The current financial crisis is not only a disaster for the economy but it exposes in the starkest terms the collapse of American democracy.
A significant number of legislators in Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, refused to vote for the first version of the $700 billion bailout bill because they got a lot of heat from their constituents. Why bail out the banks and not help the people who are losing or have lost their homes because someone tricked them into buying a balloon mortgage? Why bailout the big banks and investment firms without penalizing them for their terribly bad judgment? We are being told over and over again that many of the bankers and investors who lost billions of dollars bought securities which they did not completely understand. It is quite clear that a large part of responsibility for the current economic situation rests with large banks and their leadership. But Congress is being asked to spend an unbelievably large sum of public money to rescue them without holding them responsible.
The bailout pointedly ignores ordinary citizens. Ordinary citizens are held responsible for their lack of judgment or care in buying their homes. A while ago when the suggestion was made to help homeowners who lost their homes, the President refused to take the suggestion on the grounds that we do not want to encourage people to be irresponsible. The lesson is clear: if you are irresponsible in a small way, stand in the corner and be ashamed of yourself and then go live in your car. But if you are irresponsible to the tune of many many billions of dollars, the government will help you out.
Congress is about to pass a bailout bill. It does not contain significant help for homeowners. It does not contain serious punishment for irresponsible investors.
Add to all of this the fact that those $700 billion come out of taxpayer's pocket because that's the only place government gets money. Since the government already is in debt over its ears, it will simply have to borrow more money and our children and grandchildren will have to pay back, to make up for the bad judgments and irresponsibility of the likes of Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers.
But then you say: wait a minute. Is this not supposed to be government of the people, for the people, and by the people? Is that not what they taught us in school? Did they not tell us that we control the government through the mechanism of electing representatives who either fulfill our wishes or will be punished by not being reelected?
But if these representatives represent us, the people, how can they take our money and give it to the people who already have more than they possibly need over many lifetimes?
In this way this financial crisis is also a deep crisis for democracy because it shows that ours is not a people's government.
On Wednesday, October 1, 2008 the Boston Globe ran this paragraph:
"A nonpartisan watchdog group calculated that U.S. Congress members who voted yes [to the proposed bailout plan] received 51% more in campaign contributions from the finance, insurance, and real estate sector in their congressional careers than those who opposed the emergency legislation."
The big banks insurance companies and real estate interests have bought a lot of representatives. Their money counts for whole lot more with these representatives than the votes from their electorate. These Representatives voted to bailout their benefactors. Congressional representatives less generously gifted by a banking and insurance and real estate listened to their voters more closely and voted against the bill.
Obviuously, this is a grand generalization. Not every Representative who voted to support the bailout is bought off by large financial institutions. Not every Representative who opposed the bailout did so from regard of ordinary ctizens. But the numbers cited convey a grim message: taking Congress as a whole, the votes go where the money comes from. Orinary citizens count for very little.
This crisis not only shows how fragile our economy is. It also shows that our democracy is in terrible trouble.
Can we still bail it out?
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Regulating the Markets
Last week, Sen. McCain came out in favor of regulating financial markets. That is a departure from traditional Republican orthodoxy that is truly astonishing. For 100 years or more, Republicans and many Democrats have told us that markets are "self-regulating." It does not matter what market you are talking about -- market for consumer goods, for machinery, for finance capital such as bank loans or mortgages -- sooner or later supply will meet demand and prices will reach a reasonable level. Markets do not need government regulation; on the contrary economic problems are caused by government regulation.
But now this orthodoxy has been given up by almost everyone who has trumpeted it for many years including the White House and Republican stalwarts like Sen. McCain. The new orthodoxy is that we must return to a law (adopted during the Great Depression after 1929 and abolished under Pres. Clinton) that separated ordinary banks from investment banks. Ordinary banks are where you deposit your paycheck, maybe open a savings account, and borrow money to buy a house or a car. Investment banks do not do any of that; they operate with large sums of investment funds and, frankly, gamble with those funds trying to make money. For a while everybody wins and then, as is happening currently, the bottom drops out and many people lose. (The CEO’s of bankrupt investment houses walk off with $200 million for their old age.) But we are now being told that all of this could be avoided if only we do not allow ordinary banks to gamble in the way of investment and if, secondly, we kept a closer eye on the investment banks’ gambling.
Not surprisingly, that oversimplifies our problem. In the last 40 years there have been regular government bailouts of private businesses -- the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1970, the Franklin National Bank and New York City in 1975, Chrysler in 1980, the Savings and Loan Banks in 1990, the airline industry in 2002, and now one investment bank after another to the tune of close to $1 trillion.
It is clearly not true that in all these different cases the problem was a confusion of ordinary and investment banking. Many of the bailouts occurred when ordinary and investment banks were still distinct. Our economic system has pervasive problems which our experts and legislators still do not want to recognize.
Here is just one of them. In a capitalist system everyone pursues his or her private interest and the "unseen hand" of the market is supposed to assure us that the outcome will be the best for all of us. You look after what's good for you; I look after myself and you and I and everyone else will be better off. Let's look at that.
Suppose you have a small business. You manufacture specialty paints. Your business does okay but your profit margin is small. Then, one day, you have an inspiration. You see that the cost of disposing of your waste, much of it hazardous, is significant. So you begin dumping your waste in the woods, save the money of proper disposal and increase your profit. That is clearly a good strategy for you but if everybody did this, the Earth would soon become unlivable from all the pollution. The market is not going to make that problem go away. What is good for the individual often is bad if practiced by everyone.
One more example: another way of raising your profit margin is to lower wages. Since your business is small you may even take on a few illegal immigrants and pay them less than minimum wage. The government is never going to check a small business like yours..
This strategy too will increase your profits and be good for you. If all enterprises follow the same policy the large majority of the population would have a lot less money at their disposal. Demand for ordinary consumption goods would fall and some businesses would go broke and the economy would go into a recession, if not worse. Policies that significantly decrease consumer demand are not good for the economy even though they may be very good for individual enterprises.
There is no reason to think that capitalist markets regulate themselves. Capitalist enterprises must be carefully supervised so that they do not adopt policies that are harmful to the economy as a whole.
The current crisis is the result of the religious faith in the self-regulating market -- a faith that has no support in actual fact. It is supported only by the self interest of capitalist enterprisers who do not want to be limited in the ways they make money, even if their methods are in the short or in the long run bad for consumers or the country as a whole.
This blatant self-interest of the pundits associated with business is still at work when they try to tell us that we just need to restore a one law that separates ordinary from investment banks and then everything will be fine. Unless the government takes a firm hand to protect us against capitalists, we will never be fine.
But since the capitalists own the government, for instance because they pay for the presidential of campaigns of Obama and McCain, we are bound to hear misleading diagnoses of our present problems. Ordinary citizens and voters should not believe everything they're told.
But now this orthodoxy has been given up by almost everyone who has trumpeted it for many years including the White House and Republican stalwarts like Sen. McCain. The new orthodoxy is that we must return to a law (adopted during the Great Depression after 1929 and abolished under Pres. Clinton) that separated ordinary banks from investment banks. Ordinary banks are where you deposit your paycheck, maybe open a savings account, and borrow money to buy a house or a car. Investment banks do not do any of that; they operate with large sums of investment funds and, frankly, gamble with those funds trying to make money. For a while everybody wins and then, as is happening currently, the bottom drops out and many people lose. (The CEO’s of bankrupt investment houses walk off with $200 million for their old age.) But we are now being told that all of this could be avoided if only we do not allow ordinary banks to gamble in the way of investment and if, secondly, we kept a closer eye on the investment banks’ gambling.
Not surprisingly, that oversimplifies our problem. In the last 40 years there have been regular government bailouts of private businesses -- the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1970, the Franklin National Bank and New York City in 1975, Chrysler in 1980, the Savings and Loan Banks in 1990, the airline industry in 2002, and now one investment bank after another to the tune of close to $1 trillion.
It is clearly not true that in all these different cases the problem was a confusion of ordinary and investment banking. Many of the bailouts occurred when ordinary and investment banks were still distinct. Our economic system has pervasive problems which our experts and legislators still do not want to recognize.
Here is just one of them. In a capitalist system everyone pursues his or her private interest and the "unseen hand" of the market is supposed to assure us that the outcome will be the best for all of us. You look after what's good for you; I look after myself and you and I and everyone else will be better off. Let's look at that.
Suppose you have a small business. You manufacture specialty paints. Your business does okay but your profit margin is small. Then, one day, you have an inspiration. You see that the cost of disposing of your waste, much of it hazardous, is significant. So you begin dumping your waste in the woods, save the money of proper disposal and increase your profit. That is clearly a good strategy for you but if everybody did this, the Earth would soon become unlivable from all the pollution. The market is not going to make that problem go away. What is good for the individual often is bad if practiced by everyone.
One more example: another way of raising your profit margin is to lower wages. Since your business is small you may even take on a few illegal immigrants and pay them less than minimum wage. The government is never going to check a small business like yours..
This strategy too will increase your profits and be good for you. If all enterprises follow the same policy the large majority of the population would have a lot less money at their disposal. Demand for ordinary consumption goods would fall and some businesses would go broke and the economy would go into a recession, if not worse. Policies that significantly decrease consumer demand are not good for the economy even though they may be very good for individual enterprises.
There is no reason to think that capitalist markets regulate themselves. Capitalist enterprises must be carefully supervised so that they do not adopt policies that are harmful to the economy as a whole.
The current crisis is the result of the religious faith in the self-regulating market -- a faith that has no support in actual fact. It is supported only by the self interest of capitalist enterprisers who do not want to be limited in the ways they make money, even if their methods are in the short or in the long run bad for consumers or the country as a whole.
This blatant self-interest of the pundits associated with business is still at work when they try to tell us that we just need to restore a one law that separates ordinary from investment banks and then everything will be fine. Unless the government takes a firm hand to protect us against capitalists, we will never be fine.
But since the capitalists own the government, for instance because they pay for the presidential of campaigns of Obama and McCain, we are bound to hear misleading diagnoses of our present problems. Ordinary citizens and voters should not believe everything they're told.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Our Power
Americans have long felt aggrieved by the 9/11. Here we are the most powerful nation of the world, completely innocent, sneakily attacked by a bunch of terrorists, mostly from Saudi Arabia, a firm ally of ours in the Mideast. We found ourselves in a "war on terrorism."
Seven years later, it is time to think again about what happened there. Is it really true that we are "the most powerful nation on earth"?
Many people think that our power rests on two pillars: our military and our economy. Our military consumes more than half of the annual expenditures of the US government. That enormous sum pays for the costs of past wars and the maintenance of the current military establishment, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have been fighting those two wars for more than five years -- longer than either World War I or World War II. So far it is not clear that we have won. Our military has been victorious only in attacks on tiny, tiny countries when Pres. Reagan attacked the Caribbean island nation of Grenada, and the elder Bush attacked the small nation of Panama. We have lost most serious wars since the middle of the last century. We lost to the North Vietnamese during the war in Vietnam and were fought to a draw by the Chinese during the war in Korea. Yes, it is true that we have enough nuclear weapons to annihilate all human life on earth. Yes it is also true that our military is more high tech than anyone else's but once again we seem to be unable to win out over the homemade explosives of shadowy opponents in Iraq or the Taliban of Afghanistan -- neither of them as well equipped as we are.
9/11 is just one more example of that. When the planes left Logan Airport and disappeared from the radar we could not even get our fighter planes up in the air. We were defenseless in spite of all the incredible expenditure for the military.
As to our economic power, the United States owes the $31,000 for every man, woman and child living in our country. We are heavily indebted; our debt is growing with every year at the same time as we have no money to keep up our roads and bridges, to give a decent education to all children, or to provide a minimally acceptable life for everyone. At the moment we can't even provide jobs for everyone or guarantee a roof over their head.
So much for two pillars of our power: our military is not equipped to fight our actual enemies. Our economy is in shambles. But there is a whole other aspect of national power which we have not even mentioned yet.
During the Vietnam war, the North Vietnamese moved troops and weapons and supplies through the jungles on bicycles. Due to a massive national effort they managed to defeat a richer and much better equipped, a "more powerful" enemy. The power of the nation does not only depend on its money and its weapons. The power of a nation, in the end, depends on the dedication of its citizens to national goals and to maintaining national institutions.
During World War II, the whole nation pitched in. "There was a war on" and everything was different; many people gladly made great sacrifices. But lately we have been unable to mobilize our national energies. After 9/11, President Bush did not call for a national mobilization. He told people to go shopping. No national coming together was called for or ever thought about. Bumper stickers saying "United we stand" was all we could do as a response to the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Only half of all Americans vote in presidential elections. 9/11 and the wars we are fighting abroad have not changed that. The military can barely fill its ranks and its recruits are overwhelmingly drawn from the poor for whom we do not manage to provide the prospects of decent work for decent pay. Ours is not an army of the people; it is an army of those who have few other alternatives or, more and more, an army of foreigners who join in order to get a green card or citizenship.
In the last 50 years, American political life has undergone profound changes. Our political parties used to be large organizations closely connected to ordinary voters. Every precinct and ward had their party organizations, further subdivided into individual block committees. The parties employed a large network of volunteers whose job it was to know the people on their block, to listen to their grievances and to get them to vote for their candidate at election time.
The same was true of other organizations that had political agendas -- ethnic organizations, opponents of alcohol, PTA's and such. American democracy involved a significant number of citizens. Today the only role for citizens in politics is to send money. They neither work in the organization nor have any say when it comes to making policy.
Politics has become thoroughly professionalized. It is the business of full-time, paid operatives; citizens do not participate. If they do, if they take a grievances to a city counselor or to City Hall, they may get a hearing -- if they're lucky -- but the odds are that no one will take their recommendations seriously. They may be listened to but will not be heard. Professional politicians and bureaucrats are in charge -- citizens no longer have any power. They vote and after that they are supposed to disappear quietly.
As a result citizens have become passive. They do not trust the government to pay attention to them. Even if they face serious problems, they complain to their friends but not to the government, for what's the use?
One example of that: as the new school year begins, many school districts are unable to provide the most basic supplies such as pencils or toilet paper. The schools must appeal to parents to provide these essential items. But we hear no loud complaints about that.
Another example: more than two thirds of the electorate want the war in Iraq to end. There is no sign that anyone in the government is paying serious attention to that.
We have become weak in spite of our arsenal of atomic bombs because we lack unity as a nation. We have fragmented into different groups. There is the government and its bureaucrats. They say they represent us, but do not really. Instead they do as they please. Then there are the working Americans who barely get by these days. The government is willing to save the banks but not the houses or jobs of ordinary Americans. They work but the government looks away from them. Then there are other Americans who do not manage to get by even though many of them work more than one job. Others again will take any job if only they could get one. Their best chance is to fight America's wars.
9/11 was not an attack on us although ordinary citizens lost their lives. The airplanes attacked the US government which was even then hatching plans for Mideast wars. They had been thinking about that for years but had not talked about them. Our government does not tell us Americans what it is planning; once it has decided to go to war it tries to sell that project to us by telling lies. It stages elaborate electoral campaigns to make us think that it represents us.
9/11 and its aftermath exposes the weakness of America: all our smart bombs are no remedy for the weakness of the nation whose government has separated itself from the people.
Seven years later, it is time to think again about what happened there. Is it really true that we are "the most powerful nation on earth"?
Many people think that our power rests on two pillars: our military and our economy. Our military consumes more than half of the annual expenditures of the US government. That enormous sum pays for the costs of past wars and the maintenance of the current military establishment, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have been fighting those two wars for more than five years -- longer than either World War I or World War II. So far it is not clear that we have won. Our military has been victorious only in attacks on tiny, tiny countries when Pres. Reagan attacked the Caribbean island nation of Grenada, and the elder Bush attacked the small nation of Panama. We have lost most serious wars since the middle of the last century. We lost to the North Vietnamese during the war in Vietnam and were fought to a draw by the Chinese during the war in Korea. Yes, it is true that we have enough nuclear weapons to annihilate all human life on earth. Yes it is also true that our military is more high tech than anyone else's but once again we seem to be unable to win out over the homemade explosives of shadowy opponents in Iraq or the Taliban of Afghanistan -- neither of them as well equipped as we are.
9/11 is just one more example of that. When the planes left Logan Airport and disappeared from the radar we could not even get our fighter planes up in the air. We were defenseless in spite of all the incredible expenditure for the military.
As to our economic power, the United States owes the $31,000 for every man, woman and child living in our country. We are heavily indebted; our debt is growing with every year at the same time as we have no money to keep up our roads and bridges, to give a decent education to all children, or to provide a minimally acceptable life for everyone. At the moment we can't even provide jobs for everyone or guarantee a roof over their head.
So much for two pillars of our power: our military is not equipped to fight our actual enemies. Our economy is in shambles. But there is a whole other aspect of national power which we have not even mentioned yet.
During the Vietnam war, the North Vietnamese moved troops and weapons and supplies through the jungles on bicycles. Due to a massive national effort they managed to defeat a richer and much better equipped, a "more powerful" enemy. The power of the nation does not only depend on its money and its weapons. The power of a nation, in the end, depends on the dedication of its citizens to national goals and to maintaining national institutions.
During World War II, the whole nation pitched in. "There was a war on" and everything was different; many people gladly made great sacrifices. But lately we have been unable to mobilize our national energies. After 9/11, President Bush did not call for a national mobilization. He told people to go shopping. No national coming together was called for or ever thought about. Bumper stickers saying "United we stand" was all we could do as a response to the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Only half of all Americans vote in presidential elections. 9/11 and the wars we are fighting abroad have not changed that. The military can barely fill its ranks and its recruits are overwhelmingly drawn from the poor for whom we do not manage to provide the prospects of decent work for decent pay. Ours is not an army of the people; it is an army of those who have few other alternatives or, more and more, an army of foreigners who join in order to get a green card or citizenship.
In the last 50 years, American political life has undergone profound changes. Our political parties used to be large organizations closely connected to ordinary voters. Every precinct and ward had their party organizations, further subdivided into individual block committees. The parties employed a large network of volunteers whose job it was to know the people on their block, to listen to their grievances and to get them to vote for their candidate at election time.
The same was true of other organizations that had political agendas -- ethnic organizations, opponents of alcohol, PTA's and such. American democracy involved a significant number of citizens. Today the only role for citizens in politics is to send money. They neither work in the organization nor have any say when it comes to making policy.
Politics has become thoroughly professionalized. It is the business of full-time, paid operatives; citizens do not participate. If they do, if they take a grievances to a city counselor or to City Hall, they may get a hearing -- if they're lucky -- but the odds are that no one will take their recommendations seriously. They may be listened to but will not be heard. Professional politicians and bureaucrats are in charge -- citizens no longer have any power. They vote and after that they are supposed to disappear quietly.
As a result citizens have become passive. They do not trust the government to pay attention to them. Even if they face serious problems, they complain to their friends but not to the government, for what's the use?
One example of that: as the new school year begins, many school districts are unable to provide the most basic supplies such as pencils or toilet paper. The schools must appeal to parents to provide these essential items. But we hear no loud complaints about that.
Another example: more than two thirds of the electorate want the war in Iraq to end. There is no sign that anyone in the government is paying serious attention to that.
We have become weak in spite of our arsenal of atomic bombs because we lack unity as a nation. We have fragmented into different groups. There is the government and its bureaucrats. They say they represent us, but do not really. Instead they do as they please. Then there are the working Americans who barely get by these days. The government is willing to save the banks but not the houses or jobs of ordinary Americans. They work but the government looks away from them. Then there are other Americans who do not manage to get by even though many of them work more than one job. Others again will take any job if only they could get one. Their best chance is to fight America's wars.
9/11 was not an attack on us although ordinary citizens lost their lives. The airplanes attacked the US government which was even then hatching plans for Mideast wars. They had been thinking about that for years but had not talked about them. Our government does not tell us Americans what it is planning; once it has decided to go to war it tries to sell that project to us by telling lies. It stages elaborate electoral campaigns to make us think that it represents us.
9/11 and its aftermath exposes the weakness of America: all our smart bombs are no remedy for the weakness of the nation whose government has separated itself from the people.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Punishment: Retribution, protection, reform
The United States Supreme Court has decided that execution is too harsh a punishment for a man who raped his stepdaughter at age 8. Execution, the majority of the Court suggested, is appropriate only if the crime committed is murder. Those who take the life of another, the court believes, themselves deserve to die.
Punishment inflicts pain. The murderer or rapist who inflicts pain on a victim, their families and friends must, once apprehended and convicted, be subjected to comparable pain. Punishment serves the cause of retribution or, more plainly, of revenge.
We think frequently that revenge serves the cause of justice. The balance of rights and wrongs is disturbed when persons are assaulted or killed. The balance of rights and wrongs is restored, we believe, when the Courts inflict pain on the rapist or murderer commensurate with the pain suffered by the victims.
All of this seems pretty straightforward: someone harms somebody else, is arrested and tried. Once convicted, the court pronounces punishment commensurate to the crime committed. The victim's suffering is compensated for by the pain inflicted on the perpetrator of the crime.
But sometimes our courts treat lawbreakers who harm others in very different ways. A recent newspaper story reports that a negligent driver who put a bicyclist in the hospital for months was sentenced to probation and 100 hours of community service. The victim, who at first was not expected to survive the accident, and his family expressed disappointment at this verdict. They had hoped that the negligent driver would be subjected to more serious suffering.
Men, arrested for aggressive acts, sometimes against their spouses and children, do not always end in jail but, instead, are sent to take anger management classes. Instead of being made to suffer as they made others suffer, efforts are made to help them become better persons, better citizens, husbands and fathers.
Sometimes, in cases of family violence courts mandate mediation. Here the parties to the conflict--different members of a family--are told by a judge to sit down with a trained mediator to try to work out the family conflict and to come up with some set of commitments for future behavior that would avoid a repetition of previous violent episodes. The hope is that mediation can reestablish good communication within the family and help them find new and less destructive ways to overcome conflicts that arise inevitably where people live together in close quarters.
Community service, anger management, mediation--three attempts to try to prevent recurrence of crimes by trying to get at the causes of injuries brought about by negligence, by anger out of control, by the breakdown of family communication. Here we see a very different way of thinking about law breaking. Here the focus is not on retribution, on balancing pain inflicted by the pain of the perpetrator. Instead everyone tries to prevent recurrence of negligent injury, of uncontrolled rage, of physical violence instead of dialog.
Not everyone may be able to reform. Lawbreakers who are expected to commit further outrages should be confined in order to protect society. They may be locked up for a long time or, if we believe it necessary for ever. But notice that their imprisonment also is not in order to punish them, to inflict pain to balance the pain they have inflicted on others, but to protect all of us against them. The purpose is not to make them suffer to keep us safe.
It is not obvious that matching pain with pain is the only, let alone the best way of dealing with social conflicts and break downs that end up in court. In some situations long term confinement for the sake of protecting everyone, not punishment is the purpose of imprisonment. In others we consider it preferable not to inflict more pain than has already been caused but to try to remedy personal and social malfunctions by trying to change persons or social systems such as a family constellation.
This is not a new idea. When the Women's Prison in Framingham, MA was first established in the early 1900s, women who were mothers could have their children with them. The prison had an extensive school program. The entire effort was directed towards offering wider opportunities to the inmates in the hope that, once released from jail, they could make a better life for themselves, than the life they had before that ended up with their incarceration.
The Supreme Court decision takes for granted, without question, that punishment, retribution, revenge are the proper ways of dealing with crime. But while that may be satisfying to those affected by crime, it is not in the interest of the society as a whole. We want a world with less crime, less violence, fewer careless injuries of others. We want a world where fewer persons are out of control, unable to live satisfying and positive lives and therefore looking for opportunities to inflict pain on others. The interest of the society is in keeping everyone safe and, for the rest, in reform, in education, in trying to help persons in conflict with their neighbors and the law, to improve their lives so that they can be less destructive, happier and can make a contribution to society. The society as a whole does not improve when pain is avenged by causing more pain.
But, you say, what about the victims? If someone rapes and murders your child must you then stand by to see the courts and the prison system try to help the rapist and murderer to learn to live a better life? Are you not entitled to some minimal consolation for your loss?
Yes, you certainly are. But is the best that we can do for the victims of crime to feed their anger and deep pain by judicial murder? Concern for the victims of crimes is of course essential. But so far all we do is to allow them to witness the execution of the person who inflicted such terrible pain on them.
There surely are better ways of helping victims of crime to rebuild their shattered lives.
Punishment inflicts pain. The murderer or rapist who inflicts pain on a victim, their families and friends must, once apprehended and convicted, be subjected to comparable pain. Punishment serves the cause of retribution or, more plainly, of revenge.
We think frequently that revenge serves the cause of justice. The balance of rights and wrongs is disturbed when persons are assaulted or killed. The balance of rights and wrongs is restored, we believe, when the Courts inflict pain on the rapist or murderer commensurate with the pain suffered by the victims.
All of this seems pretty straightforward: someone harms somebody else, is arrested and tried. Once convicted, the court pronounces punishment commensurate to the crime committed. The victim's suffering is compensated for by the pain inflicted on the perpetrator of the crime.
But sometimes our courts treat lawbreakers who harm others in very different ways. A recent newspaper story reports that a negligent driver who put a bicyclist in the hospital for months was sentenced to probation and 100 hours of community service. The victim, who at first was not expected to survive the accident, and his family expressed disappointment at this verdict. They had hoped that the negligent driver would be subjected to more serious suffering.
Men, arrested for aggressive acts, sometimes against their spouses and children, do not always end in jail but, instead, are sent to take anger management classes. Instead of being made to suffer as they made others suffer, efforts are made to help them become better persons, better citizens, husbands and fathers.
Sometimes, in cases of family violence courts mandate mediation. Here the parties to the conflict--different members of a family--are told by a judge to sit down with a trained mediator to try to work out the family conflict and to come up with some set of commitments for future behavior that would avoid a repetition of previous violent episodes. The hope is that mediation can reestablish good communication within the family and help them find new and less destructive ways to overcome conflicts that arise inevitably where people live together in close quarters.
Community service, anger management, mediation--three attempts to try to prevent recurrence of crimes by trying to get at the causes of injuries brought about by negligence, by anger out of control, by the breakdown of family communication. Here we see a very different way of thinking about law breaking. Here the focus is not on retribution, on balancing pain inflicted by the pain of the perpetrator. Instead everyone tries to prevent recurrence of negligent injury, of uncontrolled rage, of physical violence instead of dialog.
Not everyone may be able to reform. Lawbreakers who are expected to commit further outrages should be confined in order to protect society. They may be locked up for a long time or, if we believe it necessary for ever. But notice that their imprisonment also is not in order to punish them, to inflict pain to balance the pain they have inflicted on others, but to protect all of us against them. The purpose is not to make them suffer to keep us safe.
It is not obvious that matching pain with pain is the only, let alone the best way of dealing with social conflicts and break downs that end up in court. In some situations long term confinement for the sake of protecting everyone, not punishment is the purpose of imprisonment. In others we consider it preferable not to inflict more pain than has already been caused but to try to remedy personal and social malfunctions by trying to change persons or social systems such as a family constellation.
This is not a new idea. When the Women's Prison in Framingham, MA was first established in the early 1900s, women who were mothers could have their children with them. The prison had an extensive school program. The entire effort was directed towards offering wider opportunities to the inmates in the hope that, once released from jail, they could make a better life for themselves, than the life they had before that ended up with their incarceration.
The Supreme Court decision takes for granted, without question, that punishment, retribution, revenge are the proper ways of dealing with crime. But while that may be satisfying to those affected by crime, it is not in the interest of the society as a whole. We want a world with less crime, less violence, fewer careless injuries of others. We want a world where fewer persons are out of control, unable to live satisfying and positive lives and therefore looking for opportunities to inflict pain on others. The interest of the society is in keeping everyone safe and, for the rest, in reform, in education, in trying to help persons in conflict with their neighbors and the law, to improve their lives so that they can be less destructive, happier and can make a contribution to society. The society as a whole does not improve when pain is avenged by causing more pain.
But, you say, what about the victims? If someone rapes and murders your child must you then stand by to see the courts and the prison system try to help the rapist and murderer to learn to live a better life? Are you not entitled to some minimal consolation for your loss?
Yes, you certainly are. But is the best that we can do for the victims of crime to feed their anger and deep pain by judicial murder? Concern for the victims of crimes is of course essential. But so far all we do is to allow them to witness the execution of the person who inflicted such terrible pain on them.
There surely are better ways of helping victims of crime to rebuild their shattered lives.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Slavery and Guilt
An upcoming PBS special "Traces of the Trade: a Story from the Deep North" chronicles the trip taken by 10 members of the DeWolfe family to visit the slave castles in Ghana
and places in Cuba. Their family had traded slaves from Ghana and used them in their Cuban sugar plantations in the 19th century. The documentary is based on a book written by one of the members of this family, Katrina Browne, uncovering the family's history in the trafficking in human beings.
According to one man who went on this journey, James DeWolfe Perry V, people who had read the book or seen the documentary asked him whether he felt any guilt because his ancestors were slavers. He responds: "I don't feel guilty about what my ancestors did, because I didn't do it."
That seems right. It is unreasonable to feel guilt about things one did not do. What is more, guilt often paralyzes people. The guilty indulge in endless self accusation that keep them from taking action to repair the damage done, wherever possible. Guilt can, however, take more positive forms. Instead of an emotion that paralyzes, guilt, at its best, is an eagerness to make amends, to help those one has harmed, and to improve oneself to do better in the future.
The slave trade is a thing of the past -- or almost so. Last week a very rich couple in New York was convicted of keeping their undocumented household help as virtual slaves. There is still a trade in women destined to end up as prostitutes. They, too, are virtually enslaved.
But the slave system as it existed until the Civil War and, for all practical purposes, for another hundred years after that, it is now no longer with us. Feeling guilt about what is past is unproductive.
But to the extent that the after effects of the slave system are still with us, all of us deserve to feel guilt -- not the guilt that paralyzes by self accusation, but the guilt that wants to change the world and also ourselves for the better.
Yes, to be sure the Democratic party has nominated a black man to be its presidential candidate. Other black men and women hold positions of leadership in business, in government, in the arts and in local communities. At the same time, average black Americans earn less, own less wealth, and are more likely to end up in prison, or to receive second-rate medical care when they are sick than many white people. Slavery may be a thing of the past but its effects are still with us.
Its effects are with us in a second way. The descendants of the DeWolfe family travels to Africa and to Cuba to retrace some of its family history. People on welfare usually don't undertake that kind of travel. That family and many others still profit from the slave trading of their ancestors. So do American institutions. Another Rhode Island family, the Browns, became wealthy in the slave trade and endowed a college which is now known as Brown University. The students and faculty at that college are still the beneficiaries of the slave trade.
The effects of the slave trade remain are very much with us in the well-being of some and the difficult lives of others.
All of us, including James DeWolfe Perry V, should acknowledge that these inequalities are an important heritage from our slave owning ancestors. We may let them suffer the punishment of a just God. But those of us who profit from the after effects of the slave trade must take responsibility for that and work as hard as we can to end racial discrimination and its many injustices.
Some examples: schools in low income -- and that means frequently black or Hispanic -- neighborhoods often have fewer resources than schools in more affluent neighborhoods. As taxpayers we must resist the agitation for lowering taxes and instead be willing to pay for giving a good education to all children, especially those whose ancestors were enslaved by the ancestors of some of us. We must be willing to provide a halfway decent standard of living to everyone and that involves food, shelter, medical care and access to education.
As long as the effects of slavery endure we must redouble our efforts to overcome them.
and places in Cuba. Their family had traded slaves from Ghana and used them in their Cuban sugar plantations in the 19th century. The documentary is based on a book written by one of the members of this family, Katrina Browne, uncovering the family's history in the trafficking in human beings.
According to one man who went on this journey, James DeWolfe Perry V, people who had read the book or seen the documentary asked him whether he felt any guilt because his ancestors were slavers. He responds: "I don't feel guilty about what my ancestors did, because I didn't do it."
That seems right. It is unreasonable to feel guilt about things one did not do. What is more, guilt often paralyzes people. The guilty indulge in endless self accusation that keep them from taking action to repair the damage done, wherever possible. Guilt can, however, take more positive forms. Instead of an emotion that paralyzes, guilt, at its best, is an eagerness to make amends, to help those one has harmed, and to improve oneself to do better in the future.
The slave trade is a thing of the past -- or almost so. Last week a very rich couple in New York was convicted of keeping their undocumented household help as virtual slaves. There is still a trade in women destined to end up as prostitutes. They, too, are virtually enslaved.
But the slave system as it existed until the Civil War and, for all practical purposes, for another hundred years after that, it is now no longer with us. Feeling guilt about what is past is unproductive.
But to the extent that the after effects of the slave system are still with us, all of us deserve to feel guilt -- not the guilt that paralyzes by self accusation, but the guilt that wants to change the world and also ourselves for the better.
Yes, to be sure the Democratic party has nominated a black man to be its presidential candidate. Other black men and women hold positions of leadership in business, in government, in the arts and in local communities. At the same time, average black Americans earn less, own less wealth, and are more likely to end up in prison, or to receive second-rate medical care when they are sick than many white people. Slavery may be a thing of the past but its effects are still with us.
Its effects are with us in a second way. The descendants of the DeWolfe family travels to Africa and to Cuba to retrace some of its family history. People on welfare usually don't undertake that kind of travel. That family and many others still profit from the slave trading of their ancestors. So do American institutions. Another Rhode Island family, the Browns, became wealthy in the slave trade and endowed a college which is now known as Brown University. The students and faculty at that college are still the beneficiaries of the slave trade.
The effects of the slave trade remain are very much with us in the well-being of some and the difficult lives of others.
All of us, including James DeWolfe Perry V, should acknowledge that these inequalities are an important heritage from our slave owning ancestors. We may let them suffer the punishment of a just God. But those of us who profit from the after effects of the slave trade must take responsibility for that and work as hard as we can to end racial discrimination and its many injustices.
Some examples: schools in low income -- and that means frequently black or Hispanic -- neighborhoods often have fewer resources than schools in more affluent neighborhoods. As taxpayers we must resist the agitation for lowering taxes and instead be willing to pay for giving a good education to all children, especially those whose ancestors were enslaved by the ancestors of some of us. We must be willing to provide a halfway decent standard of living to everyone and that involves food, shelter, medical care and access to education.
As long as the effects of slavery endure we must redouble our efforts to overcome them.
Terrorism and Torture
A brief item in the newspaper reports that, according to a recent opinion poll, "the number of Americans who would condone torture, at least when used on terrorists in order to save lives, has risen in the past two years to 44%." Another 53% disapproved of torture under all conditions.
Imagine the police bringing in a disheveled young man, first name Mohammed, born in Saudi Arabia (like Osama bin Laden) who is said to belong to a group threatening to blow up the school where your child is learning to read and write. Would you not be willing to do anything to this young Mohammed in order to prevent harm to your child? If we are honest, most of us would answer that question with a "Yes."
What then is wrong with those 53% who oppose torture? Don't they have children? Or do they have children they don't care for? Don't they know at least how precious their children are to most people?
Those 53% see the problem in this story about Mohammed. Told the story about terrorists threatening your child, your first reaction is to say: do anything to protect my child, including torture. But after a moment's thought the problem is obvious: how do we know Mohammed is a terrorist? One possible scenario is that he has confessed (without torture.) He has changed his mind, he does not want children to be hurt, he wants to help to prevent that terrible disaster. In that case no one needs to torture him because he is willing to tell all.
Suppose Mohammed denies the charge of terrorism. He claims not to know any of the other people suspected of plotting against the school. Should we torture him because he is a terrorist? How do we know that? Surely, we are committed to saying this: he is innocent until proven guilty. Unless a court case is brought against him that shows that he is indeed a terrorist, it is illegitimate to even consider torture.
Our legal system is a great human accomplishment. It demands that guilt must be proven, that accusations from third parties are not sufficient to label anybody a criminal or a terrorist . We should be proud of that legal principle of persons being innocent until proven guilty and should do everything to support it. Fortunately, US Courts are beginning to insist that our government accord fair treatment to its prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Recently a three judge Court of Appeals sharply criticized the government for holding a Chinese man for six years on no better evidence than that he had been accused of terrorism by the government in three separate documents.
We have not always adhered to these principles. In earlier days women were tortured and killed as witches on the mere say-so of some hysterical child. Black men and women, and some whites, were dragged from jails, without trials, hung, burned and mutilated by angry mobs. People used to be punished for actions they had not committed; rumors were sufficient (together with the victim's black skin). We now try to avoid those kinds of injustices.
We, therefore, may not call anyone a terrorist until a proper court proceeding has proven that. We may not torture anybody simply because someone has called him a terrorist, even if that someone is the US government, the FBI, the CIA, or his best friend. Without a trial in which he is convicted, Mohammed may not be called a terrorist or be treated as one.
The poll cited earlier shows that 44% of our fellow citizens are willing to torture terrorists "in order to save lives." This raises another worrisome question: do we know that torturing people saves lives? Many people point out that inflicting intense pain on someone is not likely to make him terribly truthful or a reliable witness. How reliable is information gained by torture? The answer to that question is not clear at all.
So why are 44% of our fellow citizens prepared to torture persons whose identity as terrorists has not been proven and whose possible torture has not been shown to save lives?
Frightened human beings do not think clearly and effectively. For the last eight years the government and many politicians have maintained a steady drumbeat of fear mongering.
They have resorted to a technique regularly used by governments ( and powerful private groups) to manipulate citizens. At the beginning of the war with Japan, the government created hysteria about a possible Japanese invasion of California, putting Japanese Americans--most of them American citizens whose sons and daughters were serving in the US military--in concentration camps. In the 1950's, at the beginning of the Cold War, paranoid anti-Communists instigated a new hysteria about internal subversion. Many lives were seriously disrupted by illegal and coercive inquisitions into political beliefs or membership which the Constitutions is supposed to protect. Today, our government, having woefully mismanaged the response to 9/11 is trying to distract us by fanning the fear of secret dangers that lurk everywhere--the "terrorists."
They do not serve us well. They do not serve our institutions well. It is not clear that they even enhance our safety. It is high time that we stopped talking as if our life was constantly in danger. It is high time to try to think clearly and calmly about terrorism and about torture.
Imagine the police bringing in a disheveled young man, first name Mohammed, born in Saudi Arabia (like Osama bin Laden) who is said to belong to a group threatening to blow up the school where your child is learning to read and write. Would you not be willing to do anything to this young Mohammed in order to prevent harm to your child? If we are honest, most of us would answer that question with a "Yes."
What then is wrong with those 53% who oppose torture? Don't they have children? Or do they have children they don't care for? Don't they know at least how precious their children are to most people?
Those 53% see the problem in this story about Mohammed. Told the story about terrorists threatening your child, your first reaction is to say: do anything to protect my child, including torture. But after a moment's thought the problem is obvious: how do we know Mohammed is a terrorist? One possible scenario is that he has confessed (without torture.) He has changed his mind, he does not want children to be hurt, he wants to help to prevent that terrible disaster. In that case no one needs to torture him because he is willing to tell all.
Suppose Mohammed denies the charge of terrorism. He claims not to know any of the other people suspected of plotting against the school. Should we torture him because he is a terrorist? How do we know that? Surely, we are committed to saying this: he is innocent until proven guilty. Unless a court case is brought against him that shows that he is indeed a terrorist, it is illegitimate to even consider torture.
Our legal system is a great human accomplishment. It demands that guilt must be proven, that accusations from third parties are not sufficient to label anybody a criminal or a terrorist . We should be proud of that legal principle of persons being innocent until proven guilty and should do everything to support it. Fortunately, US Courts are beginning to insist that our government accord fair treatment to its prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Recently a three judge Court of Appeals sharply criticized the government for holding a Chinese man for six years on no better evidence than that he had been accused of terrorism by the government in three separate documents.
We have not always adhered to these principles. In earlier days women were tortured and killed as witches on the mere say-so of some hysterical child. Black men and women, and some whites, were dragged from jails, without trials, hung, burned and mutilated by angry mobs. People used to be punished for actions they had not committed; rumors were sufficient (together with the victim's black skin). We now try to avoid those kinds of injustices.
We, therefore, may not call anyone a terrorist until a proper court proceeding has proven that. We may not torture anybody simply because someone has called him a terrorist, even if that someone is the US government, the FBI, the CIA, or his best friend. Without a trial in which he is convicted, Mohammed may not be called a terrorist or be treated as one.
The poll cited earlier shows that 44% of our fellow citizens are willing to torture terrorists "in order to save lives." This raises another worrisome question: do we know that torturing people saves lives? Many people point out that inflicting intense pain on someone is not likely to make him terribly truthful or a reliable witness. How reliable is information gained by torture? The answer to that question is not clear at all.
So why are 44% of our fellow citizens prepared to torture persons whose identity as terrorists has not been proven and whose possible torture has not been shown to save lives?
Frightened human beings do not think clearly and effectively. For the last eight years the government and many politicians have maintained a steady drumbeat of fear mongering.
They have resorted to a technique regularly used by governments ( and powerful private groups) to manipulate citizens. At the beginning of the war with Japan, the government created hysteria about a possible Japanese invasion of California, putting Japanese Americans--most of them American citizens whose sons and daughters were serving in the US military--in concentration camps. In the 1950's, at the beginning of the Cold War, paranoid anti-Communists instigated a new hysteria about internal subversion. Many lives were seriously disrupted by illegal and coercive inquisitions into political beliefs or membership which the Constitutions is supposed to protect. Today, our government, having woefully mismanaged the response to 9/11 is trying to distract us by fanning the fear of secret dangers that lurk everywhere--the "terrorists."
They do not serve us well. They do not serve our institutions well. It is not clear that they even enhance our safety. It is high time that we stopped talking as if our life was constantly in danger. It is high time to try to think clearly and calmly about terrorism and about torture.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
The Olympics and Politics
A recent editorial in the New York Times deplores the worsening human rights record of the Chinese government. Latest examples are a long list of instructions for foreign and domestic visitors to the upcoming Olympic games forbidding anything remotely political; the persecution of Chinese lawyers defending Tibetans; the arrest of Chinese parents protesting peacefully against a corrupt government whose shoddily constructed schools collapsed during the recent earthquake. Hundreds of children died in these schools.
In the same editorial, the Times approves of the Olympic Committee's prohibition against political demonstrations during
the games. "We respect the goal of trying to put aside divisions while celebrating a common humanity" says the Times editorial writer.
Many people think that the Olympic games are not the place for politics. They should be all about sport and nothing else.
But think of what we put aside when we "put aside divisions" or when we refuse to engage in politics. We refuse to look at the real human misery in China. The government keeps close watch on its people; protesters end up in prison. It arrested the parents whose children died during the earthquake because of poor quality construction of school buildings. Corrupt government officials pocketed some of the money destined for school construction. The shoddy buildings they did erect were not earthquake proof and children died. The grieving parents protested and were jailed.
All of this is terrible enough but think about the wider effects of this massive repression: the millions of Chinese who are intimidated and do not protest poor wages, poor working conditions, or the tyranny of petty government officials.
At issue is not merely the "poor human rights record of the Chinese government;" at issue are the suffering and misery of large numbers of ordinary people. If most Chinese were happy with their lives, if they were hopeful for themselves and the future of their children, why would the government need to employ a large army of secret police to supervise citizens? The reign of terror imposed by authoritarian governments, like that of China, is made necessary by the misery of large numbers of ordinary people.
The advice to put aside politics during the Olympics says "forget about the parents who lost their children in shoddily constructed schools. Forget about millions of people deprived of even half-way decent lives. Forget unsanitary slums and their diseased and malnourished inhabitants.What matters now is who can run faster, jump higher or throw the javelin farther. Don't think about freedom loving men and women, languishing in prison. Don't think about millions of families overworked and undernourished. Let's just celebrate a common humanity."
Yes, by all means, let's celebrate a common humanity. How do we do that? By ignoring fellow humans whose lives are made miserable by their government? The poverty and misery of millions of Chinese are not suspended for the Olympics. Most of them will have to go to their workplaces and work long hours under hard conditions for very little money. Should we ignore their pain while we cheer for our team?
The truth is, of course, that ignoring oppression and suffering in China has nothing much to do with "celebrating a common humanity." US and other foreign corporations are making money by the bushel basket in China because wages are miserably low and workers who protest end up in prison. The human rights record the NY Times deplores makes lots of money for US corporations. They like the human rights record of the Chinese government because it maintains low wages.
And the NY Times, always on the side of business, may deplore that human rights record of the Chinese government but is quick to add that we should not do anything about it. After all the misery of the Chinese is the price they must pay for our prosperity.
In the same editorial, the Times approves of the Olympic Committee's prohibition against political demonstrations during
the games. "We respect the goal of trying to put aside divisions while celebrating a common humanity" says the Times editorial writer.
Many people think that the Olympic games are not the place for politics. They should be all about sport and nothing else.
But think of what we put aside when we "put aside divisions" or when we refuse to engage in politics. We refuse to look at the real human misery in China. The government keeps close watch on its people; protesters end up in prison. It arrested the parents whose children died during the earthquake because of poor quality construction of school buildings. Corrupt government officials pocketed some of the money destined for school construction. The shoddy buildings they did erect were not earthquake proof and children died. The grieving parents protested and were jailed.
All of this is terrible enough but think about the wider effects of this massive repression: the millions of Chinese who are intimidated and do not protest poor wages, poor working conditions, or the tyranny of petty government officials.
At issue is not merely the "poor human rights record of the Chinese government;" at issue are the suffering and misery of large numbers of ordinary people. If most Chinese were happy with their lives, if they were hopeful for themselves and the future of their children, why would the government need to employ a large army of secret police to supervise citizens? The reign of terror imposed by authoritarian governments, like that of China, is made necessary by the misery of large numbers of ordinary people.
The advice to put aside politics during the Olympics says "forget about the parents who lost their children in shoddily constructed schools. Forget about millions of people deprived of even half-way decent lives. Forget unsanitary slums and their diseased and malnourished inhabitants.What matters now is who can run faster, jump higher or throw the javelin farther. Don't think about freedom loving men and women, languishing in prison. Don't think about millions of families overworked and undernourished. Let's just celebrate a common humanity."
Yes, by all means, let's celebrate a common humanity. How do we do that? By ignoring fellow humans whose lives are made miserable by their government? The poverty and misery of millions of Chinese are not suspended for the Olympics. Most of them will have to go to their workplaces and work long hours under hard conditions for very little money. Should we ignore their pain while we cheer for our team?
The truth is, of course, that ignoring oppression and suffering in China has nothing much to do with "celebrating a common humanity." US and other foreign corporations are making money by the bushel basket in China because wages are miserably low and workers who protest end up in prison. The human rights record the NY Times deplores makes lots of money for US corporations. They like the human rights record of the Chinese government because it maintains low wages.
And the NY Times, always on the side of business, may deplore that human rights record of the Chinese government but is quick to add that we should not do anything about it. After all the misery of the Chinese is the price they must pay for our prosperity.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)