February 19, 2012

Support the Arab Spring!

By Jer Clifton

Last week Alicia and I went to a CNN forum at Emory about the future of the Arab Spring.  I thought it was good but there was a suprising amount of technical issues, the topic was a bit broad, the moderator was prone to cutting off good discussion, and when Alicia and I rode the scooter home we froze our little butts off, but that last part probably had less to do with the forum than other things.

Two people on the panel stood out that I want to put on your radar screen.

Dalia Ziada is director of the Egypt office of the American Islamic Congress which focuses on building interfaith and intercultural understanding.  She is a published poet and active in pro-democracy politics.  

 

Lamees Dharif is an award-winning journalist and activist who has been active in the Bahraini resistance campaign.  She has been banned from writing by the Bahraini government since the beginning of the democracy movement there.  

There was some discussion about the relative immaturity of democracy exhibited so far in the region and that people in America and elsewhere were worried about how long it was going to take for the situation to stabilize.  Lamees provided the metaphor that if a man is in a coma for 40 years, he does not wake and go for a run.  No.  It takes him a while to find his bearings, to re-learn how to feed himself, walk, etc.  But eventually he will run.  So it is with the middle east.  When people have languished under corrupt and totalitarian rule for so long, of course it is going to be a long time before the culture and intsitutions of democracy become realized.

I would take it further.  Americans who criticize the Arab Spring as creating instability are hypocrites and cowards.

Consider, in 1775 we started fighting our Revolution, two years later the States entered into an agreement under the Articles of Confederation.  We won the revolution in 1781 and we remained under the articles of confederation for 8 more years until 1789.  It was only then that we adopted the Constitution.

In other words, we operated under a system of government that was broadly understood not to be working for 12 years, and after that things still took a while to stabilize.  Our economy was in shambles.  Our money was worthless.  Did you know that States were leveraging tarrifs against each other.  States were violating the peace treaty with Great Britain, but the federal government could not do anything about it.  In the meantime, other nations rode roughshod over this toothless and inneffective American government.  Great Britain ignored various aspects of the treaty of Paris.  They kept warships in American waters for years!  Spain closed the Port of New Orleans to Americans in 1784 and the Americans could not do anything about it.  To top it all off, in 1787, Massachusetts farmers under the leadership of Daniel Shay revolted because they could not feed their families and their  homes were being foreclosed.  They captured the arsenal at Springfield and marched on the Massachusetts legislature.  Washington called it, “Liberty gone mad.”

Additionally, the instability that Americans generated in their own country was exported all over the world.  Over the next 20 years revolutions broke out in Haiti, Batavia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Mexico, Ireland, Poland, and most famously, France.  In fact, “Atlantic Revolutions” is a blanket term for all the revolts that happened during the late 17th century.  Or you might call it the “Atlantic Spring.”

We were Egypt in the late 1770s and King George III was Mubarak!  Americans are at the apex of hypocrisy and selfishness when we refuse to support, diplomatically at least, the people rising up to challenge oppressive rulers because we are worried about paying a couple bucks more at the pump.  Additionally, we need to understand that we have supported, in many cases, these totalitarian oppressors ourselves.  I love America, which is why reading the history of our relationship to the Middle East for the past 80 years is depressing.

Finally, revolutions are what I thought conservatives wanted.  Wasn’t this what the second Iraq war was ostensibly about: encouraging democracy around the world.  Was there not instability and confusion in Iraq?  In general, the negative reaction of conservative talking heads to the Arab Spring confuses me.  Maybe these revolutions are tainted by the fact that Obama is in office?  I’m not sure.

Realistically, we should expect the Arab revolutions to make the region messy and unstable for some time.  Nonetheless, we must support them any way we can for however long they need it.  No matter how I look at it, it seems to be, quite clearly, our ethical obligation.

14 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in History, General, Middle Eastern History/Politics, Politics

February 13, 2012

He was Me (Dad’s Story)

By Jer Clifton

After last week’s post, I commissioned my father to write this particular story.  It is one so real to me that I struggle to remember that I was not actually in it!  Also, those of you who know me well will be struck with how the last few paragraphs share identical sentiments you’ve heard me rant about dozens of times.  Indeed, I was startled to see the resemblance, and then ashamed of my surprise.  Of course!  I got my passion for connecting to history from my own connection with my dad (and most of my other good passions I got from him too).  I hope you enjoy it!   

I remember the day very well. As a boy, it was my task to clean and dust the basement. It was one of those finished basements with the brick fireplaces and wood paneling popular in the 70’s. We spent a lot of time in that basement (as opposed to the living room, which was reserved for “guests” and almost never used), so it got messier quicker.

There was delicious irony in my mother assigning this particular task. On the wall an old photo of a civil war soldier looked out from a very ornate frame that my mom had to clean when she was a kid. She hated cleaning that frame, because it was so ornate—it took forever. I grew up around this picture and its frame, and now it was my turn. But unlike my mother’s situation, my taskmaster was not as persnickety, and so all I had to do was to take a vacuum brush to it, and then wipe it down with a cloth dampened with “Endust”–some wonderful modern chemicals.

On this particular day, however, I was not appreciating the lucky break that history had given me, but rather thinking what a silly chore this was.  And so I began to wipe this stupid frame with the stupid old picture in it, thinking what a beautiful day I was wasting. But, as I did so, the light from the window reflected off the picture in a way that made me actually look at the picture. My half closed eyes slowly got wider and wider. And I stopped wiping and just stared. And gaped.

I knew I was looking at my great great grandfather, Rich McGee. He was a confederate soldier in the civil war.  And he was around 16 when he joined. I knew all this. But it began to dawn on me that the eyes that were looking at me were about the same age as eyes that had been joylessly cleaning with Endust.

A stocky, 16 year old. Brown hair. Round face. Light colored eyes.

And then I saw him.

He was me. I was not looking at a picture, I was looking in a mirror. I had grown up into this picture.

It was both an exhilarating and tremendously creepy sensation, all blended into one. There was at once a sense of bonding with the past, and at the same time a realization that his world was nothing like mine, and the issues that he faced were quite different. I had to eventually stop and go upstairs to tell Mom my epiphany. She just smiled.

This got me wondering what had happened to Rich McGee.  And so I asked my grandmother Dana what she remembered about Rich McGee in the civil war. This is the story that she told me, with probably some details gone awry:

There were three brothers who had signed up for the confederate army, I believe from Patrick County. The mother was understandably worried for his sons. She made the oldest promise that he would take care of the youngest.  I don’t know why the middle child was not a part of this family pact, maybe the mother felt that he could take care of himself (but not necessarily others).

I don’t remember what battle it was—it could have been the second battle of Manassas. But after a day of combat, the older brother could not find the youngest among the fires that the soldiers huddled around. Desperate, he made his way out in the darkness, away from the fires, and back unto the battlefield looking for his brother. While searching on that battlefield, he was shot by a Union sniper, and was killed instantly.

Eventually, they did find the younger brother out there in the battlefield.   He was alive, but seriously wounded. About a half a year later, he would die from those wounds.

Only the middle child, Rich, remained.  Again, I am not sure which battle, but he was eventually taken prisoner, and waited the rest of the war out in a union camp.

Rich McGee eventually lived into his 90’s and died in the 1930’s. He had a son, also named Rich, and that son also lived into his 90’s and died in the 1960’s. I have a picture of that son, then grown old, there with his little great grandson—me.

And when I think of this, it reminds me how young we are as a nation, how the things we read about in history books are not really that far away. It also reminds me that we are never born in a vacuum. That we stand on the shoulders of the decisions and choices of those before us. And we stand with similar equipment in mind and body. This doesn’t stop each new generation from taking history in another direction. But it does tell us at what point we start.

I have come to appreciate the Chinese value of honoring our ancestors. But I don’t have to burn incense or paper money to do so. I can honor them by remembering their stories.

So thanks, Jer, for letting me do some remembering and some reminiscing–some honoring.

By Cary Clifton

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Ethics, History, General, Jer's Myths, Personal

February 6, 2012

Captain Abraham Lincoln: An Invitation to Story

By Jer Clifton

While reading a biography of Abraham Lincoln recently, I saw this little tidbit that seemed worth sharing.  It reminds me of a similar story from my own family’s history.  

Thomas Lincoln named his son “Abraham” after the boy’s grandfather, Captain Abraham Lincoln, who fought in the Revolutionary War.  Once little Abe was old enough, Thomas told the story of how his namesake died.

After the War for Independence, Captain Lincoln moved his family to Kentucky, where they lived on disputed Indian lands.  One warm day in May, 1786, Thomas recounts, when he was just six, he went out with his brothers Josiah, age 8, and Mordecai, age 14, and their father to work the fields.  Suddenly a shot rang out from the woods nearby and Father collapsed.

Thomas stood transfixed in the crackling calm of shock–staring at his father.  Josiah took off sprinting to Hughes Station, where settlers gathered in the event of Indian attack, calling for help as he ran.  Mordecai hustled to the cabin where the family kept a loaded musket.  A figure emerged from the forest and moved towards Captain Lincoln’s body, towards Thomas.

Mordecai, quick to the cabin, grabbed the musket next to the door, turned, and saw the figure for the first time, an Indian, standing above his Father.  Gasping, Mordecai yelled and stumbled towards his Father and Thomas, the heavy rifle causing him to lose his balance and fall.  Thomas, still in shock, turned to the Indian, who was now reaching towards Thomas, who Mordecai thought was about to be killed or carried off.

In that second, 14 year old Mordecai rose to his feet, took aim, and fired, hitting the Indian in the chest and killing him instantly.  Bathsheba Lincoln, Abraham’s grandmother, was left a widow with five underage children.

Thomas Lincoln’s story had a powerful affect on young Abraham.  “The story of his death by the Indians,” President Lincoln later wrote, “and of Uncle Mordecai, then fourteen years old, killing one of the Indians, is the legend more strongly than all others imprinted on my mind and memory.”

I started loving history when I realized that the figures of history are just as real as you or I.  I started feeling socially responsible when I realized the future, though unknown, is still infinitely more real than the best fiction.  Connecting the past, the present, and the future, are stories–stories that formed us before we were born, and, through the telling, continue to form us today.  For Lincoln, his Father’s account of his grandfather’s death was such a story.  For me, my Father has told me a family story with similar effect.  I have invited him to re-tell it on my blog.  I also invite any of my readers, if you have a family legend, a connection to the past, which strongly imprinted itself on “mind and memory,” please share it on my blog.  The door is open.

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Children, History, General, Old Jer Idea, Random Thoughts

January 22, 2012

Knowledge Matters: The 1-1-1 Plan

By Jer Clifton

In the glorious light of this nail-bitingly dramatic Republican primary, I am taking the opportunity to articulate  a plan that would forever change our political process.  The plan would hopefully push candidates to do more to educate their constituents and pander towards the generally knowledgeable instead of special interests or the ignorant folks who can’t pick out Saudi Arabia on a map.   My plan, which has been rolling around in my head for some time, is based on two equal premises.  The first is as lofty as the second is pragmatic.

Premise 1: Everyone has a right to influence their country’s decision-making processes.

Premise 2: Those who have more knowledge and understanding in relevant areas should have more influence in their country’s decision-making processes.

In other words, everyone should have a voice, but not all voices are equal.  Some people do not track the news at all, some have never shown any interest in economics, political theory, history, foreign policy, etc.  I’m fine if people do not engage in these issues.  That is up to them.  However, if you don’t cook, I’d rather not eat your food.  If you don’t know anything about construction, I’d rather you not build my house.  In the same way, governing takes skill and picking governing representatives takes skill.  I’d rather live in a country that tried to recognize and use those skills.

Under our current system, politicians cater to those who are less informed rather than more informed.  Why?  I believe a big reason is that those with well-wrought opinions tend to be less easily swayed.  So unless there is an incentive to appeal to those with carefully constructed opinions, they will be increasingly ignored in favor of the emotional, more easily manipulated, less informed voter–those that might change their mind after seeing an ad or two, or hearing a talking point or two.

Therefore, I have created the 1-1-1 Plan.  It’s quite simple.  Everyone has the opportunity to have their vote be worth 3 votes.  Each of us would start with a baseline of 1, by virtue of being a citizen only.  The second amount would be given based on a conglomeration of life experiences that society deems valuable.  These experiences would be identified by a bi-partisan congressional commission every year.  For example, 0.1 points could be given for military service, 0.1 for Peace Corps/AmeriCorps/Teach for America service, 0.1 for college, 0.1 for having visited a foreign country, etc., up to 1.0 max.

The final amount would be allotted based on how many correct answer the voter gives to a simple 10 question basic knowledge test.    Questions would be randomly selected from a question bank which a bipartisan commission would create: 2 questions would be budget related, 2 questions would come from U.S. history, 2 would be about the constitution, 2 about foreign policy, and 2 the economy.  One of each question pair will be easier and one harder.  A typical quiz might look like the following:

  1. Currently, our national debt is closest to what percent of GDP?    A) 40% B) 70  C) 100 D) 130%
  2. Department of Defense spending accounts for what percent of the national budget for FY 2011?   A)10% B) 20  C) 40% D) 60%
  3. Which president signed the Civil Rights Act?  A) JFK B) LBJ C) Nixon D) Ford
  4. After the Boston Massacre in 1770, which Founder represented the British soldiers? A) John Adams B) Samuel Adams C) Thomas Jefferson D) John Marshall
  5. Which branch of the federal government is empowered by the Constitution to declare war? A) Judicial B) Executive C) Legislative D) Military
  6. A constitutional amendment requires how many yea votes in both the House and Senate? A) 1/2 B) 3/5 C) 2/3 D) 3/4
  7. Iraq shares a border with all but one of these countries: A) Israel  B) Syria C) Turkey D) Iran
  8. Through this shipping lane travels 35% of the worlds seagoing oil.  A)  The Straits of Malacca B) The Strait of Gibraltar C) The Bering Strait D) The Strait of Hormuz
  9. The dot-com bubble spanned roughly: A) 1986-1990 B) 1990-1995 C) 1996-2000 D) 2000-2005
  10. In economic parlance, the word “externality” refers to: A) goods which are undersupplied in a typical market.  B) an extreme case of failure of competition as a restraint on producers.  C) a means of final payment for goods in most price system economies.  D) social costs or benefits from production or consumption that are not reflected in market prices.

Obviously, there are problems with the 1-1-1 plan.  For example, literacy tests were used in the South to oppress African Americans for decades, and, in the early days of our country, only land-owning white men could vote.  So there is a bleak tradition here of discrimination under the guise of prudence.  One question particularly concerns me: will the 1-1-1 Plan favor the more educated, and thus the more wealthy?  And I’ve come to think that yes it will.  Or more precisely, it will tend to give wealthier people a more influential voice in the process in proportion to their population.

However, under the current plan, why do the rich already have a more influential voice in the political process?  I believe that a big part of it is for the reason I mentioned earlier: the rich partner with ignorant people by exploiting their lack of knowledge through multimillion-dollar ad-buys.  So the 1-1-1 Plan would dull the cudgel that the rich already wield.  Also, helping the poor, I believe, is a very difficult and complicated affair.  Being knowledgable in economics and economic development, for instance, is a more helpful qualification than having been personally poor.

Finally, and I find this most assuring, this plan has a third premise:

Premise 3: Generally, those less knowledgeable in a particular area desperately want those more knowledgeable to take the lead in solving important problems in that area.

Ultimately, I like the 1-1-1 Plan because it incentivizes education, raises the level of debate, and asks us all to take a breath and humble ourselves.  Voting is serious business.  In fact, I would say the average voter is more responsible for our current troubles than the average politician.  So lets pray for a day when society expects more from voters than merely the possession of an opinion.

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Old Jer Idea, Politics

January 8, 2012

Ron Paul = Mitt’s Best Friend

By Jer Clifton

If Mitt Romney is the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, it will be because of Ron Paul.  Consider:

1) If Ron Paul wasn’t running, those votes would be going for anyone but Mitt Romney.  Paul’s success eats into Romney’s opponents.

2) Ron Paul’s substantial but not-substantial-enough following will continue putting him in second or third place, distancing Romney, the front runner, from all the other competitors.  He creates a barrier between Romney and everyone else by making them look small.

A democracy is funny when ideological opposites help each other achieve power.  A new poll puts Jon Huntsman at 17% in NH.  Ron Paul is at 16%.  Mitt Romney is 40% and everyone else is small.  This echoes Iowa, where Ron Paul got second, Santorum tied Romney for first, and everyone else was small.  If Mitt is going to be defeated, that person in second place at least needs to be the same person every time, but if they are not, and Ron Paul keeps the rest of the field at a distance….”hello, President Romney.”

(However, the economy just added 200,000 jobs and we are now at 8.5% unemployment.  If the economy continues to improve, Obama will likely win.  Maybe that is why Huckabee, Chris Christie, and Marco Rubio sat out this round out.)

I miss posting more!  I love it and all the comments from last time.  It really is a great way for me to stay engaged with so many friends and family (and strangers, which is cool) all over the world.  Thanks for staying in touch.  

12 Comments   |  tags: , | posted in Politics

December 15, 2011

Politics is Intellectual Football (I’m a Confirmed Idiot #1)

By Jer Clifton

Sometimes I have thoughts worth sharing, but I don’t share them because they are in various ways self-congratulatory.  If subtexts had vocal chords they might scream, “See!  Aren’t I great?”  Don’t get me wrong.  That’s a wonderful message which the world needs to hear.  It is just problematic when it is so obviously preached by me.  So sometimes I avoid ideas and messages worth sharing, things I believe in, that may help people, in the pursuit of looking like a nice guy.  But no longer!  I am starting a blog series called “I am a confirmed idiot.”  Basically, I am requiring myself to start any post containing obviously self-congratulatory subtext with a formulation in which I confess a unrelated humorously humiliating personal act.  This frees me to make my points with righteous passion, holding nothing back, for, as it says in Leviticus 27:35, “If you are humble for a moment, feast on the joy that comes from being full of yourself the rest of the time.”  Specifically, I will start these posts by saying, “I am a confirmed idiot.  After all, I once….” then I’ll tell of my stupidity, and I’ll end with “…however…”and then state my idea.  For example: 

I am a confirmed idiot.  After all, I once hit my friend in the head with a brick after excitedly bounding over to show her how high I could throw bricks.

However, unrelated to that, I do treat serious topics, like politics, the way that they should be treated, with marked levity.  Politics, for instance, is no fun unless you watch it like intellectual football, which I do, which is why I stay informed and will continue to stay informed.

I was talking to a friend today.  She’s smart, she cares about the world, and she wants nothing to do with politics because it is so depressing.  I feel like I talk to a friend like this once a week.

This is horrible.  We can’t be losing the attention of smart and loving people.  All we will have left are the angry, jaded, and unintelligent people.

Instead, we gotta make jokes and relish the clever games that politicians play.  We need it to be fun.

“But real lives are at stake,” they tell me.  “Exactly,” I respond, “that’s why we gotta enjoy the crap out of it.”

Alternatively, we can pay attention to non-depressings things that do not matter.  On Tuesday I had lunch with a fun group of African American ladies and a few of them got into a friendly and spirited discussion about the Dallas Cowboys and Atlanta Falcons.  After some fightin’ words, and laughs, and more trash talk, I remained conspicuously silent.   Finally, I blurted it out, “I must confess.”  They stopped and stared as I paused and lowered my head, “I don’t watch football.”  They laughed their heads off.

Football is interesting.  There are personalities involved.  Sneak plays.  Talent.  Vanity.  Cleverness.  Aspirations.  Competitions.  Macho-ness.  Smackdowns.  Sometimes, when an enemy quarterback gets run over, you can’t help but bite your knuckles in delighted surprise.  Sometimes, a penalty gets called that you stand up from the couch to “boo,”  but when you see the instant replay close-up that shows your favorite lineman doing something very naughty, you also bite your knuckles in delighted surprise.

It’s a moment when my Honduran friend might rase his hand and say, “No [SNAP] he [SNAP] didn’t [SNAP]!”

Those ladies loved their football, even though football doesn’t matter.  What mattered is the entertainment value, and nobody is above that.

Fortunately, politics has all the drama of football, except it is more interesting because, obviously, something is at stake.  Like football, the smack-downs are usually obvious and well-reported.  For example, when Gingrich told Romney on last week’s ABC debate that the only reason he was not a career politician is that he lost to Ted Kennedy in 1994–good smackdown.  But here are two political plays that really made me bite my knuckles in glee (the best are always sneak plays):

Perhaps you saw it.  Last Tuesday, Newt Gingrich had a one-on-one debate with Jon Huntsman.  At first, Newt’s choice puzzled me.  Why would the frontrunner choose to elevate one of his opponents?  Ahhh… he wanted to elevate Huntsman because a Huntsman rise is likely to chip into Romney’s numbers rather than his own, and Romney is of course the bigger threat.  Did you see the new poll that came out today in New Hampshire?  Newt’s play picked up a couple of yards for him (and Huntsman).

Nice…I bit my knuckle with glee.

Perhaps you saw it.  Mitt Romney is running a TV spot in which he talks of debt reduction as a moral responsibility.  Ok.  No big deal, right?  Wait…am I crazy, or is this commercial really about Newt’s infidelity and two divorces?  (Note the happy couple at the end who have been married for an often mentioned 42 years.)  Without being negative, the ad turns personal morality into something which actually makes one better at fostering a good economy.

Oooh… well-played Mitt.  Well-played.

I am sure some of my readers will find these “sneak plays” depressing.  Some of those people might also be disgusted at me for how I find so much glee in them.  But I am more disgusted in their disgust than they are disgusted in me.  Enjoying the serious topic of politics as intellectual football is the only moral choice I know of that a loving and smart person is able to make.

So grab the popcorn, don your favorite candidate’s hat or over-priced t-shirt, gather some happy loud-mouth friends, and turn on the news.  The game never stops.

16 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Ethics, I'm a Confirmed Idiot, Politics, Uncategorized

November 26, 2011

The Three Necessary Ingredients to Getting Things Done as President

By Jer Clifton

A good friend of mine just wrote me, mentioned that she was a Herman Cain supporter, and asked my opinion on the Republican presidential nomination race so far.  In short order, I made this little schema for picking a president.

People are rightly obsessed with finding a presidential candidate who can “get things done” in Washington.  I know I am.  I believe that the ability to get things done is more important than the positions one holds on policy issues or having amazing character.  If you can’t implement and make stuff happen, who cares if we agree?  So, instead of picking the best person or the one most right on the issues, we should pick the best player at the game called “politics.”

First, we need someone who knows the system in Washington.  This runs against the grain for many who want a Washington outsider, thinking that outsiders are not “corrupted” by DC cooties.  In truth, you want someone who knows the system very well and can work the system very well.    Part of why Obama struggled as much as he did the first term, and perhaps why Clinton might have done better, is because Obama was not an experienced Washington insider, wasn’t really all that experienced at national politics generally, and had never been an executive (having executive experience, like that of a governor, helps too, though it is best combined with DC background).  So, I would rank Republican presidential candidates as follows with 10 being the best:

Newt Gingrich, 9, vast DC experience, former speaker of the House, has been around forever, he knows government and can work the system.

Jon Huntsman, 8, has no DC experience as a politican, but he has plenty of DC experience as a civil servant, a former governor, and seemed to be a successful one.

Mitt Romney, 7, no DC experience, but he was a governor, and is generally government savvy (I think).

Rick Perry, 6, governor, does not seem savvy like Romney.

Michelle Bachman, 3, has DC experience, but only in the House and no executive experience.

Hermain Cain, 1 or 2, no political experience.  It doesn’t matter if you agree with his 999 plan, or really anything he says.  He would likely be unable to implement it.

Secondly, most people long for their President to be a “real” guy and not some sleazy politician.  But the fact of the matter is that only sleaziness, or what some might call sleaziness, gets things done in politics.  We need a presidential candidate who is politician enough to not alienate themselves from their constituents and to hold different groups together.  This means, quite simply, being good at being a politician, at keeping a majority of people mostly happy with you.  This is why Herman Cain would be an awful president (I think), just like Michelle Bachman, or Rick Perry would be.  They say too many dumb things, which will erode public support (and in all three of their cases already has).  This would be a big blow to them especially, because if you are not good at working the system in Washington, you can make up for it by maintaining popularity.  But these politicans are not politician enough to maintain this sort of support over the long term.  Being a politican is hard, maintaining popular support is harder still, and that is why support has been swinging so wildly from Bachman to Perry to Cain and now to Gingrich.  Of course, I say dumb things all the time, as we all do, and we can give people the benefit of the doubt, but even a fervent Herman Cain supporter who loves how “real” he is has to admit that it is unlikely that he can remain self-controlled, prudent, on-message, a clever communicator, committed and also non-committal enough…politician enough to maintain popular support.  So, here is a cursory ranking based on political skills:

Mitt Romney, 9, super disciplined, has hardly had much of a gaffe, stays on message; he’s a smart robot, has experience being a politician.

Jon Huntsman, 7, has experience being a politician, and in fact just as much as Romney, though not as a frontrunner presidential contender for two election cycles, so he is still a little bit of an unknown.

Gingrich, 6, political experience but is also a gaffe machine.

Rick Perry, 5.

Michelle Bachman and Herman Cain, 2 or 3, woefully undisciplined.  Could unlikely maintain support over the long haul.

Third, successful presidents cannot be beholden to uncompromising constituents.  This means that the more idealogical your base, the less likely you are to be able to get things done.  That is simplistic, of course, but holds true generally.  In order to get things done, the President, like any politician, has to be positioned in such a way that he can compromise with his opposition, and even his own party, without fear of  losing his own supporters.  In a republic, leaders cannot get anything done unless they can compromise with others.  So the following ranking is merely based on how moderate the candidate’s base is likely to be:

Jon Huntsman, 9; he would be a 10, but he has been having to pretend to be more conservative than he really is to have even a smidgen of a chance in New Hampshire.

Mitt Romney, 7; I’m not sure where to put him really.  I can’t really predict how conservative he would be in the White House.

Newt Gingrich, 6.

Rick Perry, 5.

Herman Cain, 4.

Michelle Bachman, 3.

Once you have established who would be most unable to get things done, then you can cross them off your list (Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Michelle Bachman are likely gone).  As for me, if I do not dismiss those individuals most unlikely to get things done, then I would have to seriously reflect on whether or not I care about my issues in the first place.  Too often, people are narcissistic and vote for the person most like them instead of the person most able to do good.  So, in order to be moral, let’s lose the likely losers.

I would probably then look at the top three, assuming they are all roughly comparable, which in this case they are (Huntsman, Romney, and possibly Newt, though he might have too much baggage), and pick the one who best represents your values, opinions, etc.

So who do I like these days?  My opinion has stayed the same.  If I was a Republican, which I am somedays but usually not, I would be a Jon Huntsman fan.

6 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Politics

November 12, 2011

Outliers (2008), Guns, Germs and Steel (1999), and Michele Bachmann–Part 2 of 2

By Jer Clifton

Outliers made me realize that lots of people are talented, work hard, and succeed (10,000 hour rule), but the bridge between success and wild success is built exclusively on fortune.  Because of this I cannot help but surmise that much of the wealth of the wildly wealthy belongs, in a way, to all of us.  Guns, Germs, and Steel took this line of thinking further: the “us” is larger than one country.  In other words, much of the wealth of wildly wealthy countries belongs to the world.

By 12,000 years ago, every continent and major area had been settled.  People were everywhere.  In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond asks this question: why did some societies develop faster than others?  In other words, why did the Spanish conquer the Aztecs instead of the Aztecs sailing to Spain and conquering the Spanish.  He notes, quite correctly I think, that if you do not have an explanation for this, it is difficult to uproot racism–even one’s own.  How could a couple hundred Conquistadors conquer millions of Aztecs?  Our minds immediately go to the first distinction: one group is Spanish, the other is Aztec.   To combat this, Diamond explains in detail why societies developed the way they did.  I want to point out just a handful of his observations.

In the long term, enormous benefits come to those who stop being hunter-gatherers and turn to food production.  I’ll mention three.  Because hunter-gatherers support population densities of 10-100 times less per acre than food producers, 1) food producers have more warriors and 2), and this cannot be overstated, high population density breeds diseases and disease-tolerant populations.  3) Also, food production will eventually allow some people to do something besides agriculture.  Food production allows for food supluses which can support an artisan class, a key to starting the process of rapidly ‘making stuff better.‘  Artisanship leads to specialization, expertise, academia, and ultimately to some form of scientific inquiry and space shuttles.

But these benefits are long term.  In the short term, the switch from hunter-gathering to food production can be very unattractive for at least these two reasons.

  1. In general, food producers have to work harder than hunter-gatherers, sometimes even twice as many hours in a day.
  2. The first food producers had, compared to what we had today, pretty shitty crops.   Have you seen a wild tomato?  They are tiny pathetic albeit beautiful things.  It would take a while for those to develop into something big enough to be worthwhile.  Likewise, after controlling the breeding of domesticated animals for thousands of years, we have developed chickens that create lots of eggs and lots of meat.  Sheep have more wool.  Cows have more milk.  All of these gains would be nearly non-existent when they first started.

Of course, hunter-gatherers did not switch to food production because they foresaw its benefits for distant descendants.  Indeed, because making the switch was so unattractive, food production only developed independently in 4 separate places around the globe.  The cultrual, and specifically agricultural, descendants of these areas would come to dominate the others.  For example, it is estimated that Spanish disease wiped out between 85-97% of the Aztecs in first 130 years of exposure to Conquistadors.  This incredible advantage was due directly to population density made possible by the switch to food production.

Switching to food production doesn’t really make sense until you have a package.  A food production package includes a number of different domesticable crops along with animals to eat, to use for muscle and for manure.  Why weren’t all aborigines able to develop a food production package from local flora and fauna?

Jared Daimond tells this story: He was hiking in the jungle of Papua New Guinea with a few aborigines and ran out of food.  They stopped for the night, and one of the men slipped off into the falling light.  He came back with arms full of mushrooms and starts preparing them.  “We can’t eat these,” Jared protests, “people get sick from mushrooms all the time.  Even scientists who study it their whole lives can collect the wrong mushrooms and die.”  The aboriginees turned to him, scolded him like a child, and then commenced to describe, by memory, the 87 different varieties of mushrooms that could be found in that area, how they could be recognized, where they grew, which parts were edible, what sort of sicknesses were caused by ingesting the wrong parts, etc.

It is reasonable to believe that 12,000 years ago everyone would have been just as familiar with the local flora and fauna as the aborignees in Daimond’s story.  Ok, so why did food production develop in some places but not others?  In short, some places, like the fertile crescent, had enormous local benefits.  Others, like Australia, had very little benefits.  What are these benefits?  Edible plants that were the easiest to domesticate, the “low hanging fruit,” were nearly all native to areas in which food production developed independently (e.g., wheat was native to the fertile crescent and was by far the best candidate for domestication).  Even more striking is that worldwide there are only 14 possible domesticable animals.  Of these, 7 were native to the fertile crescent.  None were native to Australia.

What facilitated the spread of food production across Eurasia is another thing that Eurasians cannot take credit for: their continent’s long east/west axis.  Crops and animals had a hard time spreading over North and South America.  The tropical jungle, the Isthmus of the Panama, as well as the vast climate differences associated with different latitudes, made the spread of food-producing crops and livestock very unlikely.  After all, a llama is not suitable to live in the Amazon.  Not until the present age were Llamas raised in North America where, it turns out, there has been appropriate environments for thousands of years.  In contrast, the crops originally developed in the fertile crescent, and the animals domesticated there, could be used everywhere from Spain to east asia (although east asia was blessed with rice varieties and water buffalo, upon which they developed their own agricultural package).  So why wasn’t there domesticable animals in places like North America?

The truth is, and I did not know this before I read Diamond’s book, there was.  Archeological evidence suggests that there were various animals that might have been docile, herd-like, sufficiently safe, etc.–that would have had all the qualities necessary for being a candidates for domestication.  Millions of these creatures covered North and South America, but they had a weakness.

Remember the Dodo bird?  It had developed without humans, and so had no fear of them.  Hungry explorers would literally walk up to them, grab their heads, wring them off, and make supper.  Such an easy food quickly went extinct when they were exposed to humans.  Now, unlike Eurasia and Africa, the flora and fauna of the American continents developed, like the Dodo bird, with no human contact.  But, 20,000 years ago, when humans crossed the Bering Strait, that isolation ended, and animals that might have done nicely as plow-pulling, milk-producing, manure-making, yummy beasts were killed and eaten.  Little did these newly arrived peoples know that they were killing their own descendant’s chances of food production and opening themselves up to Spanish conquest 20,000 odd years down the road.

In two recent Republican presidential debates, this question has been posed to Michelle Bachman: for every dollar that I make, how much do I deserve to keep?  She responded without hesitation: “All of it.  You earned it.  Of course you deserve it.”

Among hunter gatherers, without division of labor, there is in fact a surprising amount of equality, and decisions that the strong-man makes are generally arrived at by consensus.  Combine that with the previously-mentioned intimate knowledge hunter-gatherers had of their environment and this scene comes to mind:

Everyone had noticed: the mighty herds were gone.  A good many of the tribe were thinking that restraint might be necessary.  They were hoping that their strong-man would make a decree.  Others, no doubt, were indignant.  “How dare you tell me how to live my own life!”   This group despised any attempt at others to coerce them, which of course nobody wanted to do.  The tribe had grown large with the easy abundance of food, but now great swaths of land had to be combed over in an attempt to locate these animals, and some large families were already on the verge of starvation.  How could people be expected to limit consumption now?

So I imagine the opportunistic prehistoric politician/priestess, jumping around a fire in garments made of animal fur, preaching earnestly to her people.  “You killed it.  You dragged it back to camp.  You cooked it.  Of course you deserve it.”

“Therefore Joy,” Outliers, Guns, Germs and Steel, and my study of economics–and I would even say the Bible too–puts me in a different place.  For every dollar we earn, we probably deserve very little of it, and even less as one becomes more wealthy.  Nearly everything we are able to accomplish we owe to others, some living, most not, and all of us in one way or another owe God/fortune.

However, God and most people, past, present, and future, aren’t idiots; if individuals do not get enough gain from their labor, they will not work.  And so God and society are generally wise to approve of individuals and individual countries keeping a disproportionate amount of their profit.  But we must never think that anyone is entitled to cheap oil or tasty, slow-moving creatures.  Instead, all should be thankful for the gifts and advantages they have been given.

I imagine the global non-temporal society, which we are connected to in a weird and beautiful way,

  • from those who first switched from hunter-gathering to food production
  • to modern day Australian aborigines who never had a viable food-producing package
  • to our children’s children’s children who will live out the consequences of our actions,

…is genuinely thrilled to see us productive and rewarded for our work.  After all, present day production and innovation, though often dependent on the exploitation of natural or human resources, may ultimately do the most good.  But I also imagine this global non-temporal society beseeching us to be thankful and do our best to look out for their interests too.  Jesus might call it “loving your neighbor.”

These days, I might call it being a conservative Democrat.


1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Ethics, History, General, Ideas From Therefore Joy, Politics

November 7, 2011

Outliers (2008), Guns, Germs and Steel (1999), and Michele Bachmann–Part 1 of 2

By Jer Clifton

In the last few years, no book has affected my perception of the world and my own role in it more than Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.  The book makes many points, but here I want to talk about just one.  Gladwell makes a compelling case that enormously successful people, the statistical outliers, are not off the charts because they themselves have amazing innate abilities.  Rather, the enormously and naturally talented are a dime a dozen, and those talented people who work very hard their whole lives are also common.  So what distinguishes the wildly successful?  Luck.  Those who make it really big (as opposed to usual, laudable, but still small-time success) usually benefited from a special set of circumstances over which they had no control.

Consider this, if you took the richest people ever (material gain being not a definition of success, but certainly a type of it), adjust for inflation, and make a top 100 list, you would find that at least 25% would have been born inside the United States in the past 200 years.  However, if success was based on individual talents, then that number should be much less (Here’s some of my own math: looking on the web, it looks like between 90-110 billion people have lived on the earth, so lets say 100 billion.  I think, to be very generous, there have not been more than 1 billion people who lived in the United Sates over the past 200 years, so I am guessing that, if wild success was due to innate ability, the number of Americans on the top 100 list should be under 1%).   Moreover, of these two dozen born in the US, about a dozen were born in one four year period; Rockefeller (1839), Carnegie (1835), and JP Morgan (1837), and the other dozen in another four year period; Steve Jobs (1955) and Bill Gates (1955).

This is already a strange coincidence, but it just gets stranger the closer you look.  The individual stories of these men tell a tale in which they were extraordinarily well-situated to catch each coming wave, the first being the American industrial revolution, the second being the personal computer revolution.  Of course, you had to be intelligent, talented, hard-working, and ambitious, but you also had to both not yet have a family to support, so you could afford (and have the time) to take risky business ventures, and also be old and experienced enough to see the wave coming.

Experience, it turns out, is absolutely key.  Gladwell popularized the 10,000 hours rule, which states that predictable success in any field takes about 10,000 hours of practice.  This holds true for premier violinists and computer programmers.  Bill Gates, it turns out, by the time he was 18, had more computer programming experience than anyone in the world his age.  Among other fortunate coincidences, he happened to have grown up  where there was an exchange program at a local college with one of the only computers that existed at the time.

Gladwell gave many more examples that left me with an overall impression of “wow, this changes everything.”  I saw it everywhere.  For example, no matter how brilliant and devoted a statesman is today, he or she cannot be a Founding Father.  If there would have been no American Revolution, John Adams would have just been a Boston laywer, and a struggling one at that.

As I reflected on this, I felt a weight fall off my shoulders.  I never wanted to be the richest man ever, but I suppose I want success.  I want to change the world–to make my mark.  Also, when I read the biographies of people like John Adams, I relate to them alot, I see myself in them, as many people do, and I realize that I could do something like what they did too.  But great accomplishment is just as outside of my control as it was theirs.  In my writing, in my nonprofit work, all I can do is my best, which, quite simply, might not be enough for wild success.  My best can likely secure success, but only of the more tame variety without some brilliant coincidence of fortune.  In fact, even the smaller amount of success that my abilities can most likely secure me is not really what I deserve.

For those of you who have read recent drafts of Therefore Joy, you will know that I view individual humans as incredibly affected by each other.  If so, we take part in each others joys and triumphs.  In other words, my work-ethic is not entirely self-created, and so the blessings that my work-ethic bestows on me, to be fair, must be partially distributed to, for instance, my third grade teacher, my mother, my childhood friend.  This is impossible of course, so we do not do it, but if we could we should.

Ultimately, the recognition of the prime role that fortune/providence/destiny/God plays in all this has allowed me to pursue my dreams even harder.  I realized that I cannot fail if I keep trying.  I became convinced that the most I can do is always continue to “give success a chance” for me that means that I will keep writing, trying to get my manuscript out there, keep working on poverty issues, and stop stressing about results.  Many of you may know this already, but I am just catching up:  Stress kills people. Humble work is freeing.

(See how this relates to Guns, Germs, & Steel and Michelle Bachmann in part two.)

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Ethics, History, General, Politics

September 28, 2011

Good News!

By Jer Clifton

We are not PREGNANT!  (In addition to enjoying my capitalization decisions, I would like to take a moment to note that whenever a young married couple has good news that has nothing to do with procreation, it can be, for many, disappointing good news.  My good news, alas, is of this type.)

First, I got a job at Habitat for Humanity International, and I am about to finish my first week.  I’m the new CEO.  Seriously, they were all very impressed with my community organizing skills and lightning-quick reflexes. Or, I’m working in the office of the CEO as a Strategic Planning Intern (fortunately it’s a paid position) tasked with, you guessed it, working on their new 5-year strategic plan.  But I do love my endearingly ambiguous plaque.

I am very excited about the job and the people I am working with.  I enjoy how intelligent everyone is, how fast-paced everything is, the enormous amount of talent and experience at the table, and the incredible responsibility; it’s great.  It can also be overwhelming.  Pray for me.  I sometimes sense I am drinking water from a fire hose.  Habitat is a huge and complex organization.  But I seem to have found some footing today, and I think that, in addition to learning a lot and making great connections, I might have one or two things to contribute.  Also, attempting to drink from a fire hose sounds like something I would try.  : )

Secondly, two weeks before I got the Habitat job, I signed a traditional contract with a prominent literary agent.  I am very excited about that as well.  He has been in the business a long time, knows what he is doing, and I trust him.  He is going to be able to open some doors for me, and he has already helped me sharpen my proposal.

Thanks for all those who have been so supportive over the past year.  We really appreciate it.  Though I expect to stay busy, I hope to keep posting on a weekly basis (maybe Wednesday mornings?), but we will see if that happens.  This blog is a good outlet for my vast nerdlike tendencies.  A post of epic proportions has been brewing in the recesses of my mind which connects Malcolm Gladwell, Guns Germs and Steel, and Michelle Bachman.  We’ll see what comes of that!

In other news: Alicia is really loving her classes; she is swamped with different development projects, and she and I just celebrated 3 years of marriage!  Also, we will be in Buffalo Oct. 20th to 23rd.

10 Comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Personal