Our modern world is built upon selfishness, and greed. We live in the Age of Scrooge, all the while yearning for Utopia, a world of goodness and of hope, a world from which suffering and pain have been banished. We long for a just and equitable world, a world in which each gives “according to her ability, and each receives according to her need”, where “all men are created equal”, and all live decent, hopeful, wholesome lives.

But Utopia is a fiction; and, in this world, Greed is God.

We humans wish for, and will demand in its absence, a social hierarchy in which a few have all too much while others, many others, have little, or next to nothing. How odd! Our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, the bonobo chimps of the African Congo, are so decidedly, so firmly, egalitarian. They live as though they belong to some great ape commune, a sort of kibbutz in the trees. Why can we not do the same, with a few reasonable substitutions, of course?

Many have tried. The Second Great Awakening of the early 19th century, for example, spawned any number of Utopian movements in the United States, concurrent, perhaps not coincidentally, to the initial development of Marxist theory in Western Europe. The early followers of Joseph Smith, for example, the Mormons who trekked westward across the grassland deserts of the American Midwest, arguably attempted to create a quasi-socialist, egalitarian city-upon-a-hill in their Great Basin paradise of Deseret, though their idea of “equality” didn’t include anyone other than white, Mormon males. And not just the Mormons, but many other religious and ideological communities of the time attempted to create such egalitarian societies only to see their experiments degenerate into rigid status hierarchies over time. Given a few generations, most human communities end up with a King or some other form of Grand Poobah.

Basely, we crave grossly unequal, hierarchical societies, anti- societies to which we return, time and again, in which some have more than they need, or even want, while others have far too little, and die early deaths of hardship and privation. Human nature is just ugly. We rape and murder, start wars, drop bombs, lie, cheat, steal, and otherwise lay waste to our planet. We are far from angels.

To be human is not, necessarily, to be good.

But there’s more to humanity than darkness and greed, and for all the ugliness we inflict upon our world, we are equally capable of astonishing acts of kindness and love. We ache for a world that’s fair and just. This fundamental division in our nature, the deep rift between dark and light, good and evil, a sort of constitutional and inherent dualism, is what drives us forward, ever forward, separating us from the rest of the animal kingdom. We are separated from our fellow animals by our very ability to recognize our divided nature, and by our ability to question our own actions.

So we are divided against ourselves. Longing to soar, we crawl the sewers, tasting the mud and bitter soil of the underworld from which so many of our actions spring. Only we, of all the creatures on Earth, are capable of self-reflection, of recognizing the basic division of our nature, and of asking, upon acting, whether we have done the right thing.

And now, here we are. The time has come. We must ask. Have we done the right thing?

Forty years ago, we embarked upon a massive, global program of social engineering in which the magical forces of “The Market” were unleashed upon us. These forty years have been characterized by rising poverty, precarity, and no small dose of misery among the 99%. Early on, Margaret Thatcher proclaimed that “there is no such thing as society!” In this brave new world of ours, as ushered in by Mrs Thatcher and her American partner, Ronald Reagan, there is no wider society to which The Market must be held to account. And without society and its collective sense of morality, we are only just individuals struggling against each other for survival in an atomized world.

Is this what we want? Is this a world we would wish for anyone other than our very worst enemy? Is this the legacy we wish to bestow upon our children and grandchildren, a world in which the mantra of “dog eat dog – NO QUARTER!” is scrawled in cheap, red paint upon the cathedral door? Is this the best we can do for ourselves?

We have become grossly accustomed to seeing men, women, and sometimes whole families, sleeping rough beneath bridges and highway overpasses. Poverty surrounds us, to the point where people living on the streets of the city do their “business” on city sidewalks, and office workers take great care to avoid soiling their shoes with shit and piss as they hurry to their high cubicles in glass towers where they write code to “Change the World!”, or plan exotic vacations for the well-to- do. We are so accustomed to this that we scarcely give it a second thought, but had we woken up one morning in the early days of the Age of Reagan and seen such scenes as these, we’d have been catatonically shocked at the horrid spectacle of it all.

We created this world.

We are responsible for this, even if just by way of passivity and acquiescence.

Have we done the right thing?

Our modern-day global excuse for religion, neoliberalism, the cult of the “free market”, preaches that poverty is natural, inequality good, and, this above all, “Greed is God!” It’s only natural, we are told, that humans should be unequal in their circumstances, as some are more worthy, talented, and cunning than others. These ubermensch deserve far better lives than those of us down below. Such is the dogma of meritocracy. Day after day, on television and in the press, the gospel of greed and  self-interest is tirelessly pushed.

Greed, my friend! Greed is God!

How terribly inhumane.

But we don’t inhabit a humane world. We inhabit “The Market”. And the thing about The Market is that it’s inherently unequal. In The Market, human suffering and inequality are natural conditions, like sunshine, rain and wind, with which we should not, and cannot, interfere.

Markets know best, they say, so when markets create misery, well, not to worry because this is good and natural, the best of all possible worlds! Suffering is inevitable because The Market creates privation and poverty as a natural consequence of its efficiency! This world that we now inhabit, a world that’s been stripped of community, and of public compassion and charity, a world in which there is “no such thing as society” to rectify the ugliness with which we are now surrounded, why, this world of opulence and tent cities, of abundance and abject destitution is the best of all possible worlds!

And so we have created yet another bulletproof hierarchy for ourselves to dwell within. The swelling egalitarianism of the mid-twentieth century has been done away with, relegated to the scrap heap of foolish, discarded ideas. The Market will decide which of us is meant to prosper, and which is meant to die. Hierarchy is Inevitable; Long Live The Market!

Or so we are told.

This world of suffering and inequality is a choice we have made. Whether we, you and I, are actively its architects, or have simply acquiesced to it by way of our collective silence, we are all of us complicit in the neoliberal nightmare. The human world is a human creation, and the way in which we organize our world is a choice we have made, and continue to make, on a day-to-day basis. We choose to allow this gross and immoral world, and, in my view, we can just as easily choose otherwise.

The neoliberal experiment began as a reaction to what seemed like the inevitability of socialism in the wake of the Russian Revolution and the horrible privations of the Great Depression. The project was actively formulated and developed, following very logical steps from gestation to implementation, with each opportunity for advance having been earnestly taken where possible. Think tanks were formed, disciples recruited, coups d’état carried out. In short, neoliberalism was no accident, and neither must its replacement be.

To create a new, more equitable and fair world, a world in which all of us might thrive, we must first envision that world. Just as the nascent neoliberals once did, in the 1940s and ‘50s, we must put our heads together and formulate a theory, nurture a philosophy, build a network of like-minded souls. We must envision, and design, a social- economic theory, and system, that can compete with, surpass, and ultimately render the neoliberal nightmare obsolete.

Can we imagine and create such a system?

This is our challenge, and I’m not so sure the challenge can be met.

We mammals adore a hierarchy, with alphas and betas and deltas all existing in the space allowed their kind. After the Fall of the USSR, for example, Russia quickly returned to what it had always been, a up- and-down hierarchy with a ‘Tsar’ and a small ‘aristocracy’ atop a mass of peons below. One might think that after 70 years of socialist ideology and Utopian dreams of a perfect world, however imperfectly implemented, Russia would have recoiled at the return of its ancien regime, the ludicrously unfair world of Tsarist Russia. But rather than revolt, they seem to have settled-in, as if settling -down to doze in an old and comfortable, though badly worn, armchair.

I’m not sure it’s possible that we might create a better, fairer system because we are divided against ourselves, divided between the dark and the light, and more often than not, it seems the dark side takes the day. Nonetheless, I insist that we have a responsibility to try! Knowing better, knowing that a better world is possible, that its creation is always within our grasp because We Make Our World means that we have a responsibility to do our best to create something better than the nightmare, neoliberal world. We have a duty to try, even if we should fail, because we know better, and this duty cannot be discharged with a shrug and a wank just because the cynics and naysayers insist it cannot be done, that we must give in to the baseness of our nature, that we must live like animals in a zoo enclosure, with our noses up the backside of the Dominant Alpha Chimp.

We are responsible for the world in which we live. We cannot complain that this world is unfair and ugly without attempting to change it for the better because we determine the shape and form of our world, and if that world is ugly and unfair then we need only look in the mirror to see the reason why it might be so. We, you and I, are responsible.

Now we must Do the Right Thing.

On a recent, steamy July evening in Hoover, Alabama, the moderator closed a meeting at the Adelante Alabama Workers Center by asking those of us assembled to volunteer to place our bodies and our white privilege between undocumented immigrants and governmental authorities. The substance of the remark was not a surprise; we had come to the meeting sponsored by the Center and the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice to learn how to accompany and be helpful to undocumented immigrants at required check-ins with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and at court appearances unrelated to immigrant status, but the dramatic characterization of the evening’s purpose was an effective wake-up call after two hours in hard folding chairs, and it both sobered and excited me.

Even while growing up in a rundown housing project of converted barracks north of the airport in Birmingham, Alabama, I knew that white skin made me privileged. My contact with black people was limited in the place Dr. Martin Luther King called the most segregated city in America, but, particularly after the Supreme Court’s school desegregation decision in 1954, issues of race hung in the air like smog, permeating all public discourse. Coming of age in the early 1960s, I naively believed for a while that guaranteeing civil rights for black Americans would relieve the sense of responsibility that many of my generation felt about “unearned” privilege. Today, while black citizens continue to experience inequality and injustices, Alabama officials have declared that southern hospitality does not extend to immigrants, documented or not. In 2011, the state legislature passed an oppressive immigration statute; more recently, then­ governor Bentley, ignoring his lack of enforcement authority, declared that none of the Middle Eastern refugees entering the country under an official, federal refugee program would be allowed to reside in Alabama. The local atmosphere, as well as my experience in a graduate program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, have raised my sensitivity to issues of race, ethnicity, and privilege to an all-time high

I did not believe that my body would be at risk, so no physical courage was required to say yes, but I felt glued to my uncomfortable chair. After leaving a long career as a lawyer and a healthy share of community activities twelve years ago, I edited my life to bare bones and have refused new commitments. I had had enough of confrontations and conflicts for two lifetimes. I chose a life of solitary pursuits – reading, writing, and yard work – and limited company – family and kindred spirits. Since the presidential election of 2016, however, I had been considering a different future; perhaps being a good neighbor and friend as requested was the door to it. While others were asking questions or crowding the two computers to volunteer, I mentally reviewed the evening.

The Center is located in a small house at the edge of a once-residential neighborhood disrupted by the building of I-59. I arrived to find the small parking area full. A greeter introduced himself, parked my car for me in a tight spot on the street, and graciously offered his arm.

“Tell me the best English word for adelante,” I said. My search had yielded several. “Forward!” he answered, as we climbed, I somewhat unsteadily, a steep, grassy bank.

The meeting room, filled to capacity, was the former living/dining area of the house and opened onto a deck for overflow. The training was presented by informational talks, demonstrations of a court appearance for a traffic ticket and an ICE check-in, and a question and answer period. A simultaneous translation system for English and Spanish insured understanding of the presentation. Most of the current volunteers, like me, speak little, if any, Spanish, and we were assured that it was not necessary.

I learned that, after an initial arrest for lack of required immigrant documentation, a person with a “permanent” local address may be released with a regular check-in schedule. Apparently, this is discretionary. There seemed to be no clear path to properly documented status or deportation. This lack of due process drove the lawyer in me crazy, and I asked a few questions, but I had to put that concern aside and focus on the role of accompanier– providing transportation, help with forms and questions, support and comfort. It appeared that the worst thing that could happen was an on-the-spot decision of ICE to detain.

Volunteering would move me out of my comfort zone, but I realized I had received the most polite, not to mention useful, request or demand about my white privilege ever directed at me. It was an offer I could not refuse.

Two weeks after volunteering, I agreed to accompany Anna to her initial check-in at the local ICE office. At the Center I met a small, pretty woman with jet black hair and a face so free of lines that I would be surprised later to learn she is over sixty. She knew only a few words of English, and I was relieved that she had brought along a bilingual neighbor, Carlos, who made the introductions.

“She says she is very nervous,” Carlos translated, when Anna spoke her first words since saying hello.

“Tell her ‘me too,”‘ I responded. ” We are learning together.”

When we arrived at the destination indicated by my GPS, it was not  clear which of the nondescript, three-story, brick buildings perched on a hillside below street level housed ICE. Finally, we spotted “Immigration” on a small sign on the ground floor of one building and made our way into the parking area. Few cars and no people were visible in this low-traffic area.

I was not told the particulars of Anna’ s status; I knew only that it did not allow her to remain permanently in the United States and that an application for a more secure status was pending. I was not told how she entered the country or came to the attention of ICE. She had received a letter listing items to be produced, and we reviewed each of them in the car. The instructions provided that all cellphones had to be turned off, so the three of us left our phones in the car to avoid questions. Before we could open the office door completely, a loud voice stopped us.

“You can’ t bring bags in here!” The voice belonged to a tall, stony-faced officer posted inside.

When we returned from stowing our purses, she barked again: “10:30 or 11:00?”

I thought the officer could take a lesson from the TSA officers who also have routine but very important jobs, but I simply answered, “11:00.”

She handed Anna a clipboard with a form attached and directed the three of us to a seating area where a few others were waiting. The questions were ordinary but still unsettling.

We mulled over “Have you ever used any other name?” Should Anna write the full name shown on her passport? It is longer but not “other” as I know that term would ordinarily intend. Our hesitation is the kind of craziness that overtakes a person when she is unsure of the good faith of a process or the people in charge of it.

“Have you ever been married, Anna?” I asked.

”No,” she replied, and we settled on “no” for the answer. After all, she would be showing her passport.

When Anna was called, all three of us approached, but only two people were allowed behind the waist-high wall. Fluent Spanish trumped privilege. From my seat adjacent to the interview area, I could hear the questions and answers and watch the fingerprinting. The clerk seemed warm. She smiled. They all shared a joke I did not catch. When, after about fifteen minutes, Anna and Carlos rejoined me, I realized that I, with nothing at stake, had been holding my breath during most of the interview.

In the car the mood was lighter, almost giddy, as we buckled up. Just outside the parking lot Anna made a little cry, and I stopped. She had forgotten to get a signature from the clerk on her excuse for absence from work that morning. We agreed that a copy of the signed appearance form with date and time of appearance would suffice, and the good mood resumed.

Back at the Center, I wished Anna good luck, and she hugged me. We drove away in separate directions, Carlos, I imagined, to drop Anna at work and go home for some sleep before his night shift, and I to my quiet house.

I do not believe Anna needed me, and I know that my privilege, which is as immutable as the condition that gives rise to it, is no less after this small event. But I believe Anna was glad to have me, and I was happy to have been with her and to know that she was safe. Until next time.

I. Introduction

The tug-of-war over the meaning of “freedom” is the struggle of our time. But in many ways this struggle is hardly new: the meaning of freedom is inseparable from the notion of government. The idea of freedom is, after all, as old as government itself. Who governs and who are the governed? Are the governed free? These are ancient questions. What is new is that the battleground has shifted radically. The new battleground depends on recent changes in language and meaning, and specifically on what we mean exactly by the word freedom. The concept of freedom radiates a primeval power that borders on the mystical. It goads us, it guides us, and it shapes us. But the modern concept of freedom has grown significantly more complicated. For this paper, I will discuss three categorical definitions of freedom that are vying for prominence, and one of them represents my own conjecture. These three definitions (domains) draw their rhetorical license from the mystical power of freedom, but they depart from one another in practical ways that materially impact the rights of people, the function of global economics and the emergence of new levels of personal power.

Furthermore, it seems that our ability to communicate using a common, reliable language has deteriorated. We are linguistically brutalized. Nowhere is this discordant trend more important than in our inability to talk about freedom in a meaningful and reliable way. The essential tenets of freedom, assuming that we can even establish a shared understanding of those essentials, are inseparable from the belief systems that we have come to call “the left” and “the right.” These are the polar ends of the aforementioned tug-of-war. But there is more at stake than the meaning of language alone. The failure of language runs in parallel with the failure of our political and economic system, and the price of failure is high.  We are unable to make any headway in our disagreements when words like freedom can establish no common territory. The steady march toward democracy stumbles. We must therefore refresh our understanding, revitalize the definitions of words, especially words like freedom. While I will highlight the ideas of several prominent thinkers, the point is not to put them on a pedestal or a podium. The idea, rather, is to examine them as signposts, crystallized embodiments of the evolution of an idea embedded in our language.

While our discourse has faltered, many pundits have also claimed recently that democracy is declining in “the west.” There has been broad discussion of the sputtering of representative government, the reemergence of authoritarian systems and the increasing powers of a new class of oligarchs who live independently of government power. To be sure, these claims are broad brush observations, and governments change their tolerance for various freedoms over time. But there is clear evidence for concern. In the US, for example, freedom of the press has come under increasing pressures from both the government and the systematic machinery of our political economy. For example, the US has dropped to 45th in the world in the World Press Freedom Index (Reporters Without Borders). And it is trending downward. The relationship between a functioning language and a functioning democracy are nowhere more clear than in the freedom of the press.

What is perhaps most alarming is how the term “freedom” has become the banner for those who seem to want to cultivate power and corral it into fewer and fewer centers. Those with the most power espouse the need for more freedom, but what exactly does this mean? What we mean by “freedom” is not merely a demonstration of linguistic gymnastics. What freedom means, what it stands for in law and in the interpretation of law, determines how government governs, and how economies run. Perhaps it was a prescient forewarning rather than a than critique on his times when Orwell wrote that “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” More likely it was an observation that applies regardless of the current brand of dominant political philosophy. Power seems to prefer to gather rather than to disseminate.

I identify and examine three distinct domains of freedom: Personal Freedom, Economic Freedom and Hegemonic Freedom. These three domains are often in conflict with each other, and the domain that prevails will determine the kind of world we live in. How we define freedom will determine how we define ourselves, and how we live our lives.

1. Personal Freedom: This domain is articulated clearly in 19th century political philosophers like Bentham and Mill who espouse the civic necessity for Personal Freedom. Another way to identify this form of freedom might be social or civil liberty, but even so it seems to require basic fundamental freedoms that reside in personhood. We remain enthralled by dreams of personal freedom. This definition refers to the liberty to think and say whatever we want, to be where we want, and as such it subjects our ideas to the scrutiny of the marketplace of ideas. Both Bentham and Mill offer a definition that is rooted in the belief that personal freedom is a political force and that the marketplace of ideas will drive the best ideas to the front. Personal Freedom forms the basis for a healthy democratic society.
2. Economic Freedom: The second domain is articulated by 20th century economic philosophers like Hayek and Friedman, both of whom are reacting against the trend toward collectivist economic strategies that led to devastating world wars. While these two thinkers have emerged as idealized paragons of modern neoliberalism, their ideas about freedom deserve close attention. In this domain, free markets and competition create the only path toward an effective democratic order. Economic control through government is the enemy. Economic Freedom is formally anti-collectivist in its posture and its rhetoric, and economists like Hayek and Friedman argue for a political and economic system where freedom of production rules the day. It provides, in fact, the only viable road to true freedom.
3. Hegemonic Freedom: The third and most recent domain of freedom stems from the rise of the globally super rich. Hegemonic Freedom is inextricably derived from the domains of Personal and Economic Freedom, and yet it represents a fundamental departure from them both. This new brand of freedom is realized through personal economic power and it proposes to subvert the democratic process, to push the ideas of Economic Freedom to an extreme where a small group of the super-rich operate “freely” outside of the constraints of government. This brand of freedom culminates beyond of the constraints of government, and it simultaneously assimilates and perverts the original ideas of Personal and Economic Freedom. Bastions of Hegemonic Freedom pursue ways to control government as the means to protect their wealth and power, and to prevent governments from reining them in and taking their wealth.

The word freedom holds mystical power and Merlin is always nearby when it is spoken.

We must also contend with wizardry. The word freedom holds mystical power and Merlin is always nearby when it is spoken. The most ambitious among us wield it like a magic sword pulled from the stone. But the idea of freedom controls us more than we control it. The history of civilization has brought us to this relationship with it. In many ways, the evolution of human political systems revolves around the competing spectra of freedoms. The gravity of liberty is inescapable and it holds us in its orbit. Liberty seems encoded somehow into our desires and dreams. Perhaps it is because we are so deeply social, so fundamentally dependent on one another for survival, that we paradoxically long for some kind of reversal. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. We cannot separate the idea of civilized society, or any form of society for that matter, from the idea of freedom.

The word freedom (or liberty) is so deeply ingrained in our psyche, in our collective spirit, that we easily fall prey to the manipulation of the idea. Someone on a podium will sermonize on the sanctity of liberty and our pulse rate picks up. These manipulations are not hidden far beneath the surface. They are easy to spot when we look. When a powerful speaker invokes the term freedom, we are often spellbound and we associate our most inarticulate hopes to what that might mean. And when we’ve already aligned our personal ideology with that speaker, when we wear the same jersey or carry the same flag, we forget to question what we are being sold and at what price we are buying. The idea of liberty can work on us like a magic spell. We must, therefore, become more skeptical, more scientific, when we hear the word freedom spoken from a podium.

We need look no further than the Old Testament to see the seeds of a dream. In Exodus God sends Moses to free the Israelites from the Pharaoh and then lead them to freedom. “Then Moses raised his hand over the sea, and the Lord opened up a path through the water with a strong east wind. The wind blew all that night, turning the seabed into dry land” (14.21). This is the very soul of deliverance. And in 19th century America, Harriet Tubman delivers slaves to the north on the underground railroad. The pursuit of freedom for African Americans continues today. The idea of contemporary freedom cannot be separated from the ancient dreams of personal freedom – the freedom to control your own body in an unfolding history where people were legally owned as property, where people were chained and bought and sold at the open market beside the nearest sea port. To have freedom is to have the most essential power, such as the power to move and to think and to speak in the world. The power to say no.

Of course freedom comes at a cost. In the views of Sartre, for example, we are all doomed to our freedom. “We are left alone, without excuse. This is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free.” If we are free, truly free, we must own our lives, our choices, our destinies. Sartre’s notion of freedom forces us to reflect, to look inward at ourselves and our lives and see them as a series of choices, choices that we must own. But this is not the kind of freedom that is on display in our time. Today, the idea of Freedom thrashes about between the three domains I outlined above: Personal Freedom, Economic Freedom and Hegemonic Freedom. These are the freedoms that battle for preeminence in our time.

II. Personal Freedom

The first domain, Personal Freedom, is perhaps most clearly articulated when it is considered as a form of civil participation. The ideas encompassed with the name of “freedom of the press,” for example, are the most overtly and politically engaged forms of Personal Freedom. This is precisely why freedom of the press is historically called the Fourth Estate (wikipedia). In this domain, Liberty is not merely a concept we can appreciate from our chaise lounge. It is an act we can make as a member of the broader community. And so we consider liberty as a formal component of civil participation, and we understand fully that liberty is a form of power.

This power performs many functions, not the least of which is to place a check on the rise of unbridled political power. Bentham considers how liberty of thought can pose a danger to the established order, and he writes that “in all Liberty there is more or less of danger: and so there is in all power. The question is – in which there is most danger – in power that is limited by this check, or in power without this check to limit it” (To the Spanish People, Letter 1). Bentham is quite clear on this point: unchecked power is the greater danger to the function of government. We must exercise the ability to express our ideas fearlessly in the public sphere. After all, “secresy [sic] in subjects, supposes tyranny in rulers” (Letter 1).

Another critical form of Personal Freedom in the civic arena has been named by history as the “freedom of assembly.” In this case the material end or purpose of the freedom to gather and assemble stems from the need to discuss the state of government and the condition of the governed. The purpose, in other words, of such a Personal Freedom is to openly discuss ideas about the quality of political leadership. Freedom of assembly can be viewed then as a bookend to the freedom of the press; it allows people to caucus so that they can debate, discuss, reason and organize around civic actions as they relate to the manifestations of power. Bentham continues in his letter #1: “In regard to assemblies in particular, insert a declaration, giving the people the assurance that, for as much as there exists not any law to the contrary, they remain at liberty, at all times, and in all places from which they are not excluded by special ownership, to meet, for the purpose of delivering their opinions, in the freest manner, on the conduct of their rulers.” With a brief nod to concerns over private property, Bentham is crystal clear that the right to assemble must exist so that the people may speak freely on the conduct and character of those in power. Bentham is keenly interested in how these ideas are reflected in the applications of law and not merely as cultural heuristics.

These ideas of Personal Freedom are of course embedded in the US constitution in the first amendment. They are primordial to the mythology of the United States. We naturally place them on a pedestal and hold them up as trophies of the national character. And yet even though the first amendment stands out as a fine example of unambiguous language, we still interpret it as if through a prism. There are other competing values that interfere with these ideals.

Bentham proposes stark concerns when civic personal freedoms are rolled back. In short, the ruling class will join with the wealthy and quickly consolidate an array of alliances that undermine the common people. “And thus, in the union of the monarchical and the aristocratical interest, you would see and feel, as here, an alliance defensive and offensive against the interest of the people” (Letter #1). We should keep this concern in mind when we discuss Economic Freedom in subsequent sections.  And what does Bentham fear the most? It is not the ruler of the government. Rather, it is the persistent power that resides in the hands of the wealthy. “No: it is not so much of a monarch that I am afraid, for he is mutable. It is of the aristocracy that I am so much afraid; for that is immutable. It is itself immutable: and no less immtuably adverse is its interest to the interest of the people.” In other words, he does not fear so much the person who sits atop the throne, but instead it is the people who cannot be seen who are behind the throne.

Personal Freedom, when seen through Bentham’s lens, is essential to the power that must reside in the people, which is the power to choose their rulers. Personal Freedom, the freedom of the press and the freedom of assembly, are the essential empowerments that effectively place the ruler in the service of the people. In Letter #2, where Bentam addresses Spanish restrictions over the right to assemble, he explains how these powers, when removed, are the hallmarks of despotism. “Behold, then, the distinction between a government that is despotic, and one that is not so. In an undespotic government, some eventual faculty of effectual resistance, and consequent change in government, is purposely left, or rather given, to the people.” The removal of Personal Freedom is precisely the road to despotism. In this light, Personal Freedom embodies the power of the people over the power of the ruler. Personal Freedom provides the necessary check over the despot. It not only reflects that power, but it effectuates the power by its very operations in the civic arena.

When seen in this light, Personal Freedom is not merely a right, but rather it is a vital source of power, a force. It is the single most important force that holds the powers of the ruling class and the aristocracy (wealthy) class in check. And so when Personal Freedoms, the freedom of the press and the freedom of assembly, are under attack, it is a direct attack on that political force, the essence of any notions of democracy.

What I am interested in here is the evolution of the idea of freedom.

I have not said much here that is new or revolutionary, or even insightful. What I am interested in here is the evolution of the idea of freedom. The effort spent to explore how political force is rooted in personal freedom, rather, establishes a baseline of sorts. It places the idea known as Personal Freedom at near mythical status. This baseline definition of Personal Freedom then establishes both a civic and a psychic foundation. It is clearly civic, as Bentham details, but it becomes psychic in that we hold these notions highly in our values. These cultural values become inseparable from personal values for complex reasons that I will not go into here, except to propose that our relationship with freedom is so essential to our nature that we struggle to separate the personal from the civic. And it is precisely this foundation that makes us vulnerable to extrapolations of freedom into other arenas, arenas where we can quickly get into trouble.

In Letter 3, Bentham begins to break down the specific political malformations of the idea of freedom, the language of freedom. He points out that any discussion of freedom, ipso facto, must be further broken down into greater detail, greater specificity, so as to avoid a gross misuse of the very idea of freedom. Freedom alone, in other words, is the highest taxonomy of concepts and can be seen as a genus of other species and subspecies of ideas. To confuse different and unique manifestations of freedom (liberty) under an illusory umbrella definition of freedom represents nothing less than a misuse of power. And so “to putting aside nonsense, and determined to have sense to argue with if possible, I put aside Individual Liberty, and return to the word power: political power” (Letter 3). While our current civil systems continue to confront, discuss and examine many other “subspecies” of Personal Freedom, such as a sexual orientation, religious belief and “choice,” this paper highlights Personal Freedom as a non-violent political force, a form of representative power that resides within the governed.

Published in 1859, Mill’s On Liberty appears at a moment when human slavery still legally drives the economics of the agrarian US, and Women’s rights have barely even begun to emerge as a factor in the discussion. The American Civil War is two years away from erupting and leading to the deaths of nearly one million Americans. And American Women are exactly 60 years away from having the right to vote in their own political system. The ideal of Personal Freedom for humanity, as advocated by Mill, remained in violent conflict with the very definition of humanity and who was counted as fully human.

J. S. Mill knew Jeremy Bentham, both as a teacher and as a leader. The continuity from Bentham to Mill is explicit and clear. There is perhaps no greater synthesis of the western ideas of freedom than Mill’s On Liberty. When we look at Mill’s iconic treatise, we find that he opens the piece with a discussion of power. It is as if he picks up the pen where Bentham put his down. Remarkably, however, Mill starts out by stipulating what he is not talking about. Mill seems apprehensive about the misapprehensions and misapplications of the term Liberty. He knows that Liberty is an elusive domain, and so he clarifies explicitly that he is not talking about free will. He is examining “civil, or social liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual” (p. 151). As the piece develops, Mill will work his way deeper into the subtleties of Personal Freedom, but the table stakes are unmistakable. “A time, however, came, in the progress of human affairs, when men ceased to think it a necessity of nature that their governors should be an independent power opposed in interest to themselves” (p. 152). Mill’s idea of liberty is inseparable from the direct exercise of power. But it’s not simply an issue of individual tyrants who need restraint. One of the most influential spokesmen for Personal Freedom, Mill goes further to address another form of abusive power, the tyranny of the majority: “…there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling.”

Mill then steps back and reframes his essay on a more generalized approach for an understanding of Personal Freedom. He defines three categories of freedom and formally designates them as “the appropriate region of human liberty.” These three realms are: freedom of thought, freedom of taste, and freedom of assembly, or what he calls the “freedom to unite for any purpose.” The ideas of Bentham are not far away. These three categories, though each having their own nuances (or subspecies), form the grand backdrop for Mill. And then he launches into the first of the three, “Liberty of Thought, from which it is impossible to separate the cognate liberty of speaking and of writing” (p. 160).

Personal Freedom, as it turns out, is a precondition. We soon discover that what Mill’s ultimate aim is “truth” and the only reliable process of finding it. [CE2] We are back to the classical beginning of philosophy itself. Truth, moreover, can only be achieved through the liberty of thought. He sees liberty of thought as the singular reliable weapon against the “propagation of error.” Repeatedly Mill attacks the tendency of individuals toward “error,” he attacks the “fallacious,” and he is on the lookout for “mistakes.” And while liberty of thought creates the path towards some kind of reliable truth, it also establishes the justification of judgement and action. “The steady habit of correcting and completing his own opinion by collating it with those of others, so far from causing doubt and hesitation on carrying it into practice is the only stable foundation in a just reliance on it” (p. 166). Mill’s grand conception of truth is in fact a deeply practical one, for it rests not only on the process of debate and proof, but such a rigorous process then forms a direct line to earned authority and justified action. In fact, “on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right” (p. 165)

Mill, like Bentham, adopts a utilitarian stance in his idea of Freedom. He is not an idealist fighting for the cause of grand Truths. The pursuit of truth, rather, through “liberty of thought” represents a combative arena where contestants battle for their position, and “it is on the calmer and more disinterested bystander, that the collision of opinions works its salutary effect” (p. 190). Furthermore, Mill adopts the nuanced position of rejecting binary truth (wherein one point of view is either right or wrong). Mill furthermore rejects the worldview in which revolutions of thought require the victory of one opinion and the defeat of another. More often, “conflicting doctrines, instead of being one true and the other false, share the truth between them, and the nonconforming opinion is needed to supply the remainder of the truth of which the received doctrine embodies only a part” (p. 185). Received opinion, then, becomes the enemy of truth. Dogma stands in opposition to any vital truth. Mill, like Bentham, advocates for the vitality of free public discussion. Personal Freedom, therefore, becomes the path to civil society, a society that freely pursues vital truths and thus innoculates itself from the tyranny of dogma and authoritarian rule.

III. Economic Freedom

That is enough, for now, on the domain of Personal Freedom, at least as it has been defined by the Englishmen, Bentham and Mill. When looked at categorically, Personal Freedom represents the foundational root of the other domains of freedom that will be discussed next: Economic Freedom and Hegemonic Freedom. The meaning of Personal Freedom evolves violently in the US between the Declaration of Independence and the Civil War, and by the time of the World Wars of the 20th century, the ideological boundaries of Personal Freedom become disrupted in profound ways and with profound implications.

As we transition now to Economic Freedom, I will focus on Hayek and Friedman as the central spokesmen. There are many other spokesmen for Economic Freedom that could be chosen, but these two stand out as flag bearers in the crowd and deserve close examination. With both Hayek and Friedman, we quickly discover that human liberty has grafted on an entirely different branch of ideas and implications. In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek offers a stark warning to world leaders in the second half of the 20th Century, a warning about a path to economic slavery and the totalitarian state. We have chosen the wrong road, the road of collectivism. The title itself serves as a cautionary flare, for Hayek articulates the case in which economic models that rely on government control rather than individual liberty lead to disaster, to economic and personal “serfdom.” In his 1956 Preface (12 years after the original publication), Hayak reaffirms his premise that “only if we understand why and how certain kinds of economic controls tend to paralyze the driving forces of a free society, and which kinds of measures are particularly dangerous in this respect, can we hope that social experimentation will not lead us into situations that we do not want” (p. 45).

In Hayek’s original Introduction to the 1944 text, he references none other than Mill as he sets up the structure of his socioeconomic argument. Mill, Hayek points out, “drew his inspiration, more than any other men, from two Germans” (p. 61). It is vital to note here that Hayek’s motivation stems unequivocally from the rise of National Socialism in Germany. National socialism led directly to Nazism, totalitarianism, and catastrophe. But Hayek’s argument here is not that Germans are inherently predisposed to fascism. Freedom does not reside natively within certain peoples. Rather, when a nation’s economic system abandons free markets (i.e.  economic liberty) in favor of national planning, we are indeed then on “The Road to Serfdom.” It is the idea, not the people, that is the real enemy. “Mere hatred of everything German instead of the particular ideas is, moreover, very dangerous, because it blinds those who indulge in it against a real threat” (p. 61).

Hayek looks out at the world of 1944 with an economist’s perspective and sees the ravages throughout Europe and the world. Hayek writes from the shadows of destruction and devastation brought on by the Third Reich and its allies. He sees economic policy as inseparable from these global disasters. It is, in fact, the causal relationship. After highlighting Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia as case studies in centralized economic control, Hayek then makes his essential argument and states his warning: “…the contention of this book that the political development had something to do with their economic policies was then still indignantly rejected by the advocates of planning in [England]” (p. 43). In other words, national leaders were blind to the impact of economic models that relied on collectivist planning models, and they failed to understand the levers of power in their own nation-states.

According to Hayek, Economic Freedom and Personal Freedom are convergent, if not coterminous, and the course of history in the first half of the 20th century reveals a steady movement away from “liberal” philosophies: “We have progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past” (p. 67). This is the essential conjoining of Economic Freedom to Personal Freedom upon which so much depends. The two cannot be separated. And the evil that Hayek speaks of has a name, and that name is National Socialism. In short, “socialism means slavery” (p. 67). The question that arises, of course, is whether the personal freedoms discussed previously (freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly) are fundamentally equivalent to the freedoms of a market-based economic model and economic production. In other words, the question becomes this: is the freedom to economically produce what we need or want an equivalent and necessary aspect of personal freedom? Hayek answers in the affirmative. As it turns out, he will end up speaking for many others who advocate for laissez faire economics.

This brand of Economic Freedom does not apply only to the mundane workings of shop-keeping and dairy farming. Hayek argues that individualism and risk-taking have unleashed scientific revolutions. “Only since industrial freedom opened the path to the free use of new knowledge, only since everything could be tried – if somebody could be found to back it at his own risk – and, it should be added, as often as not from outside the authorities officially entrusted with the cultivation of learning, has science made the great strides which in the last hundred and fifty years have changed the face of the world” (p.70). Human freedom changes everything. When looked at in this light, from Hayek’s rhetorical vantage point, and considering (merely as familiar examples) the changes brought about by the ideas of Newton, Darwin, Einstein, and the Wright brothers, we could argue that the unleashing of human freedom is the true innovation, the essential alteration in the structure of civilization that begets even more alteration, more change than could possibly have been imagined in a world where an individual’s liberty was limited by fealty to one’s feudal Lord and his Priest. Once the creative force of Personal Freedom has been fully and finally released from the bottle, we sparked the advancements in human understanding of the world. And not just understanding, but also engagement and alteration. As Hayek views “industrial freedom,” it did not merely give us the ability to understand flight.  It allowed us to fly.

In The Road, Hayek observes how the socialist’s use of “freedom” shifts rhetorically as a means to reframe the development of civilization. He too sees the meaning of this word as a key battleground. As the conceptual foundations of socialism fell into place, the tug-of-war over the meaning of freedom was well under way. Emergent socialists, as Hayek sees it, made the case that individuals could only achieve freedom through coercively planned frameworks for economic activity. “The change in meaning to which the word ‘freedom’ was subjected in order that this argument should sound plausible is important. To the great apostles of political freedom the word had meant freedom from coercion, freedom from the arbitrary power of other men… The new freedom promised, however, was to be freedom from necessity, release from the compulsion of circumstances which inevitably limit the range of choice for all of us, although for some very much more than for others. Before man could be truly free, the ‘despotism of physical want’ had to be broken, the ‘restraints of the economic system’ relaxed.” (p. 71). We can see Hayek articulate how the freedom as outlined by the likes of Bentham and Mill (and others), was repositioned by emerging socialists as merely transitional. Freedom from economic need was the next step for collectivism. But Hayek counters these attempts to appropriate the definition of freedom. “There can be no doubt that the promise of greater freedom had become one of the most effective weapons of socialist propaganda” (p. 72).

In order to understand Hayek’s nuances more fully, it is important to know that he does not advocate a laissez faire system, and he explicitly advocates for action on the part of the state. “Of course, every state must act and every action of the state interferes with something or other” (p. 118). But this action should be based in law that transcends the individuals in power at any given moment in time. He believes that the state must protect those who lack power or standing as well as guard against the dangerous and polluting consequences of production. But competition unshakably reigns at the heart of his position. “To prohibit the use of certain poisonous substances or require special precaution in their use, to limit working hours or to require certain sanitary arrangements, is fully compatible with the preservation of competition” (p. 86). Even though Hayek acknowledges and accepts the regulatory role of government, we must still recognize that Hayek’s articulation of Economic Freedom represents a departure from Personal Freedom. Economic Freedom leads directly to the freedom of production. When we produce things that come into the world, we alter the landscape for everyone. In some cases, we produce “poisonous substances” and we tend to abuse labor. The physical and environmental impact alone presents Economic Freedom with complex entanglements that do not apply to Personal Freedom.

Philosophers stipulate etymologies. They define their terms, and they decide what gets included in the definition and what gets excluded.  This definitional process frames the underpinning of their arguments. Their terms are usually conceptual, like the term freedom. And they will often propose a new definition, new ideas to be included and some older ones excluded. They are on guard against “received ideas,” which provides a reliable technique for injecting “new ideas.” What we are talking about here is the unfolding definition, the unpacking and the repacking, of the contents of freedom. We can see that Mill and Bentham outline a case for Personal Freedom that necessarily includes free expression, free press, and free assembly as forms of non-violent political power that can help to keep the manifestations of tyranny in check. We can also see how Hayek wishes to reestablish free production as utterly necessary to avoid the authoritarian inevitabilities of collectivist economic systems. If Personal Freedom is the ultimate goal, what humans want as the end result (Hayek concedes that even most Socialists want that end result), we cannot get there without Economic Freedom. Whether you call it collectivism, socialism, or centralized planning, the road is the same: the loss of Personal Freedom and the decline of civilization. The world-wide disasters of the 20th century provide Hayek with ample demonstration that, in his eyes, Adam Smith was right all along.

It might come as little surprise that Hayek ventures into the same epistemological territory as Mill. Truth and truthfulness come under scrutiny. As Hayek sees it, the collectivist economic model leads inexorably toward the totalitarian state. And one of the necessary victims of that model is truth. This outcome has an inevitability in it for Hayek, and what follows necessarily is the need for everyone to fall in line. “The most effective way of making everyone serve the single system of ends towards which the social plan is directed is to make everybody believe in those ends” (p. 171). The totalitarian system, for example, requires the extinction of dissent. With the elimination of the marketplace, we also eliminate the marketplace of ideas. The truth then becomes a part of the planning process, a carefully crafted construction designed to create hierarchical obedience. “There is consequently no field where the systematic control of information will not be practiced, and uniformity of views not enforced” (p. 176).

In Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman picks up where Hayek leaves off, and he carries the Economic Freedom argument to an even purer expression of laissez faire values. Friedman openly acknowledges the influence of Hayek on his own thinking. The two economists knew each other well and explicitly referenced one another’s works. In the 2002 introduction, Friedman references Hayek’s Road to Serfdom as “brilliant” (p. viii) and in Chapter 1 as a “penetrating analysis” (p. 11). But Friedman presses the argument forward and wastes no time staking out his position in plain language: “To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them” (p. 1). One’s country, in this formulation, should represent nothing other than a container of individuals. A free nation’s character becomes simply the bottoms up collection of the totality of the individuals. To me it is striking here that Friedman uses the word “country” and not the word “government,” for while government is a construction of man for the sake of the state, the country certainly represents more than human-centric governance. The country includes the land, the resources, the geography, the place itself.

Friedman’s free-wheeling rhetoric represents a departure from Hayek’s more analytical style in important ways, and there are times when his proposals fall far short of intellectual rigor. Friedman takes the important step, for example, of conjoining economic freedom and personal freedom, as well as all other forms of freedom, in what he defines as “freedom broadly.” For Friedman, “freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end unto itself” (p. 8). What does this mean exactly? If Economic Freedom is a member idea of the set of ideas known as “freedom broadly,” and since freedom broadly understood is clearly what we value most, then Economic Freedom must follow as a logical inevitability. This argument, while at first glance appearing to be conceptually and logically sound, reveals a formative bias. But with only a modest amount of scrutiny, we can see that Friedman conflates Economic Freedom with all other forms of freedom and performs the neat trick of saying that this justifies Economic Freedom as an ultimate end. It’s a bit like saying “radiation is a natural occurrence in the world,” and thus “radiation from a nuclear reactor disaster is a natural occurrence in the world.”

While these two thinkers have emerged as idealized paragons of modern neoliberalism, their ideas about freedom deserve close attention.

This is not the only logical fallacy that Friedman commits in the early chapters of Capitalism and Freedom. “Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion – the technique of the army and the modern totalitarian state.  The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals – the technique of the marketplace” (p. 13). This is an exemplary use of the false dichotomy, were Friedman constructs what appears to be a comparison of equals, but which in fact is a hierarchy where one is preferred over the other. This might even represent an unalloyed, textbook example of the false dichotomy. In this case, the coercive model is the collectivist model and it is anti-freedom. Whereas the marketplace model is the model based on freedom and it is clearly the most desirable means and end. QED.

These fallacies are important because they point to the “all in” ideology that Friedman postulates and advocates. He does not offer a balanced, scientific depiction of the problems and the arguments, which would certainly include identifying the dangers of the marketplace model for society. Perhaps more importantly, these fallacies require our attention because Friedman was not merely an economist writing obscure papers that were bound and shelved and read by a few scholars from time to time. Friedman personally advised both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan on how best to direct the economies of the UK and the US. Hayak championed and translated these laissez faire economic policy principles, and they were actively pursued in the 1980’s by the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States.

And now we can return to Friedman’s odd usage of the word “clearly,” because it appears repeatedly and rapidly in clusters throughout the early parts of the Capitalism and Freedom. Here are just a few examples. “Clearly, economic freedom, in and of itself, is an extremely important part of total freedom.” What exactly is “total freedom,” and what are we to make of the use of this word, clearly? To say that something is “clearly” this, or “clearly” that, does not make it so. In fact, it reads as if the author has dropped all pretense of rigorous analysis. Objectivity has been abandoned for polemics. Just a few sentences below this, we find that “political freedom in this instance clearly came along with the free market” and this word continues to crop up in the following paragraphs as if to prop up some kind of assumed truth. Friedman appears to be selling (rather than investigating) these ideas.

In the fine debating tradition of “either you’re with us or you’re against us,” we also learn that if you aren’t in agreement with the need for economic freedom, then you are some kind of fascist. “Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself” (p. 15). The word “belief” here provides a good reason to pause. In the realm of economics, it would seem that “belief” is not the standard toward which we want to aspire. It would seem, rather, that evidence and objective examination of cause-and-effect would be the responsible way to go.

When we move into the topic of “neighborhood effects” we catch brief glimpses into how far his radical ideas of economic freedom will go. After Friedman has spent some time and ink sketching out the role of government to create the “rules of the game” he then weighs into several of the challenges of free market economics. He dispenses with monopolies quickly and then broaches the topic of how we might impact others with our freedom to produce. “The obvious example is the pollution of a stream.  The man who pollutes a stream is in effect forcing others to exchange good water for bad. These others might be willing to make the exchange at prices. But it is not feasible for them, acting individually, to avoid the exchange or to enforce appropriate compensation” (p.30). Friedman’s treatment of this scenario reflects a staggering blindness to the impact of man on the rest of the world. The idea that others might be willing to exchange bad water for a price reduces the impacts of human pollution merely to the human-centered world of commerce. It is as if Friedman cannot see through the clear stream water to what else lives there, for the stream may only be valuable to another man, or to a company.

Anthropocentrism can also be defined as “human supremacy” or “human exceptionalism.” In this worldview, an event like poisoning a stream can be handled simply through the exchange of money. And so we see how a anthropocentric free market philosophy can create serious problems, not only for other free individuals but for every other living being. And spending 57 words on neighborhood effects, Friedman is done with the polluted stream. Economic freedom in Friedman’s world seems to include the near total disregard for the well-being of all forms of life that are not human, except that they might be tallied into a total cost to the polluter.

Friedman spends more energy on the national parks system and concludes that parks could, and perhaps should, be handled by free enterprise. “I cannot myself conjure up any neighborhood effects or important monopoly effects that would justify government activity in this area.” Once again, Friedman’s copious imagination seems depleted of insights beyond his own biases. What about, for example, the regulation of endangered species, especially those that don’t recognize the borders of a national park, that have been threatened by the freedom of individuals to hunt and kill them? How should this be managed by private enterprise? Whether or not you agree with this “neighborhood effect,” it wasn’t hard to “conjure up.”

Friedman’s zealotry for economic freedom extends, it appears, into the mother’s womb. “The freedom of individuals to use their economic resources as they want includes the freedom to use them to have children – to buy, as it were, the services of children as a particular form of consumption” (p. 33). Now, in all fairness, if one were to take a purely economic point of view of the world, then this argument can seem to flow from a defensible philosophy rooted in enthusiastic free market thinking. But, of course, there are competing economic points of view that would also stake claims on the value of children as, say, sources of future labor. But we must pause here to observe that such zealous economic views relegate the human impacts on the rest of the living world as either “neighborhood effects” or areas of excessive regulation. Friedman’s philosophy of freedom reveals a radically nearsighted vision for liberal economic theory. Moreover, he seems blind to its impact on a world where life has evolved over billions of years.

There are many other free market economists that could be surfaced and examined, but Hayek and Friedman are clearly two of the most prominent torch bearers of these ideas. While they departed from each other in important ways, they both were strong and impactful champions of the ideals of Economic Freedom. And one can see clearly now that they were wildly successful, perhaps even more successful than they could have imagined. We have steadily and successfully grafted the branch of ideas known as Economic Freedom onto the root of the idea known as Personal Freedom, and we don’t seem to know how handle what it is that we have created. And what have we created exactly? I call it Hegemonic Freedom and Nancy MacClean calls it “the radical rich minority.” And so when we think today about the battle over freedom, and about minority rights, we are no longer thinking about the right minority.

IV. Hegemonic Freedom

In Being and Nothingness, Sartre considers freedom as essential and inescapable.  We are all, as he views it, condemned to be free. But there is a formidable spark of insight in his contemplation of freedom that raises up to meet the idea of Hegemonic Freedom. “I apprehend it, or at least I try to apprehend it as the original beginning of my possible, and I do not admit at all that it has in itself a beginning. I assert then that an act is free when it exactly reflects my essence. However this freedom which would disturb me if it were freedom before myself, I attempt to bring back to the heart of my essence-i.e., of myself. It is a matter of envisaging the self as a little God which inhabits me and which possesses my freedom as a metaphysical virtue” (p.42). What else to replace God but the idea of the self as a god? Otherwise, what are we to do with gods other than to relegate them to the garbage heap of history? While there is risk of pulling Sartre out of his ontological context, the idea that freedom emerges within the individual as a godlike entity bears close to the concept of Hegemonic Freedom. My observation is simply this: We have entered an era in which Personal Freedom and Economic Freedom have birthed a new domain of freedom, and this freedom is one that seeks to establish a degree of individual power that aspires to have untouchable powers. We are no longer talking about Personal Freedom – we are talking about personal power. We have entered the era of Hegemonic Freedom.

Hegemonic Freedom observes that there are individuals that can now achieve a level of Economic and Personal Freedom that swells and extends their power beyond the reach of the traditional state authority.

Hegemonic Freedom, as I will argue here, observes that there are individuals (and organizations of select individuals) that can now achieve a level of Economic and Personal Freedom that swells and extends their power beyond the reach of the traditional state authority. The government is no longer the source of power to be feared. The situation has reversed. The government is now the check against Hegemonic Freedom, and government’s ability to perform that function continues to come under assault. The idea of Personal Freedom, which was once an idea that was intended to allow individuals to overcome the abuses of totalitarian governments, has become the means to abuse the people that those governments are supposed to represent. The proverbial tail is now vigorously wagging the dog.

Individuals (and organizations) that pursue this form of freedom, a freedom whose essence is deeply rooted in individualistic manifestations of power, view governments as obstacles to the ultimate reach of extranational authority. Hegemonic Freedom therefore siphons concepts from the ideas of Economic Freedom in such a way that Personal Freedom for select individuals (and organizations) reaches new orbits fuelled by levels of extreme wealth, a wealth that comes through the winnings made possible by the values of Economic Freedom. Hegemonic Freedom represents the ruthless offspring of Personal Freedom and Economic Freedom. It does not come into existence without both parents. When acting at its most influential, and perhaps its most cynical, Hegemonic Freedom appeals directly to the enlightenment rhetoric of Personal Freedom.  In other words, the value system of Economic Freedom creates the possibility for Hegemonic Freedom and in so doing the rhetoric of Personal Freedom remains rooted deep into the ground upon which Hegemonic Freedom grows. These roots in Personal Freedom provide an endless supply of rhetorical material for its surrogates and surreptitious spokemen. You cannot chop down tree of Hegemonic Freedom without pulling out the roots of Personal Freedom. It is a fantastic conundrum, and one that we must learn to free ourselves from.

When considered as a source of raw political force, the representatives of Hegemonic Freedom marshal their considerable resources in order to buy and sell their way to the podium. While they are not always successful, they continue to craft their messages based in the enlightenment language of Personal Freedom. But it is a ruse, and a very effective one. They orchestrate messages of freedom that are then broadcast into the market by the media by consolidating and controlling the narrative and the storyline. They fund the political campaigns of those that will espouse the values of Economic Freedom regardless of evidence of its abuses. The forces that represent Hegemonic Freedom directly fund and influence the theories and ideologies taught at major universities by making foundational donations to the departments where such ideas are taught.

The architects of these radical ideas state explicitly that the outcomes of a laissez faire-leaning system, an expressly individualistic system, do not matter. All that matters is the adherence to the first principles of anarchic individualism. Buchanan claims unapologetically “that is ‘good’ which ‘tends to emerge’ from the free choices of the individuals who are involved” (Limits of Liberty, p. 9). His line-of-argument on this point is notable. The first principle of individualistic conduct replaces the scientific notion of evidence. Furthermore, the idea of the social contract is superfluous. “It is impossible for an external observer to lay down criteria for ‘goodness’ independent of the process through which the results are obtained” (L.o.L., p, 9). He says that whatever emerges from a totally free system is “good” by the very nature that the system was free. But then Buchanan immediately argues that outcomes cannot be seen as independent from process. Does this mean that both outcomes and process matter?  Apparently not, because then he immediately reiterates that the outcomes are irrelevant. “And to the extent that individuals are observed to be responding freely within the minimal required conditions of mutual tolerance, any outcome that emerges merits classification as ‘good,’ regardless of its precise descriptive content” (L.o.L., p.9). Is it that the outcomes don’t matter, or is it that the outcomes of a laissez faire system are well known? The rich and the powerful are “free” to marshal their resources to exploit the polity.

“It is a matter of envisaging the self as a little God,” says Sartre. A little God indeed. Perhaps it can be said that God is not dead after all, but has instead been born again within those individuals who choose to aspire to a Godlike freedom. The statistics are all well-known at this point. “What’s been going on the last 30 years? It’s a story of the uber-wealthy percent increasingly moored to markets and markets unmoored to any rules” (The Atlantic). When the markets are unmoored, we are living the values of Economic Freedom. “The rise of the rentiers is nothing new. What is new is the degree of financial globalization and liberalization that has supercharged the fortunes of the super-wealthy even beyond robber baron levels.” Liberalization means Economic Liberty, the freedom to operate in an unregulated system.

And thus we now live in the upside down world. The ambitious and talented individuals who once pursued freedom from the totalitarian state have now gained powers beyond the state, and they have simultaneously gained powers over those that remain within the governance of the state. These powers flow from extreme wealth, a wealth born of Economic Liberty. Of course, this power has not been distributed evenly. And for men like Buchanan, this is how it should be. “For my purposes, there is no need to discuss in detail the degree of possible inequality among separate persons in the conceptual state of nature that has been used to derive the logical origin of property rights. Those who have referred to the strong enslaving the weak may well have exaggerated the differences” (L.o.L., p. 34). That a functional state of free individuals begins with inequality is not only natural, but it requires no discussion.

The triumph of Economic Freedom has led us all to the rise of individuals who function independently of the traditional nation-state, those few who have the ability to operate independently of the reach of government power. This is in fact what makes the government their enemy, for it is only the government that can constrain their ascendency. Only a powerful government can seize the source of their power, which is their wealth and their property. And so it benefits the radical rich minority to argue for a constitutionally weak government.

In another familiar signal of our current upside down world, the term we use for an economic liberal is in fact a political conservative. In other words, the name we give to those who advocate and legislate for Economic Freedom is “Conservative.” To be a conservative in this upside down world is in fact to be a liberal. But here’s the brilliant logic of this: to espouse Economic Freedom allows the wealthy and the powerful to conserve their wealth and power through the mechanisms of unregulated markets. And yet we are flummoxed, walking around in a fog. The term liberal, of course, refers to economic liberalism, otherwise known as Economic Freedom. But these so-called conservatives believe in the values and policies of economic liberalism. We find ourselves confounded in our attempts to make sense of our situation.

It is one of the most effective linguistic reversals of our time (and perhaps the bellwether of the era of Hegemonic Freedom). And since this metaphorical bellwether is in fact the sheep that leads the flock, we must ask if we can see the teeth of the wolf. And what these self-named conservatives have mastered is the ability to turn liberalism into a term of weakness, a set of ideas that somehow threatens a citizen’s Personal Freedom. All of which brings us back to square one. We still yearn for the existential release of freedom. We want to be unbound, unchained, untethered, but once we have been released, it turns out that we want to have the powers of a little God.

The numbers of inequity are well known by now. We see them so frequently that we struggle to think critically about their implications. We become inured to the inevitable, or perhaps worse we each see these numbers as the scorecard in a game we are losing. Here’s one example: “the eight richest [individuals] have the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the world — nearly 4 billion people” (Business Insider).  We shrug our shoulders and go back to work.

The rise of highly wealthy individuals is not limited to the countries considered to be part of The West. We might look at China, or India, or Russia.  The trend, in other words, is increasingly in the direction of extremely powerful individuals whose power reaches beyond the state. “The French economist Thomas Piketty estimates that more than half of Russians’ total wealth is held offshore in this manner – some $800bn (£597bn) – and by a tiny number of people, perhaps just a few hundred” (The Guardian). This is not Russian wealth but the wealth of certain Russian individuals. This wealth then finds its ways into other nations in order to avoid the constraints of any single nation. “Over the past decade, £68bn has flowed from Russia into Britain’s offshore satellites such as the British Virgin Islands, Cayman, Gibraltar, Jersey and Guernsey. That’s seven times more money than has flowed directly from Russia into the UK. (On top of that, some £94bn has poured out of Russia into Cyprus, £13bn into Switzerland, and £23bn into the Netherlands, which has its own network of tax havens.)” It is a staggering notion that 50% of the wealth of a country like Russia resides in other countries, and that this money is controlled by an increasingly small number of individuals and organizations.

We hear the phrase “no one is above the law” in public discourse when someone in a position of power has been accused of breaking the law. It is time-tested pabulum, but we like to think that it is true nevertheless. It sounds good to say it, but saying it doesn’t make it true. Usually said by a political opponent, the phrase begs the question of whether or not certain individuals are in fact above the law. To be able to operate “above the law” is to achieve Hegemonic Freedom, for it is only the government that can restrain or constrain the power of the extremely powerful and extremely wealthy individuals. If one lives “above the law” then they live “above the reach of government.” It is government that has the power to seize the assets and to punish individuals by taking away their basic freedoms, i.e. by putting them in prison for breaking laws. It is precisely this power of government that drives proponents of Economic Freedom to argue repeatedly that “the government is the problem.” The argument goes like this: government regulation, taxation and legislation damages the benefits of the unfettered free market, and thus destroy jobs (low paying jobs, to be clear). It operates like a veiled threat. This is the message platform that pours out from proponents of Economic Hegemony. “Less government equals more jobs for you.”

But the subversive vein is not always quite visible, and it is the vein through which the blood of Hegemonic Freedom runs. When government becomes the problem, we weaken our collective ability to ensure that “no one is above the law.” Thus, if we are indeed “a country of laws” then it is the government that will create and discharge those laws. We fail to grasp this truism when someone waves the flag of freedom in our faces. We may be a country of laws, but do they apply to everyone? There is a peculiar calculus at work here. It is precisely the captains of Hegemonic Freedom that espouse the values of weakened government, which in turn enables them to grow their power, to achieve greater Hegemonic Freedom, to become “like a small god.” Less taxation, less regulation and less legislation lead to greater accumulation of wealth and power for individuals and those that run large organizations. Meanwhile, those who run large organizations are achieving levels of income that set them apart from the citizenry. “In the 1950s, a typical CEO made 20 times the salary of his or her average worker. Last year, CEO pay at an S&P 500 Index firm soared to an average of 361 times more than the average rank-and-file worker, or pay of $13,940,000 a year, according to an AFL-CIO’s Executive Paywatch news release today” (Forbes, May 22, 2018). One might argue that stratospheric pay rates follow from a corresponding extreme level of talent and responsibility. It is well deserved, and the rising tide raises all boats. This all too familiar refrain tends to come from the true believers of Economic Freedom. To run a large organization, in other words, requires tremendous skills and entails great liabilities. But we need only examine the 2008 financial crisis to see that personal accountability does not follow from extreme levels of compensation. And neither does talent. Could it simply be the case that the current incarnation of Economic Freedom means that extreme wealth simply flows to the top by design? That it is systemic? And thus Hegemonic Freedom becomes an inevitability?

The damage done from the 2008 banking crisis is well documented. While the cause was born in the US financial markets, the effects were global. The people who paid the highest price were those at the bottom 90% of the economic ladder. Not only did they bear the brunt of the collapse, they paid the bill. But who was punished and who was held accountable? Were there people in power that were above the law? The individuals at the top of the financial institutions paid no such price. In fact, in many cases they were paid bonuses for their performance. This is not new information, but it is worth revisiting for a moment. “Since 2009, 49 financial institutions have paid various government entities and private plaintiffs nearly $190 billion in fines and settlements, according to an analysis by the investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. That may seem like a big number, but the money has come from shareholders, not individual bankers. (Settlements were levied on corporations, not specific employees, and paid out as corporate expenses—in some cases, tax-deductible ones.) In early 2014, just weeks after Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, settled out of court with the Justice Department, the bank’s board of directors gave him a 74 percent raise, bringing his salary to $20 million” (The Atlantic). But the point here is not to rehash a well understood demonstration of wealth and the power that accompanies that wealth. Nor is it an opportunity to further impugn the byzantine banking system. That has already been done. The point is to see this episode from the lens of Hegemonic Freedom. The leaders of global financial institutions are prime examples of the new royalty. They are the new princes, the new lords, the new bishops in an era where the values of Economic Freedom, while playing to the promise of Personal Freedom, have achieved the full benefits of Hegemonic Freedom. They are not only above the law, but they articulate the terms of the new laws. Joseph Stiglitz articulates the growing power gap using simple terms in Freefall, “In this new variant of the conflict between Wall Street and the rest of the country, the banks held a gun to the heads of the American people: ‘If you don’t give us more money, you will suffer’” (p. 50). But it should be pointed out that banks don’t do anything. The leaders and managers at the tops of those institutions determine the values and call the shots.

Nancy MacLean explores Buchanan’s body of work and his practical impact in the current situation and she highlights the dreamlike notion of freedom as an offering dangled before our eyes, and perhaps before his own eyes.

The dream of this movement, its leaders will tell you, is freedom. “I want a society where no one has power over the other,” Buchanan told an interviewer earlier in the century. I don’t want to control you and I don’t want to be controlled by you. It sounds so reasonable, fair and appealing. But the story told here will show that the last part of that statement is by far the most telling. This cause defines the “you” its members do not want to be controlled by as the majority of the American people. And its architects have never recognized economic power as a potential tool of domination. To them, unrestrained Capitalism is freedom. (Democracy in Chains, p. xxxiv)

The “movement” MacLean talks about here represents what I would call the people and the ideas that have created a world where representative governments find themselves battling with the forces of Hegemonic Freedom. It is the collection of Billionaires, and those who aspire to orchestrate that ultra-free world with them, who have the power to influence how we think. In 1956, there were no Billionaires (MacLean, p. xxiii). Now there are over 2,000 of them, representing almost eight trillion dollars in wealth. This math cannot be accounted for by inflation.

We become like sops when sprinkled with the rhetoric of freedom. We do not ask ourselves what lies at the bottom of this foggy notion of freedom. It feels good, and we believe that it somehow invokes our enlightened self-interests, but what is the true price of such freedom and who pays for it? We do not see the message behind the message. We do not combat the spells cast by the magical rhetoric of freedom and we do not ask the simple question, “What exactly do you mean by Freedom, sir? Please tell me who wins and who loses as we grant the powerful with more and more power all in the name of freedom.”

In closing, let’s assume for a moment that Hayek is right when he argues that the rise of Personal Freedom has led us to radical advancements in science, art, technology and man’s power to understand (and to change) the world. Furthermore, let’s argue that the diverse domains of human freedom have in fact unleashed the most creative (and destructive) forces on the planet. We might say then that nuclear bombs and genetic engineering are merely two of the more spectacular fruits of human creativity, made possible only by freeing humankind from the orthodoxy of churches and kings. It seems to me that there is ample evidence to support this claim, and I confess that I am convinced. Now what? Now we must ask the questions that Buchanan explicitly refuses to ask. We must ask about where this power takes us. And so the question becomes this: how will we harness the powers of human freedom? And to what ends?

References

• Liberty of the Press, and Public Discussion, Jeremy Bentham, Edited by John Bowring, 1843
• On Liberty, J. S. Mill
• The Road To Serfdom, F. A. Hayek
• Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman
• The Limits of Liberty, Between Anarchy and Leviathan, James M. Buchanan
• Being and Nothingness, J. P. Sartre

Additional Background Material

• Freefall, Joseph Stiglitz
• Democracy in Chains, Nancy MacClean
• The Atlantic, “What Putin Really Wants”
• The Guardian, “Sergei Roldugin, the cellist who holds the key to tracing Putin’s hidden fortune”
• The Guardian, US ‘name-and-shame’ list of Russian oligarchs binned by top Trump official – expert
• The New Republic, Political Corruption and the Art of the Deal
• New Yorker, Putin, a Little Man Still Trying to Prove His Bigness 
• New Yorker, A Theory of Trump Kompromat
• The Atlantic, The Plot Against America
• The Atlantic, Street’s Bankers Stayed Out of Jail
• Alex Stamos, How the U.S. Has Failed to Protect the 2018 Election–and Four Ways to Protect 2020

2018 marks the 150th Anniversary of the Fourteenth Amendment and this is the second installment in which Sisyphus examines its import. The influence of the Amendment on the controversies and interpretations of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Supreme Court is an important and complex study. In this issue, we examine how the Fourteenth Amendment has been interpreted, how precedent is established, and the implications of its interpretation for future Supreme Court decisions.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. — CITIZENSHIP CLAUSE OF THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION

The Reconstruction Amendments–the thirteenth (banning slavery), the fourteenth (establishing due process), and the fifteenth (granting the right to vote to emancipated slaves)—were originally written by the legislature to address the challenges the post-Civil War government would face at the end of the war and presents national (rather than state) legislative solutions to the reintegration of four million native-born, former slaves into the body politic of the reformed nation. From the perspective of hindsight, the intention of the Reconstruction Amendments protects the most vulnerable in the society. In the subsequent one hundred and fifty years, however, the chips have not fallen that way.

HOW CORPORATIONS BECAME PERSONS

“…in cases like the notorious Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), [Supreme Court] justices refused to read the Constitution as protecting the rights of African-Americans, the real intended beneficiaries of the Fourteenth Amendment. Between 1868, when the amendment was ratified, and 1912, the Supreme Court would rule on 28 cases involving the rights of African-Americans and an astonishing 312 cases on the rights of corporations,” says Adam Winkler. In fact, Winkler’s latest book We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won their Civil Rights chronicles one of the “most successful yet least known ‘civil rights’ movements in American history.”

By the time of the framing of the Constitution, there were 300 corporations in the thirteen colonies. Indeed, corporations are, in large part, an interwoven thread in the tapestry of American society, growth, and development. A series of lawsuits beginning in the nineteenth century and continuing unabated over the subsequent 130 years has produced a controversial legal precedent, granting corporations personhood and many of the same rights as human beings.

In Corporations Are Not People, Bill Moyers writes, “…in its founding era, Alexander Hamilton created a financial system for our infant republic that mixed subsidies, tariffs, and a central bank to establish a viable economy and sound public credit. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson warned Americans to beware of the political ambitions of that system’s managerial class. Madison feared that the ‘spirit of speculation’ would lead to ‘a government operating by corrupt influence, substituting the motive of private interest in the place of public duty.’ Jefferson hoped that ‘we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and [to] bid defiance to the laws of our country.’

“Andrew Jackson…vetoed the re-chartering of the Second Bank of the United States in the summer of 1832. …In his veto message, he said: ‘[This act] seems to be predicated on the erroneous idea that the present stockholders have a prescriptive right not only to the favor but to the bounty of the Government…It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes.’”

And Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, AT&T, and Comcast are not the first corporations with antitrust issues, just the most recent.

In 1881 California imposed a special tax on Leland Stanford’s Southern Pacific Railroad. Southern Pacific pushed back, “making the bold argument that the law was an act of unconstitutional discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment… Stanford’s railroad argued that it was a person too, reasoning that just as the Constitution prohibited discrimination on the basis of racial identity, so did it bar discrimination against Southern Pacific on the basis of its corporate identity,” states Winkler. The case made it to the Supreme Court. The head lawyer on Southern Pacific’s legal team was Roscoe Conklin. Conklin had the unique distinction of being the last living survivor of the Congressional drafting committee framing the Fourteenth Amendment. As such, Conklin claimed to have in his possession a journal containing the notes from the framing and claimed that the framers had changed the term “citizens” to “persons” in order to include corporations. It is important to note that Conklin had turned down appointments to the Supreme Court on two occasions, citing “poverty due to civil service,” so he was a well-known peer to the Court. But that did not stop him from lying. There was no such mention in the journal, the Court did not rule on the case, and it was dropped three years later.

However, Southern Pacific brought a new suit, without Conklin and his journal, but addressing the same legal arguments. The Court ruled on the second case, but the justices expressly declined to decide if corporations were people, resolving the case on other grounds. “The Supreme Court’s opinions are officially published in volumes edited by an administrator called the reporter of decisions. By tradition, the reporter writes up a summary of the Court’s opinion and includes it at the beginning of the opinion. The reporter in the 1880s was J.C. Bancroft Davis, whose wildly inaccurate summary of the [second] Southern Pacific case said that the Court had ruled that ‘corporations are persons within … the Fourteenth Amendment.’ Whether his summary was an error or something more nefarious—Davis had once been the president of the Newburgh and New York Railway Company—will likely never be known.”

Enter Justice Stephen J. Field. Justice Field has the dubious infamy of being the only sitting justice ever arrested and the charge was murder, even though he was found innocent. But he was guilty of serious ethics violations. He was a friend of Leland Stanford and shared confidential SCOTUS briefs with the Southern Pacific legal team and saw an opportunity in Davis’s inaccurate summary. “A few years later, in an opinion in an unrelated case, Field wrote that ‘corporations are persons within the meaning’ of the Fourteenth Amendment. ‘It was so held in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad,’ explained Field, who knew very well that the Court had done no such thing.”

Subsequent SCOTUS decisions and the entire basis of the corporate rights movement are based on Field’s intentional lie intended to establish a faux precedent. Since the earliest days of the Republic, even though they have not been subject to systematic oppression, corporations have asked the Supreme Court to recognize their Constitutional rights. “Today,” writes Winkler, “corporations have nearly all the same rights as individuals: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, religious liberty, due process, equal protection, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, the right to counsel, the right against double jeopardy, and the right to trial by jury, among others.” The problem is that—in addition to decisions being based on faux precedent—affording “artificial persons” (corporations) the same rights as “natural persons” (human beings) creates an imbalance. Corporations (which do not have the ability to vote) can fund and unfairly influence elections. Corporations can commit crimes and not be sentenced to jail, only restitution. In effect, corporations become “super citizens” whose influence is greater than yours or mine, limited only by fiscal contingencies.

Clearly, this is an issue that did not start with Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) but has been around since almost the beginning of the nation. And the federal courts frequently side with the interests which can afford to continue to sue for more and greater legislative rights.

“… in 2006,” writes Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap for Occupy.org and Move to Amend, “my community in northern California passed a ballot initiative to outlaw political contributions by outside corporations because of our experience with a giant timber company based in Texas that tried to recall our elected representatives for enforcing the law against them; and of Wal-Mart corporation trying to change our local zoning laws through purchasing a ballot initiative.

“Our community tried to protect ourselves, but two short years later in 2008 our ‘Humboldt County Ordinance to Protect Fair Elections and Local Democracy’ was overturned in federal court because it violated the so-called rights of corporations to influence our local elections.”

“…corporations need some constitutional protections,” opines Winkler. “As you know, there’s a constitutional movement to amend the Constitution, to add a 28th Amendment that would outlaw corporate rights, that would say corporations are not people, supported by a lot of big organizations–Move to Amend, Public Citizen, and others. I think that constitutional amendment would be a mistake, although I understand its motivations and desire to scale back corporate power. Corporations need basic protections for their property rights, otherwise the government could come and seize a corporation’s assets without paying just compensation. We want corporations to have due process rights, so Apple can fight against the federal government and the FBI when it says, We want you to open up this iPhone. Apple wouldn’t do that if it didn’t have due process rights. And, of course, we want corporations like The New York Times and CNN to have, even though they’re corporations, to have some free speech rights; otherwise they could be censored. So I think we need to have a nuanced approach to the rights of corporations. They need some constitutional protections, but that doesn’t mean they need all the same constitutional protections as you and me.”

“Wealth acquired under capitalism is in and of itself no enemy to democracy,” says Moyers in Corporations Are Not People, “but wealth armed with political power—power to choke off opportunities for others to rise, power to subvert public purposes and deny public needs—is a proven danger to the ‘general welfare’ proclaimed in the Preamble to the Constitution as one of the justifications of America’s existence.”

When the Supreme Court ruled that the free speech rights of the conservative non-profit Citizens United v. FEC were violated by the prohibition of airing Hilary: The Movie in response to Fahrenheit 9/11, the ruling included language that fundamentally altered campaign finance rules. By allowing corporations and billionaires to covertly fund political advertisements, it “elevated money itself above votes.” The public outcry over Citizens United is that it overturned established rules of campaign finance and allowed corporate front groups to covertly fund political ads, Senate and House campaigns. “The more you spend on politics,” says editor Jim Hightower, “the bigger your voice is in government, making the vast vaults of billionaires and corporations far superior to the voices of mere voters.”

“It is not a partisan issue; it is more than a political issue; it is a great moral issue,” said President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-09). “If we condone political theft, if we do not resent the kinds of wrong and injustice that injuriously affect the whole nation, not merely our democratic form of government but our civilization itself cannot endure.”

The corporate plutocracy has quietly encroached on the rights of the ordinary citizen throughout the nation’s history, but the Supreme Court decisions have typically been in the corridors of power. Although cases are public record, a majority of cases slip quietly through the legislative cracks. With the advent of televised high-profile Court cases, typically the more modern—Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Citizens United v. FEC, Bush v. Gore—the average person is able to more closely follow the decisions that impact their everyday lives. Finally, the populace is able to monitor the Supreme Court’s zeal to protect its corporate “super citizens,” to see in real-time decisions that affect their liberty.

Nowhere is this more glaring than Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014). In the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the department of Health and Human Services required employers to provide insurance to their employees (free of charge) that offered a full range of contraceptives. Failure to do so was intended to be met with fines. The Green family corporation (owners of Hobby Lobby) and the Hahn family corporation (owners of Conestoga) claimed that the law violated the religious freedom of the aforementioned corporations and the fines were burdensome. The corporations won by a narrow margin, SCOTUS determining that the right to contraceptive and reproductive health of the corporations’ employees infringed on the evangelical owners’ religious rights. In effect, the corporations in the case had a greater right than their employees and the intention of the ACA.

In a 5-4 opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, the court held that as applied to closely held corporations, the Health and Human Services [HHS] regulations imposing the contraceptive mandate violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act [RFRA]. Alito was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Justice Anthony Kennedy filed a concurring opinion.”

“In her dissent [Justice Ruth Bader] Ginsburg [joined on the merits by Justice Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Stephen Breyer], … worried about what other challenges might come next: ‘Reading the Act expansively, as the court does, raises a host of “Me, too” questions. Can an employer in business for profit opt out of coverage for blood transfusions, vaccinations, antidepressants, or medications derived from pigs, based on the employer’s sincerely held religious beliefs opposing those medical practices? The exemption sought by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga would override significant interests of the corporations’ employees and covered dependents. It would deny legions of women who do not hold their employers’ beliefs access to contraceptive coverage that the ACA would otherwise secure.’”

“Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. told the justices at oral arguments that the challengers to the law were asking for a radical departure from precedent. In briefs he said, ‘The Supreme Court has never granted a religious accommodation to a secular business that comes at the expense of its employees.’”

–ABC News,

Neoliberal ideologies that have permeated the courts and culture since Eisenhower and the establishment of the CIA under the Dulles brothers facilitate and reinforce policies that are favorable to business but detrimental to the “general welfare” of “we the people.” (The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War).

[The Fourteenth Amendment] shapes almost every issue we debate today: immigration, racial and gender equality, voter suppression, free speech, corporations and federal power. Its history destroys the notion that freedom grew steadily over time — that the founders bestowed liberty on white men, which was gradually extended to others. Rather, the amendment reinvented freedom. It established birthright citizenship, required ‘due process’ and ‘equal protection’ of the law for everyone, and put the federal government in the business of policing liberty. It removed race and ethnicity from the legal definition of American identity…

The 14th Amendment is felt by all of us, every day. If it did not invent freedom, it transformed and strengthened it, codifying a universal definition of individual rights and national identity that has been an example to the world. But the failings of those who wrote it linger on. Many of us still have not internalized the idea that an American can look like anyone in the world. Whoever calls the police on a peaceful, unarmed black or brown person is acting in a long, grim tradition. Complaints about the immigration of Muslims, Latin Americans or people from ‘shithole countries’ restate the original arguments against the 14th as opening the doors to ‘heathens’ and ‘pagans.’ Even debates over the intrusiveness of the federal government and the rights of corporations are rooted in the amendment that forever altered Washington’s role in American life.

— Pulitzer Prizewinning Author T.J. Stiles in an OpEd for the New York Times.

BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP

Which brings the discussion to birthright citizenship, the appointment of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to SCOTUS, and the current philosophy and ideology of the Supreme Court. The United States determines citizenship by the precedent of jus soli (right of the soil). “In most developed countries and in all of Europe, it is jus sanguinis (right of the blood) that determines a child’s citizenship. That is, defined by parental citizenship, not place of birth,” claims Ronald L. Trowbridge, chief of staff for former Chief Justice Warren Burger, in a recent OpEd for the San Francisco Chronicle.

There are 34 countries that practice jus soli, an important part of the 14th Amendment. President D.T. has suggested that he intends to sign an Executive Order to amend the Constitution and its protections.

“Many legal scholars have raised doubts that an executive order can change the birthright clause. More than a dozen constitutional law professors from the country’s leading law schools released a public statement immediately following Trump’s claims,” FactCheck relates.

“’As constitutional scholars who have studied the 14th Amendment, we write to say in no uncertain terms that (President Trump) is wrong. … There is no serious scholarly debate about whether a president can, through executive action, contradict the Supreme Court’s long-standing and consistent interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment,’ the statement reads.”

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizen of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

–Citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment

“Americans shouldn’t casually dismiss the threat of a president or Congress redefining the Citizenship Clause to exclude disfavored groups. When political imperatives and racial hostility mix together, the Supreme Court cannot always be relied on to defend the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship,” Sam Erman and Neil Weare argue in a recent article for Slate. “Many assume that the overwhelming bipartisan consensus condemning the constitutionality of Trump’s plan to restrict birthright citizenship by executive order or congressional statute makes such plans dead on arrival. Simply put, the original understanding of the Citizenship Clause requires recognizing all born on U.S. soil as citizens (the only narrow exceptions are for the children of foreign diplomats, enemy soldiers, or certain Indian tribes). An unbroken line of Supreme Court precedent agrees. But America’s unsavory history of denying birthright citizenship in overseas U.S. territories offers a cautionary tale.

“The problem began in 1899, when President William McKinley oversaw annexation of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines from Spain. In step with prevailing racial attitudes, he judged the native inhabitants unfit to be American citizens. So he acted unilaterally to deny them citizenship,” says Slate. “McKinley’s view—like Trump’s—was clearly contrary to well-settled understandings of the Citizenship Clause.”

“…[T]he 14th Amendment’s ratification, the Supreme Court explained ‘put at rest’ the [prior] proposition that ‘[t]hose who had been born and resided always in the District of Columbia or in the Territories, though within the United States, were not citizens.’ …[T]he chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee explained during congressional debates over the Citizenship Clause that it ‘refers to persons everywhere, whether in the States or in the Territories.’ (All emphasis ours.)”

However, rulings of the Supreme Court are subject to the ideologies and philosophies of the sitting Justices, determined less by “right” or “wrong” but rather by interpretation of the Constitution.

“In a 1901 case involving tariffs on oranges from Puerto Rico that had nothing to do with citizenship, key Justices nonetheless opined on the racial fitness of residents of the territories to be citizens. Justice Henry Billings Brown—the author of Plessy v. Ferguson—rejected birthright citizenship for territorial inhabitants’ ‘children thereafter born, whether savages or civilized.’ Justice Edward Douglas White expressed concern about ‘bestowal of citizenship on those absolutely unfit to receive it.’”

This is still an open, unresolved issue with potentially far-reaching consequences. In all the U.S. territories, inhabitants are expressly labeled as second-class Americans—they can’t vote in federal elections and federal policy requires that U.S. passports include a disclaimer in all capital letters that “THE BEARER IS A UNITED STATES NATIONAL AND NOT A UNITED STATES CITIZEN” in clear violation of the Citizenship Clause of the Constitution.

On November 14, 2018, the Federal District Court in Utah heard its most recent birthright citizenship case. Fitisemanu v. United States argues that Congress does not have the power to redefine the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship to treat those born in U.S. territories as second-class Americans. The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment unequivocally guarantees citizenship to persons born on U.S. soil, whether born in a state, territory, or the District of Columbia.

The United States is not unique in denying rights to some of its citizens over the centuries and having to explain its motivations. As example, the modern history of the Dominican Republic shines a light on the practice of changing “fundamental truths.”

“…the original 1865 jus soli, or ‘place-of-birth,’ birthright-citizenship provision in the Dominican Republic—enacted three years before the U.S. emerged from its Civil War with a Fourteenth Amendment and jus soli provision of its own—signaled a vision of the new Dominican state as a place open to just about everyone. As the historian Anne Eller has written, the provision came in a moment of heightened international cooperation when Haitians, who had thrown off French colonialism and slavery more than 60 years earlier, helped Dominicans win their final and lasting independence from Spain,” notes Jonathan Katz in the Atlantic.

What was accepted as a “fundamental truth” for a republic for two hundred years were only laws written on paper by men. Laws can be changed. In 2010, the Dominican Republic redrafted its Constitution to exclude Dominicans of Haitian descent, all those who could not prove that their parents were legal Dominican residents. The new law affected residents of Haitian descent only and its implementation required petitioners to reconcile their citizenship back to an exception in 1929. The subsequent racial unrest divided the island nation. “Facebook and Twitter were filled with an ultra-nationalist, anti-Haitian narrative of Dominican history, which erased historic alliances and played up real and imagined abuses. Many pushed their completely unfounded belief that the true intention of Haitian immigrants and their children was to conquer the Dominican Republic and raise Haiti’s flag over the entire island.” By 2015 the racial tensions were so great, Dominican nationalists lynched a Haitian man in a public square in Santiago.

“…as Dominicans have ably shown, the most extreme rhetoric has a way of becoming real,” Katz continues. “And the consequences of inciting millions of people against vulnerable groups of immigrants are impossible to control. Representative Steve King—a freshly reelected white-supremacist Republican from Iowa who favorably retweets neo-Nazis—regularly introduces bills that are eerily similar to the Dominican law: denying birthright citizenship to anyone without a parent who is a citizen or ‘lawful permanent resident’ of the United States. In late October, King crowed: ‘I am very happy that my legislation will soon be adopted by the White House as national policy.’ And supposedly sober-minded conservatives may be little help. Days after criticizing the president, [Congressmen Paul] Ryan tried to walk back his comments [against the policies of DJT], telling Fox News that he agreed the Fourteenth Amendment ‘should be reviewed.’”

CONCLUSION

What is clear is that the freedoms guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment are being challenged and that, we too, may have to face the dangerous discriminatory forces engendered by Trump’s policies in the United States. But we do have to fight for what we believe. While the Founding Fathers had presented a document far from perfect, they believed at the time that the document was better than any alternative. But they had not yet worked out fully the question that has plagued all nations aspiring to democratic government ever since: how to implement principles of popular majority rule while at the same time preserving stable governments that protect the rights and liberties of all citizens.

It might be worth retelling a well-known story from our country’s founders and their struggle for democratic rule: The deliberations of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were held in strict secrecy. Consequently, anxious citizens gathered outside Independence Hall when the proceedings ended in order to learn what had been produced behind closed doors. The answer was provided immediately. A Mrs. Powell of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

The allegory idea came first, actually.  I was thinking about how, and whether, everyone and everything could somehow get along in such a divided socio-political scene, and when the players entered in, I thought about the old dramatic allegories, like Everyman, that would personify concepts and groups.  Now I had this older genre kicking around for a poem that’s taking up hard stuff but wants to be a little light and encouraging, so doing the rhymed approach seemed to fit; I rarely write in rhymes, and I hadn’t written a sonnet in a long while, and voila! 

Well, we enlarge the grown-up table for
the far-flung fragments of our Family.
Here’s our current Winter spent in agony,
here’s our disrespected Sister, here is War
that mushrooms undiminished, glibly tears
our global Soul to slivers. And here We are;
and here’s a Brute beside us so bizarre
that nearly nothing else we’ve known compares—
as if we’d acceded to some greater Hell.
Ah, but here’s what’s left of human Dignity.
Seated here’s Resolve to trample Travesty.
But there’s our Greatest Fear that’s hard to quell….
Hey, this isn’t fatalistic Falderal!
We must make sure the table’s set for All.

—first appeared in Writers Resist

WARNING: I have been a liberal political activist for my entire adult life. I am a left-wing, pinko, commie, government-affirming, tree-hugging bleeding heart. I am the exact kind of person conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter want you to keep your children away from. Frankly, I am damn proud that in the unlikely case we ever meet, they both would despise me.

And still, I recently ran full-steam, head-first into a wall. I was blind to my entitled, ego-filled attitude. The collision has left me with a concussion. I am quite shocked and dazed, but grateful for my ongoing recovery. Writing this article has been my personal equivalent of the National Football League’s concussion protocol. In this process I have learned a great deal about myself and the realities of white male privilege.  

Now that I am seventy years old and semi-retired, I have time to pursue one of my great dreams: to have some of my work published. This is a truly daunting task and can be more than a little overwhelming. The writing remains exciting. Finding publishers is exhausting at worst and annoying at best. This part of the process consumes much more time than actually creating.

Fortunately there are resources, including several magazines and websites which provide lists of publishers seeking particular kinds of work. I came away from my initial survey of these resources with a sense that diversity had come to publishing. There seemed to be a flood of contests and calls for manuscripts from every underrepresented population: younger women, older women, LGBTQ writers, African-Americans, Native Americans, refugees, and immigrants were all given their opportunities.

It seemed that the only group that was left out was mine: The Old White Guys (OWGs). I was not very happy about it. It seemed that others were being given opportunities denied to me. The sentiment that the OWGs had held a privileged status for eons and that it’s now time to even the playing field was of little comfort and at times even felt offensive. Nothing in my life has been particularly easy. Everything I came into was a result of hard work. Implying I had it easy in the writing and publishing realm felt like an insult. This is one of the reasons many white males are so resistant to dealing with accusations of privilege. The sense of having worked very hard in life and simultaneously seeing the advantages accorded to us because of our race and gender can be difficult to integrate. It is not just fragility. Rather it reflects fury at the implication that our success was gifted to us. And when one is furious, the ego is activated and the ability to discern with an open heart shuts down.

My conscience said that equality—rather equity— was what my liberal self had always worked towards and hoped for my entire life. This experiment in literature was a concrete working-out of civil rights and social justice in a very specific and concrete corner of society. Great. Except I felt left out. Others seemed to be taking my place at the exact moment I wanted to claim it. Making room for others was costing me.   

My liberal sensitivities were still alive, but I was on a slippery slope. Darth Vader was beckoning me. I did not entirely plunge into the dark side, but I began to think there might be some truth to the ‘alt-right’ harangue that minorities had taken over and were taking all the good opportunities. I believed my dream was at risk because others were granted special status. My major error was allowing my mind and ego to go to the place of either/or: either them or me.  

As I surveyed the various calls for writing, I found one prize for a single mother living with a child under ten. The prize was an internship over the summer on Martha’s Vineyard. Great prize, but that one was out. I have five grandchildren who I love deeply, but I’d rather stick a screwdriver in my eye than live with any of them. I spent many years raising children. Been there. Done that. It was wonderful. Not looking for a repeat. And obviously I don’t fit the category.

There was also a prize for a translation of Zen poetry by Asian writers. Learning a new language is another of those screwdriver things. If this kept up, I was going to not only need more screwdrivers, but also more eyes.  

By far, the greatest number of requests were for works of poetry. But alas, I am not a poet. I am unable to put words together artfully enough to write poetry.

The next largest group of requests was for writers of various forms of fiction. Since I write essays, this was closer but not quite a bull’s eye.

Hmmmmmm. I wonder what happens if you stick a screwdriver in the eye of a bull. Some good fiction writer, accustomed to vivid detail, could write a great short story about that.

One group I did fit into was writers who have never published a book. The way it was looking, that might always be my group: The-Old White-Guys-Who-Have-Never-Published-A-Book-Group (OWGWHNPABG).

Maybe OWGs should get together and establish our own damn contest. Perhaps the conservative billionaire Koch brothers would fund it since they bankroll so many absurd rightwing causes. Theme: “Why liberals all suck.” Or perhaps, “Why all liberals should stick a screwdriver in their eye.”  The judges could be Fox News commentator and presidential confidante Sean Hannity and the ‘alt-rt’ spokesman, double-shirted Steve Bannon.

No matter how many snarky, sarcastic jokes I told myself to lighten my mood, the problem seemed insurmountable.

THE CHALLENGE

Then I got really lucky. While at a local poetry reading with my son and grandchild I began whining about all of this, insisting there should be contests and opportunities for the OWGs. After listening for several minutes my grandchild (who is twenty-one and identifies as transgender) retorted, “Grampa, anytime you speak like this I want to strangle you. This is all white-male-privilege crap.”

My son rolled his eyes adding, “Best check your facts, Dad. You sound like a limousine liberal.” We discussed this for twenty minutes or so, but I was clearly outgunned so I retreated with the intent of proving them wrong later.

My family has a well-cultivated, sharply-honed tradition of debate, discussion and provocation. It is one of the ways we love each other and play together and is one of the most beautiful things in my life. Three or four of us around a table and things can get very intense. However, in this instance I felt more than challenged. I felt stung. As with the publishing world, I was being displaced in my family. This OWG wasn’t going to be reduced in his own family, at least not without a fight. So I went home after the reading and immediately began preparing my defense. The intensity of that reaction should have alerted me, but it took a while.

THE RESEARCH

I remain enough of a liberal to believe that facts still matter, so I began researching the calls for manuscripts in exacting detail with the intention of sending both my son and grandchild the information that would prove my case. By the end of the week, I’d email facts, figures, numbers, charts and graphs.

What I discovered very quickly is that the situation was far worse than I had imagined. It was not worse because there was MORE exclusion. What I discovered was that I was flat-out WRONG. The facts did not fit my initial bias. What I discovered was that there was far LESS exclusion for OWGs than I thought.

Authors are informed of publishers’ interests through several magazines like Poets & Writers and Writer’s Digest. Both provide extensive lists of opportunities to submit work. In addition, there are websites like Submishmash Weekly and The Masters Review, which are helpful resources. I subscribe to Poets & Writers, so I concentrated on this source. Having the old-fashioned hard copies made the work easier (any OWG knows this). I focused on what were then their last four issues: November/December 2017 through May/June 2018.

The most relevant material for authors in search of publishers is in two sections. The first is in “Deadlines,” which is a listing of contests sponsored by publishers and community groups. The second is in “Classifieds,” which are publisher calls for manuscripts of books, articles, stories and poetry.

During the eight-month date-range I studied, there were approximately 520 notices, many of which included calls for more than one genre of writing, so the total number was 738 (many publishers marketed in multiple editions, so this is the number of notices, not publishers). By far the largest number of calls were for poetry (307). Fiction was next (220). Non-fiction—including creative non-fiction, my genre (143). There were 61 requests for book-length manuscripts (which could be in any genre). Finally, there were seven calls focused on translations. 

Of 738 announcements, I was eligible for the 143 in the non-fiction category (19% of the total announcements). In other words, the biggest source of exclusion was my self-selection out of poetry and fiction, not through being ignored or pushed aside by rising groups, but by excluding myself. It had nothing to do with others being favored.

Next came the tricky part. How many of the notices for 143 non-fiction calls were OWGs excluded from? What I found were exclusions based on geography, age, gender, race and theme. The largest category, much to my surprise, were exclusions based on location. For example, submissions needed to be from “a resident of Maryland” or “Westchester County.” I had to admit that if the folks of Westchester County are funding a prize they have the right to focus on writers from or about that area.

There were very few based on age. Two were for writers under thirty and one was focused on “Baby Boomers.” Three. Before I added this up, I would have sworn there were 30 based on age. Twelve notices (8%) were focused on LGBTQ community. There were about 15 ads focused on women writers. Much to my shock, there were only four calls based on race: three for African-Americans and one for Latina writers. Perhaps the flood of diversity is more like very slow drip. There were two for immigrants and/or refugees. Translations were the focus of seven ads. There were 27 ads with issues limited by themes including health, healing, medicine, the environment, peace and the human spirit.  In addition, as I reflect on this, the vast majority of writers—even if they are African American, female, LGBTQ, or refugees—would only fit into one or two of these categories. Everyone is limited in one way or another.

Back to the 143 calls for non-fiction manuscripts: I am excluded by 23%. On first impression I would have sworn to anyone within earshot that it was well over 50%. I would have sworn that there were 20 for refugees alone. I was utterly and totally convinced of it until I actually counted them all. And if someone had tried to tell me differently, I would not have believed them, any more than I believed my son and grandchild.

There are two personal considerations that arise. First, like most of life, writing (and especially getting published) is more difficult than I expected. I thought others were in my way. What I now see is that publishing is difficult for everyone, not just OWGs. The only thing in my way is how hard I want to work at all of this. No one is pushing me, or us, into the background.

Second, I unknowingly (or half-knowingly), translated difficulty into threat and began to blame. The ethnic- and gender-based ads totally jumped off the page into my mind. As I observed the extent of my exaggeration, it was as though each one jumped off the page several times. Clearly, I need to be very observant of my reactions in all of this.

Briefly stated, white male privilege is, in part, based on seeing personal and societal problems as being outside of oneself and taking a stance of being the victim. The problem is caused by the ‘others’ and we are the victims of their special treatment. Most importantly, we must preserve our communities before they outnumber us.

This was perfectly portrayed by then-candidate, now President Donald Trump in his announcement at the beginning of his campaign:

When Mexico sends its people, they are not sending their best. They are not sending you. They are not sending you. They are sending people that have lots of problems and they are bringing those problems to us. They are bringing drugs. They are bringing crime. They are rapists. And some I assume are good people.–Washington Post 7/8/15

Not only is the current administration divisive but the political climate inspires us to conclude erroneously that it is other people’s fault and we become the (implied) hapless victims of a conspiracy to defraud us of our “rightful principal” place in the culture. It is especially important to note the phrase, “They are sending…” DJT implies that Americans are at the mercy of the plans of others (whoever they may be) and we are the targets. Systemic problems of capitalism, which serves the billionaire class so well and keeps the working class enslaved, is only a part of the problem. There is no looking into the mirror—we are both complicit in its advantages and victims of its excesses. Is America supposed to be “made great again” primarily by marching to the drumbeat of blame and victim-hood?

CONFRONTING PRIVILEGE

There are two major reasons to confront privilege. First it creates an imbalanced society where some people are more advantaged than others. Second, it corrupts the heart and soul of white people. We need to face this for our own sake.

The imbalance: If the country does not care for all of its citizens, the citizens will not care for the country. Disaffection spreads like an invasive species of plant life, eventually weakening the ecosystem. The country that scapegoats one group this year will find another group next year. For every group targeted there is another group being groomed as the next sacrifice. Standing for equality for everyone is the best defense against a government gone off the rails into the abyss of darkness, discrimination and hate. The greatness of American Democracy is that everyone is supposed to benefit, not the chosen few. What makes America great is its commitment to protecting minorities.

Heart and soul destruction: White male privilege weakens white people. While at one level there are some very clear cultural, economic and social advantages to our position, it is also a trap. It is a fool’s refuge. It is a self-defeating, self-sabotaging venture which will ultimately lead to the ruination of our country. Self-segregated communities insulate kids against diversity, creating a legacy of children that can’t compete “outside of the box”. It sets us up to cooperate with and support forces that keep large portions of our population out of the mainstream. We end up supporting politicians who do not have our best interests in mind. The more we hoard the privilege, the more it corrupts us.

I do not know what it is like to face discrimination and bias every day. More than likely I would not cope with it very well. But I do know what it is like to live in a community which has collectively sold its soul for thirty pieces of silver. The reason to confront inequality is to prevent further corruption of our collective souls.

There are many ways in which white male privilege corrupts the soul.

One example is obviously me. I suffered from confirmation bias. A good dose of loving confrontation, research, thinking, and the self-reflection it generated rescued me from the slippery slope. Had I continued in that direction, many of my lifelong values would have been compromised. Facing the white-male-privileged attitude in my initial reactions to the publishers’ calls for manuscripts opened my eyes and heart and soul, which were in the process of closing.

Another example involves a man with whom I am only slightly familiar. He recently posted a vile message on Facebook saying a particular ethnic group should be erased from the Earth. Understandably many people responded in opposition. Hate speech needs to be confronted. But it is also important to see how his stance reflects his hardened heart and burdened his soul with tons of hate. I do not know him well enough to know how literally he meant his posting, but it seems clear to me his heart is weighted down.

The third example sees these processes from a collective perspective. My personal experience and our shared experience mutually reflect each other. I almost sacrificed many of my individual values and we as a country are now sacrificing our communal values. After all these years of progress, our government is going to build a nonsensical wall. Children of immigrants continue to be imprisoned. There are efforts underway designed to restrict voting rights. We accept a president who does not know the difference between truth and a lie. This president threatens to assassinate a world leader. He has tried to ferment a coup in a Central American country.

There are many instances of this, but I will briefly focus on immigration and the ‘no tolerance’ policy which has led to the ongoing separation of immigrant children from their parents.

Our government recklessly enacted a program of taking children from their parents without the slightest regard for the trauma this would cause. In addition, there was no plan to eventually reunite the children with their families. Our government has imprisoned children who have broken no laws. Our values of legal due process and fairness have been abrogated. This is reminiscent of slave owners selling the children and sending them away. It also fits with a long history of our government mistreating the children of native people. The present policy resurrects a barbaric aspect of our history. This does not make America great again. We are diving into the darkest, most vile aspects of our collective psyche.

What is next? Whose due process will be suspended next? The same administration who created this immigration debacle consider the press the enemy of the people. Will the reporters be rounded up? The Vice President has advocated electroshock as a treatment for homosexuality. Is the LGBTQ community next? Five years ago I would not have imagined our country imprisoning children. Now I do not trust we won’t do worse. Our collective souls are debilitated.

The macro problem of white male privilege invaded the micro of my life as I sought publication for my work. Privilege is not some distant social process that exists in the hinterlands of ethereal sociology and my history of progressive activism did not make me immune to seeking my share of it. The more we cling to privilege the more likely we are to eventually experience both individual pain and collective destruction. But facing it brings the opportunity for personal and collective liberation from the myths which limit and corrupt us.

This book calls out to be a movie. That may sound a little startling to say, given that it’s a biography of a philosopher. But Prideaux places you in Nietzsche’s mind and life so clearly you understand his struggles and drive for truth in personal as well as philosophical, social and historical terms. In fact, as a reader today, you feel grateful for it and inspired to read his work for its current relevance. The quotes she uses from Nietzsche are so clear they give liberating pleasure. Given that this is a history of a philosopher’s journey, it’s remarkable how she keeps you within the human beings involved—and particularly in how she follows Nietzsche’s marvelously integrous drive through one veil of illusion after another. Philosophy becomes not only urgently useful but essential to living a true life. As he comes to acknowledge the Nothingness people so strenuously avoid, one can easily see that German society at the time, structured as it was on protestant Christian religion, was doomed. One understands that a philosophical / spiritual crisis predicts an actual psychological / social crisis. The true philosopher, a mind that is free, is a compass, by which one can detect a true direction. Nietzsche showed how we worship illusion and spectacle. That condemns us to falling into conventional sentiments that rob us of real feeling and, socially, devolving into obsolete structures that will no longer work. The relevance of his insights into our increasingly tribal, illusion-worshipping world are frightening.

Sometimes the people around Nietzsche are so hilarious, sometimes so jealous, vindictive, racist, narrow-minded and vain, Nietzsche stands alone. He, of course, doesn’t completely escape being ridiculous, although his harrowing health problems account for much of this impression. All these people are intricately entangled in a society about to suffer catastrophic change. Their adherence to one sort of illusion or another, such as the Pure German Race ideal that Nietzsche’s sister pursued with her husband (he saved her from spinsterhood and she provided the money), as they tried to establish their Teutonic utopia in Paraguay, only leads to more delusion. In that case, the realities of the jungle worked on the colonists, who hoped to realize their dream of pure Germanic identity, until they become pathetic creatures out of sync with the nature around them. The husband, once a charismatic, blond Siegfried, wasted away and eventually killed himself.

One might except Wagner from social blindness, who viewed his work as revolutionary and offering an alternative to mediocrity and materialism, but his addiction to an identity that kept him in constant financial trouble eventually compromised his vision and narrowed his music to become used as a vehicle for nationalistic purposes.

Through his new opera form [the Ring cycle,] Wagner imaged himself purging German culture of alien elements, specifically, anything French and anything Jewish. p.71

Nietzsche abhorred nationalism, and the anti-semitism that went with it. Perceiving that the social structure and belief system he inherited couldn’t go on, he mercilessly and unsentimentally knocks out the underpinnings of Western Culture. He emerges, amid all the ignoble motives people around him display, as a peculiar sort of hero: a man who not only thinks for himself but sees clearly enough to open new paths of thought and identity. Endearingly, however, he refused to replace an obsolete system with one of his own. He thought of himself as the philosopher of Perhaps, leaving others to fulfill themselves according to their own light. He said he’d rather be thought of as a buffoon than a saint. He was a torch, a sort of trickster, surrounded by hypocrisy and guile, doggedly seeing through compromises that trapped people in delusion.

I felt I was in good hands, with this biographer. She has thoroughly digested primary and secondary and even tertiary archival documents, unsentimentally sees the development of Nietzsche’s thought, understands its social relevance to his times, and makes philosophy live beyond the boundaries of the Academy. It becomes not only important, but necessary to the ordinary person. In Nietzsche’s view the pursuit of truth was predicated on the difficult practice of what he called selbstüberwindung, or self-overcoming. He treasured all his life a line from Pindar’s Pythian Odes:  “Become what you are, having learned what that is.”

I AM DYNAMITE! : A Life of Nietzsche

by Sue Prideaux (Tim Duggan Books 2018)

422 pages

After sixteen years of attending Catholic schools serving almost no non-white students, I applied for grad school to Howard University, one of the nation’s oldest historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). When friends asked, “Why’d you apply there?” I answered, “It’s time for me to experience a nonreligious school.”  One inquisitive friend pressed, “What you really mean is, you want to experience firsthand being unequal?”

The truth is, I’d been having the time of my life substitute teaching at schools abutting the Howard campus.  I strolled across the campus at lunchtime or after dismissal.  I felt comfortable, welcomed. I applied, perhaps on a lark. After spending the summer working in Harlem, I started grad school.   

My first impression of Howard was about dress.  My undergrad college had abandoned its suits-and-ties dress code, but most Howard students and younger black faculty still dressed to the nines, with faculty wearing richer threads.  Older faculty dressed as if preparing for a board meeting.  Younger white faculty looked like L.L. Bean catalog models.  

For the first time I attended a school that didn’t have a crucifix on the front wall of every classroom.  Howard was non-sectarian but, to my surprise, decidedly religious.  Religion and church played a far greater role in day-to-day conversation than at the Catholic college where I’d completed undergrad.  I often felt like I’d joined a congregation.

I knew that Stokely Carmichael, a 1964 Howard grad, spoke out vehemently against the Vietnam War, and popularized the chant, “Hell No, We Won’t Go!”   I knew Howard had been rocked by student protests and boycotts a few years before I arrived.   But I didn’t see or hear about any demonstrations, protests or rallies at Howard related to the war or civil rights.  If Howard still had a chapter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which Stokely joined as a Howard student, I didn’t find it and it certainly didn’t find me.  Perhaps it held sub rosa meetings, off campus, to avoid adverse attention.   But wasn’t attention essential in becoming visible?  I believe Howard undergrads regarded campus as a safety zone buffered from the civil rights and anti-war battles being carried on somewhere else by someone else.  

Older faculty rarely talked about race except as a demographic dimension in research.  Younger faculty voiced keen awareness of race.  A fist-clenching, black female professor, dressed like a Black Panther, once chewed out a black male student: “You infuriate me because you represent the epitome of the stereotype of the black male that I’ve spent my entire career trying to prove has no validity.” She seemed perpetually angry at something undefined.  

Another professor tasked me with facilitating discussion on the theories of Berkeley professor Arthur Jensen, whose research on heredity and intelligence led him to assert that blacks are genetically inferior intellectually.  I was the only white student in a twelve-person seminar.  Five minutes into class, she threw a wrench into the works by asking, “Why would anyone, under any circumstances, ever attempt to prove the inferiority of any racial or ethnic group?”  Her question re-directed the conversation, so I aborted my presentation.  Class over. I felt set-up.  What transpired was exactly what she planned.  Apologetically, she said, “I can’t give you a grade, not for that,” so she assigned me another topic for the following week.  

I became close with two male faculty in their late twenties who were “sort of white.”  My advisor was of Eastern European Jewish descent, his parents having narrowly escaped Europe after Hitler invaded Austria.  Darker-skinned than many black faculty and students, he became embroiled in occasional battles with people who insisted he denied his “blackness” to pass as white.  “If I were really black, I’d be crazy as a Howard professor to try to hide that,” he said, “and even though I’m not black, based on my family history I can tell you lots about oppression and racial hatred.”  The other young faculty member lived in a commune and wore his long hair in a ponytail.  After being denied tenure, he re-discovered his Native American ancestry.

Stokely returned to Howard during his brief marriage to South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba. By then he was going by Kwame Ture.  I wanted to see him, but I was well aware of his antipathy toward whites.  He’d broken with the Panthers because they believed white activists could help the movement, but he insisted whites should get their act together first by focusing on their own communities.  I told a black student I was concerned about being the only white face in the audience.  He said, “You have darker skin than lots of the students who claim African ancestry.” My adrenaline raced like a runaway horse.  When Ture talked about “us,” I felt included.  I asked no questions and didn’t approach him afterwards to talk about Vietnam.  

When I started at Howard, I was accustomed to show up for meetings on time.  At Howard, however, I often wondered whether I’d gotten the time or place wrong.  Just as I was getting ready to leave, others would begin filing in.  “You’ve got to adjust to colored-people time,” I was advised by a black male grad student.   “Isn’t that racist?” I asked.  “If you say it, it’s racist,” answered the grad student.  “If I say it, it’s an inside joke.  And if you start doing it, you’re just plain late.” 

After I settled in, I often walked across campus to buy a bean pie for lunch.  There is something soulfully satisfying about bean pie.  One day, I wandered off campus toward Western Market, carrying my camera in a brown paper bag.  A police car whipped around the corner and two white cops jumped from the car. 

“What’ve you got in that bag?” one yelled.

“A camera,” I said.

“Likely story. Let’s see.”

I opened the bag, took out the camera, and held it up.

 “What’s inside the camera?” he asked.

“Film.” 

“Open it.”

“But that’ll expose the film.”

“Ask me if I care.”

“Okay.   D’you care?”

“Open the damn camera.”

 I opened the camera, thereby exposing the film. The cops tore the camera away and saw there was nothing else inside.

 “What’re you doing in this neighborhood?” the second cop asked.

 “I’m in grad school at Howard.”

“Does he look black to you?” the first cop asked the second cop.

“Prove it,” the second cop ordered.  

 I held up my Howard photo ID. 

The second cop said, “We don’t want to ever see your face again in this neighborhood.   D’you understand?”

Yes, I understand. 

One late October, A friend invited me to a Halloween party in Howard’s neighborhood sponsored by the Order of the Eastern Star. Warned it was a costume party, I wore a sleeved white leotard and tights and smeared whiteface on my hands, face, neck, and hair.  As we reached the venue, the Grand Matron gave me a toothy smile: “I can see you’re trying to win the prize.”   Asked who or what I was disguised as, I said, “A white man.”  A man in a scarlet suit confided, “You look just like a Caucasian.”  We danced all night and, of course, I won best male costume.  The best female costume winner was a black woman dressed as a harem dancer.   At the DJ’s direction, she and I paraded around the room, arm in arm.  As cameras flashed, the well-lubricated audience chanted, “Black and white, black and white.”  By going to Howard, I had the unique privilege of bathing in the River Jordan, figuratively speaking, of course.

Once I became a researcher and had to pursue competitive contracts, the Howard credential garnered subtle preference points. Except when the opposite happened.  Once, at a contract kick-off meeting, a new client said, “You don’t look black.” I promised I’d wear a dashiki to the next meeting.  Now and then, someone read my resume and said, “This is supposed to say Harvard, not Howard, right?”  The conservative father of a close friend once referred to Howard as my “alma mammy.”  However, another new client confided, “What initially interested me was your going to Howard.” 

Toward the end of my research career, I decided to walk north twelve miles from the National Mall to where I’d stashed my car in the suburbs.  It was a brilliantly sunny, crisp afternoon.  I walked up 7^th Street, which feeds into Georgia Avenue before it runs by the Howard campus.  It happened to be Homecoming Weekend.  Adherents of the Nation of Islam, dressed in their iconic tan suits and ties, were hawking their incomparable Supreme Bean Pies. 

“I got through four years at Howard on bean pies.  I crave a bean pie,” I said to a pie salesman.  After we completed the transaction, I said, “Peace out.”

In reply, the pie salesman said, “Peace . . . my brother.”  

Nearby, waiting to march in the homecoming parade, various Greek groups crowded the sidewalk.  “I graduated from Howard too—long, long ago,” I told a couple of antsy, ready-to-rock marchers.

Excited beyond belief, one said, “Is this your first homecoming?  Isn’t it great to feel like you’ve come home?  

”It sure is,” I answered, swallowing my first mouthful of bean pie.

“Well, welcome home!”

ELDERS CLIMATE ACTION NORTHERN CALIFORNIA CHAPTER
Bi-Weekly Update December 31, 2018

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.” ― Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

There will be a planning meeting on January 10th. We need everyone to help! RSVP to receive zoom call instructions.

CALIFORNIA ACTIONS

NorCal Member Natalie Nussbaum attended a recent meeting of 350 East Bay. Here are her notes on the Sunrise Movement discussion. “The meeting was inspiring, motivating, and uplifting. First on the agenda was a presentation by Sunrise Movement, a national movement of young people united to work on climate change, justice and jobs, and produce future climate leaders. They have already been involved in many constructive actions including an early response to Hurricane Harvey, promoting a No Fossil Fuel Pledge for political candidates, and canvassing and calling to elect candidates who are not bought by the fossil fuel industry. They focus on politicians and elections and are a growing movement, well organized, with training provided about how to be most effective. Sunrise gives a voice to young people, and builds coalitions to really expand the movement to protect our planet. Discussion centered around how we can support Sunrise–e.g. provide connections, contacts, funds.

NATIONAL ACTIONS

From 350.0rg: The UN Climate Talks (COP24) in Katowice, Poland just closed. And it doesn’t look good. Despite last minute efforts to put together the rulebook of the Paris climate Agreement, country delegates failed to deliver a strong enough set of guidelines. Will you join over 50,000 people worldwide telling world ‘leaders’: “No more carbon bombs: we must stop and ban all fossil fuel development”? HERE

From SierraRise: The Arctic is warming at a rate of almost twice the global average. Yet the Trump administration is fast-tracking the process to allow Hilcorp Energy to drill in the Beaufort Sea, part of the Arctic Ocean. Hilcorp’s “Liberty Project” would entail building a 9-acre artificial island close to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of the world’s last pristine wildernesses. HERE

From the Sierra Club: Protect Our Air From Toxic Mercury. Trump and Wheeler’s proposal is open for public comment. Send them a message that we oppose any weakening of protections against mercury and other toxic pollution. HERE

The Trump Administration announced a fresh attack on America’s efforts to combat the climate crisis: They’re working to unravel an Obama-era rule — one that ensured that coal plants being newly built had to adhere to clear carbon pollution limits, reflecting the best available approaches to reducing this dangerous pollution. Take action today, and demand Americans remain protected from this dangerous pollution. Don’t roll back carbon pollution limits on new coal plants HERE

From Sierra Rise: Every minute, the equivalent of an entire garbage truck of plastic gets dumped into our oceans. In the United States, stores distribute 100 billion single-use plastic bags per year, many of which end up in our waterways. Rather than address this problem, the Plastic Industry Association is working diligently to keep us reliant on disposable plastic products, such as straws, bags, and Styrofoam containers — known as single-use plastics. Take action to demand nine major companies withdraw their support from an industry association that is actively promoting plastic bag pollution. HERE

From the Sierra Club: Ryan Zinke has resigned as Secretary of the Interior. Tell your Senators to replace him with someone who will work for the public — not the oil and gas lobby. HERE

From Friends of the Earth: Sign your name to the Clean Cruising pledge: Tell Carnival to stop polluting the Arctic! HERE

From Climate Hawks: Apparently Donald Trump has never been briefed on climate change. The acting head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed that Trump has never been briefed. Nor has NOAA been asked to give a briefing. So we’re asking you to take action. Write a letter to NOAA asking the agency to brief Trump on climate change. HERE

From Friends of the Earth: Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is fighting for a seat on the House Ways and Means Committee. If she gets it, she’ll be in a perfect position to make sure progressive priorities like the Green New Deal get fair consideration, and funding. Sign Now: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Ways and Means HERE

WORLD ACTIONS From Oil Change International: Tell the European Investment Bank to stop funding the fossil fuel industry. HERE

CLIMATE VICTORIES!

From the Sierra Club: We successfully pushed the California Air Resources Board to approve a rule that public transit buses deliver cleaner air, not dirty tailpipe pollution.

The Washington DC Council voted to pass the most aggressive climate bill in the country. This is a big deal! Here are the four key things the bill does:

1. 100% clean electricity by 2032 2. The strictest building energy performance standards anywhere in the country 3. Increased funding for local sustainability initiatives including the Green Bank as well as for green jobs programs 4. Curbs transportation emissions by tying fuel economy to vehicle excise tax (i.e., if you buy a Prius you pay less on your title tax than if you bought a gas guzzler)

From SumofUs: All 28 European countries, including the UK, will have to ban throwaway plastic items including plates, cutlery and foam take-away food containers and cups from 2021. Single-use plastic straws will be banned too, except for people who need them for medical reasons.

INTERESTING AND RELEVANT ARTICLES

How The Iconic 1968 Earthrise Photo Changed Our Relationship To The Planet by Bill McKibben 12/06/2018 HERE

Description of the history, content and politics of the Green New Deal being promoted by Sunrise Movement and a growing body of progressive groups in and out of government. In the words of author David Roberts, “This is a deep dive into what the GND means, its history, the role it is playing in current politics, the effort to fill it out with policy, and the many challenges it faces”. HERE

The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act of 2018 was introduced in Congress by two Republicans and three Democrats. This historic bipartisan bill would enact carbon fee and dividend into law when passed. The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act of 2018 incorporates the most important provisions of carbon fee and dividend: a fee on carbon emissions at the source that starts at $15 per ton and goes up $10 per year, and a full dividend allocated to households. You can get more information from Citizens Climate Lobby: CCL’s website and on CCL Community at

cclusa.org/bill.

Beyond the glare of official Washington the story of President Trump’s retreat on the environment is unfolding in extraordinary consequential ways for the health and safety of Americans. In just two years, Trump has unleashed a regulatory rollback with little parallel in the past half-century. Read the details in this New York Times article “Retreat on the Environment Is Affecting Communities Across America” HERE

Check out Zero Carbon Home by David Green: a roadmap for how to make money by cutting the carbon footprint of your home to zero. HERE

From Flipboard. Cement is the most widely used man-made material in existence. It is second only to water as the most-consumed resource on the planet. But, while cement – the key ingredient in concrete – has shaped much of our built environment, it also has a massive carbon footprint. HERE

ECO TIPS Recycle plastic grocery bags at Safeway, Lucky, Target. All the major stores that distribute plastic bags also collect them for recycling into other products. Of course the best is to use paper or reusable bags instead, but if you have plastic bags, here’s info on recycling. You can recycle a bunch of different types of plastic bags and wrap via these boxes. Click HERE for details.

If you haven’t seen/read the Exponential Climate Action Roadmap report, it can be downloaded at https://exponentialroadmap.org/. Read the Executive Summary on pages 7 through 11. LIVE WEBINAR January 11, 2019

There is a global trend of young people who are speaking out about climate change and its catastrophic effects in the face of what they view as negligent indifference from world leaders. To see what is happening in Indiana read “’Now it’s on us to fix’: Fearing for their future, Hoosier kids are taking control” and check out their video HERE

MARK YOUR CALENDAR NOW FOR THIS DATE

Saturday January 12 Sunrise Movement Green New Deal training. 9:30 – 5:30pm, in Oakland, CA. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks will be provided. (This is a movement of young people – which generally means between high school and 35 ish. If you do not fall within that age group but are interested in coming, please reach out to us! People of all ages, backgrounds, and identities are welcome and supported in this space.) To register click HERE and for a video of Sunrise’s 2018 accomplishments click HERE

Update compiled and edited by ECA NorCal members Bill DeVincenzi, Shirley McGrath & Marilyn Price

wakeful [weyk-fuhl] adjective

Get woke, America. On November 6 , 2018, it seemed–for a bright, shining moment–that a majority of America was working together and ushering in a new age of cooperation and compassion and real desire to see justice return to American soil. What a long, long time ago that was: before the renewed battle over the wall sleight-of-hand detracted from children dying on the border and the opening of national monuments to fossil fuel decimation. Before the longest government shutdown in American history. 

Wakefulness, to me, is rising to find that the world is not what you thought it was but different. This new understanding–often triggered by crisis– is like a shock to the system that implies you must change your life. In Buddhism, wakefulness is the awareness that you may not exist in a binary world. You have to make non-binary adaptations. The implications of this are dramatic. This elicits a re-evaluation of our economic system, of our cultural understandings, our narrow-minded tribal perspectives, our ego-dominated separation from self in the world. To be woke is to learn what is, not what we thought.  We are changing all the time.  With each decision, a path is forked that determines what our next choices will be and we are on the path to becoming unique personalities. If this were not so, we would not be able to sit in a sanga meditation and watch our story unfold before us and recognize it as just a story. We would not be able to choose compassion as a path to pursue. As Sartre says, “We are doomed to be free.”  Our conception of ourselves is not who we are. Who we are is the sum of the choices we have made, whether we face up to them or not. It is often the case that we do not tell ourselves the truth about who we are. 

Adyashanti, a Buddhist monk, expressed the opinion that poetry attempts to articulate the irreducible quality of things. The thing is just the thing, not in anything said about it. There are no things, everything is a process. Whenever you call it one thing, you’ve eliminated other things. Words can both reveal and conceal. Don’t walk in someone’s mind with dirty feet. The thing you take away from a poem did not come from the words themselves.

In this issue, we invite you to write about a time you confronted your sense of self, were moved to examine a cause you are passionate about.  As Rumi says, “Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”