Plague days

I've been re-reading Albert Camus' novel The Plague for the umpteenth time, about an outbreak of the pestilence in the Algerian town of Oran in the 1940s. I think Camus saw it as a metaphor for the grip of fascism on Europe.

At times, I  feel like I've lived through wave after wave of outbreaks of the plague, not, thank God, in the form of 20th century fascism but of a mean-spirited, all-American robber baron mentality of bloodless greed, often backed up by bigotry, fanaticism and xenophobia.

The first wave hit with the Reagan ascendancy in the 1980s, followed by the Gingrich "revolution" in 1994, the era Bush II, and lately the Tea Party. it's hard for me to tell most days whether to count that as separate waves of plague or one long outbreak the wanes and waxes.

I think that's also why the image of zombies shows up so much in this blog, as the dead (or in this case ideas that should have long been dead) come back to devour the living. In the image of Camus' novel, the dead rats keep appearing in intervals, signifying another outbreak.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, here's American food policy on plague.

AND HERE'S ANOTHER CRITIQUE of the ideology of the plague.

Musing amidst the ruins-updated

El Cabrero recently passed a literary milestone. After several years of effort, I finally made it through an unabridged version of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. My "secret" for getting through big books like that is to read a couple of pages from each volume daily, then take a break when a volume is finished, then repeat as necessary. I've found that you can get through almost anything that way...although I have yet to try my method on Joyce's Ulysses.

I was inspired to try Gibbon after three people I know did the same (one, however, told me that if he had to do it over again he'd do a one volume condensation). As the story goes, Gibbon was inspired to take up the task while visiting Rome on the "grand tour" of Italy made by so many upper class Europeans. As he put it,

It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted fryars were singing Vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City first started to my mind.

I got a bit of a chance to muse amidst the ruins of the Roman capitol myself last summer, so I can relate.

Was it worth it? What with cognitive dissonance and all I'd have to say yes, especially since saying no would mean fessing up to wasting a bunch of time. Still, it was a grand tour of its own. Over the next few days I may share some impressions.

A FAVORITE TARGET OF MINE gets whacked by Paul Krugman here.

IN PRAISE OF HAVING A SPINE. Here's E.J. Dionne's latest while we're at it.

OLD SCHOOL BIRDS can be seen here.

PERSONAL NOTE. We're back in WV after a bit more than a week on the road. It's always nice to come back to the farm and find that approximately the same number of animals are still alive as were there when we left.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The not so mighty hunter

Another deer season has come and gone. I made several efforts this time, but things didn't break my way.

I think part of the blame for this lies with the deer themselves. At one point, I might have had a shot at a group of them. Looking through the scope, I saw one deer licking another one.

It would have been so much easier if the deer in question would have been giving the other one the finger (although I know there are logistical problems for deer associated with performing that gesture).

Deer should be meaner. And uglier. Then everything would be perfect.

DEAL OR NO DEAL, REVISITED. Here's economist Dean Baker's take on the unemployment/tax cut deal.

FEAR OF SUCCESS. Here's a take on the right wing's fear of successful public programs.

PLUTOCRACY REVISITED. A former neo-con fesses up.

GAME CHANGER. The WV Senate will be under new management.

BLASTED MOUNTAINS AND BLOWN UP BUDDHAS. All the way from the state of Maine, this article compares the coming destruction of Blair Mountain with the blown up Buddhas of Afghanistan.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

"This is mine"

I've been blogging off and on lately about the connections between evolution and our social and political life. It seems that recent research has pretty much busted the bubble of those who thought that people are blank slates on which society writes whatever it will.

If that idea was true, then it might follow that all our nasty traits are due to the corrupting influence of society and could be removed given a different environment. If, on the other hand, we carry a lot of evolutionary baggage from our pre-human ancestors, this might not be so easily done.

In a classic passage, the 18th century philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau finds the source of human corruption in the primal sin of private property:

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying 'This is mine,' and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: 'Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.'

Rousseau and others in this tradition believed that with a reorganized society, we might be free of this corruption and spare ourselves any number or crimes, wars and murders.

It can't be denied that greed for private wealth has caused all kinds of carnage. And it shouldn't be forgotten that people like Rousseau played an important role in opposing arbitrary tyranny and absolutism and making real social gains. But the utopian vision has run aground these days, and part of the problem might be the raw materials with which the reformer has to work.

DEATH OF A THOUSAND CUTS. Republicans plan to kill or weaken health care reform bit by bit if victorious in November.

HAIR OF THE DOG. This sampling from a new book looks at how right wing "philanthropy" helped pave the way for the Great Recession.

COLD COMFORT. Speaking of the Great Recession, the National Bureau of Economic Research said it officially ended in June 2009. Just not so's anyone could tell.

STEPPING UP. In this op-ed, a wealthy entrepreneur argues for ending Bush era tax cuts for wealthy Americans.

INDULGE ME. Longtime readers of Goat Rope will remember El Cabrero's fondness for the martial arts. Here's an interesting item from the Washington Post about how China's newly wealthy are hiring martial arts experts as bodyguards.

SOME BIRD. Imagine one with teeth and a 17 foot wingspan.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

In the spirit of fair play

I've spent a good bit of time here taking swipes at right wing Whackadoodleism. In an effort to transcend the bitter polarization of our time, the spirit of fair play prompts me to state for the record that Whackadoodleism is not the monopoly of any political tendency (although these days it seems to tilt more in one direction).

Here's one example of Whackadoodlery on the left that is pertinent to the sporadic series of posts here about human evolution and social life. The great biologist E. O. Wilson is widely admired today for his scientific work on topics ranging from ants to ecology to biophilia as well as his advocacy for dealing with climate change.

It wasn't always that way. In the mid 1970s, Wilson wrote a book titled Sociobiology: the New Synthesis which discussed genetically inherited behavior patterns of various animals. None of that was particularly controversial for people who were paying attention. But Wilson had the temerity to extend his analysis to humans and to suggest that we had some evolutionary baggage of our own.

Left wing ideologues somehow took this to mean that Wilson was suggesting that war, racism, imperialism, etc. were biologically inevitable. (He wasn't, by the way.) At a meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, activists chanted "Racist Wilson you can't hide, we charge you with genocide" and poured ice water on his head as he prepared to give a speech.

(Genocide for writing a book? Really? And Sociobiology didn't discuss the issues of race.)

He gave the speech anyway.

For the record, I'm not endorsing all of his ideas on human evolution and our genetic legacy. Wilson himself has long accepted as valid some critiques of that formulation. But it there is a growing sense in the biological and social sciences that we are animals after all. Biology isn't destiny, but it is...well, biology.

(Plus, living around roosters has taught me a lot about human males.)

That doesn't spell the end of efforts to work for greater social justice, but it might be time to retire a cherished radical myth that human nature is a blank slate or some kind of silly putty that can be moulded into any shape we want.

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? Labor Day has come and gone, but labor woes are still with us.

WHAT HE SAID. This op-ed by a friend of mine suggests ways West Virginia can strengthen its unemployment insurance program.

THE BEGINNING OF SORROWS. Here is a review of several recent books on the politically pivotal decade of the 1970s.

LOOSE WITH THE TRUTH. Here's another look at misinformation on health care reform. We're probably going to see a lot more of that.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Hot dog

Whose dog is that?

We interrupt our regularly scheduled program for this urgent canine update from Goat Rope Farm. When I returned home yesterday, a strange dog awaited me.

Actually, it was Arpad, our Great Pyrenees. He's a long haired beast who loves cold weather--the colder the better--which means he's pretty miserable in the WV summer.

However, the Spousal Unit's sister, who has spent years working in animal hospitals, is way better at being a doggie barber than we are and she just happened to be here on a visit. Arpad got a buzz cut. Aside from a puff at the end of his tail (for a lion effect), he could be a Marine recruit.

He's tiny now. I hardly recognize him, but he seems a lot more chipper...if it really is him and not a clever Cylon impersonation (sorry, I've been watching Battlestar Galactica lately).

OK, back to the salt mines...

DAMAGE REPORT. Here's a look at how 30 years of "conservative" rule damaged the American economy.

IGNORING THE UNEMPLOYED. Here's a good editorial about the need for Congress to act to help the unemployed, a frequent subject of rants at this blog.

COUNT THE COSTS. Here's Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo on a new study by the WV Center on Budget and Policy about the impact of coal--benefits as well as costs--on the state budget. And here is his article about it for the printed paper. This ought to be good for another industry hissy fit.

CHIMPANZEE WARS. They happen.

NOT TOO FAR FROM WALDEN, a senior citizen from Concord is battling for a ban on bottled water.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A powerful mix

1898 political cartoon.

People have long observed how powerfully nationalism can motivate people, even those who have low status and little apparent stake in the nation in question. When World War I broke out in Europe, for example, there was widespread joy and euphoria on all sides. Even many political radicals who had previously vowed to oppose international conflict joined it.

Nationalistic enthusiasms (which nation is involved is immaterial) can override rational and religious considerations. Reinhold Niebuhr in his 1932 classic Moral Man and Immoral Society, has a succinct explanation:

"The man in the street, with his lust for power and prestige thwarted by his own limitations and the necessities of social life, projects his ego upon his nation and indulges his anarchic lusts vicariously. So a nation is at one and the same time a check upon, and a final vent for, the expression of individual egoism."

In his view, it is precisely that mixture of selflessness and vicarious selfishness that give nationalism its power.

A LIVELY CREW greeted shareholders at Massey Energy's annual meeting in Richmond, Va.

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS. A new survey about American attitudes towards things like capitalism and socialism finds some surprising numbers.

CHRISTIANITY AND CONSERVATISM. This article wonders how, given the Bible's powerful statements on social justice (yeah, I said those dreaded words), the two can go together.

OK, SO I'M SMIRKING. The state of WV is discontinuing it's redesigned version of Medicaid, which is something quite a few people I know will celebrate.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The Platonism of the left, the wilding on the right

El Cabrero tries not to rant too much here about things that get on my last nerve, but I may indulge myself a bit today. My topic of choice is what I've come to think of as the Platonism of the left.

Plato, of course, was a great Greek philosopher and student of Socrates. He wrote brilliant and often charming dialogues that have influenced thought for 23 centuries or so--so much so that Alfred North Whitehead famously referred to Western philosophy as "a series of footnotes to Plato." I've fallen under his spell more than once myself.

But thinkers from Nietzsche to Karl Popper have pointed out the dark sides of Platonic thought. For Nietzsche, he represented pure decadence for devaluing the material world in favor of the realm of forms or ideas. For Popper, he was an advocate of a closed society.

Platonizing has become a verb or sorts, which at the broadest level means to imitate his thought. At it's worst, it can mean believing that one's own ideas or models of the world are more real than the world itself.

I think the Platonism of the Left has surfaced during the health care reform debate. Some "progressive" people would apparently prefer an imaginary perfect bill which had no chance of getting anywhere to an imperfect real one that will make a huge difference for many Americans.

I don't mind if people would prefer to live in an imaginary world--as long as they don't mess up the real one.

Meanwhile, there's also the Whackadoodleism of the right. See below...

MORE UGLY. Some representatives who voted for health care reform have received death threats. What exactly is in that tea, anyway?

IT'S ALL FUN AND GAMES until somebody cuts a propane line. The FBI is investigating an incident involving a cut gas line at the home of the brother of Virginia Democratic Congressman Thomas Perriello after his address was published in a Tea Party blog which urged the faithful to visit the place and express their feelings about his vote in favor of health care reform.

AND STILL MORE. One might think that after the wave of name calling, vandalism, death threats, and other fun and games that right wing leaders would try to tone down the rhetoric. Sarah Palin appears not to have gotten the memo (if one existed) however. In a recent tweet, she wrote

Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!"

Read more here.

WHATEVER HAPPENED to the old conservatism?

FALLOUT. A group of evangelical Christians have responded to Glen Beck's assertion that the idea of social justice is communist/Nazi. (One sometimes wonders whether those who assert the Whackadoodle equation of communism and Nazism may have dozed during their history of World War II classes.)

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The end of the world as we know it (revisited)

El Cabrero has always thought that there is a good kind of conservatism and a reactionary kind. The good kind respects traditions and has a cautious approach to change. The reactionary kind tends to view any kind of legislation or policy change that might benefit disadvantaged people as leading to the apocalypse.

The nice people at The New Republic have come up with some great (and bi-partisan) examples of the second variety.

Here are a few of my favorites:

ON WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE:

“Woman suffrage would give to the wives and daughters of the poor a new opportunity to gratify their envy and mistrust of the rich. Meantime these new voters would become either the purchased or cajoled victims of plausible political manipulators, or the intimidated and helpless voting vassals of imperious employers.”

—Former President Grover Cleveland, 1905

ON ABOLISHING CHILD LABOR:

“[T]he child will become a very dominant factor in the household and might refuse perhaps to do chores before six a.m. or after seven p.m. or to perform any labor.”

—Senator Weldon Heyburn (R-ID), in 1908

ON THE PERILS OF SOCIAL SECURITY:

“I fear it may end the progress of a great country and bring its people to the level of the average European. It will furnish delicious food and add great strength to the political demagogue. It will assist in driving worthy and courageous men from public life. It will discourage and defeat the American trait of thrift. It will go a long way toward destroying American initiative and courage.”

—Senator Daniel O. Hastings (R-DE), 1935

ON THE EVILS OF MINIMUM WAGE AND MANDATORY OVERTIME PAY:

“[The Act represents] a step in the direction of Communism, bolshevism, fascism, and Nazism.”

—The National Association of Manufacturers, 1938

ON DEMON MEDICARE:

“It is socialism. It moves the country in a direction which is not good for anyone, whether they be young or old. It charts a course from which there will be no turning back.”

—Senator Carl Curtis (R-NE), 1965

The list could go on and on, but you get the idea. Meanwhile, here's some other stuff to check out:

SPEAKING OF THE END OF THE WORLD, Coal Tattoo yesterday reported that a new study of the damaging effects of mountaintop removal mining is likely to get another coal industry hissy fit going. Here's more from Dot Earth and the Gazette.

BANK ON IT. Here's Krugman on financial reform.

IT'S NOT ALL BAD. Here is a piece on some recent positive innovations that could make the future a little better.

IS IT RAINING IGUANAS IN FLORIDA? Not exactly, but almost. Apparently, when it gets cold, they kind of shut down and fall from trees, but are usually OK when they warm up.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Out of the darkness

The theme at Goat Rope these days has been Greek tragedy but you'll find links and comments about current events below. Today we start on the Oresteia by Aeschylus, one of the greatest dramatic works ever written. Its great theme is the human journey from violence and barbarism to democracy and the rule of law. Too bad the journey isn't over yet

According to Robert Fagles and W.B. Stanford,

Aeschylus was forty five in 480 B.C. when the Persians sacked Athens and destroyed the shrines of the gods on the Acropolis. Soon afterwards he fought in the forces which defeated the Persians at Salamis and Plataea, as he had fought in the Greek victory at Marathon ten years before. The Greeks in general, and the Athenians in particular, because they had played the major part in the triumph of Hellas, saw these victories as a triumph of right over might, courage over fear, freedom over servitude, moderation over arrogance.

In the optimistic climate that prevailed after that great victory, it was hoped that a new era of harmony, rationality, and justice would prevail. Aeschylus' trilogy about the violence-ridden family of Atreus developed these themes.

More to come.

CEO PAY. The Obama administration is proposing that firms that have received two rounds of bailout money must submit changes in executive pay to government oversight.

GROSSED OUT. Some scientists suggest a link between the emotion of disgust and conservative political attitudes.

HEALTH CARE. Millions of Americans want a public option to be included in health care reform, but it's going to be a struggle to get one.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

What is concealed and what is revealed

Albert Greiner as Oedipus in an 1896 version. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

A few years back, El Cabrero went on a jag of reading bizarre works of literary theory. One little volume that was kind of fun was Mythologies by Roland Barthes. In it, the author attempted to explain the inner semiotic meaning of things like fast cars, professional wrestling and even strip tease.

He argued that what gave the latter its power (at the time anyhow) was what was concealed rather than what was revealed. I guess I'll take his word for it.

It does often seem to be the case that things left to the imagination have greater power than things explicitly shown. In Greek tragedy, for example, all kinds of nasty things happen. Oedipus gouges out his own eyes, Agamemnon is butchered in a bath tub, Pentheus is torn to pieces by a group of frenzied women led by his mother.

But one difference between ancient tragedy and modern gory movies is that this kind of action takes place offstage. But this doesn't diminish the effect; if anything, it increases it.

Aristotle believed that tragedy should produce a powerful and cleansing emotional reaction in the viewer (it works for the reader too) by producing both pity and fear. But it wasn't necessary to show everything to do this:

Fear and pity may be aroused by spectacular means; but they may also result from the inner structure of the piece, which is the better way, and indicates a superior poet. For the plot ought to be so constructed that, even without the aid of the eye, he who hears the tale told will thrill with horror and melt to pity at what takes place. This is the impression we should receive from hearing the story of the Oedipus. But to produce this effect by the mere spectacle is a less artistic method, and dependent on extraneous aids.

Some things are perhaps best left to the imagination. It occurs to El Cabrero that the makers of slasher movies have neglected their Aristotle.

THE STATES AND THE STIMULUS. A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research warns that spending cuts at the state and local level could blunt the stimulus impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

WORKERS OF THE US, REUNITE? Here's an article on the possible re-unification of the AFLCIO and Change to Win labor federations.

FIGHTING THE NEW DEAL. Here's a book review of Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Is it over yet?

I always felt that through some kind of cosmic paperwork mixup I was born in the wrong time. Given the choice, I think a birth sometime around 1915 or a little earlier might have worked.

For most of my life, I was right there with Hamlet: "The time is out of joint..."

I've always felt more affinity for the world of the 1930s and 1940s, as hard as those times were, than the world I was born in--and was always a little jealous of my parents for having the chance to live under a president like FDR.

It seemed that it was my fate that during all my adult life, the political forces that I hated the most would be triumphant: market fundamentalism, one-sided class warfare from above, with divisive cultural issues providing a smokescreen. The first election I could vote in was 1980 and I still recall what a miserable night that was. The decade the followed was disastrous for West Virginia, with double digit unemployment and a crashing standard of living.

The 1990s were a little better, but the dominant ideology was still that of pseudo-conservatism, a toxic mix of plutocracy and prejudice. And those were the good old days...

It is the peculiar distinction of the Bush years that by comparison, almost any administration of the past looks pretty good.

At many points over the last 30 years, I kept wondering if it was ever going to be over. Every ebb of the tide seemed to be followed by another peak. Like one of the bad guys in a slasher movie, it seemed to revive every time you thought it was dead.

I guess we had to drink the cup to the dregs before the bankruptcy of the agenda became apparent.

Is it over? Lots of people think so, but I'm not going to drop my guard. Meanwhile, here's to the changing of the guard.

IT'S ON. The fight over the Employee Free Choice Act and the role of the labor movement in rebuilding the middle class, that is.

NEEDED: a better bailout.

TOOL USING ANIMALS. You might be surprised at the list.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ....

NEMESIS

The fearsome goddess, courtesy of wikipedia.

On the walls of the temple of the god Apollo at Delphi were carved the words "Meden agan" and "gnothi seauton"--Nothing in excess and Know thyself. As words of wisdom go, those are two of the best.

It was commonly held that excess (hubris) leads to destruction. (Good thing that doesn't happen any more, huh?). The "Know thyself" thing could be interpreted in lots of ways but the main idea was know that you are just a mortal, not a god.

A basic idea that runs through Greek mythology is that of nemesis, personified as a goddess of the same name that "gives what is due." When people are excessive, i.e. when they act as if they were gods, they have to pay the price. Although the goddess Nemesis doesn't have a speaking role in the Odyssey, the concept does.

Like Dylan said, "When you bite off more than you can chew/you've got to pay the penalty."

That was the case of the Greeks at Troy. After they finally gained access to the city they had besieged for 10 years, they committed a number of atrocities and excesses. Achilles' son Neoptolemos killed King Priam at his family altar. The child Astyanax, son of Hector and Andromache, is thrown from the city walls. According to some versions, Ajax the Lesser raped Cassandra, daughter of Priam, in the temple of Athena.

The gods were not amused.

For those reasons, the "victors" at Troy must pay a heavy price. Some, like King Agamemnon, will be slain when they reach home. Menelaus and Helen won't make it home for eight years. Ajax the Less will drown on the way home. Many others die on the way as well.

Odysseus must wander and suffer for 10 years and go home to face much trouble. In the epic cycle, the characters frequently opine that the lucky ones fell in battle.

As you may have noticed, sometimes you lose when you win and vice versa.

The Odyssey is all about the perils of homecoming and the price of excess.

SPEAKING OF NEMESIS. Thomas Frank ponders the conservative crackup in his latest book. Here's a preview.

HEY NEMESIS, COULD YOU PUT THESE GUYS ON YOUR LIST? It looks like Wal-Mart's latest attempt to intimidate employees might have backfired a little. Not enough...

HUNGRY PLANET. Here's an item on possible responses to the global food crisis.

CLIMATE CHANGE SKEPTICISM is predictable but unaffordable, according to this item from the Boston Globe.

QUEEN OF THE STARS. Brian May, founder and guitar meister of the rock group Queen just published his Ph. D. thesis on astronomy. I hope it comes with a guitar solo. For that matter, we should name a galaxy for Freddie Mercury. A planet just isn't enough.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: STELLAR

INFLUENZA

This man is easily influenced.

The theme at Goat Rope lately has been insights from the social sciences about human violence, cruelty and...well...evil. Once again, I highly recommend social psychologist Philip Zimbardo's book The Lucifer Effect and its accompanying website.

One of the themes that jumps out over and over again from all the research (not to mention history) is that people are extremely susceptible to situational and systemic pressures which can make them do things they would otherwise never have done.

The sad thing is that a lot of the things that can get us into trouble are basic human tendencies we all share, such the need for acceptance, the desire to be liked; reciprocity; the sometimes very useful trait of obeying authority (which is only as harmless as the authority itself); our tendency to take cues from the actions of others (social proof); etc.

While the focus at Goat Rope lately has been on violence and cruelty, we can all fall under different forms of social influence in less extreme settings, including the workplace, buying and selling, relationships, etc. Not to mention advertising and politics...

At the Lucifer Effect website, Zimbardo and Cindy X. Wang have a useful section on resisting social influence that covers most of the bases. It's worth checking out.

So like obey me or something...

WHAT WENT WRONG? Conservative thinkers are trying to figure it out. El Cabrero has an idea or two...

NEEDED: A NEW SOCIAL COMPACT. That's what she said. I concur.

SLOWING DOWN THE NEXT WAR. Here's a positive assessment of recent citizen efforts in the US to prevent war with Iran.

MINIMUM WAGE. The federal minimum wage is increasing to $6.55 per hour. Twenty three states and the District of Columbia already have laws mandating a higher minimum.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

VIOLENCE AND PUBLIC HEALTH

Improvements in human longevity and physical well-being over the last hundred or so years have come more from improvements in public health than in the treatment of individual patients and diseases.

I'm just talking about the basics, like clean water and a sewage system. This is still an issue in many parts of the world. In the developing world today, diarrhea is the leading cause of child deaths--two million per year. Around six million people of all ages die from it annually.

Dr. James Gilligan, author of the 1996 Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic, suggests that we take a public health approach to violence prevention and reduction at both the interpersonal and structural level.

Rather than conventional moralistic condemnations,

the only way to explain the causes of violence so that we can learn how to prevent it, is to approach violence as a problem in public health and preventive medicine, and to think of violence as a symptom of life-threatening (and often lethal) pathology which, like all forms of illness, has an etiology or cause, a pathogen. To think of violence as evil--if we confuse hat value judgment about violence with an explanation of it--can only confuse us into thinking we have an explanation when we do not.

Based on experience over 25 years in working with violent offenders, Gilligan believes that he has identified the pathogen or "virus" that causes violence. And that pathogen is shame.

More on that tomorrow.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE UPPER CLASS? They're still there.

TWO FROM THE NEW YORKER. Here's George Packer on the future of movement conservatism. And here's an item on the elusive search for a cure for the common hangover.

NIRVANA. Not the band, the state of being. Here's an interesting article about a brain scientist who experienced it by way of having a stroke.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, more and more therapists and researchers are giving Buddhist-inspired mindfulness meditation a second look.

CLOSING A GAP. Some colleges are trying to break down the barriers between the sciences and the humanities.

DEATH'S DOOR. The Rev. Carroll Pickett, for years a prison chaplain at Huntsville, Texas who witnessed 95 executions, has come to oppose the death penalty and is the subject of a new film.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

FROM JESUS TO CONSTANTINE

Caption: It's a long way from Jesus to Constantine. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

While lots of people are gearing up for the traditional holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus, El Cabrero has been musing about the birth of Christianity, a topic I find endlessly interesting.

Historians often distinguish between the religion of Jesus and the religion about Jesus. According to the earliest sources, the religion of Jesus consisted of his proclaiming and to a degree enacting enacting the Kingdom of God. The religion about Jesus arose in the time immediately after his crucifixion in Jerusalem around the year 30. I'm not saying the two were incompatible or inconsistent with each other, just different.

Whatever really happened, it is historically indisputable that some of his early followers claimed to experience him as a living reality after the death on the cross. Initially, the community of believers was tiny, although it grew steadily throughout the Mediterranean world despite sporadic persecutions.

Historian Bart Ehrman, who produced From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity for The Teaching Company, estimates that the number of believers grew from 20-100 people in the year 30 to 5-7 percent of the total population of the Roman Empire--around 3 to 4 million out of a total of 56 million--by the time of Constantine (circa 272-337).

Massive conversions are not necessary to account for this growth. The increase described above could have happened if Christians increased their membership by 40 percent per decade or 4 percent a year, about the rate that the Mormon church has grown. This could have simply involved the slow conversion of friends, family members, and social networks.

Major conversions did not occur until the Emperor Constantine's conversion around the year 312 (although he did not undergo baptism until he was on his deathbed). Around 313, he and co-emperor Licinius agreed to a policy of toleration for all religions, including Christianity. Once the religion gained imperial favor, many more conversions followed. By the end of the fourth century, around half of the empire's residents were Christians.

Under Emperor Theodosius I, orthodox or catholic Christianity became the state religion and pagan practices were banned.

It seems to me that the alliance of church with empire was a major and unfortunate turning point. When religion and state merge, the result usually isn't better government--it's worse religion.

FORESTS AND TREES will play a major role in any successful effort to address climate change, according to this Time article.

VETERANS' ISSUES. Here's a link to the Washington Post's ongoing series on returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.

RECONCILIATION? It looks like a truce is in effect between Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship and WV Governor Joe Manchin. I think I liked it better the other way.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO CONSERVATISM is the theme of this op-ed of mine from yesterday's Gazette-Mail.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

WIRED FOR INGRATITUDE

Caption: Venus is the ultimate ingrate.

One of humanity's many character defects is a tendency towards ingratitude. In some respects, we can't help it. Bad is louder than good.

By that I mean that we seem to be wired to notice and take action when faced with a threat or a need. Hunger, heat, cold, fear, pain, whatever.

Everybody notices it when they have a toothache. But how often do you notice when you don't?

El Cabrero's perspective on all that changed a few years back when I woke up in a hospital with a respirator going down and a catheter going up. I'm not sure which was worse.

Ever since then, I've tried to make it a practice to notice and be grateful when I wake up and those things are gone.

Happy Thanksgiving!

SPEAKING OF TURKEYS, here are some observations about the ethics of our culture warriors.

DON'T HATE THE PLAYER. According to a new study, violent video games are great teachers--of aggression.

HATE CRIMES went up by 8 percent in 2006.

GOT WOLF MILK? Archaeologists think they may have located an ancient Roman shrine venerated as the cave where legendary founders Romulus and Remus were nursed by a she wolf.

NOT A SHOCK. A new study links lower test scores with declines in reading.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

REGARDING LIFE, DEATH AND WALT WHITMAN (AND STUFF ON CURRENT EVENTS)

Although April has passed, and most of May, T.S. Eliot's line fron The Waste Land about April being the cruelest month still rings true. The ongoing carnage in Iraq and elsewhere and the massacre in Virginia left their mark. But I also felt something else, like an old and deep body wound.

It finally occured to me that April was the anniversary of the death of a very close comrade, friends and co-worker. We fought side by side for several years in some poverty related policy battles and had quite a winning streak for a while there, although she suffered from a debilitating illness that consumed more and more of her life force.

It was a great partnership and what I miss most are the conversations. When we weren't in predatory mode, we spent exalted timeless moments discussing literature, philosophy, science, religion, life and death. Sometimes our best discussions would be at breaks between meetings, court cases, or legislative sessions.

One area where we differed was the subject of death. She believed it was the end and I could never quite convince myself of that, although, like Hamlet, I sometimes wish I could. When her time came, she faced it like a Spartan. The last book she read was the philosophical poem of Lucretius, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things). In that materialist vision, all that exists are atoms and the void and death is just a dissolution.

For reasons I can't fully explain or articulate, I sometimes have a sense that the difference or gulf between past and present, life and death, and the living and the dead aren't as clear or final as we often think.

The best expression I've found of this sense comes from a lesser-known poem of Walt Whitman's called "Song of Prudence," which will be the guiding thread through this week's Goat Rope.

Meanwhile, back in the world...

MORE ON THE ARACOMA FIRE. Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette had an good article yesterday featuring an interview with Minness Justice, a MSHA mine inspector who had worked at Massey's Aracoma mine in which two men died in a Jan. 2006 fire.

WHITHER EVANGELICALS? According to this item from today's NY Times, the recent death of Jerry Falwell signals a generational change in evangelical Christians. Many members of the new generation have broader priorities, such as fighting poverty and AIDS, climate change, etc.

DOWN YES, BUT OUT? From the same source, here's a look at the recent fortunes of the right.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

EDMUND BURKE: THE BEST CONSERVATIVE but first some WV items

Caption: This amphibian considers reptiles to be reckless innovators.

FIRST THE GOOD NEWS: The Employee Free Choice Act passed the U.S. House by a margin of 241-185. Among WV's delegation, only Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito voted against it. There's a good post about that at West Virginia Blue. See the item "Capito spins anti-union vote as pro-union."

WHAT THE? While you're at WV Blue, scroll on down to the post "Tax Breaks for the Rich" for info on the WV Senate's proposal to drastically cut corporate taxes. This would mean drastic cuts in education, services, and infrastructure. At this moment, the Gazette reports that it doesn't seem likely to pass the house, which is a good feature.

THE HORSE'S MOUTH. Check out Jim Lewis's new Notes from Under the Fig Tree for an account of his arrest at Congresswoman Capito's office over her Iraq position, his hearing, and other interesting items.

NOW BACK TO THE SERIES ON CONSERVATISM:

If there is an Achilles' heel of conservatism, it is it's historic tendency to side with with politically and economically dominant groups. When this happens, there are pretty simple reasons for it: nearly any society consists of winners and losers. The winners want to keep their winnings, whether they were gained by fair means or foul.

(In fairness, it could also be said that the Achilles' heel of radicals is the belief that a major transformation of society by peaceful or violent means would bring about an improvement for the majority of people outside the ruling elites. To put it mildly that's not always the case and often such changes make things worse for everyone.)

But I'd say the best conservatives can transcend this weakness. The British statesman Edmund Burke (1729-1797) is a case in point.

Born in Ireland, Burke served for many years in Parliament where he was spoke eloquently and effectively against abuses of power. He defended the American colonists and recommended a conciliatory policy in the 1770s and later exposed English crimes against the people of India.

He was, in other words, a progressive conservative, i.e. one who recognized that society should be prudently reformed and that abuses should be corrected, but he was realistic enough to know that most human actions have unintended consequences.

He parted company with some of his former radical allies, including his former friend the Anglo-American revolutionary Thomas Paine, over the French Revolution. His 1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France is one of the best books of political theory ever written.

Burke had no doubts that the excesses of the French monarchy needed to be corrected. But he was convinced that one should seek to reform past abuses in a way that respected a people's history and tradition and that trying to start again with a blank slate would lead to violence, chaos, war, and tyranny...which is pretty much what happened. While El Cabrero intends no disrespect to the French Revolution, it was, well, a goat rope.

Here's are some sample quotes:

The science on constructing a commonwealth...is not to be taught a priori... The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity; and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man's nature, or to the quality of his affairs...The rights of men in governments are...often in balances between differences of good; in compromises sometimes between good and evil, and sometimes between evil and evil...

So when and how should good people deal with abuses of political power and when should patience give way to resistance?

The speculative line of demarcation where obedience ought to end and resistance must begin is faint, obscure, and not easily definable. It is not a single act, or a single event, which determines it. Governments must be abused and deranged, indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past. When things are in that lamentable condition, the nature of the disease is to indicate the remedy to those whom nature has qualified to administer in extremities this critical, ambiguous, bitter potion to a distempered state. Times and occasions and provocations will teach their own lessons. The wise will determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable, from sensibility to oppression; the high-minded, from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands; the brave and bold, from the love of honorable danger in a generous cause; but, with or without right, a revolution will be the very last resource of the thinking and the good.

He also had a long-term view of society as a partnership "between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born." That's an insight we could use today given the disastrous impact of this generation on the earth's resources.

Sometimes he could go too far, as for example, when he referred to the mass of lower class English subjects as "the swinish multitude."

Thomas Paine responded to his former ally's Reflections with Parts I and II of The Rights of Man, where he accused Burke, with some justification, of pitying the aristocracy and ignoring the sufferings of the lower classes: "He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird."

Actually, the world needs both its Paines and Burkes in proper measure. In the end, both were right. As Craig Nelson wrote of British political history in his recent Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations,

In the end, Burke's Reflections accurately predicted that the French Revolution would finish in bloodshed and tyranny, while Paine's Rights just as brilliantly anticipated, two hundred years ahead of its time, the style of government for close to half the world's nations today. The great irony of this epic struggle in British political history is that, when it came to dear old Albion, both would be right. The English polity over the coming decades would glacially reform itself, just as Burke proposed, but into a structure not all that different from the one envisioned by Rights of Man.

It would be nice to think they are somewhere now arguing about who was right...

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE "CANON OF CONSERVATIVE THOUGHT," plus WV items

Caption: Dr. Denton "Denny" Dimwit (center) is an economic libertarian rather than a traditional conservative.

This is the third post in a series about conservative political philosophy. If this is your first visit, please scroll down to the previous entries.

Yesterday's post discussed Russell Kirk's seminal book, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, which has had enormous impact since it first appeared in the 1950s. Whether you agree or not, it is worth a look and deserves respectful treatment.

Early on in the book, Kirk identifies what he considers to be the canons of conservative political thought. They are enumerated below, with comments from yours truly.

1. "Belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience." Comment: I wouldn't necessarily disagree. The problem arises when different more or less bloodthirsty groups fight over exactly what that transcendent order consists of (sorry about the preposition thing) and impose their vision on others. This is one huge advantage of the American system as opposed to theocracy.

2. "Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems..." Comment: I don't have the problem with egalitarianism (in moderation, as with all things) that Mr. Kirk and his allies do but I'm with him at least part way on resisting uniformity and utilitarianism.

The irony of modern conservatism is that a lot of the uniformity and dissolution of old values comes from an amoral and cut-throat capitalism, which for many is at least as sacred as any transcendent order. Personally, I neither worship capitalism nor plan to destroy it; I'd just be happy if it used the bathroom in the right places. I wonder what he'd think of a Wal-Mart world and a fast food nation?

3. "Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes as against the notion of a 'classless' society." Comment: OK, I admit that complete arithmetical equality in terms of income, wealth, etc. is neither possible nor desirable. But that doesn't mean there is any virtue in extreme inequality or a hereditary class system either. And its no excuse for people in a country and world as wealthy as this one for millions of people to live in poverty, do without health care, earn a sub-living wage, etc. Smart conservatives like Theodore Roosevelt knew that.

4. "Persuasion that freedom and property are closely linked..." Comment: I wouldn't necessarily disagree, which I why I'd like to see property more widely distributed. One problem conservatives sometimes miss is that if sacred Property is concentrated into a few hands at the expense of the vast majority of people, the same is true of freedom. A persistent danger to principled conservatism is a de facto embrace of oligarchy.

In practice for most of history, as E.P. Thompson noted in his The Making of the English Working Class, "the greatest offence against property was to have none."

5. "Faith in prescription and distrust of 'sophisters, calculators, and economists' who would reconstruct society upon abstract designs." Comment: I'm OK with that one too, especially if it includes neocon sophisters, calculators and market god cultist economists. By the way, by "prescription," he means tradition or custom.

and

6. "Recognition that change may not be salutary reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress." Comment: He must have been talking about our adventure in Iraq, huh? I'm with him on this one too. Change is inevitable. Sometimes you have to try to speed it up, slow it down, or direct its course but I would agree with Kirk that "a statesman's chief virtue, according to Plato and Burke, is prudence."

So like, where are the prudent statesmen or stateswomen? We could use some. But seriously, all in all it's not a bad list and merits courteous treatment even if one can't swallow the whole thing. But what he's talking about is a far cry from the current fare.

Next time: Edmund Burke, the best conservative.

WEST VIRGINIA ITEMS. In case you missed it, here is UMWA president Cecil Roberts' response to another attack on unions by Massey CEO Don Blankenship.

Let me also mention two really good WV blogs (in alphabetical order:

Lincoln Walks at Midnight, which offers what it calls a "just-the-facts approach to politics and government in the Mountain State of West Virginia," and

West Virginia Blue, which describes itself as devoted to "Democratic politics, progressive policies, the good life and free living in Wild, Wonderful West Virginia."

Both blogs are regularly updated. The latter even has the occasional gratuitous animal picture.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED