Death Watch?

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/the-sad-path-from-reaganism-to-national-conservatism/606304/

An intriguing article. What the author fails to see in her otherwise intelligent criticism is that her much beloved Reagan/Thatcher combination inevitably lead to exactly what she is condemning now. She believes they were wonderful and what is happening to conservatism today is a betrayal of their ideals. But even when Ronald Reagan was sitting in the White House, I could see that those ideals were going to lead to exactly this sort of situation. Perhaps Thatcher and Reagan would indeed condemn what is happening today, but they cleared and plowed the field upon which it has flourished. 

Two excerpts:

>National conservatives cannot simultaneously be helpless victims of a totalitarian culture and also hold enormous political power, which some of them plainly do.<

Of course they can! Double think may be a term created in the novel 1984, but it’s been with humanity as long as there have been humans and possibly before we even fully evolved as a species.  Always remember that even the very exemplar of extreme evil to the vast majority of humans, Hitler and the Nazis, insisted they were saving their nation.  Those horrible liberals, communists, and leftist elites with their Jewish science had to be destroyed to protect freedom.  It wasn’t just propaganda. Any true believer Nazi knew that he was a savior not only of Germany, but of the entire human race.  The radical right wing nationalist conservatives of current American politics are determined to save democracy by declaring a military dictatorship, having military trials for all important Democratic Party leaders, and locking members of the opposing party up in Guantánamo Bay. Yes, they actually say this. Just Google Q anon to see how they intend to save democracy by having a military overthrow of the government of the United States, establishing Donald Trump as president for life, and using martial law to send all their political enemies to concentration camps.  

Freedom!

>The world inhabited by Reagan and John Paul II is long past, and no one knows how they would react to so-called cancel culture and Twitter mobs, or the backlash against Western culture on American (but not Hungarian) college campuses, or some of the uglier strains of far-left thinking. But somehow I doubt their response would be the creation of a new, kleptocratic authoritarian right that chips away at the institutions preserving democracy. Nor do I believe they would have wanted to destroy the institutions that have long undergirded the West, as so many of these new “nationalists” want to do.<

Once again using the extreme example of the rise of the Third Reich, remember that the Nazis were contributors to the success of preventing the Communist Party from seizing control of Germany, a great dream of Stalin.  However the answer to one level of extremism is not its opposite. What is necessary is balance.

Imagine a teeter totter. On one end sits a small child trying to have some fun, while on the other end sits a cartoon weight labelled “ten tons”.  To bring things back into balance and restore fun, you might think, let’s take the small child off the teeter totter and put another 10 ton block on that end.  

This would fail for two reasons. One is simply that the child is no longer on the teeter totter even trying to have fun! The second is that this will not result in a balanced teeter totter. It would invariably result in a teeter totter with both extreme ends firmly sitting on the ground and with the center of the teeter totter snapped in two by the excessive weight.

The answer to extremism is not mirror opposite extremism. The answer to extremism is moderation.  Instead of adding more weight to the other side of the teeter totter, let’s remove all of the excess weight. Let’s put another child about the same size and weight as the first one on the opposing seat. Result? Balance! Result? Fun.

So far I think the author would agree with this comment, yet, once again, she is ignoring the simple reality that the right wing extreme of today is not really a betrayal of the golden age conservatism she so fondly recalls.  However well-intentioned it was, it was obvious to me, and I suppose to at least a few others, that by turning America into the general direction of extremism we were making a change of course with ever increasing consequences as the decades accumulated.  A very small change in initial angle can result in massive change developing over time.  For more detail on this, refer to the butterfly effect and chaos theory.

Democracy in America is crumbling. I have literally spent decades referring to America as a failing democracy; as an oligarchic kleptocracy.  As time has gone on, I have been proven more and more correct as we continue to sail further and further off course.  I do not regard America as a functioning democracy.  I cannot say the democracy is alive and well in America. Instead I must sadly say that democracy is alive and on life-support in America.

There is a point upon which I have never heard anyone else comment and which I think is absolutely critical and yet another sign which I see as part of the effort to put an end to the great experiment begun in 1776.  I may be seeing something that isn’t there, but I remind you that when I saw the religious fanaticism of a tiny minority of the ultra religious threatening to seize power in America forty years ago, many thought I was being foolish, yet the decades have proven me to be correct. (Think I am exaggerating? Do some googling. All around America state legislatures are attempting to ban elements of science that don’t match their religion from the classroom. They are attempting to teach their religious doctrines as  science.  Preachers openly declare that the Constitution is not the supreme law of the land, instead it is the Bible,  and that the Constitution is  null and void if it contradicts their interpretation of Scripture.)

And what is this point I find so threatening and dangerous?  If you follow politics at all you will have heard in recent years conservatives defending the erosion of democracy by declaring that America was never intended to be a democracy.  We are are republic, they say, not a democracy. This is the equivalent of saying I don’t own a car, I own a Ford Mustang.  It is true that America is not a pure democracy, but it is also true that the Founding Fathers were very clear that what they were creating was not simply a republic but a democratic republic.   One could also call it a republican democracy.  In other words, there are many kinds of democracy. If we are not the most extreme possible form, a pure democracy, that does not mean we are not a democracy. You will see you again and again that extremists insist that if you live on earth you have two choices.  You must occupy the North Pole or the South Pole. They pick these two tiny extremes and ignore the vast majority of the planet which lies between them.

So what’s the danger of this seemingly simple misunderstanding by conservatives? It is insidious because it attacks the very concept that we are a democracy. The people saying it generally do not realize the danger in their words.  They think they are being clever while actually they are exemplars of the Dunning-Kruger effect.  They do not see that if we are not a democracy but a republic, it follows that the leaders of the republic get to make the decisions, not the people.  It’s not those who repeat this nonsensical meme who intend harm, it is those who originated it and spread it. They wish to create an attitude among significant proportion of Americans that democracy is not really a thing. At least not in America. Who needs democracy? We’ve got a republic.

I hope I don’t need to expound any further on this point to make the dangers of this position clear.  The right wing makers of public opinion play the long game. They plant seeds today which may not be a fruit for decades. No, I’m not a conspiracy theorist. The right wing extremists have made their plans to seize control of America with complete candor and openness.  It goes back to Newt Gingrich. It goes back to the open declaration by the Republican Party that their long term goal is to make themselves a “permanent majority party”. That translates as one party rule.

So how much danger are we in?  Let me again note that forty years ago I was right. Democracy was being put in serious danger by the way conservatism had veered toward radicalism.  Yes, I was right about that. 

I also said at the time that inevitably this movement would fail because, if nothing else, simple demographics would wipe it out. The White majority will become just another minority, the largest minority, to be sure, but nevertheless a minority.  Also, the young people are much more open minded, less frightened, less willing to be blinded by fear and panicked into hatred.  The extremists will lose power, I said.  The only question was how much damage they would do before they finally did so. On this point, I was only half right. I knew they would do a lot of damage. I had no idea they could do this much damage. I never would have predicted this.  If fact, I don’t think I can justly claim to be even half right on this point, I think I have to say on this one, I was wrong.

Nevertheless, I still believe that democracy in America will survive and recover from its time in intensive care.  My generation has cleaned up the mess left to us by our parents, to some extent. In the process we have created a mess for the next generation. In defense of we Boomers, I can only say:

We didn’t start the fire. 

It’s been always burning 

Since the worlds been turning.

On the other hand, while we put out some parts of the fire, we set some new areas ablaze.

Not all of us from my time have joined the mob in flocking to Fox News and other right wing propaganda machines.  Not all of us are frightened of immigrants,or change, or young people.  I have fought the good fight.  Like a certain boxer, I carry:

...the reminders

Of every glove that laid him down or cut him

'Til he cried out in his anger and his shame

"I am leaving, I am leaving", but the fighter still remains

I haven’t given up. I’ll keep on fighting.  I care too much not to, but I am old and battered and not so very well.  Instead of passing the torch, I’ll ask others to join in accomplishing the mission.

Let me end with a message to my children, my grandchildren, and my great grandchildren. Let this be your cry:

We’re coming to the edge,

Running on the water,

Coming through the fog,

Your sons and daughters.

Let the river run,

Let all the dreamers

Wake the nation.

Come, the New Jerusalem.

(Oh...and please hurry!)

I Hate You For Not Hating The People I Hate!

Politics are hot tonight! Another really interesting exchange from Facebook repeated here.

Me:  Rush Limbaugh is a truly despicable man. Exemplary of all that is wrong with America today. Racism, bigotry, lies, deceit, vulgar crudity, it’s a long list. He is himself a malignant tumor on our national soul, but no one should celebrate the fact that the man has cancer.

Although a repugnant and disgusting example of humanity, he remains a human being.

R:  This is not even a big surprise, this is just the average low life that is the Democratic Party, they lost an election because they did not have an electable candidate, they continue to lose at every turn and they can’t stand it they’re vicious vile bottom feeding lowlifes!

Me:  Actually those low lifes won the election by a considerable margin.   Only the corrupt, deal with the devil, electoral college (which was created to protect the power of the slavers) gave this wretch of a man authority.

But it is hard for Democrats to win elections when Republicans are busy purging voter rolls, and otherwise rigging elections so that they can have what they have desired since the days of Ronald Reagan, openly desired I might add, that is to say a permanent majority. I don’t like Democrats. But at least they are not trying to destroy democracy in America.

The Republicans, on the other hand have already largely succeeded in bringing an end of the experiment the Founding Fathers began. The only question now is, can we take democracy back or is it too late.

R:  Jimmy, oh Lord one of those...

Me:  Yes Randy we are those people.  People who believe in reality. People who believe Christ meant what he taught. People who prefer reality to your nasty, hate filled fantasy world.  People who know history.  People who know facts. People who refuse to hate. We won’t even hate people like you.

L:  and I agree TOTALLY with Jim! I am ONE OF THOSE!! LOL

B:  Half the country are "vicious, bottom-feeding lowlifes" but Jim is "one of those." Not sure who this fella is but my guess is he extols the Bible while epitomizing Matthew 7:3-5. It'd be hilarious if it wasn't so grave.

The Religious FreedomTo Persecute

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/mississippi-wedding-venue-refuses-to-rent-to-engaged-interracial-couple-because-the-owners-say-its-against-our-christian-beliefs-to-do-mixed-race-and-gay-weddings/ar-AAGEPUL

ME:  We knew this was coming. Conservative Christianity is an now an excuse to break the law and deny people their human rights. Thank you Republican Party.  Back when Ronald Reagan was president I referred to Republican Party as the New World Hezbollah, the American Party of God.

     I was predicting the future more than describing the current reality at that time. And I was right.

S:  Uh oh. Shades of Hitler.  Many of Germany’s 30,000 Roma (Gypsies) were eventually sterilized and prohibited, along with Blacks, from intermarrying with Germans. About 500 children of mixed African-German backgrounds were also sterilized. New laws combined traditional prejudices with the racism of the Nazis.

ME:  We must remember that from the very beginning many have pointed out it’s not make America great again, it’s make America white again.

S:  True, true, true.

S:  Another consequence of Hitler’s ruthless dictatorship in the 1930s was the arrest of political opponents and trade unionists and others whom the Nazis labeled “undesirables” and “enemies of the state.” The mere denunciation of a man as “homosexual” could result in arrest, trial, and conviction. Jehovah’s Witnesses, who numbered at least 25,000 in Germany, were banned as an organization as early as April 1933, because the beliefs of this religious group prohibited them from swearing any oath to the state or serving in the German military.

ME:  Auschwitz was started as a camp for political prisoners, including journalists, who, of course, were enemies of the people.

S:  Could it happen here?

ME:  Not by that incompetent dolt, Trump. 

     Just as back in the days of Ronald Reagan I was seeing where the Republican Party was headed and was deeply worried about it, I can see that as Reagan laid the groundwork for what’s happening today, what Trump is doing today is laying the groundwork for what could very well be the turning of the United States into a fascist-theocratic dictatorship.  Back then I was saying the danger was of these fundamentalists turning America into a Third World country, just as they did to China, just as they did to the great Islamic empire. These once technological and cultural leaders of the world degenerated once they turned inward and began believing in their own superiority and purity and the fundamentalist beliefs of their religions.  Science is not at war with religion, with the exception of a few fundamentalist evangelical atheists. Neither is religion at war with science, except for a few fundamentalist evangelical Christians.  

     In spite of the minority status,they are a very powerful group in the United States.  Courts are being packed all across the country up to the Supreme Court with ultra conservative judges who believe in their theology. Elections are being rigged in favor of the ultra conservative and religious fanatics. And behind it all, of course, are the ultra wealthy. Those who wish to turn us into Mexico — a tiny ruling class of the Dons  and all the rest of us their peons, barely more than an other herd of cattle or sheep for them to exploit.

     I knew then that I was regarded back then by many as being foolish and extreme in making this prediction, but time has borne me out.

     There are times you really don’t want to be right. Even when you are certain that you are.

Say It Ain't So, Ronnie!

Jacob Weisberg, author of the book Ronald Reagan, while being interviewed on the Charlie Rose show said, "You look at Ronald Reagan as someone who supported amnesty on immigration, who supported handgun control through the Brady bill and who did more, although he later regretted it, to make abortion legal in the years before Roe v. Wade than any other person because he signed a bill essentially saying in California saying that woman's doctor could give her permission to have an abortion."

And what do you think about those facts, idolizers of Ronald Reagan? Is it possible that the idol has feet of clay? I suppose it wouldn't matter if he did, his cowboy boots would hold them together.

 Just another case of what I like to point out as often as I think I can get away with it. That is, today's conservatives keep confusing the Ronald Reagan living their heads with the one who used to live here in the real world. They are very, very different people.

A Sea Change

Washington Journal's opening headline today read:
Speaker Ryan: "Don't lose faith in government".

This is a statement which would have been utterly unthinkable and considered to be a death sentence for the political career of any Republican just a few weeks ago. CSPAN Twitterers and callers were shocked that he dared to say such a thing, many noting it seemed unbelievable.

You all know I was convinced that Ronald Reagan was one of the worst presidents in American history and how happy I was when Bill Clinton, a liberal Democrat, became his replacement (although I despised Clinton, It seemed that he had to be better than Reagan). You also know how bitterly upset I was when one of the first things Mr. Clinton said was that, "The era of big government is over."

It was a capitulation. It made it clear that from now on Democrats would act like conservative Republicans. It was a declaration of their complete cowardice. It was the equivalent of the Emperor of Japan declaring to his people that, "We must now endure the unendurable." Like Clinton and Ryan the Emperor lacked the courage to simply say the truth and had to wrap it up in obscure phraseology. He didn't come out and say "Hey guys, guess what? For the first time in 2000 years, Japan lost! See, it turns out that we are not the island chosen by the gods to gloriously rule the world, we're the island that just got the crap beat out of it by the gaijin , the blue-eyed, hairy stinky, racially inferior barbarians. I hope you're not mad about all that war stuff I got you into."

From the time Clinton crumbled, Democrats were terrified to do anything except pretend to be conservative Republicans. It was disgusting the way they pandered to their new masters. And then Barack Obama won the presidency. And he said in effect, "The Reagan revolution is over!", because he said the government wasn't automatically bad. He said the government of the people, by the people, and for the people was good as long as it met the needs of those people and served them well.

Republicans of course kept right on chanting "Four legs good; two legs bad!" No wait. Wrong chant. They chanted about how government was automatically bad and smaller government was automatically good.

So did the terrified and cringing Democrats. It was so bad they even tried to distance themselves from the successful president of the United States during elections. Those Democrats often found themselves losing those elections. The few Democrats with the courage to stand up for and stand with Obama had a better chance at winning. The Reagan revolution was finally weakening.

Now that the GOP has so successfully terrified a large segment of the American populace, split America into old white men against everybody else, made so many Americans believe that feelings of terror and rage were much more real than mere facts or reality itself, even the Republican leaders are realizing just how much they've damaged this country.

I repeat, Speaker Ryan today declared the foulest and filthiest possible Republican blasphemy. He declared that we must restore trust in government.

Just as Bill Clinton's declaration removed the spines of his fellow Democrats, Mr. Ryan's declaration is an admission of failure. He even criticized identity politics, among other issues. Identity politics is all the Republican Party has offered since Ronald Reagan was running for president by opposing welfare queens.

The Republican Party has destroyed itself just as the Democratic Party destroyed itself when Democrats gave up on what they believed and began to pander to the new masters in Washington. Pail Ryan's declaration sounds much like something a liberal Democrat would have said. It marks the recognition among the Republican leadership that they have destroyed not only this country, but their own party.

The coffin of the Reagan revolution has been nailed shut. It's now on display for mourners to parade by and express their sadness over the death of their beautiful conservative dreams.

The question now is whether the Republican Party can reform itself as the Democrats managed to do (although it took them decades) or whether the party will go the way of the Whigs and the Know Nothings.

There's actually a bigger question. How long will it take us to repair the damage the GOP has already done to America and how much more damage can they do before they recognize that zombie Reagan is no longer a good leader for the party?

I don't expect the fanatic Republicans become as submissive as the Democrats did. They will not go quietly into that good night. Nevertheless, even their own leadership can now see the wreckage Republicans have made of their home states (Kansas is a good example). Reality has this fact about it. You don't have to believe in it, but it's still there and it will deal with you, even if you refuse to deal with it.

"We've got to stop being the stupid party."

Why am I so hard on today's Conservatives? I think the best answer came from a Conservative. During an interview with the author, C-SPAN quoted from Matt Lewis's book, Too Dumb to Fail, "Somewhere between Reagan's 30 minute speech in 1964 and the most recent government shutdown, the Conservatives movement became neither conservative nor a movement. Hijacked by the divisive and the dumb, it now finds itself hostage to emotions and irrational thinking. It became more personal and less principled--more flippant and less thoughtful. It became mean. It became lazy. It became it's own worst enemy."

The author later added during the interview, "...but there's no doubt that, In recent years, we've seen the dumbing down of Conservatism". Later he added "…because of the political milieu, even the smart Conservatives are forced to play dumb."

He went on to make a number of statements which were entirely counterfactual, indicating that he's not entirely exempt from the gullibility and stupidity of contemporary Conservatism. For example, he repeated the old, entirely unfounded, declaration that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. Nevertheless, I agree with his essential points in regard to what went wrong with the movement.

Almost every criticism I make about today's Conservatives is also made by this dedicated Conservative. What I oppose isn't the concept of reasonable caution in moving forward, what I oppose is emotionalism, extremism, and a hatred of rational thought. When an entire political party is dedicated to a constant state of outrage over lies, deceits, and half-truths; you can bet that something is very wrong with that party.
Permit me to repeat, I am not particularly fond of the Democratic Party, but when you have two bad choices; one of which is merely bad while the other is absolutely horrific, you take the merely bad.

I could go on and repeat myself like an older, wiser Marco Rubio, but I won't.

Fact: 0 Fear: 57

We're number 2 in ignorance? Not acceptable!  America will rise (sink?) to number one!

The video is also well worth watching, but oddly blames television for the problem. Surely the citizens of the other nations in the survey have televisions, yet they mange to be better informed and less deluded. The problem is that we allow our corporate masters to hijack our public airspace and use it against us.  Thank you, Ronald Reagan for vetoing the bill extending the Fairness Doctrine, and thus ensuring the robber barons would control our minds. My favorite superhero is Ronald Reagan, Destroyer of Democracy!

http://bluenationreview.com/politics-fear-create-america-ignorance/

How Reagan Failed To Win The Cold War Or Tear Down That Wall

What really caused the fall of the Soviet Union and the opening of the Berlin Wall? Not Ronald Reagan.
So, my right wing friends, I am confident that you want to know what really did cause the collapses. Here is a brief, but accurate, answer:

According to Mary Sarot, History and International Relations Professor at the University of Southern California :

The Revolution was aging. The Soviets were crippled by instability; in only 2 1/2 years, the USSR had four leaders, because three of them had dropped dead. (No, Ronald Reagan did not sneak over the Soviet Union, have a gunfight with each one of those men at high noon at the OK corral, then ride off into the sunset, back to America, after each gunfight. They died because they were very, very old.)

Because of this embarrassing series of deaths, the Politburo decided the next General Secretary had best be a young man who was more likely to survive. Primarily for this purpose, they chose Mikael Gorbachev. (No, that is not Russian for Ronald Reagan.)

Gorbachev, the only General Secretary of the Soviet Union to have been born after the October Revolution, opened up the Iron Curtain and eased repression through Perestroika and Glasnost, both of which began to erode Soviet power and control. Rather than brutally crushing all opposition, the kinder, gentler route was chosen, and this ultimately lead to the people rebelling. (No, Ronald Reagan did not order him to do any of these things.)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, aka America, Ronald Reagan left office, his successor, George Bush Senior, fired almost all of the previous administration members. This was one of the most extreme changes of administration in American history. The policies of Ronald Reagan were canceled. (No, policies which have been abandoned no longer have the power to change the world.)

This easing of pressure by the Russian government caused the Hungarian Communist dictatorship, which had previously respected the East German government's refusal to allow their citizens to exit the country, to suddenly change its mind. Bribed by the West German government to do so in September, 1989, they began allowing East Germans to come to Hungary and from there take trains to escape to West Germany. So many took this route that the government in East Germany was in danger of collapsing. (No, Ronald Reagan was not the engineer, nor conductor on any of these trains. Neither did he work for the Hungarian government.)

East German officials became so desperate they declared they were going to close the borders even more decisively. This led to mass protests. (No, Ronald Reagan did not lead or participate in any of the protests.)

Now threatened with the demonstrations, the panicked government planned to have their own Tiananmen Square, imitating their Chinese allies. When protests erupted in in Leipsig on October 9, 1989, the government issued orders to shoot to kill. To accomplish this definitive crushing of protest, machine guns were issued to the massive number of troops sent to the city. The 100,000 plus demonstrators turned out to be far more than expected and were so peaceful that the troops refused to fire on them, and instead began to join the demonstrators. (No, Ronald Reagan was not in command of the East German army at that time. He did not issue an order to join the protesters, or refuse to fire on them.)

The spectacular failure lead to the leader of East Germany being kicked out of power. (No, Ronald Reagan was not involved in the decision to fire Eric Honecker or to replace him with Egon Krenz.)

Krenz proved to be incompetent. He decided to talk a nice game while maintaining all existing brutality and oppression. In pursuit of this policy, he made an announcement that there would be minor changes to travel restrictions. He intended this to sound as if changes had been made, while in fact changing nothing. The announcement was botched, leading reporters from the West to think the Wall was opening. The East German people, assuming that the reports were accurate and that this meant the Wall was now open, stormed it en mass. (No, the Great Communicator, aka, the Great Deceiver, did not write or make the announcement. Neither did he storm the Wall.)

With a successful Solidarity movement in Poland on their minds, with the efforts of the Polish Pope inspiring them, with the recent fall of the leader of the repressive government, with the success of the protests which turned the army onto their side, the people of East Germany decided that this was the time to act. Tens of thousands of them went to the Wall and demanded to be allowed to pass. The Stasi tried to hold the line, but began to fear for their own lives. They were outnumbered literally thousands to one. Finally, Harold Yeager, a junior officer on duty that night decided to let people through. Once this was done, the damn had broken and stations all over the city followed his lead. (No, Harold Jager is not the German spelling of Ronald Reagan.)

Remember: Ronald Reagan was no longer president of United States when the Wall finally did fall. Ronald Reagan's policies had been replaced by the sharply different policies of his successor.

So, Republicans, please pay attention. In spite of your fervent belief, your absolute conviction, and your total unwillingness to consider any alternatives, Ronald Reagan did not open the Berlin Wall in 1987. He gave a speech. He gave a rather poor speech. The Wall did not open until his policies have been repudiated and changed by his presidential successor.

So who did tear down the Wall? The answer is: The people of East Germany. Many others contributed and helped to create the atmosphere that led to this final action on their part; but ultimately, they did it. They put their lives at risk and they tore down that Wall. Ronald Reagan's contribution, if he made any, was minor and unimportant.

This is more than just correcting history and eliminating a foolish delusion. As Dr. Sarot points out, the idea that Ronald Reagan gave a speech and magically everything fell before him, has convinced American neocons that all we have to do is rattle our sabers and then wait around until, almost instantly, the world changes into a wonderful happy place. It was exactly for this reason that they included the phrase "from Berlin to Baghdad" in plans that led to the Iraq war and its foolish dreams of easy success and a war that would pay for itself.

Later in the same program, Melvin Leffler of the University of Virginia, a history professor, reported on how the fall of the Berlin Wall looks to various parts of the world, as explained at a meeting with his colleagues from other parts of the world.

He notes that in Western Europe, the fall of the Wall is regarded as evidence of the success of multilateral cooperation and integration among nations and institutions. Russia regards the fall of the Wall as evidence of the results of poor leadership and placing trust in foreign governments. China regards the event as proof of the need to have economic reforms to benefit the peoples' standard of living, while at the same time suppressing political liberalization and strengthening the power of the state.

At the meeting, Prof. Leffer's contribution was to explain the meeting of the fall the Berlin Wall to the United States. He explained to his colleagues that we regarded the fall as a triumph of "freedom over tyranny" and think it showed how effective the United States was in its use of power in the policy of containment and the threat of the use of force against Communism. In other words, we see this as an American victory as a result of American power, which shows the benefits of American supremacy.

It is important to note that no one else in the world looks at it this way. This is an American interpretation. It is deeply flawed. It ignores the people who actually worked so hard in cooperation with America to contain and defeat Communism and it assumes that we, and we alone, should take all the credit. It is a neocon fantasy. It is a neocon mythos.

Bizarrely, Republicans and Democrats, and especially Bill Clinton, actually somehow decided that we had destroyed Communism because of unrestricted free enterprise! This led Clinton and others to believe that deregulation would be a good thing because it would automatically make everything work better. The ultimate result was the second greatest economic disaster in the history of the world.

The professor agrees that memories of the Berlin Wall coming down were a major contributor to the strange belief that we would be welcomed as liberators in Iraq, which would spontaneously turn into a democracy. We know how successful that was.

Somehow the neocons forgot to notice that East Germany joined West Germany. West Germany! ...An established and successful social democratic democracy. That is to say, a highly regulated, free enterprise-based, socialist system. Not unrestricted free enterprise, but free enterprise working within a highly socialist and well-regulated system. He further notes that we were not a largely unregulated, radically free enterprise system when the Berlin Wall fell. That came later. At the time of the fall, we were still very much an FDR nation. Capitalism was well regulated, with socialistic safety nets such as Social Security and Medicare firmly established and welfare in full effect in this country.

He adds that what actually caused the fall of the Berlin Wall includes the reconciliation between France and Germany and the spread of economic cooperation across Europe in the form of the Common Market and in the expectations that the then proposed European Union would bring even greater prosperity.

All acknowledge that US power was an essential contributor through containment, but that it was a contributor, not the cause. Containment is what allowed these other factors to take root, flower, and lead to the harvest of freedom. Reagan did made a contribution, but it was not in blustering speeches and being threatening as Republicans would have it today. It was in working with other leaders who also contributed and in maintaining the decades old policy of containment. It was in negotiating. It was in cooperating even with our enemies, not in taking a bullying, domineering, militaristic stand. He did the former early in his presidency. He evolved to the latter position as he matured as a president.

Ultimately, the American president who most contributed to the fall of the Wall was George Bush Senior. He succeeded where Reagan failed, not by being provocative, but rather by encouraging reforms and a sense of peace between the Soviets and the Free World.

But if a single person is to be given credit for the fall of the wall, the professor indicates that the one who most contributed was Gorbachev. It was he who changed the vision of the Soviet Union, turning away from militarism, international bullying, and a threat based, security conscious state. If anyone tore down the Wall it was Gorbachev. (No, he did not do it because Reagan told him too.)

The next speaker, Jeffrey Angle of Southern Methodist University, the Director of the Center for Presidential History had much the same points to make, although his statements can be summed up as, the fall of the Wall was, "an intertwined global affair."

He then says that the ultimate lesson of the fall of the Berlin Wall varies from nation to nation. For America, he says, "Ronald Reagan single handedly spent the Soviets into the ground.… And single handedly, moreover, tore the Berlin Wall down, brick by brick."

And of course most Americans believe that Reagan did this because he believed in freedom and strength and, I add, that for strength you can also say militarism or bullying.

He again makes the point that neocons in America assumed that this meant that all we had to do was run around, make threats, maybe have a very brief pay for itself war, and everybody will automatically want to be American just like the East Berliners had. The problem with this, he points out, is that the East Berliners did not want to be Americans. They wanted to be Europeans.

They had, he says, "A desire to join the collectivist spirit embodied in the nascent European Union." So, to Europeans the lesson was clear, unrestricted socialism as found in Communism is a miserable failure while well regulated capitalism working together with well-regulated socialism make a great team. Collectivism is desirable, if it is balanced with individualism. That's pretty much the exact opposite of what so many Americans take as the lesson of the Berlin Wall. The Director points out that Gorbachev expected us to reward him and his country, now Russia, with aid and support and by keeping NATO right where it was. Because we interpreted bullying, and militarism, and saber rattling as the solutions to all international conflict, we did those things instead. The result is Vladimir Putin.

So let me draw a conclusion: Ronald Reagan helped, a bit, to cause the collapse of the Berlin wall, while George Bush Senior, who did less than many other leaders in the world (and who did it by being thoughtful, careful, and keeping his mouth shut), contributed more.

In other words, if I were channeling Ronald Reagan's ghost I would not declare in his famous drawl, "Well, I won the Cold War. All by myself." Instead I'm quite certain he would say, like that little girl in the Shake and Bake commercial that anyone of my age remembers, "And I helped!"

I repeat: The big contribution America and Reagan made to the fall of the Berlin Wall had nothing to do with spending or threatening. It had everything to do with the policy of containment, a policy practiced by every American president from Harry Truman (who developed it) through George Bush Senior. However, containment alone could do nothing but exactly what it's name indicates, contain Communism. By doing so we kept the rest of Europe free and allowed them to develop the capacities and systems which eventually outcompeted the Soviet Union. But remember, we did not beat the Soviet Union through unrestrained, unregulated capitalism. The defeat of the Soviet Union is correctly attributed to a combination of well-regulated capitalism and well-regulated socialism, combined with the efforts of many world leaders, the aging of the revolutionary, Stalinist leadership of the USSR, and the courageous sacrifices of the oppressed people of the Warsaw Pact.

During the question-and-answer period, Prof. Sarotte indicated that if there was one thing she could change about the historiography of that era, it would be that, both then and now, people talking about this era would not simply talk about Europe, but would also talk about Europeans! She points out that it's not possible to accurately talk about the fall of the Wall without talking about Berliners or about the reunification of Germany without talking about Germans, but many people, including historians, do exactly that. She then recalled a former activist she had interviewed on the subject. This was a woman named Mafianna Buetler (sp?), an activist in East Berlin, "It still amazes me when I read history books about the history I lived...about the history I made. I read these history books, and they say the Wall fell and it gave us our freedom. We fought for our freedom and then the Wall fell." The professor said that's what she would change. She would make it clear that there were people who risked their lives to gain their freedom and that the Wall fell as a result of their struggle and its success.

Got it?

Part 2 -- The Best Educational System In The World, And How We Can Have It, Too

So now that we have seen what a superb educational system actually looks like, and noted how radically different it is from our own, it's time to ask the question, "How do we get there?"

In order to answer this question we must begin with an essential element of Finland's schools that cannot readily be applied to our educational system. This reality is that child poverty is rare in Finland. I have pointed out on repeated occasions that the only real problem with the American educational system is child poverty. Eliminate that one factor and we immediately rocket up to being rated as among the best schools in the world.

This does not mean that we do not need to pay attention to the system of Finland. It is a vastly better educational system than ours, even allowing the absence of child poverty. However, the fact remains that the biggest educational problem America faces today is that so many of our children come from poor homes.

That is an entirely different subject and one which would require extensive examination. So, as important as it is, I regarded as largely unaddressable within the context of the current discussion.

But there remain many things which we can and should be doing now. At this point I'm tempted to say the key to all of these educational reforms is…but I cannot do so. That is because there is no one key. There is no one magic solution. Well, with the exception of eliminating child poverty, there is no magic solution, there is no one key.

The things we need to do must start with centralizing our educational system in that the federal government should be responsible for education in this nation and it should establish the guidelines and rules by which everyone else operates. At the same time, we must give a much greater autonomy to the teachers and the principals of individual schools. In other words, we must both become much more centralized and much less centralized. This seeming contradiction makes sense when you realize that we centralize in some areas and decentralize in others.

At the same time we must stop the adversarial cancer which is in eating away at our educational system. When I first became a teacher, our district was just beginning to unionize. I was against teacher unions then, and to some extent remain so to this day. I felt that public service employees, such as teachers, policemen, and firemen, should not be unionized. Instead, I believed we should serve the public and in return be treated with the respect due to those professions. 

I was part of the first contract negotiations held in our district. Because it was a new practice to us, a representative of the California Teachers Association was present. At one point in the negotiations, while our group was in caucus, I said that I really felt that we were taking an adversarial position which was unnecessary. I commented that I sincerely believed that if I sat down with the district superintendent, he and I could quickly reach a solution and agreement with which everyone would be satisfied. I suggested that we all should take that attitude which should lead to a win-win situation. 

The CTA representative was shocked and angered. He said I was betraying my fellow teachers. He threatened to report me to the Labor Relations Board for my unacceptable attitude. He declared that we must treat the administration as our adversaries, any suggestion of developing a cooperative relationship he regarded as repulsive.

I responded as those of you who know me well would expect me to respond. A cooler and older head at the table suggested that both of us should calm down and we should continue on. We finally simply ignored the conflict and proceeded.

I tell this story to emphasize what I despised about unions. Why was it necessary for us to be adversarial? What was the need for that? Today I take more nuanced view, I'm not necessarily opposed to unions if those unions have the correct goals. IF.

If the union's goals are to protect its members no matter what... If the union's goals are to create an adversarial relationship with the administration... If the union's goals are not to make education the best it can be...then I oppose unions.

However, if the union's goals are to protect teachers who need to be protected and deserve to be protected while at the same time weeding out teachers who should not be in the classroom... If the union's goals include creating a cooperative and mutually beneficial relationship with the schools' administrators...if the union's goal is to make education the best it can be for the children's sake...then I strongly support unions.

In Finland a teachers' union works as a cooperative colleague of the administration. We need to create that situation. This requires a fundamental change the attitude of union leaders, not easy to accomplish, but I think my attitude is closer to that of the majority of teachers. So it is possible.

We also must eliminate the adversarial relationships between teachers. Teachers who work together to attain the goal of making their school a fine place for learning will have much greater success than teachers struggling to get the merit or bonus pay available from attaining higher test scores than those of their colleagues' classrooms. Teachers should not be enemies in a zero sum game. They should be professional members of the same team. No merit pay, no bonuses, only a fair wage for a dedicated public servant. 

The competitive model being pushed so hard in American education today, the model created by the Republicans and embraced by the Democrats, is poisonous. There is no competition in Finland, only the accomplishment and the development of the individual child. Our divisive attitude can be changed only if we change the politicians and they can only be changed if we change the opinions of the public. This could be done. However, the likelihood of attaining it in our current environment of political bitterness and hysteria is unlikely. It is not impossible, and it is worth working for, but it will not be an easy task.

Both responsibility and autonomy must be given to individual principals and their staff members. Teachers are professionals. Given the level of respect they deserve (in Finland they are among the most respected of all professionals) and given both the responsibility and the power to control their own schools in cooperation with their principals, teachers will get the job done. I have no doubt of that. They already have my trust and my support. Getting the rest of the country to agree to that won't be easy. Ever since Ronald Reagan first smeared the nation's teachers to shift attention away from his own failures, teachers have been the scapegoat for just about every single thing that's going wrong in our country.

Before Reagan's smears, teachers were highly respected and honored in our country. We can get back there again. I can only repeat that it will not be easy, but it is entirely doable.

Most importantly of all, education in America must return to being child centered. Children are not raw materials. They are not mere objects to be milled, ground, forged, and hammered into the correct shape. They are human beings who should all be encouraged and assisted in reaching their own full potential as an individual. Such an attitude cannot be attained in a test driven environment. If we are to improve our educational system we must ban standardized tests, or at least reduce the number of standardized test a student takes in his school career to one, as the Finns have done.

This is a mere outline. In order to actually obtain the reforms needed, much more planning is required. However, the outline is valid. We must begin the struggle and we must begin it now. We have one great advantage on our side. That is that even the conservatives admit that Finland's educational system is superb. There is the blueprint; we only need to follow it. There is the pattern; we only need to cut and sew it. There is the model; we only need to copy it.

It is said that it is hard to argue with success. Unfortunately, one of our political parties today has largely taken over the media, has dedicated itself to being pro superstition and anti-science, has based its actions not upon facts and reality but on fear and rage, and thus made sensible change difficult. However, these victories need not be eternal. We can turn the tide back to reality-based decision making.


For another view, see the following:
http://edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-daily/flypaper/2012/real-lessons-from-finland-hard-choices-rigorously-implemented.html

My disagreement with this article is that it assumes it was necessary to go through the extreme educational system which preceded the blossoming in order to reach the blossoming. I completely disagree. The earlier efforts were in fact failures and I do not see that is necessary to reproduce other people's failures before copying their successes. Nevertheless, I offer it to you for the sake of open discussions. It is a thoughtful article which at least approaches the subject without a rigid sense of Ideology.

Frankly, this is quite surprising since the The Thomas B. Fordham Institute tends to be a self-styled conservative organization which usually displays an extremely rigid sense of ideology. I do not recommend their articles in general, only this particular one and it is presented only as an alternative to my views.

I also cannot help but note that while this organization is forced by facts (a remarkable accomplishment for a conservative organization) to admit that the Finnish system, which is so antithetical to their ideology, is in fact highly successful; they manage to conclude that the only way to reach the Finnish system is via all the mindless rigidity of their ideology.

This attitude reminds me of the great Marxist screed. First we must have a dictatorship of the proletariat. This is undesirable, but a necessary stage. Then it will simply fade away. (As if dictatorships ever simply fade away.) However unpleasant this may be, it is a necessary base for finally attaining the real goals of a classless society.

So we must suffer all the bad, awful things before we can finally attain the good things? How sad.

The Best Educational System In The World, And How We Can Have It, Too

I am accustomed to truly bizarre statements being made by the callers when I am watching C-SPAN's Washington Journal.  However, I simply could not allow the statements made by one truly misinformed individual to go unanswered. During a discussion of how to improve American education, a caller made the following statement:

Finland has a decentralized, consumer driven model where where they use vouchers and local autonomy to direct education.

If you know anything about Finland's educational system, you know that this is a statement which is roughly equivalent to stating that in Germany the economy is doing well because they still maintain plantations where slaves grow and harvest cotton. Germany never had such a system. Germany certainly does not possess such a system now. And the Finnish education system is almost the exact opposite of everything this man thinks it is.

Which leads me to wonder where he got such bizarre misinformation. I suppose it could be FOXNews. But who knows?

I suspect it is more likely that he assumes Finland is doing those things because he has decided that they will magically work. Since he knows the magic formula (or, at least, believes he does) he assumes that a highly successful system such as Finland's must be using the methods that he knows will magically work. This is of course totally wrong.

It would be like saying I know that blowing your nose on paper napkins rather than Kleenex prevents cancer. I then find that there is a city in which cancer rates are unusually low. Therefore, without any further fact checking, I assume that everyone in that town must be blowing their noses on napkins rather than Kleenex. After all, how else could you explain the success in keeping cancer rates low?

Just to cover a few of the areas:

1.  Much of education is far more centralized in Finland than in the United States, but only in some ways. Most importantly, their system is a function of the national government and it controls many essentials such as the certification of teacher education programs which are not under the control of the US government. After all, in America, education is a function the state governments.

However, the caller was partially correct in that the national government of Finland has wisely delegated much control to local levels, including giving principals and teachers strong control over their own schools.

Therefore, the Finnish system is BOTH more centralized and less centralized than ours.  It depends upon which area you are discussing.

2.  There are virtually no voucher schools or charter schools in Finland. The creation of such a school is highly controversial and is generally regarded as damaging and negative to the nation's children. 

3.  Yes, parents are very involved in education, but they do not control education as parents do in America through local school board elections.

4. Finnish educators do not believe in homework.

5. Finnish educators regard the arts as critical to a child's education. These programs have not been cut back severely, as they have in the United States.

6. Finnish children get far more recess time then do their American counterparts.

I can go on and on but I've already addressed this in the following blog posts:

http://el-naranjal-del-desierto.blogspot.com/2012/10/educational-deform.html

http://el-naranjal-del-desierto.blogspot.com/2013/09/finland-strikes-again.html

Interesting Link:

 http://www.businessinsider.com/finland-education-school-2011-12?op=1

Anyone interested in factual data should click the link above. It lists many of the the things Finns are doing correctly in their schools. The authors say that the schools are decentralized, but as I pointed out above, this is simplistic.  They are more centralized in some ways, while less centralized in others.

Further, the authors don't mention a couple of matters which they should have included.  First, retention is very rare in Finnish schools. And second, charter schools and voucher systems are not used in Finland. Third, schools are non-competitive. Teachers don't compete with other teachers, children don't compete with other children, school districts don't compete with other school districts. The entire focus of the entire school system is on the benefit of, to, and for the children

Excerpt From A Reference Article:

-- School Management and Organization

The Ministry of Education and Culture oversees all publicly funded education, including the development of the national core curriculum through The Finnish National Board of Education and the accreditation of teacher training programs. Below the national level, Regional State Administrative Agencies and Centres for Economic Development oversee education.

At the local level, the authority comes from the Regional State Administrative Agencies and the Centres for Economic Development. The local government is responsible for providing basic education (grades 1-9) in 3,100 schools, 45% of which teach fewer than 100 students. However, larger schools exist, with the largest comprehensive schools enrolling more than 900 students. For upper secondary education, the Ministry of Education and Culture provides licenses to local authorities, municipal authorities and registered associations and foundations to establish schools.

Schools are managed by the teachers and staff. The local municipal authority in any given region appoints principals for six- or seven-year terms, but apart from this appointment, they largely leave the running of the school to the principal and his or her teachers. Principals are responsible for managing the school staff, ensuring the well-being and success of the students, and managing the school budget, although they do this generally in collaboration with the teachers. --

From:  http://www.ncee.org/programs-affiliates/center-on-international-education-benchmarking/top-performing-countries/finland-overview/finland-system-and-school-organization/

Final note: in a previous version of this post I stated that the central government was responsible for teacher certification. This is not correct. Only universities may issue teaching licenses in Finland. However, one of the functions of the central government is the certification of the teacher programs offered at those universities.  Once accepted into such a program, the potential educator receives his training at government expense.

Mexico Or Bust! ...And Bust?

Notes taken from Thom Hartmann's presentation on c-span referring to his book, The Crash of 2016:

In spite of bubbles, busts and booms, one thing was true of our economy for the first 200 years or so of our existence. As productivity increased, wages increased.  Workers were rewarded with higher salaries or shorter hours which is, as a practical matter, the same thing. This changed under the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

The author points out that in the 19th century people worked anywhere from 60 to, in some cases, 80 hour work weeks.  By 1900 the average was 60 hours.  By the 1920s the average was 50 hours. By the 1950s the average was 40 hours, and that was generally a matter of law as well as simple economics.

In the 50s, 60s, and 70s we saw, for the first time in American history, three consecutive decades of GDP growth of over 3.2%. During those decades, America had the richest middle class in history. That middle-class had large amounts of equity in their homes giving them a net value which was the highest in the history of the world for an average population.  During those decades, the average American, while not what we would call wealthy, nevertheless was acquiring more wealth than ever before.  They may not have been rich, but they were definitely worth something more than their fathers or grandfathers or great great great great grandfathers had been.

Even more:  They had leisure time. They had pensions.  They had job security.  They had paid vacations!

Where did they get all of this? They got it from the well regulated, smoothly functioning,  free-market economy created by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Before Ronald Reagan, and yes, right up to Ronald Reagan, we were:

The greatest creditor nation in the world. After Ronald Reagan we became the greatest debtor nation in the world.

We were the largest manufacturer and exporter of finished goods. After Reagan we became the largest importer of finished goods.

We were the largest importer of raw materials to make finished goods. We are now the largest exporter of raw materials to make finished goods.

So, in the 30 years since Ronald Reagan we have gone from the leader of the world in wealth to a state which we would have thought back in the 1970s could only happen to a Third World nation.

Now to be clear, remember that productivity has continued to increase, wages have not kept pace.  Average worker income in the 1980s was about $25,000. Average worker income today is about $25,000.Back then, a single worker earned enough money to keep the house, to support a household, and to accumulate wealth (usually in the form of home equity). Today both partners must work to barely keep afloat, and we have a long way to go before we recover from the devastating effects of the housing bubble.

What the hell happened?

Hint: What happened to destroy all of this was not the Democratic Party. Neither was it moderate or liberal Republicans (yes, Virginia, these things used to exist).

Conclusion: Keep voting Republican. They will turn America into a Third World country. We are heading toward Mexico as it was 20 years ago, even as Mexico benefits from a growing middle-class.The Dons and the Patrons will rule America. The rest of us will be peons. By the next century it is possible, if we keep electing Republican administrations and congresses, that Americans will be desperately trying to escape the poverty north of the border by sneaking our way across the Rio Grande to find jobs in Mexico.  That'll teach them a lesson! Let's see how they like it!