You Don't Have to be Anti-Zionist to Criticize Israel

I am five years older than the State of Israel, and can remember listening to the portentous UN vote on May 14, 1948 on the radio. I grew up in a family that was Zionist as a matter of course, and when, as a teenager, I attended a Zionist summer camp with Israeli counselors I became an unabashed advocate for the Jewish state. Later, as a consultant I worked in Israel with Israeli colleagues and had the privilege of facilitating a workshop on the design of a new Middle East for the then Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, who is now the President of the country. All of which is by way of saying that my views are long-standing and highly pro-Israel.

At the same time, I have never been blind to the fact that Israel, like any political state, has its issues. A key core value of Judaism over the centuries has been inclusivism, reflecting, I believe, centuries of being excluded. This value of inclusiveness has its roots in tradition going back to Genesis and continuing through the story of Ruth that we read on this holiday of Shavuot – it is summed up as “do not mistreat a stranger – remember that you were strangers.”

When an individual violates a deeply held value they will feel conflict and suffering over having failed to live up to their own standard, and I think the same is true of nations. From the beginning, the State of Israel has espoused the ideals of freedom, democracy, and inclusiveness, and has had to figure out how to live up to these values when dealing with a variety of “strangers,” whether they were Arabs living in the land in 1948, other Arabs who arrived post-statehood, immigrants from countries where religion had been so suppressed that the olim (immigrants) barely knew and could not prove they were Jews, other immigrants from far-flung Jewish communities in Ethiopia and India to name two who did not fit the Israelis’ picture of who Jews were, and the list goes on. Additionally the past few days have seen what can only be described as pogroms, incited by Members of the Knesset and carried out by Israeli mobs against African immigrants, many of whom fled their home countries to escape horrific persecution. As the newspaper Haaretz said, things are being said publicly and by public officials that, were they said about Jews, would have the speakers up in arms. A move is afoot to send these immigrants back to their home countries – kind of the way the British sent Jews back to Europe during the 2^nd World War.

Another value that is important to the Israeli state is that it is a Jewish state. While explicitly eschewing theocracy, Israel was founded as a homeland for Jews and as a response to the Holocaust as the latest in a long list of expulsions, persecutions, and pogroms. While other denominations of Judaism existed in the Fifties, the early governments of the State allowed “Jewish” to be defined by the most traditional denomination, the Orthodox. Of the Orthodox movement, the best organized and most unified were the haredim- literally those who live in fear or awe of God, the term today refers to what are called the “ultra-orthodox,” including but not limited to Hasidim.

It is not a stretch to call the Haredim fundamentalists. They cleave to strict interpretations of the Torah as God’s own immutable words, practice separation of the sexes, modesty of dress, strict observance of holiday and dietary practices, etc. Whether by default or intention the government of Israel has historically allowed the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox to define rules of citizenship, marriage, conversion, and many of the things that touch the daily life of the average Israeli.

Lord Acton said “power corrupts,” and I would argue that the power ceded to the ultra-Orthodox has corrupted both them and the State. The same people that will not turn on a light or a stove on the Sabbath have burned the cars of those who drive on that day. The same people who cling to a Torah that repeatedly admonishes against slander will call a ten-year old girl a whore and immodest for not meeting their standard of dress. The same people that recite Proverbs 31 (“a woman of valor”) on Friday nights will relegate women literally to the back of the bus the rest of the week.

The success of this haredi domination in Israel is now spreading to the US. In recent weeks we have seen reports of a practice of hiding instances of child abuse “so as not to bring shame on the community,” to the extent that those reporting sexual abuse of their own children have been shunned and expelled from synagogues and schools and there is credible evidence of an elected District Attorney colluding in the practice of bringing these cases to the Rabbi before or instead of they were brought to the legal authorities.

This brings us to the thornier question of the treatment of minorities in Israel. This one is almost unfathomable to me, in part because it is not a matter of the undue influence of a small religious group, but rather is in some cases a matter of official policy and in others a widespread public practice.

At the time the State was established in 1948, Ashkenazic Jews, that is Jews from Western Europe, many of them leaders in the Yishuv, the pre-State settlement, led the War of Independence and led the new government. This reflected the fact that much of the settlement in the first half of the 20^th century was from Western Europe and it also reflected the post-Shoah influx of settlement.

Here in the US we think of the Ashkenazic way as “real” Judaism – from the pervasiveness of Yiddish to holiday customs to food, most of what you’ll find in the press and in our synagogues reflects our Ashkenazic background, and almost all of the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox movements are from that community as well. It’s interesting to note that while about 20% of the Jews in the world are Sephardic, their numbers are much higher in the State of Israel. Despite that, Sephardic Jews in Israel, particularly those from India, Africa, and elsewhere who are darker-skinned  are discriminated against and mistreated, and often not recognized as legitimate Jews by the Haredi religious authorities.

I could go on – non-Orthodox rabbis are not recognized as clergy, and the same is true with non-Orthodox conversions and marriages, and on and on – but to get to the thorniest issue, we have to look at the status of Palestinians in Israel and in the territories that Israel has occupied since and subsequent to the 1967 war. I’m not interested here in getting into the question of who has a right to live in the land – I’m willing to stipulate on a number of grounds, not least the UN resolution of 1948, that Israel is the Jewish State. However, while many people assume otherwise, Israel has no official state religion – it’s like the US in that way. The founders of the State were committed that the Jewish homeland would be a country of true religious freedom. For that reason, I will also stipulate that the situation of Palestinian Arabs is not a case of religious discrimination.

Unfortunately, that makes the whole question more difficult rather than easier. There is growing unhappiness among the Arab citizens of Israel – a recent poll indicated that 48% of Israel's Arab citizens are dissatisfied with their lives in the Jewish state, compared to 35% in 2003; the number of Arabs who are not willing to befriend Jews has doubled and, perhaps most seriously, 62% of Israeli Arabs fear "transfer" (forced migration or, as it has been called, "ethnic cleansing"), compared to just 6% who expressed that fear in 2003. It was also noted that 40% of the respondents expressed their distrust of Israel's judiciary system while almost 41% supported an Arab boycott of Knesset elections.

In terms of demography, 58% of Jewish respondents said that they fear the threat of the demographic situation changing in favour of Arabs, due to the higher birth rate of the latter, at three children per family compared with 2.1 among Jews.

According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, the Arab population in 2010 was estimated at 20.4% of the country's population. The majority of these identify themselves as Arab or Palestinian by nationality and Israeli by citizenship. Many have family ties to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as to Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Negev Bedouins tend to identify more as Israelis than other Arab citizens of Israel.

Most of the Arabs living in East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967, were offered Israeli citizenship, but refused, not wanting to recognize Israeli sovereignty. They became permanent residents. They are entitled to municipal services and have municipal voting rights.

When half of a group that comprises 20% of a nation’s citizens are dissatisfied with their lives, that nation has a problem. When 62% live in fear of deportation or relocation, that problem is serious indeed. In the United States in the ‘60’s, African-Americans comprised about 10% of the population, and arguably most were dissatisfied with their lives and lived in fear of discrimination, racism, and, in some parts of the country, lynching. They were citizens who were not equal in a country founded on equality, and when that situation became intolerable for them as well as for much of the white majority, there was social change. Today about 10% of the population of the US is identified as LGBT – Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, or Transgendered, and have reached the point where they are demanding and getting social change. So it is reasonable to think that the same movement toward social change should be happening in Israel, but it is not.

I’m familiar with and even sympathetic to many of the arguments that support the status quo in Israel. Certainly, any group that comprises an existential threat to a sovereign nation must be taken seriously and dealt with as a matter of national security. However, in a democracy, when a group of citizens oppose the established state and do so non-violently, that minority deserves to be heard and taken seriously.

I can already hear the objection – “sure, non-violently, but the Arabs in Israel are far from non-violent – what about the rockets, the bus bombings, and all the rest? But it’s there that we fall into the same logical trap that many in the US fall into – our enemies are Muslim, therefore Muslims are our enemies – including Muslims who came to the US, some of them generations ago, and who are loyal, law-abiding American citizens. Now most Americans would not subscribe to that line of thinking – we consider it ignorant and racist. Yet in discussing Israel, we rarely hear the distinction drawn between Arabs who are Israeli citizens and those who are attacking from the outside, whether from Gaza or the West Bank, or from within Israel’s borders where they live as outsiders.

I’ve purposely left out the question of the territories annexed after the 1967 war. That’s a thorny question. Does Israel have the right to occupy and annex these territories by right of conquest? I’ll leave that to the political scientists and the ethicists. But some things I am sure about:

First, Israel is a de facto theocracy, with important civil and religious functions under the thumb of the Orthodox minority’s version of Jewish Sharia law.

Second, and related to that, women, the LGBT community, the Sephardic community and others in Israel are discriminated against and often abused.

Third, Arab citizens of Israel do not have the same freedoms including freedom from fear that even Jews who are not citizens have.

And Fourth, and perhaps most important, pointing out these facts and, yes, criticizing the Government and people of Israel for these wrongs does not make me anti-Zionist any more than criticizing US policies makes me anti-American.

Given Israel is the Jewish State it, like the Jewish people ourselves, will be held to a high standard. According to the Torah, we are commanded to be “a nation of priests, a holy people.” Throughout the Torah, the Prophets, and the writings holiness is drawn to include equality, liberty, treating others equitably, doing justice, loving mercy, etc. Like it or not, if that is who we proclaim ourselves to be, we give the world the right to hold us accountable for being that – this is no less true for Medinat Yisrael than for you and me as individual Jews.

If Israel is the Jewish State, with every Jew in the world having the right to Israeli citizenship simply for the asking, then we are all, in effect, citizens of Israel, and we are accountable for its policies and actions. I love Israel as I love the US, and that makes it my responsibility to speak out. I hope you will also.Follow this blog

Charley Reese's final column for the Orlando Sentinel.

A friend forwarded this to me and I think it's worth wide circulation. Please pass it on, post and tweet.

Charley Reese's final column for the  Orlando Sentinel. 

This is about as clear and easy to understand as it can be. The article below is completely neutral, neither anti-republican or democrat. Charlie Reese, a retired reporter for the Orlando Sentinel, has hit the nail directly on the head, defining clearly who it must assume responsibility for the judgments made that impact each one of us every day. 
      545 vs. 300,000,000 People

                     -  By Charlie Reese

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The President does.

You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations.  The House of Representatives does.

You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a President to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall.  No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating  deficits. The President can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? John Boehner. He is the leader of the majority party. He and fellow House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want.  If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.

If the Army & Marines are in Iraq and Afghanistan it's because they want them in  Iraq and Afghanistan.

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy","inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they  alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.

Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.

We should vote all of  them out of office and clean up their mess.

Bonanza Column 244 - Ave et Vale

I began writing this column in September of 2004 – this particular column is number 244 and will be the last, at least for a while.

After writing about TRPA critically during the Juan Palma years, hopefully during the John Singlaub regime, and enthusiastically as I’ve watched Joanne Marchetta engage with reinventing the Agency, I’ve decided to put my money where my mouth is. Several weeks ago Joanne approached me and asked if I’d take the job of Chief Operating Officer and partner with her in transforming TRPA along the lines that, at about the same time, were being demanded by Nevada SB 271. I agreed to do so on a half-time basis so that I didn’t have to bail on my other clients and began work at TRPA on July 1.

I’ve been in the business of organizational transformation since before the discipline had a name, starting with pioneering work at IBM, moving through other companies in a variety of industries. I’ve been a contract executive before, but not with the organizational redesign portfolio, and after thirty years of working with organizational leaders at arms’ length as a consultant, the opportunity to actually get in and work inside organizational change was just too good to pass up.

Unfortunately, now that I’m on the TRPA payroll, it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to continue to write a political column – even if I did, I couldn’t write about TRPA, and that wouldn’t be fair to the paper or to its readers, so with surprisingly mixed emotions, I’m going to discontinue this column and hope the Bonanza will find someone else willing to represent the Progressive view on a weekly basis.

I know there will be those who are glad, even gleeful to see my departure from print, and even a few who will be sorry. I know from letters and blog responses that I’ve really annoyed a lot of Conservatives, and that has been more than half the fun for me – the rest has been satisfaction when other Progressives told me how much they appreciated my speaking their views, and there have even been a number of thoughtful folks who have told me they didn’t agree with me, but I made them think – no writer could ask for more.

I’ve never subscribed to the definition of an intelligent person as “someone who agrees with me.” (Given the number of times I’ve been called dumb, stupid, and a moron in response to my columns, there are those around here who do subscribe to that definition.) I can’t fathom most of what Conservatives think or believe, but I don’t disrespect them for thinking it (except for the far Right fringe, but then again I feel the same about the far Left fringe). I believe that one of the key things that makes America great is our diversity – of opinion, of culture, or religion, all of it – and I originally took on this column to be sure that there was more than one voice in the Bonanza. I think I’ve done that and I hope it won’t end with my stepping down.

I consider Freedom of Speech the cornerstone of all the other freedoms we have – without free speech and a free press, if the other freedoms were abridged, there would be no way to make that known or to act against it. It’s no accident that the recent democracy movements began with acts of speech, or that repressive regimes focus on making sure people don’t have the freedom to speak. For that reason, writing this column has been a privilege, and opportunity, and a gift.

By the same token, there would be no point in speaking if no one was listening, so I want to take the opportunity to say thank you – to friends, to foes, and to innocent bystanders. Your reading made my writing possible and, not incidentally, fun.

In that first column in 2004 I quoted JFK’s definition of a Liberal. I think it’s fitting that I close with that in this last column:

A "Liberal" [is] someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."

And don’t worry – I’ll be around, and you’ll hear from me. Y’all take care now…

Bonanza Column 243 - Who Are the GOP Working For?

The New York Times reports that high-ranking executives at 200 of the biggest U.S. companies saw their pay increase an average of 23 percent from 2009 to 2010, bringing them close to pre-recession earnings. Those big paychecks didn't trickle down to the rest of the workforce, with the average American employee seeing less than a 1 percent increase in pay. The average CEO made $10.8 million last year, with CEO Philippe Dauman leading the pack with a whopping $84.5 million.

You read it right – eighty-four and a half million dollars. Now I’m sure Viacom is a very nice company – they are in the entertainment business, and it’s hard to fault that. Still, after a lifetime of working with some top CEOs, I can’t imagine anyone being worth that kind of money, or even $10.8 million, particularly when the people who are actually doing the work that earns the company its money get a 1% increase against 23% for top executives.

In addition to working with CEOs and top executives as a consultant, I’ve been an executive myself, and I don’t subscribe to the view that “the suits” or “the people on the top floor” don’t produce anything of value. On the contrary, it’s been my experience that the work of strategic design and strategy execution are what allow companies to grow, innovate, and be profitable and what allow employees to focus on customer service, quality, and sales. Still, if the top salesperson in a company makes, say, $250,000 per year and top executives make $10 million, it’s hard for me to imagine that what the executives do is worth 40 times more to the company than what the salesperson does.

All this becomes more relevant when you consider the current debate between the GOP and the Democrats over closing tax loopholes for the wealthiest Americans (In case you’ve been living in a cave, the GOP opposes this). Now the Right would have you believe that the debate is over raising taxes “on the American people,” but what the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats want is to raise revenues by closing tax loopholes and exceptions for the very wealthiest Americans, not for the middle or working classes. Republicans, on the other hand, under the dubious banner of “no tax increases” would reduce spending by cuts in programs like Social Security and Medicare.

However they clothe it, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the GOP, or at least the right wing of the GOP, which seems to be driving the Republican train, don’t really care about the vast majority of Americans. According to factcheck.org, roughly one family in 50 will make over $250,000 this year – that’s 2% of the population that would be affected by closing tax loopholes or even raising taxes on those making more than a quarter million a year. Said another way, the GOP is fine with protecting this 2% at the expense of 98% of the people in the US.

I know this is not a popular argument here in Incline Village, where probably the percentage with incomes over $250k is considerably higher than 2%. But for humanity’s sake, what happened to noblesse oblige, the idea that people born into the upper social classes must behave in an honorable and generous way toward those less privileged?

If the United States is not to become a two-class society¸ with a huge working class supporting a privileged few, Republicans in Congress will have to stop pandering to their wealthy patrons and lying to people about who is paying their freight, and start thinking in terms of what’s good for the people who elected them.

Bonanza Column 242 - Politics vs. Ideology

As the state’s new fiscal year begins, I guess you’d have to say we’re in better shape than Minnesota – at least our state government is open for business. At the same time, with Washoe and Clark Counties demanding the return of a total of $123 million from the State to County coffers, it’s clear that Governor Sandoval has a tough row to hoe in managing the state’s economy.

I’ve been an outspoken critic of the past two governors, both Republicans, and the long-time reader of this column (and I’m sure there is one, even if it’s only my brother) might expect me to continue that course of criticism with Governor Sandoval, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint you for now. My disagreement with Governor Guinn was largely ideological – he was farther right than I like to see in the State House. My antipathy for Governor Gibbons, while also ideology-based was also based in my distaste for his arrogance and his ethics.

Despite his being a Republican, I’ve liked Brian Sandoval since he was Attorney General, and as I’ve said in earlier columns, his giving up a lifetime appointment to the Federal Bench to re-enter electoral politics and run for Governor bespeaks for me an authentic commitment to public service and to serving where he can make the most difference. We do not always agree on the means for making that difference, but we differ very little about the ends. I supported Rory Reid in last Fall’s election because I thought (and still think) his plan for rescuing our suffering educational system was the better one, but I’m willing to give Sandoval’s approach a chance now that he’s in office.

And I think he’s off to a good start. Because of the timing of the governor’s taking office and the budget’s taking effect (January and July, respectively), most first-term governors go with the budget they inherit from their predecessor. To Sandoval’s credit, he built his first budget from the ground up and, again, while I don’t agree with significant parts of it, it reflects his commitment to resolving the state’s economic ills, and I can respect that and give it a chance to work rather than condemning it out of hand as some of my fellow Progressives might expect me to do.

The point, for me, is this. There is politics and there is ideology. Both involve belief systems, and no one can say that a given belief system is totally wrong or without merit except maybe at the extremes of the political spectrum. But politics goes beyond belief and into persuasion and, as Machiavelli said, into the “art of the possible” – where can we find common ground despite our different beliefs and move forward? At its best, politics is about finding the values that, at the root of it all, we have in common and resolving our differences in favor of those values. Ideology, on the othe r hand is too often about dogma and beliefs that we are certain are right. Concomitantly, any beliefs other than ours must be wrong, and we focus on differences rather than common ground. Too often, ideologues use either force or isolation to deal with those of differing beliefs, and both of those are impediments to progress.

So Progressives can differ from Governor Sandoval politically and not turn it into an ideological battle of who’s right and who’s wrong, but rather have our differences be the heat that forges new ideas and real progress. In an era where national politics has become almost essentially ideological, perhaps Nevadans can demonstrate that real political progress is possible. Let’s hope so, anyhow.

Bonanza Column 239 - The Lake Knows No Parties

As a veteran of the organizational change business, there are two things I emphasize to my clients – one is that change takes time and the other is that seeing the change reflected in the market’s response to your business takes even more time.

For those of us who watch the workings of TRPA closely, there is no doubt that significant organizational change has occurred since Joanne Marchetta took over as Executive Director, and that that change is continuing in the face of all the stresses impinging on the agency and on Marchetta herself. At the same time, it’s not surprising that much of the public have taken a “we shall see” attitude – I don’t blame them With anti-government feeling at a long-time high, many are not disposed to trust any agency to have their interests at heart, and TRPA has a long history of being one way and a short history of changing.

Now the Legislature has passed the bill that was AB and SB 271, and TRPA will have until 2014 not just to have its house in order, but to meet certain metrics that will, arguably, demonstrate that it has done so. This is not an unreasonable requirement to place on the Agency, and it is one that I am confident it will meet. Ideally I would have preferred that the bill not pass. Ms Marchetta and her staff have, I think, amply demonstrated in action their commitment to change how the Agency does business and responds to the public. Still, the inertia of public perception of change is real and needs to be taken into account, so this seems to me like a good compromise. If I were in Ms Marchetta’s shoes it seems to me that I would see the deadline as a real challenge, but one I and my staff can meet and in doing so prove our bona fides.

And make no mistake – we need TRPA. The agency was not set up on a whim – even in 1969 it was apparent that advances in technologies and increased traffic and development would make regulation a necessity if the unique character of the Lake and Basin were to survive. Tahoe’s unique position of having a state border running down its spine, leaves three options for regulation – each state regulating its side separately, the Federal Government regulating the bi-state area, or a bi-state compact leaving regulation in the hands of the coordinated effort of the two states involved. The Federal option is a nightmare that no one wants to see. The separate states option is a logical impossibility – that line down the middle of the lake is imaginary – what affects any part of the lake affects the lake. The compact is the only option that has any hope of protecting the lake and the Legislature has but some teeth into a demand that TRPA meet its responsibilities under the compact.

The bi-state compact is not perfect by a long shot. Given the varied and often competing interests of Northern California, Southern California, the Central Valley, etc., as well as Northern and Southern Nevada, urban and rural Nevada, etc., I’d rather see the Governing Board composed of people from those geographical areas most affected by the lake, but we have the Compact we have, not the Compact we want and it’s working better than not.

Two things should not enter into the scrutiny of TRPA, though it would be a miracle if they didn’t. One is party politics – this cannot be allowed to be turned into a political football. On January 10, 1945, Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan delivered a celebrated speech in the Senate chamber announcing his conversion from isolationism to internationalism saying “politics stops at the water’s edge.” Vandenberg's Senate career stands as a monument to the benefits of bipartisanship in American foreign policy, and applies no less to the edge of Lake Tahoe than to the edge of the Atlantic.

The second thing is misguided environmental Puritanism – TRPA is not perfect, and local environmental groups have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to sacrifice the good and improving because they can’t have the perfect.

Anything less than TRPA’s meeting the criteria and the Compact being strengthened would be the beginning of the end for the Lake Tahoe Basin.

Bonanza Column 240 - The First World and the Third

Recently a friend of mine sent me one of those emails that talked about all the things people our age remember that our kids and grandkids have never heard of. You know, like milk delivery to your front door (in glass bottles) (with cream on top). There was a quiz of 25 items to see which ones you remembered first-hand. I got 25 out of 25.

That, along with seeing online reports of the IHS graduation and various college commencements got me thinking about what we may have gained and lost in the past fifty or sixty years.

As I write this I’m concluding a three-week business trip to Botswana in Southern Africa. During my trip here I’ve had the enormous privilege of working with a number of Batswana (the country is Botswana with a long o, the people are Batswana, or in the singular Motswana), mainly in the diamond mining business, and have been impressed with how modern they are in some ways and how old-fashioned they are in others.

Don’t get me wrong – everything is up to date in Gaborone and in the villages around the mine sites. The Internet is alive and well, there are HD TVs everywhere, everyone drives a nice car, etc. At the same time from an American point of view much of the Batswana behavior looks quaintly Victorian. The people here are enormously polite, and you don’t get the feeling it’s put on – it seems quite natural, and they are as polite to each other as they are to outsiders. I quickly learned that even the most trivial conversation, business or personal, must start with an exchange of “how are you?” You can go for days here without hearing a single word you would not say in front of your grandmother – even in the rough-and-ready atmosphere of mining, four letter words are conspicuous (to an American) by their absence.

Botswana has been a democracy since 1965 and has an active political process. While there is only one party on the books, that party is so factionalized that there may as well be several. The current President is the son of the founding President and his popularity is not great at the moment – they’ve just gone through a seven-week public employees’ strike that he refused to settle, and Batswana, particularly parents of children who have had no real school for seven weeks, aren’t happy, but the criticism of the President in the press and by people is political, not personal in nature.

Which brings me back to our 2011 graduates from High School and College. They are graduating into a world of technology that was undreamt of in the days of home milk delivery and Butch Wax, but also into a society the incivility of which is unmatched in our history, where public officials who have done nothing wrong are subject to personal attacks that have nothing to do with reality (see “Birthers”) and others are engaged in activities that would make a Nevada Madam blush and don’t seem to see anything wrong with it unless they are caught (see Spitzer, Weiner, Ensign, et al.) or it comes back to haunt them when they think they deserve higher office (see Gingrich).

We are fond of thinking of ourselves as the “First World” and places like Botswana as the “Third World,” (the Soviet Union and its allies were the “Second World,” but now have presumably vacated that space), with the implication that somehow they need to catch up. After three weeks here I’m no expert, but I do see a lot of the values that existed sixty years ago reflected in these supposedly primitive people – sure there are goats and donkeys wandering around in the country and many people still live very simply in thatched huts, but I wonder if on “family values” and living out a deep religious faith we’re not the ones who need to catch up. I’m just sayin’.

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Bonanza Column 238 - It's All About the Brain

The eminent scholar and public policy advisor Jeremy Rifkin makes a compelling case that the history of the history of the human race is characterized by the development of wider and wider circles of empathy – starting in the hunter-gatherer days with the tribe, then affiliated groups (e.g. religions) and progressing toward the nation-state. Hence today, Americans feel closer to Americans than to, say Germans or Saudis, and this feeling extends to some very real material results such as the outpouring of aid to the areas struck by Hurricane Katrina and the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. We’ve even seen what Rifkin calls natural empathy transcend national borders after the earthquake in Haiti, the tsunami in Southeast Asia, and the more recent earthquake in Japan. For Rifkin, greater levels of civilization are marked by expanding circles of empathy and compassion, and he cites both biological and social data to back up his contention.

On the other hand, we have House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) saying he will block aid money for Missouri tornado victims unless Democrats agree to an equal amount of spending cuts. As Steve Benen points out in the Washington Monthly, “When part of the country is devastated by a deadly natural disaster, federal lawmakers "are expected to put aside politics and ideology" and help, not hold the victims "ransom" to their pet causes,” and I would add particularly in the case of a disaster such as happened in Missouri where the timeliness of aid will make a difference that could save families, properties, and lives.

Cantor and the GOP leadership have interpreted the results of the mid-term elections last year as a wholesale mandate to cut spending and damn the consequences. Republicans gave up "compassionate conservatism" as a Bush-era failure, and their renewed passion for small government essentially means "you're on your own," even in the face of disaster.

So how do we explain this seeming contradiction – as a human race we seem to be evolving in the direction of, as Einstein put it, “widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” On the other hand we have Mr. Cantor and the GOP taking this regressive position, putting a political bargaining ploy ahead of the real need of people, many of whom are presumably in their political base.

Just as Rifkin’s research on empathy and compassion began with neuroscience, and particularly with the discovery of so-called “mirror neurons” in the 1990s, we can begin to look for an answer in the brain. A study was published last month by researchers at University College London that, the researchers say, links personality traits of liberals and conservatives to differences in brain structure and, presumably, function. The study was based on 90 young adults who reported their political views on a five-point scale from very liberal to very conservative, and then submitted themselves to brain scans using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a well-established method for studying both brain structure and activity.

The study found that self-described conservatives had a greater development in an area of the brain called the Amygdala, while liberals had greater development in an area called the Anterior Cingulate Cortex. The functions of both these brain areas have been well-established. The Amygdala is a brain stem structure that is, essentially, a threat-detection sensor. When the Amygdala is activated, the result is the familiar “fight or flight” response. So people with a highly developed Amygdala will be more sensitive to threat and more likely to respond to threat aggressively.

The Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) is a region that responds to uncertainty and conflicts. The researchers said “it is conceivable that individuals with a larger ACC have a higher capacity to tolerate uncertainty and conflicts, allowing them to accept more liberal views.” They go on to say “Our findings are consistent with the proposal that political orientation is associated with psychological processes for managing fear and uncertainty.”

It is also well-established that a big part of the fight or flight response is to see the world, temporarily at least, in binary terms – good and bad, black and white, and to avoid uncertainty or shades of grey. Now none of this is my opinion – the London study was published in Current Biology, a peer-reviewed journal, and 90 is a good-size sample; Cantor’s remarks and the support of (and non-repudiation of) his position by other Republicans is a matter of record. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions, but I’m just sayin’…