The Future of Democracy
  • Home
  • Newsletter
  • Contact
  • The Books
  • Reviews/Videos

The Future of Democracy Newsletter: May 2022

5/12/2022

0 Comments

 
​Our discussion topic for May 2 was Autocrats, Oligarchs and Strongmen. We focused on the many countries that appeared on the verge of democracy over the last twenty years that now are much closer to becoming, or have become, autocracies.
 
We started with a poem called Strongman written by Wyndy, one of our members:

strongman
​

he has no wings
he walks on his fists

rocks rise before him
he breaks them
their dust blows behind him
covering old women

The cameo his Mother gave him
froze
there is no face there
its clasp nurses
at his throat

he devours small animals
can’t shit
won’t make

he wants more
always more

Cover of Freezing Order, book by Bill Browder -- click to buy
​At our meeting we focused mainly on two books.
 
The first was Freezing Order, by Bill Browder, which soon after release in April appeared at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. In 1996, Brower moved to Moscow to set up a hedge fund called the Hermitage Fund. He soon found out that the way to do business in Russia was to overlook the custom of profits being siphoned by oligarchs and corrupt officials. Most people accepted this as just a “part of doing business,” but Browder and some of his colleagues, including Russians who worked for him, decided they could not look the other way as investors had funds stolen.

Those who try to bring these practices to light in countries with a history of corruption are likely to experience consequences. As Browder tells the story, the Hermitage Fund became one of the best performing funds in the world, but when he fought back he soon found himself a target of Russian law enforcement. Putin declared him a threat to national security and expelled him from the country. Browder closed his business and moved his non-Russian staff to London. In June, 2008, Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer for Hermitage Fund, noticed that the fund had been reinstated and that it claimed a false $230 million tax refund, which was paid by corrupt officials to themselves from government coffers. When they made this public, Magnitsky, Browder and others were framed as having stolen this money. Funds stolen by Russian oligarchs (and those of other countries) — totaling in the billions — often are held in Western banks after being laundered through a series of accounts in other countries to avoid detection. About half of Putin’s billions is held in the accounts of others. This exposure forced many banks to at last investigate and enforce laws against money laundering.
 
After Magnitsky was beaten to death in a Russian jail for refusing to confess to crimes he didn’t commit, Browder — with a number of colleagues — was able to trace the funds. He then went on a campaign to punish Putin and those oligarchs responsible by convincing the US Congress, and legislators in other countries, to enact Magnitsky acts to find and seize these funds. In retaliation, Putin stopped allowing Americans to adopt disabled children from Russian orphanages. According to the book, this explains the famous meeting between Russian officials and the Trump campaign in 2016 to discuss “Russian orphans,” but really to request that sanctions be overturned. Currently there are Magnitsky Acts in 34 countries; more than 500 individuals and entities have been sanctioned.

Cover of Strongmen, book by Ruth Ben-Ghiat -- click to buy
Our second book was Strongmen by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, summarized for us by Sharon. It tells the story of Fascism and Communism starting after the First World War in Europe, with fascist strongmen at times receiving American support to defeat left-wing movements. Some future dictators were voted into office. In 1926 Mussolini received a $100 million loan from the US Government, facilitated by a partner of JP Morgan, in his attempt to defeat what was considered a threat from the left. The Nazis under Hitler were the second largest party in Germany in the 1932 elections, after which he was appointed chancellor. In Spain, Franco led a successful revolt against the elected left-wing government that came to power after the 1936 elections.
 
The book then describes dictators who took over governments after World War II, including Mobutu in Zaire, who came to power by an American-backed coup in 1965, and Pinochet, who overthrew the elected government of Allende of Chile in 1973, backed by the US under Nixon who feared communist influence. In more modern times, authoritarians have come to power by use of fraud or voter suppression. When Berlusconi became president of Italy in 1994, he was backed by corporate power and flaunted the democratic process, essentially declaring himself above the law. When Putin came to power in 2000, he began to overthrow democratic norms by shutting down news agencies that dared criticize him, and soon began poisoning his enemies. Trump took advantage of White resentment by the use of racist comments as he won the Electoral College in 2016, despite a loss of the popular vote.

​Among the tools used by strongmen are a promise to return to a time of national greatness, projecting masculine power as a key to national prominence, emphasizing crises that may or may not exist that only he can alleviate, use of propaganda and smears against opponents, illegal practices such as directing traffic to their own businesses or having their family involved in government, and actual or threatened violence against those who dare voice criticism, especially the press. According to the book, countering authoritarianism requires a commitment to accountability of laws and human rights. Support of dictatorships, such that of Saudi Arabia by the US, sends the wrong message. We must stand against illiberal rule, or governments that claim to be democratic while violating the rights of many for popular support. We make this choice by supporting leaders who stand for real democracy.


​Your comments and thoughts always are welcome. Also, don’t forget to look at our blog site: renewingdemocracy.org

Please recommend this newsletter to people who you think might appreciate it. If you want to be added to the list to receive each new newsletter when posted, fill out our contact form and check the box just above the SUBMIT button. You may also use that form to be removed from our list.

Visit our Books page for information about purchasing The Future of Democracy, The Death of Democracy, and Truth & Democracy.
​
Click ↓ (#) Comments below to view comments/questions or add yours. Click Reply below to respond to an existing comment.
0 Comments

The Future of Democracy Newsletter: April 2022

4/13/2022

0 Comments

 

Challenges to Democracy Here and Abroad

Cover of Democracy In Chains book -- click to buy
Our original focus was on the book Democracy in Chains, by Nancy MacLean, 2017. It is about the efforts of free-market economists and oligarchs to loosen restraints on the US economy and reverse many of the guarantees that most Americans take for granted, such as Social Security and public schools. 

However, we spent the first half of the meeting discussing the current war by Russia against Ukraine, and the struggle between autocratic and democratic elements in the world. Is this war an inevitable result of a conflict between those elements, or is it due to the megalomaniacal fantasies of one man? Russia has no history of democracy, except for a brief period after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, when there was an unregulated free-for-all — a democracy in name only — under Boris Yeltsin. Oligarchs seized government assets and enriched themselves at the expense of everyone else. This gave democracy a bad name in the eyes of many Russians. Vladimir Putin, a previous KGB (Secret Police) official took over the failed democracy, and after his election in 2000, immediately instituted authoritarian measures, moving the country “back to the USSR.” He has instituted more stringent measures since that time, and has just closed the country’s last independent news outlet. Those who follow his career are aware that elections are meaningless in Russia, with opponents being harassed or jailed, as is the case in other authoritarian states that were part of the Soviet Union, such as Hungary and Poland, where there still is some semblance of democracy, but elections are rigged heavily in favor of the incumbent.¹

​We discussed the authoritarian mindset of rulers who stay in power by identifying “enemies of the state” both internal and external, as did Stalin and Hitler. When information is limited — by design or choice — there seems to be a large part of the population who will back authoritarians. We now are finding out that some of the Russian soldiers committing atrocities in Ukraine may actually believe that they are eliminating Nazis. There also are those in our own country who believe that an election was stolen despite clear evidence to the contrary that was verified by judges of Republican and Democratic backgrounds. The question we might ask ourselves is: does human nature compel people to identify an enemy who we consider not quite human, that then justifies acts that we would not commit against those we consider members of our own group?
 
According to Democracy in Chains, James Buchanan spearheaded much of the libertarian movement in the US starting around the time of the 1954 Supreme Court Brown v Board of Education decision that ordered the desegregation of schools in the South. Much of his work helped to lend legitimacy to “states rights” efforts by setting up shop in southern universities — first at U of Virginia and then at George Mason University. Eventually his work was funded by the Koch Brothers, and led to the formation of so-called libertarian “think tanks,” such as the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, which have had considerable influence on American legislators and justices.
 
The book states that, because of our expanding welfare state, libertarians consider the foundations of the US to have failed, including the Constitution. In their view no restraints on free enterprise are justified, and government must be stripped to its most basic functions such as roads, military and police, to allow Americans to experience the type of freedom they advocate. (Page xxviii)


Cover of The Road to Serfdom book -- click to buy
​The main economists that promote these views are those of The Chicago School, including Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Hayek, in his 1947 book The Road to Serfdom, promoted the idea that all social planning is socialism, a view that probably comes out of his experience in Austria during the Second World War, when the two largest dictatorial powers, Germany and the Soviet Union, had the word socialism as part of their titles.² Many of Hayek’s promoters, however, seem unaware that he also advocated basic social supports — a contradiction of pure libertarian dogma. Friedman was the most famous of the free market economists, and his view was that any restraints on markets interfere with human freedoms.
 
The author states: “One only has to read Charles Dickens to grasp the reality of unregulated capitalism: the unchecked economic power of some enables the domination of others.” (Page 97) Taking that further, as we discussed in the group, democracy itself was the reaction to the unfettered freedom of some that impedes that of others. Economic inequality grows everywhere unless democratic guarantees are put in place. This goes back to the foundation of democracy in Athens, and began in modern times by the rebellion of thirteen colonies who believed themselves economically smothered under the British colonial system. The actual workings of a libertarian economy were on display in Chile under Pinochet, under a system that Buchanan and other libertarian economists helped to establish which was one of the world’s most unequal economies (but Chile now is in the process of revising its libertarian constitution).
 
Corporate donors to the Koch-sponsored “Institute for Contemporary Studies,” have included Exxon, Mobil, Shell, Texaco, Ford, IBM, Chase, US Steel and General Motors. Even the relatively radical views of the conservative economists mentioned above was not adequate for Charles Koch. He referred to them as “‘sellouts to the system.’ Why? Because they sought ‘to make government work more efficiently when the true libertarian should be tearing it out at the root.’” (Page 135)
 
To cite a few of the effects of these efforts, “In 2014, only 7 of 278 members of Congress were willing to acknowledge that man-made climate change was real. … Scott Walker’s administration (in Wisconsin) imposed a gag order in 2015 to prohibit employees … from discussing climate change. Rather than admit their ideological commitment to ending public education, Koch-based libertarians claim that the problems in today’s schools are the result of teachers’ unions having too much power.” (Page 217)
 
This only is a part of the larger issue of whether government should be shrunk to allow unfettered freedom — whatever its result — or if it is the role of government to regulate market forces. We can hear the echo of Ronald Reagan saying that “government is the problem.” But the razor he attempted to apply to government was not even radical enough for our current libertarian pundits — the deficit actually ballooned under Reagan. Perhaps it is fair to say that democracies work best when there is a balance between the forces of freedom and regulation that protects and promotes the rights of the vulnerable, which at one time or another is most of us.


¹See for example: “Poland Is Showing the World How Not to Run a Pandemic Election,” Zselyke Csaky and Sarah Repucci, Foreign Policy Magazine, May 4, 2020: “The upcoming Polish election is shaping up to be a farce”; and “Europe Must Stop This Disgrace: Viktor Orbán Is Dismantling Democracy,” Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian, June 20, 2019: “The ruling party, Fidesz, has so completely penetrated the state administration that Hungary is again a one-party state.”
 
²The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek, University of Chicago Press, 1944 (2007 revision): “What our planners demand is a central direction of all economic activity according to a single plan, laying down how the resources of society should be ‘consciously directed’ to serve particular ends in a definite way.” (Page 85)

​Your comments and thoughts always are welcome. Also, don’t forget to look at our blog site: renewingdemocracy.org

Please recommend this newsletter to people who you think might appreciate it. If you want to be added to the list to receive each new newsletter when posted, fill out our contact form and check the box just above the SUBMIT button. You may also use that form to be removed from our list.

Visit our Books page for information about purchasing The Future of Democracy, The Death of Democracy, and Truth & Democracy.
​
Click ↓ (#) Comments below to view comments/questions or add yours. Click Reply below to respond to an existing comment.
0 Comments

The Future of Democracy Newsletter: March 2022

3/22/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
In March, our Democracy Group talked about the book How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession with Rights is Tearing America Apart, by Jamal Greene, a Columbia Constitutional Law Professor and co-chair of Facebook’s Oversight Board.

As Greene says: “Americans today typically associate rights with several key features: Rights are meant to protect minorities and dissenters from the tyranny of the majority, they are enforced collectively by judges, and they are presumptively absolute, yielding only in special circumstances, if at all. These features better reflect the legacy of the 1960s than the 1780s. Early Americans deeply believed in ‘rights,’ but within Founding-era political thought, the institutions best suited to reconcile the competing demands of rights bearers were not courts but rather state and local political bodies: juries, churches, families, and legislatures.”

Resolving rights primarily through the courts, rather than through political institutions, has a big downside: “The difference between tying rights to judges and tying them to ‘the people’ acting through local institutions affects the substance of the rights themselves. The decision-making process of the legislature or even a jury typically involves negotiation and the open balancing of competing interests. By contrast, American constitutional judges are socialized to draw on a very different set of resources in adjudicating rights disputes: They zero in on the text of the Constitution, existing judicial precedent, and the original intentions or understandings of the founding generation.… Self-conscious about their weak democratic credentials, judges often treat matters of great moral urgency — abortion rights, affirmative action, presidential power — in just the way they treat disputes over a property line or an addendum to a business contract.”

The courts recognize a two-tiered system of rights that deserve special protection and almost always triumph — e.g., freedom of speech and freedom from racial discrimination, and rights or interests that don’t deserve special protection — e.g., the right of a university to enforce rules of civility. He claims that this way at looking at rights is detrimental to society.

Greene then goes on to illustrate different areas in which an absolutist, judicially enforced approach to rights has led to a more polarized, less just society. He contrasts the US’s approach to abortion to that of Germany’s. In the former, the abortion issue was addressed by a judicial recognition of women’s reproductive freedom as a right but not the right to fetal life. This stance contributed to making abortion one of the country’s most contentious issues. By contrast, the German Constitutional Court has recognized both a right to abortion and a right to fetal life, and directed the German legislature (Bundestag) to come up with a legislative solution balancing those rights within the framework established by the court. Partly as a result of that process, the abortion issue is not nearly as polarizing in Germany as in the US.

On the conflict between gay rights and religious freedom, Greene discusses the need for factual specificity and nuance, as has been demonstrated by some European courts, allowing a Christian baker to refuse a request to bake a cake for a gay rights celebration, but not allowing a government official to refuse to fulfill the duty to facilitate lawful same-sex unions.

In the area of campus speech, Greene thinks that a judge was wrong in prohibiting a university from preventing a neo-Nazi propagandist, Richard Spencer, from using its auditorium, citing the latter’s right to freedom of speech. “Had [the university] been the police, arresting Spencer in anticipation of his racist speech, the court would have been right to prevent that from happening. But more nuance is called for when the actor is an educational institution, and one that didn’t arrest Spencer but merely denied him a live audience in a four-hundred-seat assembly hall within its community.”

On the issue of Affirmative Action, Greene is critical of equating the prohibition of racial discrimination against minorities with the use of race to remedy past racial wrongs. “The degree to which courts are skeptical of the government’s recognition of race should be attentive to the nature of the problem it is trying to address, not simply to whether the government uses race to address it. Race-based structural inequality calls for racially sensitive structural remedies. And so, when public institutions put race-based affirmative action programs or other forms of in-kind reparations in place, courts should place significant weight on the fact that the state is seeking to advance the equality rights of people suffering from stubborn forms of disadvantage.”

The essential view of the book is that dispute resolution in other times and places has taken into account the need for people to listen to each other and to compromise on questions that divide them. The book is a plea to look beyond absolute individual rights and allow our democratic institutions to arrive at reasonable solutions to the problems that face us.
​
The group also spoke with great concern about the situation in Ukraine, sharing information and speculating on Putin’s motives and possible ill health.


​Your comments and thoughts always are welcome. Also, don’t forget to look at our blog site: renewingdemocracy.org

Please recommend this newsletter to people who you think might appreciate it. If you want to be added to the list to receive each new newsletter when posted, fill out our contact form and check the box just above the SUBMIT button. You may also use that form to be removed from our list.

Visit our Books page for information about purchasing The Future of Democracy, The Death of Democracy, and Truth & Democracy.
​
Click ↓ (#) Comments below to view comments/questions or add yours. Click Reply below to respond to an existing comment.
0 Comments

The Future of Democracy Newsletter: February 2022

2/17/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
At our February 7 meeting, Curtis Estes presented a summary and discussion of his new book, The Bitter and the Sweet: The Saga of a Black Family in America. 

Curtis is 87 years old and has spent about half his life in the Jim Crow South. His book is a compilation of memoirs and research done over a 20-year period into the history of his family and suppression of Blacks in the US going back before the Civil War.

His great-grandfather came over as a crew member on a slave ship in 1835 and fought under Sam Houston in Texas, after which he was given a land grant. One of his young slaves bore a child who became Curtis’s grandfather. This property remained in the family for many years.

Curtis’s presentation included stories of growing up based on an impressive memory, including some charming anecdotes, such as the time he helped gather wood for the fireplace in his little elementary school and how, when he was 17, he and a friend watched adults going into a jazz club, then scraped together enough to buy suits, and held their breath to see if they would be admitted.

​Curtis also discussed blatant cases of discrimination he lived through. In his elementary school, which was segregated, the class was given random books cast off from White schools, many with pages torn and covers missing. When working in a hospital as a teenager transporting patients, he had to go back and forth bringing them from the Black section to the White section for surgery. After his army service in the 1950s he was expected to work in the Houston Army recruiting office, but when he walked in, he noticed it was entirely staffed by Whites. Not long afterwards he received his discharge papers in the mail.

He eventually moved to California, where he became a teacher and then a gardener.

One of the more poignant parts of the book describes “The Condition of the Slave Ships.”
​The slave ships were probably the most inhuman form of transportation for human beings to be devised until the Nazi freight lines began rolling toward the concentration camps of Eastern Europe in World War II. The African slaves were wedged below deck, chained to low-lying platforms, stacked in tiers with an individual space allotment that was six-feet long, sixteen inches wide, and perhaps three feet high. They were unable to stand erect or turn over. The slaves were given a twice daily ration of water plus either boiled rice, millet, cornmeal, or stewed yams in small portions, resulting in near starvation and attendant illnesses. Many Africans died or went mad during the long weeks at sea. The loneliness, bewilderment and panic of those who survived the journey must have felt when they reached Boston, Baltimore or Charleston can hardly be imagined. The slaves were sick and exhausted, half naked, surrounded by sights of a strange civilization and the sound of a strange language. They were not allowed to talk to their fellow slaves. New arrivals who spoke the same African dialect were generally separated to keep them from conspiring to revolt.
Despite his considerable experience with discrimination for most of his life, Curtis always seems to focus on the positive. He is determined not to have his negative experience dominate his life. His story provides an example of how we hopefully can learn from our history without allowing ourselves to be consumed by it.
Picture
↑ Click to see larger

Your comments and thoughts always are welcome. Also, don’t forget to look at our blog site: renewingdemocracy.org

Please recommend this newsletter to people who you think might appreciate it. If you want to be added to the list to receive each new newsletter when posted, fill out our contact form and check the box just above the SUBMIT button. You may also use that form to be removed from our list.

Visit our Books page for information about purchasing The Future of Democracy, The Death of Democracy, and Truth & Democracy.
​
Click ↓ (#) Comments below to view comments/questions or add yours. Click Reply below to respond to an existing comment.
0 Comments

The Future of Democracy Newsletter: January 2022

1/9/2022

1 Comment

 
Our discussion centered around publications by two colleagues at The Atlantic Magazine. They are among many who are warning about the possible collapse of democracy in our time.

Twilight of Democracy is a 2020 book by Anne Applebaum that chronicles her personal experience with fledgling democracies following the fall of the Soviet Union, beginning with Poland where she lived. Her book goes on to discuss the decline of numerous democracies.
​
“Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun” is an article in the December, 2021, edition of The Atlantic by Barton Gellman about how states dominated by the Republican Party are changing rules to ensure their victory in future elections despite the shift toward more Democratic voters.
Picture
Anne Applebaum was present near the dawn of democracy in Poland. She held a party at which many friends, some of them in government and most of them young, celebrated the good times they expected to come under the new government. But since then much has gone wrong with democracy in Poland and many other countries: “Poland is now one of the most polarized societies in Europe, and we have found ourselves on opposite sides of a profound divide, one that runs through not only what used to be the Polish right, but the old Hungarian right, the Spanish right, the French right, the Italian right, and with some differences, the British and American right. … Some of my friends now support a nativist party called Law and Justice. … Many of its supporters and promoters slowly came to embrace a different set of ideas, not just xenophobic and paranoid, but openly authoritarian.”
 
She goes on to state that among those who have succumbed to authoritarian views many “have been educated in the best universities.” She provides a view about what is happening in many countries: “Given the right conditions, any society can turn against democracy.”
 
She discusses how, of the US founders, Hamilton in particular “was one of the many in colonial America who read over and over again the history of Greece and Rome [places where democracy failed], trying to learn how to prevent a new democracy from becoming a tyranny.” She quotes Hannah Arendt’s description of how an “authoritarian personality … derives his sense of having a place in the world only from belonging to a movement. … Authoritarianism,” she tells us, “appeals to people who cannot tolerate complexity. … It is suspicious of people with different ideas. … Authoritarians need the people who will promote the riot or launch the coup. But they also need people who can use sophisticated legal language, people who can argue that breaking the constitution or twisting the law is the right thing to do.”
 
As to the future of democracy, particularly in the US? “Modern Americans have long been convinced that liberal democracy, one achieved, was impossible to reverse. The founders themselves were not so certain: Their beloved classical authors taught them that history was circular, that human nature was flawed, and that special measures were needed to prevent democracy from sliding back into tyranny. They sought to create a system, stuffed with checks and balances, that would encourage people to behave.”
 
Applebaum doesn’t have clear solutions to our democratic dilemma. What she offers is: “Because all authoritarians divide, polarize and separate people into warring camps, the fight against them requires new coalitions.”

Picture

Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun.
January 6 was practice. Donald Trump’s GOP is much better positioned to subvert the next election.


Some key quotes:

  1. The prospect of this democratic collapse is not remote. People with the motive to make it happen are manufacturing the means. Given the opportunity, they will act. They are acting already.

  2. For more than a year now, with tacit and explicit support from their party’s national leaders, state Republican operatives have been building an apparatus of election theft.

  3. Who or what will safeguard our constitutional order is not apparent today. It is not even apparent who will try. Democrats, big and small D, are not behaving as if they believe the threat is real. Some of them, including President Joe Biden, have taken passing rhetorical notice, but their attention wanders. They are making a huge mistake.

  4. The strategic objective of nearly every move by the Trump team after the networks called the election for Joe Biden on November 7 was to induce Republican legislatures in states that Biden won to seize control of the results and appoint Trump electors instead.
 
Our group discussed the importance of not becoming so cynical that we are unable to act. Our country has been through many crises, including the Civil War, the Second World War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. In all of these situations it seemed that democracy, if not the world as we know it, could end. But we were able to eventually move past them, although their residue may still remain.
 
Some ideas that came up in the group:

  1. We can donate time and/or money to aid get-out-the-vote efforts and pro-democracy candidates as a means of countering measures aimed at voter suppression.

  2. We can make an effort to get people involved in greater self-governance, particularly those in rural and poor urban environments and then build on their suggestions.

  3. Many people who express discontent are not experiencing the benefits of democracy and feel neglected. Perhaps this could be remedied by providing new career opportunities to strengthen their lives and confidence. This could include supporting the economy in rural areas via light industry, rural electrification, or even supporting family farms to return a sense of purpose to those who may have lost it. (Some of this actually is happening in Illinois.)
 
Currently, about 40% of this country is dominated by the illusion that the 2020 election was stolen and thus that their world is threatened.
 
But democracy can be awakened. Once people allow autocracy to take place they often regret it as nearly everyone loses their freedoms. There are some countries where people have determined they no longer will accept a government that ignores their needs. There currently is a rebellion in Kazakhstan, and newly elected liberal leaders in Italy and Chile.
 
We want to hear from you about what you think the solutions to our democratic dilemma might be. If we are stuck in fear or blame we will be unable to identify a light on the horizon or move toward that light. Let us know your ideas about how we can focus our efforts to preserve democracy. This is a time when all hands are needed on deck.
 
You are invited to offer public comments below, or write to us directly via our Contact page.


Your comments and thoughts always are welcome. Also, don’t forget to look at our blog site: renewingdemocracy.org

Please recommend this newsletter to people who you think might appreciate it. If you want to be added to the list to receive each new newsletter when posted, fill out our contact form and check the box just above the SUBMIT button. You may also use that form to be removed from our list.

Visit our Books page for information about purchasing The Future of Democracy, The Death of Democracy, and Truth & Democracy.
​
Click ↓ (#) Comments below to view comments/questions or add yours. Click Reply below to respond to an existing comment.
1 Comment

The Future of Democracy Newsletter: November 2021

11/10/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
The focus of our November discussion was a book by Karen J. Greenberg, Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of American Democracy from the War on Terror to Donald Trump. Greenberg is Director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law.
​
The theme of the book is that Congress gave blanket permission to George W. Bush to carry out the “War on Terror” after the 9/11/2001 attacks, and that the balance since that time has tilted toward abuse of that mandate in restricting civil liberties. This eventually enabled Donald Trump to violate many established norms.
​This book provides an excellent refresher about the first time that the US has been directly attacked, and how anxious our country — and Congress — were to guard our shores. But the bargain we made for security undermined many of our constitutional protections. “Basic building blocks of the country have been undermined and at times destroyed. In the name of retaliation, ‘justice,’ and prevention, fundamental values have been cast aside, among them the right to be safe from abusive powers by the state.” (Page 1)

​Greenberg contends the “subtle tools” that slowly eroded our liberties began with the vague language of laws passed after the attacks, starting with the Authorization for the Use of Force (AUMF) approved by Congress on September 18, 2001. (Page 17) The only “nay” was from Congresswoman Barbara Lee. The vague directive of that authorization was that the president could “use all necessary and appropriate force” with no limits specified. The President could order an attack on any individual or organization that he decides has some link to the 9/11 attacks. Even that limitation was transgressed, based on secret Justice Department memos that claimed for the President unlimited power to act against “future acts of terrorism.” Bush — and Vice President Dick Cheney — ran with that authorization to ignore long-established laws and conduct an ill-defined war on terror without clear objectives in Afghanistan and Iraq.​

The US Patriot Act of October 2001 took the violation of civil liberties even further. It “called for removing limits on unwarranted surveillance, extending secret ‘sneak and peek’ searches that did not require giving notice to the person, lowering the thresholds for criminal investigations, and expanding other powers.” (Page 28) Although its target was initially intended to be foreign or foreign-influenced terrorists, the expanded surveillance tools of the Patriot Act were soon being used on suspected drug traffickers, white collar criminals and other conventional law enforcement targets.

The use of alternative terms to avoid established norms was a common approach in the aftermath of the attacks. Captured prisoners were labeled “detainees,” allowing the US to place these people in a legal limbo that lacked the protections of either international law for armed combatants or US criminal law. Men would be imprisoned at the Guantanamo base in Cuba without being charged, some for up to 20 years (so far). They could be subjected to torture or “enhanced interrogation” techniques that had been condemned by all civilized nations, and which, as shown by experience, didn’t actually yield valuable information.

Under Obama, the term “war on terror” was replaced with “overseas contingency operations,” but drone attacks increased, sometimes killing innocent civilians. Obama did reduce troops in Afghanistan after increasing them and killed Osama Bin Laden, the leader of the 9/11 attacks.

Trump then expanded the violation of established norms, with the assistance of his attorney generals, and fired many “advisors” who disagreed with him. He violated anti-nepotism laws to hire family members as advisors, fired the FBI Director in an unprecedented move, dismissed five inspector generals to avoid scrutiny of his policies, and fanned the flames of antiimmigrant attitudes by use of harsh rhetoric, a Muslim ban, and a child separation policy. (Page 85) He sent Homeland Security Department troops across the country to put down protests after the murder of George Floyd, starting with Portland, Oregon; they proceeded to conduct law enforcement operations without any legal authority and eventually had to be restrained by federal court order. He disassembled the US preparation mechanism for disaster preparedness while denying the seriousness of the coronavirus threat. He inspired an insurrection at the US capital that came with minutes of overthrowing our democracy.

Under Biden, vague language seems to be diminishing. He has used the word “terrorist,” but without relating it to Islam, executive orders are again more detailed with less language that could be used for expanded operations and unintended consequences. “When it came to COVID relief, Biden issued not one but eighteen executive orders, each one packed with specific instructions.” (Page 206) So we can hope that the broad, nonspecific terms that provided previous presidents nearly unlimited — and legally questionable — power may be diminishing.

Your comments and thoughts always are welcome. Also, don’t forget to look at our blog site: renewingdemocracy.org

Please recommend this newsletter to people who you think might appreciate it. If you want to be added to the list to receive each new newsletter when posted, fill out our contact form and check the box just above the SUBMIT button. You may also use that form to be removed from our list.

Visit our Books page for information about purchasing The Future of Democracy, The Death of Democracy, and Truth & Democracy.
​
Click ↓ (#) Comments below to view comments/questions or add yours. Click Reply below to respond to an existing comment.
0 Comments

The Future of Democracy Newsletter: October 2021

10/12/2021

0 Comments

 
The focus of our October discussion was two books by economist James Galbraith, Inequality and Instability: A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis (2012) and his latest book, Inequality: What Everyone Needs to Know (2016).
Picture
Inequality and Instability presents the concern that inequality has been endemic to society from the beginning. The views presented are based on extensive statistical data that considers inequality from numerous angles, including within and among nations historically, and between modern states. Galbraith’s conclusion is that inequality gives rise to indebtedness, which in turn gave rise to our major financial crises — including those of the 1930s Great Depression and our more recent Great Recession that began in 2008: “For those with very little money…, the spur of invidious comparison produces a want for more, and what cannot be earned must be borrowed.” (Page 3) The 2008 financial crisis “was about the terms of credit between the wealthy and everyone else,” and “the lending to those who cannot pay.” (Page 4)
Going back to ancient times such as Greece — and even in the Bible* — there is mention of how those in need often became dependent on the wealthy in hard times. If debts continue to be unpaid, debtors have gone to prison or had themselves and families perpetually indentured to the lender.
 
Inequality leads to discontent among those at the lower end of the scale, which result in insurrection or revolution as has happened throughout history in countries including the US, France, Russia, and China. Economic discontent is more frequently expressed via elections in nations that are considered democratic.
 
In countries considered democratic, however, there also is growing inequality that began in the 1980s and continues into our day. According to Galbraith: “Increasing inequality is a sign that something has gone wrong.” (Page 13) By all measures - both within and between countries — inequality is increasing.
 
Galbraith doesn’t agree that democracy automatically leads to an egalitarian society. In his view: “the result holds only for a subclass of democracy, namely social democracies that have been stable for a long period of time.” (Page 15) Most of those are located in Western Europe, but Eastern European countries on the whole have the lowest level of inequality.
 
In the US, “states with higher inequality tend to have lower turnout of potentially eligible voters in presidential elections — a result consistent with the idea that in high-inequality states the wealthier voters have a strong interest in restricting access to the ballot among the poor.” (Page 16) This is exactly the pattern we’re seeing at present in a number of southern states.
 
Different from what some might expect, countries with less wage inequality have lower unemployment rates. (Page 17) American states that are highly polarized, with a strong divide between rural and urban areas, tend to vote Democratic.
 
Since the 2008 crash, inequality is largely due to the division between those who do and don’t have stocks, since the stock market rallied within a couple years of the crash.
 
Income and pay inequality were largely reduced after World War II, but now continues to shoot up. (Page 72) Globalization — goods being produced overseas more cheaply — have played a major role in that trend. (Page 97) Reductions in inequality generally take place over a long time as the result of changes in public policy.
 
Reduction of inequality can be a driver for people to become more active and increase their tendency to vote if they don’t become lethargic. (Page 152) One factor that reduces inequality is more equal pay structures — i.e., not having a huge difference between those at the top and bottom of the pay scale. Strong social structures, like excellent medical and retirement benefits — also tend to reduce inequality.
 
The 2008 crash — which should serve as a warning for our own day — was caused in large part by overly easy credit availability due to too much money in the system looking to be lent out, which in turn was the result of interest rates held artificially low. These trends followed the elimination of Depression-era regulations, such as Glass-Steagall, that prohibited banks from speculating in investments with client funds. (Page 293)
Galbraith’s book Inequality: What Everyone Needs to Know provides information that is essential for those who hope to lessen the effects of inequality and its accompanying instability. It covers a lot of ground, including how economic inequality is measured, to what extent economic inequality has been rising, what are the causes and consequences of rising inequality, and what policies might be effective in addressing excessive inequality.

It’s generally agreed that inequality rose in the U.S. significantly from the early 1980s on. In 1980, the top 10% earned about 35% of the national income. By 2010 it was around 50%. Why this rising inequality?
Picture
​The main reason for the increase in inequality was an increase in investment income at the very top of the economic ladder, rather than increasing inequality of wages and salaries. The growth of tech spearheaded this trend. In the 1970s and 80s “the top technologists in the big corporations realized that they would be far better off if they set off on their own, incorporated themselves as independent technology firms, and then sold their output back to the companies for which they had formally worked in salaried jobs. In that way, technologists could become owners, taking advantage of venture finance, and could, in effect, upset the previous structure of American corporate valuation.” (Page 86) This trend was furthered by tax changes during the Reagan administration encouraging greater corporate executive salaries, paid in large part in stock options. “Now top incomes are no longer fixed salaries but instead closely track the stock market.” (Page 118) Deregulation and changes in the business culture also contributed to “corporate looting, rapid corporate growth, stock market valuations, too good to be true business plans and reporting, and vast accumulations of personal wealth by insiders.” (Page 132)
 
A few other possible reasons for increasing inequality in the U.S.:
  1. Trade agreements that shifted manufacturing from North to South, e.g., to Mexico or China, definitely had an effect on the manufacturing sector in the US. Good paying manufacturing jobs shrank, from about 15% to now about 8% of the national economy, while the lower paying service sector expanded.
  2.  The decline in private sector union membership.
  3.  The reorganization of the family to create greater numbers of families headed by single, low income women.
​
Galbraith does not put much stock in the theory, popular among some economists and politicians, that a major factor in US inequality is the rise of technology that put a premium on education and put those without education at a greater disadvantage. This theory is not well supported by available evidence.
 
Why Do We Care about Economic Equality?
 
“It should be possible for an egalitarian society to be entirely composed of the poor. [But] there seems to exist no such society in the world. Egalitarian states are almost all rich; poor countries are all highly unequal,” with Cuba as the possible exception. (Page 126) There is also considerable evidence that egalitarian societies do better in terms of health care, mortality, life expectancy, and other factors.
 
Policies That Reduce Inequality
 
“There is little doubt that countries with strong unions and high minimum wage laws — in relation to the average productivity of the country — have less inequality than those in the opposite position.” (Page 140) Other policies: Making income tax more progressive, Earned Income Tax Credit, Social Insurance Programs.
 
One of our members stated that the economies — just like the environments — of all countries are interrelated. Thus the leading democracies must press for universal reforms to preserve our economies which are tied to basic rights for everyone.

*Leviticus 25:35–37, for one example: “If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to support himself among you, help him as you would an alien or a temporary resident, so that he can continue to live among you. Do not take interest of any kind from him, but fear your God, so that your countryman may continue to live among you. You must not lend him money at interest or sell him food at profit.”

Your comments and thoughts always are welcome. Also, don’t forget to look at our blog site renewingdemocracy.org

Please recommend this newsletter to people who you think might appreciate it. If you want to be added to the list to receive each new newsletter when posted, fill out our contact form and check the box just above the SUBMIT button. You may also use that form to be removed from our list.

Visit our Books page for information about purchasing The Future of Democracy, The Death of Democracy, and Truth & Democracy.
​
Click ↓ (#) Comments below to view comments/questions or add yours. Click Reply below to respond to an existing comment.

0 Comments

The Future of Democracy Newsletter: August 2021

8/7/2021

0 Comments

 
The focus of our August discussion was the book Discrimination and Disparities by Thomas Sowell, an economist at the Hoover Institution on the Stanford Campus, a conservative think tank headed by Condoleezza Rice. It has sponsored numerous conservative economists, including Milton Friedman toward the end of his career. Sowell’s books are popular.
​
As a free-market economist, Sowell champions individual responsibility and is critical of government programs to help lift minority groups. He, and other conservative economists, believe it is up to individual effort to bring one success. But not everyone is fortunate enough to have things work in their favor, so some people fall behind, as the author acknowledges.
Picture
The book distinguishes between what the author calls Discrimination I, an ability to discern differences in qualities of people, and Discrimination II, treating people negatively based on animosity to those of a particular sex or race. He agrees that Discrimination II is destructive to democratic society, but argues that Discrimination I is inevitable and actually beneficial. Beneficial discrimination would include the reality that employers hire those who they see as best meeting job qualifications, or that children who meet college entrance requirements are most likely to succeed.

He justifies what he calls Discrimination IB, where an employer would hire based on the general characteristic of a racial or other demographic group to avoid having to examine the background of every applicant. He claims that this type of discrimination is cost effective because it eliminates needing to consider people whose backgrounds make them unlikely to succeed. Several people in our group called into question the distinction between Discrimination IB and Discrimination II, because both were based on stereotypes, were unfair to individuals and costly to individuals and society. Contrary to Sowell, these critics believed it was legitimate to legislate to prohibit Discrimination IB to prevent discrimination based on race, sex, ethnicity, etc.

Sowell states that people tend to sort themselves by race and ethnic background. Thus he denies that segregation is major factor in housing discrimination. Even within communities of every background (Sowell is African-American), he claims that groups sort themselves based on identification with their subgroup, as did, for example, those of Irish from English from Italian populations in America at one point, and as did established blacks from poor recent arrivals in the North. He claims that this type of segregation is entirely natural, normal, and justified. He doesn’t account for the fact that whereas segregation among white ethnic groups usually disappear within a generation or two after immigration, segregation against blacks has persisted across generations.

He points to the landmark 1954 Supreme Court Decision, Brown v. Board of Education that ordered integration of schools, as one that may have been well-intended, but ultimately did not meet its goal of equal educational opportunities. This is because, he claims, educational advancement for blacks did not result. Instead, he points to schools designed for particular groups, such as charter schools, as providing educational excellence. A member of our group pointed to contrary studies, for example ones showing significant gains in lifetime earnings for blacks who had attended integrated schools.

He also devotes a chapter to the idea that words and statistics can be used to prove the point of those who already have made up their minds, and then use arguments and math to justify their previously determined positions. Words like “diversity” and “social injustice,” he claims, are used to justify government override of “millions of peoples mutually agreed transaction terms.” i.e. a society in which markets predominate free of government interference. Many in the group found this familiar conservative formulation unpersuasive.

In the realm of taxes, he devotes a lot of energy to praising tax cuts and decrying tax raises, stating that national revenues actually have risen during times of tax cuts. He criticizes those who would denigrate “tax cuts for the rich,” another abuse of language. He cites examples of when tax cuts for the rich led to increased government revenue because the wealthy had less incentive to shelter their income, but does not cite many counterexamples where such tax cuts resulted in revenue decline, such as the 2017 tax cuts.
Picture
Most of us probably would agree with his idea that one of the key factors of success is motivation. Those who work hard to succeed are most likely to do so. But what about those from backgrounds where they were provided minimal stimulation or were neglected? Should we just say “tough luck” to those people? Sowell makes a claim that many people, and/or families, don’t stay in poverty for long, but his view is countered by, among others, Thomas Piketty, who wrote Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a book we have reviewed, that has reams of statistics showing how inequality increases in families over time. Michael Sandel’s 2020 book The Tyranny of Merit cites studies suggesting that social mobility in the US is significantly less than commonly thought, with only about 4–7 percent of those born in the bottom fifth if the income distribution making it to the top fifth. Most in the group did not believe that Sowell had successfully made the case against government intervention to help those who struggle in today’s economy, although it could be acknowledged that not all past interventions have been successful.

Picture
Perhaps this is the most relevant question we might ask ourselves: “What is government for in a democracy?” The answer would be different if we ask: “What is government for in an autocracy?” The promise of democracy that emerged around the world earlier in this century is largely unfulfilled, with many democratic-leaning states now leaning backwards. The reason is that the governments of those nations have been repurposed to serve the narrower needs of a portion of the population rather the population as a whole. Democracy is a Greek term for “government by the people,” and all governments serve some of the people. Governments that serve the needs of the largest amount of people are the most democratic. Those who would have their governments serve mainly themselves, or those like them, ultimately are compromising the lives and rights of everyone.

Every attempt at democracy has been based on restoring rights to a segment of people who believed themselves overlooked, including those who founded the US, where we have gradually moved in the direction of greater human rights with perhaps three steps forward and two back. But once that vision is lost by those who serve themselves or their leaders rather than democratic principles, the slide toward autocracy begins. The purpose of government in democracy is to continually return us to that balance.


Your comments and thoughts always are welcome. Also, don’t forget to look at our blog site renewingdemocracy.org.

Please recommend this newsletter to people who you think might appreciate it. If you want to be added to the list to receive each new newsletter when posted, fill out our contact form and check the box just above the SUBMIT button. You may also use that form to be removed from our list.
​
Visit our Books page for information about purchasing The Future of Democracy, The Death of Democracy, Truth & Democracy, and Everyday Spirituality for Everyone.

Click ↓ (#) Comments below to view comments/questions or add yours. Click Reply below an existing comment to respond.
0 Comments

The Future of Democracy Newsletter: July 2021

7/20/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
The focus of our July discussion was the book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley. We discussed how fascism operates to entice people into following leaders who often act against democracy and how we might respond against what seems to be a growing trend that undermines many countries in our time.
 
The theme of this book is that fascism is based on creating scapegoats for the fears of those who believe themselves threatened. Leaders take advantage of people’s fear of losing their rights to “the other” whom they become convinced are out to steal them. These fears often are projected onto minorities portrayed as threats to the “real” national character. Following are selected quotes from the book.

This pattern of blame by the majority of a minority has had a resurgence over the course of this young century. In Brazil, under Bolsonaro, right wing demonstrations were held across the country, calling to disband Congress and the courts. The neo-fascist party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) now is the third-strongest party in Germany. Under Hindu nationalism in India under Modi those deemed to be non-citizens [Muslins] will be scheduled for detention and eventual deportation. In early June (2020), the Trump administration cancelled educational, recreational, and legal aid for children in detention centers.
 
Under regimes leading toward fascism there is movement toward unifying institutions around loyalty to an ethnic identity … or loyalty to a single leader. Liberal democracy is in retreat. But a tendency to blame others for the real or imagined deterioration of our society is an ancient problem.

Fascist politics includes many distinct strategies: the mythic past, propaganda, anti-intellectualism, unreality, hierarchy, victimhood, law and order, sexual anxiety, appeals to the heartland, and dismantling of public welfare and unity. In the cases of Nazi Germany, Rwanda, and contemporary Myanmar, the victims of ethnic cleansing were subjected to vicious rhetorical attacks by leaders in the press for months or years before the regime turned genocidal.

The most telling symptom of fascist politics is division. It aims to separate the population into “us” and “them.” Fascist politicians justify their ideas by breaking down a common sense of history in creating a mythic past to support their vision for the present. … Fascist politics creates a state of unreality, in which conspiracy theories and fake news replace reasoned debate.

When social rankings and divisions solidify, fear fills in for understanding between groups. Any progress for a minority group stokes feelings of victimhood among the dominant population. … As the fear of “them” grows, “we” come to represent everything virtuous.

Following the horrors of WWII, which sent masses of refugees fleeing fascist regimes, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirmed the dignity of every human being. Fascism today might not look exactly as it did in the 1930s, but refugees are once again on the road everywhere.

In all fascist mythic pasts, an extreme version of the patriarchal family reigns supreme. The function … is to harness the emotion of nostalgia to the central tenets of fascist ideology — authoritarianism, hierarchy, purity, and struggle.

The Hutu power movement was a fascist ethnic supremacist movement that arose in Rwanda in the years before the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán … has overseen the demolition of the liberal institutions of the country. If one can convince a population that they are rightfully exceptional, that they are destined by nature or by religious fate to rule other populations, one has already convinced them of a monstrous lie.

In the US, Confederate monuments arose well after the Civil War had ended, as part of a mythologized history of a heroic Southern past in which the horrors of slavery were de-emphasized. In early 2018, the Polish parliament passed a law making it illegal to suggest that Poland bore responsibility for any of the atrocities committed on its soil during the Nazi occupation of Poland, even the well-documented pogroms during this time. Le Front National is France’s extremist far-right party, and the first neofascist party in Western Europe to achieve significant electoral success. … But during the 2017 election campaign, Marine Le Pen denied French complicity in one particularly large roundup of French Jews, in which 13,000 were gathered … and sent to Nazi death camps.

Politicians in the US Republican Party seek to harness white resentment by denouncing accurate historical scholarship about the brutality of slavery as a way to “victimize” American whites, especially from the South.

To honestly debate what our country should do, what policies it should adopt, we need a common basis of reality, including about our own past. History in a liberal democracy must be faithful to the norm of truth, yielding an accurate vision of the past, rather than a history provided for political reasons.

It is standard in fascist politics for harsh criticisms of an independent judiciary to occur in the form of accusations of bias, a kind of corruption, critiques that are then used to replace independent judges with ones who will cynically employ the law as a means to protect the interests of the ruling party.​
Picture
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates argues that people are not naturally led to self-governance but rather seek a strong leader to follow.

The chief reason we have free speech in democracy is to facilitate public discourse about policy on the part of citizens and their representatives. But the kind of debate where one shrieks insults at another … is not the kind of public discourse that free speech rights are meant to protect. Fascist policies seek to undermine public discourse by attacking and devaluing education, expertise and language. Intelligent debate is impossible without an education with access to different perspectives. … In fascist ideology, there is only one legitimate viewpoint: that of the dominant nation. Reality is always more complex than our means of representing it.

Fascist politics exchanges reality for the pronouncements of a single individual, or perhaps a political party. Anyone looking at current US politics, or Russian or Polish, would immediately note the presence and political potency of conspiracy theories … aimed at some out-group, and in the service of some in-group. Fascist politicians discredit the “liberal media” for censoring discussion or outlandish right-wing conspiracy theories. Because the audience for conspiracy theories readily discount their own experience, it is often unimportant that conspiracy theories are demonstrably false.

Fascist politics seeks to destroy the relations of mutual respect between citizens that are the foundation of a healthy liberal democracy, replacing them with trust in one figure alone, the leader. Since Plato and Aristotle wrote on the topic, political theorists have known that democracy cannot flourish on soil poisoned by inequality. According to fascist ideology, nature imposes hierarchies of power and dominance that are flatly inconsistent with the equality of respect presupposed by liberal democratic theory.

The idea of liberal democracy is that all of us are equally deserving of the basic goods of society. This kind of nationalism is therefore in no sense opposed to equality. Fascist nationalism is a repudiation of the liberal democratic ideal; it is nationalism in the service of domination.

We tend to describe the actions of those we regard as one of “us” quite differently than the actions of those we regard as one of “them.” If someone we regard as one of “them” does the same thing, we tend to describe the action more abstractly, by impugning bad character traits to the person committing it. They are criminals. We make mistakes.

In fascist ideology, the rural life is guided by an ethos of self-sufficiency, which breeds strength. Most often American opposition to welfare is represented as a manifestation of a commitment to individualism, of support and desire for nurturing an ethic of self-sufficiency. Many Americans hold false beliefs about who is poor. There is widespread ignorance of the fact that those who benefit from the majority of welfare programs are white. The “hard work” versus “laziness” dichotomy is, like “law-abiding” versus “criminal,” at the heart of the fascist division between “us” and “them.”

Adding race and previous incarceration together makes employment prospects dramatically worse. In the 1960s, the Kennedy and Johnson administration responded to the civil rights movement by pairing job training and antipoverty programs with punitive anticrime measures. When Richard Nixon ran in 1968, he used urban unrest to change the subject from social justice to law and order … he inherited a penal system that had been shedding prisoners.

In functioning unions, white working-class citizens identify with black working-class citizens rather than resent them. According to fascist politics, unions must be smashed so that individual laborers are left to fend for themselves. When poor white workers lack class identification with poor black workers they fall back on familiar lines of racial division and resentment. … “Right to work” is an Orwellian name for legislation that attacks workers’ ability to collectively bargain, thereby robbing workers of a voice.

Fascist movements share with Social Darwinism the idea that life is a competition for power, according to which the division of society’s resources should be left up to pure free market competition. The fascist vision of individual freedom is similar to the libertarian notion of individual rights — the right to compete but not necessarily to succeed or even survive. … Freedom is defined by unconstrained free markets. In the 2012 American presidential election, vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan repeatedly spoke of American society being divided into “makers” and “takers.” A generous social welfare system unites a community in mutual bonds of care, rather than dividing it into factions that demagogues can exploit.
​

We can expand our understanding of “us” by … considering both the people living in refugee camps of the world and the residents of small towns in Iowa to be our neighbors.

Our group then discussed how to move past the inroads that fascism seems to be making in many countries. How do we create a world where we move toward its opposite — which is democracy — and work with others toward a more equal society?
 
Part of the fascist mentality is characterizing people by the groups to which they belong rather than their individual actions. We can criticize fascist elements where we see them yet this often results in a circle of blame.
 
But as individuals, we each can move toward a more democratic society by striving to see people more as they are beyond race, religion, gender, political preference and every other type of label we place on them.
 
All of us at times engage in unfair judgments, and then sometimes look back and regret our actions as having been harmful when we may not have meant them to be. But if we learn from our very human pattern of judging others and begin to treat them with greater respect we can contribute to a more fair and equitable world.
 
Perhaps we can begin to realize that the needs of others — for recognition of both their value as people and their physical needs — also are our needs. If our actions in our personal and political lives move us toward a world that maximizes the value and potential of everyone, those benefits also accrue to ourselves. This is the essence of democracy.
 
Also, I recommend this article about the deterioration of democracy in Nicaragua as an example of what has happened to many countries in this century:
​

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/04/opinion/daniel-ortega-nicaragua-election.html

Your comments and thoughts always are welcome. Also, don’t forget to look at our blog site renewingdemocracy.org

Please recommend this newsletter to people who you think might appreciate it. If you want to be added to the list to receive each new newsletter when posted, fill out our contact form and check the box just above the SUBMIT button. You may also use that form to be removed from our list.

Visit our Books page for information about purchasing The Future of Democracy, The Death of Democracy, Truth & Democracy, and Everyday Spirituality for Everyone.

Click ↓ (#) Comments below to view comments/questions or add yours. Click Reply below an existing comment to respond.
0 Comments

The Future of Democracy Newsletter: June 2021

6/14/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
The focus of our June 7 discussion was Israel/Palestine. We were honored to have Alan Dowty — author of a book by that name — join us to help understand the current Middle East situation and the history of the relationship between Jews and Palestinians in that region.
​
The origins of the conflict between these populations goes back to the 1880s when Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe began settling in the region as a result of persecution. At the time the area was under the Ottoman (or Turkish) empire, where Jews generally had been welcomed as refugees as far back as the time of their expulsion from Spain in 1492. But the Jews who migrated into the empire had usually been welcome as citizens who merged into the prevailing culture. Those who arrived in Palestine followed the admonition of Theodore Herzl to establish a homeland, which was a threat to the population already living there.

The Arabs in the area, around one-half millions Muslims and Christians, lived under the shadow of the Crusades, the aborted attempt of Christian European armies to recapture the holy land at any cost from about 1100-1300. After World War I, British displaced Ottoman rule, which improved health, transportation, and communication services.

​For Arabs, the growing Jewish presence presented a threat that they would lose their land. After World War II, almost all Jews accepted the idea that Palestine should be their homeland after persecutions and rejections by other countries. 
Hagenah(meaning Defense) was founded in 1920 to protect Jewish immigrants. In 1936 “the great revolt” by Palestinians began with the intent to expel what they considered Jewish interlopers in their land.
 
Dividing Palestine was first proposed in 1937 by the British Peel Commission. The British were caught in the growing conflict from Jews escaping persecution and native inhabitants, eventually evacuating in 1948 as the State of Israel was declared. Israel also inherited a sizable Arab minority as the war between Israel and its neighbors — plus Palestinian groups — began. Nevertheless, an agreement was reached between Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon — for Israel to claim possession of about 78% of the former British Palestinian mandate.

PictureGamal Abdel Nasser
The two decades between 1948 and 1967 wars were dominated by the personality of Gamal Nasser, who served as a model for unity of all Arabs. By the early 1960s a number of Palestinian fighting groups emerged, including Fatah (under Yasser Arafat) and the PLO. The period of 1956–67 was relatively quiet as UN peacekeepers were stationed on the border between Israel and Egypt.

The 1967 war was precipitated by the Soviet Union warning Egypt that Israel was about to attack Syria. Egypt moved troops into the Sinai and closed the gulf of Aqaba to Israeli ships. In six days of fighting that began on June 5, Israel captured the Gaza Strip and Sinai from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. A “land for peace” formula was adopted by the UN at the end of the year in which Israel would exchange land for recognition, and this has been the basis for subsequent negotiations, but the word Palestine does not appear in the resolution.
PictureAnwar Sadat
 Anwar Sadat became Egyptian president when Nasser died in 1970 until his assassination in 1981. Sadat coordinated an attack on Israel with Syria in 1973 which was defeated. Starting in 1977 Egypt strengthened ties with the US and negotiated peace with Israel under Manachem Begin, which also led to a treaty with Jordan. But the Palestinians still saw themselves as oppressed, which resulted in the Intifada and Hamas, which had both violent and non-violent purposes: improving the lives of Palestinians and confronting Israel. But among Palestinians — many of whom worked in Israel — income and consumption levels have improved considerably since 1967.
 
There have been numerous short bursts of war between Israel and Palestinians since that time, among them in 2008, 2012, and the most recent spate of attacks that resulted in many deaths, but inevitably more on the Palestinian side which has inferior offensive and defensive capabilities. UN fact finding often has found fault on both sides for causing excessive civilian casualties.

The most recent change in government about to take place that combines representatives from the right and center of Israeli politics, as well as Arab members of Knesset, may be cause for cautious optimism. The current coalition may be a hopeful sign that all sides are willing to give a bit in an effort to end the politics of confrontation that has affected the area for over 100 years. At first they might seek to agree on rebuilding the infrastructure and economies of all areas before they can hopefully build enough trust to address the ultimate and unavoidable issue of how the land is to be shared or divided.


Your comments and thoughts always are welcome. Also, don’t forget to look at our blog site renewingdemocracy.org

Please recommend this newsletter to people who you think might appreciate it. If you want to be added to the list to receive each new newsletter when posted, fill out our contact form and check the box just above the SUBMIT button. You may also use that form to be removed from our list.

Visit our Books page for information about purchasing The Future of Democracy, The Death of Democracy, Truth & Democracy, and Everyday Spirituality for Everyone.

Click ↓ (#) Comments below to view comments/questions or add yours. Click Reply below an existing comment to respond.
0 Comments
<<Previous
    Picture5th edition now available

    Steve Zolno

    Steve Zolno is the author of the book The Future of Democracy and two related titles. He graduated from Shimer College with a Bachelors Degree in Social Sciences and holds a Masters in Educational Psychology from Sonoma State University. He is a Management and Educational Consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area and has been conducting seminars on democracy since 2006.

    Archives

    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    September 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Home

Newsletter

Contact

The Book

Events/Reviews

The Future of Democracy: Lessons from Our Past and Present to Guide Us on Our Path Forward by Steve Zolno 
​is a book covering democracy’s past, present, and future, available now in print and e-book editions.

Site copyright © 2019–2022 by Steve Zolno.
Site developed and maintained by Your Attention, Please! communications
  • Home
  • Newsletter
  • Contact
  • The Books
  • Reviews/Videos