Merck to pay $950 million to settle U.S. Vioxx charge - Health - msnbc.com

Merck to pay $950 million to settle U.S. Vioxx charge - Health - msnbc.com

This article reinforces the idea that we have returned to the Robber Baron era. For corporations like Merck, breaking the law is simply a cost of doing business. They lack any sense of civic responsibility. The only way to reverse this is to hold the people who run these companies legally responsible and give them jail time for the criminal acts that their companies commit under their leadership. Ultimately, perhaps the solution is to hold their stockholders responsible for financing criminal activity. That would be one small step toward public accountability.

Net Generation as the "Occupant" Generation

 In 2005, Diana Oblinger and James Oblinger first defined what they call the “Net Generation”—a generation born in or after 1982 who have lived their entire lives in the era of the Internet.  If Baby Boomers were defined by television and Generation X by video gaming, the Net Generation is defined by the Web and online communities. 

They are, in effect, the emerging American society.

This month, as the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon morphed from a localized protest in New York to a global movement, it became clear that the Net Generation is also the “Occupant” Generation.   They were born at the beginning of the Reagan Revolution and have lived all their lives in an era where one’s identity in the broader society as “citizen” has been replaced by “consumer.”  They are the increasingly disenfranchised victims of a corporate plutocracy that has reamed out the core of our culture and, one might expect, left little for this generation to strive for—except for righting the wrongs that have been done to their society. 

And, perhaps, creating a very different society in the vacuum that the financial 1 percenters have left in the wake of their greed.

In Educating the Net Generation (EDUCAUSE 2005, available at www.educause.edu/educatingthenetgen/ ) the Oblingers reported several unifying characteristics that Howe and Strauss described of this generation, which has also been called the Millennial Generation:

·      They tend to gravitate toward group activity.

·      They believe that “it’s cool to be smart” and focus on academic performance.

·      They get involved in extracurricular activities.

·      They are close to their parents and identify with their parents’ values.

·      They tend to respect social conventions and institutions.

·      They are fascinated by new technologies.

·      They are racially and ethnically diverse.

They also noted that, while this generation is very mobile, it is also always connected and most are experiential learners—they prefer learning by doing, an exploratory style that, note the Oblingers, “enables them to better retain information and use it in creative, meaningful ways.”  Some other preferences:

·      They prefer to work in teams.

·      They prefer structure to ambiguity.

·      They are oriented toward inductive discovery or observation, formulating hypotheses, and figuring out rules.

·      They crave interactivity.

·      They eagerly participate in community activity.

·      They believe they can make a difference.

The same characteristics that made this a unique generation of learners may also serve to help them confront imbalance between the people, through our government, and increasingly international corporate forces.  The challenge is to create a new balance in society between corporations and our government.  In many ways the task before them is much more difficult than what the Baby Boomers faced in the 1960s.  Then, we still lived in a mixed economy in which there was agreement that government should respond to society’s needs and protect people from the excesses of the private economy.  Today, the government, while still a potential ally, is weakened by a generation of deregulation.  The Net Generation, with its willingness to engage as a community—to be more than consumers—can overcome the current ambiguity about the role of government and create a society that will truly make a difference.

The Occupy movement is an important step toward that goal. 

Sachs' "Mixed Economy"--A Middle Path

I am continuing to read Jeffrey Sachs’ The Price of Civilization.  It is like taking a crash course in modern economics.  Sachs’ discussion of the current political and cultural context of economics makes me think that the struggle is not between two opposing views of how to manage government within the context of our constitutional democracy.  Instead, I am beginning to think that the struggle is between democracy itself and a plutocracy in which a tiny minority of super-rich elites rule on the backs of an increasingly poor working class, buffered by a small professional class. 

           

To find a counterpart, I suspect we need to look back not to the Roaring Twenties or the Gilded Age of the Industrial period, but further to the landed aristocracy of the agrarian Middle Ages.  While that aristocracy was based on land—the proper form of wealth in an agrarian era—today’s aristocracy is based on market wealth, a wealth that manipulates markets rather than produce goods that improve the lives of people.   Just as the landed barons controlled the government of the Middle Ages, the corporate/finance barons are attempting to control democratic government today, rending it in the words of one presidential candidate, “inconsequential” and opening the door to direct corporate control.

Ultimately, I suspect, this is what the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators are really rallying against.  And, I further suspect, it is what concerned the Tea Party before they were taken over by the plutocrats.   At its most absolute, the fight, is not just to determine which political party will control government.  The fight is for idea of democracy itself.  

That said, it is absolutely essential that people not drift to extremes.  Neither a corporate plutocracy, in which government is inconsequential, nor a socialist government, in which the market is controlled centrally, are likely to produce long-term health for society.  What has proven to be successful—and which made the United States the most successful country in the world for most of the 20^th century—according to Sachs is a mixed economy, in which corporations are generally free to produce goods and service and the government serves to do those things that are necessary for a happy life but that do not produce profit:  build roads and train systems, create levees and dams to control rivers and avoid floods, fund basic research that often has no immediate profit value.  And, I would add, regulate the activities of corporations only so that they do not work against the best interests of the population as a whole.

Ultimately, we need to focus not on the extremes, but on the balance—the mix, if you will—between these two aspects of a healthy democratic society.  Government and business are the Yin and Yang of a successful economy.  Together—as we found in the half-century between the Great Depression and the Reagan Revolution—they can create a wonderful society.  As we have seen elsewhere in the world, without that balance one gets failure at either extreme, whether it be the socialism of the USSR or the plutocratic oil dictatorships of the Middle East that are now being dismantled by the Arab Spring. 

Moderation, rather than extreme idealogy, is the key.  We need to reward politicians who have a long view and who are able to see the value of a diverse American “us.”

Jane Addams and the Tea Party

I am re-reading Jane Addams’ wonderful "Twenty Years at Hull-House." In explaining the spirit with which she founded her settlement house in 1890s Chicago, she wrote that it was driven, in part by “the conviction, in the words of Canon Barnett, that the things that make men alike are finer and better than the things that keep them apart, and that these basic likenesses, if they are properly accentuated, easily transcend the less essential differences of race, language, creed, and tradition." Addams, of course, was speaking about the importance of integrating into American life the millions of immigrants who had been attracted to the United States at the height of the Industrial Revolution.  However, her words also set an expectation for us today.

American-style democracy thrives on our ability to find aworkable middle—a place where are “basic likenesses” outweigh the things thatkeep us apart enough for us to fulfill the purpose of our federal government as declared in the opening sentence of the Constitution: “. . . to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity . . .” I would like to think that I could identify some “basic likenesses” with the Tea Party members of Congress.  However, it does not come easily.

The Tea Party, which declared its purpose during the last election as being “to take back our country” (they did not say from whom), can be expected to become even more radical and less prone to compromise now that they have won a big victory.  These right wing extremists have set themselves so arrogantly apart from the mainstream of our country, that, right now at least, I cannot find common ground with them.  They, in turn,seek no common ground with anyone who does not share their ideology.

I hope that our politicians are able to find a way to build a workable middle ground in this environment.

Civic Virtue

Jeffrey Sachs begins his new book The Price of Civilization with this statement:

At the root of America’s economic crisis lies a moral crisis:  the decline of civic virtue among America’s political and economic elite.  A society of markets, laws, and elections is not enough if the rich and powerful fail to behave with respect, honesty, and compassion toward the rest of society and toward the world.  America has developed the world’s most competitive market society but has squandered it civic virtue along the way.  Without restoring an ethos of social responsibility, there can be no meaningful and sustained economic recovery.

It is a statement that sheds light on the ongoing debate about Social Security. 

            Republican Presidential candidate Rick Perry has called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme”—a fraud by which the government cheats taxpayers—“investors” in Perry’s analogy—by not returning full value on their investment but instead using it to pay out funds to others.   Perry’s accusation is a good example of the civic blindness that has infected conservative thinking in the U.S. 

            Social Security is not the equivalent of an individual retirement account.  Instead, it is a kind of publicly funded insurance policy.  Behind it is a key assumption:  that those of us who have been able to make a good living will ensure that our neighbors who have not done as well will still be able to retire with a modicum of dignity.  The “return on investment” of Society Security is not what the well-off take out of it, but that our elderly neighbors in need don’t go hungry.

            In the early run-up to the 2012 presidential primaries, we have heard candidates for the highest office in the land suggest that those who cannot afford health care should simply die and that those who don’t have jobs should simply go out and get one.  The lack of compassion among these people—and, by extension, in the general population that keeps these folks thinking they have a chance at being our President—is appalling.  Moreover, as Sachs suggests, it bodes ill for our country’s long-term health.

            Sachs’ book suggests that civic virtue and prosperity go hand in hand.  I would love to hear a debate among the candidates about how they define these terms.  What constitutes “civic virtue” for a Presidential candidate who advocates a government that is inconsequential?   Is a society in which one percent of the population control 20 percent of the wealth a “prosperous society?”  Or is it a poor society with a handful of very rich plutocrats?

            I hope that we can get to a debate about these issues in the months ahead.

NYT: Forests dying off as world's climate warms - Technology & science - The New York Times - msnbc.com

Here is a detailed report on how global warming is resulting in a not-so-gradual killing off of forests around the world, as insects that used to be controlled by cold weather are living to become invasive.

The article notes that richer nations will need to fund the work that is needed to stop this trend. Given today's political climate, it is hard to imagine that we can come together as a community to fight global warming at this level. It is sad to think what we stand to lose because of wrong-headed politics and radical ideologies.

We can make progress--and save countless lives--only by working together. It is time for a little humility in our politics.


NYT: Forests dying off as world's climate warms - Technology & science - The New York Times - msnbc.com

Social Security: The Individual and Society

Texas Governor Rick Perry continues to stand behind his comment that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme.”  He could be more wrong, and his statement reveals much about how he sees the role of government and, indeed, the fundamental nature of a democratic society. 

First, let’s get something straight.  A Ponzi scheme is defined by Wikipedia as “a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors, not from any actual profit earned by the organization, but from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors.”   Social Security is not an individual investment.  It is, as its name suggests, a way that the people of the United States, through our constitutional democracy, have agreed, over several generations now, to set aside funds to ensure that everyone who needs it has access to a modicum of income during their retirement years.   The problem with Social Security is not that it was set up to be deceptive; it is that (1) because of the phenomenon of aging Baby Boomers, the ratio of young to old people has changed since Social Security was designed in the 1930s and (2) people are living much longer than they did in the 1930s.  These two factors put a stress on the ability to maintain the Social Security funds:  Relatively fewer people are supporting a relatively larger group of senior citizens who are living longer. 

There is no question that Social Security needs to be adjusted so that it can continue to work in the years ahead.  However, that is no excuse for a Presidential candidate to call it a criminal act.  Either Rick Perry is incredibly uneducated or he is incredibly immoral—willing to knowingly tell lies in order to attract money and support from an ideological fringe group.  Or, perhaps, he simply is unable to see how the interests of individuals relate to the interests of the broader community in which they live.  No wonder, in that case, that, as Governor, he spoke favorably about Texas seceding from the United States. 

One is tempted to laugh at this kind of foolishness.  But that would be a mistake.

In Praise of Fact Checkers

Twenty-four hour news channels have changed much of how we perceive the news of the day.  One not-so-good impact has been a significant reduction in serious, in-depth analysis on a daily basis.  Instead, news events tend to be presented by bringing together disparate voices on a topic and letting them go at it.  The live format provides little opportunity for the news anchor to challenge opinion and get at the real facts of the matter.   It makes one pine for the 22 minutes or so of nightly that we used to get from CBS, NBC, and ABC in pre-cable days, when reporters had to boil events down to the core facts and leave the opining to the Sunday talk shows.   The news channels have done much to bring the immediacy of world events into our homes, but they have also made it very easy for demagogues to spread mistruths, partial truths, and, occasionally, outright lies with little to check them.   With a few notable exceptions, analysis has been replaced by the simple presentation of opposing opinion, leaving it to the viewer to find the truth.

Luckily, some organizations (news and otherwise) have also developed “fact checker” services to help us sort out truth from misperception and misrepresentation.  Here are a few:

http://www.politifact.com/   Politifact.com is a service founded in 2007 by the St. Petersburg Times that quickly evaluates the accuracy of political statements.  In 2009, it won a Pulitzer Prize for “separating rhetoric from truth to enlighten voters.”  It has a “truth-o-meter,” a “Flip-o-meter,” and an “Obameter.”

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/category/fact-check/   CNN provides this service mainly to allow us to keep score on political speech.

http://www.ucsusa.org/news/ucs-fact-checker.html  The Union of Concerned Scientists uses its fact checker to try to keep public officials and politicians—but also the media—honest on all sorts of science issues, especially the environment.

http://www.factcheck.org/  This service is managed by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania that focuses on research in political communication, information and society, media and children, health communication, and adolescent communication.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker  Subtitled “The Truth Behind the Rhetoric,” this fact check blog from the Washington Post is written by Glenn Kessler, a veteran diplomatic correspondent who is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and who has been with the Post since 1998.

Check these out and, if you know of other good fact checkers, please share them.

"Almost Treason?"

Texas Governor Rick Perry's recent remarks that the Obama Administration's--and, in particular, the head of the Federal Reserve's--actions on the economy amount to "almost treason" suggest that we should ask ourselves what else might constitute treason?

For instance, when a Governor of a State suggests that his state may secede from the Union, is that "almost treason?"

When a candidate for political office suggests that a public official be executed, is that "almost treason?"

Treason usually involves a conspiracy, so if the person who committed these "almost treasonous" acts gets chosen by his party to take over the government, what is that? 

I do hope, sincerely, that our politicians try their best to ignore the radical fringe at both extremes of the political spectrum and find a middle path that allows them to work together to solve our country's problems.  We have never been an "all or nothing" country.  We've always governed amid multiple ideologies, multiple strategies, multiple pressures, and multiple ideas about what constitutes service to the people.  Today, we desperately need to find the middle.  If the politicians, individually, cannot do that, then the electorate--the people that the Constitution was written to protect--needs to select politicians who can work in the messy middle of our political system in order to protect our long-term interests as a nation.

Meanwhile, people like Rick Perry should take care that their rhetoric does not cause others to ask the same questions of them.

GOP’s nasty ‘tar baby’ politics - Leonard Pitts Jr. - MiamiHerald.com

GOP’s nasty ‘tar baby’ politics - Leonard Pitts Jr. - MiamiHerald.com

Thanks to Leonard Pitts, Jr., for giving us the straight facts about the political crisis in the United States. The radicalization of American politics is as much--if not more--about our President's race than any other single factor.

A Good Example of Truth-Telling Journalism

Who's to blame for S&P's U.S. credit rating downgrade? - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

This analysis by CBS is a good example of what I called for in my previous posting.

Truth versus Power

On Friday, August 5, MSNBC had this headline in its Business section:  “No double dip, but economy stuck in low gear.”  Right next to it was this headline, “NYT analysis:  We’re probably in a double dip recession.”  Directly under that was another headline: “Why recession fears are overblown.”   And, of course, at the very top of the site was the breaking news:  “US Loses Top Credit Rating.”

So, what did we learn from MSNBC on this particular day?  Not much, it appears.  Now, I am a big fan of MSNBC.  This website is my home page on my web browser.  However, we have to question the value of their reportage on this issue, this particular day.

In a recent Rolling Stone article, former Vice President Al Gore wrote, "After World War II, a philosopher studying the impact of organized propaganda on the quality of democratic debate wrote, 'The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false'."  The task today, is to push our politicians to move past propaganda--the always evident "talking points" on each side--and to demand that they tell us what they think is true.   

The 24-hour news channels have given us a “talking-point versus talking-point” approach to the news, instead of reportage based on fact-finding and analysis.  In this radicalized political climate, it simply is not enough to invite to the table a liberal and a conservative and elicit their talking points on an issue.  Rather, we should expect the reporter to dig out the facts personally and present an analysis that they can support as the truth as they see it.   That is, we should ask journalists to pursue questions of truth rather than questions of power. Otherwise, propaganda will win out and, when that happens, a democratic society will always lose.

Jane Addams and the Tea Party

I am re-reading Jane Addams’ wonderful memoir, Twenty Years at Hull-House.  In explaining the spirit with which she founded her settlement house in 1890s Chicago, she wrote that it was driven, in part by “the conviction, in the words of Canon Barnett, that the things which make men alike are finer and better than the things that keep them apart, and that these basic likenesses, if they are properly accentuated, easily transcend the less essential differences of race, language, creed, and tradition.”  Addams, of course, was speaking about the importance of integrating into American life the millions of immigrants who had been attracted to the United States at the height of the Industrial Revolution.  However, her words also set an expectation for us today.

American-style democracy thrives on our ability to find a workable middle—a place where are “basic likenesses” outweigh the things that keep us apart enough for us to fulfill the purpose of our federal government as declared in the opening sentence of the Constitution: “. . . to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity . . .” I would like to think that I could identify some “basic likenesses” with the Tea Party members of Congress.  However, it does not come easily.

The Tea Party, which declared its purpose during the last election as being “to take back our country” (they did not say from whom), can be expected to become even more radical and less prone to compromise now that they have won a big victory.  These rightwing extremists have set themselves so arrogantly apart from the mainstream of our country, that, right now at least, I cannot find common ground with them.  They, in turn, seek no common ground with anyone who does not share their ideology.

I hope that our politicians are able to find a way to build a workable middle ground in this environment.

An Awful Week

It’s been an awful week out there in the world by most measures.  

First, of course, for some of us, there was the heat wave, which begins the list simply because of its striking immediacy.  Like most politics, it was regional in scope, but local in impact.  Few could ignore it; some died because of it. 

In Africa, where eleven million are suffering from famine, Somali militants refused to allow aid to get to the people who need it, demonstrating once again the uselessness of ideology over simple humanity. 

Here in the United States, radical conservatives are just fine with the idea of bringing on a new recession by forcing their fiscal ideology on the rest of the country, with impact on the rest of the world.  Here, too, ideology has replaced simple humanity.  One needs to be reminded that Pragmatism was an American philosophy.  Where is Dewey when you need him?

Then, very sadly, in Norway, one of the most peaceful countries, a conservative zealot—why real Christians allow these people to get away with calling themselves Christians I will never know—goes on a killing spree, murdering other Christians to make what he hoped would be an opening statement against the rising population of Islamists in Norway. 

Finally, for some perspective, on July 23, the “Writer’s Almanac” (http://www.elabs7.com/functions/message_view.html?mid=1296273&mlid=499&siteid=20130&uid=ecd2852d92)  carried this bit of trivia:

On this day in 1929, the Fascist government in Italy banned the use of foreign words. Regional dialects were still so prevalent when Mussolini came into power in 1922 that no more than 12 percent of the population of the unified state spoke straightforward Italian. The regime wanted to promote unity and a strong national identity, so anything that was seen to undermine these things was a cause for concern. French and English words and phrases were particularly popular; where possible, the government required the use of the Italian equivalent, and if one didn't exist, they made the foreign word as Italian as possible. Wine from Bordeaux became known as Barolo; a movie, formerly known as "il film," was now called "la pellicola." 

It reminded me of how short the road is from a self-governing kind of freedom to fascism, especially when one compares the 1929 event with the current discussions about immigration here in the U.S., where some want to build a great wall against our neighbors.  This short road is where American politics is currently being played out.  It is a frightening time for anyone who holds dear the American style of democracy.  We are losing the middle—the place where reasonable people can feel comfortable making a few compromises in order to live with their neighbors in a humane environment in which, even if everyone isn’t in harmony, they at least play to the same beat.  That beat is the heartbeat of our democracy.

One factor in all this may be the increasing global interconnectness that the Information Revolution has created.  Perhaps fear of losing their culture and, in the process, their identity drives people to radical cultural extremes.   The challenge we all face is how to keep our local culture—the culture that defines us to ourselves and our families and friends-- alive while we find our way—and come to feel at home—in a new, global culture.  We need to find a way to be more open about these questions, of course.  But we also need to take great care that, in the process, we do not repeat the cultural suicide that stained the 20^th century.

From the Typewriter to the Cloud: The Impact of Technology on Writing

One of this year’s finds at the annual AAUW book sale at Penn State was “The Writer’s Chapbook,” a collection of reflections about writing by top authors, drawn from their interviews in “The Paris Review.”   Reading it the other day, I stumbled over several authors commenting on the impact of the typewriter on writing. 

The biographer Leon Edel talked about Henry James, who must have been one of the early adopters of this new technology.  Here’s what he said:  “He began dictating directly to the typewriter.  It’s a case of the medium being the message and with dictation he ran into longer sentences, and parenthetical remarks, and when he revised what he had dictated he tended to add further flourishes.  In the old days, when he wrote in longhand he was much briefer and crisper, but now he luxuriated in fine phrases and he was exquisitely baroque.”

Conrad Aiken, noting that he never used a carbon copy “because that made me self-conscious,” wrote, “I can remember discussing the effect of the typewriter on our work with Tom Eliot because he was moving to the typewriter about the time I was.  And I remember our agreeing that it made for a slight change of style in the prose-that you tended to use more periodic sentences, a little shorter, and a rather choppier style—and that one must be careful about that . . . But that was a passing phase only.  We both soon discovered that we were just as free to let the style throw itself into the air as we had been writing manually.”

I suspect it is too bad that Henry James dictated rather than take to the keyboard himself. 

These couple of examples also made me wonder:  how has word processing changed style over the past two decades?  One imagines that the ability for infinite self-correction should free the imagination and allow writers to be more spontaneous, on one hand, and more precise on the other hand.  Then, add the Internet as a publishing environment.  I have to think that the ability to immediately publish one’s thoughts would lead to shorter pieces more focused on the immediacy of insight rather than on long, complexly woven pieces—a tendency reinforced by the limitations on length imposed by Twitter.  However, there is also the inevitable temptation to constantly revisit and revise—to not let good enough alone in this environment.  This suggests the need for a new artistic ethos:  that the writer, having written, must move on.   But it also raises a question about the relationship between writer and reader and how readers engage with the writer in the creative process.   In this new environment, is writing about the finished product or does the reader gain artistic insight in the process itself?

Worth exploring more.  Any thoughts?

Salt march to the Dead Sea: Gandhi's Palestinian reincarnation—By David Dean Shulman (Harper's Magazine)

Salt march to the Dead Sea: Gandhi's Palestinian reincarnation—By David Dean Shulman (Harper's Magazine)

Today, I ran into two interestingly opposing ideas. The first was part of a National Public Radio report on the impact of tobacco on the health of people in developing countries. One of the people interviewed, responding to a comment that pressure should be put on tobacco growers in developing countries, defended those that grow tobacco. I can't quote him directly, but in essence, he said, "If there is no law against it, then why should they not pursue a living by growing tobacco."

It is an interestingly amoral position that I have heard others--including American free marketers--take. I was left wondering why it is that we have abandoned personal morality in today's economy: if I am not breaking a law, then don't tell me not to do something. It left me a bit saddened.

Then, this afternoon, as I was watching supper cook on the grill, I read "Salt March to the Dead Sea," a commentary about the impact of Mahatma Gandhi on today's Palestinians. David Shulman noted that Nehru summarized Gandi's principles as follows: "Fearlessness and truth, and action allied to these," adding:

"'Action' meant deliberately breaking an immoral law, en masse, with an eye to the symbolic effect of disobedience: 'You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees,' said Gandhi. The goal was never merely to undermine the system but also, crucially, to change the hearts and minds of one's opponents--in effect, to humanize them. To this end, one must never meet violence with violence."

That inspired me, but it also left me wondering: What does one do when there is no law to disobey? How do we fight an amoral system that uses the LACK of laws to justify its selfish actions? This, it seems, is a critical issue in a system where deregulation is seen as a public good and where executives and politicians alike see amorality in the face of profit as a private good.

Perhaps the Gandhian thing to do in this situation is simply to shun companies that pursue profit through amoral, if not immoral action. Perhaps, nonviolent action in this case means that we turn our backs on companies that put profit above the public good and encourage others to do the same. In a consumer society, this will take some fearlessness, as well.

Memorial Day Flowers

This morning, we drove to the little village of Burnside, Pennsylvania, to put flowers on the graves of Karen's grandparents and great-grandparents for Memorial Day.  It was a quiet drive on a Sunday morning through the rural Central Pennsylvania countryside, much of it following the West Branch of the Susquehanna River.  This has been a wet spring, and it was threatening to rain later in the day, so we were in a hurry to get the job done.

The cemetery had been mowed earlier in the week, possibly for the first time this spring.  It was a rough mowing, and one of our first tasks was to clear away the clippings.  Another family was there--a local couple whose parents knew Karen's grandmother well.  They came prepared with a grass rake (the husband was on the cutting crew, it turns out) and they lent it to us to clear our graves.  Then, we planted a total of 8 geraniums and a more than a dozen ageratims at four graves.

Heading home, we saw a young couple rafting on the Susquehanna and another man fishing in the middle of the stream.  It was nice to drive through the small towns--Mahaffey, Curwensville, Grampian--and enjoy a Sunday drive.  We got home without any serious rain and in time for Sunday brunch. 

Later this week, I will head to Hermitage to put flowers on my family's graves.  That is a bit less involved, since the cemetery does not allow live flowers.  But I look forward to it every year, nevertheless.

I suspect that this Memorial Day tradition is one that is already fading, but I do enjoy it.  It is nice to feel connected, even briefly,  to family and community this way.

Water wars? Thirsty, energy-short China stirs fear - World news - World environment - msnbc.com

Water wars? Thirsty, energy-short China stirs fear - World news - World environment - msnbc.com

Here is an MSNBC report on a long-term issue that may drive international affairs in the coming decade more than the issues that are in the press these days.

Thoughts on the Federal Budget

This weekend’s short-term budget agreement has made it clear that, despite the radical ideologies that have been on display in Washington in recent months, it is possible to find a middle ground between the extreme right and the extreme left in order to stabilize our economy. This will be absolutely critical in the weeks ahead as we develop a budget for next year and a long-term strategy.

It is good to note that, at root, under all the politics, there is a significant difference in moral vision at work in the budget fight—a fundamental difference in how people view their responsibility to other people.

Democrats tend to believe that, in a democracy, individuals have personal freedoms, but also have a responsibility to their community. That responsibility takes the form of using government to protect people and to give them the opportunity to share in the benefits of democracy. This is what drives us to fund social infrastructure—from highways to social security—and to protect the ability of even the poorest to get an education and health care.

Republicans tend to believe that, in a democracy, individuals have the freedom to achieve whatever they are able to accomplish, but that they are not their “brother’s keeper.” Each person is responsible for himself. This is what drives Republicans to want to limit government and trust the private sector, which is the environment in which individual achievement thrives. While some recently have noted the difference between “small government conservatives” and “big government conservatives” (who want to control behavior), the small government approach is more classic American conservatism.

Interestingly, both positions have evolved to incorporate moral positions that are, at least on the face of it, antithetical to the tenets described above, but that may offer deeper insight into why the two philosophies differ. Democrats, for instance, believe in the individual’s responsibility to the community, but also defend the individual’s right to decide on moral issues—abortion, gay marriage, etc.—even when their decisions are in opposition to community standards. Republicans believe in the individual’s right to be free of government intrusion, but also call for government control over individual actions (again, abortion, gay marriage, etc.) where individual decisions might threaten community moral standards. At issue in both positions is a moral understanding of the limits to community and individual rights and obligations.

The beliefs of both parties have their roots in the 1800s. Republicans—the party of individual freedom—was, of course, the party that advocated for the elimination of slavery. That moral stance also brought to the party Quakers and others who believed in individual responsibility and in the power of small communities to provide moral direction. Democrats, on the other hand, took their modern form as advocates of working people—including immigrants and African Americans—who needed protection from the robber barons of industrialized America’s “gilded age.”

Today, we are facing a very different cultural and economic environment. The two perspectives have become increasingly polarized. It is hard to find a middle ground where rational decisions are made that reflect our best efforts to solve a problem as a society. Yet the middle ground is exactly where we need to be. We need to decide that, ultimately, it is not enough to protect the freedom of individuals to invest in companies that send jobs overseas. And, it is not enough to maintain entitlements that burden our grandchildren with unbearable debt.

Here are some starting points:

1. One cause of big government is our international military commitment. We should close down our longstanding military operations in Germany and Japan. World War II has been over for more than 60 years. The Soviet Union is gone. We simply don’t need to be there. Let’s bring home these troops—or most of them, if we need to maintain a presence at a lower level. However, let’s keep the troops active—it would be wrong to push a lot of unemployed soldiers back into the domestic economy—and put them to work on domestic issues: repairing roads, improving our public parks, supporting public services, etc. Over time, we could transform our standing military into a broad-based community service corps that, ideally, would be a desirable first stop for young men and women after high school graduation. The result would be to reduce the cost of maintaining the troops overseas, bring one pillar of big government under control, and redirect the personnel cost to domestic public service.

2. Social Security is an important safety net for America’s senior citizens. We should not throw it away. Instead, we should confront the outdated assumptions of the system, which was established at a time when life expectancy was 69 years. Today, financial advisors regularly suggest that people take an early pension, since they can expect to recoup the loss through a longer life. This may be good financial planning for the individual, but it undermines the social purpose of Social Security. Rather than take away the safety net, we should strengthen it by making it more reflective of today’s demographics. Keep the general retirement age at 66, but (1) limit early access to Social Security to people who can demonstrate a real need for early (age 62) access to their funds and (2) limit access until age 70 for those who have other sources of retirement income of more than $100,000 annually.

3. Rather than simply cut Medicare and Medicaid, clean them up to eliminate waste and abuse. The TV ads that offer seniors “free” motorized carts paid for by Medicare are an example of just how blatant the mis-use of Medicare and Medicaid have become. Because these services cover the costs, older people who enter the medical system tend to be over-tested and over-medicated. We need to tighten up how people qualify for devices like carts and require doctors and hospitals to better justify the services that they provide, often without the active consent of the patient. Cutting fraud and abuse is the best way to reduce these health-care costs.

4. Reduce or eliminate federal subsidies for oil companies. They are seeing record profits; they do not need any help.

5. Eliminate or reduce tax breaks for wealthiest individuals—those in the top 1 percent of the population. The idea that these breaks on individual income create jobs is nonsense. A fair tax system that properly distributes the burden of providing social services needs to be developed, with fewer loopholes and exceptions.

Logic and Faith

John Dewey once wrote that the worst thing that ever happened to western civilization was our acceptance of the ideas of the classical Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. They believed in the existence of pure, ideal exemplars for “forms” of great ideas. Dewey, on the other hand, believed human beings can never truly understand these ideal forms, assuming that they exist. Dewey advocated for logic in philosophy, but not as a means of finding absolute truth. Instead, he saw logic as a tool of inquiry. In this sense, the means—inquiry—was consistent with the end—true to Dewey’s ultimate test of learning. Since ideal forms could not be discovered, the goal of philosophy was to improve our ability to inquire and to increasingly improve our understanding of what is essentially an unknowable reality.

Everyday science bears out Dewey’s sense of things. The more we learn about the universe around us, the better tools we develop to gather information, the more we understand the limits of our ability to truly know about the world around us. We know from dogs that human beings cannot hear the full spectrum of sound. We know that there is a spectrum of light waves that are invisible to the human eye. We guess that there may be dimensions beyond the three that we can directly experience, and we think there may be a fourth dimension—time—that we sense but that we can measure only in its passing. We’ve invented tools that can sharpen our senses. However, we are not able to invent tools that can help us understand what we cannot otherwise sense. We don’t know what we don’t know.

Is there a “sixth sense?” We debate it. The evidence of our five senses does not give us confidence, but we debate it because there are phenomena that we cannot otherwise explain. Is there a seventh sense? An eighth? If time is the fourth dimension, is there a fifth? A sixth? We don’t know. But we can explore. We can inquire.

We can also have faith. Throughout history, religions have been attempts to explain why things are the way they are. Some seem to hit closer to explaining things than do others. But they are all attempts to understand what cannot be directly sensed. Often, the problem with religion is that it eventually loses confidence in true faith and falls back on literal absolutes. And, given the fact that the religion’s texts often have been translated multiple times through the years, often in quite different cultural contexts, their literal “truths” are sometimes hard to decipher. Regardless, faith is better seen, not as unquestioning adherence to dogma, but as another way to guide inquiry.

Logic and faith work together to help us understand a world that we experience, but that we cannot fully sense.

Blowin' in the Wind

Tonight, to Pandora—the Internet radio application—I heard a live version of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” sung by Peter, Paul, and Mary. They introduced the song by saying something to this effect: “This song asks nine questions; our answers to them will determine the fate of this generation.” They then launched into a particularly beautiful, even soulful version of Dylan’s song.

It reminded me of the first time that I hear Bob Dylan sing this song. I was in my early teens. We were at my cousin’s summer campsite at Pymatuning State Park. The radio was on in the background and PPM’s version of the song was playing. Then, the DJ came on and said, with a bit of a smirk in his voice, “Do you want to hear this song by the guy who wrote it?” Then he played Bob Dylan’s version as a joke.

That winter, my mother bought us a stereo for Christmas and, for me, a copy of Dylan’s album, “The Times They are a Changin’.” That Christmas, she introduced me to the voice of my generation. Thanks, Mom.