1. How would Marxists and Tocquevillians differ on the validity of the concept "authoritarianism"?  What is meant by the concept?
   
2. What effect has the institution of primary elections had on American political parties?  What would a Marxist, a Weberian and a Tocquevillian say about this?
3. What is the nature of "new" social movements?  How do these differ from the previous ("old") social movements?
4. How might a psychohistorian view George W. Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq? 
   
5. What evidence of realignment of American politics can be found in the 2004 elections?
6. What evidence of dealignment of American politics can be found in the 2004 elections?
7. How has the most widely accepted view of the strategy developing nations should adopt in dealing with the world economy changed since the 1960s authors relied upon in our text?
8. What did Bernard Lewis believe "went wrong" in the Arab world?  When did this happen?
9. How do recent events in the Ukraine illustrate many of the issues discussed in this course?
10. In what ways did American strategy in occupying Iraq fail to give sufficient emphasis to the political sociology of the country?
    

The Moslem world has been in a general state of decline for centuries, relative to the west, as discussed in the book What Went Wrong? by Bernard Lewis.  Some Moslems believe that this is because of a failure to modernize, to accept science, to be open to the modern world.  Others argue that it is due to a failure to stick to the true word of God.  This is a major split, between modernists and fundamentalists, in the Arab world, with "moderates" trying to steer a course between them.  A major issue is whether to apply Islamic religious law as national law.  Turkey, under Ataturk, became a modern secular state, Saudi Arabia is much more traditional.   The Shah of Iran was a modernizer, although also an authoritarian, whereas Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution against him, is a fundamentalist.  The current leader is trying to modernize but without alienating the Ayatollahs.

There is a similar split within Israel, between the Orthodox religious Jews and the Zionists who tend to be secular.  There is also a left/right political division.  The Israel/Palestine conflict is only one of the issues in the Middle East that generates terrorism.

Arab Human Development Report. 

Wikipedia on Terrorism.   What Terrorists Want.  Can Torture be Justified?  Jerrold Post on Terrorist Motivation.  Terrorist Beliefs and Terrorist Lives.  NY Times Story on Iraq.  The Dancer Upstairs. Al jazeera News.  

It is hard to say when movements begin.  Some theorists believe that they emerge spontaneously when people who share a common problem begin to feel dissatisfied, perhaps because conditions have gotten worse, or at least because they stopped getting better, or not as quickly.  There is Davies J-Curve theory, which was developed to explain when revolutions occurred, but can be applied to social movements in genera..  This is the "collective behavior" school in sociology.  Another theory, "resource mobilization," says that discontent is always there and that movements emerge when someone has the resources to mobilize it.  Resources include communication skills, leadership skills, time, money, political support.  At the early stage, the leaders tend to be intellectuals and public speakers.  Sometimes movements are galvanizaed by books, e.g., Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique or Rachel Carson's The Silent Spring or Thomas Paine's Common Sense or Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed.  .  Not all efforts to galvanize movements succeed, e.g., the Men's Movement.  Numerous books have been written trying to start one, and there have been beginnings, but there doesn't seem to be a critical mass.  Perhaps there is no charismatic leader.  Others are galvanized by brilliant orators - Spartacus, Martin Luther King.  Sometimes the leader is a religious or spiritual figure, e.g., Gandhi.  Or a labor leader, Debs, Marighela.  One could also look at the world's leading religions as social movements started by charismatic leaders, e.g., Jesus, Mohammed.  There are still leaders starting new religions, the Unification Church.  Other movements may start without a single leader, e.g., the student movement of the 60s and 70s.  

There may be a generational cycle to the emergence of social movements.  Strauss and How argue that there are 25 year generational cycles, with an active generation being succeeded by a more passive one.  The active generations alternate between  Idealist and Civic versions.  The Idealist are likely to generate moralistic movements.  The generation that came of age in the 1960 was the last Idealist generation.  
9/11 as a Turning Point in History (power point presentation at the World Future Society, July 20, 2002)

Once movements are started, they develop movement organizations.  There is typically a period of internal conflict as the movement tries to define its goals and tactics.  There are splits between radical and reformist tendencies.  Different agitators compete in offering visions of the future.  The original leaders may be cast aside as old fashioned.  Ideologies may change.  This is a difficult period, and movements may fall apart and lose effectiveness.  A statesman is needed to pull things together.  

After this, comes the period of formalized decision-making with strong organizations exercising control.  These may become established pressure groups with little interest in changing society.  If radicals succeed in taking power, they may become the new established order.  One can think of this in the history of the Christian movement, which went thorugh its mobilization stage in the first century or two.  Eventually the church went from a persecuted movement to an established hierarchal part of the established order, e.g., the Roman Catholic Church with the Pope.  Even so, conflict can break out and new religious movements can emerge, e.g., Protestantism, but they must deal with the hegemony of the established church.

early two weeks have passed since the presidential election, and the conventional wisdom about why George W. Bush beat John Kerry has yet to solidify. Instead, a number of competing theories have emerged to explain the outcome. Unlike in 2000 when such theories were mainly along banal, ideological lines--the DLC accused Al Gore of having been too populist; liberals accused him of having been too centrist--this year's recriminations have been more wide-ranging and less predictable. Below, TNR Online's guide to which explanations of Kerry's defeat are worth taking seriously.

Theory: It's about geography. Population shifts have increased the number of electoral votes in the Sunbelt while decreasing them elsewhere, so Democrats need to expand their electoral base. A nominee from one of the bastions of coastal liberalism--like Boston or San Francisco--will never be able to carry the states needed for victory.

Notable Proponent: Ron Brownstein.

Notable Critic: Sean Wilentz.

Evidence: Kerry failed to win a single state outside the Northeast, the upper Midwest, and the West Coast. No northern Democrat has been elected president since 1960.

Counter-Evidence: Kerry actually won by wide margins in urban areas across the South and Midwest. Even in blue states, most counties outside the cities went to Bush. The divide in the country is between urban and rural voters--not between coastal and heartland voters.

Likely Contribution to Outcome: 20 percent. John Kerry is no Bill Clinton for many reasons--not being from Arkansas was only the beginning of his problems.

Likely Solution for '08: No to Hillary Clinton. Yes to Mark Warner. The convention? Think Atlanta, not Boston.

Theory: It's about Bob Shrum. Kerry's über-strategist is an über-loser. Over the years, Shrum has worked for the presidential campaigns of Ted Kennedy, Dick Gephardt, Michael Dukakis, Bob Kerrey, and Al Gore. He quit Jimmy Carter's campaign in 1976 before Carter sealed up the nomination and never became one of Bill Clinton's confidants. His inability to pick winners extends beyond politics--Shrum once participated in a strategy session for New Coke. The only skill he does seem to possess is a talent for bureaucratic maneuvering.

Notable Proponent: Anonymous senior adviser to Kerry (note: there may be more than one).

Notable Critic: Bob Shrum.

Evidence: See every presidential election since 1976.

Counter-Evidence: At least Shrum got Kerry to the general election.

Likely Contribution to Outcome: 10 percent. The problem with Kerry's campaign was not that Shrum wielded too much influence but that no one was in control.

Likely Solution for '08: As one Kerry adviser told The New Republic's Ryan Lizza, "There should definitely be a seven-strikes-and-you're-out rule."

Theory: It's about Gavin Newsom and Margaret Marshall. If the San Francisco Mayor and the Massachusetts jurist hadn't led the charge for gay marriage in America, conservatives wouldn't have turned out in record numbers to support anti-gay marriage referenda and the president.

Notable Proponent: Congressman Barney Frank.

Notable Critic: Andrew Sullivan.

Evidence: High turnout usually benefits Democrats, but this year it benefited Republicans. In decisive Ohio, where job losses should have tilted the electorate in Kerry's favor but a gay marriage referendum was on the ballot, Bush came out on top.

Counter-Evidence: Turnout was not appreciably higher in states with gay marriage referenda than in those without them. In Oregon and Michigan, voters supported Kerry while banning gay marriage.

Likely Contribution to Outcome: 5 percent. "Newsom is the Nader of 2004" is a pithy line for dinner-party pundits, but the numbers just don't indicate that the San Franciscan spoiled a Kerry victory. Still, gay marriage undoubtedly whipped up some fervor on the right.

Likely Solution for '08: The places to advance equality for gay Americans are the legislatures, not the courts. This would prevent gay-marriage opponents from playing on the public's fear of so-called activist judges.

Theory: It's about John Kerry. The junior senator from Massachusetts is an awkward, aloof elitist who can't connect with ordinary Americans. He has a bizarre penchant for putting his foot in his mouth. He looks like Herman Munster and/or a Frenchman.

Notable Proponent: Our boss, Marty Peretz.

Notable Critic: Hendrik Hertzberg.

Evidence: "I have a somewhat Establishment background," "I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty," "the global test," etc., etc., ad nauseam.

Counter-Evidence: Over 55 million Americans did vote for the Democratic ticket.

Likely Contribution to Outcome: 30 percent. Yes, the fact that Republicans attacked his character mercilessly and unfairly was not Kerry's fault. But his inability to parry those attacks was perhaps his greatest weakness as a candidate.

Likely Solution for '08: Voters are looking for a normal human being to be their president. Plan accordingly. (Hint: Claiming you're a regular guy is not the same as being a regular guy. Witness Kerry's pitiful plea: "Have you had a beer with me yet? I like to have fun as much as the next person and go out and hack around and have a good time.")

Theory: It's about Iraq. Caught between the Democrats' antiwar base and the nation's pro-war majority, Kerry tried to achieve that famous Bill Clinton "triangulation." But he never emerged as a sufficiently hawkish candidate. He should have outflanked Bush on the right by saying he supported the Iraq war and that he would have done a better job winning it--criticizing Bush on troop strength, funding, and planning. Instead, he muddled his position on Iraq and relied on his service in Vietnam--a credential that never persuaded many voters.

Notable Proponent: Karl Rove.

Notable Critic: Robert Kuttner.

Evidence: The GOP's incessant invocation of Kerry's biggest Iraq flub ("I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it") was effective because it played into voters' doubts about Kerry's position on the war. One of the final polls before the election revealed Americans trusted Bush over Kerry on Iraq and terrorism by significant margins.

Counter-Evidence: Kerry actually captured a commanding majority of voters who saw Iraq as a problem distinct from the larger battle against terrorism. His position on Iraq wasn't the problem; Bush's fear-mongering about terrorism was.

Likely Contribution to Outcome: 30 percent. From his September 20 speech at New York University through the debates, Kerry finally presented a coherent critique of Bush while still maintaining his reservations about the war. Had he started his campaign with that critique rather than closed with it, he might have won.

Likely Solution for '08: Democrats criticize Bush's Iraq policy by reminding him that hope is not a plan. Note to Democrats: a resumé is not a plan either. The party doesn't need someone with a military background, just someone with a coherent, tough view of America's role in the war on terrorism.

Theory: It's about values. Republicans have them. Democrats don't. If the party ventures outside its natural homes--the hotbeds of secular humanism and the cesspools of Hollywood entertainment--it may learn what concerns real Americans.

Notable Proponent: Mort Kondracke.

Notable Critic: James Q. Wilson.

Evidence: Exit polls indicate that over a fifth of the electorate ranked "moral values" as the most important issue--and those voters split for Bush 80-18.

Counter-Evidence: The exit poll question was flawed. True, a plurality of voters chose "moral values" as the issue most important to them--but it's a pretty vague term. And if you add together "Iraq" and "terrorism," then a plurality of voters were most concerned about national security.

Likely Contribution to Outcome: 5 percent. The values theory is really just a variation on the gay marriage theory, which the number crunchers have all but rejected as having played a substantial role.

Likely Solution for '08: Why being against gay marriage and abortion reflects good values but being for health care and progressive taxation does not remains a mystery to most Democrats. Here's an idea for Democrats: Start framing your issues in moral terms and people will start seeing them as moral issues. Ask Bill Clinton for help if you need it.

Theory: It's about Teresa. You can't be a serious presidential contender unless you have an appropriately docile wife. Between telling a right-wing reporter to "shove it" and denigrating Laura Bush for never having held a "real job," the ketchup heiress succeeded in alienating a sizable portion of the electorate. Also, she faked the cookie recipe she submitted to Family Circle magazine.

Notable Proponent: Hugh Hewitt.

Notable Critic: Melinda Henneberger.

Evidence: None per se, but come on--she even spoke French in her Democratic Convention speech.

Counter-Evidence: The most recent polling on Teresa showed that less than 40 percent of voters saw her unfavorably--hardly placing her in the league of other powerful women who have garnered Americans' hatred (such as, say, Martha Stewart).

Likely Contribution to Outcome: 0 percent. Despite Bush's inane line in his stump speech ("perhaps the best reason to put me back in there is so that Laura will be the First Lady for four more years") there doesn't seem to be any evidence that voters spend much time considering a candidate's wife.

Likely Solution for '08: No solution is necessary. Nothing indicates that the First Lady is a deciding factor for many voters.

Theory: It's about the Clintons. The Democratic super couple sent Kerry their advisers, who promptly bungled the senator's campaign.

Notable Proponent: Arianna Huffington.

Notable Critic: None. No one seems to be taking Huffington's theory seriously enough to criticize it.

Evidence: A variety of Clinton advisers signed on to the Kerry campaign for its final stretch; Kerry lost.

Counter-Evidence: A variety of Clinton advisers signed on to the Kerry campaign for its final stretch; Kerry lost, but he made up ground in the final weeks.

Likely Contribution to Outcome: 0 percent. The Clintonites ran the only two successful Democratic campaigns in nearly three decades. They're as good as you can get, but even they can't invent a charismatic personality out of nothing or teach basic political skills.

Likely Solution for '08: Sign up the Clinton advisers at the beginning, rather than when you're already in trouble. And remember that you just need the advisers--not necessarily an actual Clinton.

he new conventional wisdom is that the election results were not so much a triumph for right-wing Christians as they were a more general endorsement of George W. Bush's clear, reassuring presence in a troubled time. How else to explain the two-thirds of Bush voters who were not evangelical? How else to explain the one in five gay voters who went for Bush despite his determination to rob them of civil rights? Or the big gain in Bush votes in, say, New York City?

Well, here's another explanation: A large part of the pro-Bush vote--especially among blue state residents--was a vote against the left elite and the cultural attitudes it represents in the public imagination. It was a vote not so much for Bush or his often religious policies (or even the war on terror) but against the post-9/11 left, against Michael Moore and political correctness and Susan Sontag and CBS News, among a host of others. I have to say that this was the most appealing thing about Bush for me. If he hadn't so obviously screwed up the Iraq war and endorsed a constitutional amendment against gay rights, I would have succumbed myself.

Two recent movies brought this home to me. The Incredibles, although brilliantly animated, funny in patches, and engrossing, is a far cry from Pixar's previous masterpieces. Its characters are less inventive, its plot more contrived, its jokes less wry. But its moral is a very canny one and may account for its popularity. The Incredibles are a family of superheroes who are forced into early retirement because their feats had incurred too much collateral damage; lawsuits on superheroics had made the Incredibles a liability. So they were required to go into hiding, to restrain their unique powers, to conceal their genetically given talents. The fundamental moral of the movie is that this restraint is wrong and needs to be overcome: Letting the talented earn the proud rewards of their labor, and the fruits of their destiny, harms no one and actually helps those in the greatest need.

Is this a moral for the religious right? Hardly. The Incredibles in some ways portrays normal American life as stultifying. Its brutal parody of family squabbles is by no means an encomium to traditionalism. It's not anti-family, of course. But it is pro-talent and pro-opportunity. It is in favor of the urge to get out there and achieve things without apology. Within the right-left rubric of American cultural discourse, the movie is therefore rightward-tilting. And that's why many critics on the left have decried it.

Or take the latest product from "South Park" creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, Team America: World Police. You might think of "South Park" as a quintessentially blue-state product. Its humor is profane and scatological; the show is at ease with sexual candor, racial jokes, and regularly lampoons organized religion. But, once you look beneath the surface, you find that this blue-state comedy has little truck with liberal political correctness, Hollywood piety, trial-lawyer insanity, hate-crime hooey, and all the other shibboleths of the good-government left.

The same is true of Team America. No good liberal would have as much fun with bad ethnic stereotypes. A recurring gag is the fact that Kim Jong Il pronounces his "r"s and "l"s the wrong way round. No right-thinking listener to Air America would be comfortable with an activist group called the Film Actors Guild or FAG for short. The quintessential voice of liberal activism on the Web, Daily Kos, had this to say about the movie:

What do we get? Peacenik liberal Hollywood actors coddling up to terrorist regimes (ha ha). If you hate Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin and Janeane Garofalo, then you'll love seeing them get killed in a bloody battle with Team America. One dead Rush Limbaugh would've attoned for using Michael Moore as a suicide bomber. Perhaps massacring Fox's whole afternoon lineup and Tom DeLay would've balanced out the dead actors. But oh well. Me, I didn't care for it.

What Kos doesn't get is that Parker and Stone don't think that Fox is as pompous or as self-important or as cringe-inducing as Tim Robbins passing himself off as an intellectual. And neither do most Americans. Yes, Stone and Parker often lampoon silly morality crusades. Their "South Park" episode on Mel Gibson, "The Passion of the Jew," was a devastatingly hilarious takedown of Gibson's psychosexual extremism. But there is also a love of ordinary American culture and of American power that animates and centers the Parker-Stone sensibility.

Yes, Team America shows the gung-ho, Jerry Bruckheimer version of American patriotism as absurd, clumsy, and crude. But Stone and Parker never lose sight of the fact that Kim Jong Il is worse; or that real enemies are out there; or that America is better than many other whiny world powers, paralyzed by fear and inertia and hypocrisy. That's why you both lament and celebrate the U.S. missile crashing into the Louvre, and that's why cheers went up in the blue-state movie theater I was in when Susan Sarandon plunged to a gruesome death. And for all the homegrown idiocies of South Park, you grow to love the dysfunctional redneck Colorado town where the cartoon sitcom is based. The humor is at America's expense; but it's also borne out of a real and intimate love of American culture itself. Colorado is, after all, a red state.

This is what the left has lost sight of. Americans tend to believe that talent needs no apology; that action is often better than complaint; that their own country, despite its many faults, is still a force for great good in the world. The left tends to view things a little differently. The most shocking manifestation was the way in which the far left saw September 11 as an indictment of America rather than of jihadist nihilism. A more anodyne version was the way in which the Kerry campaign tried to reassure Americans of Kerry's commitment to national defense by playing up his Vietnam record rather than unleashing him to rage against the evil of terror. The legitimate criticisms of the Iraq war seemed at times to emanate from a welter of whining rather than from a determined attempt to win in Iraq or from righteous, well-deserved anger that Bush had botched it. Facing a world of unprecedented danger, the Democrats still offered little in the way of a constructive message about what they would do proactively to defeat the enemy. For all his faults, Bush did.

At home, the Democrats spoke too easily of people injured by fate or economic transition or social injustice, while scanting the positive things that people can and will do to change their own circumstances, to beat the odds, to rise above their own limitations. They had a trial lawyer as vice-presidential nominee and a candidate who had spent a lifetime in politics achieving very little, even by the standards of the U.S. Senate. They may have made legitimate points, but they seemed too much like the critics of the Incredibles rather than their fans.

The truth is, there is a conservative majority in this country not because the religious right is a majority but because Republicans have been able to corner the market on the themes of achievement, individualism, energy, and action. And they have also won over those who disdain the politics of resentment, whining, and permanent criticism. If James Dobson represents one wing of contemporary Republicanism, Arnold Schwarzenegger represents the other. Democrats will never win over the Dobsonites. But they can win over the blueish voters who voted red last time because the pious, do-good, elite whining of Gore and Teresa and Hillary seemed so alien to Americans' entrepreneurial, anti-p.c., and irreverent popular culture.

There's a reason Schwarzenegger couldn't be a Democrat. And a reason why he's a red-tinted governor of one of the bluest states in the country. If you want to understand why, go to the movies and watch cartoons and puppets. They'll beat focus groups every time.

Realignment, Now More than Ever
The next best thing to a permanent majority.
by Fred Barnes in The Weekly Standard
11/13/2004, Volume 010, Issue 10

KARL ROVE SAID LAST YEAR that the question of realignment--whether Republicans have at last become the majority party--would be decided by the election of 2004. And it has. Even by the cautious reckoning of Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, Republicans now have both an operational majority in Washington (control of the White House, Senate, and the House of Representatives) and an ideological majority in the country (51 percent popular vote for a center-right president). They also control a majority of governorships, a plurality of state legislatures, and are at rough parity with Democrats in the number of state legislators. Rove says that under Bush a "rolling realignment" favoring Republicans continues, and he's right. So Republican hegemony in America is now expected to last for years, maybe decades.

His definition of realignment is "a sudden transformation that turns out to be permanent." The breakthrough occurred in 1994 when Republicans shattered the 40-year Democratic grip on Congress and the statehouses. ...

Mourn

[from the November 22, 2004 issue]

Please. Just right now, don't say, "Don't mourn, organize" or "Pray for the dead but fight like hell for the living." Don't explain Kerry's loss with Harry Truman's quip that voters will always choose the real Republican over the fake Republican. Don't let's talk about Eugene Debs and Fighting Bob La Follette and how important it is to lose and lose and lose until you win. It all seems a bit inadequate, a bit quaint and this-land-is-your-landish, the left's commitment to doing more of what we've been doing, only harder.

I also don't want to hear carping criticisms of John Kerry. Given that he is a fallible mortal, he was a pretty good candidate. Sure, he made mistakes--not responding instantly to the Swift Boat liars, wearing that silly goose-hunting get-up, letting Bush get away with saying drugs from Canada will kill you--but Bush committed his share of gaffes as well. Any candidate does. Think back to the actual human beings running in the primaries: Who would have done better in the real-world mix of competing claims and hard choices and twenty-four-hour spin? Dennis Kucinich? Al Sharpton? I admired Howard Dean, but face it, the Republican attack machine would have shredded him in a week.

The Kerry campaign may have been a broth with too many cooks, but it did a lot of things right. It raised a ton of money from small and first-time donors instead of relying on big donors, as the Democrats have tended to do for the last decade. It had fantastic labor support. It had MoveOn, America Coming Together and the other 527s, which mobilized intensity, creativity, time and cash and evoked a surge of grassroots progressive activism like nothing in living memory. Hundreds of thousands of people--Democrats, leftists, Greens, independents, Deaniacs, even a few stray Republicans--knocked themselves out registering voters, phone-banking, going door to door; for many, like me, this was the first time they'd volunteered for a presidential campaign. Kerry had the energy of millions, black and white, enraged by Florida 2000, by Iraq, by Bush's governing from the hard right without anything resembling a mandate--people who were willing to stand in long lines in the hot sun or November chill for however many hours it took to cast their ballot. Kerry may not have displayed passion, but his supporters had plenty to spare.

It's an article of faith among progressives that moving to the left wins votes, and I have written many columns in witness to the creed. But what if it isn't true? What if it wins fewer votes than being a liar and a bigot? One leftist intellectual I saw at an election-night party suggested to me that Kerry shot himself in the foot when he didn't throw Abu Ghraib in Bush's face and proclaim that as President he would never permit torture. I would have wept with joy to hear that speech, but where is the evidence that significant numbers of voters not already committed to Kerry--let alone voters who supported Bush--were outraged by Abu Ghraib? Did I miss the demonstrations, the sit-ins, the teach-ins, the lying down in traffic by swing voters and nonvoters to force the Bush Administration to account for this outrageous crime against humanity?

Similarly, some were impatient with Kerry's "nuanced" position on gay marriage, but is there any reason on God's earth to believe there are lots of gay-friendly swing voters or nonvoters out there just waiting for a candidate who wants to let Mary Cheney wed Rosie O'Donnell? Everything we know--the passage of all eleven state bans on gay marriage, for example, some of which go so far as to ban civil unions as well--suggests that Kerry understood quite well where the people were.

OK, you say, that's one of those pesky newfangled cultural-elite issues that alienate the heartland, which yearns for the old-time religion of "economic populism." Kerry's health insurance plan wasn't perfect, it wasn't single-payer, but it would have insured all children and about half the adults currently uninsured--26.7 million people!--and it would have been paid for by canceling Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, something populists should go for. No sale. His plan to help young people pay for college wasn't perfect either, but it was a lot better than what young people are getting now. Result: Young people constituted their usual pathetic proportion of the total vote. And this is after the best efforts of P Diddy, Christina Aguilera, Eminem and virtually every other pop icon except Britney Spears.

The logic of the "Left Is More" position seems to be this: What people really want is a Debs or La Follette who will smite the corporations, turn swords into plowshares, share the wealth and banish John Ashcroft to a cabin in the Ozarks. But since the Democratic Party denies them their first choice, they will--naturally!--pick a hard-right warmaker of staggering incompetence and no regard for either the Constitution or the needs of the people. Better that than settle for a liberal centrist who would only raise the minimum wage by two dollars. In other words, these proto-progressives will consciously choose the greater evil out of what--spite? pride? I scorn your half-measures, sir! Keep your small change!

This makes no sense to me as an explanation of the recent election. It doesn't explain, for example, why Republicans gained in both House and Senate. It doesn't explain why Californians rejected a referendum to amend their three-strikes law so that twice-convicted felons wouldn't get twenty-five years for shoplifting, or why Arizonans voted solidly to bar undocumented aliens from obtaining a wide range of essential public services and to require public servants to report them if they try. It doesn't explain why the Kansas school board is once again a chorus line of creationists.

Maybe this time the voters chose what they actually want: Nationalism, pre-emptive war, order not justice, "safety" through torture, backlash against women and gays, a gulf between haves and have-nots, government largesse for their churches and a my-way-or-the-highway President.

Where, I wonder, does that leave us?

October 29, 2004

Study Puts Iraqi Deaths of Civilians at 100,000

ARIS, Oct. 28 - An estimated 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq as a direct or indirect consequence of the March 2003 United States-led invasion, according to a new study by a research team at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Coming just five days before the presidential election the finding is certain to generate intense controversy, since it is far higher than previous mortality estimates for the Iraq conflict.

Editors of The Lancet, the London-based medical publication, where an article describing the study is scheduled to appear, decided not to wait for the normal publication date next week, but to place the research online Friday, apparently so it could circulate before the election.

The Bush administration has not estimated civilian casualties from the conflict, and independent groups have put the number at most in the tens of thousands.

In the study, teams of researchers led by Dr. Les Roberts fanned out across Iraq in mid-September to interview nearly 1,000 families in 33 locations. Families were interviewed about births and deaths in the household before and after the invasion.

Although the authors acknowledge that data collection was difficult in what is effectively still a war zone, the data they managed to collect is extensive. Using what they described as the best sampling methods that could be applied under the circumstances, they found that Iraqis were 2.5 times more likely to die in the 17 months following the invasion than in the 14 months before it.

Before the invasion, the most common causes of death in Iraq were heart attacks, strokes and chronic diseases. Afterward, violent death was far ahead of all other causes.

"We were shocked at the magnitude but we're quite sure that the estimate of 100,000 is a conservative estimate," said Dr. Gilbert Burnham of the Johns Hopkins team. Dr. Burnham said the team excluded data about deaths in Falluja in making their estimate, because that city was the site of unusually intense violence.

In 15 of the 33 communities visited, residents reported violent deaths in their families since the conflict started. They attributed many of those deaths to attacks by American-led forces, mostly airstrikes, and most of those killed were women and children. The risk of violent death was 58 times higher than before the war, the researchers reported.

Police Investigate 2 Canadian Muslims Over Comments About Jews

ORONTO, Oct. 30 - Two prominent Canadian Muslims who made derogatory remarks about Jews have been condemned by moderate Muslims and other Canadians, and the police have opened investigations to determine whether the men have broken any laws.

A statement on a Web site by a Muslim cleric from Vancouver calling Jews "the brothers of monkeys and swine" was perceived as particularly disturbing, especially after Russia reported that one of his followers had left Canada to join rebel forces in Chechnya and had been killed in combat.

The cleric, Sheik Younus Kathrada of the Dar al-Madinah Islamic Society, posted a clarification on his Web site this week, saying that his comments had been taken out of context.

"I am not the demon the media is trying to make me out to be," he said. In a separate development, Mohamed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, a national group, said during an Oct. 19 broadcast of a cable television current affairs program that all adult Israelis were legitimate targets for Palestinian suicide bombers.

"They are part of the Israeli Army, even if they have civilian clothes," said Dr. Elmasry, an Egyptian-born immigrant who is a professor of computer engineering at the University of Waterloo and who frequently writes articles on Islamic topics for opinion pages of newspapers. "Anybody above 18 is a part of the Israeli popular army."

   ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
<josbwm@aol.com>

In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.

The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or — what is but a legal expression for the same thing — with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters.

Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production.

No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the tasks itself arises only when the material conditions of its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master [3] and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other -- bourgeoisie and proletariat.