communist sympathies); and Millennial Cheneyism (the executive branch aggressively
exceeding long-accepted constitutional limits on its power - even while operating in a
system that separates powers in order to provide checks and balances on each co-equal
branch).
In each case, prejudice, greed, and political expediency took hold before being
beaten back – for the time being. It is a constant struggle. As much as America has
accomplished in advancing humankind’s perpetual quest for greater Freedom, it has
never completely lived up to its own promise, for whatever reason – whether because of
bitter class wars (Howard Zinn), its economically-motivated Constitution (Charles
Beard), or some combination of these or other factors.
Which viewpoint more accurately describes the true America - the mythic
common-interest pursuit-of-equal-liberty view; the grittier class-warfare explanation; or
the more cynical economic-interest rationale? The reality is that there are elements of
accuracy in each. And it is useful to keep them all in mind: Lest we become swept-up in
misty patriotic myth, we should recall America’s ignoble history of injustices and
intolerance; or, conversely, lest we lose hope, we should remember that the myth and
partial reality of America as beacon of freedom has for centuries truly inspired millions
around the world. In the end, the goals represented in the positive myth are worth
fighting for, both idealistically and practically, for they advance our individual and
collective humanity – and offer a model of ambition, idealism and hope for future
generations.
...
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Obama's Victory - What it Means
Reflections the morning after Barack Obama's historic victory - in what amounts to nothing less than a national catharsis.
What's most moving to me is to think of what this means to all of those within and outside of the United States who have long felt disenfranchised or oppressed by government tyranny. The United States was founded 232 years ago and the Constitution framed 219 years ago as a slave-holding country - and now a son of the formerly-enslaved peoples will be president of the United States. Amazing, ... and incredible. It redeems one's hope that America is not destined to go the way charted for it by George W. Bush and Richard Cheney for the past eight years, where torture is authorized and individual liberty stolen by overzealous government.
And what about overseas? It's deeply moving to see the images of celebration around the world in response to Obama's victory. America has long been a beacon of hope for people around the world, and its image has been severely tarnished in recent years. But the fact that the American people can elect an African American, a son of a Muslim, goes a long way to beginning to restore a bit of America's luster. It is possible for reason, and tolerance, to prevail; instead of arbitrary, meaningless judgments based on skin color, religion or the like.
The New York Times reports from Gaza this morning, in "For Many Abroad, An Ideal Renewed":
"From far away, this is how it looks: There is a country out there where tens of millions of white Christians, voting freely, select as their leader a black man of modest origin, the son of a Muslim. There is a place on Earth — call it America — where such a thing happens.
"Even where the United States is held in special contempt, like here in this benighted Palestinian coastal strip, the “glorious epic of Barack Obama,” as the leftist French editor Jean Daniel calls it, makes America — the idea as much as the actual place — stand again, perhaps only fleetingly, for limitless possibility.
“It allows us all to dream a little,” said Oswaldo Calvo, 58, a Venezuelan political activist in Caracas, in a comment echoed to correspondents of The New York Times on four continents in the days leading up to the election.
"Tristram Hunt, a British historian, put it this way: Mr. Obama “brings the narrative that everyone wants to return to — that America is the land of extraordinary opportunity and possibility, where miracles happen.”
"But wonder is almost overwhelmed by relief. Mr. Obama’s election offers most non-Americans a sense that the imperial power capable of doing such good and such harm — a country that, they complain, preached justice but tortured its captives, launched a disastrous war in Iraq, turned its back on the environment and greedily dragged the world into economic chaos — saw the errors of its ways over the past eight years and shifted course.
"They say the country that weakened democratic forces abroad through a tireless but often ineffective campaign for democracy — dismissing results it found unsavory, cutting deals with dictators it needed as allies in its other battles — was now shining a transformative beacon with its own democratic exercise.
"It would be hard to overstate how fervently vast stretches of the globe wanted the election to turn out as it did to repudiate the Bush administration and its policies. Poll after poll in country after country showed only a few — Israel, Georgia, the Philippines — favoring a victory for Senator John McCain.
"“Since Bush came to power it’s all bam, bam, bam on the Arabs,” asserted Fathi Abdel Hamid, 40, as he sat in a Cairo coffee house.
"The world’s view of an Obama presidency presents a paradox. His election embodies what many consider unique about the United States — yet America’s sense of its own specialness, of its destiny and mission, has driven it astray, they say. They want Mr. Obama, the beneficiary and exemplar of American exceptionalism, to act like everyone else, only better, to shift American policy and somehow to project both humility and leadership.
...
"Such contradictory demands and expectations may reflect, in part, the unusual makeup of a man of mixed race and origin whose life and upbringing have touched several continents.
"“People feel he is a part of them because he has this multiracial, multiethnic and multinational dimension,” said Philippe Sands, a British international lawyer and author who travels frequently, adding that people find some thread of their own hopes and ideals in Mr. Obama. “He represents, for people in so many different communities and cultures, a personal connection. There is an immigrant component and a minority component.”
"Francis Nyamnjoh, a Cameroonian novelist and social scientist, said he saw Mr. Obama less as a black man than “as a successful negotiator of identity margins.”
"His ability to inhabit so many categories mirrors the African experience. Mr. Nyamnjoh said that for America to choose as its citizen in chief such a skillful straddler of global identities could not help but transform the nation’s image, making it once again the screen upon which the hopes and ambitions of the world are projected.
"Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at the People’s University of China, said Mr. Obama’s background, particularly his upbringing in Indonesia, made him suited to understanding the problems facing the world’s poorer nations.
"He and others say they hope the next American president will see their place more firmly within the community of nations, engaging in what Jairam Ramesh, junior commerce minister in the Indian government, called “genuine multilateralism and not in muscular unilateralism.”
Assuming Mr. Obama does play by international rules more fully, as he has promised, can his government live up to all the expectations?
"“We have so many hopes and wishes that he will never be able to fulfill them,” said Susanne Grieshaber, 40, an art adviser in Berlin who was one of 200,000 Germans to attend a speech by Mr. Obama there in July. She cited action to protect the environment, reducing the use of force and helping the less fortunate. In essence, she wants Mr. Obama to make his country more like hers. But she is sober. “I’m preparing myself for the fact that peace and happiness are not going to suddenly break out,” she said.
...
"“Definitely, this will improve America’s image in Russia,” said Sergey M. Rogov, director of the Institute for U.S.A. and Canada Studies in Moscow. “There was this perception before of widespread racism in America, deeply rooted racism.”
...
"So foreigners are watching closely, hoping that despite what they consider the hypocrisies and inconsistencies, the nation they once imagined would stand as a model for the future will, with greater sensitivity and less force, help solve the world’s problems."
It is indeed a new, more hopeful, day in America - and in the world - today.
What's most moving to me is to think of what this means to all of those within and outside of the United States who have long felt disenfranchised or oppressed by government tyranny. The United States was founded 232 years ago and the Constitution framed 219 years ago as a slave-holding country - and now a son of the formerly-enslaved peoples will be president of the United States. Amazing, ... and incredible. It redeems one's hope that America is not destined to go the way charted for it by George W. Bush and Richard Cheney for the past eight years, where torture is authorized and individual liberty stolen by overzealous government.
And what about overseas? It's deeply moving to see the images of celebration around the world in response to Obama's victory. America has long been a beacon of hope for people around the world, and its image has been severely tarnished in recent years. But the fact that the American people can elect an African American, a son of a Muslim, goes a long way to beginning to restore a bit of America's luster. It is possible for reason, and tolerance, to prevail; instead of arbitrary, meaningless judgments based on skin color, religion or the like.
The New York Times reports from Gaza this morning, in "For Many Abroad, An Ideal Renewed":
"From far away, this is how it looks: There is a country out there where tens of millions of white Christians, voting freely, select as their leader a black man of modest origin, the son of a Muslim. There is a place on Earth — call it America — where such a thing happens.
"Even where the United States is held in special contempt, like here in this benighted Palestinian coastal strip, the “glorious epic of Barack Obama,” as the leftist French editor Jean Daniel calls it, makes America — the idea as much as the actual place — stand again, perhaps only fleetingly, for limitless possibility.
“It allows us all to dream a little,” said Oswaldo Calvo, 58, a Venezuelan political activist in Caracas, in a comment echoed to correspondents of The New York Times on four continents in the days leading up to the election.
"Tristram Hunt, a British historian, put it this way: Mr. Obama “brings the narrative that everyone wants to return to — that America is the land of extraordinary opportunity and possibility, where miracles happen.”
"But wonder is almost overwhelmed by relief. Mr. Obama’s election offers most non-Americans a sense that the imperial power capable of doing such good and such harm — a country that, they complain, preached justice but tortured its captives, launched a disastrous war in Iraq, turned its back on the environment and greedily dragged the world into economic chaos — saw the errors of its ways over the past eight years and shifted course.
"They say the country that weakened democratic forces abroad through a tireless but often ineffective campaign for democracy — dismissing results it found unsavory, cutting deals with dictators it needed as allies in its other battles — was now shining a transformative beacon with its own democratic exercise.
"It would be hard to overstate how fervently vast stretches of the globe wanted the election to turn out as it did to repudiate the Bush administration and its policies. Poll after poll in country after country showed only a few — Israel, Georgia, the Philippines — favoring a victory for Senator John McCain.
"“Since Bush came to power it’s all bam, bam, bam on the Arabs,” asserted Fathi Abdel Hamid, 40, as he sat in a Cairo coffee house.
"The world’s view of an Obama presidency presents a paradox. His election embodies what many consider unique about the United States — yet America’s sense of its own specialness, of its destiny and mission, has driven it astray, they say. They want Mr. Obama, the beneficiary and exemplar of American exceptionalism, to act like everyone else, only better, to shift American policy and somehow to project both humility and leadership.
...
"Such contradictory demands and expectations may reflect, in part, the unusual makeup of a man of mixed race and origin whose life and upbringing have touched several continents.
"“People feel he is a part of them because he has this multiracial, multiethnic and multinational dimension,” said Philippe Sands, a British international lawyer and author who travels frequently, adding that people find some thread of their own hopes and ideals in Mr. Obama. “He represents, for people in so many different communities and cultures, a personal connection. There is an immigrant component and a minority component.”
"Francis Nyamnjoh, a Cameroonian novelist and social scientist, said he saw Mr. Obama less as a black man than “as a successful negotiator of identity margins.”
"His ability to inhabit so many categories mirrors the African experience. Mr. Nyamnjoh said that for America to choose as its citizen in chief such a skillful straddler of global identities could not help but transform the nation’s image, making it once again the screen upon which the hopes and ambitions of the world are projected.
"Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at the People’s University of China, said Mr. Obama’s background, particularly his upbringing in Indonesia, made him suited to understanding the problems facing the world’s poorer nations.
"He and others say they hope the next American president will see their place more firmly within the community of nations, engaging in what Jairam Ramesh, junior commerce minister in the Indian government, called “genuine multilateralism and not in muscular unilateralism.”
Assuming Mr. Obama does play by international rules more fully, as he has promised, can his government live up to all the expectations?
"“We have so many hopes and wishes that he will never be able to fulfill them,” said Susanne Grieshaber, 40, an art adviser in Berlin who was one of 200,000 Germans to attend a speech by Mr. Obama there in July. She cited action to protect the environment, reducing the use of force and helping the less fortunate. In essence, she wants Mr. Obama to make his country more like hers. But she is sober. “I’m preparing myself for the fact that peace and happiness are not going to suddenly break out,” she said.
...
"“Definitely, this will improve America’s image in Russia,” said Sergey M. Rogov, director of the Institute for U.S.A. and Canada Studies in Moscow. “There was this perception before of widespread racism in America, deeply rooted racism.”
...
"So foreigners are watching closely, hoping that despite what they consider the hypocrisies and inconsistencies, the nation they once imagined would stand as a model for the future will, with greater sensitivity and less force, help solve the world’s problems."
It is indeed a new, more hopeful, day in America - and in the world - today.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Observations on President Barack Obama's Inauguration and Inaugural Address
Some observations on this amazing day of Barack Obama's Inauguration:
Chief Justice John Roberts chose a bad time, in front of millions (billions?) of people watching around the world, to mess up his recitation of the oath of office, saying: "I Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear" [Obama repeats], "that I will execute the office of the President to the United States faithfully," [Obama repeats, "that I will ...", then nods & waits for Roberts to correct himself, which he does, prompting, now accurately, "faithfully execute the office ..."], after which Obama too messes it up by placing "faithfully" at the end of the phrase, saying, "execute the office of the President to the United States faithfully." Oh well....
It was most refreshing to hear President Obama say in his Inaugural Address, "Our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers." How nice to hear acknowledgement of non-believers. For too long they have been outcast in this nation, which officially proclaims "in God We Trust," even though the First Amendment prohibits government establishment of religion.
Other memorable points from the speech:
-recognition of the significance of his election: "[It is remarkable that] a man whose father less than sixty years ago, might not have been served in a local restaurant, can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath. So let us mark this day of remembrance, of who we are, and how far we have traveled."
American character & challenge: "Those values upon which our success depends - honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is of us now is a new era of responsibility."
-appeal to reason & progressive government: "We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise healthcare's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories, and we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age."
-Hope: "Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions; who suggest that the system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short, for they have forgotten what this country has already done. What free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage. What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them; that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply."
-appeal to the Muslim world: "To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy."
-appeal to despotic leaders: "To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit, and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history. But that we will extend a hand, if you are willing to unclench your fist."
-repudiations of the Bush/Cheney approach: "As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers, faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man; a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expediency's sake." And: "Those of us who manage the public's dollars will ... do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government"
-appeal to the world of America's leadership: "To all the other peoples and governments that are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is the friend of each nation and of every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity. And we are ready to lead once more."
-American power & humility: "Earlier generations ... understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do what we please. Instead they knew that our power grows through its prudent use. Our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering quality of our humility and restraint. We are the keepers of this legacy."
And last, Reverend Joseph Lowry's inspirational words in the benediction summed up the mood of the day perfectly: "Help us to work for that day when nation shall not lift up sword against nation; when tanks will be beaten into tractors; ... when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.... In the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day, when black will not be asked to get back; when brown can stick around; when yellow will be mellow; when the red man can get ahead man; and when white would embrace what is right. Let all those who do love justice and mercy, say 'Amen.' Say 'Amen'; and 'Amen.'"
Amen.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Old (Mar.23,2005): Congress Out of Bounds on Schiavo Case
(This OpEd was written on March 23, 2005.)
To the editors:
There’s no getting around it - the United States Congress is out of control. Its current intervention in the Terri Schiavo case is only the latest example of how uncomprehending Congress is of the proper role of the legislative branch in our constitutional design; and of the proper role of government in general vis-à-vis the private individual.
Congress’s intervention is highly inappropriate. First, Florida state courts have determined repeatedly under the evidentiary standard enacted into law by the Florida state legislature (clear and convincing evidence) that Terri Schiavo would wish not to be maintained in a persistent vegetative state; second, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized the fundamental right of individuals to avoid unwanted medical treatment. Congress, by interfering with what the courts and legislature of the sovereign state of Florida have determined in their efforts to respect an individual’s fundamental constitutional right, deeply offends the constitutionally-mandated balance of federal-state relations and separation of powers among the branches of the federal government.
More generally, Terri Schiavo has a natural right to determine how to live her life. It is not up to her husband, it is not up to her parents, and it is not up to the United States Congress - it is up to her, and to her alone. She decided she would not want to be artificially maintained in a persistent vegetative state, and her wish should be respected.
The sort of position being taken by Congress and the President in this and other cases would have been unthinkable through much of the nation’s history. The most basic concept among the founding generations for what this new nation of “America” was to stand for was the lofty principle that government of any sort simply lacks the authority – legal, moral, or otherwise - to interfere with individual liberty. The preeminence of this concept was recognized by Justice Louis Brandeis when he stated famously in 1928, “The makers of our Constitution … conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.”
In words that might have been penned directly in response to the actions of Congress and the President in this very instance, Justice Brandeis also cautioned, “Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent…. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
We’ve come a long way in America since the founding, but unfortunately we’ve come in precisely the wrong direction on matters of individual liberty. One colleague puts it this way: “Instead of a land of individual liberty and … tolerance, America has become a land of public morality and intolerance, all without the benefit of constitutional amendment…. [and w]hile there is nothing wrong with having an opinion based upon one’s culture or religion, there is something wrong with imposing this opinion upon others in a pluralistic society founded upon individual liberty.” [Elizabeth Price Foley, Liberty for All: Privacy Versus Morality in the American Constitution (forthcoming, Yale Press)]
Congress’s actions in the Terri Schiavo case demonstrate yet again its utter lack of understanding of the core principle that government acts legitimately only insofar as it protects the individual’s “right to be let alone” as it does so. As a reminder to Congress, the President and other government officials of this axiom, Justice Brandeis’ “right to be let alone” opinion should be framed and placed in every federal and state building in the land - perhaps in place of the Ten Commandments.
To the editors:
There’s no getting around it - the United States Congress is out of control. Its current intervention in the Terri Schiavo case is only the latest example of how uncomprehending Congress is of the proper role of the legislative branch in our constitutional design; and of the proper role of government in general vis-à-vis the private individual.
Congress’s intervention is highly inappropriate. First, Florida state courts have determined repeatedly under the evidentiary standard enacted into law by the Florida state legislature (clear and convincing evidence) that Terri Schiavo would wish not to be maintained in a persistent vegetative state; second, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized the fundamental right of individuals to avoid unwanted medical treatment. Congress, by interfering with what the courts and legislature of the sovereign state of Florida have determined in their efforts to respect an individual’s fundamental constitutional right, deeply offends the constitutionally-mandated balance of federal-state relations and separation of powers among the branches of the federal government.
More generally, Terri Schiavo has a natural right to determine how to live her life. It is not up to her husband, it is not up to her parents, and it is not up to the United States Congress - it is up to her, and to her alone. She decided she would not want to be artificially maintained in a persistent vegetative state, and her wish should be respected.
The sort of position being taken by Congress and the President in this and other cases would have been unthinkable through much of the nation’s history. The most basic concept among the founding generations for what this new nation of “America” was to stand for was the lofty principle that government of any sort simply lacks the authority – legal, moral, or otherwise - to interfere with individual liberty. The preeminence of this concept was recognized by Justice Louis Brandeis when he stated famously in 1928, “The makers of our Constitution … conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.”
In words that might have been penned directly in response to the actions of Congress and the President in this very instance, Justice Brandeis also cautioned, “Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent…. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
We’ve come a long way in America since the founding, but unfortunately we’ve come in precisely the wrong direction on matters of individual liberty. One colleague puts it this way: “Instead of a land of individual liberty and … tolerance, America has become a land of public morality and intolerance, all without the benefit of constitutional amendment…. [and w]hile there is nothing wrong with having an opinion based upon one’s culture or religion, there is something wrong with imposing this opinion upon others in a pluralistic society founded upon individual liberty.” [Elizabeth Price Foley, Liberty for All: Privacy Versus Morality in the American Constitution (forthcoming, Yale Press)]
Congress’s actions in the Terri Schiavo case demonstrate yet again its utter lack of understanding of the core principle that government acts legitimately only insofar as it protects the individual’s “right to be let alone” as it does so. As a reminder to Congress, the President and other government officials of this axiom, Justice Brandeis’ “right to be let alone” opinion should be framed and placed in every federal and state building in the land - perhaps in place of the Ten Commandments.
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