Friedman's 2009 piece on U.S. torture still correct (Stratfor)

Here's the practical part of George Friedman's 2009 op-ed on U.S. torture for intelligence gathering, and it's still on-target:

The problem with torture — as with other exceptional measures — is that it is useful, at best, in extraordinary situations. The problem with all such techniques in the hands of bureaucracies is that the extraordinary in due course becomes the routine, and torture as a desperate stopgap measure becomes a routine part of the intelligence interrogator's tool kit.

At a certain point, the emergency was over. U.S. intelligence had focused itself and had developed an increasingly coherent picture of al Qaeda, with the aid of allied Muslim intelligence agencies, and was able to start taking a toll on al Qaeda. The war had become routinized, and extraordinary measures were no longer essential. But the routinization of the extraordinary is the built-in danger of bureaucracy, and what began as a response to unprecedented dangers became part of the process. Bush had an opportunity to move beyond the emergency. He didn't.

If you know that an individual is loaded with information, torture can be a useful tool. But if you have so much intelligence that you already know enough to identify the individual is loaded with information, then you have come pretty close to winning the intelligence war. That's not when you use torture. That's when you simply point out to the prisoner that, "for you the war is over." You lay out all you already know and how much you know about him. That is as demoralizing as freezing in a cell — and helps your interrogators keep their balance.

And here's the philosophical part:

And this raises the moral question. The United States is a moral project: its Declaration of Independence and Constitution state that. The president takes an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. The Constitution does not speak to the question of torture of non-citizens, but it implies an abhorrence of rights violations (at least for citizens). But the Declaration of Independence contains the phrase, "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." This indicates that world opinion matters.

At the same time, the president is sworn to protect the Constitution. In practical terms, this means protecting the physical security of the United States "against all enemies, foreign and domestic." Protecting the principles of the declaration and the Constitution are meaningless without regime preservation and defending the nation.

Let me repeat something: The U.S. is a moral project on display for the whole world.  It's not just another country defending its people and borders. U.S. conservatives and liberals alike believe in "the American way," whatever they take that to mean. So if we allow harm to that moral project, we allow harm to the essence of who we are. We become something else. That's why myself and others have argued since 9/11 that if we allow the terrorists to change who we are, then they've already won. They've convinced us to abandon our moral project.

Now to Friedman's qualifier on that: "Protecting the principles of the declaration [of Independence] and the Constitution are meaningless without regime preservation and defending the nation."

But the U.S. regime has never been threatened; and the defense of the nation was never in question -- perhaps only the defense of a few thousand potential citizens of that nation. No threat that we know about has risen to the level of a gun to the head of America, or an existential threat.

Furthermore, it's clearly not worth taking every possible precaution possible against any imaginable threat. Those threats have to be real and of sufficient magnitude and likelihood. And the costs mustn't exceed the benefits.

To put it in everyday terms, as my conservative friends like to do, think about the safety of your home. If you're honest, you would probably admit there are several measures you could take to make your home safer against intruders, accidental injury, fires and natural disasters. But there are costs and trade-offs to all these measures; and at a certain point each one of us says, "I've done enough," knowing full well we could be safer if we were willing to spend more, endure more inconvenience, etc. And these are only the material costs and trade-offs -- not moral costs and trade-offs involved in torturing people!

I say this to ward off oft-heard arguments, mostly from conservative politicians and pundits, that the U.S. Government exists primarily to protect us from every military or terrorist threat, both real and imaginable. No, it doesn't. Because the costs of doing that wouldn't be worth it. Indeed, trying to do "everything possible" could even make life in the U.S. not worth living, and make abandoning our "moral project" seem like a more appealing option. That's the danger. 

Torture and the U.S. Intelligence Failure

By George Friedman

April 20, 2009 | Stratfor

URL: http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090420_torture_and_u_s_intelligence_failure#axzz3LQKKLpE1

U.S. foreign policy must be moral as well as prudent

This entire op-ed by Harvard professor Joseph Nye is worth reading. I especially liked his comparison of Bush 41 vs. Bush 43 [emphasis mine]:

When we cannot be sure how to improve the world, prudence becomes an important virtue, and grandiose visions can pose a grave danger. This is sometimes forgotten by those who want Obama to place bigger bets in the revolutions of today’s Middle East. It is one thing to try to nudge events at the margins and assert our values in the long term; it is another to think we can shape revolutions we do not fully understand. There is a difference between a limited punishment of Syria for breaking an international taboo on the use of chemical weapons and becoming involved in a civil war. In foreign policy, as in medicine, it is important to first do no harm. Bush 41, who lacked the ability to articulate a vision but was able to steer through crises, turned out to be a better leader than his son, who had a powerful vision but little contextual intelligence about the region he tried to reshape.

Definitely I agree with Nye that prudence is the word of the day -- of the decade -- in U.S. foreign policy.  We'll be paying for Dubya's imprudence in Afghanistan and Iraq for decades to come. What I disagree with is Nye's America-first view on foreign policy that naturally gives U.S. presidents the right or the option to intervene militarily wherever they wish, as long as their "big bets" show promising odds of success over there -- success as defined by us, over here. 

What Nye and others don't realize is that we are in a new era, a new wave of democratization, now continuing in the Arab-Muslim world. The arc of history bends toward democracy. The U.S. has played no small role in that. (Pat self on back). So anybody straining against that arc will feel the pain, eventually. That goes for the U.S. at home or interfering abroad.

Egypt offers preliminary evidence that Arab-Muslims refuse to go back to dictatorship.  They've had a taste of revolution and they liked it.  Certainly I disagree with the way the Egyptian military with the support of some Egyptians ousted the democratically elected President Morsi, even while I sympathize with their grievances against him.  The street protests of an active urban minority proved very effective, but it was hardly democratic or representative of the wishes of 84 million Egyptians.  Nevertheless, what did we immediately see thereafter? The Egyptian military promised fresh elections.  We'll see if the generals follow through on their promise -- and the U.S. should pressure them hard to do so -- or if the interim government will ban the Muslim Brotherhood as a political party. Nevertheless, the point is that a "new normal" has been established: elections, democracy.  Baby steps.  

Hence, Nye rightly reminds America to think of revolutions in terms of decades, not weeks or years, and to "first do no harm."  But Nye is old-fashioned in his chauvinistic belief that the U.S. can intervene boldly in other nation's affairs and still be lucky enough to avoid blowback.  No.  The world has changed. Everything happening everywhere is known to everybody; and small voices can have huge ripple effects in unexpected places.  Like our back yard.

More importantly, we must graciously accept that the international institutions of peace, national sovereignty and democracy that America helped to build in the 20th century increasingly constrain U.S. foreign policy options as they gather power and widespread recognition. That is a good thing for everybody, the U.S. included. We shouldn't struggle against those reassuring bonds; we shouldn't strain to unbend that just arc.

What I'm getting at, finally, is a plea for a moral foreign policy based on U.S values.  Yes, really and truly.  Not just words to that effect, but deeds. That is the way.  

Many will say I'm naive.  But I say: isn't it in fact naive to think anymore, post-911, that we can make agreements with dictators and hope to maintain control, through them, over millions of angry and oppressed people?  People with access to the Internet, and weapons, and relatives, friends and sympathizers all over the world?  OK, maybe for a while.  But then what?  All that anger will burst forth eventually... and do we really want to bear the brunt of it?  

No.  We must be respected by the people of the world, and not just their leaders.  And we can do that only by leading with our values that we believe are universal (and in fact God-given) and that lead to the greater happiness of all mankind.  If we really believe that, and we're right, then America should prevail.  If we only pay lip service to our values outside U.S. borders, or think they are only for white Christians surrounded by two oceans, then... By all means, let's rely on old-fashioned realpolitik and brute force to get what we want.  But then we shouldn't be shocked or outraged when others resent us or even try to kill us in response; and no more asking ourselves, then, in a pitiful mockery of self-reflection, Why do they hate us?

The foreign policy risk behind the Arab revolutions

By Joseph S. Nye Jr.

August 31, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/17sysWe

Rush misunderstands natural law

Rush: "'We hold these truths to be self-evident...' was so obvious that those truths had to be written down."

Unwittingly, Rush Limbaugh has given us another teachable moment. Teachable as in, we should avoid repeating the errors of an ignoramus.

Rush and his caller last Friday discussed natural law.  What's that?  Well let me define it for you, alternatively, as:

1. (Philosophy) an ethical belief or system of beliefs supposed to be inherent in human nature and discoverable by reason rather than revelation;

2. (Philosophy) a nonlogically necessary truth; law of nature. See also nomological;

3. (Philosophy) the philosophical doctrine that the authority of the legal system or of certain laws derives from their justifiability by reason, and indeed that a legal system which cannot be so justified has no authority.

What Rush and his interlocutor meant to say was divine natural law:

Divine natural law represents the system of principles believed to have been revealed or inspired by God or some other supreme and supernatural being. These divine principles are typically reflected by authoritative religious writings such as Scripture. 

Notice that these two are not necessarily the same.  One could be an atheist and a Darwinist and yet subscribe to natural law, because certain laws just make sense in our historical-human context.  For example, murdering somebody is morally wrong for all kinds of obvious reasons, and you don't need God in the guise of a burning bush to tell you why.  Same thing with stealing, bearing false witness against your neighbor, etc.  These immoral acts cause unnecessary conflict, strife and suffering.  

Here's a more generic definition of natural law that covers the two above: "A principle or body of laws considered as derived from nature, right reason, or religion and as ethically binding in human society."  So it's either/or/or.  

The major difference between the non-religious and religious definitions would be the concept of "inalienable rights."  Personally, I find the concept of inalienable rights awfully stupid, and it's easy to demonstrate why:

Imagine it's just you and a liberal (or a conservative, it doesn't make a difference) all alone on a deserted island.  You're fighting over coconuts to survive.  While arguing for your fair share of coconuts on the island, you remind him about your "inalienable" rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"... and in reply he hits you on the head with a club and takes all the coconuts for himself.  Your rights were easily made alienable with that club.

Meanwhile, God or Zeus does not strike him down with a thunderbolt, preventing him from taking all the tasty, life-sustaining coconuts and saving your cranium from a cracking.  In fact, he gets fat on coconuts while you become tropical fish food.  So where do your inalienable rights figure in there?  Sorry, there was no overreaching government there to protect your inalienable rights. 

So the concept of "rights" without a strong government to uphold them is just academic-philosophical flim flam.  And who are the biggest opponents of strong government?  Advocates of divine natural law, that's who.  See the cognitive disconnect?  

Non-religious definitions of natural law don't subscribe to "inalienable rights," that's why they're superior.  They rely on innate arguments from logic, experience and history, not from dry old sectarian texts.  This is not to say I'm a believer in natural law.  I'm not.  What may seem "obvious" or a "law of nature" to you may not be so obvious to me; so again, any right of yours that depends on persuading me cannot be innate or natural.  

For Rush and his caller, this discussion of natural law was just a segue to complaining about the all-fronts "assault on God" in America.  That phrase always makes me laugh.  Does God really need the American federal government to protect Him?  Is He really that weak? Aren't churches strong enough?  If not, then... what's their purpose?  Are they just non-profit conservative lobbying organizations?  (In Republicans' ideal US of A, yes, they would be.)

As a member of the Left, let me make it clear: I'm not assaulting anybody's religion.  With my politics, I'm simply ignoring it.  That's all.  If ignoring something is offensive then... Well, if you're a married man, you know it's almost a sin to ignore your wife's new hairdo, outfit, etc.  But I think with religion we should not be so overweening and sensitive, what do you say?  Any religion that's been around more than a millennium can probably fend for itself.  Agreed? 

The Left's Assault on Religion

June 28, 2013 | The Rush Limbaugh Show

URL: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/06/28/the_left_s_assault_on_religion

The morality of capitalism v. redistribution

Where to begin with the question "Is capitalism moral"? Let's start with the title. Kind of a loaded question. Anyway let's be precise. Pearlstein is really discussing political economy, i.e. how our laws and governance influence commerce and the general welfare. Pearlstein means to debate the role that government should play in the economy. 

To start, Pearlstein correctly notes that, "For most of the past 30 years, the world has been moving in the direction of markets," and yet increasingly over that same period we have "stagnant incomes, gaping inequality, a string of crippling financial crises and 20-somethings still living in their parents’ basements."

Thus Republicans have pivoted, Pearlstein says, to focusing on capitalism's moral superiority because they certainly can't make a prima facie case for capitalism's benefits. Unfortunately, Pearlstein takes their bait and tries to analyze, more or less objectively, which side -- the "free-market capitalists" or the "redistributionists" -- is indeed morally superior, and the flaws with each.

The truth, as with most things, is muddled and complicated.  But I want to lay down a few markers. First, very few liberals/progressives/Democrats insist on having this "moral" debate. Why? Because we liberals are outcome-based. By contrast, conservatives and free-marketeers believe that one's moral principles should determine the rules of the game, and if one's moral principles are sound, then ipso facto, the results will take care of themselves. More precisely, conservatives believe that economic results are morality-free; only our political economics must be morally sound.

Let's admit though that his whole debate has been predicated by recent shitty economic outcomes. For a liberal, a more appropriate question would be to ask: whose political economy is the most responsible for the shitty state of today's economy?  True liberals would be even more precise: what specific policies have led us to these terrible outcomes? Conservatives would obviously like to dodge this question, and instead talk in philosophical or moral abstractions, parables and anecdotes, because the facts -- the results -- of their 30 years of neo-liberal rule do not support the morality of their political economy.

Second marker: to quote Paul Rosenberg: "economics used to be called 'political economy', because the great classical economists never lost sight of the fact that economics was a thoroughly political activity, not something outside of the life of a political community." In other words, economics never, ever, ever happens in a political vacuum. Thus, the notion that, in some ideal country, the free-market capitalism of Adam Smith hums and churns along for the betterment of all, unfettered by and independent of government, is naive and silly. Government has a role to play, it sets the rules of the economic game, we all know that.  To what extent government is involved is a matter of degrees. 

Again, liberals believe that government's role should be evidence- or outcomes-based, i.e. tweaked according to the outcomes achieved, whereas conservatives believe that outcomes, like people, should take care of themselves. What's important for them is to set up a system of rigid, unchanging moral conditions under which people operate.

Third marker: noting the terrible results of recent deregulation, privatization-outsourcing and tax cutting is not the same as saying "capitalism is bad." Conservatives and perhaps Pearlstein would like to provoke us liberals into saying that. It's not necessary, or rather, it's an academic argument rather than a real one, since we have not had a "free-market" system for a very long time, if ever. Indeed the U.S. Government has been "meddling" in the economy for a very long time, just in different ways and to varying degrees. 

The recent political-economic bag is mixed: just as union membership has been plummeting, charter schools have been blooming, taxes on the One Percent were being cut, and regulations on Too Big To Fail banks were being torn down, so was USG spending on the military-industrial complex going through the roof (Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Department of Homeland Security apparatus), not to mention Dubya's tremendous addition to the Medicare entitlement -- altogether resulting in a 91 percent increase in our national debt from 2002-2009. 

To be sure, we also had the Great Recession from 2007-2009 that is almost entirely to blame for our persistently high unemployment and deficits since then. This begs the question: what political-economic philosophy was more responsible for the Great Recession? Because we wouldn't be having this discussion right now if it weren't for the Great Recession. You could skip all the junk I wrote above and below, and if you answer this one question correctly, then you are nearly at the truth....

But anyway, back to Pearlstein. He critiques liberals because "they have yet to articulate the moral principles with which to determine how far the evening-up [redistribution] should go -- not just with education but with child care, health care, nutrition, after-school and summer programs, training, and a host of other social services."  There are two big problems with where Pearlstein is going with this.

First, his critique is simply untrue. Liberals have laid out their moral principles, most eloquently in President Roosevelt's 1941 "Four Freedoms" speech that included the "freedom from want," and then in President Johnson's "Great Society" initiatives in the 1960s.  

In fact, our moral calculus is much easier to understand than conservatives'. We believe that, in the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the world, nobody should go hungry, uneducated or without health care. Furthermore, we believe that our nation's children, elderly and disabled deserve special care and protection, including additional food, medical and housing assistance. This is pretty easy to understand, and to verify. Can a child perform well in school relative to his peers? Does a person go hungry or malnourished? Does a child have a roof over his head? And so on. Depending on the answer, we have a moral obligation to do something. It couldn't be easier to understand.

Second problem: Pearlstein asks liberals to lay out: 1) our moral principles [check]; but also, unfairly, 2) a formula for government redistribution that is clear and will work forever and ever, amen. That's just childishly naive, I'm sorry. Pearlstein needs to get real. First, he ignores political reality that demands compromise. Nobody gets his way all the time, 100%. And let's just remind ourselves why this matters: if tomorrow President Obama would say that a "fair share" of taxes on the One Percent was, say, 30 percent, then this would be all anybody could talk about. Conservatives and their armies in think tanks, cable and talk radio would parse and mince it to death for weeks and months. When in fact it's all relative; and liberals don't care what the number is, as long as it generates sufficient revenues and ensures economic growth. (But historically, until the 1980s, the top marginal rate didn't fall below 70%).  At the end of his essay, Pearlstein admits as much:

Moral philosophers since Adam Smith have understood that free-market economies are not theoretical constructs -- they are embedded in different political, cultural and social contexts that significantly affect how they operate. If there can be no pure free market, then it follows that there cannot be only one neutral or morally correct distribution of market income.

Second, Pearlstein fails to acknowledge that liberals, unlike conservatives, think and act according to feedback loops: from problem/result --> intervention --> result/problem, and so on. Therefore, without observations of actual events, we cannot tell you what will be a fair and equitable taxation rate 5, 10 or 50 years from now, or a fair distribution of wealth. We won't even hazard a guess. 

Such tolerance for uncertainty drives doctrinaire conservatives to conniption. But that's a fundamental difference between us.  Therefore, a real liberal would start with our current and projected expenditures and sources of revenue and go from there; he wouldn't start the analysis with, "Well, it's just plain unfair and immoral for somebody to pay more than x percent of his gross income in taxes."  And besides, if that is my "moral" conviction, then how in the world can we debate that? We'd start at an impasse.

Pearlstein does argue that the distribution of economic rewards will shift over time, but liberals already know this:

[T]he way markets distribute rewards is neither divinely determined nor purely the result of the “invisible hand.” It is determined by laws, regulations, technology, norms of behavior, power relationships, and the ways that labor and financial markets operate and interact. These arrangements change over time and can dramatically affect market outcomes and incomes.

Pearlstein's next critique of liberals is that they "have been able to create a welfare state only by addicting a middle-class majority to government subsidies -- subsidies that now can be financed only by taking more and more money from the rich." 

Do I really need to cite statistics about tax and income inequality and the disappearing U.S. middle class?  If so, read this, this, this, this and this. And don't even get me started about the $29 trillion bank bailouts, that primarily went to save financial markets in which the top One Percent owns 42 percent of all financial wealth, and the top 20 percent owns about 90 percent. The TBTF bank bailouts clearly demonstrate who is really "addicted" to Big Government and to what degree! 

Overall, although Pearlstein leans conservative, he touches on most of the important questions. The main take-aways from our debate are these:

• Pure capitalism (or socialism, for that matter) has never existed anywhere, nor can it;
• We are only worried about rising deficits and redistribution payments because of the Great Recession that in turn resulted from financial deregulation that conservatives support, even to this day;
• Liberals should never feel obligated to justify the morality of their political economy, when if fact we are much clearer on this than conservatives who claim to care about the poor just as much as we do, yet have no idea how to remedy persistent poverty;
• Liberals should not fall into conservatives' trap of naming "ideal" marginal tax rates, debt:GDP ratios, or anything of the kind, because 1) it's unwise tactically, in a political system that demands compromise, and 2) the correct answers will change over time.

A final note on political-economic morality: Pearlstein doesn't mention it but I will: conservatives' economic morality depends on personal pain and suffering. They firmly believe that pain teaches us lessons and can be personally redeeming; therefore, for redistributionist Big Government to deny a person the pain that he "deserves" is to deny him the chance to learn and improve himself.  

There is also a religious conservative variant of this belief: even if one's suffering wasn't caused by one's poor decisions, it may still be part of God's plan for that person; therefore, for redistributionist Big Government to prevent that pain and suffering is to interfere with God's plan for that person. Moreover, government assistance to a suffering person denies true Christians the opportunity to curry favor with God by performing charitable works for that suffering person. 

I hope I don't have to explain how sick and twisted such moral reasoning is, much less why it cannot be the basis for our country's political economy....

Finally, a note on redistribution. I will take the liberty here of quoting myself at length:

[L]et's recall for a minute what the U.S. Government -- any government from the dawn of human civilization -- actually does, in pure basics: it collects taxes from the people how it sees fit, and then spends that money how it wants. It does not, for example, say, "Mr. David Koch, since you contributed 0.01 percent of federal income tax revenues in FY 2011, we are allocating 0.01 percent of the FY 2012 federal budget to you."  

Since our government doesn't do this -- since no government has ever done this, ever -- then by definition, what our government does is redistribute wealth.  Moreover, sooner or later all government spending ends up in private hands -- just not necessarily (and not usually) in the hands that gave it its money in the first place.  If that's not redistribution then I don't know what is.

Is capitalism moral?

By Steven Pearlstein

March 15, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/WLTcrp

The social compact, and the morality of gov't. budgets

Most conservatives don't believe anymore in the idea of the commonwealth.  They believe "freedom" means the freedom to do whatever they want, free from responsibility to help their fellow citizens.

Recently I was discussing the economic crisis in the EU with a Frenchman.  He said it's basically OK there, because people still believe in The Social Contract of Jean Jacques Rousseau, who was an inspiration to America's Founding Fathers.  Here's what old Jack wrote in 1762:

Finally, each man, in giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody; and as there is no associate over whom he does not acquire the same right as he yields others over himself, he gains an equivalent for everything he loses, and an increase of force for the preservation of what he has.

If then we discard from the social compact what is not of its essence, we shall find that it reduces itself to the following terms:

"Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole."

I agree completely with Lakoff that a budget is, among other things, a moral document.  It is not just revenues and outlays.  Conservatives are very concerned with personal morality and behavior; but they overlook or downplay the moral role of the State -- not in its directing individuals' personal behavior, but in upholding the common good, preventing abject poverty, defending the weak and infirm, and applying the law equally.  

Romney, Ryan and the Devil's Budget: Will America Keep Its Soul?

By George Lakoff and Glenn W. Smith

August 22, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL:  http://huff.to/QpUCOe 

The morality of liberal & conservative economics

Lakoff and Wehling voice thoughts that I haven't been able to formulate as clearly. Obviously what they write is the truth.

Indeed, I have noticed for a while now how many conservatives seem to take thinly veiled pleasure in contemplating the economic suffering of those who ought to "learn their lesson" from the Great Recession: distressed homeowners; the newly unemployed; students in debt; European "socialists;" and of course poor minorities, always minorities.  Yet their bitter pills are never prescribed to Wall Street.  Why is that?  Lakoff and Wehling have the answer: conservatives see wealth as proof of one's morality.  Or as they put it: "The most moral people are the rich."  People with money can't be wrong; to them it's as simple as that.

Economics and Morality

By George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling

June 13, 2012 | Huffington Post

In his June 11, 2012 op-ed in the New York Times, Paul Krugman goes beyond economic analysis to bring up the morality and the conceptual framing that determines economic policy. He speaks of "the people the economy is supposed to serve" -- "the unemployed," and "workers"-- and "the mentality that sees economic pain as somehow redeeming."

Krugman is right to bring these matters up. Markets are not provided by nature. They are constructed -- by laws, rules, and institutions. All of these have moral bases of one sort or another.  Hence, all markets are moral, according to someone's sense of morality.  The only question is, Whose morality?  In contemporary America, it is conservative versus progressive morality that governs forms of economic policy. The systems of morality behind economic policies need to be discussed.

Most Democrats, consciously or mostly unconsciously, use a moral view deriving from an idealized notion of nurturant parenting, a morality based on caring about their fellow citizens, and acting responsibly both for themselves and others with what President Obama has called "an ethic of excellence" -- doing one's best not just for oneself, but for one's family, community, and country, and for the world. Government on this view has two moral missions: to protect and empower everyone equally.

The means is The Public, which provides infrastructure, public education, and regulations to maximize health, protection and justice, a sustainable environment, systems for information and transportation, and so forth. The Public is necessary for The Private, especially private enterprise, which relies on all of the above.  The liberal market economy maximizes overall freedom by serving public needs: providing needed products at reasonable prices for reasonable profits, paying workers fairly and treating them well, and serving the communities to which they belong.  In short, "the people the economy is supposed to serve" are ordinary citizens. This has been the basis of American democracy from the beginning.

Conservatives hold a different moral perspective, based on an idealized notion of a strict father family.  In this model, the father is The Decider, [ Dubya? -- J ] who is in charge, knows right from wrong, and teaches children morality by punishing them painfully when they do wrong, so that they can become disciplined enough to do right and thrive in the market.  If they are not well-off, they are not sufficiently disciplined and so cannot be moral: they deserve their poverty. Applied to conservative politics, this yields a moral hierarchy with the wealthy, morally disciplined citizens deservedly on the top.

Democracy is seen as providing liberty, the freedom to seek one's self interest with minimal responsibility for the interests or well-being of others. It is laissez-faire liberty. Responsibility is personal, not social.  People should be able to be their own strict fathers, Deciders on their own -- the ideal of conservative populists, who are voting their morality not their economic interests.  Those who are needy are assumed to be weak and undisciplined and therefore morally lacking.  The most moral people are the rich. The slogan, "Let the market decide," sees the market itself as The Decider, the ultimate authority, where there should be no government power over it to regulate, tax, protect workers, and to impose fines in tort cases. Those with no money are undisciplined, not moral, and so should be punished.  The poor can earn redemption only by suffering and thus, supposedly, getting an incentive to do better.

If you believe all of this, and if you see the world only from this perspective, then you cannot possibly perceive the deep economic truth that The Public is necessary for The Private, for a decent private life and private enterprise. The denial of this truth, and the desire to eliminate The Public altogether, can unfortunately come naturally and honestly via this moral perspective.

When Krugman speaks of those who have "the mentality that sees economic pain as somehow redeeming," he is speaking of those who have ordinary conservative morality, the more than forty percent who voted for John McCain and who now support Mitt Romney -- and Angela Merkel's call for "austerity" in Germany. It is conservative moral thought that gives the word "austerity" a positive moral connotation.

Just as the authority of a strict father must always be maintained, so the highest value in this conservative moral system is the preservation, extension, and ultimate victory of the conservative moral system itself.  Preaching about the deficit is only a means to an end -- eliminating funding for The Public and bringing us closer to permanent conservative domination. From this perspective, the Paul Ryan budget makes sense -- cut funding for The Public (the antithesis of conservative morality) and reward the rich (who are the best people from a conservative moral perspective). Economic truth is irrelevant here.

Historically, American democracy is premised on the moral principle that citizens care about each other and that a robust Public is the way to act on that care. Who is the market economy for? All of us. Equally. But with the sway of conservative morality, we are moving toward a 1 percent economy -- for the bankers, the wealthy investors, and the super rich like the six members of the family that owns Walmart and has accumulated more wealth than the bottom 30 percent of Americans. Six people!

What is wrong with a 1 percent economy? As Joseph Stiglitz has pointed out in The Price of Inequality, the 1 percent economy eliminates opportunity for over a hundred million Americans. From the Land of Opportunity, we are in danger of becoming the Land of Opportunism.

If there is hope in our present situation, it lies with people who are morally complex, who are progressive on some issues and conservative on others -- often called "moderates," "independents," and "swing voters."  They have both moral systems in their brains: when one is turned on, the other is turned off. The one that is turned on more often gets strongest. Quoting conservative language, even to argue against it, just strengthens conservatism in the brain of people who are morally complex.  It is vital that they hear the progressive values of the traditional American moral system, the truth that The Public is necessary for The Private, the truth that our freedom depends on a robust Public, and that the economy is for all of us.

Adam Smith on selfishness v. self-interest

UPDATE (06.08.2013): Originally, I posted this article without any commentary although I found it extremely interesting, and, I won't kid you, very heartening for my progressive beliefs. For some reason it's one of my most popular posts.  I'm not sure why.  Maybe it's because people of all stripes, even today, see Adam Smith as the final authority on capitalism.  

Personally, I'm not willing to go that far. Experience and scholarship have contributed much to our understanding of capitalism/free enterprise, call it what you will, since Smith's time.  To give one giant example: Keynes. Say what you want, but the guy invented macroeconomics. Until him, there was only microecon, Smith's provenance. So we gotta give prop's where they're due.

Nevertheless, it's certainly worth discovering in the article that follows what Adam Smith himself actually thought about "capitalism," a word that wasn't even invented in Smith's lifetime; it was coined by 19th-century socialists to disparage what they saw as an economic system that exploited the working class.

I'm no economic scholar, I'm not even an entrepreneur. However, during extensive international experience as a consultant I've seen in developing countries what confirms Smith's belief that a certain moral underpinning (trust, fair dealing, a man's word is his bond, deal on a handshake, etc.), not to mention robust courts that enforce verbal as well as written contracts, are necessary for "economic individualism" to flourish without harming the common good. As Americans and Westerners, we overlook their powerful role too often. And it undermines our credibility when we preach the virtues of the "free market" to developing nations: like criticizing the composition of their roof while ignoring the crumbling foundation.  

Speaking of the common good, or general welfare, that's a concept under constant threat in the U.S., although it's specifically mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. Constitutional "purists" tell us there are no superfluous words in that revered old parchment, so it's worth contemplating what exactly was meant by the general welfare, and how it can be protected. Alright, enough of my two cents.



A Tale of Two Smiths: What Capitalism's Founder Would Think of Goldman's Greed

By John Paul Rollert

April 20, 2012 | Next New Deal

Adam Smith made a distinction between self-interest and selfishness -- and he knew that too much of the latter would lead a nation to ruin.

It has been over a month since Greg Smith's letter of resignation sent Goldman Sachs into full PR panic mode. Since then, the firm has completed its great "muppet" sweep, Mr. Smith has secured a blockbuster book deal, and Lloyd Blankfein has found himself fighting off stories of a growing power struggle at the top of Goldman high command.

All of this makes for good copy, but it risks obscuring the enduring moral dilemma at the heart of the original letter. Namely, when it comes to doing business, can we make a meaningful distinction between self-interest and selfishness? Or, apropos of Mr. Smith, should a place like Goldman ever hold itself to a higher standard than "How much money did we make off the client?"

Another Smith certainly thought so: Adam Smith, the founding father of modern economics. He first made his name as a moral philosopher with The Theory of Moral Sentiments, a careful diagnosis of the concern we have for others, the attention we show ourselves, and how the tension between the two underwrites a common code of ethics.

One of the principal villains of Smith's work was Bernard Mandeville, an occasional philosopher who impishly elided fine-grained distinctions. His scandalous work, The Fable of the Bees, was an allegorical poem involving a thriving beehive that bore more than passing resemblance to 18th-century England. Accounting for the affluence and ease the bees enjoyed, Mandeville made two contentions sufficient to give any high-minded economist heartburn. 

First, he claimed there was no essential difference, morally speaking, between the con man and the merchant. Both were driven by selfish instincts to get the better of their fellow man (or bee), and to that end, both trucked in deceit. Yes, the con man broke the law, but the merchant hid behind it.

Mandeville's second claim was even more scabrous: So be it. Vice, not virtue, kept the wheels of commerce turning, with the benefits shared by all:

Thus Vice nurs'd Ingenuity,
Which join'd with Time and Industry,
Had carry'd Life's Conveniences,
It's real Pleasures, Comforts, Ease,
To such a Height, the very Poor
Liv'd better than the Rich before,
And nothing could be added more.

If these lines sound a little bit like "greed is good," then you get Mandeville's point. Human beings are selfish, and thank goodness for it. Otherwise, we might end up like the bees, who are nearly wiped out after a spell of virtue saps their ambition, spoils their economy, and exposes them to outside attack.

When he stepped forward to challenge these views, Smith knew that he had to provide a compelling distinction between pursuits that are self-interested and those that are merely selfish. He granted Mandeville that there was "a certain remote affinity" between them insofar as both are motivated by a concern for personal well-being, but he appealed to common sense in saying that that we don't view all human desires equally. My interest in having a clean shirt is not only legitimate, it's laudable, whereas my longing for a panda skin sportcoat is not only illegitimate, it's an outrage.

Fair enough. But how exactly do we make these distinctions? Smith says we come by them naturally, by engaging others and discovering where our desires echo, overlap, and, finally, are at odds with one another. This process, iterative and ongoing, defines our moral sentiments, the felt necessities of right and wrong that shape and restrain our actions.  It also defines for us what Smith called "a fair and deliberate exchange," the very type of interaction at the heart of a commercial enterprise. 

When he turned his attention to economics, Smith did not think of himself as devising a system that was antagonistic or even alien to the one he had already developed. A free market provided individuals a space to engage each other in the pursuit of their own private interests, but that realm was not free from moral sentiments, nor should it be. Engaging in business was no less a part of human interaction than raising children or making friends, and the idea that a commercial sphere dominated by the grossest behavior would not contaminate the rest of society was not only silly, it was dangerously naive.  

This was Smith's greatest difference with Mandeville: He did not believe that a nation in which people pursued their interests irrespective of one another would be affluent. It wouldn't even be stable.  Riven by "hostile factions," society would seethe with conflict, for people with different interests would view each other with "contempt and derision."  In such an environment, Smith observed, "[t]ruth and fair dealing are almost totally disregarded," for the interests of others have no moral claim on us.

Is Goldman Sachs such an environment? Greg Smith says so, but only the people who work there know whether the culture is as "toxic and destructive" as his letter claims. Yet to the degree that clients are viewed with contempt and derision, especially by leadership, Adam Smith would say that we should hardly be surprised, as the other Mr. Smith seems to be, by "how callously people talk about ripping their clients off." This is to be expected. The line between selfishness and self-interest, in business as in all human pursuits, appears only when we feel that the interests of others occasionally require us to restrain our own. When we stop caring, that line disappears, and with it some very worthy things — personal integrity, self-respect, professional pride — that money can't buy.

John Paul Rollert is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Drug testing for welfare recipients and clash of conservative values

This is a pretty good example of where conservatives' values collide, and one proves stronger: on the one hand, conservatives despise drug use as immoral, and they think it leads to crime and poverty; on the other hand, they want to cut government expenditures wherever possible.
In the case of drug testing for welfare recipients, it's a case of spending way more money on testing than can be saved by excluding drug abusers from welfare.
For example, since Florida mandated testing of welfare recipients last year, only 2 percent have failed the tests. Florida has had to eat the costs of tests for the 96 percent who passed.
But don't hold your breath waiting for Florida to cancel expensive drug testing. This is a case where conservatives want government to spend a lot of money to promote their values.
UPDATE (02.25.2012): GOP primary candidate Mitt Romney said that drug testing for welfare recipients was an "excellent idea," damn the costs. So there you go.

Commentary: Drug testing welfare recipients is a waste of taxpayers' money
By Mary Sanchez
February 20, 2012 | Kansas City Star
URL: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/02/20/139081/commentary-drug-testing-welfare.html#storylink=cpy

Outraged at lack of outrage?

This letter (see below), which has been bouncing around conservatives' inboxes and blogs for months now, is a real "everything but the kitchen sink" diatribe. It worries me that some Americans seem so outraged and frightened at so many things. They're seeing a different America than I do. 

 My comments:

- George Soros, Al Gore, and Barbra Streisand (the Usual Suspects?) all have money and power, but there are people on the right, left and middle with lots of money who try to influence our country. America's monied elite is not solely a liberal group, not by a long shot.

- The whole "press 2 for Spanish" thing is an example of the free market at work. Hispanics have disposable income, too, and U.S. companies want their business, hence they try to make it easier for them to spend their money. That's capitalism. If there were 45 million American consumers speaking Swahili, you'd hear "press 3 for Swahili." Laissez-faire conservatives, take note.

- People who can't communicate in English are already marginalized, socially and economically. And they know it. Immigrant parents want their kids to learn English and enjoy the fruits of America and the English-speaking global economy, not speak their native language at school and be left behind. Indeed, we should assume that immigrants who were willing to abandon their native country, friends, family, and customs and endure untold hardships to come to America had nothing but the future on their minds; they were not thinking about what would be the easiest thing for them in the short term.

- Maybe America is in moral and ethical decline, I don't know, but by what measure? Who's to judge? The number of Americans who call themselves faithful, attend church regularly, practice abstinence before marriage, avoid illegal drugs, volunteer in their communities, etc. is no less than it was 20-30 years ago, and is by some indications even greater. Or is she complaining about our politician's morals, like Sanford's? Or perhaps Wall Street's morals? If so, she has a legitimate beef. Personally, I think it's a normal phenomenon for aging people to see change as negative and equal to moral decline. "Things were better back in my day," is something older folks have been saying for generations.

Contrary to the hell-in-a-hand-basket myth, take note that we don't lynch our fellow Americans anymore. We don't deny anybody the right to vote. We don't let children work in sweatshops all day. We protect our kids from pedophiles better than ever. We recognize that there really are workplace behaviors called "sexual harassment" and "racial discrimination" and we seek to minimize them. Almost all U.S. corporations now acknowledge, and sometimes even practice, the concept of "corporate social responsibility." Our rivers don't catch on fire anymore. We don't allow our old and infirm to wallow in isolation and excrement anymore. We don't ignore it when priests molest our kids anymore. I could go on, but you get the point. We might be declining in some respects, but America is getting a heck of a lot better in many respects.

- All I will say about Iran/Ahmadinejad is this: we can't debate this topic until you folks come out and say what you want. Why can't you be forthright about it? You want to start a preventive war against Iran. If you neoconservatives have the courage of your convictions, and you're certain talking to Iran is "appeasing a madman," then please don't dance around it. It insults my intelligence.

- If Tyson wants to give its Muslim workers day off, that's their right. It's America! What, would conservatives have Big Government step in and prevent them?

- The Jewel of Medina was indeed published in 2008. What, would conservatives have Big Government step in and force Random House to publish a book? Companies do cowardly things for PR/marketing reasons all the time. When they cave in to one of conservatives' demands, it makes them happy. When they cave in to some liberal constituency, or some whacky group, conservatives cry "moral decline!" In business everything comes down to profit. In a capitalist system, you have to take the bitter with the sweet.

- We can debate the science or practicality of environmentalism, but 99.99% of environmentalists believe that they are doing the right things for the right reasons. That is the very definition of personal ethics. There is no conspiracy.

- "I don't even feel like my vote counts, I am so outnumbered by those who disagree with me," she concluded. I hope to goodness she is outnumbered.

---------------------------------------

This letter was sent to the Wall Street Journal on August 8, 2008 by Alisa Wilson, Ph.D. Of Beverly Hills , CA in response to the Wall Street Journal article titled "Where's The Outrage? Really." that appeared July 31,2008.

Really. I can tell you where the outrage is. The outrage is here, in this middle-aged, well-educated, upper-middle class woman. The outrage is here, but I have no representation, no voice. The outrage is here, but no one is listening for who am I?

I am not a billionaire like George Soros that can fund an entire political movement.

I am not a celebrity like Barbra Streisand that can garner the attention of the press to promote political candidates.

I am not a film maker like Michael Moore or Al Gore that can deliver misleading movies to the public.

The outrage is here, but unlike those with money or power, I don't know how to reach those who feel similarly in order to effect change.

Why am I outraged? I am outraged that my country, the United States of America , is in a state of moral and ethical decline. There is no right or wrong anymore, just what's fair.

Is it fair that millions of Americans who overreached and borrowed more than they could afford are now being bailed out by the government and lending institutions to stave off foreclosure? Why shouldn't these people be made to pay the consequences for their poor judgment?

When my husband and I purchased our home, we were careful to purchase only what we could afford. Believe me, there are much larger, much nicer homes that I would have loved to have purchased. But, taking responsibility for my behavior and my life, I went with the house that we could afford, not the house that we could not afford. The notion of personal responsibility has all but died in our country.

I am outraged, that the country that welcomed my mother as an immigrant from Hitler's Nazi Germany and required that she and her family learn English now allows itself to be overrun with illegal immigrants and worse, caters to those illegal immigrants.

I am outraged that my hard-earned taxes help support those here illegally. That the Los Angeles Public School District is in such disarray that I felt it incumbent to send my child to private school, that every time I go to the ATM, I see "do you want to continue in English or Spanish?", that every time I call the bank, the phone company , or similar business, I hear "press 1 for English or press 2 for Spanish". WHY? This is America , our common language is English and attempts to promote a bi- or multi-lingual society are sure to fail and to marginalize those who cannot communicate in English.

I am outraged at our country's weakness in the face of new threats on American traditions from Muslims. Just this week, Tyson's Food negotiated with its union to permit Muslims to have Eid-al-Fitr as a holiday instead of Labor Day. What am I missing? Yes, there is a large Somali Muslim population working at the Tyson's plant in Tennessee . Tennessee , last I checked, is still part of the United States . If Muslims want to live and work here they should be required to live and work by our American Laws and not impose their will on our long history.

In the same week, Random House announced that they had indefinitely delayed the publication of The Jewel of Medina, by Sherry Jones, a book about the life of Mohammed's wife, Aisha due to fear of retribution and violence by Muslims. When did we become a nation ruled by fear of what other immigrant groups want? It makes me so sad to see large corporations cave rather than stand proudly on the principles that built this country.

I am outraged because appeasement has never worked as a political policy, yet appeasing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is exactly what we are trying to do. An excellent article, also published recently in the Wall Street Journal, went through over 20 years of history and why talking with Iran has been and will continue to be ineffective. Yet talk, with a madman no less, we continue to do. Have we so lost our moral compass and its ability to detect evil that we will not go in and destroy Iran 's nuclear program? Would we rather wait for another Holocaust for the Jews - one which they would be unlikely to survive? When does it end?

As if the battle for good and evil isn't enough, now come the Environmentalists who are so afraid of global warming that they want to put a Bag tax on grocery bags in California; to eliminate Mylar balloons; to establish something as insidious as the recycle police in San Francisco. I do my share for the environment: I recycle, I use water wisely, I installed an energy efficient air conditioning unit. But when and where does the lunacy stop?Ahmadinejad wants to wipe Israel off the map, the California economy is being overrun by illegal immigrants, and the United States of America no longer knows right from wrong, good from evil.. So what does California do? Tax grocery bags.

So, America , although I can tell you where the outrage is, this one middle-aged, well-educated, upper middle class woman is powerless to do anything about it. I don't even feel like my vote counts because I am so outnumbered by those who disagree with me.

Alisa Wilson, Ph.D. Beverly Hills , California