Rabbi Michael Lerner Lays It All Out
By LibertarianHawk Posted in National Security — Comments (15) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Promoted from blogs, with a disagreement: contra LibertarianHawk, the transcript is endlessly fascinating. The level of activity that the progressive movement apparently needs to generate in order to sustain the supposed will of the people is positively Herculean. Why, looking at it you'd almost think that these guys are pretty much backed by their tuchises. Tuchisi? - Moe Lane
I don't know how much dialogue this leaked conference call of "peace activists" will generate. Frankly, most of it is sleep-inducing and shows more than anything else that the antiwar movement is basically out of gas and that they know it.
However, there is one interesting, substantive passage. It comes from the man who leaked the transcript of the call, the venerable far left Rabbi (and 9/11 Truther) Michael Lerner.
Most of the contributions from the call's participants are about "what they are doing" to advance the cause of forfeiting the front of the War on Terror that is taking place in Iraq. And we hear the typical spiels about letters to the editor, marches, email campaigns, and so forth.
But then, out of nowhere, Lerner chimes in with this gem:
we know that many people who oppose the war are nevertheless unsure about how the US can get out without making the situation worse and without abandoning its role in the world, we are trying to encourage a national conversation about the fundamentally flawed idea that lies behind the war in Iraq, which is what we call “the Strategy of Domination.” The core bad idea is this: that the world is full of hurtful people who will hurt us unless we hurt them first, that they will dominate us unless we dominate them and so we have no choice but to take strong aggressive action lest they come to our very homeland and attack us. And of course, that could happen, but it will happen bccause we’ve been acting on that fear for decades, and attempting to dominate the world, in the course of which we’ve spread a great deal of pain and hence generated a great deal of anger.We want our Congresspeople, and all the people who shape public opinion to begin to take seriously the notion that homeland security could be better achieved through a Strategy of Generosity rather then a Strategy of Domination. war to protect ourselves is by dominating others.
The Right says that you dominate through the military, but the liberals often say no, we can dominate through a variant of that, “soft power,” namely through economic and diplomatic means. Those are code words for domination as well.
We’re arguing that the West needs a fundamentally different paradigm. It’s one that would have tremendous impact because it’s intuitively obvious to many, many people in their own lives, and in their workplace and so on, that people do do more effective work when they go with cooperation and generosity, rather than with domination and fear. That, from our perspective is the most important thing to do: Change the liberal/progressive discourse so that we have an alternative intellectual and spiritual framework.
Specifically, that leads us to advocate for a Global Marshall Plan, and our call to dedicate between 1 and 2 percent of the GDP each year for the next twenty, for the purpose of eliminating global poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education, and inadequate healthcare, both domestically and abroad.
1 to 2 percent of the GDP can do that. But the specific Global Marshall Plan only makes sense in the context of a general assault on the underlying ideology that makes this war and every other war seem plausible.
Read that whole quote, if you didn't. Kudos to Rabbi Lerner for his candor, anyway. He has either the guts or the intelligence or both to admit what many won't or can't.
But there it is in a nutshell. Lerner, and I presume many others who share his views, has a fundamentally flawed idealistic view of humanity. Forget the socialistic aspect of his "Global Marshall Plan" -- that somebody of his ideological stripe would advocate such massive wealth redistribution (in dollar terms, he's talking about $300 billion a year, plus growth, over the next twenty...roughly $8 trillion) isn't news. And the fact that he actually labors under the absurd belief that this would eliminate "global poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education, and inadequate healthcare" isn't either. For socialists like Lerner, the problem is always that government just hasn't taken and redirected enough of people's money to make these problems disappear.
No, the little nugget of ideological clarity here is that we can buy peace....that the reason warfare exists anyway is because of economic inequality and if we just went ahead and gave away our money we would end armed human conflict forever more.
The reason humans fight with each other is because person or people A have a lot and person or people B don't. So the answer is for people A to just hand the money over preemptively so as to short circuit the conflict.
Or, put another way, if you want to end bank robbery and drug dealing, just go ahead and fork money over to the would be bank robbers and drug dealers and they won't rob banks or deal drugs. We'll just do their stealing for them, in a legal and non-violent fashion, to prevent the inevitable illegal and violent theft that will occur if we don't.
One of my favorite Mark Twain quotes comes from a letter he posted late in life to William T. Stead. Twain understood humanity better than Rabbi Lerner does. It was a harsher understanding of humanity -- if we could get beyond the loony socialism stuff, Lerner's idyllic version of mankind would be a better one.
The entire letter is worth reading, but the money quotes come right at the beginning:
Peace by compulsion. That seems a better idea than the other. Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.
Can't we reduce the armaments little by little - on a pro rata basis - by concert off the powers? Can't we get four great powers to agree to reduce their strength 10 percent a year and thrash the others into doing likewise? For, of course, we cannot expect all of the powers to be in their right minds at one time. It has been tried. We are not going to try to get all of them to go into the scheme peaceably, are we?
Twain all but admits that it would be better if everybody were "in their right minds" -- as Lerner suggests they would, if we'd just share more of our wealth.
Twain knew his fellow man well. Lerner doesn't -- he just knows what a better world this would be if his fellow man was what he thinks they should be.
The danger is in confusing the two, as Lerner quite obviously has. He's mixing up a vision of a better humanity with the real humanity. And as long as people keep doing that, even if with the very best intentions, we'll keep repeating history.
And I realize that he means well when he says these things. I'm sure he genuinely believes that man would start being more civil and peaceful if only we could fashion "social and economic justice" as he sees it.
Never mind that we're spending 3 times the amount he advocates for the "Global Marshall Plan" domestically, year in and year out, in perpetuity...and that we've come no closer to eliminating poverty than we were when we started.
"Poverty", as a broad term, can't be cured. Only those who are stricken with poverty can bring themselves out of it -- and then only if the opportunity and incentives are there for them to do so.
But the mere fact that Lerner believes if we could eliminate poverty that, suddenly, humans would start being more humane....it's beyond naive, it's dangerous.
I dare say that we'd do nothing more than enrich those who would do us harm.
Of course, it's absurd to treat absurd ideas as serious ones. But people need to understand where folks like Lerner are coming from. Because his ideas will have a lot of appeal to people who, at their core, share his idealism.
He works, and he works, and he works toward his radical socialist utopia, but when it comes to the current fight, he's even hated in the anti-war groups. Why? He's a Rabbi, and well... not everyone on that side likes that, because that kinda keeps him from being in solidarity with Fatah and Hamas propaganda.
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Every Democratic congressperson who might find these words compelling has the resources available in their own office to read and analyze studies and reports as to why this idea would never work.
But then those same critters also have the resources to know that a national minimum wage doesn't work either, for example. In fact, I find it hard to believe that the congresscritters who voted for a national minimum wage doesn't work.
So why do it then?
Because it sounds good.
--
We would also like to know your advice for somebody like my daughter, who's going to graduate in two years, advice that you would give a young person.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Advice for a young person. Study history.
...only buys you "peace" until you're late with an (extortion) payment. If Al Capone were still around, he could explain it from the receiving end.
I suppose the conversation is pretty fascinating in that regard. For having the will of the people on their side, it does seem that they have to pull out all the stops to get any movement at all.
I really think they've misinterpreted what the people gave them. They're not going to see it that way, of course. As far as they're concerned (looking, in particular, at Rep. Moran's comments) they just have a stubborn president and some duped moderate Democrats who aren't on the cutting edge of political progression.
IMO, these "duped moderates" are the only thing keeping the Democratic Party from going completely over the cliff by horribly overplaying their hands.
...when it comes to these people. Which is another way of saying that it's not surprising that I found this more interesting than you. :)
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
was due, in large part, to the fact that we bombed the crap out of everybody before we offered the olive branch.
Actually, I strongly support the entire process:
- bomb the crap out of our enemies
- completely destroy their leadership that made the crap bombing necessary
- rebuild them when we've won
Lately our problem has been skipping steps 1 and 2.
They tend to leave that little tidbit out when assessing the success of such diplomacy, don't they?
Germany and Japan were thoroughly defeated -- at extremely high costs in blood and treasure (ours, theirs, our allies, their allies, etal) -- before we could go in and forge lasting, positive relationships with both nations.
I have long agreed that there is no better peace agreement than a trade route. Nations who do business together rarely fight each other militarily (it's not unheard of, but it's not common). And this is why I fear China a lot less than many people do. The Chinese ruling class may be filled with oppressive creeps. But they're far too interdependent with not only us but places like Japan and Europe to start becoming belligerent.
But what gets me most about Lerner's idea here is that he has such an idyllic conception of mankind. And this is somebody who's been at the forefront of the debate over Zionism for quite some time.
You'd think that, eventually, he'd come to realize that Israel's enemies don't care for any sort of rapprochement with the the Israelis. They don't care for peaceful coexistence. They don't care for a positive working relationship. They don't want a two-state solution because that necessarily means that one of those states is Israel.
They want Israel gone. They want the Jews off of the land they consider theirs -- or at least subjugated. There is no negotiation possible when such an unwavering premise exists.
I don't even see how this is debatable anymore. And that being the case, how can somebody like Michael Lerner still hold such a universally high opinion of anybody who can biologically claim to be human?
With the "peace through trade" argument. It comes very close to reliance on the "rational behavior of mankind" theory that Lerner embraces. "War is an irrational endeavor" makes sense only to someone who ignores history. We have wars to dominate trade or get trade advantages. We have civil wars among peoples living and trading under the same government. We have religious or ideological wars among trading peoples-- the most obvious current one is against Israel. What portion of Muslims went to work in Isreal every day before the Intifada?
War is as rational in the human condition as poverty or the search for God. Klausewitz said it best: "War is an extension of politics by other means." and "War exists for the benefit of the defender."
In particular these lines from "Gee, Officer Krupke":
We ain't no delinquents,
We're misunderstood.
Deep down inside us there is good!
Hope is one thing, wishful thinking is another, but denial of evil gets you this:
She sailed away
On a happy summer day
On the back of a crocodile.
"You'll see," said she,
"He's as tame as can be;
I'll ride him down the Nile."
The croc winked his eye
as she bade them all good-bye,
Wearing a happy smile.
At the end of the ride
the lady was inside,
And the smile on the crocodile.
Perhaps Rabbi Lerner needs to reread the history of Israel to see how well their Marshall Plan worked with Israel's enemies - and they gave lots more than 1-2% of their GNP.
Lerner: "...that leads us to advocate for a Global Marshall Plan, and our call to dedicate between 1 and 2 percent of the GDP each year for the next twenty [years], for the purpose of eliminating global poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education..."
Perhaps Rabbi Lerner would care to explain how sending trillions of dollars in foreign aid will boost the "inadequate education" of all those "poor" Islamic countries where it's illegal for girls to even go to school, let alone learn how to read.
On second thought, maybe Lerner just doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.
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Is that if human being had what it would take to make Socialism work the way it's Supposed to work, as according to the writing of Lenin and Marx, then Socialism would not be neccessary at all.
"I Will Always Place The Mission First.
"I will never accept defeat.
"I will never quit.
"I will never leave a fallen comrade."
Warrior Ethos, US Army
We will be "providing" food, education, health care, etc, to the poor of the world. Those on the receiving end won't have a lot to say about the social values that will be transacted in the deal. Providing for someone's every life-sustaining need brings with it a great deal of power over their life.
was a major "spiritual" guru or whatever to Hillary! because of his deeply shallow advocacy of the idea of the politics of meaning.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling