The 70's and the “Arab Spring”

Ok, I'm over 60 and listen to some music my loved ones call “moldy.” But I like to think that much of the music of the 70s holds up well. Anyway, in addition to the indie and alternative music my son and friends at ATG keep me current with, I still play that moldy stuff.

Much of 70's music – and for my purposes here that means the period from around 1968 to 78 – is just music, meant to entertain, get you “up” or help you get high. But two strains have had me thinking recently because they seem to pinpoint something that changed early on in the decade, something that maybe points to a broader dynamic we can see playing out in the recent “Arab Spring” and on the streets of American cities.

The first of the 70's music broke over the happy silliness of Beatlemania. It took rock and folk and added drugs to produce the psychedelic movement with Jefferson Airplane and then the Grateful Dead. The Beatles themselves started it with "Magical Mystical Tour." But while this and much else of the time was just escapism – not to denigrate such fun – the strain that I'm focused on here was the music of protest and revolution. In the aftermath of the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention and in the middle of the Vietnam war movement, songs like “What About Me” by Quicksilver Messenger Service (1970) addressed the issues of pollution, war, repression, the 99% but also looked forward to change through confronting the forces of authority challenging them – “what you going to do about me?” Other songs of the period looked forward to just jumping over the mess of this world in the post-apocalyptic “Wooden Ships” (Jefferson Airplane & CS&N, 1969) or by hijacking a starship (Jefferson Starship's "Blows Against the Empire," 1970). Whether it was confronting the man or escaping him, this music looked toward a better future, a fundamental re-ordering of society.

But by 1972, disappointment, alienation and a sense of loss had already begun to set in, despite the fact that we would shortly be seeing the first seeming accomplishments of the “attack” against the old order. Richard Nixon would be forced to take us out of the Vietnam War (the Paris Peace Accords, 1973) and himself would be forced from office (1974). I was at a CSN&Y concert in Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City on the night of August 8, 1974. One of the group came out to explain a slight delay by informing us all “it's over,” Nixon had resigned. Music and fireworks celebrated this “victory.”

But The Who, sensing that maybe it would not be so easy, announced in “Won't Get Fooled Again” (1971) that after the “fighting in the streets” our team on the left would now be our team on the right. Jackson Browne was asking in “Doctor My Eyes” (1972) if perhaps we had already seen too much without anything really getting any better? Pink Floyd was suggesting that maybe it was all really about money and that anyone who doubted it was living on the "Dark Side of the Moon" (1973).  Jethro Tull – Ian Anderson always seeming to be bitingly aware of how real life disappoints our dreams – noted how each day was like “Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day” (1974) and, in “OneWhite Duck” (1975), that something must be wrong in our brains if we were “so patently unrewarding.”

By 1977, Jackson Browne was “Running on Empty” and the year later, Jefferson Starship began its transformation into pop. Most of the supergroups fell apart in a haze of booze and drugs. Everyone else went to work. And the Fall of Nixon led to the two hapless president – Ford and Carter – and then in 1980, the “return of the repressed” victory of Barry Goldwater in the form of Ronald Reagan.

The hopes and dreams of the 70s were real and so was the movement on the streets. We – and I am taking some liberties here including myself in this – did remove a president and end a war. But the hopes that any of this would really change anything fundamental or in some way make our daily lives “better” or “happier” were not realized.

We've seen in the past year new movements in the streets, toppling governments and challenging the economic order. The experience of the 70s reminds that the push for real change leads to reaction; the harder the push, the greater the reaction. Society is, by evolution, a essentially conservative adaptation. The force of inertia fights against any change of direction. But the movement of the Arab Spring is more powerful than anything we experienced in the 70s because it is more necessary, more mass based. The Occupy movement is more informed by history than we were in the 70s. And it is so much clearer now, and in so many ways, that the world we live in has serious problems that don't seem to be getting better on their own, by business as usual.

Leaving the last word to Neil Young, who remained sideways hopeful despite everything we've seen since the 70's, keep on rockin in the Free World.

Biking at the Speed of Light

Took a long bike ride yesterday from Northwest Washington to Needwood Lake in Rockville.  Fifty miles round-trip in just over four hours.  On the way back, it occurred to me that after a certain point, time had been suspended for me.  Each moment was part of the next and the whole ride was as one unified experience, one moment in time.  Each point I had passed was "just now" no matter how many miles had speed under my wheels since.

This doesn't happen on my shorter bike rides but seems to kick in after 15 miles or so.  Einstein explained that at the speed of light, time stops.  It had stopped for me at a considerably slower pace.

Maybe this is how to unify quantum physics and relativity?  For quantum physics, reality is subjective in the sense that its many possibilities don't become one thing until observed.  Einstein thought of his science as objective.  The speed of light is the same everywhere, independent of the observer.  But time is experienced subjectively.  It passes slow or fast depending on how we feel it.  And biking at our speed of light can suspend our experience of time entirely.  Time too doesn't become anything specific until we observe it.

Our Three-headed Beast - Divided US Leadership

The New Yorker of March 19 has an interesting piece - The Unpersuaded by Ezra Klein - that looks at whether Presidential speeches make any difference.  He finds that they do, in a negative way.  When President's talk about things they support or want to do, they engender partisan resistance to that very thing among the opposition.  What helps a President achieve his agenda is a strong enough economy to help him win re-election and his party to gain enough seats to gain/maintain control of Congress.  This may always have been true but seems more so over the last few decades.

Drawing from political scientist Juan Linz, Klein writes that our form of presidential democracy is not common.  And for good reason.  "A broad tendency toward instability and partisan conflict is woven into the fabric of a political system in which a democratically elected executive can come from one party and a democratically elected legislature from another.  Both sides end up having control over some levers of power, a claim to be carrying out the will of the public, and incentives that point in opposite directions."  Parties no longer moderate this tendency in our American system because they have been transformed from "big tents" to groups operating as "disciplined, consistent units."  With party rigidity, the President becomes a polarizing figure rather than a persuader.

In other words, we have a system in which the parliamentary leaders - Speaker and Senate majority leader - and the executive can form a three-headed beast instead of a coherent government.  Time for change?  Time for a constitutional convention?

Changing the US Constitution: Some Suggestions

Wrote late last year about the Articles of Confederation and the possibility of working through the states to call a constitutional convention according to Article 5. This would mean seeking and supporting candidates for state legislatures whose sole purpose would be to have their state call on Congress to call such a convention – an “Occupy the Constitution” movement to allow us to assemble, debate and decide on draft amendments while enjoying our Tea. It's only fair, therefore, for me to outline a few of the ways I think we might use the amendment process to change the way our government works and make it more responsive to the majority.

Simplicity in representative government may be best – a one-house Congress elected for four years choosing a Prime Minister with a ceremonial President. Whatever party wins the majority gets to implement the policies it was democratically chosen to enact. But the USA may be too big and complex to give so much power to any one institution. The Founding Fathers may have been on to something when they provided for checks-and-balances. For checks and balances, I would not touch the Supreme Court much. But it might also do to re-invigorate the role of the states both to decentralize power and to provide some degree of check-and-balance at the federal level. Here's my suggestions:

• Increase the size of the House of Representatives to allow for greater and more diverse membership and points of view. Article One, Section 2 says the number of representatives “shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand.” Congress changed this by law in the 1920s to fix the number at 435. One for every 30,000 would now mean some 10,000 representatives. That seems much. But why not 1000?
• Elect the House for four year terms so its members can do something other than campaign all the time.
• Allow the House to choose the Prime Minister. He/she would be head of government, commander-in-chief and choose the cabinet and senior government officials (including ambassadors), assuming the powers contained in Section 2 of Article 2 without the need to seek advice and consent.
• The House would originate all bills and approve all treaties, assuming all the functions and limitations contained in Sections 7, 8 and 9 of Article 1.
• No commitment of US troops abroad for any time and any purpose would be possible without a majority vote in the House specifying the duration and terms.
• Repeal the 17^th Amendment on popular election of the Senate. Make senators appointed by state legislatures to two year terms. Senators would represent the States at the federal level.
• The Senate would have the authority by majority vote to reject laws and treaties passed by the House. The House could overcome the veto by a 60% vote. (We want to have checks and balances without completely tying the hands of the majority.)
• Members of the Supreme Court would be nominated by the Prime Minister and approved by majority vote of the Senate to serve single terms of 15 or 20 years.
• The President would be chosen by the House and be confined to being the ceremonial head of state. (Or we could abolish the office altogether.)
• Congressional campaign funding would be limited to public sources – money collected by the national treasury and doled out equally to candidates gaining sufficient support through local petitions – and individual contributions limited to some modest amount, say $200.

It might be good as well to take a hard look at the proliferation of government departments. We might grandfather State, Treasury and War – the first created – as well as Justice. But some of the others may be doing things better left to the states or society?

November 22

Tomorrow is the date in 1963 that President Kennedy was shot.  Every American alive then can tell you where he or she was at the moment they heard.  We are getting old and it is history.  But the hatred that may be the real story of that day is not history. America has always had this deep vein of hatred running through it.  I saw this weekend a local production of a play about the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858.  The hatred goes back even farther than this.  It is rooted in our Declaration of Independence and our central lie that all men were created equal.  We had slaves, all thirteen states had slavery.  Slavery defined us and it still does.  At bottom, the hatred aimed at Lincoln, Kennedy and Obama is about the feeling that while we are slaves - to all kinds of forces beyond us - we have none.  It's about powerlessness and the inch-deep popular culture that cannot really sustain us.  It's about not really controlling ourselves or much of anything and not knowing what to do about it.  It's about being owned and having nothing we can really own.

The Case for a Constitutional Convention

I wrote several days ago on the usefulness of rediscovering the Articles of Confederation. But it is clear that the crisis – economic, political and moral – facing the United States today cannot be resolved by simply returning to the past. For years now, things seem to have been getting worse. Income disparity has been increasing, wars proliferating, politicians squabbling. Government has become overbearing, inefficient and too beholding to money. The American people's growing sense that things need to be fixed has energized both the Tea Party and Occupy movement.

Change is necessary but we the people cannot trust others to do it for us. Our politicians seek nothing more than power. Once elected, they spend most of their time and energy raising money in order to get re-elected. Our leaders do not lead because taking necessary actions might lose this or that constituency. So we need to start the change ourselves.

We need to begin pushing for a Constitutional Convention to change the way our government works and to ensure it better serves the 99%. A government lean, more responsive to our needs in the 21st Century and more focused on achieving economic prosperity with justice and liberty.

The Occupy movement has been criticized for not having any overall objective. How about occupying the Constitution?

The Tea Party wants fiscal responsibility, free markets, and constitutionally limited government. Let's do that the right way.

The US Constitution in Article V allows for various ways to amend the constitution:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; 

Leaving constitutional changes to the Congress would be to leave it in the hands of the professional politicians. The most reliable way to ensure real change would be to use the mechanism of a Constitutional Convention. None has been called since the first in 1787. But if the Occupy movement – perhaps alongside the Tea Party – focused now on electing in 2012 state legislatures committed to calling a Convention, a new era of American democracy could begin.

A Constitutional Convention would surely be a hotbed of democracy. Whether Occupy or Tea Party, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, everyone would come into it with different ideas. Reaching agreement on amendments to the constitution would probably be difficult and require equal measures of consensus and compromise. But such a convention would offer a real opportunity for the people to once again assume control of their government. The process of reaching agreement and then ratification by 3/4s of the states would offer further opportunities for democratic participation.

Some are no doubt afraid – whether they say so or not – of such direct democratic participation. They are comfortable with the way things are done today and do not want anyone to mess with that. But we, the great law abiding majority, the 99%, have nothing to fear from coming together to discuss and enact change.

Taking Back The Articles of Confederation - Concluding Reflections

Introduction    Part 1    Part 2    Part 3    Part 4    Part 5

   The victory of the Founding Fathers in 1787 put the Articles of Confederation into the dustbin of American history.  But the debate between anti-federalists and federalists never entirely disappeared.  A fundamental difference in political vision has continued to run through the American political tradition like twin rivers.  The source of one river is the impulse, typical of Americans, to rise above local and individual differences to grasp the elements of a national, even global, commonality.  A rich and powerful mass democracy with universalistic pretensions has been built along this river.

   The source of the other river is the impulse, equally typical, to do it ourselves, to keep it small.  Upon this river have floated the various proposals and efforts over the years to reduce or limit the size and powers of the federal government.  Politics in America has often been the attempt to sail upon both rivers at once.  Those on opposing sides have had various labels:  Federalists and Anti-Federalists, unionists and states-righters, liberals and conservatives and now Occupy and Tea Party.

    Since the Articles were cast aside, the federalists have generally been ascendant. Those who have sought to advocate states rights or who have fought to preserve state powers against encroachment by the federal government have been handicapped.   The Articles were judged by its opponents to have failed.  Memory of the 13 years of confederal government faded.  This is not to say that the idea of state sovereignty has not returned at times to haunt American politics.  The southern Confederate States of America, in its mixture of states rights and an unholy effort to maintain slavery, was the final nail in the coffin not only of state nullification but of an historical consciousness of what was lost with the victory of the Federalists.

    What has been lost can be seen most closely in the failure of government in the current United States to serve the majority, the 99%.  One could say that this failure was inevitable in the age of nation-states, superpowers and globalization.  Governing a large modern nation in a world of fierce ideological, political and economic competition must entail enormous bureaucracies and incomprehensibly large budgets.  In our case, the attempt to guarantee the “pursuit of happiness” of all citizens - as much a necessary requirement of centralized, representative government as the gladiatorial games were for Imperial Rome - requires great effort and considerable resources and organization.  It gives great scope to the power of money.  

   Yet the voices raised against “big government” and "big business" express true insights.  The role of the average citizen in government has dwindled to the vanishing point while that of big money has come to predominate.  In the 19th and 20th centuries, Americans experienced the full range of challenges -- collective and personal -- associated with the growth of modern industrial society.  These difficulties included wars and cyclical economic downturns.  The growth of the central government in response to these challenges – especially during the Civil War and the Great Depression -- was dictated, at least in part, by practical necessity.  But the Constitution gave the government a mandate to provide for the “general welfare” and “common defense.”  It armed Congress with all “necessary and proper” power for doing so and vested in the president whatever "executive power” might be necessary.  With each major crisis, the focus shifted to what “government” could do to resolve the situation and, thus, from local efforts to the central government.  Along with the “welfare state,” the seeming imperatives of economic development made the government in Washington the ultimate provider  The Cold War, as well as the “hot” ones, levered the presidency into what can fairly be described as an imperial throne.  Meanwhile, as government receded from the people, it fell more and more into the hands of those with the cash to fund the politicians and manipulate the bureaucracy to their own ends. 

    In 1787, America reached a fork in the road.  It could have chosen to stay on the course it was marking out for the first time - confederal democracy - or it could return to the well-trodden path of centralized government.  Perhaps being “too young to know what we are fit for”, we chose the old road, and that has made all the difference.

    There are, however, two features of confederal democracy that might lead one to see in it a workable model for self-government.  First, by leaving decision making in the hands of those most directly affected, confederal democracy provides the citizens of the relevant community a public space in which to confront each other and work out jointly what is to be done.  They enjoy what Arendt called the pleasures and benefits of public life.  Tempered by the experience of mutual recognition and cooperation between citizens in the process of self-government, local government can become, as it was for the Greeks, an arena for collectively seeking the good life.  Politics in confederal democracy therefore would be vigorous and complex and would mirror the full range of interests, values and tastes in the community.

   Second, by leaving primary responsibility for living the good life where it most belongs, with those most immediately affected by the results of collective decisions, confederal democracy leaves less space for others to operate in the shadows.  Power flows not from beyond but from below.  Problems are solved at the level of government at which all affected can participate - town, county, state, regional, national - but no higher.  Citizens face each other directly in full transparency to solve their common problems and to resolve their differences.  A confederal polity requires citizen initiative.  Confederal democracy - built on active citizen participation in their polis - is the unrealized potential of the American tradition of local self-government.

    Certainly, the need to guarantee social justice and political equality amidst the strains of modern society assures that even a confederal central government would be an important political actor.  But perhaps the load might be more evenly placed, resting more directly where in a democracy it should, on the people.  However, the road chosen in 1787 followed the premise of maintaining government as far from the people as the new notions of popular sovereignty allowed.  Under the shocks of industrialization and war, Washington came to monopolize political space and government became someone else’s concern: citizens became subjects.

   The result is ironic.  The fate of over 300 million Americans - and essentially the entire globe that we have come to dominate - rests with a mere handful of people often far removed from the results of their decisions.  The Constitution that took the place of the Articles of Confederation set up a powerful central government and left we the people with no place else to turn.  But the call to resurrect the vision of that other, more democratic America still echoes.  Those who hear this call should ensure that they go back to the source to be sure they understand what they are hearing.