Philistines and Palestinians at the Opera

The Death of Klinghoffer was composer John Adams's 1991 follow-up to Nixon in China, arguably the most popular if not the best American opera of the last half-century. Nixon had already been somewhat controversial, as its title character was still alive at the time it premiered. For Klinghoffer Adams and librettist Alice Goodman raised the stakes, making an opera of the 1985 hijacking by Palestinian of the cruise ship Achille Lauro and the murder by the hijackers of Jewish passenger Leon Klinghoffer. Not nearly as memorable musically as Nixon, Klinghoffer is best known for being controversial. Give a performance and people will protest. From the beginning, what's been protested is the creators' failure to sufficiently demonize the terrorists. Because the terrorist singers are allowed to state their viewpoint in their own terms instead of singing something like, "We hate Jews because we're mean," the opera is accused of "glorifying" terrorists. "Glorifying" is the standard term employed by the censorious when morally questionable characters in media aren't demonized to the satisfaction of certain sensibilities. Even though Jimmy Cagney's character in The Public Enemy dies a gruesome death, that film was accused of "glorifying" gangsters because Cagney looked cool until he died. So it has been with crime movies ever since. A certain mentality never trusts audiences to make their own sound judgments; it requires art to become propaganda, moral or political, telling audiences quite explicitly what they should think of questionable characters. Gangsters should show no appealing (much less redeeming) qualities; nor should terrorists.

The Metropolitan Opera premiered a new production of Klinghoffer this week, and the protesters were led, rhetorically at least, by Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City. Giuliani released a statement explaining his protest while defending himself against the charge of philistinism. I am not so a cultural illiterate, America's Mayor writes: "As an opera, the music and choruses are quite excellent. John Adams is one of America’s greatest composers, and I admire and enjoy his music." Alas, Klinghoffer is politically and hence morally incorrect. It is "factually inaccurate and extraordinarily damaging to an appropriate description of the problems in Israel and Palestine."

Giuliani's tortured explication of what's "appropriate" is revealing. He argues that the hijacking and murder must be understood as cynically motivated to promote the brand of the Palestinian Liberation Organization as the organization with which the world must deal. It seems important to Giuliani that the murder be seen as a dispassionate act, not as a lashing out by angry people. The key sentences in Giuliani's screed are: " It was not the act of people feeling oppressed. This was the act of an organized group seeking international recognition, moral equivalency, and money." Therefore, any scene or aria in which Palestinian characters express feelings of oppression and grievance are "inaccurate" and "damaging." 

A consistent part of the right-wing reaction to terrorism against its interests or allies is to deny the legitimacy of grievances. The right-wing argument is always that terrorists hate their targets not for what we do, but for what we are. A corollary argument is that the terrorists, rather than making reprisals against perceived oppressors, are always the aggressors. This fits a popular picture of Islam portraying the religion as always hostile and always on the offensive against infidels purely by virtue of their faith. From this standpoint, to let a terrorist character on stage say or sing what an author might fairly imagine is on his mind, even while making his terrorism obviously odious, is always subversive. Instead, the terrorist, or the enemy agent, must be motivated exclusively by hate, fanaticism, or selfish personal ambition. Anything else might make audiences think, even if the authors clearly don't intend audiences to take the villain's side. By protesting The Death of Klinghoffer, Giuliani claims he wants people to know the truth about the story behind the opera, but the truth about him is that he doesn't want people to think. He wants them to hate. I imagine most people who watch the opera will hate the terrorists anyway, but for people like Giuliani it has to be the right kind of hate, and it's up to him, apparently, to teach us how to hate properly. As Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote on a lower rung of musical-theater ambition, "you have to be carefully taught."

Unfit to keep and bear arms in New York State

A local paper reports that not only gun-rights advocates but mental-health advocates are protesting the designation by the state of New York of "some 34,500 persons" as mentally unfit to have firearms. Most of these people apparently self-diagnosed themselves, since it turns out that less than 300 people will have to give up their guns after these findings. Nevertheless, a Queens doctor, representing other mental-health advocates, worries that "too many people are being deemed dangerous." This doctor worries that some genuinely troubled people will be discouraged from seeking help because it might mean losing or being denied guns. He doesn't like that he has to report "any kind of dangerousness," which begs the question whether he believes in acceptable levels of "dangerousness" in mental patients. By comparison, the NRA looks almost reasonable in asking that decisions on mental fitness not be made "capriciously or maliciously," though their measures of caprice and malice may differ from other peoples'. Amid these concerns, it seems only fair that someone ask whether the number is actually too low. I concede, however, that other measures of fitness may be too subjective or controversial for psychiatrists to address scientifically -- even if those others may be the ones that count most.

What ails America?

You don't have to be irrational about the prospects of the Ebola virus spreading across the U.S. to be appalled at the poor handling of the initial outbreak. Two people may not make an outbreak -- not counting the Liberian who brought his infection here and died earlier this month -- but compared to the efficiency shown in treating American aid workers who contracted Ebola in Africa, the performance of that Texas hospital and the CDC are troubling. The two infected nurses may be the end of the chain, but Americans need to think about alternate scenarios, yet may have a hard time doing so. As Charles Krauthammer notes, "In the face of a uniquely dangerous threat, we Americans have trouble recalibrating our traditional (and laudable) devotion to individual rights and civil liberties. That is the fundamental reason we’ve been so slow in getting serious about Ebola." Nothing taken to excess is laudable, however, and in facing the prospect of pandemics that American devotion may prove a handicap sometimes. Back during the George W. Bush presidency people worried that a pandemic might be used as a pretext for martial law; the advent of Barack Obama only changed the identities of some of the worriers. But you may not need to be paranoid to take an "I don't have to do that" attitude toward recommended precautions or protocols. Krauthammer writes that "choosing between security and liberty ... is the eternal dilemma of every free society," yet our entire culture, it sometimes seems, conditions us to prefer liberty every time. It certainly seems to discourage us from recognizing inherent obligations to our fellow citizens, yet our obligations only grow more obvious as a virus grows more virulent. Ebola has raged through Africa because of inadequate infrastructure and bad cultural habits, we're told. American habits may prove nearly as harmful in the absence of an ethical infrastructure suited to the challenge. This alarmist tone may prove premature insofar as this outbreak may peter out after a handful of cases. But if a wider outbreak, now or in the future, can be blamed on people failing or refusing, from a desire to stay "free," to do the right things, more Americans may finally question whether "freedom" really should be any culture's supreme value.

The Iraq WMD Bush didn't want you to know about

The big twist in the New York Times story about chemical weapons found in Iraq during the 2003 American invasion is that the George W. Bush administration never took advantage of the discoveries to vindicate the President's decision to invade. Given how some Republicans today are pouncing on the news as proof that Bush was right all along, you wonder why W. or his handlers doubted the benefits of an announcement -- and you get a chilling suspicion that however dumb Dubya may have been, he was smarter than his base. The problem with the WMD the Americans found is that they were old: 1980s-vintage stuff left over from the Iran-Iraq war. In calling for the 2003 invasion, Bush argued that Saddam Hussein's government was making new, more dangerous chemical weapons, and nothing of that sort has yet been found. Worse for the Americans, their own people played roles in the production of some of the weapons found during the invasion and occupation. Reminders of our past relations with Iraq could only further fuel criticisms of U.S. Middle East policies guaranteed to generate "blowback." The Bush cover-up may also have been motivated partly by a desire to avoid responsibility for American soldiers sickened by handling the captured weapons. But considering how ready Republicans still are to believe the pre-invasion narrative about Saddam's threat, we might feel justified in concluding that Bush never bothered publicizing these finds because, in the end, he never really cared whether or not Saddam had old or new WMD. For him and his cronies, more likely, the invasion was a means to a more ambitious strategic goal -- the "democratization" of the region -- rather than an essential act of national defense.

But if the Times piece was intended to further damn Bush or revive skepticism toward meddling in the Middle East, the article undercuts itself with an alarmist note about the possibility of remaining stockpiles falling into the hands of fighters for the self-styled Islamic State. The report claims that the weapons as found were no threat to the U.S., but that components could be repurposed -- and were during the occupation -- for small-scale use in guerrilla warfare. It would be grimly ironic if the same stuff that comes closest to evidence against Saddam Hussein were used again as evidence justifying an escalation of U.S. opposition to the IS. But at a time when even Democratic pundits question the effectiveness of bombing against a mobile enemy, nothing so ironic would surprise me.

Religion as a last resort

The soldiers of the self-styled Islamic State are unapologetic about the atrocities they commit. They provoked a fresh wave of outrage this week, not with any new beheadings, but with the publication of the latest issue of their English-language magazine, Dabiq, in which IS writers reaffirm their right to slaughter alleged idolaters and enslave the women they capture. Browsing through the issue myself, I was struck by how these guys argue that it's better to take slaves -- for sex! -- than to commit adultery. But if it all adds up to an appalling system of values, it's still a system of values; the IS justifies it all by saying this is what God allows or orders them to do. That's why I think Thomas Friedman is wrong to characterize the IS as a force of disorder, or to say, quoting from a Batman movie, that the IS fighters just want to watch the world burn. They want to create order in their little caliphate, but on the basis of such authoritarian violence that many liberals simply refuse to recognize it as order. The desire for order is at least as much a factor in the appeal of the IS as the desire for violence. That desire for order is why so many people turn to religion in bad times. For a while during the 20th century it looked like people might look to themselves, or at least to Marx, Lenin, Stalin or Mao, to create order in the world, but Communism as collectively authored by the last three was "the god that failed." In the underdeveloped world especially, young people whose parents or grandparents vested their hopes in socialism or communism now turn to Islam, Pentecostalism, a more assertive and chauvinistic Hinduism, and so on. Why this seeming relapse? Is it because people still hope a god will provide for them when the man-gods of Marxism-Leninism failed? That's probably true to some extent -- it'd be the extent to which the desire for a god reflects people's feeling that they should be provided for, and that the power to provide for them must be out there somewhere. But there's more to religion's enduring appeal than that. It may be that, compared to the Market, the Party or even the State, a religion is something that can always use more people. The Market doesn't need all of us; it tells us to make ourselves useful or rot. States and parties too often sacrifice people's livelihoods, if not their lives, to austerity or competitiveness. Religions are no better, inherently, at providing for people than markets or states, but they promise everyone a place in an eternal order on what look like relatively easy terms -- especially, in the case of the IS, if you're a man. Those who worship the Market as a different sort of god make no such promises because they think it would encourage freeloading. Religions know better because, as I wrote, they can always use more people. Their promises lost their appeal not so long ago, but while the failures of the recent past loom large people around the world forget the lessons of the more distant past and assume that the old gods never failed. As some have suggested for some time now, it may take something like a Thirty Years War in the Middle East -- something that seems ever more likely lately -- to break the spell of Islamism, while we probably won't need anything so drastic to break the spell of Pentecostalism in the Third World. But where will the poor and all the people who feel that they have no place in the world look then? Somebody better have an answer.

Columbus Day is the real Festivus

That second Monday in October is here again, and Americans, in some cases, will find time during the holiday to debate the legacy of Christopher Columbus. By now no one buys the idea that Columbus "discovered America," but his voyages clearly mark the beginning of an epoch of exploration and exploitation to which the U.S. owes its existence. Back in 1892, the 400th anniversary of his first voyage was a tremendous patriotic occasion from which came our present Pledge of Allegiance, if not all its controversy. Italian-Americans subsequently adopted the day as their own, their answer to St. Patrick's Day, albeit with less beer. In modern times, as his legacy of conquest if not genocide grew unbearable for many Americans, the idea of celebrating Columbus with a holiday grew more offensive. In some places "Indigenous Peoples' Day" or something like it is celebrated, while U.S. traditionalists protest that trend as a further advance of "political correctness." By this point no one, as far as I can tell, is calling for Columbus to be celebrated uncritically as a hero, but many argue that we should recognize that something important happened on or around the second Monday in October, 1492, and some feel that to repudiate the event entirely, as others seem to want, is somehow to repudiate our own national existence. So there may be parades in some places, but for the most part, when the occasion is noted it becomes the subject of argument and the airing of grievances from across the cultural spectrum. If the alternatives are unthinking patriotism and activist education about indigenous peoples, a holiday defined by debate looks just right.  If we trace our nation back to Columbus, it's only appropriate that his day be noted with griping from all sides.

When Republicans defended voting rights, and Democrats cried fraud

Recent court decisions have pushed the question of identification requirements for voters back to the forefront of U.S. politics, just in time for an election season. By now the storyline is familiar: Republicans want to require voters to show photo i.d. at polling places in order to prevent fraudulent voting; Democrats protest, while dismissing all suspicions of fraud, that Republicans simply want to make it more difficult for certain populations who are less likely to have an ID card, or the documents necessary to get one, to vote Democrat. But it wasn't always so. In the course of my research for another project, I saw that one hundred years ago this month, New York State struck down a law that had been passed by a Democratic legislature over protests from Republicans that the measure's only purpose was to keep certain people from voting. Given where Republicans and Democrats stood 100 years ago, you might expect that black votes were at stake, but in fact the Democrats were out to make life more difficult for rural voters in general. The controversial law required residents in rural communities to register in person with the local election board when they moved from one municipality to another. Democrats argued that in-person registration was necessary to prevent fraud by election workers, who in theory could add names to voting lists arbitrarily otherwise, while Republican complained that requiring registration in person imposed a hardship on farm people who would have to travel long distances to take care of the paperwork at a time when transportation options were still quite limited. It was hard enough, presumably, to take the long trip just to vote; to require an extra, earlier trip simply to register would only discourage country people from voting. I don't know on what basis the court struck down the law, but in any event it was ruled unconstitutional, and Republicans immediately calculated how many more votes they'd get in that November's elections.

At that time, in the South, Democrats found every means possible to keep black people from voting. It took a change in black voting habits for Democrats to turn from opponents to defenders of black voting rights, while Republicans seem to have learned indifference to cries of hardship when it appears necessary to suppress "fraud" at the polls. We know they're not entirely indifferent, however, given how they accused Democrats of trying to ignore votes from overseas military personnel in recent elections. It still comes down to who you want to vote. If the groups adversely impacted by photo-ID requirements didn't vote consistently Democrat, Democrats would most likely not oppose those requirements so much, but it's also true that Republicans might not press for them so much. The question isn't whether one party or another is more inclined to commit fraud. Both major parties jockey for advantage constantly, and have done so throughout their 150+ year struggle for the American electorate. Republicans have just about always accused Democrats of driving immigrants to the polls regardless of their actual entitlement to vote, while Democrats until relatively recently strove to thwart black voting, not so much because Democrats were racist (though many were) but because blacks voted Republican. If a future demographic shift in voting habits threatens to tilt the balance of power, one party will seek ways to facilitate it, and the other will seek to thwart it. Each party really is more interested in maximizing the turnout of the most loyal populations than maximizing the vote of the entire American people -- but both could probably be defeated if Americans didn't do such a good job of suppressing their own votes through ignorance, complacency, or lack of imagination. That apathy toward alternatives to the two-party system is a greater threat to democracy than any of the tricks the two parties play on each other.

Capitalism is history

The "interchange" of scholars on the history of capitalism in the new issue of the Journal of American History has an inescapable "blind men and the elephant" quality to it. I mean no offense to the scholars, all experts in their fields facing the challenge to teach about capitalism in history classes. The definition of capitalism still seems open to dispute. How do you define it? At first glance, capitalism is an "ism" or ideology, but in terms of economic or social history capitalism is no more an ideology than "feudalism" was. But capitalism isn't merely a phenomenon of economic history, not simply a set of practices adopted at some point or destined to be abandoned at another point. Back when I was in grad school historians were debating when the U.S. became capitalist. They focused on perceived transitions to a "market" economy from more traditional "moral" economies, or looked for turning points when people began producing primarily for markets rather than to achieve subsistence or "sufficiency" for themselves. A debate continues over whether slavery was a capitalist phenomenon. Some historians rule it out because they consider "free labor" a defining component of capitalism, or assume that since "reinvestment" is another defining component, capitalist slaveholders would have invested more in keeping their slaves fit to work at their most efficient. Another group of historians rejects stark separations of slave and capitalist economies, noting that much of the money many pioneer capitalists had to invest in things came from the slave trade in one way or another. Simpler broad-stroke definitions simply won't do, either, since historians can show readily that profit motives and acquisitive impulses have existed throughout history.

Capitalism might best be described as an event, but is hard to describe because the event isn't over yet. We can begin to describe it because it has had to define itself in reaction to challenges from socialism, the labor movement, the regulatory state, etc. At a certain point in history, capitalism is simply progress. Once it becomes a reactionary force -- and even if you dispute whether what it resists is really "progress" or an inevitable change -- we can begin to define it by negation, by what it can not or will not become. The beginnings are not so obvious, in part because there's no such thing as the "Capitalist Manifesto." Unlike with socialists, no author I know of offered a package of ideas called "capitalism" as the next necessary step in human progress back when kings and nobles still reigned and economies were governed by guilds, "just price" customs and other traditions. If socialism always has an element of conspiracy to it, if only because socialists knew what they wanted, capitalism developed more spontaneously and with much less sense of destiny. In broadest terms, the opportunities created by technological innovation and the Age of Exploration enticed people into challenging old rules and customs that appeared to impede the enrichment of ambitious individuals, of nations, and to some extent societies as a whole. If capitalism as an event comes to an end eventually, it most likely won't be ended by the sort of working-class revolution Marx expected. It does not appear to follow as logically as he thought that workers will want to take over the means of production. As long as they are satisfied with life after hours, the working classes in developed countries can reconcile themselves to whatever alienation or exploitation they endure at work. It seems more likely now, in an era of diminishing resources, that the state, defined not as the vehicle of the proletariat that will wither away but as the thing that keeps us alive and always must, will set the terms for the end of capitalism. Nothing except dogma says that states can't function as capitalist investors themselves -- China belies the claim -- but the crises of the future may compel states to become the sort of "command economies" that are seen as anathema to capitalism.  In simpler terms, capitalism has been fueled by generations of new ideas about what can be done, but the future seems likely be governed by a greater overriding sense of what must be done. If capitalism is ultimately irreconcilable with such necessities, future generations may be able to define it more precisely as a thing of the past, though what follows -- global democracy, global totalitarianism, global religion, or perhaps a new dark age -- may remain a mystery to future historians for some time afterward.

Ben Affleck, defender of the faith

It was an interesting way for Academy Award Winner and future Batman Ben Affleck to promote his current picture, but there he was on Bill Maher's talk show debating Maher and "militant atheist" Sam Harris (of The End of Faith fame) about Islam. Affleck questioned Harris's credentials as an expert on Islam and the menace the religion as a whole purportedly presents to the rest of the world, as well as Harris's contention that "Islamophobia" is used as a pejorative to discourage legitimate criticism of the religion. Basically, Harris and Maher were saying that one can criticize aspects of Islam without being a bigot, but Affleck wasn't buying it. He understood the other two to be saying that the threat of jihadist violence was inherent in Islam; to him that meant they were portraying one billion or so Muslims as potential jihadists, and to him that's bigotry. Maher and Harris stuck to their guns, citing surveys purporting to show that majorities of Muslims around the world believe, for instance that apostates from Islam (like atheist heroine Ayaan Hirsi Ali) should be killed.You can read what all these people actually said here.

If Affleck and his antagonists seemed to talk past each other, it's probably because both sides are right to different extents. Affleck is certainly right in his assumption that the majority of Muslims around the world have never had a jihadist thought in their lives, while Harris and Maher are just as right to argue that the doctrines of Islam, and their political implications in the secular world, are proper subjects for criticism. The atheists are right to reject the equation of reasoned criticism of religious beliefs or cultural values with a "phobia," but the actor is right to worry about the collective stigmatization of practitioners of the world's second-largest religion. Maher and Harris are really taking the same stand critics of Israel take when accused of anti-semitism. On that analogy, Affleck is wrong to equate their criticism of Islam with anti-semitism, but he's still right to warn against an implication of collective responsibility that's really no different from the self-styled Islamic State's rationale for beheading harmless reporters, aid workers, etc. in reprisal for their nation's acts of war.  Harris and Maher insist that "moderate" Muslims have a duty to intervene against their violent, radical co-religionists. Implicitly, they'll judge Muslims by how well they perform this duty, regardless of any other issues Muslims themselves may raise. But if collective responsibility is wrong when asserted by the IS or al-Qaeda to justify the murder of American civilians, it must be wrong even when Americans merely blame all Muslims for failing to suppress their radical elements. As Affleck himself noted, Americans would reject the idea that U.S. atrocities in Iraq are "a reflection of what we believe in." In that case, implicitly, we should look elsewhere besides in the Qur'an (the "mother lode of bad ideas" in Harris's term) to understand why Muslims are waging jihad. Religion may shape the attack, but it doesn't necessarily provide the impetus. Jihad in our time is a reaction against something, or several things, not merely some madman's dream of power and plunder. While neither Harris nor Maher is a neocon, and Maher's definitely no Republican, their antipathy toward Islam may blind them to other causes of jihad that come from outside the dar al-Islam. It probably doesn't make sense to ask why they don't criticize the Christian Right as vehemently as they criticize Islam, but they probably should ask why outsiders have been riling up the Muslim world for the last century or so, and whether there's a way of thinking to blame that ought to be reformed.

Talking Turkey about Syria: stupidity isn't Made in USA

The U.S. and "the West" in general suffer from what might be called democratic chauvinism. These countries presume that liberal or constitutional democratic republics are really the only legitimate form of government on earth, and reserve for themselves the right to determine whether any government that isn't such a republic is a threat not just to world peace or order, but to "freedom" as well. Some regimes, like the monarchy of Saudi Arabia, pass the test because they have something to offer and are willing to deal with us. When that isn't the case, the West has few reservations about demanding "regime change" as a moral imperative. To the rest of the world this looks like western imperialism or "arrogance," but the example of Turkey suggests that such arrogance may come inevitably to republics, wherever they emerge. Turkey has been a republic for nearly a century now, not counting periods of military rule. The republic's Islamist leader is accused, inevitably, of "authoritarian" tendencies both by outside observers and domestic opponents, but President Ergodan shows what might be described as small-r republican arrogance when it comes to his neighbor, Syria. Turkey showed some reluctance about joining the coalition against the self-styled Islamic State a little while ago, but with the IS driving Syrian Kurds across the Turkish border into refugee camps Erdogan now vows to fight the IS. But just like the Americans, he stubbornly refuses to recognize the most obvious, if not most necessary ally against the takfiri headcutters: the Syrian government. In practically the same breath, Erdogan says "we will continue to prioritize our aim to remove the Syrian regime." No doubt, also like the Americans, he assumes he can find rebels capable of toppling Bashar al-Assad, yet incapable of becoming a threat to his own country's interests.

In Turkey's case, this may be less democratic chauvinism than plain old Sunni chauvinism. The Turks may hate Assad less because he's a tyrant than because he's an Alawite -- though for all I know they may think him a tyrant because he's an Alawite. Like other Sunnis, Erdogan probably considers Assad too friendly with Shiite Iran. But worrying about Iran -- as the government of Israel also recommends to everyone -- seems to be a priority error at the present time. The IS, after all, is the latest existential threat to global peace, order, freedom, etc. Their high-profile but limited-scale atrocities have stigmatized them as the barbarians of the hour. Some people, no doubt, regard the self-styled IS caliph -- a figure who seems to keep a relatively low profile, at least as far as western media is concerned -- as the next Hitler. But if "next Hitler" is anything more than a rhetorical device, might the world not learn from how it dealt with the first Hitler? Wasn't it Winston Churchill, idol of neocons, who said, to justify Great Britain's alliance with Stalin's USSR, that if Hitler invaded Hell he'd make an ally of the Devil? It's all about priorities. The "greatest generation" understood this, so it makes sense that an American veteran of World War II, George H. W. Bush, having identified Saddam Hussein, however foolishly, as a "next Hitler" after Iraq invaded Kuwait, went to the trouble of assembling as broad a coalition as possible against Saddam -- including Syria under Bashar al-Assad's dad. It should be a matter of common sense, should you find a threat to global peace striving to overthrow a country, to join forces with that country's government, whether you like it very much or not. But that pragmatic step is morally or strategically unacceptable to Americans and Turks alike. It's reasonable to assume that each group is more interested in having their man or clique in control of Syria than in eliminating the IS.  Each probably wants to blame Assad for the rise of the IS -- for not disappearing conveniently when asked, or for not getting killed in a timely manner -- but the impulse from outside to destabilize Syria probably keeps the IS going more than anything else, even if no outsider really wants them to take over. Like it or not, the surest way to suppress the IS in Syria is to shore up the Assad regime. That doesn't mean Assad is a good man or a good leader or that Syria needs a dictatorship or whatever else you might infer. It means that the world -- the Americans, the West, the Sunnis --  needs to stop fantasizing about third forces and make the only choice possible in Syria, apart from letting history run its course.

Could term limits empower Congress?

It's nothing new for George Will to advocate term limits for people in Congress. The columnist has long opposed the ascendancy of a careerist "political class" alleged to be interested only in expanding government for their own benefit. Term limits, Will hopes, would assure a steady rotation through the legislature of people with real careers -- people presumed familiar and sympathetic with the needs of the private sector upon which national prosperity depends. Whatever his biases, there are small-d democratic arguments for and against term limits. One argument against is that if the people are sovereign, they should be able to elect whom they will as often as they wish. On the other hand, if democracy means more than elections to you, you might grow suspicious of the masses' dependence upon a handful of great leaders, and you might believe that rotation in office, enforced through term limits, affirms the democratic idea that any educated person is capable of legislating. Advocates of limited government like Will advocate term limits, but that doesn't mean that term limits only serve to limit government.

This week, Will is concerned less with limiting government in general than with maintaining checks and balances. Like many observers on both right and left, he's concerned that Congress has grown too deferential toward the President, be he a Republican or a Democrat, on questions of airstrikes, troop deployments, etc. He worries that Congress is insufficiently jealous of its prerogatives when it comes to making war. His possibly paradoxical suggestion is that a Congress constrained by term limits would be more assertive of its rights against the other branches of government.

If anything, Will takes a more damning view than ever of the alleged political class. Promoting the views of Greg Weiner, a conservative constitutional scholar, Will argues that career politicians don't make a career of politics for the power as much as they do for the perks of office. In Weiner's words, "increasingly, there is evidence that members of Congress do seek office for something other than the power, for power is something with which they are not merely willing but often eager to part." This sounds more plausible when you think of war-powers issues than when you recall the determined obstructionism, often applauded by Will, of a Republican majority in the House of Representatives. But give both Weiner and Will credit if they're looking beyond the partisanship of the moment: congressional deference to the Commander-in-Chief on questions of war should be of concern to every citizen, regardless of party or ideology.

How would term limits reverse the trend? Here Will jumps from Weiner to James Madison, who wrote in the Federalist Papers that for checks and balances to work, "The interests of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place." Will's hope is that limiting the career incentive would leave candidates for Congress who are true believers above all in the rights and prerogatives of Congress. These worthies would be less interested in bringing the bacon home to their constituents than in keeping an eye on the other branches of government, the executive in particular, lest they overstep their constitutional bounds. Having done their round of vigilance, they would then return happily to private life.

It would be easy to caricature this proposal as an exchange of careerists for ideologues, but for the sake of argument let's entertain the premise that people who aren't motivated to run for office by the promise of perks are more likely to act on principle (if not ideology) when they're elected. If that's the case, why not go further than limiting terms and eliminate as many of the corrupt incentives that Washington offers as possible? Without going so far as to deter working-class people from running for office, we might expect our representatives to live as spartan a life in the capital as possible consistent with the dignity of their offices. Put them up in dorms if need be -- comfortable but no place you'd want to spend the next twenty years. At the back end, take even more steps to keep them from cashing out by taking jobs with lobbying firms or anyone whose promise of future wealth might corrupt a legislator today. Do everything that would filter out anyone interested in anything other than helping Congress play its appropriate constitutional role. Would that leave only Tea Partiers? There's no reason to think so. People still run for office to accomplish things, not just to guard against the Executive Branch. While there's been many a shameful example of Democratic congresspersons living large while playing champion of the little guy, it doesn't follow that liberals, much less leftists, go to Washington for the glitz or the glamor. Nor does it follow that any one person needs to stay in Congress for a lifetime to accomplish something for the little guy. Democrats and liberals routine argue against term limits mainly because, going back to the 1980s, they saw them as a sour-grapes Republican swipe at a then-entrenched Democratic majority in Congress. The fact that we see conservatives still calling for term limits after almost twenty years of GOP control of the House suggests that there's more than sour grapes involved. We need not agree with those conservatives about the necessity of term limits, but we might find them useful if not appropriate to our kind of democracy. In the end, however, it still comes down to what voters want from Congress, and in a democratic republic there are no term limits for the people.

People Power in Hong Kong?

Instead of a "color" revolution, the Chinese island of Hong Kong is having an "umbrella" revolution this week. The name comes from the inexperienced protesters' resort to umbrellas to fend off tear gas. The protesters have gathered by the tens of thousands to protest what they consider a violation by the mainland Chinese government of the "one nation, two systems" principle under which the former British colony reverted to China in 1997. Since then, Hong Kong residents have continued to enjoy a greater degree of civil liberty than exists on the mainland -- but the islanders are understandably jealous of their privileged status and vigilant against encroachments on their freedom by the central government. In a few years, Hong Kong will elect its local chief executive for the first time; under the British the governor was appointed by London. For the present protesters, the milestone has been marred by Beijing's assumption of a right to screen or vet all candidates for the high office. That is, whoever might get nominated by the islanders, the central government will decide who actually gets to run. For the protesters, this means that the Communist party on the mainland gets to play the role of the guardian council in Iran. While that doesn't mean Communists will take over, it is presumed to mean that no one will be elected who isn't duly deferential toward the Communist leadership in Beijing, just as the Iranian council ensures that no one is elected who isn't duly deferential to Ayatollah Khamenei. The umbrella revolutionaries want Beijing to rescind its decision, but both Beijing and the current regime in Hong Kong has made it clear that that won't happen -- especially not at the dictate of a relative handful of "radicals."

To the extent that Chinese Communists remain "totalitarian," they are the people least likely to make any concessions to "people power," as was made clear most forcefully in Tiananmen Square 25 years ago. A communist party typically sees itself as the only legitimate representative of "the people," whether it's in power or not -- and leaving communism out of the question there are plenty of reasons to question the legitimacy of "people power" demonstrations anywhere, especially when outside observers spend so much time lecturing China about the importance of the rule of law. "People power" is incompatible with any vision of "rule of law." Liberals who applaud "people power" wherever they see it betray their liberalism, since "people power" is always a radical strategy. It may be appropriate sometimes for liberals to become radicals when "people power" rises in a polity that lacks a rule of law, but liberals often are too quick to identify the lack of liberalism in a country with the lack of a rule of law. They find it hard to concede that there might be a rule of law that isn't a liberal rule of law. Some see no rule of law in China because they assume that the Communist party can act arbitrarily when it pleases, with nothing to constrain it. Therefore China must be in the wrong in the current dispute with Hong Kong -- it must be exerting arbitrary power over the local elections and thus the locals are right to resist. It's certainly the protesters' prerogative to dislike Beijing's decision, and they should have a right to say so -- and in Hong Kong, as far as I know, they do have that right without having to hit the streets. But that doesn't mean that they're right. For one thing, they may not speak for a majority of people on Hong Kong itself. For another, it isn't for outsiders to judge -- at least not by their foreign standards. Is it wrong for the U.S. Constitution (Article IV, Section 4) to require that each state in the Union have a republican form of government? Does that compromise local autonomy at all -- and for that matter do all Americans agree on the meaning of small-r republicanism? It may sound outlandish to Americans for anyone to raise those questions, and it probably sounds just as outlandish to the Chinese government when people question its right to hold candidates for local offices to some standard of fitness. That doesn't mean that the Chinese are right, but we ought to consider the possibility that there is no right or wrong in such matters. That in turn doesn't mean the umbrella people are wrong, but it should be one thing to sympathize with protesters, and another to assume, as we too often do, that they deserve to win and should be helped to win. Neither side in Hong Kong is necessarily our side. When we decide that one side is our side, we've probably overstepped our bounds. Individuals should be able to choose sides without crossing that line, but governments ought to be more diplomatic. To use a sports metaphor, root for whom you like, but don't run on to the field.

Muslim Defeats Patriots

Don't worry: it was only a game. The Kansas City Chiefs, who are somehow less offensive to people than the Washington Redskins -- perhaps location matters -- soundly whipped the New England Patriots in yesterday's Monday Night Football game. One of the highlight for Chiefs fans -- and for the many haters of the too-successful Patriots -- was a pass interception ran back for a touchdown by Kansas City safety Husain Abdullah. A devout Muslim (convert or native I don't know), Abdullah actually skipped a season of pro football so he and his brother could make the pilgrimage to Mecca. He's also an exuberant football player in the modern demonstrative style. As he crossed the goal line, he slid to his knees and then made a prayerful bow to thank Allah for his success. The Chiefs were then penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct.

Everyone was quick to deny that Abdullah was penalized specifically for making a sort of Muslim prayer in the end zone. Abdullah himself assumes that the referee actually objected to his flamboyant knee slide. The NFL has had an issue with end-zone celebrations going back generations. They seem unseemly to old-timers who recall a stoicism that once was the image of unpretentious heroism in sports. The old ideal was the wide receiver who, having caught the touchdown pass, calmly handed the football to the referee and reported back to the sidelines. Our culture has grown more exhibitionist since then, and the argument has been made that some people need to celebrate their triumphs. Throughout professional sports, this triumphalism is taken to absurdity by the devoutly religious. To me, the silliest such spectacle is the Christian baseball player who needs to cross himself or point his index fingers skyward to thank the Lord for hitting a single. In football, the more secular celebrations have always borne an inference of taunting that make them "unsportsmanlike" in official eyes. Add Islam into the mix and things could grow more volatile. Muslims have played in the NFL since the fad for "reversions" to Islam, orthodox or otherwise, began in the 1960s. Muslim football players are rarely as overtly devout as Abdullah. One covert, Ahmad Rashad, was so unthreatening a figure that he became a successful sports broadcaster in the 1980s after his retirement from the game. Husain Abdullah is being compared not with his Muslim predecessors in football but with a more recent player: Tim Tebow, the failed quarterback who gained a (dare I say?) cult following because of his overt Christianity. To my knowledge, Tebow was never penalized for striking prayerful poses after throwing touchdowns or running them in, though some of his fans believe his NFL career was thwarted due to secular-humanist antipathy toward his devotions. For now, it remains a matter of interpretation whether Abdullah was punished for his devotions. As I noted, he doesn't think so himself, but a statement from the league declaring the referee wrong for having penalized him suggests that the front office is worried about having appeared Islamophobic last night. If anything, however, the NFL more likely will be accused of "political correctness" for its retraction. In the long view, this episode is just another complication in the league's conflict with itself over the behavior of players on the field. By now, I suspect, most people have no idea why anyone objects to end-zone celebrations. Most fans see them as part of the entertainment, but the NFL seems haunted by the lingering idea that entertainment and sports are two different things. On top of that, religion is a third thing altogether -- or is it?...

God's gift to Islamophobes

Terrorism is more successful at empowering terrorists than it is at terrorizing people. It may not give certain terrorists the political power they desire, but it certainly gives them the power to lash out at people to avenge their grievances. The man in Oklahoma who beheaded a former co-worker and attacked another before getting shot (not fatally) by a "good guy with a gun," i.e. a reserve deputy who happens to work at the site, probably had at least as many personal grievances as he had religious or political ones. A recent convert to Islam, he reportedly became a Muslim counterpart to the obnoxious evangelical Christians who try to "witness" to people, and his proselytizing -- one can only imagine the pitch -- may have been a factor in his getting fired. A typical workplace amoklauf, then, except for the choice of weapon and the professed faith of the perpetrator. Those make him a "terrorist" in many eyes, presumably on the premise that anyone motivated by Islam, to any extent, to kill people is a terrorist rather than a plain old murderer or crazy person. Some say there's more to it, pointing to the purported radicalism of an imam at the Oklahoma City Islamic center the killer attended, as if a workplace rampage could be part of someone's strategy to destabilize the United States. The inevitable Islamophobic backlash might be more destabilizing if people leap to the conclusion that Islam was the necessary and sufficient cause of the Oklahoma rampage and conclude, as one Oklahoma legislator has reportedly, that Islam is a "cancer" that must be rooted out of the American body politic.

I'll go this far: Islam and the specific example of the self-styled Islamic State's beheadings may have been the killer's trigger, but had it not been Islam it may have been something else eventually. Terrorism may be a means to an end politically, but some people are terrorists in their hearts or minds before they ever have a political thought or feeling. People like this man probably wish they could kill people -- at the least, they definitely wish people dead -- but they might flounder in their personal fantasy worlds until they stumble upon something that empowers them by entitling them. For any number of reasons, Islam was this man's entitling trigger, but there are other such triggers out there, starting with other religions. What this guy lacked before, possibly, was that one thing to get him over whatever inhibitions kept him from lashing out, to tell him that it's not only OK but right and necessary to kill. And after all that it's still unclear whether he thought he was waging a jihad on his co-workers or he simply thought beheading was cool and badass. Whatever the ultimate truth this guy is the worst thing to happen to American Muslims in a long time because of the convert-to-killer arc drawn in a media-driven rush to judgment. The best thing they can do right now is make it clear to concerned outsiders that the man had tried to convert to the "religion of peace" but had clearly failed. Rather than worry, however understandably, that his crime will subject other Muslims to undeserved scrutiny if not outright persecution, they need to make the case that, whatever the killer himself thinks, he isn't one of them but one of the many Americans who need an excuse to kill and found one.

Where Separatism is Illegal -- sort of

Now it's Spain's turn. The region of Catalonia wants to hold a referendum, emulating Scotland, on whether to secede and become an independent country. But the central government claims that the referendum will be unconstitutional if the Catalonians don't get permission from Madrid. Whether the Spanish government would give such permission seems unlikely, since the prime minister has said that "Nobody and nothing will be allowed to break up Spain."

Catalonia is described as one of Spain's richest and most industrialized regions, with Barcelona its showpiece city. BBC reports describe the independence movement in terms many might recognize as right-wing: the secessionists reportedly resent being taxed to support poorer parts of the country. There's probably more to it than that, since Catalonia had some degree of autonomy until about 300 years ago. Like Scotland, there's a "national" heritage cherished in contrast, if not in opposition, to Spanish national identity. Such vestiges probably can be found in all the modern nation-states of western Europe, all of which, after all, were founded in the forms we know today by one dynasty or principality subjecting several others in the epoch of "absolute" monarchy. These stirrings in a part of the world (western Europe as a whole, that is) widely regarded as the most civilized on the planet should silence some of the perhaps-bigoted sneering at apparently intractable tribalism in the Middle East, but that doesn't mean that a global trend towards "balkanization" isn't a matter of global concern wherever it occurs. Separatism most likely isn't just an outburst of tribal bigotry or nationalist ambition, but also a protest against misgovernment, real or alleged, tainted by the impulse to leave erstwhile fellow citizens to their fate. You can understand why national governments oppose separatist movements everywhere, but "separatist" shouldn't be used as a label that allows you to dismiss complaints that may have more legitimacy and universal relevance. Lately we've seen the extremes of China's imprisonment of an apparently non-violent separatist and the United Kingdom's successful gamble that a free vote on Scotland's independence would go the U.K's way. Spain now appears to be at a constitutional impasse, delaying the moment of truth more nations may face as more people question whether or not the forces of centralization and consolidation are irreversible, and others ask whether they should be.

Right makes might?

The President's main purpose in appearing before the United Nations General Assembly today was to justify the American air campaign against the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and to solicit further global support for the overall campaign to destroy the IS. With that came a lot of predictable statements about how Obama's war won't be like Bush's, and how American and Muslim values are perfectly compatible, once you eliminate extremism. I found it more interesting that he felt it necessary to bring up Ukraine again, at a time when Russia's support against the IS would be quite helpful. But if Russia values the Assad dictatorship in Syria so much I suppose the Russians have to stand against the IS no matter what Obama says. That aside, the President's comments on Ukraine showed again that, no matter how he seeks to differentiate himself from George W. Bush and the neocons, as an American he wears a set of blinders very similar to those a Republican president might sport at such a gathering. American and Russian responses to the Maidan uprising, Obama argues, show that the Russians live by the "might makes right" principle, while Americans believe that "right makes might."

Here's how the President described the uprising in Ukraine: "Here are the facts. After the people of Ukraine mobilized popular protests and calls for reform, their corrupt President fled." Obama's assumption, we can infer, is that no one -- not the Russophone Ukrainians in the eastern part of the country who supported the "corrupt" president, nor their Russian sympathizers and sponsors, nor anyone else on Earth -- had a moral right to question the legitimacy of what happened in Kiev. But to put it another way, a mob of hundreds of thousands of people intimidated a weak leader into abandoning his post. Leave aside what the mob or the president stood for. Does this sound like "right makes might" or "might makes right" to you? If it were a million of so Tea Partiers (or Occupiers, to be nonpartisan about it) converging in Washington D.C. and deciding to stay until Obama resigned, the President would certainly see things very differently. No principled argument against his authority or legitimacy would be likely to sway him, while his supporters certainly would see the opposed masses as nothing but a mob. Most Americans -- probably even most Republicans -- would probably agree. Our country has a rule of law, as well as free and fair elections; these are the instruments of accountability for elected leaders. "People power" may be an instrument of democratization, but most liberals would probably say it has no place in an established constitutional democracy. In someplace like Ukraine, however, "people power" is deemed necessary and proper by many American observers. These Americans recognized no "rule of law" in that country that trumped the prerogatives of "people power," because they had decided that Yanukovych was "corrupt" (as he probably was) and, worse -- as Obama prudently omitted to mention -- a stooge of Russia.

Americans reserve for themselves, as opinionated individuals if not as world rulers, the right to decide whether other countries have adequate "rule of law" or when "people power" is justified in toppling governments. I don't think a foreign observer has to be an "authoritarian" or an "elitist" to find both the American attitude and the Ukrainian example, as reaffirmed by Obama today, rather alarming. We shouldn't really go too far to the other side -- there ought to be cases when a "right to revolution" could be recognized universally -- but we should consider the other point of view enough to recognize an inconsistency between the vision of global stability the President preaches and his uncritical endorsement of a form of mob rule wherever he sees fit. When Obama says "right makes might," he certainly doesn't mean that liberal democracy will give Ukraine the power to fend off Russian aggression. He means quite specifically that "bigger nations should not be able to bully smaller ones," Russia being the bully in the Ukraine scenario and that powerful outsiders would be justified, right making might, in punishing the bully. For Obama, "might makes right" really means what most Americans believe, regardless of party: that American-style liberal democracy (in simpler terms, "freedom") always deserves to win and should be helped to win by liberal democrats around the world. His U.N. audience may be excused for seeing little difference, despite his own disclaimers, between Obama and Bush -- but one possible difference might worry them. It was easy for many around the world, and in the U.S., to see Bush's idealist rhetoric as a flimsy veil for the cynical greed of his cronies -- but Obama may really believe all this stuff.

Where separatism is illegal

Xinjiang has been part of China far longer than Scotland has been part of the United Kingdom, but the example of Israel suggests, sometimes to Israel's own chagrin, that there's no statute of limitation on national aspirations. That doesn't mean a country can't pass a law against them. The U.K. was a model recently of how to address such aspirations when the central government allowed a referendum on Scottish secession and agreed to abide by the result. In central Europe the peaceful separation of Slovakia and the Czech Republic, the former components of Czechoslovakia, also seems like a high point of civility. In other countries, like the United States, it's okay to advocate secession, but our Civil War sets an ominous precedent should any state actually attempt to secede. By comparison, China may look less hypocritical in some eyes for simply forbidding separatist activism. The Chinese government has just sentenced an ethnic Uyghur scholar from Xinjiang to life in prison for the crime of "separatism." From China's own English-language account of the sentencing it's unclear whether they equate "separatism" with incitement to violence or whether merely advocating Uyghur independence, or even greater Uyghur autonomy within China, is a crime in Chinese eyes.

Xinjiang's situation differs from Scotland in that Uyghurs have been blamed for terrorist attacks inside China in recent years, while we're some centuries removed from the last violent uprising in Scotland. Why is Uyghur nationalism violent while Scots nationalism isn't? The tempting answer is that the Chinese government is "violent" toward Uyghur aspirations in a way the United Kingdom hasn't been for some time. But there can be resentment of central rule by an ethnic other without violence being part of it, or else there wouldn't be a Scots separatist movement at all. It may be easy to dismiss Uyghur separatism or nationalism because it's sometimes violent -- not to mention because Uyghurs are Muslims -- compared to Scots nationalism or even Tibetan nationalism within China. But to China separatism (or "splittism") is the original offense, before violence enters the equation. The Chinese government shares with many Americans the belief that political union is inseparable, and that separatism is always a step backward. That's the American belief about their own country, at least, even though we let our fellow citizens argue to the contrary. Even here, however, a growing distrust of all large institutions, including the state, has been noted, and looking outward Americans often cheer for the world's separatists, accepting their narratives of oppression by tyrannical majorities or repressive central bureaucracies. It may be an objective fact that the Chinese are oppressing the Uyghurs of Xinjiang, but does it follow that the remedy for such oppression is the hyper-balkanization of the planet. Ideally an Uyghur is equal to a Han Chinese, a Scot to a Briton -- but does that require the existence of four countries rather than two?

In every country, no person should feel like less of a citizen, or less of a human being, because of their ethnicity -- but on some level --politically, at a bare minimum -- shouldn't every person feel more like a human being and less essentially ethnic? Unfortunately, the 20th century's major attempt to cultivate a predominant "human" identity seemed oppressive to nearly every ethnicity, while China's superficial continuation of that effort may simply mask Han chauvinism at the expense of the Uyghurs, the Tibetans and other minorities. It might still be argued that the adoption of a "human" identity by everyone is essential for humanity's long-term survival, but it must also be acknowledged that resistance is inevitable. It should be possible to deplore abuses of majority rule or large-scale centralized government, or at least to sympathize with the victims of such abuse, without abandoning a belief that the necessary trend is away from separatism, nationalism, sectarianism and tribalism. That may mean sometimes deciding that separatism is unjustified -- possibly more often than not -- but it also means holding every nation to the same standard of equal treatment of all its people, whether our own lives up to that standard or not.

Actual conservatism? In defense of big organizations

David Brooks is one of the house conservatives at the New York Times. Practically speaking, that means he represents the point of view of Republicans, albeit of the more "thoughtful" kind, and with the caveat that many Republicans probably would regard the likes of Brooks as a RINO. He probably isn't expected to articulate philosophical or even practical conservatism, but he did so, whether he intended it or not, in one of last week's columns. Lamenting the inability of African countries to respond effectively to the latest Ebola outbreak, Brooks blames an absence of infrastructure in the afflicted countries. He goes on to observe a disdain for infrastructure in other places, synonymous with many Americans' disdain for government itself. Writing as a conservative, Brooks sees this as a decline from the 20th century.

A few generations ago, people grew up in and were comfortable with big organizations — the army, corporations and agencies. They organized huge construction projects in the 1930s, gigantic industrial mobilization during World War II, highway construction and corporate growth during the 1950s. Institutional stewardship, the care and reform of big organizations, was more prestigious.

Now nobody wants to be an Organization Man. We like start-ups, disrupters and rebels. Creativity is honored more than the administrative execution. Post-Internet, many people assume that big problems can be solved by swarms of small, loosely networked nonprofits and social entrepreneurs. Big hierarchical organizations are [seen as] dinosaurs.

His capitalization of "Organization Man" refers back to a 1950s bestseller that warned of a trade-off between collective organization and individual creativity. Starting in the Fifties people grew anxious about the conformity that might be imposed by collective organization, whether on the state level in Communist states or on the cultural level by corporate monopolies and pervasive mass media. Bigness itself became suspect as "Small is Beautiful" became a mantra for some. If Brooks now sees all of this as a sort of backsliding, at the time it was thought a healthy reaction to societies that had gone too far in one way or another. It's clear that a new kind of alienation evolved at midcentury that still inhibits many of us. Yet we still think of the years before as the heyday of the "Greatest Generation," and Brooks doesn't seem to disagree, at least on this score. His is a particularly daring and challenging conservatism when it comes to the defense of big government. though as a Republican he most likely would question whether big government is the best solution to all problems. To the extent that it does solve some problems best, as he argues in the case of epidemics, Brooks might ask what it would take to make people more comfortable again with big organizations or governments, whether the alienation so many have felt can be transcended. It really might just be a matter of time. In the 1930s, threatened by economic depression and fascistic aggression, many people around the world felt there was no hope for survival outside big institutions. In our time "survivalism" is still identified with an individualist ethos, but how much longer will that last should we see more pandemics, more globalized terrorism, more climatological upheaval? Before long, true survivalism may be identified with pragmatic submission to effective authority, though it may prove harder for us or our descendants to swallow that than it was for our grandparents or their parents. We seem more ready to see authority as Other rather than of us. Whatever it takes to change that is what actual conservatives should call for. If a conservative like David Brooks isn't willing to wait until catastrophe to call for change, that may be a good sign.

Separatism without violence?

The people of Scotland voted yesterday by a 55% to 45% margin to remain in the United Kingdom, defeating a secessionist movement that was clearly popular and widespread. So when does the guerrilla warfare commence? Probably we shouldn't hold our breath. I haven't even heard anyone complain of fraud at the polls. Does this prove anything? If Scottish secessionism doesn't turn violent, does that prove that Scots care less about independence than, say, Russophone Ukrainians? It's probably safer to say the Scots care in a different way, or to a different degree. Obviously, many Scots believe that independence is a good idea, something worth trying. Far fewer, as obviously, feel that their lives or even their sense of identity depend on independence. We shouldn't conclude that some nationalities don't believe in independence as much as others if they don't believe in fighting for it. But it may be true that a place like Scotland will never be independent unless Scots are willing to fight for it, even to the point, probably, of fighting other Scots. That observation is not meant as a reproach against the Scots. The fact is, they don't have to be independent. If anything, by bucking a possible global trend toward separatism and tribalism, the Scots this week may have proven themselves among the world's most progressive people. If those who do deeply believe in independence don't believe in forcing it upon their more reluctant brethren at gunpoint, that would only be further proof. Personally, I was indifferent to whether Scotland seceded or not, and apart from the U.S. government I suspect most Americans felt the same way. The campaign for independence carried no ideological import, or was vested with none by our punditocracy. If only we could see similar conflicts around the world as clearly.

Kerry meets his critics, in front and behind him

This afternoon's Senate hearing of Secretary Kerry was a spectacle displaying American government at something like its best, in character if not in wisdom or efficiency. The thing you noticed immediately were the silent protesters holding antiwar signs behind the Secretary of State, who had come before the committee to advocate for war against the self-styled Islamic State, throughout the hearing. Remarkably, they were not removed and Kerry, long ago an anti-war protester himself, went to the trouble of addressing them. His address was unlikely to convince them -- predictably, he emphasized the IS's systemic misogyny to refute arguments against war from Code Pink, a female-directed protest group. Certainly Kerry must recall that in his youth the warmongers of the time warned of the atrocities to be committed on all freedom-loving people by Communists, and as a soldier in Vietnam he no doubt saw Communist atrocities close up. Yet he turned against the Vietnam War and appeared  before the Senate not merely as a protester or heckler but as a witness to make the case that the war then being waged was not the answer to whatever threat the Viet Cong represented. Does he think the women of Code Pink are ignorant of Islamist misogyny, of reports of rape and enslavement? They are not so clueless, surely, yet as Kerry believed about Vietnam more than forty years ago, they believe now that an air war against ISIS won't solve the problems it feeds upon. That someone must stop the IS as a matter of humane principle no one disputes; how it is to be done, and by whom, are questions that should be asked without presumptions of naivete or cowardice from those being questioned.

With Code Pink waving signs behind him, Kerry was literally in the middle when questioned by Senator McCain, who used an American ambassador to Syria as a kind of human shield while he spouted his characteristic insanity. He relayed (in fact, previewed) the ambassador's report from the Free Syrian Army, i.e. the "good" rebels in that country, that they considered their government, the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, a greater threat than ISIS. McCain then questioned the priorities of Kerry and President Obama; why adopt an "ISIL first" strategy when the real priority, at least as far as McCain is concerned, is to put the Free Syrian Army in power, or at least to replace the Assad government? The Arizonan wants the Obama administration to order airstrikes against Assad in order to prevent the dictator from bombing the "good" rebels, while Kerry struggled to nudge McCain toward a more "confidential" discussion of the nation's Syria strategy. McCain represents those Americans who want no power in Syria except one that'll be friendly toward the U.S., if not also toward America's friends. If anything, it appeared more important to him to topple Assad than to destroy the IS. Fortunately, his position isn't even necessarily representative of Republicans. Sen. Paul noted during his turn with Kerry that had we bombed Assad last year, ISIS might well have taken all Syria by now. On the other hand, many avowed liberals share this dangerous impulse to destroy all dictators. This sort of fanaticism needlessly complicates the crafting of a true international coalition against the IS. There really does seem to be a consensus that ISIS needs to be destroyed; there obviously isn't a consensus that Assad must go. The Iranians, Russians and others will not accept that outcome. We can call them all a bunch of authoritarian poopyheads, or we can make a grown-up decision to do one thing or another -- the thing nearly everyone agrees with or the thing many refuse. Even then, it's one thing to agree with the world about destroying ISIS, and another, just as important, to consult with the Senate and the American people -- with Congress and Code Pink -- before committing resources to that mission. No one wants the IS to win on any front, as far as I know, but we still need to decide what it's worth to us, and to the rest of the world, to stop them.

A disagreement among Christians

One reason Republicans have gotten especially worked up over the rise of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is the understanding that the Sunni takfiris are persecuting local Christians along with other non-Sunni groups. I'm sure many Americans feel that this country, as a "Christian nation" has a special responsibility to protect Christians around the world. Senator Cruz of Texas apparently felt that way when he addressed the "In Defense of Christians" group last night. That organization is dedicated to the defense in particular of Christians in the Middle East from attacks by Muslim extremists. Cruz apparently went in thinking that "Christian" trumped "Middle Eastern" as far as these people were concerned. He may also have assumed that the enemy of their enemy must or should be their friend. In any event, he went on the podium before these Middle Eastern Christians and told them that "Christians have no greater ally than Israel." As reported on this Christian news site (with video) he was practically booed off the stage, but not before chastising his audience. It was un-Christian to hate Israel or the Jews, he said, forgetting or at least regretting centuries of history that testifies otherwise. He hoped to impress upon his hearers that all the groups persecuted or hated by the IS should stand together. They weren't buying it, and in a climax that was actually impressive in a way, Cruz basically told them to drop dead. If you won't stand with Israel, he said, I won't stand with you. I don't think this means he'll no longer protest the persecution of Christians by the Islamic State. More likely he'll simply prefer to deal with the Middle Eastern Christians of his conservative Republican imagination, much as most American politicians support the Syrian rebels of their imagination while ignoring the real ones.

It's interesting that most of the people posting comments on the Christian news site, seeing evidence that could be interpreted to show that Cruz cares more about Israelis than Christians, support Cruz's stand, seeing him of a man of principle. So do Republican Christians in the U.S. care more for Israelis than Christians in the Middle East when forced to choose? I suspect so, for a variety of reasons, ranging from an apocalyptic belief in Israel's role in prophecy to a suspicion that believers in Syria and Iraq aren't "real" Christians by some doctrinal or denominational standard. Most likely, I suspect, right-wing Christians are likely to see their beleaguered fellow believers, met face to face, as Arabs (if not dirty Arabs) first, and Christians second at best. Meanwhile, it should be remembered that Christians had it relatively good under the Baathist regimes in Iraq and Syria. At the very least, neither Saddam Hussein nor the Assads ever forced Christians in their countries to convert or die. A lingering loyalty to Baathism, if not a sense of "Arab" identity, may explain their persistent hostility toward Israel. But it may also have been simple resentment that Cruz saw fit to bring up Israel on an occasion intended to spotlight the persecution of Christians. Cruz and his supporters go away feeling that their Middle Eastern co-religionists are un-Christian in some important respect, and the feeling may be mutual. Get two or more Christians in a room together -- outside of a church, that is -- and that's likely to happen.

Picking winners in Syria

While making his case for further American military action against the self-styled Islamic State tonight, the President is expected to call for further American support for "vetted" or "moderate" rebels against the Syrian government. Neither Obama nor the Republicans seem reconciled to the idea that Bashar al-Assad's dictatorship may be Syria's best defense against an IS takeover. In fact, you're likely to read or hear that Assad is somehow to blame for ISIS's ascendancy in his own country -- that's "Islamic State in Syria," after all, if only through his refusal to capitulate and abdicate. You also hear from Republicans (and some hawkish Democrats) that Obama is to blame for the spread of ISIS because he hasn't heretofore given adequate support to the moderates who are somehow to defeat both ISIS and Assad. If they were capable they'd be winning -- but this argument won't work with those idealists who feel that there has to be a moderate force, a Syrian constituency for liberal, pluralist democracy. Such a force would automatically deserve to win and therefore should be supported with all available resources. If they don't win, if Syria remains a Baathist dictatorship (if not an Alawite monarchy) or becomes part of a jihadist caliphate, it has to be Obama's fault in particular and the U.S.'s fault in general because liberal pluralist democrats have to win everywhere, and liberal pluralist democrats everywhere have to support their comrades in Syria.

There's been an uprising in Syria because the country is a dictatorship and quite a few Syrians can't stand it. Bashar al-Assad may as well be King Bashar; his dynastic succession is as much an insult to the modernist ideals of the Baath party as Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un's reigns have been to Marxism and Leninism. Plenty of Syrians presumably have plenty of reasons to be rid of Assad and the Baathists, if not of the Alawite clique over which Bashar presides. But what do these disgruntled Syrians want in Assad's place? Americans suppose that they know what the Syrians should want, but it doesn't follow that that's what the people who actually first took up arms against Assad wanted. The sad fact is that there seems to be no consensus among the Syrian rebels themselves, who seem to fight amongst themselves as often as they fight the government. There are relative liberals among the rebels, but all accounts portray them as weak -- that may come with the liberalism -- and there's no reason to believe that American money and material support will make them any more formidable than the Iraqi army has been in the face of the IS assault. There's no evidence I know of to indicate that a majority of rebel supporters, much less a majority of Syrians, seek the sort of liberal pluralist democracy we think they should want. Perhaps the best proof against any Assad complaint that the entire uprising is an American plot is the fact that our favorites aren't in command right now. But a sudden ascendancy of liberal pluralist fighters, without a proportionate expansion of their popular base, would allow Assad to say that the U.S. has co-opted the uprising as much as the jihadis have. Leaving that aside, doesn't it simply seem unfair for us, who didn't start this rebellion, to dictate how it should turn out, or to say this particular group should win regardless of their share of fighting or organization? Offensive as it may be to our liberal sensibilities, the best option may be to let Assad win, if he can, if not to help him win. But Assad is too friendly with Iran and Russia, and too unfriendly with Israel, for most Americans to support him even for the sake of regional stability. Yet he may be the Stalin we must work with, clothespins on noses if necessary, to defeat the caliphists we deem the Hitlers of our time. But I fear that too many of today's Americans, transplanted to World War II, would root for moderates to win the battle of Stalingrad.

Corruption in an Ideological Age

Today is Primary Day in New York State. Governor Andrew Cuomo is being challenged for the Democratic and Working Families party lines by Zephyr Teachout, a law professor who has just published a book on Corruption in America through Harvard University Press. Teachout's challenge to Cuomo, amid claims that the governor behaved corruptly by constraining a committee he created to investigate legislative corruption, has drawn considerable attention to her book. Her main argument appears to be that the Supreme Court today fails to take seriously the corrupting potential of money in politics by defining corruption too narrowly. The Roberts Court has ruled that large campaign donations do not by themselves corrupt recipients, on the understanding that "corruption" means an explicit quid-pro-quo exchange of money for policy. In other words, the Roberts majority will recognize corruption only if a politician can be proved to have solicited money, or had been promised money, in return for a specific vote on legislation.

As Teachout acknowledges, it is easier to presume corruption than to prove it, and much easier to make the charge during a campaign than to make it stick in court. But she remains convinced that corruption is a fact traceable to the role of money in politics and the inequality of influence that inevitably results as campaigns grow ever more dependent on money in our multimedia age.

So what is corruption in relation to campaign donations? Our first impression, almost certainly, is that money in politics corrupts a politician if it changes his or her mind. We would have no problem presuming corruption, even if a quid-pro-quo couldn't be proven, if a Democratic legislator with a "progressive" reputation started voting to abolish regulations on industry after receiving donations from the Koch brothers. Yet the Kochs are understood to reserve their donations primarily for Republicans, and Republicans, for the most part, are presumed to have an ideological affinity with the brothers already. Can the Kochs actually corrupt Republican conservatives or libertarians? You would need very specific proof even for suspicion, something like a pet project of interest or concern only to the brothers, as opposed to an overall ideological agenda with which ideological politicians are presumed already to agree -- some legislation with no apparent purpose but to make the Kochs money. Absent that, the Kochs' donations only sponsor candidates who already agree with them on principle and need the money to get elected, not persuaded.

The ideological polarization (or bipolar ideologization) of American politics arguably renders traditional concepts of political corruption obsolete, if ideologues are understood to be incapable of changing their minds on policy or principle. Could the Kochs possibly change Elizabeth Warren's (or Zephyr Teachout's) mind about anything? Or for the sake of balance, could George Soros (or whomever right-wingers see as the leftist moneyman of the moment) change Ted Cruz's mind? If anything, the hardening of ideology has only encouraged investments in politics by the wealthy, not because money changes more minds but because ideological politicians are safer investments than pragmatists or politicians with any pretense of objectivity.

Suppose a corrupting influence of money over politics could be proved. What would that mean? Presumably it would mean not just that a politician votes a certain way because he receives money from someone -- that's the influence -- but also that he votes in a way inconsistent with an objective or pragmatic understanding, whenever either is possible, of the national interest or the public good -- that's the corruption. The only reason to care about corruption is if corruption means that politicians will vote the wrong way. If you don't presume that some policy questions have right or wrong answers, or good or bad consequences, then anyone should be able to influence his representative with all the arguments or enticements at his disposal. Corruption is bad -- is corrupt -- if it closes a politician's mind, if it blinds him to the right thing to do or inspires him to knowingly reject it. Ever since the Founders rejected the idea that constituents could explicitly and bindingly instruct representatives how to vote, American politics presumes that representatives will legislate with open, objective minds. If ideology is the opposite of an open or objective mind, while it is also possible to know the "right thing to do" without reference to ideology, then ideology itself is the real corrupting element in politics, and money in politics is only gravy. Of course, it's even more impossible to ban ideology than it would be to ban corruption. You can only hope that ordinary Americans will recognize ideology as corrupt -- or, more likely, "crazy," -- and rise up against them like people rose up against Communist ideologues in Europe a generation ago. But despite persistent and increasing disgruntlement in the electorate that result seems no more likely than ever -- and if that lamentable state of affairs can be traced to money in politics, if money can be blamed for Americans thinking they can only ever choose between two lousy options, maybe that's where the real corruption is.

The NBA and 'freedom of speech' in civil society

Once again an owner of a National Basketball Association franchise is pressured to sell because of allegedly racist comments made in a less-than-private environment. In this case the owner of the Atlanta Hawks is being shamed out of the league for opining that efforts should have been made to attract more white fans to home games, the implication being that the existing crowd, from the players to the cheerleaders to the people already in the seats, were too black for some people's comfort. For some observers this is further proof that the U.S. is going down the chute of political correctness, but such observers need a gentle reminder that it is not the United States government pushing the poor man out, however much some would like to see President Obama behind this in some way. Instead, the NBA is part of what pundits and political scientists call "civil society," the conglomeration of private, voluntary associations that provide what many consider a necessary buffer between the individual and the state. A healthy civil society is deemed essential to liberal democracy by those who note its absence wherever liberal democracy fails to take root. Where there is civil society, it is presumed, the people are more free, in part because civil society relieves them of dependence on government for mere existence, or for information about the world. Taking the long view, these sweeping claims for civil society may be true. But in a pluralist society it is accepted that common standards of, for want of a better word, civility, will not and can not prevail among all the institutions that form civil society. Civil society must accommodate, to some extent, religions that require adherents to be less "free" than the liberal ideal. So too, it seems, it must accommodate entities like the NBA that have decided not to tolerate the least hint of racism among franchise owners, however much their policies appear to violate liberal principles of privacy and free speech. That's how it has to be, I suppose, if civil society is necessary to a civil nation, not to mention civilization -- and if civil society isn't just someone's synonym for free enterprise or laissez-faire.

The sklavenmoral of the master class

David Brooks has described Russia's interventions in Ukraine and the rise of the "Islamic State" in Syria and Iraq as "revolts of the weak." That sounds paradoxical since both ISIS and Vladimir Putin are perceived to advance their interests through raw application of force. To call them "weak" is almost to say that strength, or at least brute force, is weakness. However, Brooks isn't talking about physical strength or the kind that finds expression in warfare. Instead, Russians, Muslims and others are "weak" if they "can’t compete if they play by the normal rules of civilization." By appealing to pure force, "they are conspiring to blow up the rule book."

When is strength not strength but weakness? When a transvaluation of values is underway. Brooks's column put me back into the Nietzschean frame of mind I've worked within on and off for a while recently. It had struck me that in modern times we had seen an ultimate transvaluation, an upending of Nietzsche's own genealogy of morals. As I remember it, he theorized that morality, as we know it, arose from a revolt of the "weak." Previously, when the strong, or strength, ruled without question, people thought only in terms of good and bad. Strength was good, the lack of it bad. Morality introduced the idea that the opposite of good was "wrong" or "evil." The strong should not claim power simply because they are strong; to thus rule over the weak was morally wrong, if not evil. Nietzsche proposed that the weak conquered the strong, on one level at least, once concepts of morality prevailed at every class level.

Nietzsche imagined morality as the revolt of have-nots against haves, and so called it a sklavenmoral or "slave morality," but in the 21st century morality both sides appeal to its principles. Isn't it a sklavenmoral, a repudiation of strength, when the haves tell the have-nots that they may not take what they need to survive (or simply what they want) even though they can, presumably, through strength of numbers -- either in raw physical terms or through the vehicle of democratic government?  Here's an important difference: the sklavenmoral of the have-nots targets the haves' conscience by calling them evil and warning them of divine retribution or other bad consequences of their abuse of power, while the sklavenmoral of the haves targets the conscience or, rather, the low self-esteem of the have-nots by calling them weak and arguing that they don't deserve the things they want or need.

Sklavenmorals are probably inevitable in any competitive environment. In less philosophical terms, this sort of morality is rooted in the feeling that your more successful competitor has cheated in some way. That feeling presumes that your own way of doing something is sufficient if not exclusively correct, and shields you from the more painful conclusions that someone else's way is better or that you're inherently limited no matter what way you do things. When competition is a given, any rules proposed are inevitably self-serving. The rich have gotten wealthy the right way, for instance, and it's wrong for others simply to take wealth from them by force or other means the wealthy don't respect. Force is proof of bad character and an essential weakness of those who can't play by the rules. True competition, however, has no rules, and the only true rule is that which ends competition -- or at least competition for survival. By Nietzschean standards that itself is slave morality, and by my own it still is, I suppose, since I'm proposing a competition against a natural order of competition with the rules changed in my favor. This anti-competitive morality has one special virtue, I suggest: it'll never be hypocritical, as nearly all other moralizing is, whether philosophical or political.

'Convert them or kill them'

Who said it? If you've looked at any entertainment news today, you know that it was Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame, addressing the problem of the Islamic State while promoting his new book on Sean Hannity's TV show. Robertson says his preference would be to engage ISIS in bible study and teach them about Jesus, but if the other option is a war of religion he's "prepared for either one."

Put this quote in the bank and save it for the next time someone says Christians aren't like that, or haven't been for centuries. As for those already coming to Robertson's defense by saying that ISIS and other Islamic extremists "started it," the fact is that Christians have been saying that Muslims started it ever since they first heard of Muhammad. Muslims "started it," as far as Christians are concerned, by denying the divinity of Jesus and daring to claim that God gave humanity yet another revelation. I don't mean to say that Muslims are innocent over the course of global history, but that they ceased to be innocent in the eyes of Christians well before they started converting people by the sword. Meanwhile, I'm sure the folks at ISIS feel that the rest of the world has been given adequate opportunity to recognize the truth of Islam, and that the gun becomes necessary in the face of what they see as violent resistance, if not outright oppression by infidels. Both Christians and Muslims crow about all the peaceful appeals they've made before they've had to reach for the sword or the gun. But how peaceful are such appeals when the sword or gun is always there, in plain sight of everybody? Maybe the earliest Christians, the ones who let themselves get martyred in Rome, actually proselytized without any threat of violence, but most of history tells a different story. For Muslims, there was probably an even smaller window of time when the invitation to convert wasn't implicitly backed by the threat of the sword.

The most contemptible thing about Robertson's latest rant is the idea that ISIS can be neutralized, short of death, only by their acceptance of Jesus. Again, let history judge the peacefulness of Christians. If I'm right about ISIS in my belief that religion only rationalizes their deeper need for political power, their conversion would really only give them wealthier, more powerful sponsors for their violence. But many Christians persist in a belief that there are political and social implications to the divinity of Jesus, so that people like Robertson credit Christianity for the relative freedom and prosperity of "Christian" nations while blaming poverty in Muslim countries on Islam. They haven't convinced me yet. Instead of getting the ISIS idiots to trade one version of God for another, mightn't we make more progress if we could somehow convince them that there was no God to justify their lust for power and violence? They might well still kill a lot of people in pursuit of power, but at least they wouldn't go out of their way to kill them for not converting, as Phil Robertson proposes doing.

And for those keeping score: he talks a good game about being ready for a gunfight and about sitting down for bible study with ISIS, but as long as talk is all he does about it when his talk can influence others -- he's a coward, too.

For once, a terrorist who really is a coward

If you don't know who I mean, I mean that masked dude who beheaded a helpless journalist -- and may have beheaded another earlier, the voices on the videos being similar -- while talking smack to the President of the United States. Even now you may argue that an executioner isn't necessarily a coward, but he's something of a self-appointed executioner, isn't he? Meanwhile, we have no evidence that he cuts heads during break time from real fighting against real soldiers. This is as no-risk as terrorism gets -- especially with the mask on. Here in the U.S. we're all too quick to label all terrorists cowards, as if unorthodox or asymmetrical warfare is inherently dishonorable. I've even seen that American fool, whose death was reported last week, called a coward even though he died, from all indications, in combat. It's as if what was cowardly was his decision to fight for a foreign cause, however stupid, instead of muddling along like a good bourgeois drone. Calling him or anyone who risks or sacrifices his life a coward, however wicked the cause, is stupid. But by all means, call that masked Islamic State moron a coward, because until we see proof to the contrary that's what he is. Call him a moron, too, because he's murdered someone, and may yet risk his life, for the lie of God's will -- both the lie of revelation and the lie that slaughter is his duty rather than his pleasure. If he ever does get in a fight, I hope he's taken alive. That way he can keep on being a coward in his own mind for the rest of his days.

Are there principles at stake in Ukraine?

In short: no.

Imagine an alternate scenario. To protest President Yanukovich's decision to make a trade deal with Russia instead of the European Union, the western part of Ukraine secedes, declares itself a separate nation and seeks membership in the EU. I don't doubt that Yanukovich would have used force to keep the country whole, and I feel pretty certain that Russia would help him in any way President Putin could think of and get away with. So the actual conflict, in which Russia is helping the eastern region against the central government, probably isn't about any group's right to self-determination as a matter of principle, as the Russians claim it is.

But the war in Ukraine is no more a struggle for democracy against the sort of authoritarianism Putin currently embodies. The current government effectively gave up any such pretense after the Maidan uprising drove Yanukovich from power. Maybe that was a triumph for "freedom" or "liberty," but using people power to drive an elected leader from power is no more democracy in Ukraine than it was in Egypt. I'm willing to believe that Yanukovich was corrupt, a toady of Russia, whatever you want to say. But as far as I know it was his prerogative as the elected leader of his country to make the trade deal he thought best, by whatever criterion. That he didn't make the deal a large number of Ukrainians wanted is not sufficient cause to demand, much less effect, his ouster before his term was up. This has to be stressed now that some Americans want to drum up an ideological crusade against Russian authoritarianism. Russians may be everything Americans think they are, but they still have reason to question the legitimacy of Yanukovich's replacement. Before you celebrate the Maidan as direct democracy in action, ask whether you'd like governments in your own country to rise or fall in similar fashion.

Rather, the Maidan, like last year's uprising in Egypt, point toward a devolution of democracy. They signal a dangerous distrust of electoral democracy if not of representative government itself. While blind faith in democracy -- an assumption that it can never result in tyranny -- may not be justified, bad faith within a democracy -- an assumption that it is always on the verge of tyranny, that your opposition is always scheming to impose tyranny -- is hardly more justified. Suspicion of democracy has grown steadily since the decolonization of the Third World raised the spectre of "one man, one vote, once" democracy, the sort inevitably co-opted by the ambitious and ruthless and converted to authoritarianism at best, despotism at worst. Increasingly we see faithless democracy, founded on distrust of those who disagree with you and suspicion of their motives, in which the stakes are too high ever to acquiesce in controversial policies until the next election, so long as it's assumed that the next election may not take place, or that the ruling party will rig it somehow or otherwise steal it. Yanukovich is becoming a tyrant and must go; Morsi is becoming a tyrant and must go. How soon before more people say "Obama is becoming a tyrant ..." -- or fill in the name of a Republican for future reference? We distrust the "authoritarian" demand for submission, and now we distrust the implicit democratic requirement of submission as authoritarian. It's said that Putin fears the Maidan and the Ukrainian example because it may recur in Russia. Whatever he thinks, it is something to fear if it means that any mob of people can drive an elected leader from power for any reason. In the U.S. we're invited to see the Ukrainian war as a people's struggle for freedom from the ever-evil empire. In effect, to support Ukraine now is to endorse the Maidan and encourage imitators. Saying this doesn't mean I want to see Yanukovich restored to power in Kiev; at the least it's too late for that now. But do we really want a world where anyone can gather a mob and undo an election? You might say the mob won't win if the government really has its people behind it, but in our time, with the evidence in front of us, can you be so sure? Russia's bullying presence in ruthless pursuit of national interest makes the issue look simpler than it is. But neither Putin's authoritarianism, whatever its actual extent, nor the mob veto of the Maidan is a model worth promoting globally. If Putin is violating Ukrainian sovereignty, it's only after Ukrainians violated their own sovereignty more than once. Principles, such as they are, cancel out, leaving national interests -- and if the U.S. has a material national interest in the fate of Ukraine I wish someone would tell me what it is.