The Theory and Practice of Rainbows

Posted on January 16, 2009 by Gavin Stevens

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day, right there in Alabama, little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and little white girls as sisters and brothers.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today was our local Bar Association’s annual Martin Luther King luncheon. The luncheon itself was very well run with a wonderful speaker, Dr. Henry Louis Gates of Harvard University, who kept the audience in laughter while teaching them humility and coexistence. His was a fine balance not easy of maintenance, and Dr. Gates maintained the balance well from his opening words until the end of his talk. A truly masterful performance.

As masterful as his performance was, something else which occurred struck me more forcefully. On two occasions, a local school choir got up to sing. The student members were male and female and ranged from in apparent age from 7 or 8 to 17 or 18. More importantly, they represented all of humanity’s imaginable colors – each one standing there next to another, each one arranged by size without any regard for his or her neighbor’s color. The most joyous thing for me about this array was my impression that none of the students had any concern for the fact that his or her neighbor might be of a different hue and, most significantly, my conviction that not a single one of these students would understand that had such a mixed choir been tried in 1960, the result in most parts of America would not have been the beautiful music they produced.

In point of fact, almost no one would have tried such a thing in 1960, nor would most have seen the point of trying – other than those few visionaries who led us out of that black and white wasteland.

In other words, I was struck by their apparent ignorance of their novelty when compared to the remembered school choirs of my childhood. I am not naive enough to think that there weren’t tensions of some sort up on the choir’s portable stage, but, whatever the tensions may have been, they weren’t those nurtured by apartheid, segregation, separate-but-equalism or any other title mankind has given to its various philosophies and acts of conscious racism. It appeared that these children know those philosophies only from study and classwork and not from first-hand experience.

What a wonderful thing, if so. If true, it seems to me that an even more important part of Dr. King’s dream is coming true than that portion of his dreams embodied in Barrack Obama’s impending inauguration as President. As powerful a symbol as Mr Obama’s inauguration is to us and to the world at large, imagine the long term implications for the human race when children truly see their friends as friends, regardless of their friends’ color, race or any other imaginable external categorization. Imagine a world where we can like or dislike someone solely because of their personal qualities, and not because of patent, but meaningless, external differences. Imagine a world where we simply accept one another as equal members of the human race.

I am not stupid enough to think we have already achieved such a world or that its achievement is imminent or even likely. But I am creative enough to dream and to imagine a world where such mutual respect reigns, and I saw that possible world in the eyes of those children and I listened to the power of its possibility in the magic of their voices. The comparison of that choir with those of my memories was truly inspiring.

Dr. Gates saw it too. This man, who walks with a cane and who obviously tires when too long on his feet, got up from his chair on the dais, grabbed his cane, and walked slowly down the choir’s front row shaking each child’s hand and giving each a word of praise. He gave them his ear, his time, his energy, and his respect. As enjoyable as his subsequent speech was, this will remain my my fondest memory of this remarkable man. As powerful as his message was, this small act spoke more loudly about the man and the size and quality of his heart.

The wonderful thing about Dr. King’s dream was its power to inform and inspire. I don’t believe that one can inspire without convincingly informing others of the reasons why change is needed. His was a powerful voice; a voice rich in the cadence of joy, firm in its presentation of the case for change, loud in its demands for equality and justice, and enchanting in the presentation of his vision.

Dr. King was both of his time and a prophet for a richly imagined future. I was fortunate today to receive an inspiring glimpse of our possible future, and I will be fortunate next Tuesday to witness a major step on the journey to that possibility.

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Where Do These People Come From?

Posted on January 9, 2009 by Gavin Stevens

Police Captain Rick Myers said it’s unusual for a masked robber to wait in line at a bank.

CBSnews.com, Strange Stories, January 10, 2009

The above quote comes from an on-line story about a bank robber in Stow, Ohio who got into a teller’s line wearing a ski mask and waited patiently for his turn at the teller’s window. He then pulled a toy gun and robbed the bank. What was the robber thinking? Was he thinking? For that matter, I wonder where the bank guard was while the robber was patiently waiting for his turn at a stick-up? Did his fellow line-mates notice the robber’s mask and, if so, did any of them ask him to remove his mask because wearing one indoors is improper? Why didn’t the teller hit the alarm button when the robber was five persons back from the window? Why does Chief Myers compound matters by making such a “duh” statement? Is everyone in Stow, Ohio completely without brains? What goes on in Stow, Ohio on the weekends, anyway?

The only sillier thing I remember was a story from a few years back about a bank robber who wrote his stick-up note on the back of one of his own withdrawal slips and then handed the note to the teller. The teller, in turn, handed the robber the money in his till, waited until the robber left, and then called the police and gave them the robber’s name and address. The police promptly drove to the robber’s home without lights or sirens and arrested him when he subsequently arrived home carrying the loot.

It is stories like this that make me fear at times for the future of humanity. Where do they find these people? I certainly hope that none of them are my neighbors here in Humptulips County. I have a hunch, however, that many of them are found either in the upper echelons of management in some of our Fortune 500 companies or firmly embedded in our political structure. For example:

1. American car company executives flying by individual corporate jet to Washington DC to ask for a bail out of the auto industry. For God’s sake, they could have least gone in one private jet instead of three.

2. Governor Elliot Spitzer’s low-life after hours habits in contrast to his on-the-job persona of grizzled, tough prosecutor with an intolerance for criminals. You have to wonder why it didn’t occur to him that others might be startled by the contrast between his public and private behavior. You have to wonder if he thought at all or, if he did, what he used to think with.

3. Sarah Palin’s willingness to be interviewed by Katie Couric. Of course, if, as I suspect, she really doesn’t have a clue about much of anything, agreeing to be interviewed was probably a no brainer – in every sense of the phrase.

4. John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as running mate in an attempt to pick up the Hilary Clinton vote. Let’s just say that Mr. McCain’s decision seems Hilarious in retrospect, but it must not have seemed that funny as he was about to give his concession speech.

5. John McCain’s declarations of trust and support for Sarah Palin as a running mate subsequent to his defeat at the polls. It just goes to show that you can be too old to learn.

6. Congressman Tim Mahoney of Florida who, after succeeding former Congressman Mark Foley who was forced to resign in the face of a sex scandal involving Congressional pages, is facing investigation for hiring his mistress and then paying her $121,000 to stay silent after he fired her. I am uncertain exactly how many extremely stupid things were committed by Congressman Mahoney in the litany of events described in that last sentence, but I am absolutely certain he has learned nothing from his or his predecessor’s experiences since he is clearly learning impaired.

7. The Congress of the United States and several miscellaneous Presidents who all concluded that, left to their own devices and without the benefit of even minimal oversight, people with access to enormous amounts of other people’s money would always act in the best interest of the public and not engage in self interested transactions (much less theft, embezzlement, fraud and what-have-you).

And then there is George W. Bush … but having come to this point in my discourse, words fail me.

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Thanks, But No Thanks

Posted on December 29, 2008 by Gavin Stevens

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that despite President Bush’s low approval ratings, people will soon “start to thank this president for what he’s done.”

CNN on-line article, December 29, 2008

Condoleeza Rice is living in a dream world of her own making. I can well understand Laura Bush supporting her husband’s work as she did within the past few days, but I cannot understand Condoleeza Rice’s defense. She ought to look around and take note of the fact that the rest of the Bush/Cheney Gang is keeping publicly silent. Silence would seem the better path for those who are responsible for the current mess.

Even if you could excuse her for the notion that Americans will be thanking Bush for the trillions spent, the deepening national debt, the incalculable damage to our Bill of Rights, and the disaster that is our economy, the above comment isn’t Ms. Rice’s greatest howler. In the same CNN article, she states:

“This isn’t a popularity contest. I’m sorry, it isn’t. What the administration is responsible to do is to make good choices about Americans’ interests and values in the long run — not for today’s headlines, but for history’s judgment,”

I only agree with that part of her comment that indicates this isn’t a popularity contest. As much as I don’t like President Bush for his personal mannerisms, arrogance and ignorance, I am already positive that I will detest his legacy since I will have to live with it for some time to come. I am far less concerned about what a historian may say in 50 years about the Bush/Cheney presidency than I am about how to deal presently with the wreckage of my retirement plans.

To make it explicitly clear, I hold President Bush personally responsible for the actions, inactions, omissions and moral vacuity that led to the current state of affairs. He cannot hide behind the excuse of market forces or matters beyond his control to explain away this legacy; he was in charge and either established or maintained the polices that led to the current debacle. He cannot blame Cheney for the damage to our Bill of Rights, since he selected the man for the Vice Presidency -not once, but twice – thereby explicitly condoning, if not actively complicit in, its disembowelment.

George Bush frittered away his time in office on vacations while our Bill of Rights, the economy and the Middle East burned. If only he had learned to play the violin!

From the standpoint of history the worst legacy the Bush/Cheney Gang leaves for America is not the state of the economy, but the damage to our Bill of Rights. Economies fluctuate up and down and periodically go into recession, and then usually recover and remain generally strong for some period of time. I suspect the same thing will happen to this mess, and that we will eventually recover and move on. In so saying, I do realize that depressions happen as well, but I have faith in the incoming President to help us avoid a depression. Suffice it to say that I have all fingers, toes, and eyes crossed in support of the hoped for truth of that statement. I would also cross any other crossable body part in support of this theory, but I am unable to identify any that qualify.

The damage done to our Bill of Rights has a much longer tail of associated ill effects than does the economy. Future Congresses will have to spend significant time and energy to repeal the bad laws of the previous Congress. Because of the nature of the judicial process, the courts grind slowly in their attempts to support civil liberties and it may be years before they are through with the litigation backlog that presently exists and which will be forthcoming under a new administration. The executive branch of government has its own work to do in the form of undoing regulations and presidential decrees, and it cannot undo them all with a single stroke of the pen on Inauguration Day. By the time each of the branches of our government do their work, an entire generation of young Americans will have lived under policies that we wouldn’t have tolerated a decade ago. They will know no better and will have to be convinced that there once was a better world.

It is the gradual erosion of rights over time that is the greatest worry for me, since any time you take away civil rights and people adjust to a new reality it becomes harder to win back the lost rights. The will to take back civil liberties doesn’t normally appear in the general populace until such time as civil liberty denials are egregious and excessive and affect almost everyone to the point that they are living in fear. Gradual erosion is, in the minds of most people, not worth fighting for because, after all, life can go on and we aren’t entirely a police state. The energy and will it takes to rise up against a despotic government is not easy to elicit, and it generally takes a revolution to accomplish it.

Meanwhile, it is hard to drum up enthusiasm among the general populace for those who continue the fight to protect against the erosion of our civil liberties. In fact, organizations who do this, like the ACLU, are often seen as vaguely unpatriotic by many since their efforts are misunderstood. People tend to identify with the government in power – after all, it was elected in an open vote – and organizations such as the ACLU seem to many to be subversive of that government’s legitimate power. If only the voters could learn to appreciate that the incremental loss of civil liberties is worse than a wholesale suspension of our Bill of Rights, in the sense that the former can occur with little fanfare and with general acceptance and approval and last for an extended period of time while the latter would likely spark a revolution which would immediately overturn the loss.

So we have work to do – hard, slogging work that begins when George W. Bush leaves office in January. I am very thankful he is leaving, but I am not thankful for what he has left us.

Goodbye George, and good riddance to you.

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Christmas Morning

Posted on December 25, 2008 by Gavin Stevens

It is early this Christmas morning and, as is my habit, I am awake long before the others enjoying the quiet and the anticipation. Strangely, in a time of shared and extended family, this is the time of Christmas I like best. I can anticipate the day, the family games, the pleasure that I hope my gifts to the others will bring and, mostly, the thoughts of my family and my friends across the country in various stages of Christmas awakening.

Despite our continued snowfall, my youngest son and his girl friend are in residence and we enjoyed last evening together watching a Christmas movie. We did everything one expects on the eve of this holiday – cheese, crackers and sausage in the afternoon, a Christmas movie, dinner and desert, and conversation. Nothing remarkable in the sense of tradition, but satisfying and of substance, nonetheless.

I wish for many things each Christmas morning, some personal and some not. I suppose that much of what I wish for – peace, sanity, and food, health and security for all – will not likely come true in a society composed of flawed humanity. But, in any event, I can wish for these things in the considered hope that more of us do so each year than last. If I am incorrect in this hopeful assumption, I don’t wish my belief to be shattered or diminished – not on Christmas morning anyway.

This is not intended as a sectarian thought, and my use of the word “sectarian” is not meant to be limited to the many varieties of Christians in the world. My usage is an attempt to encompass all beliefs about the existence of mankind and its condition of being – including those which are religious, those which are scientific, and those which are mixed or neither. All of conscious humanity has some sense of the wonder of our place in a firmament which is vastly greater than that which we can know. All of us wonder why we exist and what our shared purpose, if any, may be. It is as much a part of the human condition to wonder about these things, as it is to want to be with family in the deep midwinter.

As the ease of communication among our species expands, it seems likely that many of the barriers created by our genetic suspicion of differences will be overcome. I have long felt that we are hardwired to be suspicious of those who look and act differently from the society with which we are accustomed. It is my firm hope that because of the increased ease of information sharing we will learn to put aside these suspicions and, instead, celebrate the differences of humanity’s opinion, ceremony and beliefs in recognition of the many ways in which humanity has discovered to travel the distance from birth to death. The ingenuity of mankind’s many methods of living a life deserves no less than such celebration.

Such are the thoughts of my Christmas morning as the world is slowly coming awake and the sharing begins.

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A Christmas Gift

Posted on December 23, 2008 by Gavin Stevens

Old age is
a flight of small
cheeping birds
skimming
bare trees
above a snow glaze.

William Carlos Williams

We are snowed in at our house in Humptulips County. We haven’t seen this much snow in our County in recent memory. Whether it is the result of global warming, a benevolent God, a freak of nature or something else equally unknown does not take away from its beauty and grandeur.

Everything is covered with snow to a depth, in some places, of 18 to 20 inches. The children and dogs are the chief beneficiaries, romping without hesitation for long periods of the day. Their play is not sophisticated. They toss snow balls, sled and build snowmen with abandon. It is the kind of play I remember enjoying in the 1950’s. There is something about the snow that makes children of all of us. While I didn’t toss a snowball yesterday, I found myself happily batting at our many pines with a broom to knock the snow off the branches in an effort to avoid their breakage.

We are snowbound – we haven’t been able to get out since last Friday due to the depth of snow and the icy conditions of the region’s roads. While we often get an annual snowfall or two in Humptulips County, they are usually of short duration and the snow isn’t deep and piled. Our normal snowfall is one or two inches of dry snow that eventually evaporates within two or three days into patchwork, lace-like decorations adorning gullies and North facing hillsides. Our current snowfall is wet, deep and of sustained duration, and more snow keeps being added to the mix. This is the stuff of the American Midwest and Northeast.

We aren’t suffering in this snow. The power is on, we have phone and Internet access to the world, and my very intelligent wife stocked up on food in advance of the event. We are eating far too many Christmas cookies and thoroughly enjoying the scenery. We will probably spoil the entire experience today by digging our way out to the road and going in for more supplies. With any luck, I might even finish my interrupted Christmas shopping – but I am beginning to wonder if I am not already finished, since we have been given this wonderful gift of snow that I hadn’t planned upon.

Being snowbound is as much a state of mind as it is a physical experience. Everything is cosier and more cloistered. The mind wanders to matters of personal relationships, perhaps because the snow reminds us of our need to depend upon one another for survival. We seem to be reveling in our relationships. I have been sharing emails with friends far and wide, and my wife has been calling her many friends and sharing our outdoor experiences here on the farm. We all feel slightly giddy in a childlike manner, as if in hopes of more wonder and beauty to come.

The snow is not without its dark aspects. We have tree branches – and, indeed, entire trees – down in some places from its weight. Our Christmas ham from Harrington’s of Vermont is somewhere in a UPS truck and cannot be delivered due to the condition of the roads. My son and his girlfriend may not be able to make it to the house for Christmas if more snow falls. I think there are Christmas presents en route to and from our house, but I cannot be certain whether the presents will arrive in time for Christmas.

But I don’t much care about all of that because we are warm, cocooned and safe. While I wouldn’t want to be snowbound for too long, the occasional hunkering down in our Winter den is not only acceptable, but appreciated. We have been granted the gift of snow for Christmas, and it is a gift that I plan to enjoy while I may.

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Blunt Truths

Posted on December 12, 2008 by Gavin Stevens

“Tyrant! You are a tyrant!”

Washington State Justice Richard B. Sanders to Attorney General Michael Mukasey at the annual Federalist Society dinner, 2008

I don’t normally find myself in much agreement with Justice Richard Sanders of our State’s Supreme Court. He is as conservative as I am liberal, and we share little in common other than our age. I believe that he and I took the bar examination together those many years ago.

Justice Sanders has always been outspoken in his beliefs, leaving little for anyone to guess at in terms of his meaning. While I haven’t often agreed with his beliefs, I have always admired his forthrightness. One need not often guess at the meaning of his words, since if you find any ambiguity in them he will promptly clarify his meaning for you.

During the annual Federalist Society dinner this year, Justice Sanders engaged in the above spontaneous outburst several minutes in advance of Attorney General Mukasey’s subsequent physical collapse. The outburst was in response to the Attorney General’s remarks defending the Bush administrations interrogation techniques used in the so-called “War on Terror.” The news media has been fond of playing the outburst in counterpart to the Attorney General’s collapse as if one was the cause of the other, but the two events would appear to have little in common other than in the media’s salacious dreams. Justice Sanders has indicated that the outburst was truly spontaneous and, in fact, has come to regret his specific choice of words. With reflection, he now believes that if he had used the word “tyranny,” instead, he would have properly indicated his dissent from the policies of the Bush administration and not evidenced what appeared to some to be a personal animosity toward the Attorney General.

For once I am in complete agreement with Justice Sander’s remarks (revised version 1.1). Were he to know much about me, he might be as surprised as I am. However, I suspect we both have an abiding belief in the Bill of Rights regardless of our respective political affiliations. This is just one more example of how we should ignore the usual political labels when discussing matters of fundamental right and wrong. Political labels are meaningless in such situations.

The primary definition of “tyranny” is the use of oppressive power by a government. By any stretch of the imagination, the government’s actions at Guantanamo and in secret renditions constitute the use of oppressive power. The government seeks to justify the use of acts that are an anathema to the Bill of Rights on the basis that those suffering the interrogation techniques are not American citizens. They are, however, human beings and the United States is a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948. Among its other declarations, Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

“No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

This language is reasonably clear and unambiguous, but I am certain that Attorney General Mukasey has several dozen reasons for its inapplicability to those held at Guantanamo. After all, he is a lawyer, and that’s what lawyers often do. As I have previously noted, I am not always proud of my profession when it comes to situations of this kind. Too many of us forget and/or set aside our basic moral codes in our zeal to represent our clients.

There are times when a client should be told that he or she is just plain wrong, and this is clearly one of them. I suspect that Justice Sander’s reaction was initially personal to Attorney General Mukasey based upon his understanding of this dichotomy – a lawyer needs to have a moral base from which he or she will not deviate and, when appropriate, should be prepared to tell his or her client that they are full of beans (as my grandmother used to say) if the client is about to engage in something that violates the attorney’s basic moral code. And, if corrective action from the client is not immediately forthcoming, an attorney should fire the client without regard to the loss of income that will result.

None of us can control much of what happens around us, since we are always subject to outside influences, pressures, events and matters over which we have no control whatsoever. However, there is one single thing that each of us has in his or her absolute control – our personal integrity. No client is worth the sacrifice of my integrity. Whether other lawyers can say the same is up to them to decide, but if they feel to the contrary, they will eventually find themselves in an ethical bind from which there is no escape.

While I have always believed this way, it was, curiously enough, a client that brought the point home to me in the most meaningful way. Many years ago I was involved in helping the client acquire a business in another state. I was a little startled when the opposing attorney called to ask if we would send more than the purchase price to his client at closing. When I asked why we should do that, he indicated that they were deeper in debt than anticipated and needed the excess funds to clear title to the assets we were purchasing. I told the attorney that we might not have a deal and, upon informing the client of the problem, immediately found myself going to a meeting involving my client, the seller and his attorney. The meeting was very difficult as it became clear the seller was in a bad way and about to lose his business if my client did not complete the sale. At the midpoint of the meeting, my client called me into his private office for a one-on-one conference during which the client told me that he was going ahead with the transaction and wanted to explain to me why he was about to do so. Despite my protest that it was his money at stake and that if he wanted to do proceed with the deal I would certainly act on those instructions without further explanation, he insisted that it was critical that I understand his motives for proceeding. After I indicated a willingness to listen, he said 5 words to me that I have never forgotten. They were: “I shook this man’s hand.”

We ultimately consummated that deal because my client had a moral base from which he never deviated in a multi-decade business career. His word was always his bond. At the time when my client died last Winter, he was equally respected for his morality as he was for his business acumen. His was a life well and truly lived.

The sense of self evidenced by my client is what each of us must maintain in order to manage our way through this life. That sense of self is what our government must have in order to maintain legitimacy at home and in the world. The Bush administration’s greatest single failing and its worst fault is that it simply forgot the most basic principles of what it means to be an American. All of its myriad deficiencies seem to arise in some fashion from this fault. It’s as if we have been governed for the last 8 years not by the idiots that we can see, but by aliens who cannot relate to our culture, mores and beliefs.

OK, OK, they are idiots as well as aliens.

So, I can not only relate to Justice Sander’s outburst, I can also, and do, applaud him for having the guts to say what he thought and to leave the room in disgust. If more of us had had the gumption to do so with other government officials in other venues at other times, perhaps these aliens would have returned to the planet from whence they came with their tails between their legs and perhaps our country would not now find itself an international laughingstock and the object of disgust and/or dismay in the eyes of many of those abroad.

The Chief Justice of our Supreme Court has publicly indicated his displeasure at Justice Sanders’ remarks and has said he would speak with Justice Sanders privately about the behavior the Chief Justice would like to see judges on his court display. I would urge the Chief Justice to rethink that statement. Rather than chastising Justice Sanders, the Chief Justice should be congratulating him for having the courage to tell one of the most powerful men in America to his face that he is engaged in the exercise of tyranny. To do so is the essence of patriotism.

I only regret that Justice Sanders didn’t take the next step and remind the Attorney General that, as a lawyer, he is entitled to his own moral code and that it is long past time for him to fire his client and walk away from the evil that the Bush administration has perpetrated.

So from one ardent liberal to one ardent conservative: Justice Sanders, I congratulate you on a job exceedingly well done. Thank you for remembering the importance of personal liberties and holding that importance as a part of your personal moral code.

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A Thanksgiving Prayer

Posted on November 24, 2008 by Gavin Stevens

Steve Inskeep: “What does it mean to be American?”

Junot Diaz: “It is a question that as individuals and as a country we wrestle with every day. It’s the wrestling with that question that defines us, not any of the answers.”

NPR’s Morning Edition on November 24, 2008

It is Thanksgiving week and a time when all of us should think about those things that matter to us as a nation and for which we should be thankful. While it is difficult to contemplate the concept of our riches amid the steady stream of woeful news articles about global recession, failing banks, shrinking retirement accounts, and falling stock markets, it is, nonetheless, true that we, as a nation, are rich indeed. In fact, it may well be that these very market forces should cause each of us to examine the complexity of our nation and rejoice, once again, in simply being one, single ingredient in that most wonderful of stews – the American melting pot.

There are two things that unite everyone in this country – the diversity of our ultimate place of origin and the rights we share as American citizens and residents.

The idea that our very diversity is a source of unification might not be apparent to some, but it is the common heritage that everyone in this country shares. Because of North America’s geographic distance from the original home of mankind, all of our forebearers came from somewhere else – even those of the Native Americans who enjoy the unique role of being descended from those who settled here first. The land was a vacancy waiting to be filled, and we are still in the process of adding newcomers and filling it. The United States is a continuing grand experiment in mixing races, religions, cultures and viewpoints that has lasted since its inception as a nation. Just when some dominant group decides that their culture uniquely represents America and all others are foreign and inferior, reality sets in and the grand spirit of immigration overwhelms that group’s notion that they should control and define who we are once and for all.

It has been ever thus since our founding. J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur said in 1782 in his Letters from an American Farmer:

“…whence came all these people? They are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes… What, then, is the American, this new man? He is neither a European nor the descendant of a European; hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. . . . The Americans were once scattered all over Europe; here they are incorporated into one of the finest systems of population which has ever appeared.”

At the time it was written, the focus of de Crevecouer’s view upon our European heritage was not misplaced, even as it failed to recognize the existing strains of Native Americans and African Americans in our culture. And the truth is that little has changed since his writing except for the incredible array of additional ingredients now in the stew. Whether he would like it or not, de Crevecouer would recognize the strains of change due to increasing diversity in today’s society even if the present day majority does not. Change the spices to add those from Africa, the middle East, the Caribbean, Asia, South America, Africa, India and so many other parts of the world in addition to those from Europe, and de Crevecouer’s comments would remain valid today.

This ever increasing diversity has been our genius. Instead of being afraid of it, we should embrace it as the essence of the American spirit and accept it as the defining element of our nation. I am not trying to argue that the process of diversification is ever easy or that each new group suffers the same exact process of assimilation upon arrival. I could not argue either point of view, since both are incorrect. I am arguing, however, that the process of diversification – no matter how it may play out for any particular group – is the defining and unifying experience of our nation and one that we should embrace in the spirit of continual reinvention of the American stew.

The energy which comes from that constant reinvention of culture is what makes America unique. The rough and tumble of our politics and the constant spark of ingenuity that governs our science, our business and our culture comes from this, our diversity – from the constant rearranging and mixing of styles, cultures, viewpoints, and attitudes. I strongly suspect that without this incredible cornucopia of diversity, the United States would have been just another enclave of statehood where a dominant voice would have ruled to the exclusion of all else, and that its history would have been quite different, far less interesting and far less successful.

The other thing we all have in common is our form of government and, more importantly, the human rights that spring from that source of government. While we haven’t always been the best at granting or securing those rights for all, our history has been one of a gradual realization that everyone is entitled to those rights. Out of the common shame of slavery and World War II relocation camps has come the understanding that to deny uniquely American rights to some is as unamerican as it is possible to be. While I would like to think that those lessons have been learned for all time and that we will not repeat those mistakes in future, I am fairly certain that the strains of the melting pot will cause us to err again in a similar manner and that we will eventually learn from whatever particular error we do commit. That also seems to be part of the American stew – while it blends, it does so slowly and cautiously.

This constant struggle is of the essence of Americanism: because we care about our rights and their application to all peoples, the struggle will continue unabated into the future. This will happen because we are simultaneously human beings who remain afraid of the unknown and Americans who share a common sense of right and wrong as expressed in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. I have confidence that eventually the second strain of our character will see us to the right conclusions as the melting pot – the American stew – continues to boil and reinvent itself.

We have especially good reason to be thankful in this year of economic chaos. Amid that chaos has occurred a remarkable event that most of us didn’t anticipate for years to come – the election of a President who doesn’t look the same as his 43 predecessors and who is quintessentially American in his views and approaches. In sharp contrast to the present sitting President, he demonstrates intelligence and articulate rhetoric. He represents both immediate and long lasting change, for our American universe can never remain as it was prior to his arrival on the scene.

As we watch the melting pot boil on this Thanksgiving day, enjoy a helping of our American stew. Don’t bemoan the new ingredients, but think ahead to future Thanksgiving days and wonder with anticipation what the stew will then taste like. To our standard helpings of turkey and dressing, imagine the wonderful new foods that will come to define this day – and enjoy the prospect.

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Palinopsia

Posted on November 13, 2008 by Gavin Stevens

palinopsia pal·i·nop·si·a (pāl’ə-nŏp’sē-ə)n. Abnormally recurring visual imagery.

The American Heritage® Stedman’s Medical Dictionary

What is the hold that Sarah Palin seems to have on the American media establishment? There doesn’t appear to be any real substance to her, yet the media persists in a series of interviews based upon her perceived star power. They cannot be conducting these interviews with an aim to convince all of us of her intellectual acumen, since the depth of her knowledge makes the depth of the nearest kiddie wading pool seem like that of the Marianas Trench by comparison. What is the fascination?

The possible answers would appear to be one or more of the following (hereinafter, the “Palinopsia Possibilities”):

1. The media is suffering from Palinopsia, and what we are seeing is nothing more than recurrent after images generated by the overly strong spotlight in which she was bathed for the several weeks of her involvement in the presidential election campaign. This is the kindest of several possibilities.

2. The media, always fascinated by behavior that is less than stellar and that borders on blowzy, is once again engaging in its favorite pastime of gossip mongering for lack of any real idea of responsible journalism. This is the most likely of several possibilities.

3. She really, truly is the future star of the Republican party, and her every move between now and the next presidential election cycle deserves to be chronicled in all of its magnificent detail for an admiring world. This is the least likely of several possibilities, but the answer that the media will give, if pressed for one.

4. The national electorate is actually dumb enough to eventually conclude that she is a viable candidate for anything outside of Wasilla, Alaska. After all, Alaska voters have already made that mistake on a statewide scale, and the media owes it to those of us in the lower 48 to prove her viability for national office. This is the most dreaded of several possibilities.

5. The public’s fascination with the continued free fall of the world economy needs to be diverted by bread and circuses, and a lurid vision of Ms. Palin in the middle of the Coliseum floor surrounded by stalking lions may be the very thing to allow the powers-that-be to retain their hold despite their incompetence. This possibility has the media as the hapless tool of the aristocracy. Another dreaded possibility.

6. She is the political equivalent of Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears et al, and the very essence of her awfulness is of a source of media enthrallment. This is my personal favorite – it is simple, it fits the nature of the media, and reminds one of a cat playing with a mouse.

If I didn’t know better, I would have to conclude that the media has been ensorceled by La Palin and that they are well and truly bound by their state of enchantment to repeat her every word and ponder her every possibility. I rather suspect, however, that they are really a pack of wild dogs circling their intended prey while waiting for the first sign of weakness before attacking. If this is correct, the final attack is well overdue given the fodder for a feast that she has already given us. Only by visualizing the media as toying with that proverbial mouse can we explain their reluctance to proceed to a kill.

Personally, I am hoping for an early cure to our Palinopsia. The image burned on my retina is not a pleasing one that I care to ponder for an indefinite period of time. I confess to wondering what her ultimate downfall might be and to relishing the various hypothetical means by which it might occur. But this, too, is a version of the cat playing with the mouse, since her take down is inevitable. As the potential victim, she is doing her best to invite the inevitable meal with her as the main course by her blatant attempts to pander to every possible voter within view. How else can one explain her statement that she admires President-elect Obama even though she still wonders about his attachment to an avowed terrorist?

There is a great headline this morning at mlive.com that says: “Palin has reached her sell-by date.” This is so true – so much so that one wonders how the likes of Matt Lauer, Larry King, Wolf Blitzer and the remainder of the current clique of “heavyweight” media pundits cannot seem to grasp it. The reason simply has to be somewhere among the Palinopsia Possibilities. If only I could be certain which one it might be!

As a postscript, I tried very, very hard to arrive at a suitable palindrome in order to name this piece “Palinopsia and Palindromes,” but without any suitable success. The only palindrome I could find or imagine was “Harass selfless Sarah,” but if there is anything at all selfless about Sarah Palin it must be of the nature of the universe’s long sought antimatter – a theoretical place holder impossible of validation given the present state of our scientific knowledge.

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Seeing is Believing

Posted on November 10, 2008 by Gavin Stevens

There is a report this morning that President-elect Obama is working on a plan to close Guantanamo immediately upon taking office. It is essential that he follow through on this matter immediately upon taking office, without qualification, hesitation or backtracking, if America is to reclaim a place of moral authority in the world.

However, there are some aspects that are troubling, such as a report that for some Guantanamo detainees a new form of special court may be required. I truly hope that this sort of thinking will not prevail, both because our existing court system ought to be able to handle anything thrown at it and because we don’t have the time to debate the nature and rules of a new court system if we are going to demonstrate effectively to the world a renewed commitment to human rights. It would seem to me that the legal authorities assisting President-elect Obama in this matter would do well to involve sitting federal judges in their planning to determine how existing federal courts might be used to prosecute the more intelligence sensitive matters. I would much rather see special court rules adopted by existing federal courts than a further debate in Congress over an issue that was clearly answered by our citizenry on November 4th.

As in all delicate matters, we need to revisit our priorities and goals, and use them as a measuring stick in order to determine how to proceed. Not only has our moral voice been severely muted in matters of international diplomacy by keeping prisoners indefinitely in Guantanamo without any serious attempt to give them a fair trial, many in the world have come to think of us as human rights abusers. America’s greatest authority on the world has not come from its extensive military might, but, rather, from its position as a moral authority. All of the military might imaginable is insufficient to allow us to maintain our position as a superpower, witness the fact that we are currently stressed beyond capacity in the occupation of two foreign countries. Our true authority has always stemmed from the essential morality of our positions. Even if we have not always been consistent in our approaches to the world and even if certain members of the international community have disagreed with our basic values or quibbled from time to time over our methods of their application, prior to the Bush administration’s hegemony there was little suspicion among other nations that we lacked a basic moral precept.

Thanks to the Bush/Cheney administration, that last statement is no longer true. In eight short years, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney squandered decades of hard work to earn the trust of the international community. Based upon the international reaction to Obama’s election, there appears to be a residual hope in the international community that America is not really as Bush and Cheney have painted it. This is a legacy of all the hard work in the decades preceding Bush from which we may still benefit.

We must bear in mind at all times that the election of Barrack Obama to the presidency has not cured international skepticism about our moral precepts, but only has given hope to the international community that we will return to our senses. As January 20 gets closer, the world is likely to hold its breath to see if the election’s promise bears fruit. In other words, the hope will turn into belief only if the actions suit the words and the implementation of a new policy is swift and unqualified in its breadth. Conversely, if our actions do not suit our words, the hope generated by Mr. Obama’s election may quickly dissipate or turn to bitterness. We cannot afford to hedge our actions in any manner that even remotely smacks of the thinking of the Bush administration on this subject. If the hope of the international community is not swiftly turned into belief by the new President, his goal of returning America to a position of international leadership will become much harder to achieve.

The world is a complicated place, and the President will always receive advice, solicited and unsolicited, from all corners of the spectrum prior to taking any action, however major or minor. I hope and trust he will remember to keep his priorities firmly in front of him when making decisions of this magnitude, and use them as measuring sticks to cut through the cacophony of conflicting opinions and position. No matter what decisions he makes, there will be significant disagreement from portions of the electorate and senior politicians, so he will succeed best if he makes decisions consistently in accordance with his personal values and priorities. He would be better served by criticism that he is consistently incorrect in his positions than by criticism that he has no clear path to success on subjects due to inconsistent decision making.

In short, a President is better off being complained of for sticking to his or her positions than for having no discernible positions at all.

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Lessons From the Long, Dark Night of Our Soul

Posted on November 5, 2008 by Gavin Stevens

Yesterday marked a series of signal events in our history, the foremost of which was the election of a young, African-American man as the 44th President of the United States. His election generated immediate hope and energy in a country starved for both at a time when we will need all of the hope and energy we can muster to deal with several daunting tasks, any one of which, if taken alone, would be considered a formidable challenge for a new President in ordinary times.

Most importantly, Barrack Obama’s election marks the beginning of the end of an era during which the nation’s very soul has been challenged by direct attacks upon our most fundamental and cherished beliefs – a period when our government deemed the use of torture to be legitimate in the pursuit of goals for which consensus was lacking and little attempt was made to develop one; when our government sacrificed our personal rights in the belief that all should feel safer in the cocoon of an idealized state that more nearly matches that of the Third Reich than the rough and tumble of traditional American democracy; when our government evidenced a disgust, dislike and disdain for the rest of this wonderfully chaotic world in which we live, simply because “they” didn’t think like us and, one strongly suspects, didn’t look like us. In short, we are about to complete a period in which the American dream was supplanted by a nightmare of our own making – a Bushmare, if you will. A nightmare wherein we engaged in persistently lower standards of national conduct in the pursuit of presidentially declaimed national goals shared only by the few and the self-appointed and promoted by the rank manipulation of our collective fears.

Having acquired more than a few gray hairs due to the passage of time and from the”enjoyment” of the vicissitudes of life, I have learned a simple, stark truth: not all of our time in this world is pleasant. Following the first of several dark episodes in my life, I was struck by the fact that while I seemed to have weathered it, I hadn’t learned anything from it since I promptly repeated the seminal mistake and entered into a second period of darkness not dissimilar from the first – except with respect its intensity. Repeated stupidities are generally far less satisfactory than the first time in which we engage in them. This second period of brain damage made me realize, however, that there is a way to profit from darkness. Since periods of darkness are, by definition, not enjoyable or fun, one has to find other ways to profit from them by knowledge gained and/or lessons learned. These periods can make us wiser and stronger simply because it is, in fact, possible to learn from our mistakes. But to do so, we must take the time to engage in the necessary sober reflection to do so.

So it is in this spirit that I offer the following as possible lessons to be learned from our national Bushmare. We are about to enter a period of unprecedented change, and not just the kind of change promised by politicians everywhere. Are there lessons to be learned from our Bushmare? These are my nominations:

1. No society can succeed by acting contrary to, or from the misapplication of, its shared core values. The discord, animosity and calamity that results from acting contrary to our national cultural identity has no redeeming qualities. At best, such behavior can only be divisive. At worst, such behavior bankrupts society, causing the loss of national pride and, eventually, the destruction of the will to continue.

2. Never give away easily that which was so hard won. Hard won rights take centuries to define and develop, and we cannot be so careless as to disavow them within the space of a single political generation. The resulting slippage can only be erased by the efforts of many subsequent generations – merely to return to a condition we once enjoyed. Therefore, we must be a responsible steward and recognize the value of our predecessors’ sacrifices by using them to shape and attain our goals, by furthering the effort they began during our time in charge, and by leaving theirs and our legacy intact so that our children may serve as stewards in their time.

3. Understand that basic human rights are not merely important to the American psyche, but are an integral part of its very warp and woof. Recognize that personal liberties are not merely a convenience, but are, rather, the singular essence which unifies the diversity which is our only common heritage – sons and daughters of immigrants of every conceivable variety and Native Americans alike. Understand further that when we diminish the human rights of non-Americans, we diminish our own honor and integrity while attacking the basic fabric that holds our society together.

4. Realize that we are not a super-power able to run roughshod over the world; that no single nation can, in a world of such variety and vastness, seek to impose its will on others without severely damaging its own internal stability. Recognize the Bush Doctrine for the basic threat to our internal security and peace that it is.

5. Never, never seek cover, security and comfort by allowing our government to preach a form of collective security at the expense of our personal liberties. Never fear the exercise by ourselves or others of our personal liberties, and learn to recognize the joy we share, as a nation, from our sanctification of their exercise.

6. Learn to celebrate, not fear, the panoply of peoples, customs, beliefs, ideas, cultures, religions, nations, and histories, and the respective acts of creativity that led to their existence. In short, listen to life’s cacophony and revel in its rhythms and teachings.

We are now faced with an imperative to change in order to preserve the best of our society. The imperative is not driven by a wish to do better, but by the failure of the basic economic model as practiced for the last 20 to 30 years. This will be a period for which the mythical Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times” was invented.

Why it might be a curse to live in such times is beyond me. Change is opportunity. We can each make of it what we will, employing our personal resources to the best of our respective abilities. It is times like this in which we can find the stuff of which we are made.

It is also a time in which we can learn and employ the lessons of the long dark night of our national soul, thereby assuring that the national angst of the last 8 years is not wasted but is employed for our mutual profit.

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