The Buie Knife

Wise Words About Political Debate with Hyper-Partisans

"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig . You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it." -- George Bernard Shaw (hat tip: Joe Johnson)

Say No to Yes Men (Or Yes Women)

“The yes-man is your enemy, but your friend will argue with you.” -- Russian proverb. Three public figures in the news seemed to have been ill-served by yes men (or yes women).

John Edwards' "yes man" Andrew Young agreed to his request to publicly say he was the father of Rielle Hunter's baby, when the father was most probably Edwards. Both Young and Edwards would have been better off in the long run if Edwards were treated like an adult (past the age of 50) and told he had to take responsibility for his own irresponsible behavior and his own baby. What was Young thinking? Even if Edwards in his pridefulness, panic, narcissism and embarrassment promised to "take care of you for life," what would accepting such a bribe do to your own reputation and sense of efficacy? Obviously Young allowed his own identity to be merged with that of Edwards, to the detriment of both of them. But it says something about Edwards' character that he wanted someone else to take the fall for his behavior.

Michael Jackson was surrounded by "yes men," so-called fans who enabled his drug addiction and wouldn't tell him the truth, that he was killing himself.

One reason Sarah Palin resigned as governor of Alaska was that she apparently had a very thin skin. The "yes men" she surrounded herself with tolerated no criticism of her, even constructive criticism, according to Daniel Larison in the American Conservative. "Palin was surrounded and cheered on by almost nothing but yes-men," he wrote, "because once anyone tried to offer any kind of criticism that person seemed to become persona non grata in her circle and in the wider conservative world pretty quickly."

Surrounding oneself with "yes men" and sycophants often proves, in the long run, to be self-destructive.

Is America Essentially A Progressive Nation?

George Lakoff is author of "Don't Think of An Elephant: Know Your Values, Frame the Debate," a professor of linguistics at Berkeley and an informal advisor to Barack Obama. He recently visited North Carolina at the behest of several progressive groups, and according to a column by Rob Schofield, reminded NC progressives what they are all about.

Lakoff is trying to get progressives to think more about the language they use. He believes  'progressives' should speak of their values first, and policy prescriptions second: "There is no left-to-right linear spectrum in the American political life," he writes. "There are two systems of values and modes of thought - call them progressive and conservative (or nurturant and strict, as I have)....Barack Obama has it right: Get rid of the very idea of the right and the left and the center. American ideas are fundamentally progressive ideas - the ideas   on which this country was founded and which carry forth that spirit. Progressives   care about people and the earth, and act with responsibility and strength on   that care...

"The progressive view of government is simple. Progressive government has two aspects: protection and empowerment. Protection is far more than the military, police and fire departments. It includes consumer protection, worker protection, environmental protection, public health, food and drug safety; Social Security and other safety nets. It also includes protection from the government itself, and hence a balance of powers, openness, fundamental rights and so on.

"Empowerments include roads and bridges; public education; government-developed   communications like the internet and satellite communications systems; the banking   system; the SEC and institutions that make a stock market possible, and the court system, mostly about contracts and corporate law. Progressive government makes business possible. No one makes any money in this country without progressive empowerment by government. A progressive foreign policy is not based solely, or even mainly, on the state - about the "national interest" defined   as our military strength and GDP. Progressive foreign policy focuses on individual people's interests as well as national interests: on poverty, disease, refugees, education, women's and children's issues, public health and so on." Read the whole thing.

Previous:

• Is America Essentially A Conservative Nation? (2004)

How Does Social Change Happen?

Does social change occur more from the top down or the bottom up?

My view generally is that it can be either/or, but truly transformational change comes when it's both/and.

Looking back at history and politics, and your own experiences, what do you think?

Commentators David Brooks and Mark Shields on the PBS NEWS HOUR pointed out that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have different theories as to how social change happens.

Blunders Leading to Violence

"Seven blunders of the world that lead to violence:

• wealth without work,
• pleasure without conscience,
• knowledge without character,
• commerce without morality,
• science without humanity,
• worship without sacrifice,
• politics without principle." -- Mahatma Gandhi. Learn more about this quote.

Saul Alinsky's Influence on Today's Political Activists

I read Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals in college. It's interesting to take a retrospective on his work, to see what others are saying, and to examine the work of people who are still trying to implement his vision and tactics.

Alinsky, unimpressed by dogma, believed in coalitions linked by clear-eyed calculations of self-interest....

An organizer must "fan the latent hostilities," he wrote in his 1946 handbook "Reveille for Radicals," and "he must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them."

The Alinsky method...is centered on one-on-one conversations. The organizer's task is to draw out people's stories, listening for their goals and ambitions -- "the stuff that makes them tick," one of (Obama's) teachers told him. There he would find the self-interest that would spark activism.

Drill Deeper:

• Rules for Radicals at Amazon.com
• Google search on Saul Alinsky
• Saul Alinsky's influence on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama

Foundations of Political Ideals and Beliefs for the Young Hillary Rodham

Fascinating article in The Washington Post on the foundations of political ideals and beliefs for the young Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Both were influenced by Chicago political organizer Saul Alinsky. In the whitebread Chicago suburb of Park Ridge, shaped by the outlook of her father, Hugh Rodham, a small businessman, whose basic political philosophy was 'self-reliance," Hillary started out as a Goldwater Republican  -- she was a "Goldwater girl" in high school in 1964. As a freshman at Wellesley, she was president of the Young Republicans. But the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, hearing Martin Luther King speak, reading about Robert F. Kennedy's campaign, the assassinations of both King and Kennedy, working in a poor neighborhood of Chicago, and reading Saul Alinksy began to change her perspective. She wrote her senior thesis on the war on poverty, and interviewed Alinsky four times. Her thesis was critiqued by four professors, one of whom said it revealed "an underlying idealism, but it's not a naive idealism."

In her autobiography, Living History, Hillary wrote that she agreed with some of Alinsky's ideas, "particularly the value of empowering people to help themselves," but she had a "fundamental disagreement" with him. She would choose to change the political system from within, from elected office, rather than as a grassroots activist agitating and creating conflict in order to mobilize the poor and demand change from the government.

'Socialism for the Rich and Brutal Capitalism for the Poor'

"America is now a land of socialism for the rich and brutal capitalism for the poor, " -- observes Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a New York magazine profile.

“...There is an ancient struggle between two separate philosophies, warring for control of the American soul. The first was set forth by John Winthrop in 1630, when he made the most important speech in American history, ‘A Model of Christian Charity,’ on the deck of the sloop Arbella, as the Puritans approached the New World. He said this land is being given to us by God not to satisfy carnal opportunities, or expand self-interest, but rather to create a shining city on a hill. This is the American ideal, working together, maintaining a spiritual mission, and creating communities for the future.

“The competing vision of America comes from the conquistador side of the national character and took hold with the gold rush of 1849. That’s when people began to regard the land as the source of private wealth, a place where you can get rich quick—the sort of game where whomever dies with the biggest pile wins.”

And RFK Jr. has some surprising observations to make about his father, who he says was in many ways more conservative than Bush and Reagan.

'Truth and Reconciliation' in North Carolina

Albert Camus wrote, in Resistence, Rebellion and Death, a collection of great essays: "What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest man. That they should get away from abstraction and confront the blood-stained face history has taken on today...."

When I read these words, I think of "The Ghosts of 1898," a remarkable package of articles published in November, 2006 in both The News and Observer of Raleigh and The Charlotte Observer revealing, in-depth for the first time in the state's mass media, the true story of how "heavily armed white men marched into Wilmington's black neighborhoods,...burned down the black newspaper, murdered dozens of black residents and banished many black citizens and their allies,...(and) changed the state's history."It is said to be the only violent overthrow of a city government in US history.

In the name of white supremacy, this well-ordered mob burned the offices of the local black newspaper, murdered perhaps dozens of black residents -- the precise number isn't known -- and banished many successful black citizens and their so-called "white nigger" allies. A new social order was born in the blood and the flames, rooted in what The News and Observer's publisher, Josephus Daniels, heralded as "permanent good government by the party of the White Man."

Not until the United States, and particularly the South, confront history, and not just the self-serving propaganda we learned in public school classrooms on issues of race, will genuine reconciliation take place. We can't be forgiven for the sins of our ancestors from which citizens today still suffer (read The Color of Wealth) if we gloss them over, don't acknowledge them, refuse to look at history and the legacy of racism in a clear-eyed fashion ourselves.

The series, written by historian Tim Tyson, is journalism at its best, and ought to win awards. What's also great to see is the public dialogue, in letters to the editor, and in the blogosphere, that the series has stimulated. The Wilmington Race Riot Commission will hopefully keep the dialogue going.

A "new generation of Americans (is trying) truth and reconciliation to heal old racial wounds. Communities divided by crimes of 60s and 70s seek new ways to reckon with the past," the (UK) Guardian reported, focusing largely on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Greensboro, NC. The article begins with this quote:

The past is never dead, wrote William Faulkner, the American south's most famous literary son. "It's not even past."

And ends with this one from Charles Payne, professor of history, African-American studies and sociology at Duke University:

"Some people are using the progress that has been made to wipe out any sense of the past as though they have conquered the past, but the legacy continues on death row and the continuing economic marginalization of black people...The extent to which these initiatives can get people to think critically about how privilege is shaped is the extent to which they strike me as being real and useful."

Drill Deeper:

• Quotes from Resistence, Rebellion and Death, a collection of great essays by Albert Camus.
• "The Ghosts of 1898," reports in The News and Observer.
• "The Ghosts of 1898," reports in The Charlotte Observer.
• Multimedia: Five descendants of "this defining period in North Carolina history talk about the effect on their families," on the Charlotte Observer web site.
• "The Ghosts of 1898" discussed in the blogosphere.
• The Color of Wealth
• The Wilmington Race Riot Commission.
• Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Greensboro, NC.
• (UK) Guardian report on NC attempts at truth and reconciliation.
• Reflections on Anger, Depression, Validation, and Invalidation in Individuals, Families, Organizations, Societies, National and World Politics

'But for Fate, We the Fortunate and the Unfortunate...'

"In serving, we recognize a simple but powerful truth, we need each other. And we must care for one another. Today, we do more than celebrate America; we rededicate ourselves to the very idea of America. An idea born in revolution and renewed through two centuries of challenge. An idea tempered by the knowledge that, but for fate we, the fortunate and the unfortunate, might have been each other." -- President Bill Clinton, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1993.