Fighting Back Against Corporatization Part 3-- Neutralizing the Psychopath

Last week, I wrote about how corporations as psychopaths because they lack empathy due to their profit motive and limited liability. Today's post will be on how to defend oneself against psychopaths. The ideas are taken from a presentation by John Clarke on "Workplace Psychopaths" and a book by Martha Stout entitled "The Psychopath Next Door."

Collective Action

A common tactic by workplace psychopaths is to identify victims' needs and to use these needs to cause emotional pain and manipulate the victim. Clarke's list of needs looks a lot like the basic needs that we have as human beings and are also preyed upon by corporations.

 
After prolonged exposure to the psychopath, the victim can develop physical symptoms as well, including stomach ulcers, high blood pressure, rashes, hair loss, anxiety attacks,  and chronic fatigue. A victim often feel like they are going crazy, because they often think they are the only ones undergoing this experience, one that defies the normal bounds of reason.

As a result, victims often feel like they are stuck and that nothing can be done. In truth, there are things that can be done.

If the victims banded together, they would not be alone. They could also gang up on the psychopath. But once they adopt this strategy, they must be completely committed to each other, because the psychopath could easily turn on them and the victims would be worse off than when they started.

Auditors can provide a check on psychopathic behavior, because they are more difficult to manipulate. They come from outside the psychopath's usual power hierarchy. They also use performance measures to evaluate people rather than subjective reports.

Both of these remedies provide useful lessons for how to defend against the bad behavior of psychopathic corporations: collective action, transparency, and oversight. Isn't it interesting that trade unions are getting slagged so badly these days?

Transparency and Accountability

One of Clarke's central arguments is that auditors are the natural enemy of workplace psychopaths, because they assess based on objective measures of performance, can see through impression management, and sit outside of the psychopath's usual power hierarchy. If we translate this over to corporations, we would need a way to generate objective measures; bypass public relations, marketing, and lobbying; and be independent.


Currently, corporations are evaluated solely on profit and loss. This isn't working very well for human beings who are more than shareholders or consumers. Measures of performance should cover factors such as labor relations, environmental impact, safety, and social responsibility. Organizations such as United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Standards Organization (ISO) have already started work on measurement regimes. I'm personally skeptical of balanced score cards. I'm sure corporations will find a way to manipulate these too, but maybe somebody who has a better grasp of game theory should design and implement them.

In order to calculate these measures, we'd need access to raw data from the companies, not just press releases or cleaned up data. We'd need to make it a legal requirement that companies release these figures.

The independent part basically rules out government at this point. Politicians need way too much money to get elected these days. It takes on average over $1.3 million to win a US congressional seat and over $8 million to win a senate seat. It's too hard to raise that much money without becoming beholden to someone. If it's not government, that basically leaves us. We are the ones who need to keep our collective eyes on corporate behavior.

Robert Jensen, a professor in the School of Journalism in the University of Texas at Austin has proposed a Citizen's Oath of Office. It is intended to be taken by every citizen on the same day that our elected representatives take their oaths of office. It states:

I do solemnly pledge that I will faithfully execute the office of citizen of the United States, and that I will, to the best of my ability, help create a truly democratic world by (1) going beyond mainstream corporate news media to seek out information about important political, economic, and social issues; (2) engaging fellow citizens, including those who disagree with me, in serious discussion and debate about those issues; (3) committing as much time, energy, and money as possible to help build [authentic] grassroots political organizations that can pressure politicians to put the interests of people over profit and power; and (4) connecting these efforts to global political and social movements fighting the U.S. empire abroad, where it does the most intense damage. I will continue to resist corporate control of the world, resist militarism, resist any roll-back of civil rights, and resist illegitimate authority in all its forms. [And I will commit to collective efforts in my local community to help build joyful alternatives to an unsustainable consumer society.]

 It strikes me that this oath would serve equally well for the purpose of resisting corporatization.

Token Economy

Clarke's third suggestion is to institute a token economy to reinforce good behavior and deter bad behavior. A token economy is a system of behavior modification that uses systematic positive reinforcement of target behavior using symbols or tokens. It is often used with children, mental institutions, and prisons. Privileges can be earned or lost based on choices made.

I find this idea appealing, because it's cute. I don't know how well it would work, but Clarke is an advocate and it has been used elsewhere successfully with recalcitrant populations. This idea also ties in well with the accountability measures discussed above. If you don't damage the environment, your charter can be extended. If you treat your workers well, your corporation is allowed to grow larger. If you're not socially responsible, we'll increase your tax rate. (I'm not crazy about this last one, because I think we should be simplifying our tax code, not making it more complex.)

Resist the Urge to Pity

"The Psychopath Next Door" by Stout has a chapter on 13 rules for dealing with psychopaths.  IMHO, it's the best part of the book.  I include two of them here.

9. Question your tendency to pity too easily.
Respect should be reserved for the kind and the morally courageous. Pity is another socially valuable response, and should be reserved for innocent people who are in genuine pain or who have fallen on misfortune. If, instead, you find yourself often pitying someone who consistently hurts you or other people, and who actively campaigns for your sympathy, the chances are close to one hundred percent that you are dealing with a sociopath.

In other words, don't feel sorry for corporations. When an automaker says that it's too difficult to meet new emissions or fuel efficiency standards, make them comply anyways. When a corporation complains that the taxes are too high, tell them that this is nonsense. When a mining corporation protests that safety regulations are too stringent, don't listen.

The last rule on her list is "Living well is the best revenge." I'll be writing about this in my next post.

Fighting Back Against Corporatization Part 2-- Striking at the Roots

Last week, I wrote about the rationale behind the creation of corporations as legal entities. If these institutions are not serving us well, then let's change them. Today's post will be about some of the ideas afoot about how this might be done.

Limit the Scope of Corporations

In "The Story of Citizens United v. FEC,"Annie Leonard explained that in the 19th century, corporations were created to undertake short term projects, such as the construction of a bridge or railroad. Upon completion of the projects, the corporation would be dissolved. We could try going back to this model, by limiting the size or duration of a corporation. For instance, any corporation with a market capitalization greater than a certain number of dollars would be forced to divide itself into new competitive units. This would also eliminate the problem of some corporation, such as a bank or auto manufacturer, being too big to fail. Another option is to have expiry dates for corporate charters, for example, it can't last more than, say 6 years.

Limit Limited Liability

When a corporation causes some harm to people, through, for example, environmental damage, drugs with side effects, faulty products, or outright malfeasance, the victims and their survivors can only sue the corporation for its assets. Limited liability prevents them from suing the shareholders, owners, or managers of the corporation for their personal assets. Unfortunately, the value of the claims can often exceed the available assets and someone invariably gets the short end of the stick.


Michael Rozeff, a liberatarian, has argued for abolishing limited liability entirely, because the arrangement skews risk assessment and market valuations. Arguments in favor of abolishing limited liability have also come from progressives, such as the article in Mother Jones following the Union Carbide gas plant accident in Bhopal, India, and the spill of the Exxon Valdez in Alaska.

Less dramatic options exist as well. Shareholders could be made liable for their capitalization and any earnings that they have received. In other words, they could lose the value that they initially invested PLUS any dividends that they were paid. For example, someone who held shares of a high profitable tobacco company would have to return the money they made if it was needed to cover claims by victims or their survivors. Another option that is currently popular is to increase the personal  responsibility of executives.

Change the Tax Code

Currently, capital gains, i.e. income from an investment, is taxed at a lower rate than earned income. I see two problems with this. 1) It encourages people to buy shares and sit on their butts, rather than to use their money do work that increases other kinds of value. 2) It encourages creative accounting to move income from one category to another. It would be more beneficial to society for this creativity to be directed elsewhere. The simple solution is to simply remove the category of capital gains. Income is income. Investing in corporations would no longer be the default choice for making money grow and people would look closer at other options, such as supporting local projects.

Amend the Constitution

This proposal is specific to the US, because it addresses a uniquely American problem. The idea is to amend the constitution to explicitly state that corporations are not persons and subject to protections under the bill of rights. Much of the  outrage surrounding corporate personhood came to a boil last year after the Citizens United v. FEC case was decided by the US Supreme Court and limits on how much money corporations could contribute to political campaigns were removed. These limits, it was decided, were an infringement of corporations first amendment rights to free speech. Many people felt that this overstepped the bounds of reason and are mobilizing. Perhaps the most visible example is Stanford University law professor, Lawrence Lessig, and his root strikers project.

Interestingly, the origins of corporate personhood are murky at best. As Rushkoff wrote in Life Inc., the concept crept into law through dogged persistence on the part of corporations and a clerical "error."

The passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, written to guarantee the rights of citizenship to former slaves, gave corporate lawyers the legal framework to make their cases. For reasons historians can't quite articulate, the Amendment uses the phrase "persons" instead of "natural persons." Corporations argued that this was because it was meant to include their own, non-natural personhood. In their opinions, justices repeatedly scolded corporate lawyers for attempting to exploit a law written on behalf of emancipated slaves. But the corporations had patience, and opportunistically sought out every leak and crack in the system.

Finally, in 1886, in a legal maneuver that has yet to be conclusively explained, a Supreme Court clerk with documented affinity for corporate interests incorrectly summarized an opinion in the headnotes of the decision on Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company. The clerk wrote, "The defendant corporations as persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution... which forbids a State to deny any persons within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." There was no legal basis for this statement, nor any discussion about it from the justices. From then on, however, corporations were free to claim the rights of personhood. The more precedents that were established, the more embedded the law became. Over the next twenty-five years, 307 Fourteenth Amendment cases went before the Supreme Court. Two hundred eighty-eight of them were brought by corporations claiming their rights as natural persons.

At present, movetoamend.org is gathering signatures in support of three constitutional amendments, one of which is to "[f]irmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights." Their effort builds on the work of reclaimdemocracy.org, which has written the following draft amendment. 

An Amendment to Preclude Corporations from Claiming Bill of Rights Protections

SECTION 1. The U.S. Constitution protects only the rights of living human beings.
SECTION 2. Corporations and other institutions granted the privilege to exist shall be subordinate to any and all laws enacted by citizens and their elected governments.
SECTION 3. Corporations and other for-profit institutions are prohibited from attempting to influence the outcome of elections, legislation or government policy through the use of aggregate resources or by rewarding or repaying employees or directors to exert such influence.
SECTION 4. Congress shall have power to implement this article by appropriate legislation.

Getting a constitutional amendment passed is not an easy task, especially in the face of opposition supposed and financed by corporations, but it is a very cool solution. If we get it done, it will be something to tell the grandkids about.

How little I knew you Geraldine Ferraro

When Geraldine Ferraro ran for vice president in 1984, I had no idea what it meant to be a feminist and to be limited as a member of a marginalized group. But I did have the impression that Ferraro must have been a Very Bad Person, based on the people talked about her, both in terms of content and tone. It didn't occur to me that her gender had anything to do with it. Her passing on the weekend provides me with an opportunity to reflect on how little I understood at the time about her and what she did for us.

That year, I was thirteen years old and in grade eight. I was not following politics at all. To me, the most significant event on the world stage was the birth of UK's Prince Harry in September. I knew that there was a presidential election in the US and who candidates were. I knew that Geraldine Ferraro was running. I had no idea what the issues were in the election. But I did have the impression that Ferraro must be a Very Bad Person.

The news was always critical. She had said the wrong thing. She was doing things she shouldn't have. Her past was questionable. More damaging than the facts were the implications, which read like a laundry list of words to marginalize someone: incompetent, immoral, not Christian, too uppity, exceeding her capabilities... The adults around me (both men and women) seemed to feel a sense of outrage; how dare she run for Vice President!

It did not strike me as remarkable that a woman was running for the position.  I had the mistaken idea that the world always was and will be this way. It didn't occur to me that people expressed these sentiments about her, because she was a woman. I had the mistaken idea that men and women had equal opportunity in our society.

To give you an idea of how unenlightened I was, let me tell you about the most memorable scene (to me) from the move Top Gun. Maverick (Tom Cruise) had kept Charlie (Kelly McGillis) waiting, because he stayed to play beach volleyball with his mates. When Maverick arrived at Charlie's place, he made weak excuses and asked her to wait some more while he had a shower. Charlie said no and made him talk to her un-showered. This scene amazed me, because it was an example of a woman not letting a man get away with bad behavior. In my daily life, male relatives often acted badly, and women just put up with it. It never occurred to me that there was something that we could do about it.


But, in a sense, there wasn't anything we could do about it. On one occasion, I did resist and it didn't work out well. My brother, sister, and I were supposed to take turns making lunch to bring to school. My brother, being the youngest and the only son, often shirked his duties with little reprimand from our parents. The job was often left to me and my sister. We probably should have just not made his lunch until he pitched in. But that was too blatant and would have drawn the ire of our parents. My sister and I hatched a plan: we would make his sandwich inside-out with the bread in the middle, the meat on the outside, and the condiments on top. We giggled like fiends as we prepared this messy revenge. When my brother came home, he was furious. (My husband says that it was probably because we embarrassed him in front of his friends.) He raged and yelled at us. And what did we do? We did what we saw our female role models did. We acquiesced and didn't do it again. It's astonishing, now that I look back on it. The me in 2011 would never put up with something like this. I don't think we did our brother any favors either.


Reading Ferraro's obituary gave me a new appreciation for what she did and how far I have come. I know what it's like to be under attack. I know what it's like to have special attacks lobbed at me with astonishing vitriol, because I was a woman and I dared. She held up remarkably against the barrage of attacks. She opened up possibilities for women who followed. Rest in peace, Geraldine Ferraro.

If you make a jest that you have to follow with "just kidding," you probably shouldn't make it

A couple of weeks ago I attended WCRE at Endicott College in Beverly, MA. It was a great location for a conference. There was a hotel adjacent to the meeting rooms, which was connected to the dining hall. There was a beach a short walk behind the dining hall.

Although women were still a minority of attendees, they had a strong showing. The first six presenters at the conference were women. The first man to present was a keynote speaker. Then, he was followed by another woman speaker. The best paper award was presented to a woman first author. The award for most influential paper from ten years ago also went to a woman first author.

Consequently, the issue of gender came up more often than usual in social conversations. One male colleague thought there were an equal number of women and men in the field. (A simple count of the people in the room proved this to be false.) Another joked that we should change the "W" in WCRE to Women. (I'd love to, but if we did, would men still submit papers?)

I have great affection for my male colleagues. They are great researchers and they have never made me feel incompetent or question my ability to participate in the community. But sometimes they have the social sensitivity of a coconut. More than once, one of them would say something in jest, that they knew to be "politically incorrect." I could tell that they knew this because the comment was stage whispered, or they said "just kidding" or equivalent, or put on a mock innocent expression on their face, or some combination of these three.

Here are three examples of conversations that I had.

1. I was in a conversation with two other women and a man. We were comparing the organizational skills of male and female students. In my experience, women students were more organized than men. One of the other women mentioned that her supervisor was impressed because she knew when were all the conference deadlines. I said that the only students who have shown up to a weekly meeting with me without a pen or paper to take notes were men. Our male colleague tried to joke that this was because men have better memories, and put on a mock innocent face. None of the women in the conversation found this funny.

2. At dinner one night, I used a purse hanger to keep my handbag out of the way and off the floor. The women in the group got into a conversation about the purse hanger and handbags. One woman said that she never got in the habit of carrying a handbag because it felt awkward. One of the men in our group asked, what kind of woman doesn't carry a purse? I told him that I didn't think this was an appropriate comment, to make generalizations about real women carrying purses. He responded strongly with a typical computer science reaction. He accused me of making a generalization when one didn't exist. He re-stated the question: what kind of woman doesn't carry a purse? a woman who doesn't carry a purse. Although logically correct, this way of speaking violates many social norms. It is much like a child saying outrageous, like asking for candy for dinner, and then saying that he is kidding when he gets in trouble.

3. I have a number of dietary restrictions- no gluten, dairy, caffeine. I also try to stay away from beef and I have not had alcohol in years. This topic always comes up at meal times with acquaintances, which happens frequently at conferences. I got into a conversation with a male colleague, who was a real food connoisseur and he was flabbergasted by the list. He lived for food and couldn't imagine living without cheese or wine. He asked if these sensitivities were psychosomatic. Despite my irritation at the suggestion that my problems were in my head, I assured him that they were not. He then leaned in and whispered, if still enjoyed sex. I answered that I didn't and the conversation ended.

Guys, if you have to tell me that a joke is funny, then it isn't. In general, don't tell these jokes. These actions are condescending and manipulative. You're saying something that is on the edge of acceptable and then telling me that I shouldn't be offended. I can either go along with it being funny (when it's not) or I can have a confrontation with you. If I choose the latter, I isolate myself socially and I develop a reputation for being too sensitive, a bitch, or -heavens for fend- a feminist.

Don't make jokes of this kind, it's not good for you. I have been part of the program comprehension community for over ten years. Like all women in a male-majority field, I have a thick skin. When I tell you that you have stepped over a line, I don't do it because I am mad at you or my feelings are hurt. I do it for the women who follow me in the field. If I didn't care about you and the field of research, I wouldn't bother telling you and let you continue to look like an idiot and drive away women.

Finally, here is an example of a story that was on the edge of good taste and mentioned sex, but I did find it funny. I include this to illustrate my complaint is not so much about the topic of a jest, but rather at whom the jest is directed and how.

A male colleague was talking about getting on in years and the aches and pains in his body. He was reluctant to bring up this story at first, so he warned that it was politically incorrect-- he liked to go skeet shooting. On one occasion an older man joined him for a few rounds. Afterward, they were having refreshments. The older man asked my colleague to guess how old he was. My colleague guessed 70-something. The man was actually over 90 and astonishingly well preserved. The man had two complaints about old age. One, he needed to take more breaks between rounds of skeet shooting, and two, he was less interested in women than he used to be. (My colleague apologized again for the political incorrectness of the story.) My colleague said that if that was all he had to complain about at 90, he would take it.

If a revolution were organized by women...

New York Times Magazine had an amazing article this week,
The New Abortion Providers, by Emily Bazelon. It talks about efforts over the last thirty years to make abortions a part of mainstream medical practice.

This approach reminded me of a discussion that I had with a couple of ladies at church. Despite their age (or because of it), they were die-hard feminists and progressive Christians. They talked about how their grandmothers were also feminists, but in a quiet way, behind the scenes. They opined that behind any social movement that was successful had women doing the cooking and organizing while the men were doing the blustering. But at the same time, they didn't embrace the dominant narrative of feminism. Jo Cranson mentioned Ashley Montague interviewing a grandmother who ask why she should settle for equality when it's less than what I had before. Robinmarie McClement cited Susan B. Anthony being very concerned about women losing their quiet power behind the throne, if they pursued feminism as a public battle.

Protests and gauntlets in front of free-standing clinics are effective because abortions are a marginalized medical practice. If more doctors performed abortions in their offices or in a hospital, it would make it much more difficult for protesters to single out patients. This change would involve making abortion a standard procedure in the practice of family doctors, internists, and OB/GYN.

In 1995, Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education made abortion training a requirement for all OB/GYN residency programs, meaning that medical students would be receiving mandated hours of lecture on how to perform abortion. This motivation behind this move was to make abortion part of the professional qualifications of a doctor. Even if the student never performs an abortion, they needed to be educated about it.

The next step was to make in-roads into academic medicine by establishing fellowships to provide advanced training and to support research.

"A physician at the U.C.S.F. medical school set up the Family Planning Fellowship, a two-year stint following residency that pays doctors to sharpen their skills in abortion and contraception, to venture into research and to do international work. In recent years, the fellowship has expanded to 21 universities, including the usual liberal-turf suspects — Harvard, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, U.C.L.A. — but also schools in more conservative states, like the University of Utah, the University of Colorado and Emory University in Georgia."


International work was an important component because it exposed the fellows to countries where back alley abortions were still common. Another side effect of the residencies is that the physicians need to perform enough abortions to "train to competency." In other words, they need to do enough procedures to be able to handle complications. This process often involves performing many, many abortions in a hospital setting, because the complication rates for first-trimester abortions are so low (about 1%). This training usually occurs in hospitals, which means greater, safe access for women. Coming out of these fellowships, residents are equipped to make decisions about the place of abortion in their own practice. The decision whether or not to offer thee treatment is not necessarily a simple yes or no, but possibly choosing a cut-off, such as 7, 9, or 13 weeks.

These small changes are brilliant, because they don't involve direct confrontation with the protesters on the front lines. They make abortion more available by changing the context. If physicians could bring the simple procedure into the medical fold, it would reduce the need for free-standing clinics and the vulnerability of their patients. (An abortion at 9 weeks gestation produces no recognizes fetal parts and takes less than five minutes by a skilled provider, using device that is "about 10 inches long, costs only $30 and looks like the kind of appliance you might find in a kitchen drawer.")

There are still other obstacles in the way, such as hospitals being squeamish about associated with abortion and the cost of extra medical insurance, but change is afoot. Moreover, this is a change brought about largely by women for women, with the support of male colleagues, away from the glare of publicity and politics.

Many of the protégées Grimes is talking about are women. In the first generation after Roe, abortion providers were mostly men because doctors were mostly men. Since then, women have streamed into the ranks of OB-GYN and family medicine. They are now the main force behind providing abortion.


Let's hear it for social revolutions organized by women.

The Future of Progressive Islam? Part II

The last post on this topic ended with questions about the interface between Islam and the non-Muslim world, typified by post-Enlightenment Western European culture. This culture has come to dominate the world, due in part to accidents of history, economic success, and the innovation that has come from multiculturalism.

A program from Wisconsin Public Radio's To the Best of Our Knowledge entitled "East Meets West: Encountering Islam" and "East Meets West: A Culture in the Crossroads" has stories on how some individual Muslims are bridging the cultures. Among those featured are Kumail Nanjiani, Tariq Ramadan, Lupe Fiasco, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Kumail Nanjani is a standup comedian living in Chicago who was born and raised in Pakistan. He has left Islam, but he began questioning the religion as a child. He was told that every missed prayer, in hell the punishment would be a mountain thrown on your back. He took this literally and began to wonder.

Why my back? If it were a mountain, it wouldn't matter if it were on my back. How big is this mountain? Could it be just a plateau? I could take a plateau. And how would this mountain end up on my back? Would there be a giant who threw the mountain at me? Overhand or shot put style? If there were a giant who was strong enough to throw mountains, why wouldn't he punch me? That would really hurt.

These questions naturally led to other ones and more things that didn't make sense. Nanjani gave his parents a DVD of his show. They had known previously that he had left Islam, but the video finally convinced them. On the one hand, they were happy to know that he wasn't an angry former Muslim. On the other hand, they were perplexed because he still seemed like a moral, caring person and couldn't understand how someone with those values could not be Muslim.

Tariq Ramadan is a Swiss-born philosopher who travels throughout the Islamic world trying to build bridges between European Muslims and conservative clerics. In the show he describes himself as:

I'm Swiss by nationality, European by culture, Egyptian by memory, universalist by principle, and Muslim, of course, by religion. These are five dimensions of my identities, but over all I am universality by principle.

Like Martin Luther, he is appealing to clerics to go back to the basics and use the Quar'an and Mohammad's life as the starting point for Muslim theology. This approach, he argues, would lead to a more dignified, simplified Islam, one that makes it easier for Muslims to participate in a modern world by providing a means for them to make decisions about how to live. In other words, to ask and answer one's own questions using primary sources, rather than following directives from an imam. He has advocated for a moratorium on stoning, death penalty, and corporal punishment in Islam. While he is personally against these punishments, Ramadan was asking for a moratorium to open a dialogue with Muslim scholars and clerics worldwide.

Speaking of advice, I heard on the BBC World Service on Saturday morning that one could telephone a call center in Abu Dabi, UAE to obtain advice on religious issues. If I recall correctly, this service is organized by the government of the emirate. They employ an esteemed panel and there is an elaborate process for arriving at the final advice, or fatwa. I couldn't find the story on the BBC web site, but there is an article on the Gulf News web site.

This brings us to Dubai, one of the emirates in the UAE, which will be the topic of my next post.

The Future of Progressive Islam? Part I

Islam is not known for being progressive, that is, embracing the modern world, more liberal values, and human rights. Although not an inherent part of the religion, Sharia law, wahabism, and the practice of covering for women have become identified with Islam. Over the last month, I have read some interesting articles and heard some podcasts that hint at what a modern, progressive Islam looks like.

Let's start with how political arrangements, societies, and authority in Muslim countries are fundamentally different from those that follow the Western European tradition of separating Church and State. There was a podcast on CBC's Ideas on "The Stillborn God" featuring an interview with Mark Lilla, author of a book with the same title. Lilla is a historian of ideas and is a professor of religion at Columbia University in New York. In the book and the interview, he explains that Islam follows a doctrine of political theology which is at odds with post-Enlightenment political philosophy.

Political theology is the doctrine that establishes the legitimate exercise of authority based on divine revelation. In other words, we are governed according to the word of the divine and by people who are divinely privileged. In contrast, Enlightenment thinkers, such as Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, argued that government and rule of law should be based on consent. In other words, the populace assents to be governed in a rational manner, because the benefits outweigh the costs. Therefore, government derives is political authority from the people. This is the beginning of the separation of Church and State; one reason that people consent to be governed is so they can be granted freedom to worship as they wish and guarantees on that freedom. (This is important because branches of the Christian church had been in extensive conflict for many years, e.g. the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in England. There were conflicts between religions, but they had less impact on Western Europe than intra-Christian ones.) In political theology, political authority derives only from God. Moreover, the idea of rule by popular consent is a sinful rebellion against the proper place of God in the world. Lilla's main point in drawing attention to this difference is to remind us that the decision to separate Church and State is not inevitable. We in the West should not be waiting around for Islamic states, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, to "wake up" and realize that our way is a better way to organize things.

Given that we have two cultures that disagree so fundamentally over the ground rules over how government should be organized, how can they co-exist in a globalized, networked world? What is the place of second-generation Muslim immigrants in Europe? How can post-Enlightenment cultures explain themselves to Muslim countries? How can a Muslim country participate in the world economy?

We visit a boondoggle

The El Toro Marine Corps Air Station was closed in 1999 and a great deal of controversy followed regarding what to do with the land. Many people favoured opening an airport (and closing the nearby John Wayne airport). Everyone else wanted anything but an airport. The latter group prevailed, and that's precisely what they got, according to the monthly Orange County Journalists Roundtable on KPCC's Air Talk.

The plan was to parcel out the land into large parcels and sold at auction. The winning developer was expected to build houses and to use part of the profits to build the Orange County Great Park. Well, the housing market has collapsed, so the park will be a long time in coming. Irvine and Orange County politicians have received a great deal of criticism for this project.

In the meantime, we have the preview park. The most noteworthy feature is the Orange County Great Park Balloon, which is a tethered helium balloon, that one can ride free of charge-- after signing a waiver that indemnified the organization and gave them permission to use photos of one having a nice time.

I thought Mini-Mausburger would enjoy the big orange balloon, so we went.





For the bargain basement price of $14 million, we have displays, chairs, umbrellas, trees in boxes, and some patches of grass. It was funny explaining to our munchkin that this was indeed a park, but it didn't have a slide or a play structure. Considering how little is there, we have received an amazing number of flyers and newsletters in the mail.





As Mr. Mausburger pointed out, the site reminded him of the party where nobody showed up. There are party favours, games, and music, but nobody showed up. We went on a Friday morning and there were about five families with children there. The plans for the park are pretty cool-- fountains, cafes, pavilions, play structures, a tricycle track, lots of baseball diamonds, and lots of tennis courts. Currently, there's an RV storage facility on the grounds and there is (sanctioned) drag racing on one of the runways on the weekend.

The balloon ride was cool-- my motion sickness, notwithstanding. But for $14 million, I would have expected a little more bang for my tax buck. A slide would have been nice.

Dreamboarding, not waterboarding

I saw this post today, and the first thing that I thought of was waterboarding. It turns out that the two have nothing to do with each other, except for the coincidental use of the term "boarding," but what if...

Dreamboarding is a technique for presenting your dreams or aspirations in a visual format. Kind of like a scrapbooking/collage/dreamcatcher mash up. It's supposed to be done to celebrate the full moon, with the hope that the dreams will come true.

Waterboarding, in the other hand, is a torture technique. I blogged about this previously, but essentially it simulates drowning by pouring water into the victim's mouth and nose.

What if dreamboarding was a peace-building technique where you poured dreams into your enemy until they drowned in them? By immersing him or her in one's hopes, fears, aspirations, love, joy, sorrows, and nightmares, one could win over hearts and minds, rather than alienate them. War is waged only against the "other," that is, against those who are not one of us. There is no "them," there is only "we." Resources, territory, and power are not zero sum games. Peace is not just the absence of war, it's the presence of a stable, just, and fair community of people who are fed, clothed, healthy, and sheltered.

Petition to Urge the Obama Family to Adopt Their New Dog Petition

Petition to Urge the Obama Family to Adopt Their New Dog Petition

I signed a petition today.

The Obama family is reportedly planning on getting a dog next spring, after the election. The petition urges the Obama family to adopt a rescue dog, instead of buying a purebred from a breeder. This petition, in part, is a response to the American Kennel Club's breed recommendations and member poll.

This is something that I can get behind. I'm a big fan of "Animal Cops Houston" and I have seen so many success stories. Rescue dogs (and cats, and horses, and...) make great pets. They are not damaged goods as many people believe. They have the same personality range as non-rescue dogs. Typically, they are up to date on vaccinations and have been spayed or neutered. Some dogs have behavioral problems when they are rescued, but these issues are worked out before the pet is put up for adoption.

If you're looking for a pet, check out the Human Society or the SPCA.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Group seeks Bush sewage 'tribute'

A citizens group in San Francisco wants to pay an ironic tribute to President George W Bush when he leaves office - by naming a sewage plant after him.

This is cute. I don't think anyone would argue that the world is a better place after 7.5 years of have George W. Bush in the White House. He's done tremendous damage to the reputation of the US.

Let's see if Presidential Memorial Committee of San Francisco are going to be successful.

Sarkozy irks female MPs with gift

BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Sarkozy irks female MPs with gift

The French president includes a grey silk tie in a present to all the country's MPs, prompting calls of sexism.

On the one hand, Nicolas Sarkozy named an unusually number of women to his cabinet. On the other hand, he sent all the Members of Parliament in France a black case and gray silk tie. What's a gal to do with a tie? Some wore the tie around their necks, others wore it as a headband, while yet others brandished it as a symbol of chauvinism in politics. So many options, so little time.

If you put a positive spin on it, all the MPs were treated exactly the same, and are all able to do an equally good job. If you put a negative spin on it, it was pretty inconsiderate to not find a suitable gift for the recipient.