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Today's
Stories
April 2, 2008
Diane Farsetta
Indian
Point on the Potomac
Harry Browne
Bertie
Ahern Laid Low by Secretary
Wajahat Ali
The Folly of Attacking Iran: a Conversation with Steven Kinzer
George Wuerthner
Open Season on Wolves
Col. Dan Smith
The
Militarization of America
Philippe Marlière
The Politics of Bling-Bling in France: Sarkozy's Cultivated Anti-Intellectualism
Steve Early
A Purple Uprising in Oakland
Reza Fiyouzat
Bowling in Hell
April 1, 2008
Jeff Leys
Fracturing
the Peace to End the War
Thomas P. Healy
Restoring the Constitution: a Conversation with Daniel Ellsberg
Winslow T. Wheeler
When Pigs Sprout Wings: Mangled Rationales for a Fatter Defense
Budget
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
New Deal Nostalgia
Patrick Irelan
Cocaine, Colombia and the Cartels
Andy Worthington
The Case of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani
John V. Walsh
The Shunning of Ralph Nader
Michael J.
Smith
Woolly Mamet
Robert Weissman
The New Philip Morris--Even Worse Than the Old?
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Defining Moments
Martha Rosenberg
Brain Mist Disease: Boss Hog's Gift to Humanity
Website of
the Day
Support Briana!
March 31, 2008
Mike Whitney
Dead
on Arrival: Paulson's Fixit Plan for Wall Street
Mats Svensson
Walls,
Tunnels and Daily Humiliations
Paul Rockwell
Hillary's
Lies About Outsourcing
Paul Craig Roberts
A Third American War in the Making?
Patrick Cockburn
Sadr
Calls for Ceasefire
Peter Dale Scott
The Showdown
Alfredo Molano
Cultura Mafiosa in Colombia
Peter Morici
Why Paulson's Reform Plan Falls Short
Uri Avnery
Day of the Land, 32 Years Later
Michael Simmons
The American Bard in New Orleans
Betsy Roberts
/ Karen Orr
The Clorox Coup
Phyllis Pollack
First the Sun and Then the Moon: Scorsese Does the Stones
Website of
the Day
Five Years Too Many
March 29 / 30, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
When
They Pick Up the Phone at 3 AM, What Will They Say?
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Police Refuse to Back Maliki's Attacks on Medhi Army
Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Next Big Bail Out Plan
Christopher Brauchli
The Pastor of Armageddon and the Slave Sale: McCain, Lieberman
and Rev. Hagee
William Blum
China, Tibet and the Propaganda Olympics
Robert Fantina
Iraq
Troika: McCain, Obama and Clinton
John Ross
AMLO, the Comeback Kid? Fighting the Privatization of Mexico's
Oil
Allison Kilkenny
Shady Lending Hits Home
Nelson P. Valdés
Cuba, the Beatles and Historical Context
Suzanne Baroud
The Great Lake of Gaza: a New Crisis in the Making
Richard Rhames
Social Security: Throwing Granny from the Gravy Train
Christopher Fons
Transcending the 60s? Obama and the Baby Boomers
Carl Finamore
Misery at 35,000 Feet: Mergers Stall, Fares Soar, Services Slump
and Consumers Sour
Eamonn McCann
Hillary Misremembers Again!
Missy Beattie
Justice and the Monsters of War
Fred Gardner
Jim Thorpe, All-American
Kim Nicolini
Cock Chuggers and Cheese Curls: Richard Kelly's "Southland
Tales"
David Yearsley
"All the World's a Hospital"
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Booked Up
Poets' Basement
Valentine and Ko Un
Website of
the Weekend
Hidden Iraq
March 28, 2008
Saul Landau
Growing
Dread About Iraq
Alan Farago
Other People's Money: the Chop Shop Economy
Peter Morici
Knocking Down False Economic Gods
Andy Worthington
Plight of the Uyghus: a Chinese Muslim's Desperate Plea from
Guantánamo
Felice Pace
Ashes of Lies: Why No One Trusts the US Forest Service
Peter Montague
Sierra Club Cleans House -- With Clorox!
Dave Lindorff
The Mumia Exception
March 27, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Basra
Erupts
Binoy Kampmark
Free Market Apostates
Joanne Mariner
"Was George Washington a Terrorist?"
Norman Solomon
NPR News: National Pentagon Radio?
William S. Lind
Mars Only Knocks Once: a Prognosis for Iraq
John V. Walsh
Obama's Speech: a Touch of Bigotry?
Robert Weissman
How Things Work
Ron Jacobs
Meeting Charlie Ehlen
Ralph Nader
Put Impeachment Back on the Table
David Macaray
Court Rules Against Grocery Workers
John Borowski
Clearcutting the History of Forest Destruction
Website of
the Day
Going Out for an English
March 26, 2008
Stan Cox
The
Germs Next Door
Sharon Smith
Greed
Pays: Welfare on Wall Street
Anita Sinha / Jill Tauber
Dreams Turned into Rubble in New Orleans
Matt Vidal
So Much for the Self-Regulating Market
William S. Lind
Operation Cassandra
Joe Mowrey
The Audacity of Hypocrisy: Obama's Pandering to Israel
Dave Lindorff
Duck and Cover (Up): Hillary Under Fire
Ray McGovern
Frontline's War: Too Timid, Too Little, Too Late
Justin Smith
Why Race and Gender are Separate Issues
Sam Husseini
The Winter Soldier Hearings and Indy Media
Martha Rosenberg
Blood on Ice: Gentlemen, Pick Up Your Clubs
Michael Dickinson
Politicians as Dogs
Website of the Day
The Wal-Mart Virus: How the Infection Spread
March 25, 2008
Ishmael Reed
The
Crazy Rev. Wright
Corey D. B.
Walker
The Politics of Jeremiah Wright
Linn Washington Jr.
Racism in America and Other Uncomfortable Facts
Alan Farago
The Money Launderers: a Picnic for Wall St. Insiders
Vijay Prashad
A Glimmer of Hope From the Gulf Coast
Joshua Frank
A Silver Lining to the Bush Years?
Ralph Nader
How Public Servants Can Help End This War
David Rovics
If I Can't Dance: Why is the Left So Boring?
Peter Morici
America's Banks are Broken
Dave Zirin
Olympic Flames: China's Crackdown in Tibet
David Krieger
The Crisis in Tibet
Website of
the Day
Memorializing Iraq
March 24, 2008
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Blonde
Ambition: Hillary's Berserker Campaign for 2012
Peter Morici
Digging Out of the Recession
Uri Avnery
Two Americas
Wajahat Ali
First of the Mohicans: an Interview with Rep. Keith Ellison
Paul Craig Roberts
Inside the Shell Game
George Ciccariello-Maher
The Coming War on Venezuela
Stephen Lendman
Sami Al-Arian's Long Ordeal
Christopher
Brauchli
Possessing Someone Else's Country
Cat Woods
A Letter to Mom on Obama
Stacey Warde
Tax Burden
Dave Lindorff
The American Dead Hits 4,000, But Who's Counting?
Website of
the Day
Live from the Longest Walk
March 22 /
23, 2008
Ralph Nader
Bush
Blisters the Truth on Iraq
Nicole Colson
Can You Afford to Feed Your Family?
James Petras
The Cost of Unilateral Humanitarian Initiatives
Laura Carlsen
From Bombs to Markets: The Andean Crisis and the Geopolitics
of Trade
Greg Moses
Tolerance and the American Pulpit
Andy Worthington
Torture Stories Dog Guantánamo Trials
Michael Dickinson
Art on Trial
John Ross
Bush's Surge Hits Mosul
Missy Comley Beattie
Killer Economics
David Michael
Green
Happy Anniversary, America!
Ramzy Baroud
The Coming Uncertain War on Iran
Martha Rosenberg
Easter Egg Shells from Hell
Paul Watson
Evolution is Going to the Dogs in the Galapagos
Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's
Raid on Brazil
James Murren
Logging v. Water in Honduras
Jacob Hornberger
Sex and the Immigration Officer
Kathlyn Stone
Ben Heine, Master of the Art of Resistance
Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking New Mexico's History
Kim Nicolini
Class, Gender and Abortion in Communist Romania
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Booked Up: What I'm Reading This Week
Poets' Basement
Wilson, Woods, Gibbons and Orloski
Website of
the Weekend
Merci, McCain!
March 21, 2008
Marleen Martin
Land
Behind Bars: the Hidden Casualties of America's "War on
Crime"
Peter Montague
Run
Your Car on Coal? Maybe Not
Saul Landau
Monroe's
Deadly Doctrine
Anis Hamadeh
Merkel in the Knesset
Jacob Hornberger
McCain's Al Qaeda Scare: Slip or Tactic?
Khalil Nakhleh
Al Nakba of 1948: How Long Will It Persist?
Adam Isacson
Colombia, Paramilitary Threats and Assassinations
Kenneth Couesbouc
Money for Nothing
Madis Senner
Will the Feds Underwrite the Stock Market?
Monica Benderman
The Costs of Freedom: What Are You Willing to Pay?
Website of the Day
Stop Foreclosures and Evictions
March 20, 2008
Damien Millet
/
Eric Toussaint
The
Triple Failing of the Big Private Banks
Mike Whitney
Winding
Up Bear
John Ross
What Do We Owe Iraq?
Dave Lindorff
Paying the Piper: the Bodies and Bills are Piling Up
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan on Fire
Jill Nagle
Memo to Sex Workers: Stop Financing Shock Journalism
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Obama and the Psychic Auto-Shrink-Wrapping Called Race in America
Dan La Botz
Obama's Race Speech
Robert Weissman
Alternative Power: Shutting Down the API
Stella Dallas
/
Jennifer Matsui
Apostasy Now! Mamet, Enter Stage Right
Website of the Day
The Angry Monk
March 19, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
A
War of Lies
Robert Fisk
The Little Men and the Inferno
Jeff Taylor
Five Years of War in Iraq
Ed Ruggero
From Pinkville to Iraq: the Dark Anniversary of My Lai
Ron Jacobs
Who'll Stop the Rain?
Christopher
Fons
Obama Takes the Race Bait
Sherwood Ross
In Defense of Rev. Wright
Cynthia McKinney
An Urgent Crisis: Confronting America's Racial Disparities
Joshua Frank
The Kool-Aid That Kills
Robert Weissman
Monsanto's Genetic Food Gamble
Walter Brasch
It's a Welfare State--If You're Rich
Yifat Susskind
Iraqi Women Resist the Occupation
Andrew Wimmer
War Demands Its Due
Website of
the Day
Glimpses of Nature
March 18, 2008
David Price
The
Military "Leveraging" of Cultural Knowledge
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Collapse of American Power
Tim Wise
Of National Lies and Racial America: Jeremiah Wright, Barack
Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth
Patrick Cockburn
One of the Most Disastrous Wars Ever Fought
Conn Hallinan
Afghanistan, a River Running Backward
James T. Phillips
Monsters: Past, Present and Wannabe
Uri Avnery
The Killing in Bethlehem
David Macaray
Could Wal-Mart Revive the Labor Movement?
Marjorie Cohn
Beware an Attack on Iran
Peter Zinn
Obama in New Orleans
Dan La Botz
The Economic Crisis, Labor and the Left
Monica Benderman
Where are We Going?
March 17, 2008
Pam Martens
The
Fed's Wall Street Dilemma
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The US, Iran and the Policy of Dual Containment
Nelson P. Valdés
The Imperial Branding of Simon Bolivar and the Cuban Revolution
Peter Morici
The Corrosive Consequences of the Trade Deficit
Wajahat Ali
Disrobing the Nine: a Conversation with Jeffrey Toobin on the
Supreme Court Since 9/11
Ronnie Cummins
Beyond Progressive Malpractice: Taking Down Big Pharma
Shaun Harkin
Saint Patrick's Day in Fortress America
Ali Khan
No Pardon for Musharraf
Robert Jensen
Beyond Peace
P. Sainath
Oh, What a Lovely Waiver!
Greg Moses
Jeremiah was a Bullhorn
Dr. Susan Block
Advice for Eliot Spitzer
Website of the Day
No Cowboys
March 15 /
16, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
How
to Destroy a Country in Five Years
Mike Whitney
Bearly
Alive: Investment Giant Rushed to ICU by Panicky Fed Chief
Ralph Nader
Of
Laws and Men
Robert Pollin
It's Still the Economy, Stupid
Diane Christian
The Poetics of Perversity: From Boccaccio to Spitzer
Wajahat Ali
Faking the Hood: a Conversation with Ishmael Reed
Tom Wright
/
Therese Saliba
Rachel Corrie's Case for Justice
Alan Farago
Back to Florida: Where Bushtime Began
Greg Moses
Raiding the Family Room in Texas
Michael Hudson
A Grand Global Bargain?
Martha Rosenberg
Why Hillary's Favorite Chicken Company is Eying China
John Goekler
Fourth Generation Warfare in a Fifth Generation Conflict
Uzma Aslam
Khan
A Letter to Barack Obama: Where's the Change, Barack?
Oren Ben-Dor
The Silencing of Gilad Atzmon
David Underhill
Mammon, Morals and the Mobile Tanker Deal
Fred Gardner
The Education of Eliot Spitzer
David Michael
Green
Why Spitzer Should Have Resigned (and Why He Shouldn't Have)
Rev. William E. Alberts
Jesus, Entombed in Heaven
Gail Dines
It's All About the John: Prostitution and Male Power
David Yearsley
Conducting, Anarchy and the Problem of When to Begin
Chris Clarke
Walking with Zeke: the Luckiest of Dogs
Poets' Basement
Anderson, Lodge & Subiet
Website of
the Day
Deviant Art
March 14, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Watching
the Dollar Die
Don Santina
Vichy
Democrats: Pelosi and the Politics of Collaboration
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Mother Vows Revenge on US: How She Lost Her Husband and Her Sons
Tim Rinne
StratCom
Rules! The Next War Will Start in Nebraska
Robert Fantina
In
Torture We Trust
Saul Landau
Letter
to the Presidents-in-Waitings
David Macaray
Common
Myths About Labor Unions
Franklin Lamb
Is
the Bush Administration Switching Horses in Lebanon
Michael Neumann
The
One State Illusion: Reply to My Critics
March 13, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Republicans
and "Free Market" Zealots Bring Disaster to America
Mike Whitney
Meltdown
Looms Larger As Credit Markets Freeze
Assaf Kfoury
"One-State
or Two State?"- Sterile Debate on False Alternatives
Andy Worthington
Afghan
Hero Who Died in Guantánamo: The Background to the Story
Adam Federman
From
Autopia to Autogeddon: Cars Reach the End of the Road
March 12, 2008
Dave Lindorff
Bringing
Down Spitzer: It's the Big Brother Who Should Bother US
R.F. Blader
The
Spitzer Backlash
Yonatan Mendel
How
to be an Israeli Journalist. Never Write "Murder" or
"Palestine"
Jonathan Cook
One
State or Two? Neither. The Issue is Zionism
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Fallon
and Gates -- At Least One Cheer
James J. Brittain
Was
the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders
Ron Jacobs
"All
the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul"
March 11, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
to End the Subprime Crisis
Ed O'Loughlin
How
Israeli Troops Invade Homes in Gaza, Brutalize, Smash and Steal
Ramzy Baroud
'Unwavering
Commitment' to Inequality
Kathy Christison
One
State or Two? The Debate Over Israel and Palestine
China Hand
PRC
Plays it Cool, as U.S. Tries to Amp Up Pressure on Iran
John Joslin
Thank
You, Nafta! Welcome to Weirton, Home of the Discount Cigarette
Mike Averko
Serb
Politics, Kosovo and the Moscow-Washington Divide
Ben Rosenfeld
Gavin
Newsom's Kneejerk Plan
Thierry Paquot
High
Rise, Low Spirits:The Curse of the Tower Block
March 10, 2008
Uri Avnery
"Kill
A Hundred Turks and Rest": The Five-Day War in Gaza
Col. Dan Smith
Scoring
the "Surge" and What Lies Beyond
R.F. Blader
Why
"Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key" is Losing its
Sheen
Michael Neumann
The
One-State Illusion: More is Less
Bob Fitrakis
and Harvey Wasserman
Did
the Republicans Give Hillary Her Victory in Ohio?
James J. Brittain
Anti-Uribe
Protests in Colombia and the World
Missy Comley
Beattie
The
Passion of John McCain
March 8-9,
2008 Weekend Edition
JoAnn Wypijewski
The
Only Way to Fight the Clintons
Mike Whitney
Sorting
Through the Rubble in Post Bubble America
Peter Morici
Fed
and Treasury Fiddle as Economy Plummets
Ralph Nader
The
Silent Violence of Gaza's Suffering that Candidates Ignore
Jonathan Cook
The
Meaning of Gaza's Shoah
Steve Niva
Behind
the Israeli Escalation in Gaza
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Crisis
over Teheran's Alleged Nuclear Plans Nearing Climax
Hervé
Do Alto and Franck Poupeau
Bolivia:
Morales is Checked
Eric Walberg
To
Leave and Stay at the Same Time: Putin to Medvedev to…?
Scott Johnson
City
of A Thousand Foreclosures
Mark Scaramella
James
Brown's Gate
Bill Clinton
President
Clinton's Remarks on Naming William M. Daley as NAFTA Task Force
Chairman
Poet's Basement
St.
Thomasino, Engel, Davies and Willson
Website of
the Weekend
Hillary
Blackens Barack
March 7, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Iraq Could Blow-Up in John McCain's Face
Robin Blackburn
Question
for Barrack Obama: Why Afghanistan is the'Right War'?
Saul Landau
The
Stupid Economy
Binoy Kampmark
When
Competition is Good: McCain and the Muddled Democrats
Chris Floyd
Crushing
the Ants: Admiral Fallon and His Empire
Andy Worthington
Spanish
Drop "Inhuman" Extradition Request for Guantánamo
Britons
Will Potter
Before
the Smoke Even Clears in Seattle: Bringing Out the T Word
March 6, 2008
March 6, 2008
Vincent Navarro
The
Next Failure of Health Reform
Forrest Hylton
High Stakes in the Andes: Colombia's Cornered President
Peter Morici
Why the Dollar is So Cheap
George Ciccariello-Maher
Counter-Attack of the Bureaucrats
John Ross
Taxi! Taxi! The Dark Side of the Oscars
Jacob Hornberger
No Standing to Lecture on Justice
Paul Watson
Illegal Japanese Whaling by the Numbers
Dan Bacher
Off the Deep End
Website of the Day
A Katrina Reader Online
March 5, 2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
A
Great Day for John McCain (and Maybe Nader)
Joanne Mariner
After Guantanamo
Fidel Castro
The Raid on Ecuador: Underestimating Rafael Correa
Christopher
Brauchli
The Turkish Invasions
Steven Sherman
Obama and the Prospects for a Renewal of the Left
Dave Lindorff
Busting Bush & Co. in New England
James Murren
Bombing Somalia
Adam Engel
Necropolis Now
Website of Day
Remember Song
March 4, 2008
Wajahat Ali
Mumbo
Jumbo: Naming Names with Ishmael Reed
William Blum
How Could Hillary Have Known?
Bill Quigley
The Cleansing of New Orleans
Ralph Nader
The Prince Harry Solution
Patrick Irelan
Oil and Health in Venezuela
James J. Brittain
/
R. James Sacouman
Uribe's Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin America
Norman Solomon
The War Election
Jacob Hornberger
Hillary in Waco: the Missing Apology
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the European Parliament
Mike Averko
Kosovo and the Press
Website of the Day
Tex-Mex Primary
March 3, 2008
Jennifer Loewenstein
Gazan Holocaust
Alan Farago
American Politics and the Faltering Economy
Richard Gott
Colombian Deaths in Ecuador
Wajahat Ali
Who Speaks for a Billion Muslims? Analyzing the World Gallup
Poll with John Esposito
Paul Craig Roberts
The Mukasey Conspiracy: a Bi-Partisan Attack on the Constitution
Robert Weissman
When Multinationals Say Adieu
Uri Avnery
Good Morning, Hamas
Martha Rosenberg
When Your Meat is a Downer
Eva Liddell
Leave the Next Dance for Bill
Michael Donnelly
Will Ferrell Does Flint
Website of the Day
Muddy Waters: Train Fare Home Blues
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Apri1
2, 2008
The Case for a
New Progressive Creed
Saving
the American Left
By BERNARD CHAZELLE
The American left is in the throes of
an existential crisis. Some say it's a failure of nerve, others
a loss of belief. It is the latter. Neoliberalism has sucked
the oxygen out of the left by deflating the political sphere
to the economic one. The left must articulate a new creed around
three principles: empowerment (the economic is ancillary to the
political); social justice (the disadvantaged have an unconditional
claim upon the collectivity); and decency (the state may not
humiliate anyone). To make its case, the left must redefine that
most exalted form of self-interest, patriotism, as pride in a
society that grants all of its members the means to belong.
First, the mythology:
* Democrats burst with Big
Ideas. Unfortunately, ballots and Big Ideas don't mix and the
timing is never quite right. But you watch. Once the Congress
is theirs, once the White House curtains have been picked, the
Dems will get crackin' on 'em Big Ideas-or on the reelection
campaign, whichever comes first.
* Big Ideas being what they
are, big, squeezing them into words can be a challenge. Luckily,
with academia's brightest bulbs lighting up the pup tent, liberals
can articulate better than anyone why it is they can't articulate
anything. So they'll pen earnest treatises on the need to call
taxes "membership fees" and trial lawyers "public
protection attorneys." Like it or not, this has proven quite
effective, and Howard Dean, for one, likes to credit Lakoff's
framing theories for his victorious run for the White House.
* Who cares if the Clintonistas
and their merry band of DLC hangers-on spoiled the broth with
their third-way brand of workfare centrism and smiley-face imperialism?
Across the blogosphere, a nascent grassroots movement is afoot,
blowing the winds of change against the Repub-lite sellout show.
It's coming. This time, it's really coming!
Like all myths, these wishful
fantasies contain a grain of truth: Democrats are diffident,
tactical, and quick to concede the terms of the debate. The netroots
channel genuine passion about liberal causes and the blogs are
buzzing. There is palpable excitement out there on the left.
A pity there is no there there. America has lefties but no left.
The verdict is brutal. By virtually
any measure, the United States is the least progressive nation
in the developed world. It trails most of Western Europe
in poverty rates, life expectancy, health care, child care, infant
mortality, maternity leaves, paid vacations, public infrastructure,
incarceration rates, and environmental laws. The wealth gap in
the US has not been so wide since 1929. The Wal-Mart founders'
family owns as much as the bottom 120 million Americans combined.
Contrary to received opinion, there is now less social mobility
in the US than in Canada, France, Germany, and most Scandinavian
countries. The European Union attracts more foreign students
than the US, including twice as many from China. Its consensus-driven
polity, studies indicate, has replaced the American version as
the societal model to which the developing world aspires.
And yet could America be a
right-wing nation of closet lefties? A Zogby poll reveals overwhelming
support for rehabilitation over incarceration for young offenders.
In an NES survey, those who want "government to provide
many more services even if it means an increase in spending"
outnumber backers of spending cuts by 2 to 1. A Pew study cites
the same ratio of people who consider corporate profits excessive.
It also finds that a majority of Americans believe "government
should help the needy even if it means greater debt."
Democratic leaders, bless their
souls, believe no such nonsense. They'll warn you incessantly
that any public policy leaning a nano-angstrom to the left is
a suicide pact. They'll brush off any talk of raising the top
marginal tax rate of 35% to anything approaching the 70% of the
Nixon years. Yes, the progressive Bill Clinton expanded
the Earned Income Tax Credit and signed the Family and Medical
Leave Act. He also increased extreme poverty despite high economic
growth. He extended the death penalty to non-homicides and oversaw
the largest increase in incarceration rates in the 20th century
(double what it was under Reagan). He exacerbated inequalities,
gave up on Kyoto, and, by his own Labor secretary's account,
presided over "one of the most pro-business administrations
in American history." His signature social policy, welfare
reform, dismantled one of the pillars of the New Deal: the federal
cash assistance program for 9 million poor children (AFDC).
By contrast, the conservative
Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency,
extended the Clean Air Act, introduced the Supplemental Security
Income program (to assist the elderly and the disabled), launched
the Minority Business Development Agency, signed the Occupational
Safety and Health Act, and implemented the first federally-mandated
affirmative action program. Nixon was a "Southern strategist"
and a right-wing crook: he was also to the left of Bill Clinton.
The senior Democratic senator
from New York, the "ultra-liberal" Chuck Schumer, recently
killed efforts to raise the tax rate of hedge fund managers to
that of his cleaning lady: a nice government handout to overpaid
bankers that is worth, annually, half of the Supplemental Nutrition
Program for Women, Infants, and Children. "I am not a populist,"
said Schumer. (Maybe just an opportunist.) During the 2008 presidential
campaign, the New York Times gently mocked John Edwards's unauthorized
concern for the poor as "raw populism." That word again.
The other P-word, poverty, has acquired in the liberal mind the
cosmic permanence of gravity. Much like in the Middle Ages, short
of killing the poor, the thinking goes, one cannot kill poverty-even
in the richest nation on earth. This capitulation to imaginary
laws of economics marks the ascendancy of neoliberalism as the
dominant dogma of the ruling class. This is a worldwide phenomenon
but its origins are uniquely American. One may wonder: if it's
worked against the interests of so many, how then did it happen?
Neoliberal
Triumph
The success of neoliberalism
is owed, like much else in American history, to race and inflation.
The civil rights movement's heroic victories triggered a white
backlash that, stirred up by the stagflation of the 70s, designated
welfare as its whipping boy. While the left fell apart under
the strain of its own failures and the pressure of the New Right,
the Dems' axis of opportunism closed ranks with dyed-in-the-wool
backlashers to excise the term "underclass" from the
political discourse and replace it with the racial codeword "responsibility."
The collective benefit of pulling people out of poverty (more
on this later) gave way to the moral hazard of unearned assistance
to the poor. By this brilliant maneuver, the state was off the
hook.
Thus shorn of social purpose,
the sole objective of the economy was now to create the conditions
for a bigger economy. This self-referential absurdity worked
out well for some. At their prodding, politicians on both sides
of the aisle wrapped the neolib agenda in cotton candy ("I
feel your pain") and sold it to the public as an inclusive
doctrine ("rising tides lift all boats"). While the
media peddled ad nauseum the seductive narrative that unfettered
growth will cure all ills, the public intellectuals played their
customary herding role as guardians of the norm. Lobby-driven
campaign financing did the rest. Neoliberalism became the new
dogma, the pensée unique.
The dogma tolerates social
conflicts insofar as they remain orthogonal to the economic fault
lines. Multiculturalism and identity politics are tolerable but
class concerns are ruled out of order. Affirmative action and
Roe v. Wade are fine but prenatal care and maternity leaves are
"fiscally imprudent." While globalized trade has benefited
many countries, the ultra-rigid neoliberal policies pushed by
the United States and the international institutions it controls
have had nasty consequences: per-capita income for nearly half
of the world's countries was lower in 2000 than it was a decade
earlier. Yet even a reasoned critique of the current economic
order is seldom allowed into the dominant discourse. It's not
censorship; it's gatekeeping. And it works. The withering scorn
heaped upon a fine "European" centrist like Kucinich
is indicative of the intolerance for any deviation from the orthodoxy.
Marxism died for all the right
reasons, but regrettably so did with it the only systematic attempt
in the history of political philosophy to put the underdog at
the heart of the reflection. Sensing a vulnerability, opponents
pounced with glee and festooned any leftish idea with the blood
and tears of every Gulag victim. Soon sedated by the illusory
success and soothing materialism of the Clinton years, progressives
lost the means and the will to fight back.
The Great Sellout came at a
price: electoral disaster. Yet, while busy mastering the fine
art of the concession speech, Democrats swatted away all attempts
at rebuilding a movement. To this day, their triangulating appetite
for compromise remains voracious and they rarely flinch from
flinching. Unless, that is, the cause is sensible but symbolic,
like protesting the display of the Ten Commandments in a court
of justice. Progressives need not prioritize because their moral
world is flat. Why obsess over war and poverty when, instead,
you can ventilate about courthouse furniture? Their creed, such
as it is, is a recitation of platitudes: feel-good drivel about
vibrant communities, boundless opportunities, growing prosperity,
and other such controversial matters. They engage in vigorous
policy debates but none of them is germane to the creed-would
you expect a discussion of the Clear Skies bill to be informed
by a belief in breathing?
Just as science should be falsifiable,
ideologies should be disbelievable. A creed that can be rejected
only by the enemies of motherhood and apple pie is useless because
it denies one the means to make tough choices. But can such a
thing ever be useful, let alone necessary?
Yes and yes. A creed serves
two functions: to feed the soul and to guide hard decisions.
Neoliberalism takes care of the decisions and the little that's
left is fast food for the soul. To see why, consider the Revolutionary
motto, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." A good measure
of a left-wing belief system is how tightly it keeps the three
threads together. Take away the last one and your creed is soulless;
remove the first two and it is toothless. Fraternity (for lack
of a less sexist term) arbitrates between liberty and equality:
it speaks to the why and the how; they speak to
the what. Neoliberalism gutted the motto and left progressives
with the monumental task of turning ethics into policy without
the normative mediation of a conceptual framework.
True, as a drive for free markets,
globalization, deregulation, privatization, elimination of economic
distortions, deunionization, and market-driven policymaking,
neoliberalism is no more a theory of social justice than greed
is a theory of property rights. It did not supplant the progressive
creed so much as let it shrivel into a mere quest for decency-a
noble pursuit to be sure, but one that is doomed without a set
of principles to guide it. It's not enough to have your heart
in the right place: your brain, and especially your will, must
be there, too.
For what does it mean to seek
a decent society if we won't say what we're willing to trade
off for it? Let's take an example. Why should long prison sentences
for violent offenders be shortened if, hypothetically, they could
be shown to reduce crime? Excessive imprisonment and snatching
old ladies' purses are both violations of common decency.
Does one trump the other? Sentiment alone cannot answer that:
only a higher set of beliefs can. Note that hard choices are
nothing new. We tolerate obscene numbers of wife beatings and
drunk-driving deaths just to make it legal to wash down our osso
buco with Chianti. The Prohibition era made a different choice.
Today's liberals assure us that such tradeoffs are passé.
Surely one can eliminate poverty and maximize economic
growth. The evidence suggests one cannot. A good society requires
tough choices. The cost of denial is a chronically reactive
stance toward social ills: a preference for remediation over
prevention, incarceration over job training, charity over antipoverty
programs, etc.
Fukuyama got it all wrong.
It's not the End of History we're witnessing. It's the End of
the Political: the denial of human agency in the regulation of
economic forces. Thomas L. Friedman calls it the Golden Straitjacket.
He explains its benefits: "Once your country puts it on,
its political choices get reduced to Pepsi or Coke." And
if you try root beer, Somalia is next. Neoliberalism is just
another word for nothing left to decide. The fall of the Berlin
Wall buried Marxism but historical determinism lives on in Washington.
TINA, Thatcher shouted from
the rooftops-There Is No Alternative. Let's test this claim.
America is richer than Europe; yet, to quote Jared Diamond, "Western
Europe's standard of living is higher by any reasonable criterion
[...]" France is slightly more productive than the
United States and its Human Development Index is higher;
yet its GDP per head is 25% smaller. Why? Because Americans choose
to work longer hours. This was not always so: in 1970, the French
worked 10% more than Americans; now they work 28% less. Apparently,
There Is An Alternative. Free markets have rules and constraints,
but so does piano composition, and the range from Chopin to Monk
is hardly suggestive of a straitjacket. Western Europe is living
proof that mixed-economy welfare states can be prosperous. The
point here is not which system is better: it is that both are
possible. It's all a matter of choice. TINA is a sham.
A Progressive
Creed
The perspective from the left
is one of justice, not charity. Note how the direction is reversed.
Charity is centrifugal: it proceeds from us toward the outer
fringes of society. Justice is centripetal: it starts at the
periphery and pulls back toward us. Society must care for the
disadvantaged not because they are the Other but precisely because
they are not. Charity is virtuous but ethically dodgy because
of a double asymmetry: giving out of pity (or even compassion)
humiliates the recipient, who cannot reciprocate, while enhancing
the giver's self-esteem. Donating old clothes to the Salvation
Army proceeds on the assumption that a garment no longer good
enough for me surely is good enough for somebody else. This is
both right and repugnant. Welfare can be degrading, too. But,
as Avishai Margalit has argued, entitled assistance is structurally
less humiliating than benevolence. In the spirit of his "decent
society," no state institution may cause loss of self-respect.
In that regard, one must single out the American penal system,
with its exposed face in Abu Ghraib, as the most egregious violator
of that obligation in this country-no serious progressive agenda
can omit prison reform.
The right to freedom from destitution
may not be made contingent on good conduct. In other words, social
citizenship must be unconditional. The disgrace of Clinton's
welfare reform was to make it discretionary. As Tony Judt noted,
it "return[ed] us to the spirit of England's New Poor Law
of 1834," by which assistance had to be earned.(2)
Responsibility is a civic virtue that society should promote
(Wall Street being a good place to start) but never require,
especially of its most vulnerable members.
The creed hinders the autonomy
of economic forces by placing their regulation in the hands of
the polity: liberty trumps efficacy. Surely this is the sort
of "luxury" that rich societies can afford-fixating
on economic growth is easier to justify in poor countries where
the stakes are malaria vaccines rather than plasma screen TVs.
Poverty in America has many causes: insufficient national wealth
is not one of them.
I summarize below the main
features of a progressive creed. It must articulate a purpose
(what world to wish for) and a perspective (how to look
at the world):
* The purpose is a society
that, first, preserve equal liberties; second, attends preferentially
to the needs of the disadvantaged. All citizens are granted an
unconditional claim upon the collectivity to be accorded the
minimum resources necessary for a life of dignity and a genuine
sense of belonging. Freedom from humiliation is never to be made
contingent on any norm of conduct (such as law abidance). Equality
of opportunity is sought as the fairest means of redistributing
access to fundamental liberties.
* The perspective affirms faith
in the power of human agency to mediate between liberty and social
justice. It posits the primacy of the political and the necessity
of a wide public sphere. It favors public investments in shared
goods (eg, health, education, infrastructure, and the environment).
It asserts the regulatory function of the state and its role
as ultimate guarantor of social provision. It regards economic
growth as a means to an end and labor as an end in itself, not
merely input into production. It views the concept of economic
class as an indispensable measure of social stratification in
policymaking. It is tolerant of economic distortions to the extent
that they serve social justice or promote citizenship.
A philosophical digression.
The creed's preferential clause can apply either directly (eg,
welfare) or indirectly (eg, public schools, medical research),
and the conditions of the disadvantaged may be economic (poverty),
social (discrimination), functional (handicaps), etc. In an echo
of Rawls's "difference principle," the clause posits
that, second only to preserving equal liberties, society must
mitigate the misfortunes of its least well-off members. A just
society favors the disadvantaged because that would be our most
likely preference, regardless of ideology, were we to join that
society with no prior knowledge of our social status. In other
words, behind a "veil of ignorance," we would choose
an allocation of resources that would make the worst possible
outcome for us the least disadvantageous. Targeting the worst
outcome and not, say, the best (as in playing the lottery) serves
an obvious egalitarian purpose. Up to a point. The preferential
clause is not inconsistent with the view that rising tides lift
all boats. In fact, it may accommodate arbitrarily large inequalities
as long as the poor do not get poorer. This may have the adverse
effect of undermining social cohesion while increasing overall
wealth. In that regard, equality of opportunity serves as a necessary
corrective-though social harmony is not its primary justification:
fair access to liberties is.
A different take on the preferential
clause holds that prioritizing according to need delivers the
biggest bang for the public buck: one dollar spent on feeding
a poor child has higher utility than one dollar spent on polishing
the deck of a yacht. Progressive taxation can be similarly justified
by the lower marginal costs of wealth acquisition for the rich.
This utilitarian interpretation strips the clause of its preferentiality
component and makes its application vastly more restrictive than
a deontological approach does. Of course, one can do away with
Kant, Mill, and Rawls altogether, and simply declare the creed
fine because it feels fine. Nothing wrong with that. In
fact, I intend to flesh out that very intuition below. End of
philosophical digression.
A debate has been raging lately
regarding the merits of the common good as the basis for
a new liberal creed. Not only is the notion central to any serious
progressive perspective, but its rhetorical power is undeniable.
It must be handled with care, however. First, left to its own
devices, the common good is merely a regulative concept, like
zoning, and not a goal in itself. Once bound to particulars,
it can mean public infrastructure-a priority that should be high
on any progressive agenda-but also wiretapping, torture, and
the draft. Which war hasn't been fought for the "common
good"? Second, there is nothing distinctively progressive
about it: from Hoover to Reagan to GWB, it has long been a conservative
mantra.
Third, the common good's attendant
doctrine of civic republicanism often carries a heroic undertone
of shared sacrifice and self-abnegation that is both a little
quaint and a little weird. Progressives cannot claim that a 3-trillion
dollar war in Iraq is no sacrifice but a war on poverty would
be-hint: $3,000,000,000,000 would go a long way toward rebuilding
our inner cities. Sadly for hero worshippers, none of the objectives
of a progressive creed requires heroism (tough choices, yes;
sacrifice, no). One should also be careful not to allow the kindness
of strangers to substitute for the obligations of the state.
The thousands of volunteers who filled in for "Heckuva job
Brownie" proved that American society is both generous and
broken.
Fourth, there is the putative
liberal sin that common-good evangelists seek to redress: the
rise of interest-group politics. Granted, single-issue advocacy
has long demonstrated a suspicious fondness for circular firing
squads: what did those anti-frankenfood crusaders on stilts think
they were doing at antiwar demos in 2003? Again, that unfailing
inability to prioritize. It is, however, more than a little churlish
to put the blame on minority politics when it is the other kind
of "minorities," ie, the insurers, trial lawyers, doctors,
and gun owners, whose lobbies keep a stranglehold on Congress.
The grievances of victimized groups have no need for legitimation
on common-good grounds. It is not incumbent upon a rape victim
to explain why assisting her is of benefit to society. Social
justice is, de jure, universal but, de facto, minoritarian. It
favors the invisible. The failure of the left is not that it
countenanced interest-group pluralism: it's that it left it up
to each group to explain why redressing their grievances serves
the common good, when it was the left's own responsibility
to do so. The argumentation rests on a rewriting of a conservative
canon, patriotic citizenship. This may explain the left's
reluctance to make the case. So, while you watch me rush in where
angels fear to tread, please keep an open mind.
Did You
Say Patriotic?
What's missing from the progressive
agenda is not the chameleon-like notion of the common good so
much as the pursuit of collective mastery and the promotion of
a shared sense of belonging. Abundance is the promised land of
neoliberalism and shopping its highest purpose. To be a citizen
is to be a consumer: "Consumo ergo sum." Such
cartoonish ontological moorings induce in many the despair of
the void. America's vindictive penal system indeed suggests a
nation riven by fear. For this, in my view, we have less bin
Laden to blame than TINA and the materialistic vacuity that goes
along with it. The first order of business is to allow the polity
to regain control of its environment-moral, social, and physical.
The progressive creed is, first and foremost, a quest for citizenship.
No citizenship, no social justice.
It's hard enough to help the poor: go try and do it with a straitjacket
on. But empowerment alone is not enough. I may well understand
that my path to freedom lies through Town Hall and not Wal-Mart.
But what's that got to do with justice? Perhaps that's why common-gooders
ask us to clone ourselves into mini-Mother Teresas. Without prejudging
the case about the goodness of our hearts, the weakness of a
sainthood-based creed is simply too obvious to ignore. If everyone
were a saint, we would not need a creed in the first place. The
trick, therefore, is to create a society of saints none of whose
members is one. That's where patriotism kicks in.
First, some clarification.
"My country, right or wrong," said Carl Schurz, echoing
Decatur. After that fateful utterance, the word patriot was destined
to join the select company of pedophile and macaca in the stink
bomb arsenal of language. So it is with my nose firmly held that
I vocally question the patriotism of those who care more about
winning Fallujah than losing New Orleans. The most humiliating
national shaming in recent American history, Katrina, registers
barely a blip in a presidential campaign: a portrait of the patriot
as an ostrich? Americans can love their country or they can turn
a blind eye to poverty and segregation: they cannot do both.
Patriotic citizenship is the commitment to a society that grants
all of its members the means to belong. It is an affirmation
of solidarity. Its motivation is the virtuous, idealized pride
in an honorable society. It is also a sublimated form
of self-interest: violent crime and poverty are, indeed, correlated.
Most of all, it is the awareness that shame taints pride and
that, despite their tenuous relation, (b) trumps or demeans (a):
* (a) The US is the world's
richest nation; (b) the US outranks only Mexico in child poverty
among OECD countries.(28)
* (a) America's GDP per capita
is 11 times higher than Sri Lanka's; (b) life expectancy for
African-American men is 3 years shorter than for males in Sri
Lanka.(29,30)
* (a) African-Americans have
been the force behind this country's most influential musical
genres; (b) one third of all black men will go to prison at some
point in their lives.
* (a) The US scoops up more
Nobel prizes in medicine than any nation on earth; (b) 18,000
Americans will die this year for lack of health insurance.
"To make us love our country,"
Burke said, "our country ought to be lovely." The alternative
is to avert one's eyes from the unlovely. It can be done. Progressive
policies are never the default option. Patriotic citizenship
rests on the mobilizing power of shame. But does shame mobilize?
Patriotism is a wonderful fertilizer of delusion. And delusion
works. Reagan speechified his way into the White House with chants
of: "We're the Greatest Nation on God's Green Earth!"
Am I suggesting "We Suck!" as a progressive alternative?
Not quite. Americans should glow with pride at the mention of
Citizen Kane, the Village Vanguard, and the Grand Canyon.
But so should they at the thought that their society is fundamentally
decent. Which it is fundamentally not.
I will leave the matter of
a progressive foreign policy for another day, for I believe it
requires a different treatment that cannot be inferred from the
creed discussed above. But here is a point of direct relevance.
The most consequential misreading of the fall of the Berlin Wall
was that America had become the world's sole superpower. The
irony is that it's precisely when it ceased to be one. Suddenly
freed from the need for US protection, our allies realized they
could ignore Washington's orders with impunity, and they did
just that in 2003. In that sense, Bush did not kill US hegemony:
he only supplied the death certificate. As the reality of a multipolar
world sinks in, America has a golden opportunity to shed its
exceptionalism and become a normal, decent society. Oddly for
a technological wonderland, some of its beliefs hark back to
Dickens and Kipling: the emulation factor of the wealth gap;
the cleansing power of force; the euphoric arrogance of its mission
civilisatrice (less euphoric after Iraq); the fixation on
absolute sovereignty. These are all 19th-century values. The
winds of geopolitical change will work to America's advantage
if they help steer its foreign policy into the path to modernity.
Economic insecurity, a weak
public sector, lack of social protection, fear of immigrants-where
did we see that before? In Europe in the first half of the last
century. Neoliberals like to forget that the continent was as
globalized on the eve of World War I as it is today. Which is
odd, because their credo that trading nations don't fight one
another was proven entirely correct-plus or minus a few dozen
million deaths. No, I am not suggesting that America's anxieties
forebode an authoritarian future. The failure of a progressive
alternative is more likely to produce a society that is increasingly
unequal, unjust, hollow, and paranoid.
Some will invoke the recession
as an excuse to do nothing. They have it exactly backwards. Economic
distress has a way of rousing people from their political torpor-what
else got the New Deal going? Fine, but Washington is too divided
to get anything done. Just the opposite. Nothing gets done because
politicians are too united-in taking orders from their corporate
paymasters. The status quo is so beneficial to lobbies that campaign
funds are roughly proportional to the number of times a candidate
promises to look but not touch.
Assuming a progressive project
gets underway, what challenges lie ahead? We know where to find
the problems-racism, poverty, health, child care, public schools,
the penal system, infrastructure, the environment, campaign financing,
etc. We know where to find the expertise-the world's best social
scientists live in our midst. We know where to find the resources-highest
GDP and all that. We know where to find the words for the prose
of our policies and the poetry of our vision. In the public mind,
however, the right is about winning and the left about not losing.
A bit of a downer perhaps. The pessimism of the intellect, Gramsci
said, must be balanced by the optimism of the will. The hard
part of a progressive project will be to summon the moral courage
to prioritize the task at hand and fuel the effort with an unshakable
belief in the justness of the cause. For that, we need a creed.
Bernard Chazelle is a professor of computer science
at Princeton University and author of The
Discrepancy Method: Randomness and Complexity. He can be
reached at: chazelle@CS.Princeton.EDU
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