Restore your faith in democracy by watching this video.

More Obscure Books: The Open Society and its Enemies- Plato

In another time by another author, the subject of this book, the emptiness of Plato's moral-political philosophy, could have been a dull and depressing piece of dead white male bashing. In fact, Karl Popper's dig into the minutia of classical philosophy reveals important truths about the irreconcilable differences that tear at our modern democracies. He views the human condition after the rupture of the tribal bubble as an ongoing conflict between our need to belong and our need to reform, our desire for predictability and the social upheaval of the open society that benefits us in so many ways. These dueling needs mean that our societies always hang in the balance between tyranny and liberty, never safe from the extremes of total disintegration or totalitarian "unity."

Popper takes pains to shatter the idealized and very popular vision of Plato as a deeply moral and fundamentally righteous crusader against the excesses of a democracy run wild. He does this by examining Plato's own social context, his place within the intellectual movements that go unnamed in his dialogs but had to be in the mind of so educated and politically engaged an author. Moreover, he turns Plato's own words against him, citing familiar passages and delivering plainspoken critiques that cut past Plato's clever tricks.

Plato's subtle but seductive war on the notions of egalitarianism, democracy, and openness that had exploded during Athens' golden age, his betrayal of Socratic notions of Justice, and his own sordid political and pedagogical experiments leave little room for doubt about his intentions. His work, particularly the Republic and the Laws where his political program is most explicitly revealed represent an unabashed embrace of social control and collectivism. The search for the "best state" is shown to reflect a tribalistic and totalitarian impulse to establish the unchallenged rule of the master race by eliminating all vestiges of openness and freedom from the society.

That Plato's program purports to answer the very basic human needs for happiness and justice is little consolation when these terms are defined as "knowing and staying in one's place" and "that which is in the interest of the state."

Here are some choice quotes from Karl Popper's book:

... Of much greater merit, although it too is inspired by hatred is Plato's description of tyranny and especially of the transition to it. He insists that he describes things which he has seen himself; no doubt the allusion is to his experience at the court of the older Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse. The transition from a democracy to tyranny, Plato says is most easily brought about by a popular leader who knows how to exploit the class antagonism between the rich and the poor within the democratic state, and who succeeds in building up a bodyguard or a private army of his own. The people who have hailed him first as the champion of freedom are soon enslaved; and then they must fight for him, in "one war after another which he must stir up...because he must make the people feel the need of a general." With tyranny, the most abject state is reached.

...[Plato] insists that only internal sedition within the ruling class itself can weaken [the state] so much that its rule can be overthrown.

...Most people in civilized countries nowadays [1944] admit racial superiority to be a myth; but even if it were an established fact, it should not create special political rights, though it might create special moral responsibilities for the superior persons. Analogous demands should be made of those who are intellectually and morally and educationally superior; and I cannot help feeling that the opposite claims of certain intellectualists and moralists only show how little successful their education has been, since it failed to make them aware of their own limitations, and of their Pharisaism.

...All theories of soveriegnty are paradoxical...We may distinguish two main types of government. The first type consists of governments of which we can get rid without bloodshed - for example by way of general elections; that is to say, the social institutions provide a means by which the rulers may be dismissed by the ruled, and the social traditions ensure that these institutions will not easily be destroyed by those who are in power. The second type consists of governments which the ruled cannot get rid of except by way of a successful revolution - that is to say, in most cases, not at all. I suggest the term 'democracy' as a short hand label for a government of the first type, and the term 'tyranny' or 'dictatorship' for the second. This, I believe, corresponds closely to the traditional usage. But I wish to make it clear that no part of my argument depends on these labels; and should anybody reverse this usage (as is frequently done nowadays), then I should simply say that I am in favor of what he calls "tyranny" and object to what he calls "democracy;" and I should reject as irrelevant to any attempt to discover what "democracy" "really" or "essentially" means, for example by translating the term into "the rule of the people." (For although 'the people' may influence the actions of their rulers by the threat of dismissal, they never rule themselves in any concrete, practical sense)...He who accepts the principle of democracy in this sense is therefore not bound to look upon the result of a democratic vote as an authoritative expression of what is right. Although he will accept a decision of the majority, for the sake of making the democratic institutions work, he will feel free to combat it by democratic means, and to work for its revision. And should he live to see the day when the majority vote destroys the democratic institutions, then this sad experience will tell him only that there does not exist a foolproof method of avoiding tyranny. But it need not weaken his decision to fight tyranny, nor will it expose his theory as inconsistent.

...Democracy (using his label in the sense suggested above) provides the institutional framework for the reform of political institutions without using violence, and thereby the use of reason in the designing of new institutions and the adjusting of old ones. It cannot provide reason.

...The more we try to return to the heroic age of tribalism, the more surely do we arrive at the Inquisition, at the Secret Police, and at a romanticized gangsterism. Beginning with the suppression of reason and truth, we must end with the most brutal and violent destruction of all that is human. There is no return to a harmonious state of nature. I we turn back, then we must go the whole way - we must return to the beasts. . . We can return to the beasts. But if we wish to remain human, then there is only one way, the way into the open society. We must go on into the unknown, the uncertain and insecure, using what reason we may have to plan as well as we can for both security and freedom.

Godwin's Law Comes to the Mainstream Media

"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." ~Mike Godwin



Ms. Wolf is probably justified in her invocation of the Evil One on this occasion, but this is the first time I had seen it done successfully by a serious journalist. This is because her use of "fascism" is not rhetorical and hyperbolic but is on the other hand highly technical and descriptive. The trends she identifies in American political life and the parallels she draws to past instances of democratic collapse have concerned me for some time. Her contribution to the ongoing discussion is much needed because, as she says, the window permitting a peaceful democratic counter-movement is being closed. Take a look.

How to Steal a Country

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I wouldn't trust most politicians to work on my car much less run my country.

Our elected legislators are running around like a bunch of unsupervised children. I've never seen anything like it. I mean, I knew that staffers often voted on behalf of their senile and doddering bosses who probably don't know what city they're in half the time, but these guys are really brazen about stealing each other's votes.

Stuck Pigs

A new youtube channel dedicated to monitoring and documenting police brutality. Check it out any time you feel like getting angry.

That Isn't News

If you’re reading this, you probably already know that the mainstream media is a smoldering wasteland of celebrity gossip, stories about sex offenders, and senseless economic hysteria. I contend that it’s worse than you think.

The problem is not so much that people watch and care about these things, that they are entertained by Britney’s blurred out cooch and amused by O’Reilly’s angry rants. We all indulge in such guilty pleasures on occasion.

The challenge facing serious people in America today is that the events that have come to fill the typical news cycle deliberately distract viewers from the developments most likely to shape their lives in the future.

American news organizations of all political slants religiously avoid discussing in any depth science and technological innovation, and avoid giving audience to powerful new ideas of any kind. Economic trends receive a great deal of coverage, but the discussion leaves no lingering understanding of the dynamics at work. International confrontations cause editors to trot out the usual cast of xenophobes and apologists, but any discussions of the historical context or the roots of the conflict are ridiculed as the kind of mushy intellectualism that has no place on the foreign policy battlefield.

Consuming such disposable media is worse than a waste of time. It actually erodes our ability to distinguish between the sensational and the significant.

I find it hard to avoid the conclusion that this is deliberate. To extract lasting information about the general from the specific of current events would be to make punditry unnecessary. If these organizations were truly educating people about the world, they would be furnishing viewers with the tools necessary to learn about and judge the importance of events independently. This is evidently one of the cardinal sins of the modern newsman.

Thou shalt not challenge, thou shalt not offend, thou shalt not empower.

In the long run we're all dead

While many of us have suspected for some time that the leaders of this country were coming unglued, it is increasingly apparent that the American Empire is fraying at the edges. As much as part of me wants to pour a glass fine bourbon and drink to its demise, I fear that the transformation we are witnessing will not be a happy one for us.

Let us review the facts:

The President and VP of the United States have lost the support of all but a radical fringe of the Republican party, and have even succeeded in alienating the traditional base in the last six weeks. The White House has gone into siege mode, and is increasingly desperate to redeem the Bush legacy - even if it means bringing the ominous predictions of a generation long battle for the Middle East to fruition. This administration has demonstrated its willingness to exploit terrorism and war to increase its political power, and there is no reason to believe that they will not attempt to do so again. Their record of restricting freedoms and trampling the constitution in the name of security may precipitate a confrontation in the event of intervention in Iran or Pakistan.

Congress has abysmal approval ratings, and cannot enforce the cooperation or obedience of the White House given a highly politicized Justice Department and the culture of loyalty fostered within it and the rest of the Executive. The Supreme Court is packed with Bush followers as well, and it is unlikely to provide any significant check on executive power even if it becomes obvious that the President is acting outside his constitutionally limited role. The mainstream media has been effectively neutered by the Bush Administration's overt carrot and stick policy of offering unprecedented access to compliant reporters but mercilessly freezing out the opposition.

Spaces for popular protest are being closed by widely publicized yet continuing surveillance programs that may allow government access to highly personal data and the communications of any American citizen. Knowledge of this capability combined with a well executed crack down on a few classes of social deviant could produce the kind of self censorship upon which true authoritarianism depends. Moreover, many Americans are still in the dark about the nature of the economic and political crisis facing this country, and can be easily manipulated by demagogues as a result. Since the 60's, Americans have lost faith in the efficacy of protest and street action to bring about lasting change, and participants in such acts of resistance are viewed as hopeless radicals or dreamers.

The immense quantity and diversity of information available on the Internet has resulted in a sort of ideological fragmentation, and without filters and mediators of culture, it becomes impossible to mobilize new coalitions that will have impact on the democratic process. The Web 2.0 phenomenon and the rise of social networking may permit a true political dialog to resume in time, but for the moment these forums are underdeveloped and lack the kind of cross cutting participation that would make them viable vehicles for change.

Despite the lull in terrorism at home during the last few years, it is still quite likely that we will be attacked again. Given that the stated goal of our enemies is to turn us against each other by exploiting the tendency of our government to overreact to perceived threats, we have done a poor job of sticking together. In an atmosphere of fear an uncertainty and absent a real alternative to Republicrat orthodoxy, the path of least resistance for politicians is more redistributive populism, more deficit spending, and more war. However, military power cannot solve our essentially political foreign policy problems, our country is already committed to entitlements it cannot afford, and increased government intervention in the economy is likely to undermine our few remaining competitive advantages.

While this all sounds quite bleak, even to a bleak prediction aficionado like myself, it is important to point out that all my short term pessimism is tempered by a firmly held belief that in the long run I will be dead as fried chicken along with all the the sons of bitches that got us into this mess. With any luck they'll go before we do and we'll have a chance to clean the place up a bit before its time to go.

But seriously, what I was going to say before the black wave came over me is that in the long run, it really doesn't matter if the federal government implodes and America becomes a pitiable backwater. Those of us that can flee will do so as people have done for all of recorded history, and we will carry with us the ideas, the information, and the drive that made this country a great place to live. In other words, lets give the reform thing the old college try, but if it doesn't work, well, keep practicing that Spanish.

This Guy's an Army of One

War: Are we still that fucking stupid?

Repeat after me:
. . .
I solemnly swear that I will never initiate the use of force, nor will I allow political representatives to do so on my behalf. I reject the use or threat of violence as a political tool both because it is morally indefensible and practically ineffective.
. . .

A victory in battle cannot settle the great questions of human life, and furthermore such questions are not meant to be buried.

To be human is to be in error. This condition has the makings of a great comedy or a great tragedy; so far we have chosen the latter.

Banish borders, not immigrants.

Your ancestors were migrants.

Indeed, you could even say we are a species of nomads. Though few modern peoples bear resemblance to the original low-speed nomads - walking across the wilderness from water source to water source, following the big game that was their livelihood - the churning flow of human populations and the reasons compelling our motion have changed very little.

We still roam the earth searching for what we need.

You've lived in one place your whole life you say? Well, if you're like most Americans, you commute about 25 minutes to work each day. You set out from the place where one vital resource is located to acquire another that you need to survive. That you return to the same shelter each night and the same job each morning makes you an adept and speedy migrant, but a migrant none the less.

Imagine how difficult your life would become if arbitrary but impenetrable man-made boundaries were drawn across the landscape in such a way that the many resources necessary for your survival were separated from one another.

This is the situation created by states that erect barriers to peaceful migrants and their goods. Our governments have closed down the natural and vital flows people and resources in a foolish and ill devised effort to protect a few enclaves of wealth.

The irony is, the only reason these enclaves, the very estates of intrepid migrants, might now be threatened is that many years of holding back the trickle of humans has turned them into an angry flood. We should stop blaming the people who follow their fortunes as all of us must. The border is the crime, not the crossing of it.

Proxy War: still the best bang for your buck!

Take a look at the photographs of the Fatah-Hamas battle filtering out of Gaza and the West Bank. Pay close attention to the guns they are carrying. What do you notice?

If you answered that ALL the Fatah militants were carrying U.S. made M-16 rifles, the standard duty rifle for U.S. troops since Vietnam, you win today's grand prize.



This weapon is the hallmark of U.S. involvement in a war. Go to the Bay of Pigs and you will still find their spent shells in the sand. They are too expensive, require too much maintenance, and are too difficult to acquire for most would be guerrillas. Quite simply, our government had to supply them to these fighters.



By contrast, look at the weapons wielded by Hamas fighters. They all carry the ubiquitous AK-47, the dirt cheap and extremely reliable Soviet assault rifle faced by U.S. troops in so many conflicts over the years.


Just because no U.S. troops are fighting in Palestine at the moment doesn't mean we don't have a dog in this fight. We need only listen to the smug statements of our representatives in the region to know that this violence is part of the larger War of Terror. We have opposed Hamas since the beginning of their ascendancy, needling them with the economic sanctions and silent treatment so characteristic of the Bush Administration. Now we fund their enemies in a feeble attempt to topple the democratically elected government. Do we expect them to behave better now that they have routed our proxies?

More on secrecy.

From the Washington Post.

The author would seem to agree:

For the past six years, I've been exploring the resurgent culture of secrecy. What I've found is a confluence of causes behind it, among them the chill wrought by 9/11, industry deregulation, the long dominance of a single political party, fear of litigation and liability and the threat of the Internet. But perhaps most alarming to me was the public's increasing tolerance of secrecy. Without timely information, citizens are reduced to mere residents, and representative government atrophies into a representational image of democracy as illusory as a hologram.

Shhh! It's a Secret.

Achieving information control is the fundamental first step of any authoritarian regime. In the absence of informed dissent, the taxpayer-funded noise machine lets leaders do what they want while most of us are so confused about the actual facts that we are incapable of articulating any policy demands at all.

As we become less capable of confronting the world in a coherent way, we are increasingly dependent on politicians to tell us what to think. Even though their "information" may conflict with realities that slap us in the face every day, the cognitive dissonance causes paralysis.

The fundamental crisis facing our government is that most of its actions are so highly classified even other officials can't and don't know what's going on. How can they plan complex operations? How can they coordinate policy? The Iraq debacle makes it obvious that they cannot.

If a government can't even trust its own employees, we must assume that it's up to some seriously twisted shit.

Forget about media bias for a moment and consider the impact of secrecy on our society. True information is the blood of democracy. We need the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help us God. Without it our political discourse is starved of air. We become captive to "experts," pundits and smooth talkers, insiders who can claim privileged access and special information. We are no longer participant citizens but subjects.

Insane Campaing Clips: Volume 3

And as it turns out . . .

. . . Al Gore agrees.


Page 3:

Fortunately, the Internet has the potential to revitalize the role played by the people in our constitutional framework. It has extremely low entry barriers for individuals. It is the most interactive medium in history and the one with the greatest potential for connecting individuals to one another and to a universe of knowledge. It's a platform for pursuing the truth, and the decentralized creation and distribution of ideas, in the same way that markets are a decentralized mechanism for the creation and distribution of goods and services. It's a platform, in other words, for reason. But the Internet must be developed and protected, in the same way we develop and protect markets—through the establishment of fair rules of engagement and the exercise of the rule of law. The same ferocity that our Founders devoted to protect the freedom and independence of the press is now appropriate for our defense of the freedom of the Internet. The stakes are the same: the survival of our Republic. We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it, because of the threat of corporate consolidation and control over the Internet marketplace of ideas.

The danger arises because there is, in most markets, a very small number of broadband network operators. These operators have the structural capacity to determine the way in which information is transmitted over the Internet and the speed with which it is delivered. And the present Internet network operators—principally large telephone and cable companies—have an economic incentive to extend their control over the physical infrastructure of the network to leverage control of Internet content. If they went about it in the wrong way, these companies could institute changes that have the effect of limiting the free flow of information over the Internet in a number of troubling ways.

The democratization of knowledge by the print medium brought the Enlightenment. Now, broadband interconnection is supporting decentralized processes that reinvigorate democracy. We can see it happening before our eyes: As a society, we are getting smarter. Networked democracy is taking hold. You can feel it. We the people—as Lincoln put it, "even we here"—are collectively still the key to the survival of America's democracy.