Anarchism: In Practice No Paradise

Anarchy, a situation of no objectively binding government, is not something that exists in the mere theory of the philosophy of anarchism. And it has never worked for the common good. There may be limited conditions when select groups of people of like temperament and outlook can participate in temporary intentional situations which maintain a peaceful egalitarian coexistence without "rules", especially at counter-cultural festivals. However, the annals of history actually show that a pervasive state of chronic anarchy spells societal disaster, especially for the socially, economically and physically vulnerable. When anarchy arises across the demographic mix, those with latent sociopathic leanings and possessed of any wealth and power will step in to take advantage of the absence of law, and intimidate, bribe, coerce, subjugate and exploit those weaker than themselves -- until of course someone stronger than themselves puts them in their place in a hierarchy of might makes right. So the long-held dream of the counterculture of establishing an Eden-like anarchy for all simply cannot be feasibly realized. One of the worst cases of political anarchy happened in China when opportunistic European colonialist powers during the 19th and early 20th centuries weakened the once impermeable fabric of Chinese society by flooding their markets with the highly addictive and emotionally and physically debilitating drug known as opium. Government in China became ineffective and localized warlords mushroomed across the countryside from the morass of chaos, creating a bitter tenor of life indeed, especially for hundreds of millions of peasants. That was the reality of anarchy. In Europe and America during that same time period, there were people who actually called themselves anarchists, and who believed that humankind would never be able to set up a form of government that would be fair to everyone. These Victorian-Era anarchists thought that, if they could demonstrate the vulnerability and ineffectiveness of government in response to acts of terrorism, people who felt oppressed by official authority would rally around them, and a tranquil utopia without oppressive law would simultaneously arise (after those in authority were either purged or converted by the sheer mass of popular will). However, desperate acts of violence do not inspire people's confidence that such instigators will suddenly fade back and become peaceful members of the tranquil and harmonious society they promise. In practical terms, anarchy is really about two related conditions: (1) the rule of law has been superseded by strongmen, and (2) impartial authority has collapsed. Sometimes this arises because of civil war, as it did in the 12th century in Medieval England, when two candidates for the royal throne garnered enough adherents to their respective causes that neither could rule the entire country, and so anarchy ensued as endemic warfare erupted between the factions. After decades of strife, social exhaustion set in, and a settlement was finally reached in which the heir of one of the contenders would succeed to the throne. That was Henry II, and it became that king's goal to reform and bolster the centralized authority of the law as a uniform system in which people of all affiliations and social estates could expect to be treated fairly under the judicial authorities. King Henry II reaffirmed the traditional national code of the Common Law. His reforms established accredited institutions of legal education, a system of qualified appointment selection for all official roles in judicial process. Those vulnerable to powerful local magnates could have real and reasonable expectations that transgressors of whatever rank or title would be duly punished by the executive powers of royal government, whose members could and would exercise regulatory and punitive powers divorced from any conflicting feudal obligations. In short, the enforcers of the law would be loyal only to the law itself, and the king's central duty would be to uphold the law. But of course, being in a time before democracy, feudal society could not always maintain the complete effectiveness of these reforms, however lasting they did ultimately become. Another civil war erupted during the 15th century in England, once again because of weakened central government in which two factions vied to establish their rival candidates permanently on the royal throne. During that time, a system of localized political patronage took advantage of the inter-dynastic collapse of effective centralized authority. From peasants to tradesmen, from knights to petty barons, every person's survival and prosperity depended on obtaining the favor of the strongest nobleman who would accept their liege service. Whether it was a baron winning a position under an earl, or a plowman winning it from a hedge knight, that person became his superior's protected client. If you were in legal trouble, your patron would pack the jury box with other clients who would find in your favor. Judges and sheriffs feared to go against the wishes of local or regional lords who had an interest in a particular case. If you were a client, you did as your patron commanded. It was a polite form of gangsterism dignified with heraldic badges of livery. Your loyalty was not to the law and justice but to might over right, and for most people of lesser social rank there was no other practical choice (whatever their personal moral ideals might have been). And if you chose to give your allegiance to a lord who ended up on the losing side, it didn't matter how legitimate and just your personal case was, you could be stripped of everything. This second civil war finally resolved under a new king (Edward IV), who restored social order by reestablishing effective centralized authority,. However, he died prematurely before the legacy of the preceding years of political chaos could be fully extirpated, and his heirs were assassinated. Once again, anarchy threatened, but a new candidate for the throne from an obscure cadet branch of the royal family won a decisive battle and took the crown to establish the Tudor dynasty. Under the Tudors, the political mechanisms for competing regional and local power were systematically eradicated, and the institutions of centralized authority were legally and fiscally strengthened, so that they could stand on their own even if a weak monarch reigned. The law of the nation now prevailed unchallenged by the great nobles, whose power was now administratively atomized. So you see, even looking at a few historical precedents in England, whose laws and institutional traditions were the foundation for America's, we see that innocent people only suffered under periods of anarchy, and reformist leaders inevitably arose who worked hard to prevent that societal agony from returning. Right now we once again must fear the potential threat of anarchy, because the rich are no longer effectively taxed, and as a consequence the institutions of state and federal government are becoming increasingly hamstrung in their ability to carry out their responsibilities to society. Through legislation that minimizes the role of government, our society is being institutionally disassembled and falling into infrastructural neglect. Our humane and economically necessary traditions of social welfare and public education that maintain a modern democratic society are being dismantled. Our regulation of the private sector against the abuses of exploitation and environmental degradation is being legally undermined by partisan judicial interpretation. And the semi-autonomous magnates of feudal times are coming back in the form of corporations with citizen-powers, who have armies of retainers: politicians and lawyers more loyal to their corporate magnates than to the rule of law. The new heraldic livery comes in the form of corporate logos. These tendencies toward anarchy are a sobering prospect for ordinary people to contemplate, and as anarchistic trends continue to undermine our good government, they will become a dire matter to confront in daily life itself. A reduced role of government will thwart our practical means toward human and civil rights as individuals. We must support leaders who believe in strong government. The laws on the books cannot be enforced without properly funded regulatory means and powers, not to mention the protection of an impartial body of officials. Broadly speaking, human nature has proven itself to be too dangerous to its own kind to be given free reign. The libertarian myth of untrammeled liberty being the highest goal of civilization is really a recipe for anarchy, where the playground will be enjoyed by the rich and powerful alone. This is the real and original reason people long ago walked away from a natural state of anarchy in the first place, and chose to set up legally ordered government by common consensus. A government that encompasses everyone's rights and well-being is the most wholesome compromise if we hope to live peaceably and constructively amongst our fellow human beings. We form a species of such morally diverse natures and purposes that we must be bound by an actionable common law that challenges and impedes those who would act irresponsibly or do harm to their neighbor.

The Way Business Should Be Done: A Shining Example from the Past

Alexander Cassatt was born to a family of comfortable circumstances in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His parents came by their prosperity through a combination of education and hard work. They instilled in their children a sense that prosperous circumstances bring with it both an opportunity and a duty to use these advantages to benefit society. The Cassatt family felt guided by a tradition of integrated life-principles: to strive to excel, to believe in the power of ideals, to understand the value of education, to aspire to bring moral improvement of society, to seek to improve the circumstances of human existence by supporting scientific, technological, architectural and artistic progress. The children of this family felt led to believe that they had only to discover their talents, and then develop them for the good of the world. The most shining example of this family was Alexander Cassatt (1839-1906). After college, Alexander Cassatt found work on the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) as a track surveyor and then manager of pioneering railway construction projects into areas never before served by modern transportation. His technical skills, social intelligence and natural aptitude for making innovative improvements in the efficiency and safety of locomotive transportation enabled him to rise rapidly through the ranks of the PRR. He soon become one of its most important leaders in technical and logistical development. Indeed, Cassatt had a knack for finding and befriending the most talented engineers, technicians and architects of his time, inspiring and winning their utmost loyalty, selfless dedication and diligence. Cassatt could take people with a multiplicity of individual ideas and skill-sets, and then enable them to work together with synergy to create new pathways of achievement. By 1899, Cassatt had been elected President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and he was to lead it to the highest standards the railroad industry had ever known, forcing other major railroads to match him in order to stay competitive. He affirmed, enforced and extended policies of workplace safety. He built double and quadruple tracking to efficiently accommodate the travel and shipping needs of a growing society and expanding economy. He created separate corridors for freight traffic. He improved and helped standardize routing, signaling and traffic control methods to ensure the safest and conditions and fastest methods of coordinated train movements. Station stops were structurally improved to provide conveniences for the needs and comforts of travelers of every description. Viaducts were built to avoid conflict with highway traffic. Cassatt maintained the highest standards of wages, fair work hours, and comfortable retirement pension funds, ensuring he had the most loyal (and even adoring) workforce a CEO could ever hope for; in fact, there was never a strike during his ascending career through the company's principle administrative posts; he took such good care of the labor force that they never felt the need to strike! His greatest achievement though was building a direct and unbroken rail connection between New Jersey and New York City and between Long Island and New York City. He achieved this by creating sub-riparian tunnels using electrified locomotives (eliminating air pollution in confined spaces). No more did people have to rely on traversing the rough and congested intermediary waters of the East and Hudson Rivers to enter the cultural and business capital of the nation, where formerly trains had had to be loaded then floated to the opposite shore via dangerous barges. His second greatest achievement was building the Pennsylvania Station in New York City, with an accompanying stately post office building that handled national mails coming and going by train. These two structures were built in grand and lasting style. But it was the Pennsylvania Station that was perhaps one of the most magnificent architectural and engineering achievement the United States has ever known. Designed by the visionary architectural design firm of McKim, Mead and White, this public edifice flawlessly processed hundreds of trains and thousands of passengers a day. Its aesthetic graces were astonishing, modeled on the Roman Baths of Caracalla, but far, far larger. To build it, Cassatt had to fight the legal chicanery and bureaucratic obstructionism of corrupt political party machines, who liked to bilk the socioeconomic agonies of the status quo in which they luxuriantly wallowed. Moreover, in order to acquire the sheer necessary acreage for his railway complex which included an underground passenger train shed, its above-ground passenger support station, its railway post office and various auxiliary structures, he also had to clear out geographically entrenched criminal rackets that included everything from white slavery to slum landlords, negotiating a myriad real estate purchases from countless proprietors large and small, present and absent. He also had to fight his shortsighted investors. Many of them would have preferred safe mediocrity and fast profits, but Cassatt would not veer from his higher goals. His board remained loyal even under immense politically-motivated journalistic criticism to call a halt to his grand vision of improvements. Cassatt had always stood by the ethical side of the argument and won, and he had never stooped to short-sighted profiteering. He had even helped put down a corrupt system of favors carried out by lower management involving free rail passes and lowered freight charges for bullying clients who wanted preferment over their competitors. Cassatt set uniform policies that were fair and equal for both his company's clients and the financial security of the railroad's employees, thereby creating great institutional strength. Sadly, Cassatt died in 1907, just three years before Penn Station was completed in 1910. The terminal was the culmination of a project whose planning had begun in 1901, with actual construction starting in 1903. By unifying New York City and Long Island with the critical mid-latitude routes of the mainland, it was comparable in its importance to the transportation achievement of the Panama Canal. It had required the alliance of three railroads: The Pennsylvania Railroad, The New Jersey Railroad and The Long Island Railroad. Such an inter-corporate partnership could only have been achieved by a man of great intelligence harnessed to moral integrity, refined articulateness and compelling long-term vision. Penn Station, as it came to be affectionately known, was a monument to modern transportation, and provided more conveniences and amenities than any of today's shopping malls. It was built of lasting materials and soundly structured, characteristics that would have enabled the edifice to safely and proudly stand for centuries. In 1963 however, it was torn down to make room for plans by an allied group of short-sighted business investors whose principle achievement became Madison Square Garden. The beautiful building that was Penn Station, with its incredible Classical statuary, Doric columns, and decorative adornments of travertine marble, as well as its awe-inspiring spaces suffused with welcoming natural light from cathedral-like windows made its visitors feel like they were more than mere travelers but invitees to a palatial nexus where their adventures could either expectantly begin or happily end in the most inspiring surroundings. Like so much outgoing refuse, the transported remains of Cassatt's Penn Station is now a mere expanse of sinking rubble, summarily dumped over half a century ago now into a New Jersey swamp. And yet, however shameful and inglorious this end, Alexander Cassatt remains an example to follow for visionary entrepreneurs of our own time. Do not give up! Brush aside the small-minded naysayers! Build for the future! Build for the mutual and lasting benefit of all humankind. Treat your workers (without whom nothing would be possible) with all the respect and honorable compensation for their labors that you can. Your company and its achievements will shine on. When Cassatt died, he had doubled the Pennsylvania Railroad's assets, annual gross income and share values. It became the highest quality train service in the nation and ranked with the best in Europe. Unfortunately, a trend ensued in the latter half of the 20th century toward a policy of profiteering, seducing the business world into denaturing itself of a sense of responsibility to economic durability for America. The heinous destruction of Pennsylvania Station was just a symptom of this shift from civic excellence to crass selfishness in the world of business. Be that as it may, the larger question for us today revolves around those wonderful passenger trains that inspired all this in noble men like Cassatt. Passenger trains remain the most democratic form of transportation humankind has ever developed, serving people of all incomes and all purposes, both humble and grand. Now our gas prices are steadily rising, our computerized automobiles are growing more expensive to purchase and maintain. People who understand that a modern democratic society cannot prosper without an efficient and stable system of transportation available to all, now realize that we must bring passenger trains back. Cassatt knew they were crucial to the success of his society then. He recognized this system of transportation would be necessary for the future success of the American people, and honored its importance with an impressive edifice. If we cannot bring "Old Penn Station" back, we can certainly bring back what it stood for. The modern passenger train is the most fuel efficient, and least polluting form of transportation in the world, and it is actually saving and building the economies of Europe, South Asia and East Asia. Because it is a safe and direct form of transportation, it has the power to take thousands of unnecessary private vehicles off the road, vehicles whose daily carbon output is making it an almost impossible challenge to combat global warming. It is time America joined the rest of the world in re-discovering the green utility of passenger trains. After all, we were once the leaders in locomotive transportation and long the envy of the world in this enterprise. We have the human and material resources right here on our own native soil. Let us become great again. Passenger trains can build the foundation for everyone's success. To the rested soul of Alexander Cassatt: we salute your spirit as our once and future hope!

The Spirit of 1848 and The Spirit of 2011

Popular uprisings spread across Europe like wildfire in 1848. They consisted mostly of working class people and university intellectuals. The intelligentsia felt repressed and the working class felt abandoned. What had happened to all the promises of freedom and the good life made by the great philosophers and revolutionary leaders of the preceding century? How come Europeans couldn't live the dream that America now enjoyed? These were not communist uprisings -- the activist demonstrators were actually demanding the simple fulfillment of the ideology of democracy. The reality they faced was a prospering of the rights, privileges, advantages and opportunities of princely merchants and the industrial entrepreneurial classes, and the onerous persistence of political aristocracy. Some of the revolutionaries of '48 were also fighting for the liberation of their entire ethnic group from political repression and oppression, such as the Hungarians seeking independence from the Austrians, of whom the latter exercised imperial authority over Hungary. But mostly it boiled down to economics. Without equal political rights and protections, regular people would never be able to penetrate the barrier imposed upon them by the allied network of the privileged. So why did it come to a head in 1848 and not sooner? After all, the American Revolution occurred all the way back in 1776, and the originally idealistic French Revolution had occurred in 1789. Well, by 1848, three new factors had entered the picture: (1) huge masses of regular working people had become absolutely critical to a newly dominant mode of production and economy -- industrial-scale factories; (2) this new and significant population of industrial workers had of necessity to acquire literacy skills to negotiate the more complicated existence of urban life and the modern bureaucratic state; (3) intellectuals who still believed in the ideals of democracy set down in the Age of Reason set up "underground" (i.e., not sanctioned by the state) printing presses across Europe to publish free-speech (and therefore illegal) newspapers and pamphlets to help politically and economically frustrated people understand and articulate the democratic rights to which they were entitled both as citizens and human beings. The uprisings of '48 were quite impressive, and some even showed temporary signs of victory. Yet ultimately each of them was brutally or quietly put down. However, they did have an ultimately lasting benefit in that the conservative elements in the countries in which they occurred began to take gradual but steady measures to improve at least some of the circumstances of the working poor, and this was largely brought about by the prospering middle class, who rubbed shoulders with the working poor on a daily business basis, and began to develop a sympathy for them (and perhaps some of those bourgeois-types quietly recalled that many of them had some poor people in their own ancestries). Another reason may have been that the prosperous shopkeepers, middle class professionals, and merchants of trade realized that if the working class could be so unapologetically brushed aside or even put down with guns by their social superiors, so might their own relatively recent rights and privileges be overturned by future reactionary regimes. After all, a sizable, dynamic and socially active middle class was still a very new concept in European states, which otherwise still retained many disguised (undisguised) modes of feudal authority. With the backing of a liberal, reformist and humanitarian middle class (some of its energy bolstered by Christian and Jewish ideals of human decency and compassion), the mainstream press gained the courage to assert free speech, and they went less and less opposed by official censors. The year 1848 had been a wake-up call for self-satisfied conservatives. Reasonable people sensed that what was good for the goose was good for the gander, and conservatives must have privately realized that if a more inclusive vision of democracy did not start to happen through peaceful legislation and liberalized jurisprudence, those very necessary factory workers might one day successfully organize themselves into a force to be reckoned with -- one that might take the job into their own capably work-calloused hands of finally completing the agendas demanded by those eighteenth century democratic mandates. And after all, the marching soldiers of those repressive states were recruited from that very class of working people. Would they fire on their own aggrieved brothers and sisters when the underprivileged exercised protest demonstrations? Laws of reform and widely beneficial civic regulation did happen in many countries of Europe (Russia and Eastern Europe being serious exceptions, though not for want of trying -- and mass exodus to America was the result). So public education improved, enhancing the scope for people to be able to consider socially responsible choices in solving political and economic problems, instead of desperately seeking violently destructive ones, such as later happened when thwarted democratic reformers felt no option left but to turn the Russian Empire into the Soviet Union. Ultimately, collective bargaining for labor became preferred to revolution as the means of settling problems of unfair exploitation in many countries. So what does this have to do with 2011? Well, a similar series of uprisings with dreams of popular revolution are spreading across North Africa and the Middle East. Their energy does not stem from Islamism or communism. They are about regular people demanding what they feel are the fundamental human, political, civil and economic rights to which they are entitled. China is doing its best to prevent the spread of these movements into East Asia, but just as in 1848, their are middle class intellectuals and a powerful form of unregulated media aiding and abetting this rise in collective self-esteem and sense of socioeconomic self-worth. That form of media is this time not underground printing presses but an "overground" transmission of information: the internet. China will not be able to stem the tide forever. They have people getting very rich off masses of poorly paid, poorly treated, overworked factory drudges making products for the entire planet. These workers are coming to know their critical value in the global economy. Already in southern China real attempts have been made to organize unions and engage in collective bargaining. In Hong Kong people are protesting the repressive measures they are made to endure. This is all good for the regular people of America, who are now vastly underemployed or unemployed because of unfair labor competition outside our country. If the regular people of the world get their political and economic rights, the global world of work will become a level playing field. Companies will have to search not for the industrial factory manager or clerical network manager who will provide the lowest bid for wage-slaves, but those who can provide the best workers -- because everyone, no matter where an entrepreneur chooses to shop around, will have legally-protected rights for fair pay, balanced work hours, and safe working conditions.

Restoring the True Meaning of "Intellectual"

People who think democracy is a nuisance have never liked certain kinds of social groups they like to label as "intellectuals". Fascists and totalitarians alike claim that intellectuals are nothing better than "troublemakers". But what does the term "intellectual" really mean? There are the stereotypes that reactionaries have derisively painted for us in the media for generations the world over. Yet these stereotypes fall far off the mark of the real definition of the word. In point of fact, there are first of all many kinds; there are: religious intellectuals, artistic intellectuals, literary intellectuals, intellectuals of craftsmanship, architectural intellectuals, philosophical intellectuals, intellectuals of history, scientific intellectuals, liberal intellectuals, conservative intellectuals, intellectuals of design engineering, amateur intellectuals, aesthetic intellectuals, social intellectuals, intellectuals of law, economic intellectuals, intellectuals of land and resource use, and even (of course!) music intellectuals. The list goes on and on. But of whatever particular kind, an intellectual is simply a person who uses his or her intellect; or to put it another way, an intellectual is a person who does not passively accept whatever is said by someone claiming to be in authority over them. In short, an intellectual never just mindlessly does or believes whatever he or she is told by anyone with pretensions to authority. They demand proof of legitimacy. An intellectual first asks such questions as: if any dictate, policy or demand is legally sound, if it is fair to all concerned and affected, if it is just in a moral sense, if it it serves or preserves the integrity of the matter at hand, or if it is humanely reasonable. Perhaps the most sensitive distinguishing characteristic is that an intellectual often finds it necessary to ask the question "why?", when there is any room for doubt. The intellect is something that every human being has been endowed with by Nature, unless biologically thwarted by congenital defect. In fact, the intellect is what distinguishes our species, homo sapiens, from all our ape and monkey cousins, who rely only on instinct, emotional learning, social mimicry, and rudimentary reasoning capacities. So to use one's intellect, in effect, to be an intellectual, is to take and exercise full ownership of our natural mental capacities. In fact, to be an intellectual is to claim one's birthright to humanity. To do otherwise is to play oneself into the hand of folly. So as you can see, to be an intellectual does not mean a person has to have a college education, or be a professor, or a professional of some sort. As a public librarian, I have encountered a fair number of intellectuals who are farmers, mechanics, house-painters, electricians, and factory workers (though many of the last are unfortunately out of work these days). Every one of America's Founding Fathers was an intellectual. If they hadn't been, there would have been no American Revolution. They simply would have accepted all the edicts passed by King and Parliament without question. Those who never bother to ask "why" have abdicated their innate capacity for critical thinking, and they are also relinquishing their rights and responsibilities as citizens of a democracy. Yes, using your intellect does take work! And fundamentally, it requires at least a decent system of public education to objectively enliven the young to its powers of use and mutual benefit. Once out of school, you have to maintain the practice of reading all of your life to keep your intellect fit and prevent the decay of mind that would set it up to be misinformed and prone to manipulation by others seeking undeserved power. You have to compare different arguments and viewpoints, and weigh their words for sound truth or self-serving deceit. You have to reflect on the lessons you have learned from your own life and the lives you have observed around you. You have to engage in discussion with (and listen to) other people who like to think and read and reflect, because each of us is differently gifted intellectually and in terms of the ability to learn objective wisdom from personal life experiences. Someone once said with ironic understatement that if you are only giving ear to one sort of person, or relying on one sort of book, you likely don't have all the facts of the matter in question. The central challenge of being an intellectual is discerning who or what source is most authoritative in terms of endowing a person with an accurate or balanced understanding of any given issue we face as individuals or as a society. Chances are, the more black and white, cut and dried, and socially excluding a set of pronouncements are, the more likely they are to be a wrenching or distortion of what is true, what is wholesome, and what is morally just. One thing is for sure, the more you use your intellect (and conversely, the less mentally passive you are) the more you come to realize you are a citizen of the world. Perhaps the greatest gift an honestly used intellect can give to its owner is an understanding of how much we have in common with every fellow member of our species on this planet, both living and dead. It matters not your ethnicity, nationality, religious persuasion, socioeconomic class, level of education, or anatomical gender: we have all been given the same type of brain to use, which acquired its present form of refinement for homo sapiens some 60,000 years ago. You can thank evolution or you can thank God. Either way, be grateful, for without our intellectual capacity, we would still be apes in the trees. It is true, we can choose not to use this precious inheritance, but if we abandon our intellect, we are no better off than slaves living under a totalitarian state. Without freely active intellectuals, civilization stagnates and regresses. Authority loses its soundness when it is left unchallenged by intellectual criticism. As every intellectual knows: an authority is one that can establish its moral, ethical, scientific, technical or factual integrity -- in whatever field or domain of human endeavor or responsibility it claims to speak for. To be an intellectual is to be fully human, heart and mind in balance.

Why "Un-American" is a Meaningless Term

Can you imagine a Swede walking up to a fellow Swede in a public park, and bluntly informing him he is "un-Swedish"? Or two Frenchmen arguing at a cafe, and one of them blurting out that the other is "un-French"? Or how about a couple Austrian shepherds confronting each other in a mountain pass and one of them shouting at the other that he is "un-Austrian"? And would it be even possible for two Canadians traveling by train from Winnipeg to Vancouver and passing the time idly conversing, and one of these passengers suddenly felt compelled to mention that the other strikes him as exhibiting a decidedly "un-Canadian" nature? Such situations are as likely to happen as the planet Jupiter acquiring a breathable atmosphere! So, as we enter the second decade of the 21st century and face multiple global crises that need and require our united and mature attention, what does it mean when sneering or self-righteous politicians and radio pundits in America "accuse" individuals or even whole portions of the population of being "un-American"? Is America regressing back to the nursery room of political development that we have people who think they can (and need to) make counter-claims as to what defines our identity as a nation? I think if we were to consult the law books of the United States, there would be a very simple answer as to whether a person or group of people are "American" or not: you are American if you were born in America, or have immigrated here and successfully progressed through the naturalization process for citizenship. That's it! Oh, but you say those pundits and politicians aren't being "literal" when they throw out such a characterization? Well then, what might they imply? If they are making a claim that being a citizen and obeying its laws are not enough to be called "American", then we have quite a ball of wax to melt through. You see, if they are getting into the primitive notion that truly belonging to any country has to do with being "culturally correct", then we are starting to step into mucky ground indeed. You see, there have been political figures in our recent past who have played with the concept of "cultural fitness" in order to decide who is really a "proper" citizen or not in their particular country (or empire). I don't have to comb very assiduously through the annals of human history to quickly come up with three very excellent examples who tried to go beyond normal and established legal definitions as to who is entitled to be (or remain) a citizen: Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler and Mao Tse-Tung. And there were terrible repercussions when those three leaders decided to play with such definitions of identity, weren't there? Millions upon millions were put to death, and not for any crime but that they did not fit the narrow definitions of membership decreed by their dictatorial states. Yes indeed, making claims outside democratically legislated, constitutionally-sound, humanely-reasoned determinations of how one becomes a legal member or retains legal membership of a country is courting the wicked figure of totalitarianism or fascism. For such wicked games to be played here in America is especially heinous, since we are a nation consisting of native peoples, immigrants and descendants of immigrants stemming from literally hundreds of ethnic origins. That such a contemporary and historical reality could ever support the notion that there is one monolithic definition of what makes a legitimate American strikes one immediately as a ludicrous thought event to consider let alone actually speak aloud with the air of authority. Yet it is sadly not merely ludicrous -- it is disturbing that such accusations in American society go so feebly challenged in a country that claims to be the leader of the democratic world. Oh, I'm not saying America does not have commercial and socially or religiously chauvinistic forces in the media who aren't doing their level-devilish best to influence and subtly intimidate the population into a form of cultural conformity. Americans are indeed bombarded by such things, and if all them succumbed whether out of fear, or a desire to belong to what they perceive to be the "winning team" and to appropriate its "credentials", democracy would surely die in this country. Indeed, anyone who might attempt to live according to the measurement chart of a "true, red-blooded American" would have to first kill their soul if they did not want to risk having a nervous breakdown or worse, and that is because any such social yardstick is an artificial construct concocted in a board room by master manipulators. Such self-appointed skull-measurers don't really care about Americans as people, but only how they can use Americans to achieve their ends for accumulating further power and wealth. Inevitably, each and every single one of us has his or her own special formative mixture of parental upbringing, family histories, life experiences, social institutional rearing, regional influences, spiritual priorities and values, and educationally-influenced expectations that shape our struggle to live life happily in whatever country we might inhabit. This is true the world over, where all countries through the vicissitudes of human history have multi-ethnic heritages, but most especially fundamentally pluralistic societies like America. I could go over what various political groups are so loudly positing as the defining traits of a "real American" or an "un-American" American, but that would be as much a waste of time as describing the potential accuracy of what one insect might tell another (if they had the power of articulate speech) when attempting to define what sort of creature a human being is.

The King Oak of Sjaelland

Called by native Danes "Konge Egen", it is a tree located on the island of Sjaelland ("Sea Land"), in the North Forest ("Nordskov"), near the town of Jaegerspris, in the country of Denmark. It is estimated to be anywhere from 1500 to 2000 years old, and is of the Pedunculate Oak species (scientifically known either as quercus pedunculata, or quercus robur), but more commonly known in Anglophone countries as "English Oak". The Konge Egan is extremely broad and squat, indicating that when its trunk took form, it grew in a meadow where there was no light competition. Ironically, today it is slowly dying because it is now surrounded by other deciduous trees, many of them its offspring or descendants, which are growing taller than it, and thus claiming more and more of the sunlight in the forest canopy. There are other examples of its kind stretching from the Caucasus Mountains to the British Isles, and they are all characteristically long-lived (most live at least a few centuries), and extremely hard timbered, bearing rugged branches, widening lobed leaves and stalked (pedunculate) acorns. Its heartwood is very durable and makes sturdy furniture and lasting house framework and rafterwork. Depending on whether they grown in a meadow or forest context, they can obtain heights ranging from 25 to 35 meters. The Konge Egen is what in some cultures would be called a "grandfather tree", and it was born in a time when the native inhabitants of Sjaelland would have practiced a native pagan religion. This religion believed a soul inhabited every tree, and had the ability to separate itself and take humanoid form, female or male, depending on the species of the tree. Beings known as "oak men" were the walking souls of oak trees. Generally, such beings were known as "wood elves". They were the protectors of the forest environment, and scourged any mortal who did not show respect to its flora and fauna and observe special taboos of sanctity. Just as the Plains Indians hunters showed proper respect to the buffalo herds, so did woodcutters and hunters have to honor the rules set by the wood elves, of which the oak men were the most martial. The oldest oak bore the elf who was king of the forest. The souls of men were thought to derive from ash trees and the souls of women were said to come from elm trees. With a natural electrical polarity attractive to lightning, oak trees in general were considered sacred to the god of thunder ("Thor", or more anciently, "Thunar"), who in turn was a protector of human beings (especially farmers and fishermen) against evil supernatural beings. Offerings of beer or milk were poured on the base of sacred trees and their emerging roots, strips of beautiful fabric tied on the branches, and people lovingly embraced the tree's trunk, all ritual acts seeking the favor of the soul of the tree to give human beings such things as protection, healing, fertility, general good fortune or successful childbirth (pregnant women in such cases put their backs to the tree and reached behind them for a backward embrace). However much the modern mind may find these interrelated beliefs puzzling, they were harmless, as they promoted conservation and a deep-seated kinship and respect for the natural world and its forces. These taboos and spiritual affinities for flora and fauna (despite Christian conversion and repeated attempts by Christianity to destroy the attitude of veneration toward natural objects and animals) persisted in rural areas throughout Europe well into the twentieth century -- just in time for the environmental conservation movement to take over in a less innocent age. If not for latent pagan attitudes that stubbornly survived for centuries through the Christian era, we would not likely have such ancient and magnificent trees as the Konge Egen. It would have been felled long ago to be rendered into tables, chairs, roof beams and wall frames, and those items would have already rotted away. The Konge Egen is a living testament to the awesome longevity and strength of Nature unfettered.

Happy Birthday America!

July 4th is the day our country as an allied group of colonies in North America under the direction of the Continental Congress declared its independence in 1776 from its political parent, the Empire of the United Kingdom of the British Isles. Our flag receives symbolic honor on this day. We are effectively celebrating and giving thanks for our national government, which is a federal system and a form of centralized government. We are not a confederacy. We aspire to the Perfect Union. The Federal Government of the United States of America was created by unanimous vote by member states in 1787, after the abysmal failure of decentralized government under the now defunct Articles of Confederation. Our Founding Fathers realized that for our country to properly function as a democracy, we needed to have a strong national government. The individual states could not effectively share out the responsibilities of maintaining a democratic government. Different states had wayward interests that did not benefit the greater good. Our Federal Government has proven its value time and time again as an institutional instrument which preserves our democracy against forces that would unravel its democratic principles. Usually people think of this in terms of the wars we have fought to preserve our country from external enemies, such as the War of 1812 or World War II. But our centralized form of government has an equal responsibility to oppose political forces which would undermine the principles of our democracy from within. There have been regions of the country that at various times have sought to flout these principles through localized political power. When strong and effective executive leadership has exercised its will in the name of our Federal Government, these destructive deviations have been corrected. The most famous example was President Lincoln's military action against seceding states who wished to have unlimited rights to extend and expand the practice and institution of slavery. What was at stake was the democratic principle of fair compensation for labor contributed by free citizens of the United States in support of all legal business endeavors. Democracy could not survive if slave labor gained the upper hand in terms of the utilization of labor in the United States. Lincoln struck a blow in support of monetarily-compensated labor by the working people of our nation, an executive action otherwise known as the American Civil War. Later Teddy Roosevelt in the first term of his office as president intervened against greedy coal barons who refused to negotiate a settlement with striking coal miners whose working conditions and lack or remunerative compensation was dire. He also went on to promote and pass a host of fair labor laws, including the eight hour work day and the prohibition of child labor. Jumping ahead to the middle of the twentieth century, Presidents Eisenhower and then later Lyndon Johnson intervened against violations of the citizens' rights of African Americans in the South, who were denied equal and open access to integrated public education, to public restrooms, to restaurants, to public transportation, and to the ballot box itself. So, I celebrate and honor our flag and the centralized government for which it stands. If we were a confederacy, we would not be a democracy, because localized political interests would have subverted our democratic rights. Though our central government has sometimes been piloted by those who have cynically acted as termites to weaken it from within, it remains the most powerful mechanism for which ethnic minorities and the socioeconomic majority of working people have recourse to defend their rights against powerful elite groups who do not respect the democratic principles upon which our nation was built. Our central national government with its superior legal and fiscal clout is also responsible for the most democratically sustaining institutions of social welfare, such as medicare, high standards of public education, unemployment compensation, social security, and the regulation of clean air, safe drinking water and unpolluted soil (hail the EPA!). The national government also helps support and inspire complementary state services that uphold the fabric of socioeconomic stability for working people. States whose leadership represents narrow interests have often been denied federal funds unless they cooperate with programs of broad-based support for its population. So if you belong to a racial or religious minority, or are a woman, or are a working person, or a person who has lost his job, or a retired person, or a person suffering from endemic poverty, or a person who cannot afford to send your children to a private school, you can thank the ability of your national central government to intervene on your behalf (by military enforcement if necessary) against those who would deny you the human and civil rights, without which our democracy would evaporate. We are a nation that believes in a Constitutionally-supported system of checks and balances to preserve just government. Let us not forget the import role the Executive Branch plays in preserving the liberty and well-being of our vulnerable regular citizens by placing a check against the terror, intimidation and legal chicanery of the mighty and their minions. Hail to America's quest for the Perfect Union!

Religious Versus Secular World Views: The Real Crux of the Matter

These days the media and the pundits and the preachers like to say that the cause for conflict between scientific and religious worlds is that one holds with evolution by natural selection and the other with Divine Creation and Intervention. From a strictly spiritual point of view, I am glad we have both worlds. Science can improve the quality of life and the quality of intellectual experience. Religion can improve the quality of human compassion and sensibly correct where we put our life's priorities in this hyper-materialistic global culture. There are also non-religious institutions and ideologies which enable people to keep their minds above the soul-destroying torrent of consumerist culture. But if a practitioner of anthropology from another planet were to look at our situation, I believe that extraterrestrial anthropologist would point to deeper levels of discordance than what our society consciously admits to. Religious institutions have never wholly been pleased with scientific and technological progress, and it's not so much to do with what the truth is in the Copernican sense. It's what the truth might lead people to do, namely, change the rules of the game. Ardent religionists do not believe this is the real and ultimate world, and therefore they are skeptical of anyone who should wish to add artificial comfort to our lives, or even to obviate the hardship of existence through well-reasoned social reforms. This world, in their eyes, is designed for suffering, and suffering is the primary mechanism for spiritual progress and the confirmation of the will toward the salvation of the soul. I do not deny that suffering builds character, refines one's ability to empathize with the plight of others, and deepens human connections. Those effects of spiritual grace form the real silver lining of a traumatic or difficult experience. So to that degree, I have no arguments with the religious perspective. However, I have a beef with people who claim that one cannot be spiritual and embrace reforms and improvements in the daily existence of this world, however transient it might be compared to the eternal joys of heaven. Religious fundamentalists often seem to align themselves with political forces and agendas that oppose or wish to dismantle secular mechanisms for social justice and broader socioeconomic enfranchisement. This tendency has baffled me as much as the opposition of most fundamentalists toward conservation and protection of the environment. How can they disrespect God's own Creation?! Yet these political stances are all of a piece if one looks at the basic (and unacknowledged) schism between religious and secular worlds: if salvation only comes through suffering, religiously-minded people do not want man-made secular and scientific institutions alleviating the condition of suffering through technological convenience, medical improvements and political protection of the impoverished and socially vulnerable. They want only God and His Churches to be the source of any intervention in the condition of this world, preferably on an individual basis, and then only under certain righteous constraints. Please do not think that I only consider the agonizing blindness of religious institutions when I contemplate the persistent problems of this world. I despise the egocentric and malicious arrogance exhibited by people who spout their contempt for those who believe in a Supreme Being, creating only more (unnecessary) discord and alienation between two worlds which need to seek harmonization for the human race to survive. Of course I DO believe in aggressively defending the right of people to choose to believe or disbelieve in the supernatural, especially against those radical factions who would make it a Constitutional Amendment that every citizen must believe in God and belong to a certain religion. However, just in terms of defending a nonreligious way of life, why not write or speak from strictly affirmative positions about how atheism or agnosticism can dynamically support a responsible and fulfilling mental, emotional and moral existence? The fact that some people choose to be believers in the Divine is no skin off the teeth of those who wish to lead empirically-based lives! Also, I have a gripe with a society which is fast making a secular religion of capitalism as some sort of flawless and monolithic self-justifying center of life. In this new cult of what was once just a practical tool of economic success, we witness some of the "high priests" of capitalism shallowly flaunt and spill their wealth with such inanity and self-engrossed pride on television as to be spiritually disgusting in their vacuous spectacle. Yet I could still easily laugh that off if such behavior were not symptomatic of far worse things. It seems the rich want us to worship them and the iconography of their wealth. They want a one-way (non-reciprocal) street. What really dismays me is how the rich now hoard such gross amounts of their untaxed wealth and thereby allow broader society to rapidly wither and collapse from the civilized heights it once knew. Why can't the wealthy discover a healthier pride? Why can't the rich adopt the true leadership role of economically nurturing society and investing their unused capital in industrial progress that involves the whole nation? Yet the "do-nothing" rich and the "better-do-nothing" religious folk have made an unholy pact with each other (despite the fact that their respective motives are entirely different), and have created a choke-hold on the lives and dreams of those who want to make THIS world a better place. If the religiously-minded wish to adhere to their strict take on God's Will, I can respect that they have their own moral reasons for this stance, but what I do wish they would realize is at least this: the rich who wish to allow our country to go to rot are not rich because God gave them their wealth. Don't confuse prosperity in this world with God's Favor. God loves us all, and most especially the poor and those who seek to help them.

Scientists and Social Responsibility

The sciences can only really flourish in a free and democratic country. This means a country which supports a system of public and collegiate education where all girls and boys, young men and young women who have the potential have the opportunity to discover science as a subject of learning and progressively cultivate their interest and ability in that subject. In this way, they can one day become scientists themselves, contributing to the good of society. We have in America scientists making incredible discoveries and creating the basis of amazing new technologies. Many scientists have somehow acquired the attitude that they do not have any ethical responsibility for discoveries they introduce to the world. They feel that they are excused from such paltry considerations because they have offered up their minds and diligence to pure scientific research, and that somehow this gives them a carte blanche to unravel anything they choose, no matter what the potential repercussions of uncovering such a mystery to the society in which we live (not to mention the ecological impact -- but that is an issue all of its own). In the meantime, waiting in the wings, are highly unscrupulous firms which are looking for the latest elucidation from these insouciant researchers that might be applied as a form of destructive power. Scientists need to stop to consider whether high-tech weaponry could be extrapolated from their "neutral" discoveries, and then used domestically against our own citizenry to subvert the freedoms which substantiate our country as an effective democracy. Human nature being what it is, when some people acquire immense power, the temptation is to throw out the fine rules that govern a democratic society and exercise that power for selfish purposes. Yet somehow we have scientists who, as bright and gifted as they are, do not see this possibility -- or else do not care. These scientists are given monetary compensation for the right by others to create technological applications of their discoveries, and then, smugly depositing their payoff, these scientists go merrily on with their pioneering work, content in the security of their narrow mental world of "pure science". But what of the regular people whose liberties are constantly being challenged and eroded by those of disproportionate wealth who are looking for disproportionate power to match? If those who do not wish to share power and voice with the regular people in our country get these technologies into their hands, there will be no way for the common person to assert his or her rights or effectively put candidates into office who will truly represent their views. We will be outgunned by vastly superior scientific mechanisms of power, and our democracy will become as hollow as the Roman Republic became when they began to bow before mighty military men who appointed themselves "emperor for life". Scientists DO need to think about the possible destructive applications of their discoveries before they unveil them. They DO need to put legal constraints on how their discoveries are developed. I am all for scientific progress, but only that which will benefit society as a whole. Scientists need to recognize that they are not monks living apart from the real world, safe with a sinecure to honor their superior intelligence. They are born of human society, they were reared by human society, and they owe human society their prudence and moral consideration. A society needs to be democratic for learning, education and science to flourish, but we are somehow educating many of our future scientists to believe that their disciplines exist in a transcendent vacuum, that they are exempt from the considerations with which the social sciences concern themselves. Maybe its time natural scientists stopped holding the social sciences with reflexive contempt under the dismissive moniker of "soft science". Maybe its time that science students took a few courses in human psychology, ethics and moral philosophy. Let's make it a requirement. Wouldn't it be a terrible irony if the fruits of ill-considered explorations of the "pure science" approach fed the very forces which already are seeking to weaken the fabric of public education and higher education in our country? In effect, you would have science destroying its own nurturing nest. Future scientists of quality can only arise from the nurturing bed of a democracy. If this bed is destroyed, scientific progress will cease because it will not be able to renew the human members that keep it moving forward. So consider this, if something you discover could just as easily be used to undermine the ability of regular people to uphold their freedom, than to create some advancement in the peaceful conduct of our civilization, have a care as to who you tell it to or who you sell it to. There is nothing wrong with scientists keeping secrets until the society they live amidst has achieved a higher degree of moral progress and commitment to social responsibility. So don't be a mercenary scientist -- be a patriot for the welfare of your fellow citizens. The act of scientific research is not inherently possessed of its own unqualified justification if the path it takes threatens human rights and the well-being of humanity. Like all human endeavors, science must be approached with humility -- especially since tinkering with its laws puts existence itself on the line.

The Irony of the Blame Game

For most of the existence of our species, homo sapiens, we have lived in harmony with Nature. Before the 19th century when the self-engrossed industrial revolution blindly moved into high gear and started polluting the rivers and the atmosphere, conservation was a matter of common sense, even among European tenant farmers and peasants. Of course there were intermittent examples through time of agricultural societies across the world collapsing because they had depleted their soil through mono-cropping, overgrazing and deforestation, but the land recovered once it was left alone, and the descendants of those erring cultures incorporated principles of conservation into their native wisdom and spiritual taboos. Just read the folklore and folktales collected by ethnologists from the world's cornucopia of nature-based cultures, and you will discover a love of the land, the flora and the fauna that is profoundly intimate and full of awe. The observations of nature are so keen and sensitive in this oral literature, and these have been married to an utterly fascinating human imagination. Before the arrival and imposition of the institutional religious faiths, human beings from every quarter of the globe cultivated a lore of accurate understandings of Nature while endowing these practical perceptions with mythic meaning which enriched the people's experience of life, sanctifying all with which they coexisted, and creating mysteries that maintained a balance of respect and gratitude. Now overpopulation and global warming (factors inescapable to the awareness of anyone living on the Earth's Southern Hemisphere) are unraveling both the natural biosphere, ancient traditional cultures and human existence itself. Some biologists, dismayed that corporations will do nothing to reverse the technological trends creating global warming, dismayed that religious fundamentalist groups are forming a political blockade on birth control, dismayed that tribal people desperately hang on to now impracticable ways of life by continuing to farm marginal lands that are now becoming desert, dismayed that first world people are putting greater demands on the energy grid, are now mounting an intellectual attack on the human race itself: human beings are causing the yearly extinction of thousands of irreplaceable species that belong to a fine ecological web of inter-species reciprocity; we simply do not deserve to be here any more. So I ask, does this include the scientists, who are themselves human beings, who depend on high technology to learn and practice their craft? Is the human race "evil" in the sense that we are a mere plague on the environment, nothing better than ecological parasites? Should we be exterminated? Where are we supposed to go? Mother Nature reared us no less than She did our biological cousins, such as the noble orangutans, and even in our sophisticated clothes, we are animals no less than the dwindling snow leopard. Vaccines and modern agricultural science drove up the survival rate of human babies born to this world, and the population consequently has grown to proportions never before possible. To whom would you deny the simple joy and fulfilling purpose of raising a family? Most people have no animus in their hearts toward Nature. Those that do have undergone ideological brainwashing, usually by parents bent on destroying sympathy for Nature because they derive their wealth or living from unmitigated economic exploitation of natural resources. It is not natural to the human psyche to be at odds with the Natural world. Every child instinctively responds to Nature as a source of joy and wonder. Even kids raised in a city have an eager curiosity to go out into the countryside at the first opportunity and explore its graces and mysteries. Population growth is something we must accept, and we must accept that we owe it to every human being to try to provide them with a life free of unrelieved poverty and travail. That takes organized mobilization of resources and infrastructure. No one has the right to decide who gets to live and who must be processed out by eugenics, even when the survival of other species is at stake. There are ways to responsibly use energy resources and the raw materials that sustain a safe and a reasonably comfortable existence. There are ways for human beings to live in harmony with other living things-- we've been doing just that for 99% of our species's history on this planet. Blaming the poor and working people for the degeneration of the biosphere is not a constructive answer and is a waste of precious time for real problem-solving. Those who control the capital of our world need to be targeted for relentless and spirited re-education. They need to be taught that they, despite all their wealth, are as vulnerable to the effects of environmental degradation as the person working all day in the factory or the tribal person trying to farm a wasteland with a digging stick. Once you convince the powerful they are capable of changing the way they use the Earth's resources and adopt clean efficient f0rms of energy without losing their pride of place, then you will truly slow down the process of environmental and atmospheric degradation and one day bring it to a halt. In the meantime, birth control practices can be re-established through respectful, discrete and gender-sensitive education of the poor by the concerted efforts from an alliance of religious and secular organizations, and this will come most effectively by accompanying these efforts with political policies which accord more educational and employment opportunities for girls and women. Social equality is the answer -- not scientifically rationalized bigotry hiding under the name of "meritocracy". Bringing the wealthy back into the fold of a balanced human community is the other half of the solution.