The cosmopolitan ecologist

Each person in Washington this Inauguration weekend had their own singular moment, when one fully realized how historic the event was. For many people it may have been the moment where Barack Obama stood on the west steps of the Capitol and took the oath. For me, for personal reasons the moment was during Sunday’s concert at the Lincoln Memorial, when some musicians covered Sam Cooke’s famous song, “A Change is Gonna Come”.

I suspect the organizers of the event meant this as a not-so-subtle play on one of Barack Obama’s campaign slogans, as well as symbolically linking Barack Obama’s achievement with the broader civil rights struggle. Martin Luther King Jr., of course, gave his famous speech from the very same steps where the musicians were performing. For me, though, there was another more personal relationship with the song, perhaps less important than the implications for African-Americans but for me more resonant. The first song at my wife and I’s wedding was another cover of the same song, by Otis Redding. We picked the song because for us we knew personal change was coming- marriage and adulthood and perhaps children. But there also was apolitical meaning, for we met at a protest against the Iraq War, and we hoped change would come politically to America as well.

And so there was something personally fulfilling about hearing that song played. We are older now, and were at the concert with our son. We have recently moved to DC, and suddenly the political tone of the place has changed. And possibly the Iraq War, which has hovered over our relationship since its inception, will begin to draw to a close. Hearing the song made me realize how interesting it is to be alive right now. It’s been a long time coming.

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For all of the excitement of Mr. Obama’s victory, and all the rhetoric about change coming to the Capital, I remain skeptical. I’m not skeptical about Mr. Obama’s motives- I shore many of his stated goals- but rather that anything will get done about them. Washington remains the place many dreams go to die. Thousands of people here are dedicated to advancing an idea that they believe in their hearts to be right (there are few cartoon villains here, the kind who intentionally do something evil), and yet most of those ideas never advance, never amount to anything.

I’m not so much interested in why a good idea dies (partisan gridlock, etc.), nor what separates a good idea from the bad, but simply how one intellectually works in such an environment of uncertainty. The battle of ideas in all domains is uncertain- that’s why it’s a battle rather than a charade. It’s just that in academia it is fairly certain that if one works hard in a narrow, somewhat pedantic domain, one will be remembered as the best in the world at that little thing. There are indeed gradients in fame and status, but there is something reassuringly permanent about an academic paper with your name on top.

Politics in contrast is a game where most contestants’ ideas are losers, never to be enacted. Most of the idealists in DC (and I count myself in their number) will do nothing, simply because so many ideas (good and bad) die. To survive intellectually thus seems to require an intense attachment to a core set of ideas as morally right, a great dose of pragmatism to seize any opportunities that may arise to advance your idea, and a faith that somehow your actions will help your idea survive after you, whether commemorated by history or not.

I have begun to ask myself every day if my actions will help make my son’s world more verdant and peaceful and beautiful, with patches of wild nature left. Any day I can say yes is a good day, for I’ve helped the idea of conservation propagate a bit more.

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For the first time in my life, I saw strangers spontaneously hugging, and it brought to mind old photographs of Times Square after the end of the Second World War, sailors kissing unknown women in the street. It was that kind of feeling in Bethesda this morning, except it was all African-Americans, greeting each other with cheers and hugs. I flashed a thumbs-up sign to one young supporter of Obama and got a big smile. My Congressman was at the escalator to the metro, shaking hands and celebrating his recent victory. It was like a Norman Rockwell painting in its patriotism, but diverse, an urban spectacle.

I had some writing to do for work this morning, so I stopped midway through my subway commute and came to Lafayette Park, with a view from a bench out on to the White House. It is quiet here, and the view is obscured chain link fences and construction materials, as the city prepares for the inauguration. A massive flock of starlings swirl around my feet, begging for food.

I know enough of politics to know that now comes the hard part for Mr. Obama, for the realities of governing often shatter the best-intentioned rhetoric. I know I will probably disagree about lots of issues with Mr. Obama over the next 4 years. And yet, from my perspective from this bench, as a new father myself, and as a citizen with a new president, Washington looks a bit different.

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David Frum’s recent piece in the New York Times Magazine is fascinating and worth reading. His central contention is that wealth and income inequality cause voters to be, on average, more likely to be Democrats. The only problem with this elegant thesis is that the data suggest it is statistically meaningless. I had meant to write a letter to the NY Times Magazine outlining the flaws in Frum’s argument, but the birth of my son intervened and kept me busy! I post these thoughts here in hopes of starting an online conversation about the issue.

The first flaw of Frum’s analysis is simply that the relationship between wealth and party affiliation is rather weak. Frum mentioned wealthy zip codes as being “a roll call of Democratic strongholds.” I couldn’t find data on voting patterns by zip code, so instead I analyzed data at the county-level. Out of the twenty richest counties in the US, the majority (13) voted for Bush more than Kerry. This is another kind of roll call Douglas County (CO), Loudon County (VA), and Hunterdon County (NJ) all were very wealthy and solidly Republican. It is true, on average that wealthier countries vote more Democratic, but just barely: each $10000 increase in median family income increased the vote to Kerry by 0.8%. What’s more, this relationship only explains 0.3% of the total variation in voting pattern, making it essentially worthless for prediction.

The situation is similar for Frum’s assertion that places with great income inequality tend to vote Democratic. Out of the 20 countries with the greatest income inequality, Bush won 7, places like Greene County (GA), Summit County (UT), and Lake County (IL). For each 10% increase in the share of income controlled by the rich, the vote for Kerry increased on average by the 5%. While I recognize that in politics this is perhaps a significant trend, more than 90% of the total variation in voting patterns remains unexplained.

Most grave is Frum’s assertion that inequality somehow causes people to vote Democratic, making Republican policies that tend to increase income inequality rather damaging to Republican Party interests. There simply is little support for this assertion. Correlation is not causation. Bigger cities have both more churches and more bars than small cities, but that does not mean churches drive people to drink! Similarly, cities may on average have greater income inequality than rural areas, simply because the very rich and the very poor move there in search of opportunity, and cities may vote Democratic more, but that does not necessarily mean the two are related. By the same logic, one could argue that since less education is correlated with voting Republican, a lack of schooling causes people to vote Republican, an argument I’m sure Mr. Frum finds repugnant.

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In preparation of my move to the District, I picked up Gore Vidal’s novel Washington, DC. It’s the most subtle and complete description I’ve ever read of our nation’s capitol. I think it captures perfectly the odd dual nature of the city, part southerners who live there permanently and part itinerant politicians floating in from (what DC views as) the hinterlands.

Despite the numerous entertaining romances and scandals that fill its pages, the book is fundamentally a meditation on the nature of power, both political and economic. The most significant conversation comes when a young, naïve, yet power-hungry senator’s aide talks to an old, wealthy newspaper publisher. The older man Blaise says bluntly “What matters is I have power and you want it,” to which the young Clay replies “Not your sort, no.” Blaise’s final retort sets the tone for the rest of the book: “All sorts are the same, as you’ll discover.”

Every character in the book has some good traits, and honestly believes they are doing good for society in Washington- the author is even optimistic enough to acknowledge that some of the characters really have done some good during their careers. Yet at the same time every character makes ethical compromises to get more power, always with the rationalization that when that power arrives they will start doing good again. For most of the men in the novel, tragically the end of their career arrives before they get around to actually doing good.

Despite the utter pessimism of this worldview, the author gives us a somewhat happy ending. For at least one character love of another human being becomes a way to forget the meaningless of the struggle of power. The love of fighting for or against a simple truth is worth the effort, if only because it makes your political life seem meaningful. It is an enigmatic ending of existential happiness, and one that I keep rereading hoping to understand it better.

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Quite by accident, I’ve read recently two autobiographies written in completely opposite styles, even though the lives of their subjects have some similarities.

Having visited South Africa, I of course had to buy a copy of Nelson Mandela’s A Long Walk to Freedom. It’s a powerful story, of a rural boy moving to a big city, becoming a freedom fighter, getting arrested and spending the next 20 or so years in jail, before ultimately emerging victorious and founding a new democracy. It’s told in a conventional way, in the first person, practically beginning “I was born in…” That actually makes it a gem to read, because the chronology sucks you in, the desire to know what happens next. It also left me much more educated about the history of the African National Conference and South Africa. What the book doesn’t do great is place one inside the head of Nelson Mandela, feeling for a moment the complex mixture of emotions that must have confronted him in prison. Rather, the narrator just says what he felt in a detailed but rather clinical tone.

I returned home and began reading Vaclav Havel’s new memoir, To the Castle and Back, which discusses his personal transition, from political prisoner under the communist regime to the president of a new democracy, and now to retiree. According to these three phases of his life, there are three types of narration, randomly interspersed: the transcript from an interview about his dissident days; bits of actual memos he wrote while president; and reflections from retirement written during a sabbatical in Georgetown. As a historical document, the biography fails; not even the basic chronology is clearly states, leaving the non-Czech reader totally confused. Perhaps that’s the point however. Havel says directly in several beautiful passages that while his life story after the fact has a certain simplicity, at no point during his life did it ever seem that way to him while he lived it. So, rather than seeing some of the epic speeches Havel wrote, we see his plaintive notes to friends who are late giving him comments on the first draft of said speeches. This book is a philosophically intriguing piece of prose, a biography that tries hard to kill the idea of a life’s narrative, and in the process leaves most of the facts a muddle. Still, one gets a good sense of what it was like to have experienced what he experienced, even if just for scattered instants.

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Sixty years ago this June, General George Marshall stepped into Harvard Yard and delivered what may be the most famous commencement speech of all time, proposing what came to be called the Marshall Plan. On the anniversary of Marshall’s speech, I’ve been reflecting on what has changed since 1947. The developing countries are in the midst of a massive urbanization that makes the redevelopment of Europe after WWII look puny, and yet American leadership on the international stage is nowhere to be found, making John Edwards comments at the end of the last debate so important.

Marshall’s plan involved massive transfers of funds from America to the rebuilding countries in Western Europe, totaling some $170 billion in today’s dollars. Yet as Marshall made clear, it was a bargain, for by investing in Europe’s redevelopment America was insuring its own security. As he put it, it was only “logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.” Marshall’s key insight was that aid, properly conceived, is not charity but an essential part of national security.

After WWII, the clear link between Europe and the U.S. was direct military conflict. Marshall essentially argued that if America did not aid Europe it would have to deal eventually with another world war started in that region. Today the link is not a direct threat of interstate violence, but the growing web of transboundary issues. The increasingly globalized nature of the world economy and environment make what happens over there, in the developing world, central to what happens here in America.

And there is a lot happening over there. This year, for the first time in the history of Homo sapiens, a majority of our species live in cities. This process of urbanization will continue, driven by the greater number of deaths than births among urban dwellers, as well as rural-to-urban migration. By 2030 the United Nations Population Division estimates there will be 1.75 billion new urban residents, the equivalent of building a city the size of Vancouver every single week. More new dwellings will be built in the next 25 years than currently exist in all of Europe. If you were to push all this new urban area together, a good guess is that it will cover an area the size of California.

I spend most of my professional time thinking about one potent link between urbanization in the developing world and America’s well-being, the environment. The billions of new urban dwellers will increasingly demand more and more oil to drive their cars, as they begin to approach American standards of living. How much oil they end up using depends on the form of the coming urbanization, and whether safe and efficient mass transit is available. That in turn will affect whether over the long-term, the number of potential consumers of oil will grow faster than oil supply, resulting in much higher prices at the pump.

Additionally, there is now broad consensus in the scientific literature of the serious potential effects of global warming. Some of these effects, such as the flooding of low-lying areas and climate-change induced famines, may create large movements of refugees. One recent study by the British NGO Christian Aid predicts 250 million refugees will flee global warming’s effects, a figure several times larger than the number of displaced people during all of WWII. Just how bad global warming will be depends, in no small part, on how the poorer countries of the world grow and urbanize.

Yet American leadership during this crucial period in history is mostly absent, or at least distracted by other issues. We have engaged in a war of choice in Iraq that in one year costs us almost as much as the entire Marshall Plan. At the same time, we remain stingy with our foreign aid, giving only 17 cents in aid for every $100 our economy produces. How far we have come since Marshall’s vision of enlightened investment in a better world! If America continues to shirk its responsibilities, we will be abdicating a leadership role in the globalized world of the 21st century, to our own detriment.

And that’s why I found John Edwards comments at the end of his last debate so heartening. When asked what he highest priority would be when he got into office, he said it would be to “re-establish America's moral authority in the world”, saying that in comparison other issues “become less important and subservient.” It was a subtle answer, and perhaps one not well suited to the quick sound bite. However, it reflects exactly the kind of positive reengagement with the world that American needs.

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I managed, quite by accident, to read two books recently that covered the same theme in different ways. Both discussed the sphere of public debate in the United States, and its relative decline in recent decades as media sources have become more celebrity-driven. One leaves you feeling righteous, but with no practical outlet for that emotion. The other is eminently practical and useful for a politician, but leaves me feeling a little queasy.

I picked up Al Gore’s Assault on Reason at the Harvard Coop. I’ll confess to not having bought it, but instead spent a pleasant hour sitting in a chair in a bookstore, reading most of the text. Gore argues that reasoned discourse in American democracy has all but disappeared, replaced by entertainment of the basest kind. This has led, moreover, to a loss of faith in reason itself, in democratic decisions made by an informed electorate. I believe in the righteousness of Gore’s call, and its something I’ve felt myself for a long time. But I don’t believe that a hortatory call to return to reason will do much good, just as it generally has not done the environmental movement much good.

I actually listened to Mark Halperin and John Harris’s book The Way to Win during a long drive down to Millbrook, NY. The central point of the book is that the modern media freak show exists, and politicians better learn how to tame it, or at least live with it. They outline two basic paths a politicians can take: the Clinton path (play to the center) or the Rove path (play to the base). I loved the book in a Machiavellian way (although the pro-Hillary bias was strong enough that I sometimes wondered if Halpern was also moonlighting for her campaign), but what scared me was the implication that what matters in the public debate is the sincerity and vehemence of a politician’s ideas, rather than a reasoned examination of politician’s ideas.

I want to believe in another route, some path for our society that lies between these two books. It would have to be more than an elegy for our (slightly more) reasoned past. It would have to be more than a moral call to return to the values of the Enlightenment. It must somehow be consistent with the brave new media world we live in. Sadly, I don’t know what the other route is. Even Mr.Gore’s admirable book just barely beings to point the way toward a Modernism for the 21st century.

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It’s finally spring here in Cambridge, in a chilly New England kind of way. There’s a nor’easter blowing through now, bringing a cold, hard rain, making the future marathoners miserable in anticipation of tomorrow. The real sign of the coming season was the delicate pink blossoms of the ornamental magnolia on my street. They are a grateful reminder that I’ve survived another winter, and a chance to muse on all that has passed since the last time these flowers bloomed.

Through the whole last year, the Iraq War continued. The build up to the war and its aftermath have now gone on longer than the entire process of falling in love, getting engaged, getting married, and celebrating my second wedding anniversary. Food for thought, that is. The war doesn’t seem likely to end until after January 2009, when a new president is sworn in.

I’ve been reading recently Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, and it seems to have special relevance now. All historical analogies are inexact and dangerous, but I think the American body politic could learn something from the ancient Athenians. If the theatrical speeches of Thucydides are to be believed, at least Athenian politicians would talk openly of the paradox between their internal democracy, at the time one of the most open in the world, and their empire. One quote in particular stood out, describing how the wars in defense of their empire subverted democratic discourse:

“To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual meanings. What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one’s unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action.”

These meditations have left me in a melancholy mood. The magnolia tree, it now appears, will have to bloom twice more before our troops are withdrawn from Iraq. And then, if history is any guide, there will be another war somewhere else rather soon.

I hold out hope though that someday a set of institutions will make outright was between nations as unthinkable as an attack between Maryland and Virginia within the United States, or indeed as an attack between France and Germany within the European Union. This dream was the subject of a sparsely attend seminar this week at the Sheraton Commander hotel, entitled “Democracy and the Future.” George Soros gave a rambling keynote address, which was nicely summarized in Amartya Sen’s response. If democracy is participation in power, in the discussion within a society of what should be and shall be, then while Athens was democratic internally it ended significant democracy for many of the citizens of other states. The same is of course true, although Dr. Sen was too polite to mention it, for the United States today: unless we strive for something greater, history will also remember us for our grand democratic experiment at home and our profound failure of imagination abroad.

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On Friday, I got the chance to see the Prime Minister of France, Dominique de Villepin, give a speech in the Forum at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Outside, the snow was coming down in white swirls, making the streets slushy in Cambridge and slowing the traffic down to walking speed. Nevertheless, he entered into the building on time, wearing the standard politician uniform of a black business suit with tie. After a somewhat fulsome introduction by a Harvard professor, he took the podium and gave a decent speech.

I was there, primarily, because I remember with fondness M. de Villepin’s speech at United Nations, opposing the US-led invasion of Iraq. He revisited the Iraq issue during his Harvard speech, making the general point that no country, even the United States, is powerful enough to be a global hegemon by itself. Therefore, international institutions must be strengthened.

I agree with this thesis, and it was generally well received at the Kennedy School, which is always internationalist in its character due to its diverse make-up. However, the specific programs he proposed seemed rather uninspiring: expansion of the UN Security Council to include Germany, Japan, and a representative of Africa; an international conference to solve the Iraq problem; another international conference to solve the Palestinian problem; and increased foreign development aid. No real news was made during the speech.

Most interesting was what lines drew applause. The fiscally-conservative elements in the crowd gave him applause for his promise to continue slowly modernizing and opening France’s economy. The libertarian elements (in the original sense of that term) clapped loudly when he said no country should torture its prisoners. Disturbingly, there was almost no overlap between these two groups, leading me to wonder what ever happened to the traditional conservative position of support for free trade and respect for the rule of law

To his credit, M. de Villepin was brave enough to take 30 minutes of unscripted questions from the audience. This is more than can be said for several American politicians, including our current President. In fact, M. de Villepin was noticeably more relaxed during this question period than during his speech. He displayed the great rhetorical skill of subtly changing a question to one he wanted to answer, and then responding to the latter. At times this meant he skipped the substance of a question, as when he dodged a question about poverty among North African immigrants by discussing unemployment in France among the general population. Still, I’m willing to forgive this rhetorical evasion, for one in such a political position as he must avoid making news accidentally.

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I sit on the edge of the tidal basin. There is not a hint of ice on the water, and its surface is so smooth it mirrors the low-lying jets passing overhead. Other than their rumble all is quiet, save for the honks of geese and the occasional chatter of a nearby game of touch football. On moments when the wind blows right, I can smell the stables of the Park Service, a refreshing odor after the cleanness of the rest of the district. Across the water tourists swarm up the steps of the Jefferson Memorial, and many of them with anti-war placards are turned away, for of course one can’t protest without the proper authorization.

It is colder on the white marble of Jefferson’s memorial. Here, thin shards of ice swirl in the water. On rare moments a shorebird tries to stand on one of these icebergs, only to quickly topple off. On my walk here I was struck by how brutal the new WWII memorial looks, naked granite, filling part of the National Mall. If humanity has a 21st century as bloody as the one we just left, perhaps the Mall will be filled with war memorials, and they will have to cut down the cherry trees to make space. As Jefferson said, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”

I’m on the fringes now of the rally. The protestors haven’t yet filled up their designated area, even though it’s already 11pm. This doesn’t bode well for a massive turnout, but there are perhaps 50,000 people here, with more arriving every second. What fascinates me is the intricate ecology of these marches. The socialist and communist papers are hawked aggressively near the entrance- they are the bottom feeders of the march, the carrion eaters. Everywhere, college kids swarming, playing football, filling up the kid’s merry-go-round. Near the front is the stage, full of speakers and media types, who are mostly ignored by everybody. The exception is some of the preacher-types, like Jesse Jackson, that can still spur the crowd. Even Jesse’s speech was a little bizarre, coinciding as it did with a nearby tribal drumming rendition of “Give Peace a Chance,” complete with a sax being played in a decidedly Dixieland style. Bizarreness is the order of the day. There was a man pushing a grocery cart around selling cold pretzels. There were a group of folks with a sign that said “Arms are for hugging,” and they thus went around hugging people. Numerous cute babies walked around in activist costumes. A man wore a classic Minuteman colonial costume, except for 1980’s vintage running shoes.

I’m now happily sitting in Teaism in Penn Quarter, digesting my meal. The place has been taken over by activists, and has a hip bohemian vibe because of it. The march after the rally was exhausting, a slow-motion slog around the Capitol. It was pleasing to see us all stretched out, surrounding the building. Interestingly, the staffers in many of the Senate office buildings had put anti-war placards up in the windows, and a few staffers even greeted the crowd on behalf of their senator!

It’s nighttime now, and I’m looking out a plate glass window onto Connecticut Avenue. I marveled as I walked here how many contradictions float around the city. It is modern and clean, but there’s a homeless person over practically every street vent. One can sense the power that resides in the city when a black town car drives by, the man in the back wearing a tuxedo. And yet the city seems shockingly unsure of itself. To Americans, the land inside the Beltway has ceased to be a place where good happens, at least consistently (I still hold out hope), and instead is just a place of necessary secrets. You see this in some of the government servants who jog by on the Mall- they are proud of themselves for being in DC in a position of power, rather than for the good things they did with their power.

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I will be in Washington on January 27, for United for Peace and Justice’s legal, permitted demonstration against the escalation of the war in Iraq. The time seems ripe now, and an effective protest may make a huge difference. The new Democratic Congress has to listen to the anti-war movement, at least to some extent, for we are part of their constituency. Moreover, the growing consensus opinion that the troop escalation is wrong (70% in a recent AP poll) adds political clout to the protest. I am also happy, frankly, that UFPJ has decided not to work with ANSWER, a more militant coalition. This will make the message of the march more focused and clear.

Who knows if the march will really be effective, or change any Congressman’s mind about how to vote? My opinion is that every person should have a set of bedrock moral beliefs that are not cast aside when they are inefficient. One should, or course, try to make one’s actions in support of these beliefs as politically effective as possible. A decent argument could be made that protest events are less effective as a political tool in the US than they once were. But history is mysterious, and sometimes one has to act without knowing the full consequences of one’s action. Vaclav Havel writes eloquently about this with regards to the Charter 77. At the time it was a mostly symbolic manifesto calling for more civil freedoms within the Czech communist system. In the end, the Charter ended up starting a chain of events that profoundly changed the Czech system, but no one knew in advance it would turn out that way. At some point a man has to commit to concrete actions that are consistent with his beliefs and improve the world a bit, and leave the writing of future history to the historians.

There is a poisonous, hip irony out there on the web that is deeply cynical about the UFPJ march. Wonkette gives probably the most egregious example, when she says “It won’t make a bit of difference, but you might get lucky with a hippie!” While I’m sure there will be a few members of the hippie species at the march, the vast majority of folks will be quite normal middle-class liberals. Wonkette’s comments reveal a deep smugness. The entire blogosphere seems to me a bit like the salons of aristocrats in Paris in the 19^th century, supportive of the Enlightenment but fearful of the rabble.

There’s also a darker insinuation in Wonkette’s remarks, that this march is just protest for protest’s sake. Milan Kundera summarized this as kitsch:

“Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.”

Bloggers hate this second tear, and well they should- the most important function of the blogosphere is as a BS detector. However, our hip, poisonous irony has also banished the first tear. I reject that. In a democracy, I want people to react emotionally (but legally) when their government invades a foreign country, displacing hundreds of thousands and killing an almost equal number. I want people to shed that first tear. And if that makes me un-ironic and subject to Wonkette’s well-crafted satire, then so be it.

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I had lunch in a little joint just outside Emory University. It served an odd mix of falafel and sushi. A man in a kimono frying garbanzo beans is quite a sight. To top it off, they were playing Louis Armstrong’s cover of Edith Piaf’s Ma Vie en Rose, while the couple at the nearby table spoke Persian. It was so multicultural that it was comic. The experience reminded me that for all the problems of America, for all of its current follies overseas, it is still a magical land, a land where people of all races and creeds do mingle. This is particularly true in cities, where physical proximity and increased economic opportunities break down barriers among people. This is the heartland of America, not some rural portion of the middle of the country.

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“The decline of ancient prejudice exposed a very numerous portion of humankind to the danger of a painful and comfortless situation. A state of skepticism and suspense may amuse a few inquisitive minds. But the practice of superstition is so congenial to the multitude, that if they are forcibly awakened, they still regret the loss of their pleasing vision.”

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News broke this week of the National Security Agency’s seizure of essentially every Americans’ calling history that they could get their hands on. I feel shocked and saddened, but not particularly surprised, given the track records of the principles involved. Interestingly, the press coverage has focused on the scope of the program (some have defended that they aren’t listening to the content of the conversations) or its effectiveness (statistically, a database of all Americans’ phone call seems likely to generate so many false positives as to be useless for law enforcement). To me, this focus seems to miss the point. The Administration has clearly intentionally violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the FISA law. It has clearly intentionally violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the 4th Amendment. What is dangerous about the Bush Administration then is not this or that action and whether it is effective, but their direct assault on the principle of constitutionalism. I mean this in the broad sense, where constitutionalism is simply the limitation of government by a set of publicly-defined, transparent laws. The reason every English-speaking schoolchild studies the Magna Carta is that it was one of the first documents of constitutionalism; the actual specifics of the rules in the Magna Carta are quite unimportant to modern men.

Whatever your political party, you have to admit that constitutionalism is central to what made the United States the great democracy that it is: we are a country of laws, not of men. What does it mean then, that some of our men of letters argue that it doesn’t matter that the president knowingly and willingly violated the law, because it was effective? When any columnist or reporter makes this argument, they are becoming, in the terminology of Milan Kundera, “the ally of their own gravediggers.” If there is no constitutionalism, if there are no rules within which democracy functions, then there are no political writers, only polemicists. Honest political writing is an effort to influence public opinion so as to democratically shape policy. If there no laws for the powerful, then writers become little more than Mark Anthony to a Caesar: skilled orators, perhaps, but not free men.

Posted by ecologist at 08:40 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Major protects continued this week in Paris, as students and some unions agitated against a new labor law that makes it easier to higher and fire young workers. In the Anglo-American press, the protests have generally been portrayed as a bunch of unruly kids, causing trouble. Let’s leave aside the very real policy dilemma this law tried to solve, and look instead at this characterization of French students as unruly or, even darker, “ungovernable.” This characterization is actually common whenever we discuss France, and I believe its overtones are ominous signs of our lack of respect for democracy.

Larry Summers’ ouster from his post as Harvard is another example of this canard. In the media, it is often describe as a coup by a small cabal of liberal faculty out to get Dr. Summers since he wasn’t politically correct enough. Forget for a second whether you agree with Dr. Summers’ policies or not: couldn’t one just as correctly say “a large plurality of the faculty had no confidence in his leadership, and voted to remove him”? But no, instead Harvard is now the “ungovernable university.”

I believe this particular concept of “ungovernability” is a covert attack on democracy. Democracy is participation in power, as Cicero once famously wrote. Interest groups within a democracy must have enough freedom to reflect on what is in their political interest, and then have appropriate power to agitate for what they want. Granted, the process of reflection must be reasoned and measured, not a mob mentality; granted, the amount of power an interest group can wield should not be disproportionate with their support among the general populace nor inconsistent with fundamental rights (I believe it is this caveat being violated that led New York City to be called the “ungovernable city”). However, if both these caveats obtain,, then we must view protest and agitation as an integral part of democracy.

The students in France have thought deeply about what is good for them, and are fighting for it. While we might argue that their position is not ideal for France as a whole, we must admit that the students know their own interests better than we do! Similarly, the faculty thought deeply about the Summers regime, and realized they wanted him gon. Within his constituency, therefore, it was rational that he was forced out, even if many outside Harvard were not pleased. In short, when the Anglo-American press calls a group “ungovernable” it is usually because they have the temerity to govern themselves! Behind this conception of “ungovernability” is a deep elitism, an idea that a certain elite group knows better than “they” what is best for them, and since the result desired is not occurring, the system must be flawed. Nothing could be further from the idea of democracy; vigorous and strident political debate is not inimical to democracy, but essential to it.

Posted by ecologist at 02:49 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I’ve been reading Amartya Sen’s marvelous book “Development at Freedom,” and I’ve found it revelatory, not for its novelty, but its clarity. Properly understood, Sen’s definition of “development” is functionally the same as the environmental community’s sacred goal, “sustainable development.” Basically, Sen argues that true development is the increase in the capability, or freedom, to live the way one would wish to live. He categorizes five instrumental freedoms: Political freedom, the ability to participate in the exercise of political power (Cicero’s definition); Adequate economic facilities to allow people to achieve their monetary goals; Social opportunities, arrangements that society makes for education, health care, and other essentials; Transparency guarantees, “the freedom to deal with one another under guarantees of disclosure and lucidity”; Protective security, such as minimal unemployment benefits.

If you stop to think about it, this is the world that “sustainable development” is supposed to create. We environmentalists have simply added three constraints to Sen’s freedom: there must be inter-generational equity, so that future generations have similar levels of freedom as today’s generation; there must be social justice, so that within a society the least free person has adequate freedom; and there must be trans-frontier justice, so that there is adequate freedom in all societies. I believe all three of these qualifiers are implicit in Sen’s writing, and in Rawls’ writing for that matter.

Despite the simplicity and beauty of this argument, I am well aware that it will make many of my fellow environmental scientists cringe. There is a fear that all this talk is too vague, and far too difficult to quantify. More and more though I think this can be overcome: look at the effectiveness of the UN’s Human Development Index, for example. I suspect many environmentalists also cringe because Sen’s definition of “development” explicitly has a political component. If the environmental mainstream really adopted it, it would be much harder for environmentalists to hid behind the vagueness of the term “sustainable development”, and work in authoritarian regimes like the Congo (Kishasha).

Posted by ecologist at 09:26 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This list goes out to all my friends and colleagues in Europe. I may share many progressive viewpoints with them, but I get occasionally frustrated by how they talk about the United States and its politics. The scope of the problem became more apparent after the chilly reception that Bernard Henri-Levy’s new book received in the United State, even among folks who are its natural ideological allies (see Garrison Keiler’s excellent review of the book for more). Here then are 10 facts European progressives should keep in mind when writing if they want Americans to be at all receptive to their argument:

1. America is a big country, which if overlaid on Europe would stretch from Lisbon to Baghdad. I say this not to be chauvinistic (although there are plenty of Americans who would be), but just to point out that there’s an enormous amount of terrain for a visitor like Mr. Henry-Levi to cover, ranging from swampy lowlands to vast deserts to tall sierras.
2. America is very diverse ethnically, with arguably more ethnic variation than Europe. Certainly, the percentage of Americans who are 1st or 2nd generation immigrants (10.4%) is far higher here than in the EU. These waves of immigrants have come in complex, spatially heterogeneous patterns, creating odd political outliers like the vehemently anti-Castro Cubans of Miami.
3. While perhaps not as culturally differentiated as Europe, where one switches languages every couple hundred miles, there is significant cultural variation in the US. The Southeastern States, with their legacy of slavery, are very different in culture and norms than the industrial Northeast. In the Western US it gets even more complicated: you have Nevada, where prostitution and gambling and just about everything else is legal, right next to conservative Mormon Utah! Most importantly, the United States has a pronounced cultural split between its urban and rural cultures. In many senses, these two groups are now fighting for power.
4. It is rather pointless to talk about “American culture” or “American politics” as a single unitary entity, any more than one can talk about a “European culture” without sounding a bit naïve to a European about the complexity and diversity of that continent.
5. There are of course some unifying traits for Americans, but they are rather few and far between, truthfully. Moreover, they tend to be of an almost philosophic nature, concerning our general temperament, rather than specific things like baseball or peanut butter (both of which substantial minorities of Americans hate). Alexis de Tocqueville does as good a job as anybody in sketching these things out, and I personally feel like no one’s really improved on his work.
6. Even the few unifying traits that exist have significant subpopulations in the US that counteract the general rule. Like all generalizations I as an American could make about Europeans, they would become harmful if they’re used to prejudge.
7. Politics in America is not some simple function of a unitary “American” character. In fact the federal system of state autonomy makes each state its own political world, to a degree many foreigners from countries with centralized governments often don’t understand.
8. Political parties in the US serve as broad coalitions, rather than as the strident unified political parties one sees in parliamentary systems. For constitutional and historical reasons (that I often bemoan) Americans are stuck with this system, which transfers all the public compromises among parties in a parliamentary system when they form a governing coalition into the back room, behind the scenes. Therefore, statements about the view of “the Republicans” strike most Americans as facile- it’s not even really worth talking politics about them until you recognize at least their 3 or 4 major constituents.
9. The current religious right-wing ascendancy at the Federal level really the political victory of a relatively small percentage of people who have control of one of our two parties, and so far haven’t shattered the rest of the party’s coalition. It doesn’t reflect anything near the majority of its own party.
10. All the electoral rules at a Federal level in the US have a consistent and intentional bias toward rural areas and away from urban areas, and toward “battleground states” (where neither party is dominant) and away from certain states (like California). This tends to make the Federal government in the US lag substantially behind urban areas in adopting progressive, cosmopolitan ideas. Don’t read too much into American culture by the politics in Washington.

Posted by ecologist at 09:22 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I just finished reading Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man, and I must admit to being pleasantly surprised. I went into the work with a dislike of the book absorbed from dozens of leftist writers, who often described it as an unapologetic celebration of the victory of unbridled capitalism. I was amused to see it for sale, therefore, at an airport book kiosk (the selection of philosophy books in airports is truly bizarre), and flabbergasted to find that I agreed with Fukuyama’s main points. There has been an empirical trend over the last two centuries, and both Fukuyama and I are quite happy about it, although I disagree with his characterization of the process of democratization as inevitable in a Hegelian sense (as opposed to just highly probable and highly desirable). We both agree that what drives most people to overthrow authoritarian regimes and install democratic regimes is the desire for recognition, or thymos. We both believe that to some extent the appearance of civil liberties is correlated with economic liberties, although we might disagree about the arrow of causality. And we both fundamentally feel that De Tocqueville was right: there is sometimes a tradeoff between equality and liberty.

However, Fukuyama’s work reminds me of a general malady in philosophy: any sufficiently abstract philosophy can be made to support an author’s political and class interests. He sees the particular form of economic development known as the Washington Consensus as a positive thing, even though it is far from pure economic liberty. He sees military adventures to spread democracy at the barrel of a gun as a good thing, presaging the current Bush Doctrine. Most oddly, he sees efforts to reform and strengthen the United Nations as an evil effort: democracy within nation-states is good, but apparently democracy between nation-states is bad!

Still, fundamentally Fukuyama and I agree about what should be the United States’ goal in foreign policy, to help make the world more democratic, even if we disagree about the means to get there. How sad then that (it appears) the Democratic party establishment has abandoned this noble goal and seems to offer only “realism” as an alternative to Bush’s crusades. We are the party of true democracy at home, as we push to make sure every eligible voter can have their vote accurately counted. We are the party of true democracy abroad, as we push Bush to work through the United Nations Security Council to peacefully restrain Iran’s nuclear program. Why then have we ceded this ideological ground? What is the Democratic party, if we are not the champions of democracy?!

Posted by ecologist at 09:17 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

One of things that ecologists and conservations spend a lot of time worrying about is the process of “parcelization”, which is rampant worldwide. Parcelization is just an infelicitous term used to describe the process by which one parcel of land is split into many smaller pieces of land. It is seen as the first step in a sequence (or spiral) of events that inevitably reduce the ecosystem services that land provides to humanity. First, after some triggering event a large parcel is subdivided legally into a set of smaller parcels, whose boundaries are set by the landowner and the relevant town or county planning commission (in some states, like Massachusetts, landowners have free reign when it comes to how to subdivide their land). The triggering event is often the death of the previous landowner, which usually brings the land into the hand of his descendants, who are often interested in maximizing the sale value of the property by subdivision. Second, these smaller parcels are generally sold to a developer, who builds a set of houses that often perforate intact habitat. What’s worse, from an ecologist’s perspective, is that these small parcels are usually too small to be managed in an ecologically beneficial way- it is impossible to manage for forest resources in a sustainable way on a parcel below a certain size, just as it is impossible to use controlled burns to minimize the risk of catastrophic fire, just as it is difficult to provide habitat to many wide-ranging species. Third, landscapes almost never go back toward a more intact state, but instead the process of parcelization continues further.

I’ve realized recently, however, that there’s an ideological split between this way of talking about land and the old progressive ideal of land ownership. Thomas Jefferson and others propounded agrarianism, the desirability of every citizen having a small farm that provides a measure of self-sufficiency and economic stability. When freed slaves were promised the proverbial (and apocryphal) “40 acres and a mule”, the motivation was similar, to strengthen U.S. democracy by having all citizens having some basic landholdings. In most developed countries today, agrarianism seems irrelevant to the mostly industrial and postindustrial world we live in, but the ideal lives on in a sense in the quest of the U.S. to make sure home ownership is available to a broad spectrum of Americans. In developing countries, of course, land reform remains a contentious topic, and one that I believe must be addressed in countries where old colonial systems of concentrated land ownership persist.

Given this progressive pedigree of the ideal of an equitable distribution of land, ecologists and conservationists must be careful with how they talk about parcelization. We must state honestly what needs are driving increasing numbers of Americans to leave dense urban regions for less dense suburban or exurban regions:
1. Many people are simply moving away from cities in a quest to find an affordable way to own a house.
2. They are seeking access to recreational amenities, like a walk in the woods or the babble of a brook, that are often absent from urban settings.
3. They are fleeing negative aspects of urban like, like higher crime and bad public schools, by going out to the suburbs or exurbs.
Our goal as conservationists must be offer political alternative that satisfy these needs with a minimum of parcelization. These must be offered to the body politic not as solutions to the “evils of parcelization”, which will be inevitably portrayed as elitist, but as ways to more fully satisfy the needs of Americans while preserving the environment. After all, Thomas Jefferson did not present agrarianism primarily because of some mystical quality of the soil (although there’s a bit of that in his writings), but because ownership of small farms led to political opportunity and democratic power. In today’s world, owning a house on a 40 acre ranchette doesn’t bring any more political power to the owner than owning a smaller house on a ½ acre lot.

I can think of two ways that conservationists can begin to address the problem of parcelization. First, we need to make urban areas more livable places. If home ownership can be made more practical to urban dwellers, crime can be reduced, and schools can be improved that much of the things pushing young parents out of the city would cease. There is much work on this front by people pushing affordable housing agendas, etc., which is wonderful. Second, in more rural locations, we need to offer more viable legal means for a set of people to share ownership in a property without legally subdividing the land. For example, states could change their subdivision laws so that instead of having an absolute minimum lot size, an increased number of (small) lots could be created if they were clustered on one edge of a parcel. The remainder of the parcel would go under a conservation easement, and be open for recreational use by all members of the community.

Posted by ecologist at 09:15 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Previously, I’ve attempted to construct voting districts for the whole world, with an equal number of people in each one. This all stems from a proposal in George Monbiot’s book calling for a global parliament, as a compliment to or replacement for the United Nations and its one-nation-one-vote paradigm. Monbiot points out that this proposal is repulsive to many in the developed world, simply because of the overwhelming dominance in the system of the developing countries, due to their large populations. As a landscape ecologist and a geographer, I was interested in how this would look on a map. My previous algorithm for mapping this was very crude, and came up with very square-looking voting districts. My current algorithm allows the boundaries of districts to follow gradients in population density, and is a great improvement.

Below is a map of 400 voting blocks of approximately equal population, based on the excellent global grid of population in 1995 available from the Columbia Earth Institute. First of all, let me say what this map is NOT: It is not an attempt to put forth a reasonable set of voting districts (which would be rather arrogant of me, as such things are always the outcome of a political process), nor is it an endorsement necessarily of Monbiot’s scheme for a world parliament. The idea is to get people thinking about how political power would be distributed if every person on earth had equal voting power. While national boundaries are shown on the map to help orient the reader, they were not used at all in the creation of these voting districts, and so the districts freely span national boundaries when population densities require that. Note the high density of small regions in southeastern Asia, particularly India and China- this is simply due to the high population density in these places.

Click on the thumbnails below to view a global map and close up maps of a variety of areas. Each color is a region with around 15 million people. Note that these are high-resolution JPEGs  (600 DPI) that don't always display well in a browser, but if you download them they look and print great in something like Photoshop.

Now, technical details on how this was made: Population data were taken from the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University; International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI); and World Resources Institute (WRI). 2000. Gridded Population of the World (GPW), Version 2. Palisades, NY: CIESIN, Columbia University. Available at http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/plue/gpw. This gives population estimates in latitude/longitude for cells that are about 5km on a side near the equator. To perform my calculations in a projection system that is more equal-area than geographic, the grid was projected into a Robinson projection, which is reasonably equal-area between 45 and -45 latitude, and doesn’t have the high distortion of shape and distance at high latitudes that a true equal-area projection (e.g., sinusoidal projection) would. The algorithm starts with the densest cell, and begins joining it with its neighbors, starting with its most dense neighbor. This process continues until the target population is reached. This district is then considered finished, and taken out of consideration, and the algorithm then goes to the next highest cell. This algorithm works quite well except in places where there’s little or no population (like northern Canada), where there are no gradients in population density to guide the placement of boundaries. The other place it occasionally fails is when there is a large city (5-10 million people) surrounded by an area of almost no population. In this case, the final district created will tend to be over my target of 15 million, as this city will get lumped in with another big one a fair distance away.

The philosophy behind this algorithm is that people who live near one another should be in same voting district, whenever possible, regardless of which country they are in. This leads to an urban-centric definition of boundaries. Take a good look at New York City, for example- the core of the city gets one voting district, while the suburbs get another. This may upset the people from the suburbs (folks from northern New Jersey often want to claim allegiance to NYC), but it is a necessary consequence of having the many millions of people in the NYC core voting together. In any event, one could argue that the suburbs of New Jersey are more like the suburbs of the lower Hudson Valley than the core of NYC, so it may be appropriate that they vote together.

Posted by ecologist at 09:05 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

There’s been much discussion recently about the U.S. “bringing democracy” to Iraq. I got curious about the track-record of U.S. military interventions (my list below is taken from Wikipedia). Being a scientist, I looked for some quantitative data on the level of democracy in each country. This is an obviously difficult thing to quantify, but the data from Freedom House are useful and reasonably objective and reproducible. They use a 7-point scale for two different metrics, political rights (PR) and civil liberties (CL), with 1 representing the highest and 7 the lowest level of freedom. So, for the record, here are the U.S. interventions since 1972 (when the Freedom House data start), the rankings before the intervention, the change in rankings immediately after the intervention (positive numbers = more freedom), and the change in rankings 5-years after the intervention.

The net change is barely positive, with on average no-change in the PR score and a 1 point move toward more constitutional liberties. 5-years after the interventions, on average the countries have also moved 1 point toward more political rights. The next thing that should jump out at you is how variable the list is. Chile stands out as the single worst U.S. intervention, as the U.S. sponsored coup substantially reduced democracy. Grenada and Panama stand out as countries that significantly increased democracy after a U.S. intervention. Now, of course, this kind of crude analysis cannot replace a detailed analysis by historians of what actually occurred in each of these countries after the intervention, but I think the data capture the broad patterns of change very well.

To put this all in perspective, below are the average scores by region over the last two decades. There’s a general trend toward more democracy worldwide, with the exception of the Middle East and North Africa. Most of the changes are small (a point or two shift), but given that they involve hundreds of countries, they make the effect of U.S. interventions on democracy seem very minor indeed.

Posted by ecologist at 09:03 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It’s winter already in Boston, and today as I walked along Newbury Street the first snowflakes of the year fell onto the still-warm ground. There was something beautiful, but so sad, about it: the Hub shutting down psychologically for winter. I continued my wandering eastward, and somewhere around the Public Garden I first heard it, a faint booming of a megaphone. Once I got the Common, I recognized was it was, a crowd of a thousand or so people protesting the Iraq War. As someone who thinks the invasion of Iraq was misguided, and that the Bush Administration’s management of the occupation was ruinous, I was happy to join in. If anything, I felt kind of sheepish that I hadn’t heard about the rally in advance.

Still, as I sat there and listened to a parade of speakers, I felt depressed. For one thing, the speakers were of a decidedly anti-capitalist bent, and as I have come to believe in capitalism (with limits) as the best way to structure most economic sectors, I felt out of place. I also felt frustrated, as I knew that a few such comments could potentially tar the whole event as a “Communist” demonstration in the mainstream media.

There was another, deeper issue. At one point I felt a sense of solidarity with the gruffy activists, with their piercings and dyed hair and beards. But now I feel some frustration with these somewhat aimless lefty protests, for they often seem directed not at winning any particular political goal, but with demonstrating the purity of their convictions. And so I want to get stuff done, help achieve some progressive political victories, which makes me identify with political leaders. My time at Harvard, I’m afraid to say, has done much to encourage this identification, this belief that political change comes primarily from those in suits, those in position of at least moderate power.

This transformation toward moderateness probably happens to everyone as they get older. What I worry about is that this trend, combined with my intense business in my career, has made me what I’ve always detested: an upper-class, bleeding-heart liberal who politically does nothing but pontificates a lot.

Posted by ecologist at 09:00 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The past couple months have actually looked somewhat rosy for progressives, as President Bush’s poll numbers have continued to drop and the public increasingly realizes that maybe invading Iraq wasn’t such a good idea after all. It all puts a smile on my face, as someone who opposed the invasion of Iraq from the start, and who was a participant in the massive anti-war demonstrations beforehand. And yet, as the body count of American soldiers approaches 2000, with many times more Iraqi civilian casualties, the moment seems bittersweet. The scientist in me asks, could the protests before the war have really worked?

The historical record suggests that under the right conditions a protest movement can help cease a war that has already begun, contrary to some of the negative critiques of David Corn and others. Vietnam would be the first example to pop into the head of many Americans, for arguably the anti-war protests played at least a minor role in the decision to slowly withdraw, along with the daily casualties of United States personnel. The French withdrawal from Algeria might be another example, although here too it was more the deaths and chaos in Algeria that was responsible for the French desire to withdraw, than the statements and protests by French socialists and the pieds-noir. Two conditions seem to be necessary for protests in the occupier’s country to have any effect at all on the occupier’s foreign policy. First, the conflict must have become bloody and costly. Second, that cost must have led to widespread resentment of the conflict by everyday people, not just those involved in the protests. As both these conditions are true in the case of the current occupation of Iraq, I see no reason the anti-war movement cannot have some effect on how quickly and effectively the U.S. begins withdrawing from Iraq.

However, there are almost no examples of a protest movement in the aggressor country stopping a war before it begins, by sheer moral force. There are a few examples where strong negative public reaction has resulted in the delay of a particular invasion- Bill Clinton, for example, clearly considered invading Iraq in the last years of his presidency, but may have backed away from this because there was such a vociferous opposition to the idea among Americans (remember the heckling at Ohio State University?). But in general, countries with a dominant military will attack other countries with regularity. From 1775 to 1914, the British Empire fought at least 19 wars, which works out to one conflict every 7 years! From 1945 till the present, the United States fought at least 8 wars, or about one conflict every 8 years. Interestingly, the reasons for the wars were all quite idiosyncratic, so there seems to be no way to predict the justification for wars in advance. This is not to say that the justification was just an excuse by the country’s leaders, or that the logic that led to war at the time did not make sense to many of those involved. Indeed, some of the wars may be quite ethically justifiable (e.g., attacking Japan after Pearl Harbor, the invasion of Afghanistan by the United States after 9/11).

The scary corollary to this trend is: the United States will invade another country again! If we assume that our military will remain at its current strength, well above the capabilities of other countries, it seems quite likely that there will be another invasion sometime soon. The circumstances under which this invasion will occur, the political form it will take, is utterly unknowable. We might safely predict that the United States won’t attack another democracy, for the historical record suggests it’s rare for one democracy to attack another. And we can safely predict it will be a relatively weak country, given that the majority of wars are between countries with profoundly different military strength. Other than that, who knows? Maybe Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Brazil, Cuba…

Is there some kind of movement, then, that will be effective in stopping the next war? Let’s call this line of thinking preventive anti-war organizing. I’ve become convinced that it is the only real hoping of building a more peaceful world in the future. Think of it as a sprinkler system installed in a new building; one hopes it never has to be used, but if the flames of war ever come, it will be there to dampen them. One potential possibility, of course, is to simply strengthen the marvelous global network that developed around the February 15, 2003 protests against the invasion of Iraq. If 10 million people can be marshaled for a protest with only six months of real organizing, it should be possible to get many times more people out to protest the next war with years of preparation.

It’s doubtful, however, that this alone is enough. Governments, even democratic governments, seem to have an amazing ability to ignore domestic opposition to foreign policy objectives. There is a real need for new ideas at an international level that will help to restrain the U.S. before the next war. The U.S. has one severe weakness right now, its dependence on foreign investment to finance its trade and budget deficits. Perhaps a set of boycotts of U.S. bonds by prominent investors and central banks, to be initiated at the start of a military conflict not approved by the United Nations Security council, would be an ambitious starts. Even a very small boycott would create ripples through U.S. financial markets simply by exposing to the media the vulnerability of the U.S. economy. It’s a crazy idea, perhaps, one that a few years ago I would have dismissed as absurd and unworkable. But the Iraq war has changed the way we all view global security, has made the globe’s people more aware of the risks of having a single unchallenged hegemon, and perhaps the time has truly come for preventive anti-war organizing.

Posted by ecologist at 08:56 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I’ve been reading a large collection of John Locke’s political writings recently and somehow they make me keep thinking of the invasion of Iraq. There’s this odd concept of sovereignty floating around in Locke’s writing, a spirit he tries hard to banish, at least in his later works. From our modern perspective, especially in America, we don’t think about sovereignty as a single entity, invested in a single person, but rather we envision a set of checks and balances- sovereignty is diffuse but all pervasive among the American people. This perspective, at least in large part, comes from Locke. The older ghost he was fighting against was the sense of sovereignty as an absolute, an absolute power invested in an absolute monarch. Locke’s viewpoint is, of course, immeasurably more tolerant of peaceful dissent than the old ghost, for dissent is to Locke but one mechanism by which the system of sovereignty operates.

And as I read, I began to realize that human history has seen a number of battles over the nature of sovereignty, with each battle occurring at a larger spatial scale. As modern nation-states were formed, there were undoubtedly those who argue that absolute sovereignty rested in one’s tribe or clans, and that all politics above that level are essentially anarchic. Then, there were those who agued that absolute sovereignty must at least rest in a single person, for the only other alternative is anarchy. And now we live in an age where it is commonplace to think of sovereignty spread diffusely among the citizens of nations, but many conservatives argue strongly that the relationships between states are essentially anarchic. We progressives have said, and must continue to say, no to this limitation.

This brings me back to the Iraq invasion. The millions who marched in the streets to try to stop the invasion have become demoralized by their defeat. The only consolation, perhaps, was the New York Times proclamation that the protestors were the “world’s other superpower.” We should take some comfort in the phrase, as recognition of our strength, but we should acknowledge the metaphor is wrong. We do not want to be a superpower, in an anarchic battle with other superpowers. Rather, we want to be a powerful check in a global system of checks-and-balances, in a global system of sovereignty.

To put it another way: the anti-war contingent lost not because the United States is too strong but because the global system of checks and balances is too weak. But to whom can we look to strengthen the global system of sovereignty? The United Nations is unlikely to save much of a barrier, as its structure forces all real power to the Security Council, where the United States has dominance. Global civil society, as we saw in February 2002, can exert pressure but is relatively powerless if its protests are mostly linguistic. What are some other possible ways to make the check against United States aggression stronger? Perhaps international unions, like the dockworkers in major ports, could agree to a week-long boycott of transporting United States products. Perhaps the EU countries and Japan could agree to a temporary moratorium on buying United States Treasury bonds. A whole series of little steps like this must be developed, at an international level, to exert our global collective sovereignty over the nation-states of the world, to finally exorcise the ghost.

Posted by ecologist at 08:48 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Something's bursting forth, worldwide. There's an optimism floating in the air, coloring every conversation in intellectual cafes, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the dark challenges our global civilization faces. Yet among the the philosophically inclided, there's been a need to hide this optimism. I want to offer some thoughts on why this is, but I must first admit to my readers that this is my personal idiosyncratic perspective, which may strike those coming from a different philosophical perspective as somewhat bizarre.

Ever since the Enlightenment, there's been a palpable faith in Western Civilization in the power of rational, purposeful action to change the world for the better. The Enlightenment certainly wasn't the first time such an ideal popped up (it goes back to at least Socrates), but is simply the most modern form. At its core, this belief takes it for granted that humans have a variety of wants and desires, and that they can rationally prioritize among them, making informed decisions. It recognizes that society can be variously structured, can be rationally examined, and can be changed if need be. Under this perspective, government can be seen as a "compact," created to balance the needs and wants of its citizens. It is this modern perspective, this belief in progress, that the global justice movement is professing when it proclaims "Another World is Possible."

And yet there has been another intellectual creed that has been floating around, and is now ascendant in liberal circles. It has been variously called Romanticism or post-Modernism or simply Irrationalism (Karl Popper's contentious term).  At its core, this perspective argues that each person, and each culture, has a different idea of what is rational. It recognizes that society can be variously structured, but argues that no structure is rationally preferable to another. Government is, from this point of view, just a vehicle for one set of values (i.e., a society) to compete against another set of values. The concept of "progress" is thus nonsensical, except from a particular societal (i.e., nationalist) perspective.

The global justice movement, from protests against multilateral economic institutions like the IMF to the social forum process, is fundamentally a belief in the possibility of progress. However, our philosophical rhetoric is still expressed in post-modern terms. We should all be honest with ourselves: we are Modernists, perhaps with a useful sensitivity to cultural differences gleaned from post-modernism, but modernists nonetheless. We do believe that people of the world share a desire for security (from hunger, danger, etc.), peace, and freedome. We do believe society can be rationally changed for the better. We do believe that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people is the best mode of government. We do believe in progress. Why then are so many progressived afraid of using this rhetoric? Perhaps it is simply because there have been so many cases in the 20th century where belief in Progess, some almighty ideology, takes precedence over the wills and desires of the majority of citizens, and leads to war and repression. The philosophers among us need to find a way to stake out a middle ground, where belief in progress does not have to involve a blind belief in an ideology. Vaclav Havel's writings seem to me to point in that direction:

"In other words: I believe... that neither politicians, nor scientists, nor entrepreneurs, nor anyone else should fall for the vain belief that they can grasp the world as a whole and change it as a whole by one single action. Seeking to improve it, people should proceed with the utmost caution and sensitivity, on a step-by-step basis, always paying attention to what each change actually brings about. At the same time, however, I believe... that as they do so, they should constantly bear in mind all the global interrelations that they are aware of, and know that beyond their knowledge their exists an infinetly wider range of relations."

Posted by ecologist at 08:46 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

More and more, I hear people whispering the word now in mainstream American political discourse, sometimes even saying it aloud: “Empire.” It’s still a shock for me to hear it, for it strikes me as discordant, horrible, wrong. Even during my brief time working in DC, when I got a whiff of how rarified the air is inside the beltway, it puzzled me. I still remember my surprise when I heard that Vaclav Havel, whose writing and political philosophy I greatly admire, was co-sponsor of a debate at the American Enterprise Institute entitled “American is now and should be an Empire.” I believe Paul Wolfowitz attended.

I think to most Americans, the E-word remains a taboo, however much it has penetrated the discussions of the political class. We honestly cannot fathom the existence of an entity within ourselves so contrary to our essence. Imagine: the President of the United States stands up in the Rose Garden and announces our intention invade country Y “to strengthen our military position and further expand our Empire.” All hell would break loose among the Washington press corp.

Still, perhaps I overstate the innocence of Americans in this regard. Maybe every nation always can find a way to rationalize anything. Perhaps the Brits really thought they were spreading civilization. Perhaps the Romans really thought the Pax Romana was in everyone’s interest. Perhaps, too, future civilizations will laugh at our conception of an “Accidental Empire.”

Ironically enough, the founders of the United States, and most especially Madison and Jefferson, openly discussed America’s imperial ambitions after her independence. The interior of the country seemed open for expansion, save for a few Native Americans who were powerless to stop it. Indeed, the central debate was not about whether American would gain an Empire, but whether in the process she would lose her revolutionary soul. The answer generally, tentatively, was yes, the historical record often shows that Empire corrupts democracy. And that answer should give us pause, as politicians ponder ways to expand United States hegemony.

Or more to the point, given America’s financial weakness and our difficulty maintaining our military: when our Empire declines, will we go like the Brits, who managed to maintain their democracy and stability during their loss, or like the Romans, who degenerated into a military dictatorship?

Posted by ecologist at 08:37 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The French voted overwhelmingly yesterday to reject the EU constitution, and I’ve spent the morning pondering this strange event from my perspective as an American. I feel strangely saddened by the rejection, for I worry that an important opportunity, for Europe and the world, may be missed. One can conceive of the putative EU constitution as a compromise- some would say a bastard child- of two ideologies. The businessmen are obsessed with free trade, and with opening up continental Europe to the type of privatization that has already occurred to a lesser extent in places like the United Kingdom. Those in civil society, in contrast, want to create a unified and peaceful Europe with a democratic governance system. Truth be told, I can understand why some progressives were upset with the current draft of the constitution: the free-traders managed to slip in some provisions that have no business being in a constitution, but would best be decided by the EU Parliament.

Maybe, as an American, I should just shrug it off as part of the inherent and healthy unpredictability of a democracy: the people have spoken, yadda yadda. And it is possible that a better, less neo-liberal (in the economic sense) constitution will be resurrected from the ashes of this one. Still, I worry that the French rejection is symptomatic of a universal human tendency toward protecting one’s “own” people and culture first, a tendency that is becoming much more problematic in the 21st century. Many of the world’s major problems, whether environmental, economic, or social, are global in scale. Power too, both economic and political (in the broad sense of that word) has become global in scale, although there are still few hands holding the reins of power. However, the majority of people remain deeply suspicious about any attempt to make the global governance system more democratic. And for good reason, I might add, as there are plenty of cases where a country embarks on “democratic” reforms that are anything but democratic in effect.

The main response of progressives to this globalization of power has been to advocate localism, the devolution of power downward. While this is an appealing ideal, it’s usually not a useful response. French voters can reject as many drafts of the EU constitution as they want, but the economy of Europe will continue to integrate- there just won’t be any citizen oversight of the process. I want to suggest to all progressives a simple test, to make sure our ideologies aren’t getting ahead of the real political event of the world: if your political enemies are celebrating a decision you made, then that decision is probably a bad one. And to all the left in France who strongly critique the United States (for good reason, on some occasions), and who spearheaded the “Non” vote, I hope you realize that they were pulling out the champagne in the White House last night.

Posted by ecologist at 08:36 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

All throughout Boston there are whispered conversations… in French. In the French Cultural Center, where I take classes, ex-pats gather in little groups, trying to figure out on what street near Copley it is located. It is the French Consulate, and it may seem odd to Americans that all the excitement is over an election, something only 1 in 2 of us Americans seem to bother participating in. What may seem even odder to Americans, given our penchant for musing about the black helicopters at the UN, is that this is not a national election everyone is so excited about, but an international one. On May 29, France will vote on whether to ratify the new European Union constitution. The coverage in the press in the United States continually betrays a sense of profound confusion: why in the world would someone want to give up some sovereignty to a higher body?

Nevertheless, Americans should care, and care deeply, about what happens on May 29. Globalization, the process of increasingly rapid connection between peoples by commerce and information flows, has been much attached from both ends of the political spectrum, but will continue its inevitable march onward over the next 20 years. There are now two main models for how this can proceed. The current U.S.-backed paradigm is one where economic globalization continues apace, while politics remains firmly national. NAFTA is a prime example of the kind of treaty that results from such a worldview; it’s loaded with special provisions for big companies, but workers had little say in the design of the treaty. The current EU process also involves a lot of economic liberalization, some of it with questionable public utility (that’s why it’s in such trouble right now in France, as people rightly question some of its economic effects). In contrast to the U.S. paradigm, however, it also involves considerable political integration. In principle, at least, democracy is globalized as well as economics. If this sounds idealistic and experimental, it’s because it is. The current EU is the greatest political experiment of the last 25 years: an uneasy truce between Beethoven and capitalism.

The important thing for Americans to realize is that economic globalization is coming, one way or another. What is up for debate is its character, its soul. Democracy can either rise to globalization, or it will sink beneath it.

Posted by ecologist at 08:31 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I saw George Monbiot speak at Duke University a couple years back, and I was impressed by the passion of his talk. I even bought a copy of his book, Manifesto for a New World Order, which I almost never do after such seminars. I recently reread the book, to sort through what in it I agree with and what in it I do not. I take issue with some of his specific solutions. I’m also more of a moderate politically than Monbiot, so it makes for awkward reading in spots. Nevertheless, the book is very important just for pointing out how manifestly undemocratic the current global system of governance is. Furthermore, Monbiot vigorously defends the need to strive for something more democratic than the current global system of governance: “If you consider this distribution of power acceptable, that is your choice, but please do not call yourself a democrat. If you consider yourself a democrat, you must surely acknowledge the need for radical change.”

The proposal in the book that most grabbed my imagination was for a global parliament, as a compliment to or replacement for the United Nations and its one-nation-one-vote paradigm. Monbiot points out that this proposal is repulsive to many in the developed world, simply because of the overwhelming dominance in the system of the developing countries, due to their large populations. As a landscape ecologist and a geographer, I was interested in how this would look on a map. Below is a map of 400 voting blocks of approximately equal population, based on the excellent global grid of population in 1995 available from the Columbia Earth Institute. First of all, let me say what this map is NOT: It is not an attempt to put forth a reasonable set of voting districts (which would be rather arrogant of me, as such things are always the outcome of a political process), nor is it an endorsement necessarily of Monbiot’s scheme for a world parliament. The idea is to get people thinking about how political power would be distributed if every person on earth had equal voting power. While national boundaries are shown on the map to help orient the reader, they were not used at all in the creation of these voting districts, and so the districts freely span national boundaries when population densities require that. Note the high density of small regions in southeastern Asia, particularly India and China- this is simply due to the high population density in these places.

Click on the thumbnail to the left to view a global map and a close-up of southeast Asia. Each color is a region with around 15 million people.

Now, technical details on how this was made: Population data were taken from the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University; International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI); and World Resources Institute (WRI). 2000. Gridded Population of the World (GPW), Version 2. Palisades, NY: CIESIN, Columbia University. Available at http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/plue/gpw. This gives population estimates in latitude/longitude for cells that are about 5km on a side near the equator. To perform my calculations in a projection system that is more equal-area than geographic, the grid was projected into a Robinson projection, which is reasonably equal-area between 45 and -45 latitude, and doesn’t have the high distortion of shape and distance at high latitudes that a true equal-are projection (e.g., sinusoidal projection) would. The current algorithm for dividing the world’s population into geographic blocks is very crude (this is why it’s so boxy), and is literally just what I could do last night when I had a couple hours of spare time.

1. Global population, excluding any already assigned persons, is summed in an X by X resolution grid for the whole globe, starting with small values of X like 50km.
2. If any cells in this grid are within the target population range (10 million to 20 million), they are saved as one voting district.
3. The global population grid is recalculated to exclude folks assigned in #2.
4. Increase the size of X slightly and repeat steps 1-4 until all areas of the globe are classified.

Now, there is an algorithm that’s quite similar to the algorithm used for spatially-constrained clustering that could be used with this data, where individual cells are agglomerated until the target size is reached. This algorithm would give much smoother looking voting districts, but I think I’d have to spend a couple days writing custom code to do it (there are, after all, some 24 million cells in the population grid), and I just don’t have the time!

Posted by ecologist at 08:24 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Every US newspaper these days seems obliged to write some piece about “Democracy on the March,” usually somehow crediting Mr. Bush for the events in Lebanon and the Ukraine. Leaving aside this somewhat dubious attribution, we might ask what the effect of further democratization would be on the environment. Are democracies able to better control pollution and environmental destruction? We in the environmental movement have sometimes been seen as rather elitist, and indeed have occasionally enjoyed the ease with which deals can be struck with autocratic institutions. At the same time, however, we style ourselves as progressives, and instinctively want to root for democracy.

We environmentalists can thus take heart at the generally positive correlation between democratic governance and environmentally sound decision-making. At any given level of economic development countries with democratic governments generally have more environmentally friendly policies than autocratic governments. This is especially true for key pollutants, like sewage, that also have severe human health impacts. Perhaps the best example of this general rule is China, which has achieved rapid growth in GDP and education levels (which are not well correlated with democratization), but has some of the most severe environmental damage of any country. There, the top-down leadership of the Communist party allows local environmental problems to be effectively ignored.

A general principle of environmental governance should be: regulate (in the broad sense of the word) at the level at which a problem occurs. Thus, aesthetic considerations of land-use should be dealt with by local municipalities. Food safety considerations, regarding what are acceptable levels of mercury for instance, should be set at a national level. And global warming must similarly be regulated at a global level. The challenge of course is that increased ecological knowledge often highlights such international connections, but in the current world of international political anarchy little effective regulation is possible.

Posted by ecologist at 08:19 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I’m sitting in a posh lobby in the Atlanta Hilton, reading the tragicomic The Crisis of Democracy by Michael Crozier, Samuel Huntington, and Joji Watanuki. I picked it up mostly for the historical value, as the book that launched a thousand conspiracy theories about the Trilateral Commission. It’s an exceedingly odd book, not for what is said, but for what is not. Throughout the whole book, and particularly in the rather vapid piece by Michael Crozier on Western Europe, there is an unstated other, some degree of liberty-drunk citizens who desire anarchy. Samuel Huntington’s argument is more well-crafted, and goes a little something like this: There had been a sharp rise in political participation in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as a rise in the amount of turmoil in the government; the former factor caused the latter, since too vigorous a democracy leads to political polarization and “democratic distemper”; the way to cure this distemper is to reduce the power of the masses.

It’s an odd argument, foremost because Huntington himself grudgingly admits that more “rational” explanation for the crises of the 1960s and 1970s “could conceivably be the specific policy problems confronting the US… and its inability to deal effectively with those problems.” With the distance of almost 40 years the book also seems somewhat incongruous, as the specific problems it worries about are long gone. Still, I’ve been mulling it over in my head, and the fundamental issue- how to structure a republic so the will of the majority doesn’t trample on the rights of the minority- will always remain a bit of balancing act.

In an odd way, this debate reminds me of the explorations in ecology of how species diversity affects stability. Such studies, both theoretical and empirical, are common in ecology. Generally, more species doesn’t equal more stability in species composition, and in fact the introduction of a new species inevitably changes the species composition to a lesser or greater degree (this is hard to predict, actually). However, having more species around does tend to increase the stability of (at least some) overall properties of the system like productivity simply because, in the event of a perturbation to the system, there are more entities to fill any gaps. In a similar way, I think Huntington is frustrated because the introduction of new political actors is changing the distribution of power among actors. This does not, however, necessarily imply that things like the constitutional process in the US are at risk. In fact, the broader distribution of power among more actors may increase the checks and balances in the system; this is, after all, what the Locke tradition is all about.

Posted by ecologist at 08:14 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

President’s Bush’s visit to Brussels yesterday, the first leg of a European tour to repair America’s image on the continent, is noteworthy not for what was discussed but for what wasn’t. Predictably, politicians on both sides of the Atlantic hailed Bush for the effort, and journalists depicted the US and Europe as a feuding couple on the mend. Missing from the political discussion was any indication of the profound irony of the Bush administration’s thinly-disguised wariness at European unity, given the central role the US played in its creation. After the Second World War, the U.S. virtually forced Germany and France into the European Economic Community, starting a process of integration that eventually led to the EU. The referendum on the new EU Constitution, which just squeaked by in Spain, should thus properly be seen as a triumph of American diplomacy. Somehow, though, this victory has become dirty, forbidden, an affront to the U.S. neoconservative worldview.

Perhaps if in the postwar period, Dean Acheson could refer to his role in American diplomacy and proudly say he was “present at the creation,” Colin Powell can write in his memoirs that he was “present at the destruction.” There is not a single major international treaty, outside of those at the World Trade Organization, that the US now plays a leading role in. This is an embarrassment. There will be protestors following Bush around Europe, and while some of their actions can be attributed to a mean-spirited anti-Americanism, many more can be attributed to the pervasive sense in Europe that Americahas not just become irrelevant to the idea of an international community but openly hostile to it. Nowhere is this attitude more glaring than in our continued rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, even as it comes into force for most of the rest of the developed world, and even as reports on the possible effects of climate change grow more dire: a just-released study by researchers at Tufts and Boston University suggests that increases in sea level caused by global warming will flood much of downtown Boston. Here again, there is irony. The U.S.played a central role in pushing for the carbon trading scheme in the Kyoto Protocol, only to abandon the protocol later. A decade from now, when we look enviously at the carbon traders in Londonwho have made millions brokering this new industry, we should remember that those brokers could have been working on Wall Street instead. Without an honest discussion of the philosophical chasm between the leadership of the EU, who fashion themselves as a modern Athenian League, and the leadership of the U.S., who want to institute a new Pax Americana, all of Bush’s high-minded words in Brussels, are meaningless. His visit is but window-dressing on the shattered trans-Atlantic relationship.

Posted by ecologist at 08:09 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Zephyr Teachout's excellent piece on PDF, about what the Internet can accomplish with respect to progressive organizing, has certainly gotten a lot of attention recently. She's been barraged by commentary from all sides, and so I resisted the urge to post directly about it, especially as I am a scientist, not a political activist. Zephyr argues, quite persuasively, that the decline of local, neighborhood organizations- rotary clubs, bowling leagues, you name it- has depaupered American life and American democracy. The decline has also meant that national organizations like the ACLU, NOW, and even the DNC, have disconnected from the "grassroots", the sentiments and actions of everyday citizens. Zephyr stresses the role that the Internet could play in reconnecting the "grassroots" to the national organization. Her piece made me want to comment on two issues, that she addressed tangentially in her piece but which I'm in the mood to elaborate on.

First, Zephyr's article is very much written for those at the national headquarter's of organizations, helping them see what structural steps can be taken to reinvigorate and empower the grassroots. While that's an extremely important set of changes that need to take place, I think such a top-down focus misses some of the core issue. In many national organizations, particularly in the environmental sector where I work, there's considerable resistance to devolving power downward, because it entails a lack of full control of the message of the organization. Such devolution has only occured when there are active chapters demanding it- that is, the devolution was initiated at the grassroots, not at the national headquarters. Ideally, there can be a push from grassroots activists for devolution while national headquarters actively facilitates that transition.

Second, from my perspective as an environmentalist, Zephyr's piece echoes a general push toward "localization" in the progressive community. I've always been suspicious of such proposals unless they can also act on the global stage. There's a need not just for more involvement at a local level in national struggles, but more "horizontel" activity between organizations, especially across national boundaries. Here, too, the Internet has an important role, already facilitating such collaborations as the World Social Forums and the series of global protests against the Iraq war. I would humbly add to Zephyr's argument that if organizations like the ACLU and the DNC want to be more effective, there need to be strengthened links between them and like-minded organizations across borders. Such a linking has already begun to some extent, but in my opinion needs to be greatly strengthed to make these organizations more meaningful in a globalized world.

Posted by ecologist at 08:08 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I ended up, quite by chance, in a crowd of about 10,000 people gathered in downtown Raleigh, NC, to rally against the planned US invasion of Iraq. It was 15 February 2003, and around the world protests were taking   place, urging the US to give the inspectors more time. I've been thinking of   that day often recently, of how it was full of hope and optimism and a surprising sense of global solidarity, of how naive all such sentiments seem now, as I   read Thomas Friedman's book Longitudes and Attitudes, which is really just a collection of his N.Y. Times pieces for the last several years. One essay in particular has been sticking in my head, from 2 February 2003, in which Friedman contrasts American optimism, our belief that we can really change the world for the better, with European "cynicism and insecurity."  I too think there's something wonderfully optimistic about the American character,   a willingness to call the future a blank slate, to declare that the "past   is a bucket of ashes," as Sandburg once said. Still, there is something   that strikes me as wrong with Friedman's argument.

In Barcelona alone, a city only three times bigger than Raleigh, somewhere close to a million people demonstrated. To dismiss this entire showing as displaced  jealousy of America and nostalgia for an old colonial empire, as Friedman does, is to miss the point. Whenever millions of people come out for an event like   February 15, there will be a diversity of motivations, and perhaps a few Europeans   were motivated by the nationalistic desires that Friedman attributes to them.   Many more, however, truly believed they were sending an honest humanitarian   message to the world, which when you stop to think about it is an amazingly   optimistic thing to do, given the state of international politics. Seen in this light, most Europeans were (and are) profoundly optimistic about the future, in that they can envision a world not ruled by any particular county or empire   but governed by an (occasionally bureaucratic) community of nations. In contrast,   most Americans, or at least American politicians, seem to envision the future   as fundamentally about the extension and maintenance of the American Empire-  the only disagreement among the political parties is how bare-knuckled we should   be about it. What's so optimistic about that, Mr. Friedman?

Posted by ecologist at 07:41 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)