On the Economic Justification of American Society and Federalism: The Oxymoron of Congress Mapping the Human Brain

In his 2013 State of the Union Address, President Obama cited brain research as an example of how the government could and in fact should literally “invest in the best ideas.”[1] He cited the $140 return to the economy from every dollar that had been invested to map the human genome, and added that funding the Brain Activity Map would be a job-creating investment in science and innovation. In terms of comparative economic advantage, he said, enlarging the “knowledge economy” would be a good strategy for maintaining a formidable standard of living. As laudatory as more knowledge of the human brain is, Obama's perspective suffers from economic reductionism and a lack of political basis.
Economic reductionism means that everything reduces finally to its economic impact. Mapping the genome may have good economic returns, but the impact in terms of human fulfillment is arguably much more beneficial and thus important. Finding the gene that causes baldness, for instance, would surely have an economic benefit for some, but the non-economic benefits to bald men would be much more important. More importantly, to the extent that mapping the genome has led to new treatments for illness, especially those that are fatal, the primary benefits have surely not been economic in nature. An old person who can live ten more years rather than one does not leap for joy because of the the additional retirement income. Because this is obvious, Obama's economic basis can now be seen as artificial or skewed at best even it it was politically and economically prudent for him to point to economic returns as they would have been particularly of interest to the companies that made campaign and other, less direct, economic contributions to the Wall Street president. Unfortunately, people reading or hearing his speech could have gotten the idea that the reduction to the economic effect is fitting rather than distorting. A government, after all, should look after the public good, which is not only economic. Of course, it has been by lip service to the general welfare that U.S. presidents have tried to justify federal spending in virtually any area, hence robbing the state governments of more and more sovereignty. 
That the federal government had any constitutional basis to be funding a map of the brain's activity is a question the federal president seems not to have considered. To be sure, balancing spending for the general welfare with the enumerated (i.e., limited) powers of the federal government is a difficult task unless the general-welfare spending is assumed to pertain only to the enumerated (i.e., listed) powers of that government. It makes no sense to say that government's powers are limited and yet spending can pertain to any domain, even preempting state spending. So by logic alone, it stands to reason that the spending clause must have been intended to furnish Congress with the authority to fund its enumerated powers.
Put another way for the faint of heart, if a positive economic return to the economy is the litmus test, then the federal government could intercede in so many areas that the state governments could eventually become little more than local governments. The crucial political benefit of federalism, wherein the state governments have the power to act as a check against encroaching or tyrannical federal power so the only check is not on the state governments by the federal government, is lost if federal lawmakers and the executive can amass virtually unlimited power for the U.S. Government (and themselves in the process!) especially if done at the expense of the states. 

A Congressional rendering of how the human brain might be mapped.      Source; nytimes.

Admittedly, a person could look at the U.S. Constitution and point out the spending clause, whereby the Congress has the authority to spend funds “for the general welfare.” in itself, the clause contains no limitation, and the general welfare is indeed wide in scope. Scientific advancement, it could be argued, is surely in line with advancing the general welfare of the people. Virtually any purpose, even those purposes in which the effect on the general welfare is merely a byproduct, could fit within the clause. To restrict the clause could foreseeably hold back the general welfare from what it would otherwise be. 
Turning to the enumerated powers of Congress, the commercial implications from mapping the brain's activity might seem to fit within the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. After all, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in Wickard v. Filmore (1942) that even a farmer in Iowa who grows wheat for his family's own consumption can be subject to regulation. Even if his activity "be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as 'direct' or 'indirect."[2] The majority opinion reasons that the harvests of wheat for private consumption, if aggregated, would have a significant effect on the interstate wheat commerce. Even an indirect effect on the interstate wheat market can justify even the growing of wheat for private consumption being subject to the interstate commerce clause, and thus federal power. So it is no accident that the federal executive publicly justified the federal funding to map the brain's activity by characterizing such a map as "a job-creating investment in science and innovation." Obama may have engaged in warped economic reductionism in order to gain more power for his government. He and the federal court before him both distorted logic for the sake of additional power going to the federal government.
The institutional and personal conflicts of interest should be obvious. Since that ruling, the reach of the commerce clause has expanded. Even something that is not itself commerce can be federally regulated as commerce. This flawed logic should be enough of a red-flag to tell us that something went deeply wrong in the federal court's reasoning where federal power was at stake or could be expanded. 
In regard to funding the mapping of the brain's activity, commerce of the completed map could indeed extend beyond state lines (i.e., be interstate commerce), but to argue that the regulating of interstate commerce extends to investing in manufacturing of the product itself conflates spending with regulating, which is to set rules. 
President Obama could be challenged for his presumption that the federal government is the definitive level of government for virtually any matter of public policy to be enacted into law. He could have quoted from Alexander Hamilton, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and the first U.S. Treasury Secretary,  who had wanted the states to be mere districts implementing federal policy. Of course, he also wanted the U.S. president to be in office for life.
Before Obama was the federal executive, I asked Sandra Day O’Conner, a former justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, why the Court had allowed the Congress to encroach so onto state matters. "It takes a majority," she said (meaning of justices). Then she observed that Congress was “acting like a state legislature.” This remarkable insight would prompt me years later to wonder whether Obama himself was conflating the federal and state levels. He may not have fully realized the distinctiveness of federal government on the empire scale from governance on the state, or kingdom, level. Whereas an empire-scale government of a federation must take into account differences in culture, political and moral ideology, economy, and even religion that exist from state to state, a state government need not as a state can be homogeneous rather than diverse within. The British, who had once had an empire to manage, suppose their state in the E.U. is diverse. I submit that the E.U. itself is much more diverse from state to state, and so taking into account such differences is an appreciable aspect of E.U. governance but not of that of a state, even the United Kingdom (or California in the U.S.). Yes, Virginia, such a comparison is valid.
I submit that President Obama did not sufficiently heed the vital differences between the federal and the state governments. Nor have majorities of justices sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court. Viewing things from the perspective of the federal government, and even having its interests at heart, it is possible to interpret general welfare and the commerce clause so broadly as to warp logic and yet not even notice this or the eventual cost (to use an economic term!) to the Union itself (i.e., impairing its federal system). Economic reductionism can be placed in service, resulting in bloated federal power and a warping of priorities (i.e., financial as the definitive litmus test for everything, including the public good). Of course, big business feels right at home in such a society--societal norms and values reflective of those of business. Meanwhile, the warped system feeds on itself, without being noticed and becoming even more warped in the process. For all of the reliance on the general welfare, who exactly is looking out for it as regards the impact on it from the federal system of government and the economic reductionism? 

See related: Institutional Conflicts of Interest, Essays on Two Federal Empires, and British Colonies Forge an American Empire, available at Amazon.

1. John Markoff, “Obama Seeking to Boost Study of Human Brain,” The New York Times, February 17, 2013.
2. Wickard, 317 U.S. at 125.

The Right in European and American Politics: Disentangling Right from Right

The far-right in Europe has been quite different than the right-wing in American politics. Putting aside the usual caricature of “people in pointy hoods and the Ku Klux Klan,” Marine Le Pen said she still believed “the American right [was] much more to the right than the National Front.” She may have agreed with those who wanted to manage American frontiers more effectively and prevent massive illegal immigration, but she was also a big believer in the state’s ability and obligation to help its people. “We feel the state should have the means to intervene,” she said. “We are very attached to public services à la française as a way to limit the inequalities among regions and among the French,” including “access for all to the same level of health care.”[1] This statement implies that survival is a human right--something the American right has tended to eschew in favor of a survival-of-the-fittest mantra that conflates the state of nature with the interdependency in a developed economy. 

Therefore, it can be concluded that American right has been more far-right than the European far-right has been in terms of government having a responsibility to take care of people in need, even providing a survival-net so that no one need go hungry, homeless, and without medical-care. Of the latter, it took President Obama, a corporate Democrat, to widen the net on medical insurance, though even he caved to the private-insurance lobby, which threatened it would withdraw its support unless the president dropped his support for a public option.  

So from an American standpoint, it is particularly striking that the European right has consistently advocated universal health-care. To the American right, even a “public option” for government-run health insurance can only be odious socialism, which in turn, if generalized, could bring down the Union. Moreover, the American rich who retort, “I don’t want to help others with my tax dollars—just defense,” is absent from the E.U.'s far-right. This point demonstrates a real cultural divide between the E.U. and U.S. 

In terms of federalism, the “Euroskeptics” have been much more skeptical of the E.U. than the state rights advocates in America have been of the federal-level of governance in the U.S. Even though in both unions secession movements have resulted from the Euroskeptic ideology, it has had more influence in terms of the constitutional design of the E.U.'s federal system as well as in European politics. For example, the governor of Hungary came to the defense of Poland when the federal Commission went after the latter for subjugating the judiciary to politics. In terms of federalism, the European right is more to the right than is the American right.

Immigration is another policy area in which the European right is further right. France's president Sarkozy’s attempt to send the Roma out of his state makes Arizona's Jan Brewer’s proposal to allow her state's police to verify the citizenship of people already involved in a police action seem down-right moderate. Whereas in the spring of 2011 the Danish government considered putting up border guards to keep African immigrants out, the Arizona government did not add border guards of its own in 2010. To be sure, U.S. President Trump did exactly that in 2018, perhaps to keep certain peoples out or to stop drug-trafficking and illegal immigration. In European far-right politics, going after particular peoples already legally in the E.U. has been fair-game. In the E.U. state of Belgium, some establishments in the Flanders region as late as 2010 have brandished signs stating “No Walloons Allowed”—similar to “No Blacks Allowed” in Alabama until the 1970s. It would be interesting to compare racism in the E.U. against Africans with racism in the U.S. against Black Americans (who go by the misnomer of African-Americans, which is an ethnic rather than a racial designation).

Perhaps it could be said that whereas culturally and in terms of federalism the European right has been more to the right, the European value of solidarity has moderated that far-right appreciably, whereas the right-wing in American politics has known no such moderating factor. Therefore, caution should be exercised when comparing seemingly-parallel parties in American and European politics. The two unions have rather distinct politics even though “right” and “left” apply to both unions. 

For more comparisons, see Essays on Two Federal Empires, available at Amazon.

1. Tracy McNicoll and Christopher Dickey, “What a Tea Party Looks Like in Europe,” Newsweek, September 6, 2010.

Climate Change: An Outsider in Democracies

The U.S. House of Representatives was created in part as an outlet for the immediacy of a people’s passions; other governmental institutions at the federal level provide a check. The term of a House representative is only 2 years, whereas that of a U.S. senator is 6 years and that of the U.S. president is four. So presumably societal  or even global  problems requiring immediate action find pressing representation in the House, whereas the perspectives of U.S. senators and presidents, being limited to six and four years respectively, are not long-term-oriented enough for problems that could blow up in decades. To register in the crowded minds of House representatives, a long-term problem yet in need of immediate attention must trigger the immediate passions of the constituents unless the representatives value principled leadership (i.e., acting in the best interests of the constituents and the country). Yet passions demanding immediate action tend, I submit, to involve anger. Climate change is thus excluded, and the long-term forecasts do little to impress upon a people how urgent rectifying action really is. Even if the scientific reports of current conditions emphasize extant dramatic changes (not to mention future forecasts with disastrous implications for humanity generally and particular regions, immediate passion is not sufficiently stirred for the U.S. House at least to prioritize addressing the problem.

A report published in January, 2019 indicates that the world’s oceans were then already 40% warmer than a U.N. panel had projected in 2014.[1] Although the data was not yet in to be included in the report, 2018 was expected to the warmest on record for ocean temperatures.

Considering that the oceans had been providing “a critical buffer” in having “slowed the effects of climate change [in the atmosphere] by absorbing 93% of the heat trapped by the greenhouse gases” that were from human uses (presumably including the methane released as the permafrost melts), the reported acceleration of ocean warming should have sounded over the lands as a clarion call for immediate action.[2] The most important implication from the report is that the oceans would absorb far less of the extra heat from the atmosphere if the oceans’ temperatures get high enough, which likely would come sooner than projected, the atmosphere would then show more and more of the immediately noticeable increased heat in the atmosphere. Although losing much or all of the “absorption drainage” by virtue of the seas would likely register very starkly into immediate effect as people spend time in the atmosphere—and thus likely trigger immediate governmental action, awareness of the implication before that point is likely too indirect to register on the awareness of constituents.

Even though Thomas Jefferson and John Adams agreed in retirement—long after they had sparred like dogs—they agreed that a viable republic (and we could add climate) requires an educated and virtuous citizenry (as it elects the elected government officials in a representative democracy). So universities in the U.S., unlike the E.U. and Asian countries, require that students wanting to become a lawyer or physician first get a degree in another school of knowledge, such as in the Liberal Arts and Sciences. To be sure, such a broad education admittedly helps in being able to make inferences, such as that when the oceans cut back drastically in what the amount of the extra atmospheric heat they can absorb, the atmosphere will warm up rather quickly. Still this is not enough to result in a “wake-up call,” for the proportion of college-educated adults in a given population has not been high enough. In other words, too many voters are not likely to connect such dots and thus will only be motivated to urge immediate governmental or global action with enforcement powers when the atmosphere has gone into “hyperdrive” in terms of warming that can be dramatically felt. Pain, it seems, like anger, can register as an immediate passion of the people whose representatives in at least short-termed offices will be motivated to act upon.
In a general sense, even designing one governmental institution, such as the U.S. House of Representatives, to give immediate passions influence in government is not enough for problems such as climate change to be treated as priorities. The fault extends ultimately down to human nature—how our brains are hard-wired and socially conditioned—so it may be said that the design at least of the U.S. Government is faulty with respect to human nature. In the U.S., a culture wherein the instant gratification of consumerism and quarterly earnings reports are given undue influence at the expense of self-restraint and a longer-term perspective and motivation, a problem like climate change wherein the immediate baleful effects are mitigated by the oceans falls between the cracks. This, I contend, is a major flaw in that the constitutional design has a gaping hole into which problems that are dramatic primarily in the future fall. Both in business and government, systemic design should be redesigned to give due emphasis—and even more so as to counter both the short-term-oriented American culture and human nature—to problems whose immediate effects mask the disaster coming in the future. It is as if an earthquake were reported and yet officials in cities on a coast would not recognize the obvious implication that a tsunami could come so an alarm should sound immediately rather than when the gigantic waves could be seen.  

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1 Lijing Cheng et al, “How Fast Are the Oceans Warming?” Science 363 (no. 6423), January 11, 2019.

2. Kendra Pierre-Louis, “Ocean Warming Is Accelerating Faster Than Thought, New Research Finds,” The New York Times, January 10, 2019.

On the History of Thanksgiving: Challenging Assumptions

We humans are so used to living in our subjectivity that we hardly notice it or the effect it has on us. In particular, we are hardly able to detect or observe the delimiting consequences of the assumptions we hold on an ongoing basis. That is to say, we have no idea (keine Anung) of the extent to which we take as unalterable matters that are actually quite subject to our whims individually or as a society (i.e., shared assumptions). In this essay, I use the American holiday of Thanksgiving, specifically its set date on the last Thursday of November, to illustrate the following points.

First, our habitual failure to question our own or society’s assumptions (i.e., not thinking critically enough) leaves us vulnerable to assuming that the status quo is binding when in fact it is not. All too often, we adopt a herd-animal mentality that unthinkingly “stays the course” even when doing so is, well, dumb. In being too cognitively lazy to question internally or in discourse basic, operative assumptions that we hold individually and/or collectively, we unnecessarily endure hardships that we could easily undo. Yet we rarely do. This is quite strange.

Second, we tend to take for granted that today’s familial and societal traditions must have been so “from the beginning.” This assumption dutifully serves as the grounding rationale behind our tacit judgment that things are as they are for a reason and, moreover, lie beyond our rightful authority to alter. We are surprised when we hear that some practice we had taken as foundational actually came about by accident or just decades ago.

For example, modern-day Christians might be surprised to learn that one of the Roman emperor Constantine’s scribes (i.e., lawyers) came up with the “fully divine and fully human,” or one ousia, two hypostates, Christological compromise at the Nicene Council in 325 CE. Constantine’s motive was political: cease the divisions between the bishops with the objective being to further imperial unity rather than enhance theological understanding.[1] Although a Christian theologian would point out that the Holy Spirit works through rather than around human nature, lay Christians might find themselves wondering aloud whether the Christological doctrine is really so fixed and thus incapable of being altered or joined by equally legitimate alternative interpretations (e.g., the Ebionist and Gnostic views).

Let’s apply the same reasoning to Thanksgiving Day in the United States. On September 28, 1789, the first Federal Congress passed a resolution asking that the President set a day of thanksgiving. After an improbable win against a mighty empire, the new union had reason to give thanks. A few days later, President George Washington issued a proclamation naming Thursday, November 26, 1789 as a "Day of Publick Thanksgivin."[2] As subsequent presidents issued their own Thanksgiving proclamations, the dates and even months of Thanksgiving varied until President Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Proclamation that Thanksgiving was to be commemorated each year on the last Thursday of November. Here, the attentive reader would be inclined to jettison the “it’s always been this way” assumption and mentality as though opening windows on the first warm day of spring. The fresh air of thawing ground restores smell to the outdoors from the long winter hibernation and ushers in a burst of freedom among nature, including man. Realizing that Thanksgiving does not hinge on its current date unfetters the mind even if just to consider the possibility of alternative dates. Adaptability can obviate hardships discovered to be dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary.[3]

The arbitrariness in Lincoln’s proclaimed date was not lost on Franklin Roosevelt (FDR). Concerned that the last Thursday in November 1939, which fell on the last day of the month, would weaken the economic recovery on account of the shortened Christmas shopping season, he moved Thanksgiving to the penultimate (second to last) Thursday of November. He defended the change by emphasizing "that the day of Thanksgiving was not a national holiday and that there was nothing sacred about the date, as it was only since the Civil War that the last Thursday of November was chosen for observance.”[4] Transcending the common assumption that the then-current “last Thursday of November” attribute of Thanksgiving was a salient—even sacred, as though solemnly passed down from the Founders by some ceremonial laying on of hands—in the very non-holiday’s very nature, FDR had freed his mind to reason that an economic downside need not be necessary; he could fix a better date without depriving Thanksgiving of being Thanksgiving.

To be sure, coaches and football fans worried that even a week’s difference could interrupt the game’s season. In a column in The Wall Street Journal in 2009, Melanie Kirkpatrick points out that "by 1939 Thanksgiving football had become a national tradition. . . . In Democratic Arkansas, the football coach of Little Ouachita College threatened: 'We'll vote the Republican ticket if he interferes with our football.'"[5] Should Christmas have been moved to April so not to interfere with college basketball? Sadly, the sheer weight being attached to the “it’s always been this way” assumption could give virtually any particular inconvenience an effective veto-power even over a change for the better, generally (i.e., in the public interest).

Unfortunately, most Americans had fallen into the stupor wherein Thanksgiving just had to be on the last Thursday of November. “The American Institute of Public Opinion, led by Dr. George Gallup, released a survey in August showing 62 percent of voters opposed Roosevelt's plan. Political ideology was a determining factor, with 52 percent of Democrats approving of Roosevelt's move and 79 percent of Republicans disapproving.”[6] Even though the significance of the overall percentage dwarfs the partisan numbers in demonstrating how pervasive the false-assumption was at the time among the general population, the political dimension was strong enough to reverberate in unforeseen ways.

With some governors refusing to recognize the earlier date, only 32 states went along with Roosevelt.[7] As a result, for two years Thanksgiving was celebrated on two different days within the United States. In his book, Roger Chapman observes that pundits began dubbing "the competing dates 'Democratic Thanksgiving' and 'Republican Thanksgiving.'"[8] Sen. Styles Bridges (R-N.H) wondered whether Roosevelt would extend his powers to reconfigure the entire calendar, rather than just Thanksgiving. "I wish Mr. Roosevelt would abolish Winter," Bridges lamented.[9] Edward Stout, editor of The Warm Springs Mirror in Georgia -- where the president traveled frequently, including for Thanksgiving -- said that while he was at it, Roosevelt should move his birthday "up a few months until June, maybe" so that he could celebrate it in a warmer month. "I don't believe it would be any more trouble than the Thanksgiving shift."[10] Although both Bridges and Stout were rolling as though drunk in the mud of foolish category mistakes for rhetorical effect, moving up a holiday that has at least some of its roots in the old harvest festivals to actually coincide with harvests rather than winter in many states could itself be harvested once the “it’s always been this way” assumption is discredited. Just as a week’s difference would not dislodge college football from its monetary perch, so too would the third week in November make a dent in easing the hardship even just in travelling and bringing the holiday anywhere close to harvest time in many of the American republics. As one of my theology professor at Yale once said, “Sin boldly!” If you’re going to do it, for God’s sake don’t be a wimp about it. Nietzsche would undoubtedly second that motion.

Why not join with Canada in having Thanksgiving on October 12^th? Besides having access to fresh vegetables and even the outdoors for the feast, the problematic weather-related travel would be obviated and Americans would not come to New Year’s Day with holiday fatigue. Of course, we wouldn’t be able to complain about the retailors pushing Christmas over Thanksgiving in line with the almighty dollar, but amid the better feasts and perhaps colorful leaves we might actually allow ourselves to relish (or maybe even give thanks!) amid natures splendors rather than continue striving and complaining.

To be sure, resetting Thanksgiving to autumn in several of the states would translate into summer rather than harvest time in several others. Still other states are warm even in the last week of November, and harvest time might be December or March. Perhaps instead of carving the bird along partisan lines, Thanksgiving might be in October (or even the more temperate September!) in the “Northern” states and later in the “Southern” states, given the huge difference in climates. Remaining impotent in an antiquated assumption that lives only to forestall positive change while retailors continue to enable Christmas to encroach on Thanksgiving reeks of utter weakness.

Giving serious consideration to the notion different states celebrating Thanksgiving at different times might strengthen rather than weaken the American union. Put another way, invigorating the holiday as a day of thanksgiving amid nature’s non-canned bounty might recharge the jaded American spirit enough to mitigate partisan divides because more diversity has been given room to breathe. For the “one size fits all” assumption does not bode well at all in a large empire of diverse climes. Indeed, the American framers crafted an updated version of federalism that could accommodate a national federal government as well as the diverse conditions of the republics constituting the Union. Are the states to be completely deboned as though dead fish on the way to the market at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial? Is it so vitally important that everyone does Thanksgiving on the same day when “by state” enjoys a precedent?

Engulfed in the mythic assumption that the “last Thursday in November” is a necessary and proper fit for everyone and everywhere, Americans silently endure as if out of necessity all the compromises we have been making with respect to the holiday? Perhaps changing the date or returning the decision back to the states would free up enough space for the crowded-in and thus nearly relegated holiday that people might once again feel comfortable enough to say “Happy Thanksgiving” in public, rather than continuing to mouth the utterly vacuous “Happy Holidays” that is so often foisted on a beguiled public. 

Like Christmas and New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving is indeed now an official U.S. holiday. This would also be true were the states to establish the holiday as their respective residents see fit. As push-back against FDR’s misguided attempt to help out the retailors and the economy, Congress finally stepped in almost two months to a day before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii (whose harvest time escapes me). The U.S. House passed a resolution declaring the last Thursday in November to be a legal holiday known as Thanksgiving Day. The U.S. Senate modified the resolution to the fourth Thursday so the holiday would not fall on a fifth Thursday in November lest the Christmas shopping season be unduly hampered as it rides roughshod over Thanksgiving. Roosevelt signed the resolution on December 26, 1941, the day after Christmas, finally making Thanksgiving a legal holiday alongside Christmas and New Year’s Day.[11] Interestingly, the U.S. Commerce department had found that moving Thanksgiving back a week had had no impact on Christmas sales.[12] In fact, small retailors actually lamented the change because they had flourished under the “last Thursday” Thanksgiving rubric; customers fed up with the big-named department stores like Macy’s being so overcrowded during a truncated “Christmas season” would frequent the lesser-known stores in relative peace and quiet. Charles Arnold, proprietor of a menswear shop, expressed his disappointment in an August letter to the president. "The small storekeeper would prefer leaving Thanksgiving Day where it belongs," Arnold wrote. "If the large department stores are over-crowded during the shorter shopping period before Christmas, the overflow will come, naturally, to the neighborhood store."[13] This raise the question of whether a major legal holiday is best treated as whatever results from the tussle of business forces oriented to comparative strategic advantage as well as overall sales revenue.

Lest the vast, silent majority of Americans continue to stand idly by, beguiled by the tyranny of the status quo as if it were based in the permafrost of “first things,” things are not always as they appear or have been assumed to be. We are not so frozen as we tend to suppose with respect to being able to obviate problems or downsides that are in truth dispensable rather than ingrained in the social reality.

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1. Jarslav Pelikan, Imperial Unity and Christian Division, Seminar, Yale University.

2.  The Center for Legislative Archives, “Congress Establishes Thanksgiving,” The National Archives, USA. (accessed 11.26.13).

3. The other meaning of dogmatic is “partial” in the sense of partisan or ideological more generally. Given the extent to which a person can shift ideologically through decades of living, might it be that partisan positions are not only partial, but also arbitrary?

4. Sam Stein and Arthur Delaney, “When FDR Tried To Mess With Thanksgiving, It Backfired Big Time,” The Huffington Post, November 25, 2013.

5. Melanie Kirkpatrick, “Happy Franksgiving: How FDR tried, and failed, to change a national holiday,” The Wall Street Journal, November 24, 2009.

6. Sam Stein and Arthur Delaney, “When FDR Tried To Mess With Thanksgiving, It Backfired Big Time,” The Huffington Post, November 25, 2013.

7. Ibid.

8. Roger Chapman, Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2010).

9. Sam Stein and Arthur Delaney, “When FDR Tried To Mess With Thanksgiving, It Backfired Big Time,” The Huffington Post, November 25, 2013.

10. Ibid.

11. The solely religious holidays in November and December are private rather than legal holidays. As Congress cannot establish a religion on constitutional grounds, Christmas is a legal holiday in its secular sense only. Therefore, treating Christmas as a legal holiday as akin to the private religious holidays (including Christmas as celebrated in churches!) is a logical and legal error, or category mistake. Ironically, Thanksgiving, in having been proclaimed by Lincoln as a day to give thanks (implying “to God”), is the most explicitly religious of all the legal holidays in the United States.

12. Ibld.
13. Ibid.

The American News Media: A Case of Egoistic Over-Reaching

During the summer of 2010, as commentators at Fox, CNN, and MSNBC were arguing, they referred to their own arguments as “trench warfare” and “hand-to-hand fighting.”  Real soldiers would doubtless dismiss such descriptors as attempts by children to count as adults—as something more.  The soldiers would be correct, of course. Insulting or criticizing another person does not constitute fighting in the sense of warfare. Someone at MSNBC calling someone at Fox a racist does not come close to shooting someone with a rifle or even slugging someone with one’s fist.  The protesters in Libya who were being shot at by their own government in February, 2011, would shake their heads in disbelief in hearing of the "war" among media personalities.

Lest it be objected that this matter is insignificant, the propensity of the media “personalities” to over-reach has, I submit, dominated their depiction of news for years.  For example, they use “crisis” far too often.  To be sure, a crisis really did exist in September, 2008 on the Thursday evening in which Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson told congressional leaders that unless they showed some intent to act, there would not be a financial system by the following Monday. This is what it means to be in a crisis mode. To call the BP oil in the gulf a crisis more than two months after the explosion (and weeks after the well had been capped) a "crisis" pales in comparision; hence, it is thus a case of the media over-reaching. 

By its very nature, a crisis is short-term.  The protest in Egypt, for example, during the Arab Spring quickly reached a do or die point. Such is crisis mode.  So too, when the planes shot at the protesters in Libya; the resulting turmoil, which can only be sustained as such for a brief period before a decision has to be made one way or the other, instantiated a crisis mode.  For republicans or democrats in Congress to refer to budget talks as though they were at a crisis utterly pales by comparison, even if non-essentials in government might be temporarily shut down. Yet journalists have nonetheless perpetuated the verbal inflation in order to get increased attention, which has its own life besides the obvious bump in ratings that benefit their respective networks. It is the journalist's own ego that is being served just as much as profits. Is there any room for news, especially international beyond Iran, Iraq, Russia, and Israel?

Every presidential address is self-righteously vaunted as critical. The President needs to say X or the sky will fall. No mention is subsequently made of the sky still up there even though the President omitted X.  Silently omitted is the accountability on journalists and pundits when they over-reach. 

Having It Both Ways: American Culture or Merely Congress?

Under the terms of the debt-ceiling budget agreement enacted during the summer in 2011, members of a joint Congressional committee, evenly divided between the parties as well as between the two chambers, had until Nov. 23 of that year to recommend ways to reduce budget deficits by at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years. Both houses had to vote on the package by Dec. 23, 2011. If no legislation is enacted, the government would automatically cut almost $500 billion from military spending, with an equal amount from nonmilitary programs, between 2013 and 2021.

As negotiations in the “super committee” were becoming mired in November, some Democrats were becoming “increasingly concerned” that some Republicans on the committee, in declaring that they would not be able to accept new revenues toward deficit reduction, were calculating that they would be able to reverse the triggered cuts. Not just any cuts—only those from military spending were loathed by the Republicans. Even as the joint committee was still meeting, Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees were “readying legislation that would undo the automatic across-the-board cuts totaling nearly $500 billion for military programs, or exchange them for cuts in other areas.”

“Republicans should not count on taking the easy way out if they continue to resist a balanced deficit deal that includes revenue increases,” warned Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the joint committee, said the attempt to undo the triggers “reflects a total lack of seriousness.” Adding that such efforts would not be successful, he said they were “the result of people trying to escape the fundamental choices before us, and one of those choices is whether or not we are willing to end special interest tax breaks to pay for defense.” Interestingly because he is a Republican, the House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, said he wanted the joint committee to succeed, but that he would not tamper with the mechanism for automatic cuts. “I would feel bound by it,” he said. “It was part of the agreement. The sequester is ugly. Why? Because we don’t want anybody to go there.” That’s just the point; the default of automatic cuts was put into the agreement as an incentive for the joint committee to reach an agreement. Consisting of both parties equally, both sides would have to give. I contend that the Republicans were much less used to giving, so they were less tolerant to the hard choice that the default they had voted for foisted on them.

The porous path of least resistance is often easy to spot. Republicans being forced to choose between agreeing to tax increases and defense cuts found themselves between a rock and a hard place—that is, between anti-tax lobbyists such as Grover Norquist and defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin. “There is more fear this time,” Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, said about the anxiety being expressed by military contractors in his district. Simply put, the Republicans were used to being able to satisfy both Norquist and Lockheed, so the lawmakers went after what they perceived as a false choice. The Speaker was being a statesman in refusing to support such efforts.

When all of a sudden getting things all one’s way is no longer possible, perception itself can be affected—such as in viewing the defense cuts as unfair or disproportionate even though they were equal to the non-defense cuts that the Democrats would have to swallow in the absence of an agreement in the joint committee. In other words, that the Democrats were not trying to change the mix of sequestration cuts even though half of those cuts were politically noxious. This suggests that the Republicans may have felt more entitled to getting things all their way than did the Democrats. Tolerance for being in a tight spot is easier if one is not used getting one’s way and thus does not necessary expect it. In other words, respect for even one’s own rules tends not to hold up to a mentality that privileges getting 100% of one’s position.

That more Americans are conservative than liberal may have been providing the Republicans in Congress with a “playing field” leaning in their favor. Hence, they could typically avoid being the side to blink. For example, during the summer of 2011, they successfully kept raising taxes off the table. When suddenly faced with pressure to give even a bit on this point, the ongoing mentality seeks to deconstruct the default giving rise to the pressure rather than to respect the hard choice and the structure undergirding it.

Beyond partisan politics, it is legitimate to ask whether the American cultures (and there are several, as in Europe) unduly support or even value the mentality wherein a person demand his own way. “My way or the highway” is a common expression in the U.S. I contend that it is particularly salient in American business. Perhaps Republicans coming from or representing that sector of society are so used the self-serving rigidity of “corporate policy” that they won’t even sit down to discuss a deal unless it fits with their “ground rules.”  I suspect that the instinct to deconstruct anything that pressures a choice that involves not getting everything one’s own way is engrained in American managerialism and corporate culture.

I suspect that people reading this essay who have visited the U.S. and are from other regions may be nodding in agreement, Yes, that’s how the rest of us see you guys, but you don’t see it. Americans are perhaps so used to the entitlement of my way or the highway and so used to evading rather than respecting even self-imposed hard choices the mentality within is hardly even recognized, much less expunged in any meaningful way. I see my fellow Americans so used to the rigidity and selfishness of employees (and managers) in retail sectors of American business that it can scarcely be imagined that customer (or, falsely, “guest”) relations in the states might be severely dysfunctional in terms of social psychology.

If I am correct here, then the way the chronic deficits are dealt with may be as problematic as the fiscal imbalances themselves, for both evince a jejune mentality that refuses to grow up and face adult decisions.

Source:

Jennifer Steinhauer and Robert Pear, “Lawmakers Aim to Stop Defense Cuts if Debt Panel Fails,” The New York Times, November 5, 2011. 

No State Left Behind: American Education Eclipsing Federalism

Facing a federal requirement that every student be proficient in math and English by 2014, the member-states in the U.S. rushed to apply for waivers in 2011 and 2012. In 2010, 38 percent of the schools had failed to meet their goals for annual progress toward the 2014 goal. The U.S. Secretary of Education thought that figure could soar to 80 percent. When a school fails to meet such goals, the No Child Left Behind law requires “a series of interventions by the district and the state that can culminate in a state takeover. With so many schools failing, “that threatened to create an impossible burden on states and districts,” according to Chester Finn, director of an institute that studies education.[1] The waivers did not come without strings, however. The Obama administration pushed the governments to measure teacher performance, and put increased emphasis on low-performing groups as well as on the lowest-performing schools.

While the waivers can easily be seen as an effort to put the Obama administration’s own priorities on legislation from a prior administration, the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, claimed that his aim was to get out of a bad law that could overwhelm states that don’t measure up. “Our goal with this waiver process, frankly, has always been to get out of the way of states and districts,” he said.[2] If this were so, however, he would not insist on negotiating for better terms in granting the waivers. Beyond this extent of intervention, that of the No Child Left Behind law requiring “interventions by the district and the state” with failing schools interlards the U.S. Government in a domain that is constitutionally reserved to the states. Absent the enumerated (i.e., listed) powers of the federal government, the fifty republics are sovereign states. While the Congress can spend in the general welfare of the political and monetary union, strings beyond the general purpose trigger a breach of the constitutional design, which should give the republics enough power to act as a check on the other system of government—that of the union itself. That is, specifying down to district intervention meddles inordinately in a state’s system of government to implement federal law.

In terms of education, the role of the U.S. Government should be oriented to regulating the interstate aspects, such as making sure that students are not deprived of equal protection (e.g., not discriminated against) and that out-of-state students are not gauged at the university level. Any spending should come attached to a general purpose (which I believe must be within an enumerated power, especially if there are any strings attached), rather than with requirements for implementation (or penalty). Should a republic not spend the money in line with the purpose (especially if that purpose lies within one of the sovereign domains of the member states), the federal government could sue to get the money back. If this seems to restrict Congressional power unduly, it may be that the federal power had gone so far beyond what is consistent with a federal system that what seems drastic is merely what is necessary to get back in line with it. In terms of failing schools, the underlying problem may be that Americans (i.e., including parents of school children) do not value self-discipline (i.e., at the expense of instant gratification) or education itself enough. Imposing federal requirements and penalties are doomed to fail against such societal disvalues. In other words, we are trashing federalism for nothing.

1. Richard Perez-Pena, “Waivers for 8 More States from ‘No Child Left Behind,” The New York Times, May 30, 2012.

2. Ibid.

Osama Killed by Obama: What Does American Patriotism Stand For?

On the day after Osama was killed by Obama, people in the American states were united in a feeling of pride for their union. Midway through a run at sunset, I paused beneath an American flag. I was caught not out of breath but by the distinct snapping sound of lazy flapping noises as the flag rolled in the light breeze. I looked up and stared at the red, white and blue performing its series of rolls. The fabric was much more alive than that stiff, wired flag still on the surface of the moon. A flag is meant to be alive—literally carried along as troops advance on a battlefield. Today’s flags hanging off still poles next to restaurants and car dealerships can hardly capture the dynamic energy of victory. To be sure, such victory was hinted at the night before as people ran hither and dither carrying flags in celebration outside the White House. It had struck me in watching the joyous scene how rare such clear-cut victories are.  It is a pity that some enemy must die for such clarity to be celebrated in a spirit of unity.

Looking up at sunset at the American flag—a symbol that has seemingly always been around—I wondered what it really stands for. What values cling most firmly to it?—nevermind the principles that are formally entailed in it. Turning to look at the auto business sponsoring the flag, I noticed a large sign displayed high up across one of the building’s walls above the repair garage: “Free Courtesy Cars for Customers with Select Insurance Companies.” My mind instantly leapt to “Free health-care for citizens with select health insurance only”—the others don’t get any. Is monetary-based exclusion the American way? What does that flag say about those who are not among the select? Is the red, white and blue referring to people living here who have money—the others just sort of existing here as though permanent aliens?

As my eyes were about to go back up the flag pole, I noticed that between tree trunks the naked sun was just about to touch the ground. Heaven would meet earth for a split-second before the ground ate into the perfect circle. I thought of Ben Franklin’s comment at the end of the U.S. constitutional convention in 1787 as he was wondering aloud whether the sun painted on the back of the presider’s chair was rising or setting. It would be ironic if on the day after a great military victory I associated the setting orange disc with the bright colors waving above me; something about the “select insurance companies” wording on the wall of the sponsoring company was giving me a proclivity to do just that, even as I felt a sense of pride in my eyes being drawn to the power in the movements of the giant fabric above me.

After my run, I briefly spoke with an auto-plant worker visiting from Michigan. He had been watching the Detroit Tigers play the Yankees.  He was disappointed in his team because even with a $200 million payroll, they had lost to Minnesota (I think). Of course, the Yankee organization knew how to put out the money to buy talent. The Tiger fan put it more bluntly. “The Yankees buy championships.” For a fan to reduce baseball teams to their payrolls seemed odd to me. Do fans in other regions of the world reduce sport to money, or is there something distinctly American about it? Whereas in Europe player captains receive championship trophies, team owners tend to get the honor in America. Clearly, a subtle difference in the value of wealth (and money as a motivator) distinguishes the United States from the European Union. Might wealth itself be what America is known for as a society?—a people obsessed with valuing money?

Can we go so far, moreover, as to conclude that the American flag stands for money? If so, did the patriotism evinced in the wake of Osama’s death reduce to dollars and cents? The political uncertainty that comes with terrorism is unquestionably bad for business. Even so, the sense of justice achieved through the execution—we could not even risk a trial—stood on the principle of an eye for an eye. Money, it could be said, was put in the service of a normative debt to be paid for the loss of innocent lives even though they could never be retrieved. However, it is difficult to see how the patriotism evinced reduces to greed.

So what does the American flag really exude? Patriotic confidence? An in-crowd based on wealth? Perhaps some other set of values that can only be observed from a distance? What does the diverse empire of fifty republics united in an extended republic stand for? Is there a common denominator or is the patriotism of victory an artificial construction based on convenience?  I suspect that these questions will go unanswered until or unless Americans are called on to sacrifice, for it may be that the value of self-denial is too far removed from what the flag has come to represent.

See related essay involving the impact of killing Osama on Obama's ability to preside.