If I had kept my focus on the past 8-10 years, I would have wholeheartedly agreed that punishment was the only fair course of action.

I still support the prosecution of those members of the last administration for their blatant abuse of power and the price that the citizenry paid and continues to pay for their self-interest, greed, and hypocrisy, but I’ve begun to believe that punishment will not solve the problem.

When you mentioned the founding fathers and their ideals, I agree with your assessment; yet I am reminded of the well-spring of democracy—the Greek city state. Democracy in ancient Greek culture was not democracy for all people. Women were excluded. Slaves were excluded. Sparta was not interested in the rights of Athens, and so on. It was justice only for the elite. And this was a minority of the people. When the founding fathers fashioned the country, slavery was rampant. Misogyny was commonplace. Class systems and religious piety were just as rigid then as they are now.

My point is this: people have been seeking personal advantage at the expense of others throughout recorded history. This must indicate some internal motivation in human beings as a whole that drives them to exercise advantage whenever the opportunity arises. There are exceptions to this, of course, but in general I think this is accurate. Just about anyone put in a position to increase their personal power will tend in that direction and rationalize the cost of that increase to others. Nietzsche was right in Will to Power. And this battle has raged for millennia in an artificial team-sport where one group beats back the other for its own gain.

Punishment doesn’t stop it. If flaying someone alive in the Dark Ages didn’t stop theft, then nothing would. Punishing women for having abortions doesn’t stop abortion—it merely hurts women. Punishing people for same-sex love doesn’t stop same-sex love—it merely hurts people. Punishing people for being addicted to drugs doesn’t stop people from becoming addicted to drugs—it merely hurts people. Furthermore, having these systems of uniform punishment in place can (and does) facilitate those with less noble ambitions than justice. Many times oppositional forces were officially condemned, so that their executions would seem legitimate. The law cuts both ways. It not only punishes those who have done wrong, it often silences those who challenge the status quo. I have written that law is written by those occupying the center of a culture (for America, white, Christian, heterosexual men) in order to force those who are marginal to conform.

Furthermore, when you apply force, people tend to rebel. It is by its nature adversarial. So when one group attacks another, the other group is fortified in its own defense, regardless of whether they are right are not.

My suggestion is that maybe there is a more sophisticated, reasonable way to curb greed, self-interest, and oppressive class systems. Maybe there is a way we can enlighten people to the values of reason and virtue without force or threat of punishment.

The problems on the extreme right stem from the belief that there is an extreme right, rather than a country of people working toward the overall good of the people. This illusion of cohesiveness on the right is, I would argue, the result of several factors: 1) capitalist propaganda that posits the idea that the value of everything can be reduced to a dollar amount, 2) the idea that loyalty is a virtue, thus you stick by your ideas and your group no matter what they say or do, 3) the notion that faith trumps reason, and that if you believe something hard enough, or enough people believe it with you, it automatically becomes true (consider O’Reilly, who frequently claims he’s right because his ratings are higher than other people’s ratings), 4) the condemnation of intellect, which allows people to dismiss information acquired from intelligent, educated, well-reasoned people when they discuss their areas of specialty (thus allowing people to ignore Nobel scientists and blinded journals and double-blind research and continue believing that the world is 5,000 years old, or that global warming is a liberal bias), and 5) the belief that all ideas carry the same weight, so if I believe that gravity causes planetary perturbations, that idea carries the same weight as the belief that angels are controlling the movement of the planets.

None of these five factors can be changed by force. They can all be changed through education and inclusion. If we perceive everyone as being on the same team, then understanding ceases to be oppositional and becomes a matter of intelligent discourse. I recall an extreme right-wing student I had a few semesters ago who only watched Fox “News” and believed everything she heard. Instead of punishing her for these beliefs, I joined with her in the examination of these ideas. As a result, she went to a website that asked for her opinions about issues before matching those interests to a presidential candidate. Instead of coming out on the far-right, she was divided equally between positions held by McCain and positions held by Obama. She was a centrist and didn’t know it. Had I attacked her, she would have become defensive and would have never realized this. I recall also talking with my niece, who was a “born-again” Christian who had attending one of the Christian training camps/schools. She claimed that the Old Testament predicted the New Testament. Rather than attack her, we opened the bible together and research what was actually there. She quickly realized that the book did not in fact predict anything.

What I’m saying is that maybe there is a way to join together in a way that facilitates genuine solutions to the difficulties that social systems face. That might be more productive than pursing revenge for the unquestionable atrocities of Bush-era politics. If we can come to the same table, we might be able to alter our objectives so that rather than personal material wealth, we value character and compassion; rather than blind faith, we value reason; rather than ignorance, we value knowledge; rather than right and wrong, we focus on those actions which are humane and beneficial to all people; rather than privilege, we value fair and balanced treatment; rather than anger and outrage, we promote cooperation and understanding; rather than exclusion, we promote inclusion.

Just a thought.

Thank you for alluding to the three-part schematic; it sparked a thought I recall from a discussion you led years ago. As sometimes happened, someone interpreted your view on economics as essentially communist. Your paraphrased response was that you were not advocating economic equality (that word must be reserved for the political sphere) but instead that considering how productive and wealthy our society is, everyone should have the means to a reasonable existence. Those who wanted to become rich could still indeed become rich, but all in our society should have access to basic needs.

Now, this discussion occurred in idealistic terms and we didn’t get down to the nuts and bolts of what tax rates would need to be and so forth; but, it did serve as an illuminating guiding principle. It’s staggering, for example, to think about the food that is wasted every year in our restaurants alone! Economic fairness would manifest itself if each and every American could live comfortably on a full-time paycheck working at any employer, not just some of them.

Christian, I found your comment to be one of two extremes. That very way of looking at the world is the problem, not the solution. Money and profit are not inherantly bad; they are necessary tools to mobilize resources. Labor is not something to be avoided, nor should that even be the goal. Every person must contribute to society in some fashion if they are to reap its benifits.

What is needed to fix the biggest problems in our society is not some massive change in its basic structure, but rather small changes in the hearts and minds of every individual.

Like the naive young college student or soon to be bride, we must be careful not to link our happiness to external events. If we do, we set ourselves up for heartbreak and failure. When that much anticipated event comes and goes, we are then struck by a reality that does not live up to the fantasy we had been projecting upon it.

If we use our hope of Obama in this way, then it is a bad thing. It then becomes nothing more than one more distraction that prevents us from working towards the good.

It does not have to be this way though. If kept in the proper perspective, hope for a transcendent figure like Obama can serve as inspiration for us all to look inside ourselves and become the change we want to see in this world.

We must always remember that the door for change in an individual opens only from the inside. That being said though, here is to hoping that Obama can knock loudly enough for many to hear…

Your articles re Obama are by far the most scholary, objective, and well return that I have ever read anywhere in the media.

With your permission I would like to reproduce them and send to persons in my email address book and also post on my own website http://www.Jzeifman. com (Books and Articles by a Dissident Dissident Democrat)

Because of my high regard for you I would very much appreciate the opportunity to chat with you on the phone in confidence re some matters which in which I believe we share a common interest.
If you will email me your phone number I will phone you. Also, if you will provide me with your postal address I would be very pleased to send you complimentary copies of my books: Without Honor and Hillary’s Pursuit of Power.

Sincerely,

Jerry Zeifman
jzeifman@yahoo.com
tel 2o3 426 0044

We now live in a society where that is not needed because technology can alleviate man from most forms of labor and create abundance. We have the technology to house, fed and educate everyone on the planet. But we are held back by a profit structure.