Words written nearly twenty years ago,  still just as relevant and still just as ignored.

In the end, the job crisis raises the most fundamental question of human existence:  What are we doing here?  There is a colossal amount of work waiting to be done by human beings—building decent places to live, exploring the universe, making cities less dangerous, teaching one another, raising our children, visiting, comforting, healing, feeding one another, dancing, making music, telling stories, inventing things, and governing ourselves.  But much of the essential activity people have always undertaken to raise and educate their families, to enjoy themselves, to give pleasure to others, and to advance the general welfare is not packaged as jobs.  Until we rethink work and decide what human beings are meant to do in the age of robots and what basic economic claims on society human beings have by virtue of being here, there will never be enough jobs.

Employment is one thing the global economy is not creating.

“The opposition stems from the tension between two competing traditions in the American economy. One is the laissez-faire tradition that celebrates individuality and risk-taking. The other is the progressive tradition that says people have a right to a minimum standard of living — time off from work, education and the like.”

And then this I take from Stanley Fish, also from a NYTimes op ed piece, We’re All Conservatives Now, of December 20. Fish is writing about the left/right opposition among academics, on the one side the conservative David Horowitz and friends, and on the other, the left leaning Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Ward Churchill, and many others.

Fish says, “Both sides can’t be right, can they? Well, actually, they can.”

And Fish is correct. For isn’t it true that often the opposing points of view, of which both he and Leonhardt are speaking, in Washington and in the University, arise from the failure of the opponents to see that the other side is, as it were, just the other side of the very same coin, just another and valid way of looking at the same thing.

The same thing being in the one case the role of government —is it too big, is it not big enough? In the other case the thing in dispute being the freedom of the professor in Academia —are there limits on his freedom to teach what and how he wants, are there no limits on his freedom?

To grasp the meaning of the Tea Party we need to understand political parties (of which the Tea Party may now be one) for what they are, — associations of  somewhat like minded voters, held loosely together by shared views on one or more single issues, such as taxation, health care, global warming, national defense, immigration, or education.

But political parties, representing differences of opinion at one level, do not affect the ability and readiness of all Americans to come together at other and much deeper levels, such as when joined together as one under the threat from Japan and Germany during World War II, from the Soviets during the Cold War, and at the present time from the Al-Qaeda terrorists armed principally with their WMD,  a seemingly inexhaustible supply of suicide bombers.

I would point out also that political parties have life and vibrancy only in democracies. In fact political parties, representing as they do the people who are governed, may be the single most distinctive feature of a democracy, any democracy.

The claims of nations without parties to be democracies, such as the claims of the so-called Peoples’ Republics of the Cold War Era, as well as of China, Cuba, North Korea and their like today, are simply not believable.

In any case we needn’t at all be distraught by the appearance of the Tea Party. In fact nothing is more American than that one, or similar groups of people, looking beyond the established channels for representation.

In fact, nothing is more normal. The Tea Party is just one apple fallen from the tree of democracy that is America. What should surprise us is that there are not more of these apples, all the time, falling to the political ground.

To understand the Tea Party, as well as political parties in general in America, the left/right line, dating from the way delegates at the National Assembly during the French Revolution were seated —supporters of the king to the president’s right and supporters of the revolution to his left— will no longer do. Left/right and their alter egos liberal/conservative need to be replaced.

By what? In what follows I make use of science writer Timothy Ferris’ analysis of political positions in his book, The Science of Liberty.

In the second chapter of his book, Science and Liberalism, Ferris shelves the single dimensional line and introduces the two dimensional triangle, labeling the three points liberal, conservative, and progressive.

And while using his image I’ll take it even further than he does because I see it as something, unlike the line whose ends never meet, that holds us all together in one single shape. This is one triangle and we are one people, and even when we cluster at different points of the triangle we are still mostly and fundamentally together.

Also I would even make the comparison of the three points to the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, all of which are equally necessary for the proper functioning of our government.

For these three points represent the three fundamental positions of the people in our democracy, in any democracy, all probably necessary for the proper functioning of the electorate. And these three political positions have always been there, no less in the time of the Federalist Hamilton and the Democratic-Republican Jefferson than in our own time of Red and Blue states and of the Republican McCain and the Democrat Obama.

But they’ve been there kind of pell-mell, not clearly distinguished and acknowledged through the chatter and the shouting of the political classes.

The liberal/conservative line didn’t fully represent let alone express the different views that were and are held by the people, and hence recently the large numbers of so-called Independents, as right now when these latter outnumber the Republicans. And hence the often tried and up until now failed Third party initiatives. The fate of the Tea Party in this regard is sill unknown.

It’s true that at present in regard to our political parties, or more importantly in regard to the political opinions of the electorate, confusion does reign. People are all over the political map, desperate for something on which to hang their political hat, and are hanging it anywhere and everywhere.

The three points of Ferris’ triangle bring some much needed clarity to the political opinion arena. The principles and opinions of the electorate may all be understood as some combination of  the liberal, conservative and progressive positions represented on the triangle.

Now it is my own view that all three positions ought to be recognized and legitimated by the government. Parties also need to recognize how much they have in common, not always be squabbling over the things that separate them. Also a party that limits itself narrowly to just one of the three positions will always be a minority party, and may even become irrelevant, as has happened in the past when single issue or single position parties have died.

By the way, I should point out, as Ferris himself does in his book, and as countless others have done before him, that the traditional meaning of the word liberal (now classical liberal is used instead) and stemming from the thinking of Hobbes, Locke, and the American founders, and fostering individual rights and freedoms, has undergone a sea change, coming to mean today the promotion of big government and big government programs.

The loss of the original meaning of the word liberal is tragic, and probably nothing can be done to change this. But the proper word to apply to a strong, active government is not liberal but progressive. To be progressive, “liberal” only in current usage, is to be behind government programs and initiatives directed to help those not able to provide sufficiently for themselves, which more and more under our recent presidents seems to mean nearly everyone.

Of course there will always be large numbers of those in need of help, the poor, the sick, the incapacitated for one reason or another, and democratic governments, our government, will have to some extent provide for them. And to this extent that we go along with this we are all progressives.

But governments should be no less interested in promoting the tenets of classical liberalism, in protecting individual rights and freedoms including the right to own property. And as much as possible they should stay out of peoples’ ways, not interfere by excessive regulations or otherwise, with individuals who are pursuing their own ends without bringing harm to others while doing so. And in fact this kind of government may come closest to being what we mean by liberal democracy.

And the third point on the triangle, the conservative position, is no less necessary than the other two to the proper functioning of a democracy. Culture and traditions, such things as equality under the law, protection of property rights, the free market, the best of what we have inherited from our forbears, all of this has to be properly recognized and protected. No legitimate democratic government can stand by while this inheritance is trampled on or just overlooked and thereby neglected.

So you might ask, should there be just three political parties, representing the liberals, progressives, and conservatives among us? Well yes and no. No, because just as governments have to represent all three positions, because all three is what we are, parties too cannot neglect anyone of the three without risk of being irrelevant.

Parties do become known as being more of the one than the other —Democrats as being progressive, promoting equality, Republicans as conservative, promoting freedom. And new parties, or more often new movements within a party, are always springing up as one or more of our three pillars is seen as being neglected — libertarians being most heard from when freedoms are most in danger, socialists being most heard when income inequalities are most pronounced.

The Tea Party, seeing in the present size and expansion of the Federal government a trampling of individual freedoms, steps up to defend these freedoms. Not too different from the anti-Federalists confronting Alexander Hamilton’s rapid expansion of Federalism in early America.

The Democrats have in my experience been the promoters of government as the protector of last resort of those at the bottom in regard to power and wealth. Republicans again from my own experience, seem to have been fluctuating between classical liberalism and conservatism. At least when at their best. This was not true of them during the reign of George W. Bush when they seemed to be without first principles.

So far the Tea Partiers are not so easily placed at one of the three points of our triangle. They are rather, and most of all an anti-party, and especially an anti-government party, and that’s why it’s been so hard to pin them down. It’s more what they’re against than what they’re for.

Finally, I’m left with the thought that the differences between the parties, and between us the governed, are not all that important. No one is promoting, say, a time when there was no national bank, no national defense, no national social security, nor even no national health care or Medicare for the aged.

And no one is for taking away our freedoms, freedom of movement, thought, and expression. And no one is saying that, those at the bottom, should be ignored and left to fend for themselves.

The differences ultimately among us are differences of style and not of substance. And that’s a good thing. It’s hope for the future. And for all of us, probably in our own lifetimes, we have experienced a closeness to each one of the three, liberal, conservative, and progressive, points on the triangle.

It would help us, and our country, if in our electoral campaigns, and in our candidate debates, we would recognize the legitimacy of the other points of view. Because what we’re really doing in spite of appearances that seem to show one against the other is fine turning our democracy, questioning the underlying classical liberal, conservative and progressive principles on which it is based and which we share even if not in the same proportions.

Michael Walzer in an article, “Which Socialism” in this summer’s Dissent Magazine says that “today’s” socialism (or if you  prefer, social democracy) combines three features, each of them crucial to the overall meaning of the word.

These features are:

Democracy, — for a socialistic regime is no less a democratic regime, with rival parties, a well-entrenched right of opposition, and a formally free press.

A (free) market, but, under socialism, one subject to state regulation, resulting in a macro-economy heavily influenced and shaped by government.

A welfare state, meaning the system of entitlements and income redistribution that provides the people with health care, schooling, transportation, a safe environment, security in old age, and basic protection from the failures of the market economy.

Now those who call our president a socialist are not speaking of his obvious democratic leanings, his adherence to a system of rival political parties, his acceptance of a well-entrenched right of opposition, or his promotion of a free press.

Rather the socialist designation probably stems from a combination of Walzer’s second and third features, Obama’s positions on market regulation and entitlements.

In the wake of the recent market collapse and the Gulf oil spill the talk in Washington has been mostly about government regulation of a too free market, one that allowed (caused) these calamities to happen.  And so far Obama seems to be mostly on the side of those who would regulate the oil and financial industries.

Now this may make him a socialist, but is there any other position to take? Who among us would defend no regulation at all of market activities? Probably no one of us, and hence we are no less socialists than Obama. Yes, as I said in my earlier Blog, we are in some respects all socialists now.

Finally we have Walzer’s third feature of modern socialism, the welfare state. Probably when Tea Partiers and other such call Obama a socialist what they really mean is that Obama is furthering the expansion of  the state, and doing so at the expense of individual responsibility and initiative.

This is the position of Guy Sorman who in a City Journal article says that socialism now means the unlimited growth of entitlements and jobs protected by the state. In that regard Obama’s attempt to extend health insurance to all would be just the latest example of this growth, thus earning him the socialist designation.

But there is another point of view to all this that I want to develop, but only in a subsequent Blog. Walzer, and the other liberal democrats, who talk about the role of government are not so much mistaken in what they say. Rather they don’t say enough.

All their talk is about the responsibiity of the state, in Walzer’s discussion the state’s responsibiity to defend democratic values, prevent market abuses, and protect the very young, the very old, all those needing help from the state’s actions and programs.

I can accept Walzer’s three features as being the meaning of socialism today.  And I would say also that there’s nothing wrong with his discussion as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough.

What’s lacking from Walzer’s discussion of socialism is the individual. What Walzer has to say is all about the state. Furthermore there is no apparent awareness that even seemingly reasonable state actions, such as the market regulations and entitlements of which he speaks, may in too many instances also serve to stifle individual growth.

For there are dangers to the individual proceeding from the actions of the state, no less than those from the market. Is Walzer aware of these dangers?

Finally, is our President a socialist? I would say we don’t yet know, but that things don’t look good in this regard. For most of the President’s talk has been about what the state can, and should do for the people, and not what the people need and should do for themselves.

Perhaps this was true at the time of the Union’s creation, I don’t know. (Actually, the Union was “created” over a period of some 50 ears, and is still a work in progress.) But I’ll assume that Sorman’s statement is accurate and that at the “start” belief in the free market and adherence to its principles was widespread among the members.

Is this no longer the case? Sorman says it’s not, and that in this regard things have changed, radically changed. Instead, of adherence to free markets all the Union members, even those of the right, have created, perhaps without always knowing what they were doing, gigantic welfare states, inspired not by a belief in economic freedom but by socialist ideology.

So that there be no misunderstanding, where there often is in regard to the meaning of the word, Sorman tells us what he means by socialism. In his view this means “the unlimited growth of the welfare state, along with the accumulation of entitlements and jobs protected by the state.”

Now most of us would agree that under this definition the present member states of the European Union, as well as many others, including the United States, are, in fact, “welfare” states.

And in as much as a given administration is growing the size of the government, and the size of the entitlement portion of the budget, such as what went on under President Bush, and is now going on under President Obama (and probably under every previous president, although under some more than others) both these men might understandably be called socialists.

But, and this is important to keep in mind, the difference between a welfare socialist (say a Roosevelt or Johnson) and a free market “capitalist” (say a Nixon or Reagan) is one of degree, not of kind. In respect to welfare socialism these men are all closer than apart. Also, their followers ought not now to be battling with the followers of their opponents over differences of degree, and they should certainly not be calling one another names.

What our country desperately needs is, first, for everyone on both sides of the left-right or welfare-free market divide, for everyone to agree that governments are (and have always been) in the business of welfare, the bottom line of which is simply helping people who for whatever reason are not able to help themselves.

Furthermore, this state of affairs is not going away, especially since welfare is probably the most legitimate form of government there is, after the police and fire departments and other such. Some degree of welfare, accompanied by a growing central government, is here to stay, and we should accept this and move on.

Second, and just as important, what the country needs, is agreement among opponents, belonging to different groups on the left-right spectrum, that welfare socialism is not possible without having, simultaneously, a flourishing free market, one that is growing the country’s, and the government’s, wealth.

And furthermore, just as we support the efforts of government to ease the lives of people, especially those who can’t do for themselves, we ought to no less get squarely behind the efforts of individual entrepreneurs to establish and grow their businesses, thereby generating new wealth and permitting governments to even be in the business of welfare.

For otherwise, as we’re seeing in Greece and other members of the European Union, and to some extent in California and in other nearly bankrupt states, the welfare governments will come crashing down as liabilities far outnumber available assets.

For governments, having no wealth creating powers themselves, will quickly find that they are unable to meet their own obligations, other than perhaps temporarily by additional taxes. Temporarily because tax revenues, like everything, else depend on new wealth creation in the private sector, and private sector wealth, is of course, the only source of new wealth there is.

In the not too distant past there were governments that saw themselves as being wealth creators. They believed that with the means of production in their hands there was no reason they couldn’t create new wealth. Of course they failed miserably, as evidenced by the many examples of the former members of the now defunct Soviet Union.

So the big question that the developed countries of the western world is now facing, that which Sorman is writing about, is whether the expansion of the ubiquitous welfare state will slow down and in the process lower its sites from still more target benefits and entitlements.

Will they undergo a reality check, reality being what they’re able to do with the means at hand, while all the time being sure that any additional benefits they might be considering, let alone those already on the books, will not ask more of the wealth producing entrepreneurs and businesses than these latter can possibly provide.

And given the present fiscally irresponsible leadership in the Western world things do not look good in this regard. In Europe and in America leaders are still talking more about what governments can do for the people, than what the people will have to do for themselves, and what they will have to do without, if they would grow, and not simply spend until there is no more, their country’s wealth.

More and more our government does seem to be in the business of giving us something “for nothing,” such as arms, —aircraft carriers, and wars —in the mountains of Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East, both of which we can’t afford and don’t need, and most recently, home ownership and now health care, both of which have somehow become in the thinking of those in the government the right of all.

Home ownership was going to make responsible citizens of everyone, in this case responsibility following rather than as in the past preceding the ownership of one’s home. Instead the resulting housing bubble and burst nearly brought down our entire economy.

For it didn’t turn out that people living in homes they couldn’t afford become responsible home owners, anymore than people with the gift of government provided health care now become more responsible for their own health.

Nothing new about any of this. Just recently I was rereading David Halberstam’s 1992 book, The Next Century, which was not so much about our century, as the last one. Halberstam was writing in a second epilogue about the “new,” Yeltsin led Russia, in the immediate aftermath of the failed coup to ouster Gorbachev and return Russia to the Soviet Union.

Halberstam was not hopeful that the new Russia would be much different from the old Soviet Union (and during the nearly 20 years since then his opinion seems to have been borne out). For in order for it to happen, that Yeltsin’s new Russia become anything at all like a Western liberal democracy, the people’s sense of obligation would have to meet [and overcome] the people’s sense of entitlement. Individual responsibility would have to suddenly appear, and from nowhere.

From nowhere because for the nearly 70 years of Soviet rule, as well as during the prior centuries under the Czars the people were never allowed to grow and develop responsibility for their own lives. Instead, they grew to accept, became habituated to, knew nothing other than the Tsarist or Communist leader who made all the important decisions for them including what kind of clothes and shoes would be made, what the schools would teach, what jobs would need to be done, what positions filled etc.

Under this system in regard to basic needs the people were provided for, although minimally, but the only freedom they knew came in the form of the crash of trees falling in the forest out of the purview of the government, or the sound of their own voices restricted to the spaces about a kitchen table.

Now our own past is diametrically opposed to that of Russia. Our country got its start by the people, one succession of immigrants after another, taking on from the moment of their arrival here the responsibility for their own lives. And this current is still very much alive (although centuries of open immigration are now threatened, as in the new Arizona police state) and with any luck it may continue to provide us with a bright future.

Unlike Russia our history has been as much that of the people, and what they have done with their freedom of thought and movement, as that of the government and what it has done with its power of command.

But will it continue, the story of our country as being mostly that of hundreds of thousands of individuals coming here and finding themselves free to do whatever they want as long as it didn’t interfer with the freedom of others? Now, perhaps for the first time other than in war time, there are large and growing numbers of people, although probably not yet a majority, who depend more on government than on their own actions for their livelihood. We don’t yet know what this will mean for all of us.

Writing about Yeltsin’s Russia Halberstam said, “Russia was a nation which resisted all the implications of political and economic democracy, a nation which lived by decree and by diktat….Is there [now] enough of a tradition of individual responsibility to give the nation a beginning of modernization? Or have expectations and a sense of entitlement already exceeded the reality of the amount of obligation required?”

We might ask of ourselves a similar question, now in the aftermath of the passage of the health care legislation, whether the people’s growing sense of what is theirs, what the government owes them, whether this now threatens to overshadow, if not overcome their own sense of personal obligation and responsibility.

Or will it be in our country, as David asks about Russia, that “the sense of obligation meet that of the sense of entitlement?” He doesn’t say so, but I would add, “meet and overcome.”

What about this one:

Should we be concerned that the top 1% of taxpayers are now paying more taxes than the bottom 96%? Does this mean that more and more the richest few own the country, that our land is now their land? Perhaps it’s always been this way, that the country is the property of the rich and powerful, but we still talk as if the country were our country, the country of all of us. Is it?

This was also the year that Karl Marx published his The Communist Manifesto. At the time of course the workers of the world, who were to revolt, had little solidarity and practically no organization. Behind the revolutions of ’48 was rather a middle class desire for liberal reforms.

What, if any influence did these revolutionary stirrings taking place in numerous European cities have on the writings of John Stuart Mill I have no idea. But these times, his times had much in common with ours. And his writing is no less relevant today than then.

This quotation comes from John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy (1848), written at a time when the population of the world had just reached one billion, 23 million of whom, compared to over 300 million now, were living in the United States.

I take the quoted passage from an email comment I happened to see, from Gary Peters posted on Andrew C. Revkin‘s Dot Earth Blog web site. Mill’s words are pretty amazing, I’m sure you’ll agree. And they’re a joy to read.

How many writers from the past are there who have important things to say to us about our own times? Countless numbers of them, I’m sure. Most often, however, and not surprising, although much to be regretted, their writings don’t reach us in the present.

Here is John Stuart Mill: 

“There is room in the world, no doubt, and even in old countries, for a great increase of population, supposing the arts of life to go on improving, and capital to increase. But even if innocuous, I confess I see very little reason for desiring it. The density of population necessary to enable mankind to obtain, in the greatest degree, all the advantages both of cooperation and of social intercourse, has, in all the most populous countries, been attained. A population may be too crowded, though all be amply supplied with food and raiment. It is not good for man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species. A world from which solitude is extirpated, is a very poor ideal. Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of meditation or of character; and solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without. Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the world with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature; with every rood of land brought into cultivation, which is capable of growing food for human beings; every flowery waste or natural pasture ploughed up, all quadrupeds or birds which are not domesticated for man’s use exterminated as his rivals for food, every hedgerow or superfluous tree rooted out, and scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could grow without being eradicated as a weed in the name of improved agriculture. If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger but not a better or a happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it.

“It is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the Art of Living, and much more likelihood of its being improved, when minds ceased to be engrossed by the art of getting on. Even the industrial arts might be as earnestly and as successfully cultivated, with this sole difference, that instead of serving no purpose but the increase of wealth, industrial improvements would produce their legitimate effect, that of abridging labour. . . . Only when, in addition to just institutions, the increase of mankind shall be under the deliberate guidance of judicious foresight, can the conquests made from the powers of nature by the intellect and energy of scientific discoverers, become the common property of the species, and the means of improving and elevating the universal lot.”

Bret Stephen’s truth about education? Education is not, as too many of us would like to have it, the solution to whatever be the problem. There is certainly no evidence that good schools make for a better world, or that just by attending school kids become good citizens. There is ample evidence on the contrary that schools, in particular the failed and failing schools of the inner cities, of which there are myriads, may be making the world worse.

The truth? Stop looking to education for what it can’t do. Look to it, at best, for what it should be doing, imparting skills and knowledge. With some we do this very well, in particular with those who attend our elite colleges and universities.

With others, with far too many, we do this very poorly. All our school reform efforts ought to be directed entirely at making whatever changes are necessary to enable larger numbers of kids to acquire new skills and knowledge. We ought not to be looking to the education of our kids to solve our adult problems.

Here is how Bret Stephens in today’s Wall Street Journal, A Perfect Nobel Pick, The committee didn’t recognize Truman, after all, puts it:

The “Goodists” are the people who believe all conflict stems from avoidable misunderstanding. Who think that the world’s evils spring from technologies, systems, complexes and everything else except from the hearts of men, where love abides. Who mistake wishes for possibilities. Who put a higher premium on their own moral intentions than on the efficacy of their actions. Who champion education as the solution, whatever the problem.

And William Easterly’s truth about health care? A right to health care cannot be, in spite of all the rhetoric to the contrary, a fundamental right, like those of freedom of movement, speech, association, equal protection under the law etc.

Why not? Because there is no reasonable end point to that right. When, for example, has one received all the care that could possibly improve one’s physical and mental systems? There will always be another test one might undergo, another new treatment one might try, another medical opinion one might seek.

At some point the right to health care has to be ended because the cost of providing the care will have exceeded our ability to pay for it. Either there will be those who will be left out entirely, as now in the case of the uninsured or those with “pre-existing conditions,” or treatments will be strictly rationed, in accordance with what acceptable criteria?

When only some speech is allowed we might do well to avoid the expression a right to free speech.  Because what we really mean is a right to say certain things, and not others. That’s not so much a right as a permission from those who make the rules.

Similarly when the right to health care means only a right to certain generic drugs, physical exams, one or two xrays a year etc., or some more realistic combination, we would do better not to talk about a right, but rather, as in the case of limited free speech, of the treatments that are currently permitted by those in power, these at best being at least those we can pay for.

Here is how William Easterly puts it, in the Financial times of October 12, Human Rights are the Wrong Basis for Healthcare. The BOLD is mine:

The pragmatic approach – directing public resources to where they have the most health benefits for a given cost – historically achieved far more than the moral approach. In the US and other rich countries, a “right to health” is a claim on funds that has no natural limit, since any of us could get healthier with more care. We should learn from the international experience that this “right” skews public resources towards the most politically effective advocates, who will seldom be the neediest.

A piece in Slate by John Horgan asks, “Does Peace Have a Chance?” And the answer is yes, at least more of a chance that ever before. The experts who study this sort of thing, we’re told, have determined that wars result more from cultural and environmental factors, than from man’s, supposedly, aggressive nature.

If true, and I’d like to believe it, that’s good news. For we can more readily influence our culture and environment than we can our nature. That also I’d like to believe, although too many of the world’s deeply entrenched problems continue to defy our attempts to solve them.

In any case many fewer people, percentage wise, are dying in wars today than in any other epoch, going back to the hunter-gatherer societies of 10,000 and more years ago when, according to the anthropologists, 12 -14% of deaths resulted from armed conflict.

Also, according to Horgan, the conflicts today are different. They have little resemblance to the trench warfare of World War One, or the devastation of cities by aireal bombardment in World War Two. Instead they “consist of guerrilla wars, insurgencies, and terrorism,” the remnants of war as one might call them.

In an op ed piece in today’s Wall Street, mostly about the Arabs, some 360 million of them by the latest count, Fouad Ajami makes it clear that while possessing a varied, rich, and important history, while no longer waging major warfare among among themselves, and while sitting on nearly one half of the earth’s remaining black gold, the leaders of these countries are doing little or nothing to improve the well-being of their own people, condemning them by their own inaction and neglect to living thoroughly impoverished lives with few if any opportunities to improve their lot.

As a result, he says, “The Arabs have become spectators to their history.” Now, as the struggle rages between the Iranian theocracy and America for Persian Gulf hegemony, things might have been otherwise, the Arabs, given their oil wealth and their large numbers they might have been a principal player. But instead they are letting events pass them by as they watch from the sidelines.

Ajami cites the most recent Arab Human Development Report on the state of the contemporary Arab world, published just last month by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

In the first of of these reports, published in 2002, a group of writers, Arab themselves, “broke with the evasions and the apologetics to tell of the sordid condition of Arab society—the autocratic political culture, the economic stagnation, the cultural decay.”

All the Arab countries together “had a smaller manufacturing capacity than Finland with its five million people,… and the Arab-speaking world in its entirety “translated into Arabic a fifth of the foreign books that Greece with its 11 million people translates….” And the new 2009 report tells pretty much the same story.

So what might the developed countries do to shake things up a bit, to confront and begin to change and modernize the “autocratic Arab political culture, the economic stagnation, the cultural decay?” Ajami seems to admire George Bush’s attempts to change things on the ground, especially in Iraq. Bush did well, he thinks, to plant the seeds of democracy in an influential Arab land. He did well to help break Syria’s hold on Lebanon. Steps in the right direction.

Ajami is fearful that President Obama will not continue to push for greater freedoms for the Arabs. He is afraid that Obama will too readily accept the failure of the unelected Arab leaders of Egypt, Libya, Syria, and the countries of the Maghreb to provide for the material and political development of their peoples.

And in fact Obama’s Cairo speech, while impressive in respect to his understanding of Middle East and Arab realities, didn’t promise any specific carrot or stick diplomacy that might begin to dislodge these feudal rulers from their secure positions and somehow influence them to do more for their own people.

I come away from reading Ajami asking myself, was Bush on the right track, and is Obama making a mistake in his dealings with the Arabs? Bush was wrong in going to war with Iraq, wasn’t he? Given the great blunder of the war in Iraq was he right about anything at all?

Then, as if to help me with my own quandary regarding how we might better use our power and influence in the Middle East I came upon this op ed piece by Thomas Friedman, Green Shoots in Palestine, written also, as the Ajami piece in the Wall Street, in response to the UN Arab Human Development Report.

Friedman tells us that the Arab authors of the study had concluded that too many Arabs lacked, “human security — the kind of material and moral foundation that secures lives, livelihoods and an acceptable quality of life for the majority,” that which is “a prerequisite for human development, and its widespread absence in Arab countries has held back their progress.”

In his response and in this piece Friedman gives an answer to my question, what to do, que faire, and it’s not the nation destroying and rebuilding program of George Bush in Iraq. According to Friedman the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, is right now testing out what may very well be the most exciting new idea in Arab governance ever, “Fayyadism” as Friedman calls it.

“Fayyadism is built on the simple but all-too-rare notion that an Arab leader’s legitimacy should be based not on slogans or rejectionism or personality cults or security services, but on delivering transparent, accountable administration and services.”

Just the other day I read much the same thing from one of our Generals in Afghanistan. The notion has been around a long time. Like Fayyad many others have known what was needed. However, the great tragedy is that those in power in the Middle East don’t know, or if they do don’t let on that they know, not Afghan President Hamid Karzai, nor Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, nor Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and certainly not Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad….