Allison Bricker

Synopsis:

Global warming alarmists want Americans to believe that humans are killing the planet. But Not Evil Just Wrong, a new documentary by Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, proves that the only threats to America (and the rest of the world) are the fl awed science and sky-is-falling rhetoric of Al Gore and his allies in environmental extremism.   The film warns Americans that their jobs, middle-class lifestyles and dreams for their children will be destroyed if the government rushes to judgment and imposes job-killing regulations on an economy already mired in recession.

Not Evil Just Wrong exposes the deceptions about global warming that scientists, politicians, educators and the media have been force-feeding the public for years, including fear-mongering about floods and dying polar bears. The documentary shows how environmentalists are pushing the same kind of anti-human propaganda that triggered a ban DDT and condemned millions of children to death by malaria, a story recounted in the documentary. Not Evil Just Wrong asks: Is carbon dioxide the new DDT and are we taking the same risks with our future?

Source(s):

The Smoking Argus

Once upon a time, the old-media use to actually employ real live journalists in lieu of the tabloid talking head hacks of today, who are all “great Americans” in their narrow pro-war, pro-torture, pro-stimulus big government masturbatory orgy mindset in love with the ideals of statism. In this clip from the CBS News program, “60 Minutes”, originally broadcast in 1979, Mike Wallace uncovers the false hype and sometimes fatal results from the government’s H1N1 vaccination program during the height of the scare in 1976.

The Smoking Argus

Dr. Tarrin Lupo contributor to “The Smoking Argus Daily” and host of the “LCL Report”, will be live on air for an interview with Kurt Wallace host of the  “Wake Up America Show” Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 9 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. The interview can be heard live on Florida’s Eagle FM104.3, via live internet stream at the Wake Up America-Liberty Works Radio Network, or via the live embedded audio player below.

(Note: Due to Broadcast regulations, some commercials are not broadcast over the internet, which may result in “dead” air, however the stream will return at the commercial’s conclusion)

Allison Bricker

This past Thursday and Friday, Bob Schulz, Chairman of the “We the People Foundation” held a two-day gathering of pro-liberty activists off the coast of Georgia on Jekyll Island. Students of history, those with an interest in modern money mechanics, and political junkies will recall that Jekyll Island was the birthplace of the banker-crafted legislation, originally entitled the “Aldrich Plan”, which led to the rise of the 3rd Central Bank of the United States, more commonly known as the FEDERAL RESERVE.

One purpose of the meeting sought to retrace the steps of the original 1910 trip, which resulted in the greatest swindle and Constitutional usurpation in our history. In addition to the sheer historical significance, the ad hoc meeting’s main purpose was to try to hammer out the numerous logistical and practical problems plaguing the organization’s upcoming “Continental Congress”.

My initial interview with Mr. Schulz regarding his organization’s plans for a Continental Congress occurred on January 20th of this year. During that interview, Mr. Schulz indicated he had already been forced to reschedule the date of the meeting twice and was now looking towards July as the date in which formal proceedings would commence. The third shift in dates according to Mr. Schulz stemmed from the overall complexity of the event and the fact that his original venue of choice, the National Constitution Center, revoked the contract at the last minute. The National Park Service denies his claim in its entirety.

Fellow readers, it has been a struggle for me since speaking with Mr. Schulz and those in his employ last Tuesday by telephone whether to unleash my blistering criticism upon both an organization and endeavor of whose efforts initially had my support. However, in the end, my loyalty lies with the Constitution, reporting of the facts, a desire to see this Republic restored, and human liberty expanded, not to an organization. Moreover, many of those who attended have my utmost respect both for their own tireless work towards the pursuit of liberty and for the sacrifices for which they have endured up to this point.

Nevertheless and contrary to our January interview, whereby Mr. Schulz impressed upon me the importance of and his dedication to total transparency regarding his organization’s endeavor, the Jekyll Island caucus was closed to all press coverage, video and print, during the actual substantive meetings. Upon inquiring about this complete reversal regarding his previously stated principle, Mr. Schulz put me in contact with the Media Director for the event, Mr. Todd McGreevy. When asked about the reasoning behind the media blackout during the actual meeting, he replied almost instantaneously:

“It’s insider business, that’s why. Mr. Schulz wants it that way”
Todd McGreevy
Media Director

Hardly a satisfactory answer, perhaps he has taken lessons from the current crop of politicians and press secretaries whose modus operandi seems to be to obfuscate and dismiss any question they do not feel obliged to answer, ergo Gibbs, Fleischer & Company.

Therefore, and let me make this plainly clear. It is not my desire to exchange one secretive organization, vis-à-vis the Bilderberg Group who also mandates media blackouts regarding their actual proceedings, for another group, regardless of stated intent.

For this reason, acts in pursuit of liberty are not planned under the darkness and cover of secrecy. Those with pure intent are conducted under the Sunshine of openness and transparency. Please correct me if the facts are to the contrary, but this meeting, nor the upcoming Continental Congress are not tasked with the planning or implementation of declaring war on our current corrupt trough of plutocratic oligarchs. Again, according to the original motivations expressed by Mr. Schulz, the whole point is merely to draft a formal Redress of Grievances, ala “The Olive Branch Petition”. Have we not had enough of the philosophy and justification thereof the misguided sentiment of state-secrets?

Fortunately, as of today, we have had the pleasure of speaking with several individual attendees to the meetings. Some of whom have expressed a desire to remain anonymous in order to retain the ability to report the facts of future committee proceedings should Mr. Schulz choose not to rescind the media blackout.

As such, we can report that for the fourth time in less than a year, the call to order of the Continental Congress has been pushed back until November 2009. The meeting is now scheduled to begin on November 9th and adjourn two days prior to the Thanksgiving holiday. This provides organizers just under twenty-four weeks to move plans out of committee regarding finalizing a location at the head of the holiday season, conducting and ratifying delegate nominations from fifty separate states, conducting fundraising for delegate offset expense packages, reserving and negotiating lodging accommodations, etcetera.

As it relates to the offset expense packages, our sources confirmed the existence of a pay package for delegates to offset the estimated $7,000.00 in expenses incurred per delegate. Thereby bringing the estimated price tag for each state delegation to $30,000 resulting in a grand total of $1.5 Million Dollars in delegate offset packages alone. Our sources inside also indicated that the expense offset package proposal came as a hedge against electing delegates that either were all independently wealthy or unemployed “deadbeats”. As such, with the hefty price tag coupled with the relatively short time span, the group needs to raise at a minimum $62,500 Dollars per week. Perhaps wagering as to when the fifth delay in the call to order will be announced would be the safer bet at this point.

Likewise, if the hope was to see a cross-section of average Americans; what percentage of potential delegates have the ability to up and leave their place of employment or turn over their small business for a period of at least three weeks in this ever-weakening economy regardless of an offset of expenses directly related to the trip? The idea of assembling in person seems rather cost prohibitive with such a small planning window. Let alone the added logistics of determining whom, how and where the money will be deposited prior to disbursement to delegates.

Nonetheless, it is this blogger’s opinion that there is perhaps more to be gleaned by those who either turned down due to scheduling conflicts or were wholly omitted from receiving an invitation, than merely reporting on the efforts of those in attendance.

It is a sign of continual disorganization or at worst utter disregard, to have scheduled the Jekyll Island event capitalizing upon the renewed and growing interest in the FEDERAL RESERVE, i.e. H.R. 1207 and monetary policy in direct conflict with the widely publicized Campaign for Liberty Seattle conference. As a result, excluding the Champion of the Constitution and perhaps the greatest voice of the last thirty years regarding the outright failings of central banking practices and a wholly fiat currency, Dr. Ron Paul.

Additionally, the remaining list of those unable to attend due to such short-notice reads like a who’s who of the liberty movement and includes:

• Lew Rockwell – Chairman Ludwig von Mises Institute
• Thomas E. Woods Jr. – Author, Historical Scholar
• Peter Schiff – President Euro Pacific Capital, economic commentator
• Andrew Napolitano – former Judge, Author, Judicial Commentator
• Dr. Edwin Vieira – Constitutional Attorney, Author

Likewise, those completely left off the invitation only event include:

• Russell Means – Activist, Actor, Author, Humanitarian
• Gerald Celente – Trends Researcher, Director of Trends Research Institute
• Naomi Wolf -  Activist, Author of “The End of America” and “Give Me Liberty”
• Kevin Jackson – Talk Radio Host, author

Consequently, according to Catherine Bleisch whom attended, the group has broken off into several committees and plans to reach out to the “left”. One then has to wonder how successful this endeavor will be if the “Welcome Wagon” exists overwhelmingly of older white gentlemen?

Please do not misconstrue my intentions as no one is calling for an “affirmative-action” delegate selection program, however one needs not be a genius to understand the dynamics of modern day America. We are a diverse nation and as illustrated above by those wholly omitted from invitation, it seems the group is content to leave appearances as pancake battered as possible.

Case in point, the 2nd Continental Congress convened in May of 1775 and the “Committee of Five” was formed to begin drafting the formal Declaration of Independence. The committee knew one of the largest obstacles they faced in winning a wide swath of both domestic and international support for independence was one of appearances. The committee was acutely aware that the cause was doomed to fail if the document they drafted played into the Loyalist claim whatsoever of being nothing more than a group of disaffected wealthy colonists with an axe to grind against the king personally.

Therefore, Mr. Jefferson purposefully and carefully created the Declaration based solely on the actions, or long train of abuses, implemented by the king and British Parliament. Thereby steering clear of attacks on the king’s personality or character traits. This fact leads many historians to agree that this deliberate construction of the document succeeded in not only unifying large numbers of previously ambivalent colonists, but also helped rally French sentiment towards the cause for independence.

Similarly, the liberty movement must acknowledge and accept that regardless of the actual facts, the perception of our movement is white and male. Therefore, it behooves those attempting to rally as much of the American public as possible to the honorable cause of individual liberty and the Constitution, to guard against accusations of a being nothing more than a “good-ole boys club”.

On the whole, it is my feeling that the liberty movement is at a critical juncture of breaking through the false left/right paradigm, the abuses endured, and the unlawful loss of liberties at the hands of the corrupt central authority. For this reason, if an endeavor as momentous as the Continental Congress is to succeed, it must be planned more carefully and deliberately. The haphazard organization by the “We the People Foundation” coupled with unrealistic fundraising timetables does not leave one with a feeling of confidence. Even more so since Mr. Schulz’s organization has seen fit to claim the title of self-appointed “leader” of the liberty movement.

Joseph Marohl

Twelve years ago, Ralph Peters wrote, “Contemporary American culture is the most powerful in history, and the most destructive of competitor cultures [called elsewhere “noncompetitive cultures, such as that of Arabo-Persian Islam or the rejectionist segment of our own population”—emphasis mine].

Peters, now retired from the U.S. Army as Lieutenant Colonel, writes novels (under his own name and the pen name Owen Parry), essays, and newspaper columns.

In the same article, Peters cites celebrities like Bill Gates, Madonna, and Steven Spielberg and television programs like Dynasty, Dallas, and Baywatch for inciting international unrest by purveying “America’s irresponsible fantasies of itself … a devilishly enchanting, bluntly sexual, terrifying world” from which the normal Third-World citizen is barred.

But Col. Peters is not altogether hostile to this devilish enchantment. For most of the article, he praises American mass media—particularly action movies—as effective in quashing ideologies (inside and outside the U.S.A.) that resist exploitation by American-style corporate capitalism.

“The genius, the secret weapon, of American culture,” he says, “is the essence that the elites despise: ours is the first genuine people’s culture. It stresses comfort and convenience—ease—and it generates pleasure for the masses. We are Karl Marx’s dream, and his nightmare.”

I might add that we are also Aldous Huxley’s nightmare in Brave New World—a culture titillated by “feelies” while rejecting actual sex and turning human reproduction into technology … for profit. A populace enslaved and intellectually enfeebled by its gadgets and incapacity for the independent thought and effective cooperation needed to resist its masters.

He continues, making a point that Noam Chomsky (on the other end of the sociopolitical spectrum) agrees with: that current labor practices exhaust workers, leaving them fatigued and incapable of research into and critical thinking about current events—thus the average worker is drawn to the seductive fantasies of mass entertainment, an American specialty.

He says, “Secular and religious revolutionaries in our century have made [a] mistake, imagining that the workers of the world or the faithful just can’t wait to go home at night to study Marx or the Koran. Well, Joe Sixpack, Ivan Tipichni, and Ali Quat would rather ‘Baywatch.’ America has figured it out, and we are brilliant at operationalizing our knowledge, and our cultural power will hinder even those cultures we do not undermine.” [Emphasis mine.]

Unsurprisingly, Col. Peters is taken less with Madonna’s “irresponsibly” open and assertive sexuality or the independent, neorealist stories of struggling masses or hapless individuals than with Hollywood summer blockbusters: “The films most despised by the intellectual elite—those that feature extreme violence and to-the-victors-the-spoils sex—are our most popular cultural weapon, bought or bootlegged nearly everywhere.”

Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Chuck Norris are, for Col. Peters, America’s answer to Tokyo Rose, Axis Sally, and Hanoi Hannah. Violence becomes the working man’s alternative to thinking about the information so readily at his fingertips—and his only tool in dealing with the reality of rising unemployment and poverty: “As more and more human beings are overwhelmed by information, or dispossessed by the effects of information-based technologies, there will be more violence.”

As highly individualistic, vigilante-style heroes begin to dominate the world’s imagination, Peters (rightly) predicts, nationalism will fail and terrorism will rise:

“We will see countries and continents divide between rich and poor in a reversal of 20th-century economic trends. Developing countries will not be able to depend on physical production industries, because there will always be another country willing to work cheaper. The have-nots will hate and strive to attack the haves.

“… Beyond traditional crime, terrorism will be the most common form of violence, but transnational criminality, civil strife, secessions, border conflicts, and conventional wars will continue to plague the world, albeit with the ‘lesser’ conflicts statistically dominant. In defense of its interests, its citizens, its allies, or its clients, the United States will be required to intervene in some of these contests. We will win militarily whenever we have the guts for it.

“… The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault.” [Emphases mine.]

No wonder, then, that the attacks on September 11, 2001, so closely resembled—in their gaudy visual spectacle—a Roland Emmerich or Michael Bay film. No wonder, then, that the shock-and-awe bombings of Baghdad looked like a video game. No wonder, then, that President Bush found it expedient to dress up like a Top Gun cadet to boast about the U.S. victories in the Middle East.

But what do we do when the mass entertainments and independent (non-embedded) investigative reporters begin to sway in another direction—away from grandiloquent, corporate-inspired logos on the evening news (so effectively lampooned on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report), and away from multimillion-dollar spectacles of computer-generated stunt work and testosterone-fueled explosions?

What happens when new, inexpensive computer and recording technologies make it possible for Joe Sixpack, Ivan Tipichni, and Ali Quat [the stereotypes Peters so arrogantly calls on to denigrate working classes and “noncompetitive” have-nots] to make their own documentaries and narrative films—telling their own stories, not just the propagandistic fantasies of corporate-owned, corporate-controlled, and corporate-idolizing mass media?

What happens when blogging and YouTube allow unsponsored, not-for-profit expressions and analyses of current events? What happens if and when the public wants to see more humane, empathetic, and cooperative images of American life?

Writing in the Spring 2009 Journal of International Security Affairs, Col. Peters complains that, once undefeatable, we Americans no longer have the guts for military victories to ensure the success of our economic interests and “cultural assaults.”

For this, he apportions blame everywhere from “academic theorists” to the end of the military draft to atheism to fewer bloody noses in school playgrounds, jaundicing America’s backbone. Further, we have “cheapened” our respect for war itself—“our enemies view the home front as our weak flank.”

But the worst thing of all, he says, is the “killers without guns”: “There will always be a hostile third party in the fight, but one which we not only refrain from attacking but are hesitant to annoy: the media.”

So however bloodthirsty American media make us citizens of the world and however much their airbrushed images of wealth and glamour make us dissatisfied with our ordinary lives, pushing us to terror and despair, there are chinks in the empire’s best secret weapon!

What’s a good neocon militarist to do?

Col. Peters strongly implies a solution: “Win. In warfare, nothing else matters. If you cannot win clean, win dirty. But win.”

But, first, let’s kill the independent media … literally: “Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media.” [Emphasis mine.]

Given his uncanny (no, “creepy”) foresight twelve years ago, Col. Peters’ new report raises chilling prospects for American democracy in 2013 … if not sooner. A “democratic” nation that declares war on its “partisan media”! —By which, no doubt, Peters does not mean Fox News, CNN, or PBS, on which he regularly appears as an expert on military and cultural affairs.

And, as Jeremy Scahill reminds us, 189 journalists have been killed while on duty covering the Iraq war alone—at least 16 of which killed by U.S. forces.

But it looks like Peters, at least, is already thinking the “unthinkable.”

Joseph Marohl

I’m getting a new look at The Wizard of Oz. Right now, a fair-sized section of “hope you can believe in” has been pulled back to reveal the old quack Professor Marvel, who was hidden there all along—torture, surveillance, high finance, and (despite a recent epistolary assurance to the contrary) the same old same old in health care reform. (I don’t make predictions, but my guess is a good chunk of “reform” change will wind up in the pockets of insurance companies and big pharma—mind you, just a guess.)

I wouldn’t go so far as to deny that Obama has brought some Technicolor rays to our black-and-white world.

Sure, as far as same-sex marriage is concerned, we see some encouraging changes—on the state level (not federal)—from which, shamefully, in my opinion, the new wizard is holding himself just as aloof as the old wizard, under whose watch these state legislative and judicial reforms emerged. And, to be fair, the religious right no longer feel quite as empowered as they did a year ago in resisting these changes, despite a monstrous, shocking victory in California six months ago.

(It is good news indeed that my gay sisters and brothers who want to get married are increasingly enabled to do so—though, I should add, I personally have no desire to get married, and legal and economic inequities towards single people—gay or straight—remain unopposed.)

And while not having quite gotten around to dumping “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”—and even continuing to enforce it (ask Lt. Dan Choi!)—Obama still promises further inroads on gay rights … “some time.”

And, sure, the Guantanamo prison-slash-interrogation center is scheduled for closure in just eight months. Fantastic news for those of us with a feeling for human rights fresher than the year 1215! But, at present, closure of the infamous (and barely legal) detention center has no funding.

On the other hand, we have seen a proposed 15% cap on credit card interests defeated this week 60-33 in the Senate—denying indebted consumers the type of safety nets Washington is shitting itself to give to failing banks and other lending institutions. Twenty-one (21!) of the nay votes were Democrats; five more Democrats did not vote at all.

Not to suggest that, for one minute, I placed much confidence in the Democratic Party to stand up for the people against big capital … much less to Republican bullies and loudmouths.

Now, just like Bush, Obama is trying to block disclosure of photographs of Americans’ torture of detainees, on the understandable grounds that they may “inflame anti-American sentiment” (but only just as understandable now as when the Bush White House made the same argument). Meanwhile, the nation engaged this week in the “single deadliest US airstrike” on Afghanistan since 2001—one of a series of attacks designed ostensibly to weaken al-Qaeda while politically proving Obama’s commander-in-chief cojones. So 100 civilian lives have no anti-American propaganda potential?

Also out from behind the curtain is Obama’s indifference to US and international conventions in choosing not to go after the high-level members of the previous administration who blighted America’s global reputation and moral integrity by promoting and condoning inhuman and ineffective techniques of torture (including Cheney and Bush—as well as culpable Democrats).

The media, meanwhile, have responded to these revelations with little heart, brains, or courage … with the continues-to-amaze exception of stand-up comics!

Obama—God help me, I still like him (and do not in fact believe in God)—needs to put some ruby slippers on his rhetoric. And fast!

I admire the man’s style, manners, and his political savvy. But only what he says appeases the left; what he does appeases the right. In trying to show he’s no “socialist,” he panders to war-mongering, corporate capitalist interests. He panders with a great deal of dignity and wit, I have to admit, but it’s time for him to make direct and deliberate domestic and international policy changes of substance.

I can’t help but worry that Obama is squandering the window of opportunity he has had since February. The good news is that, for now, the far right and religious right are in shambles—but they are regrouping … fast … and with a vengeance.

My worst fear (hopefully groundless) is that their present whining over socialism, terrorist threats, higher taxes (after a tax cut, no less), teleprompters, and Dijon mustard will turn the tide entirely back to the dark ages many of us were hoping to escape.

The wicked witch could still use a good bucket of water—and the flying monkeys need a good talking to. Americans are ready for change, equality, liberation, hope, whatever you want to call it. But it (none of it) will come by following the same road we’ve been on for decades now already.

Joseph Marohl

I appreciate the improvement in tone of the Obama administration over its immediate predecessor, for example, Obama’s statement in Turkey that America, though enriched by its Christian population, is “not a Christian nation”; even the President’s espousal of his personal faith has, so far, avoided the arrogant display of ignorance and bullying bluster of Bush.

Obama has lifted bans on stem-cell research and the abortion bans linked under Bush to international aid. On Friday, Obama condemned homophobia in particular no less than intolerance in general in a speech at Washington’s Holocaust Memorial Museum—an inclusiveness that is poignant in light of the surge in gay bashing in the past decade and the growth of hate groups in America since his election.

All these examples speak of a bright new spirit in the leadership and values of our nation.

But President Obama has everything to gain or lose over the issue of whether to investigate those in power who promoted or condoned the use of torture of terror suspects.  So far, he appears to be failing a crucial test of integrity.

Fox TV has repeatedly criticized the President’s release of formerly classified memos showing the government’s deliberate attempt to whitewash torture techniques and to approve specific techniques, namely waterboarding, that have been used as torture since at least the Spanish Inquisition and condemned by American military courts trying foreign war criminals for the past 65 years. Fox TV pundits say that the President’s act is politics, a threat to security, an aid to the nation’s enemies.

The White House has defended its action on the basis that the information had already appeared in the media—in the New York Review of Books and elsewhere. Besides, precautions were taken to blacken out names, supposedly to protect the innocent or the legally covert. And, unlike the Valerie Plame “outing” in 2003, the White House appears to have little to gain politically from the release of this information.

The burning question is—What does the President intend to do with this information?

In his original statement to the press, Obama exempted CIA operatives who participated in torture but did so with an understanding that they were acting within certain legal bounds. In World War II and other cases, soldiers were prosecuted only for exceeding the bounds of laws existing at the time—“following orders” was a legitimate defense that many Nazis who did not just follow orders tried illegitimately to use to save their necks at Nuremberg.

Obama can reasonably justify not prosecuting low-level personnel—unlike the 2004 attempt to quiet the Abu Ghraib scandal, where investigations and prosecutions did not rise higher than low-ranking GIs.

Then last Sunday, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel announced that the Bush policymakers, namely John Yoo and Jay Bybee, whose support of torture is documented in the released memos, would likewise be exempt from further investigation and prosecution. But then later White House aides intimated that the President did “not rule out legal sanctions for the Bush lawyers who developed the legal basis for the use of the techniques.”

Troublingly, in public addresses, Obama has echoed Republican speechwriter Peggy Noonan’s dribble that we should not waste time, money, and energy to “look back” to offenses in the past. (As one commenter to Noonan’s original statement put it: “Great news for hit-and-run drivers.”)

Obama told an enthusiastic crowd of CIA employees, “Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes. That’s how we learn.” But the government’s detailing of specific torture techniques and fostering an air of institutional and public acceptance of what it euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation techniques” can hardly be called a simple mistake.

On Tuesday, an internal memo by Dennis Blair, Obama’s national intelligence director, was publicized, stating, “High-value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country.” Blair seems to support at least the underpinning assumption that the Yoo-Bybee interrogation policy was effective.  Obama, in turn, has left the matter in the hands of Attorney General Eric Holder, who is less shy of the word “torture” and has called for the release of even more memos detailing the U.S. government’s support and defense of torture.

To my mind, torture is a bigger issue than the economy. The cost of investigating and prosecuting those of both political parties who were actively or tacitly behind the senseless, brutal, and unjustified beatings of detainees fraudulently in the name of the American way of life and at the expense of justice-loving American citizens is worth more than ten General Motors and fifty Bank of Americas.

And if we taxpayers could fork out $6.2 million to investigate a blowjob in the Oval Office, we owe at least as much to our sense of ourselves as a just, moral, tolerant, and humane people.

Government funds are at least as justly spent in supporting the rule of law as in supporting military actions abroad and sustaining economic growth.

One of the reasons we elect a President every four years is to permit the opportunity to investigate and legally address the flaws—both simple mistakes and flagrant illegalities—of the previous administration. If he or she does not do so, why bother with term limits or even elections?

Our nation’s much-praised propensity for “smooth transitions” distinctly implies that we transition to something new and different from its precedent—not continuation of the same, and not erasure of recent memories of injustice and lawlessness.

If Obama does not address the wrongs of the previous administration, he betrays the fundamental reason for his (or any new President’s) election: change.

If he does not push the investigation and prosecution of injustices committed in the name of America, he does nothing to build the nation’s reputation for democracy and rule of law.

If he does not look into charges of wrongdoing in the Bush administration, even if he  and (less likely) his political party could remain blameless of those wrongs, he furthers the erosion of American values and liberties and, in this case, leaves torture as a tool for future leaders with a bent towards tyranny and a cruel streak.

Joseph Marohl

To prove something means to put it to the test, not necessarily (in fact, seldom) to provide certainty on the matter. In that sense, the phrase “the exception proves the rule” makes sense, that is, a counter-proof gives us the opportunity to put a position’s logic on trial.

A good many things can’t be proved. They are, in fact, the very same things that cannot be disproved—life after death, the existence of a personal deity who creates and provides for all that exists, the assurance that your dog loves you, and so on.

To prove your position, provided it is a position and not a matter of verifiable fact, you must state your position precisely—that such-and-such exists, that it is good or beautiful or useful, that it means something, that it has causes and effects, or that we should conduct ourselves in particular ways because of it.

“The proof of the pudding is in the tasting.” Experience and experimentation are the guidelines to solid proof.

It must be publicly testable. Your intuition and feelings and the way you were brought up may all be excellent ways for you individually to be certain about the world around you, but they don’t constitute proof. They are almost useless, by themselves, in reaching the sort of compromise and consensus that life in a democracy demands. (Note: The Athenians who gave us Western democracy also gave us logic and argumentation.)

Proof must be available to the senses—especially other people’s senses, not just your own—a tangible object, an observed event, a predictable and immediate cause or effect, a deduction from premises which are themselves available to sense and experience, a comparison to something already known, a settled definition, or something that can be measured or counted.

Ideally, proof does not depend on authority or expertise, but if authorities, experts, or eyewitnesses are allowed into an argument, they must be credible—that is, knowledgeable on the matter under discussion, honest, and disinterested.

And our conclusions must be valid—which means they must follow directly and inevitably from the proofs we use.

If something can be proved, it can be argued about—it can also be disproved. Some things—such as that the earth orbits the sun, that human life has value, or that every independent citizen in a democracy should vote—have been already proved to the extent that most people no longer argue about them—and the proofs against them have fallen into disrepute—but these matters have been argued in the past, and they could be argued again sometime in the future, should new, reputable counter-proofs ever appear.

Thus, some things that used to be unarguable—that torture is never justified, that marriage can exist only between one man and one woman, that what’s good for General Motors is good for America—have recently become arguable because circumstances and change have provided new evidence for putting these assumptions to the test.

A good measure of what a society is all about is what it chooses to put to the test—and how swiftly and how carefully controversies are put to rest.

It is not a good reflection on American culture, for instance, that the issues of abortion, civil rights, and the death penalty have been allowed to roil over decades with little or no effort to rise above prejudice, preconceptions, and self-interest to study these matters and test them according to fact and reason.

Likewise, it is not a good reflection on America or its leaders that they have been swifter in declaring a new war, in a matter of a week usually, with hardly a word of debate on the matter, than in fixing its infrastructure, which—from its education system to its levees to its prisons to its voting booths—has been sagging for decades now.

What we tend to focus on in this society—in the mass media and beside the office water coolers—is almost never what proves to be the matters of much importance.

Hurricane Katrina exposed the neglect we have paid to poverty and racism, and 9/11 revealed how slipshod our security is and how arrogant our view of the rest of the world is, and the current financial crisis draws our attention to the nation’s burgeoning debt and the greed and illogic betrayed by its sense of luxury and entitlement.

Yet up to all this, we fussed over (I choose not to say “argued”) whether O.J. was or was not guilty, or whether Lindsay is or is not a lesbian, or whether George W. Bush deserved his Yale degree or his honorable discharge from the Texas Air National Guard.

This summer, when McCain selected Palin as his running mate, how quickly our attention shifted from what qualified her to be vice president to how well McCain’s staff “vetted” her (i.e., followed standard operating procedures) and how funny she was and how much her clothes cost. Just for the record, her qualifications were matters that could, with some effort, be put to the test. Her sense of humor, to take the weakest link, is harder to prove or disprove. What her clothes cost was just a matter of verifiable fact.

Here’s my point:

We are a nation primed to act on impulse and feeling—not altogether bad things and certainly necessary to motivate action. But we lack the patience to put matters of great importance to the test, to ask for proof when it is needed and, instead, to ask for too many lurid and sensationalistic details when they are irrelevant.

What does that say about us, as a people? (The answer is not altogether bad—but it’s not flattering either, for a nation as rich and powerful as we—still—are.)

Do I know what I know because it “feels” true inside me, where it cannot be touched by reason or fellow feeling, or because I have confidence that, if I have to, I can put it to the test?

Both, I think (and feel).

Joseph Marohl

The language is strange to us today. The dichotomy, of course, is too easy, naïve. Ruskin was a product of his times, as we are products of ours.

On the one hand, apart from perfectionists, that neurotic lot, nobody really speaks of human excellence anymore—or, at any rate, “excellence” as anything more than a tool of advertising or the cant of sports writing and awards shows.

But what Ruskin is talking about, besides Gothic architecture, is education … and what it means to be a human being, not a machine or a tool, calibrated for factory work.

So, on the other hand, as humanly flawed as his prophecy is, Ruskin, the Christian socialist, enchanted with a romanticized concept of pre-industrialized Western culture, could tell a thing or two about a world that would plow under humanism and the humanities for the sake of mechanization, Social Darwinism, and a soulless grinning Christendom cut off from any real concept of or concern for human suffering.

Today, in a post-industrial world, what would Ruskin make of the Internet … and consumerism? More generally, of the mass media?

We live in a society devoid of the humanistic folk element Ruskin and other eminent Victorians bemoaned the loss of, in an age of industrialization and laissez-faire capitalism.

Beginning with the English Romantics Wordsworth and Coleridge, conscious of regimentation of the displaced peasantry (with the “enclosure” of the “commons”—unowned tracts of land, on and off which peasants could live, without ownership), through the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, British intellectuals mourned the loss of what (they knew) could not be recovered (or remembered with any accuracy) and awaited whatever was coming next—an age of dehumanized machines, they feared, and of unbridled greed among the captains of industry (in whom Thomas Carlyle had put his faith for civilization’s future—a little gingerly, I suspect).

Humans reduced to statistics—human labor and imagination reduced to the calibrations of efficiency experts and test audiences—art in an age of mechanical reproduction, cool and perfect objects without the human messiness—inhumanly scaled ideals of beauty and success—intellectual discovery as corporate property—shrill, gaudy entertainments that could shut out nature, including homemade human nature, and streamline the existential muddle of chance, flux, and passion into manageable story “arcs” and simple, understandable motives, with laugh tracks and opinion polls to cue us towards the appropriate affects—consistent and reliable cheeseburgers—a clockwork sense of right and wrong—it’s the world all of us grew up in, so pardon us if we think of Beethoven as background music in a nice restaurant.

It’s in this world that we will leave no child behind. Every child has the right to be made into a decent tool of the state—and, above the state, global corporations. Standardized tests and teachers teaching to the tests leave no room for music or field trips to insect zoos. Team sports prepare young people for the military and management teams. Multiple-choice tests prepare young consumers for the “freedom of choice” provided by a remarkably homogenous set of manufactured products. Every pleasure, even every holiday and vacation, requires a blueprint, planned activities, and rubrics for evaluating the “fun.”

Abstinence-only sex, zero-calorie food, risk-free adventures, virtual reality, role models as heroes.

Perfect tools.