Rantle

by Eric Anschutz, June, 2007

The Brilliance That Surrounds Us: In the lifetime of many older Americans, we have emerged from horse and buggy to a world of amazing comfort and speed and dazzling complexity. Transportation, medicine and communications remained at more or less primitive levels until about the beginning of the 20th century, at which time began the still ongoing frenzy of scientific and technological progress that has transformed our lives. Automobiles, railroads, airplanes, central heating, electricity, refrigeration, antibiotics, telephones, radio and television have brought previously unimagined comforts and security and mobility to all of us in the developed world. More recently, we have been endowed with the magic of computers, mapping of the human genome, cellular telephones, digital cameras and ipods, and the mysteries of email. Just how do my typed words and my digital photographs appear on the computer screens of my children and friends across the city or across the world, just seconds after I click on “send.” How does Google work to provide instant answers to any question? I have no real idea, though I am an MIT graduate, albeit of almost 60 years ago. My kids do have some notion of all this, but even they, each of whom is highly intelligent, and involved in the world of high technology, cannot possibly have a complete understanding of more than just a piece of this fabulous technological world of ours.

We who live today inherit eons of evolution of knowledge that began in the caves of our stone-age fathers, plodded along through millennia of steady but slow progress, and then suddenly, in just the last 100 years or so, exploded into the high-tech world of today. And it promises to go on. Alternative energy sources, such as solar, hydrogen, wind and bio-fuel are certain to be economically viable in the near-term. Stem cell research will bring medical breakthroughs as yet unimagined. Research in the field of robotics is sure to lower the cost and raise the quality of manufactured goods. I would venture to fantasize that science will one day find a way for us to communicate by thinking, learn by having information fed directly into our brains, nourish our bodies with a daily pill, cause rain to fall when and where we need it, and, possibly, one day to transport ourselves by tele-kinesis.

Ignorance that Besets Us: With all that evolved brilliance, why have we not figured out how to manage our economy so as to eliminate poverty? Or to ensure clean air and water, world-class education and health care, eliminate the drug-culture and beautify our cities? And, above all, why have we not learned to bring about a world that resolves differences between people, and between nations, and between religions, by cooperation and negotiation and brotherhood rather than by violence. The answer, I think, lies not in ignorance but rather in our inability to find and elect political leaders with the vision and intellect needed to raise national and international leadership to the same high level to which we have raised scientific and technological leadership.

Earlier generations of leaders in American science and technology, such as Robert Fulton, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford and Wilbur and Orville Wright, were succeeded by contemporary wizards of equal ability and accomplishment: Craig Venter, Jonas Salk, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. But the same leadership succession has not happened in the realm of American politics. At its beginning, our country was blessed by political wisdom and philosophical genius: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Each of these men brought to his presidency a vision of greatness for America, combined with the eloquence and high-intelligence and integrity and strength needed to gain support. Among our recent presidents, there are, in my mind, only two for whom a claim of eloquence and vision and strength can be made: Reagan and Clinton. But President Reagan, with his vision of America as the “shining city on the hill” seems to me to have lacked both the mastery of policy details and the willingness to work hard needed to elevate this country into lasting greatness. President Clinton, in my view, had it all, except for that all-important sense of personal integrity. The moral failing and the national disgrace of the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky affairs, though they had no real bearing on his brilliance as a leader, led to the long distraction of the impeachment process, sapped his energies and our support, and made it impossible for him to lead the country to greatness.

The Coming Election: As a new election nears, we can hope to find for America a worthy successor to the early leaders of our country. We need a contemporary leader who combines the virtues of Reagan and Clinton, with none of their failings. Who is he? or she? In a country of some 300 million people, surely such a person exists, possibly even among those who have proclaimed their candidacy. The real question is whether we, the voters, will make the effort to study the candidates and look for the qualities of Washington and Adams and Jefferson and Lincoln and Roosevelt, or whether we will let ourselves be beguiled, once again, by those whose main claim for our vote is the “correct” position on such (family value?) issues as abortion, flag-burning, guns, gay marriage and school prayer, but who offer only empty rhetoric on how to deal with issues of war and peace, runaway national deficits, trade imbalance, environment, education and health care.

by Eric E. Anschutz, June, 2007

Much is said about “freedom” in America. As I contemplate that, I recall the opening words of another aging author: Snoopy, featured in Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts” comic strip. Snoopy was once depicted sitting atop his doghouse, typing the first lines of his new book, entitled “Recollections.” His opening words went something like this:

• First frame: “I’m an old dog now, “I’m not a puppy anymore.”
• Second frame: “But my life isn’t over. There are places to go, things to do, and lots still to learn!”
• Third frame: “So I’ll enroll in Senior Obedience School.”

Me too. I’m an old man now, but my life is far from over. There’s so much that I’ve always wanted to do. Now that I’m retired, have a good pension and money in the bank, I’m free to sail the Aegean, write in Paris, or run for congress. But, like Snoopy, I’ll stay where I am and find ways to live comfortably and securely with the habits of a lifetime and within the boundaries of what my family and my community expect from a man like me. Unlike Snoopy, I’ve already been to Senior Obedience School!

We Americans are devoted to the notion of rights, independence, and the exercise of free will. Though our laws and traditions give us more freedom than is possessed by citizens of many countries, familial and practical considerations limit our ability to exercise our freedoms just as surely as if we were constrained by Snoopy’s leash.

Constraints on the exercise of free will are not limited to senior citizens; indeed, they apply even more rigorously to people in their middle years. During those earlier years, we might have wanted to sleep late on a cold and rainy weekday morning – or to play tennis on a golden summer weekday afternoon. While no law precluded our right to loll about or to recreate to our hearts content, our awareness that too much lolling or playing would soon result in a sharp decrease, if not total loss of income, got us off to work and kept us there every day as surely as a prod from some prison warden.

We might, as younger people, have wished to convert savings and invested funds into a cabin cruiser or an ocean-going sailboat, and again, though we had every right to do so, those funds remained untouched because they were held in reserve for our children’s college tuition and other equally worthy life purposes.

We might even, God forbid, have toyed with the notion of going off for romantic escapades. Here, the law, at least the moral law, is a factor. But, these temptations, which may visit even the most virtuous and monogamous among us once or twice in a lifetime, are altogether resisted or kept within strict limits primarily because the bonds of marriage and family bind us as securely as the leash holds Snoopy to the confines of his yard.

Add to our self-imposed leash the boundaries that result from our need to preserve comfort and security. My wife, Sidsel, and I are today free to travel far and wide, more or less as we might wish; yet, we limit travel because there is no place more pleasant and more comfortable than our own house and our own neighborhood. I am held here by a mattress just right for my fragile back, breakfasts of waffles and coffee, perfect lunches of tuna fish or sardines on toasted multi-grain bread, with a steaming cup of tea, daily delivery of the New York Times and the Contra Costa Times, my computer and instant access to the world-wide web, the library and Barnes and Noble and Starbucks all nearby, CSPAN and CNN just a click away, tennis or golf almost every day with my fellow senior-circuit tennis and golf crowd, and the great dinners Sidsel prepares night after night in our kitchen. No five-star hotels could surpass such comfort, and the three-star places more likely to gain our patronage would fall very far short of what is available within the four walls of our own home and the boundaries of the community in which we live.

So much for free will. We are, in the last analysis, free to do only that which meets our needs for comfort and security, which is within our budgetary constraints, and which complies with and preserves both our self-image and the image we present to our families and our community. And we must be thankful for these limits on our freedom. Without them, most of us would be tempted to behave irresponsibly, or be bewildered into chaos by the limitless range of options. Without boundaries, even those of us with instincts for consistency and orderliness can fall prey to rootlessness and the temptations of endless experimentation. We need only look at the messy personal lives of those endowed by some combination of wealth and status with the ability to have it all. Brittany Spears comes to mind, as does Paris Hilton.

by Eric E. Anschutz, May 23, 2007

Three separate studies have reached the same startling conclusion: the eventual cost of the Iraq War will total somewhere between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. When questioned about it, a White House spokesman dismissed the findings thusly: “The president doesn’t approach defending America as an accountant…” Whatever one’s thoughts about the war, the trillion-plus dollar cost raises the question of what else could have been done with all that money (putting aside the cost of so many destroyed and shattered lives, and the war-caused loss of America’s moral authority). Was the money well spent? Or might we have done more for the security of our country by spending it in other ways?

I read, recently, that China, in its preparation for hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics, and aiming to use that world-wide forum to enhance its image, is building some of the most advanced facilities ever constructed, all using exclusively “green” technologies. The news article that reported this story informed us of what was portrayed as a somewhat mind-boggling fact: the cost for each of these several Olympics-related buildings will be about $1 billion. As I absorbed that impressive information, I was reminded that we Americans are spending considerably more than $1 billion each week in Iraq ($8 to $9 billion per month is the current expenditure rate). Thus, while China is spending on construction to improve its economy, to impress the world with new green technologies, and to bring pride to the Chinese people, America is spending on destruction, sapping our economy, offending world opinion, and dividing our body-politic, all the while deferring action on domestic improvements so urgently needed here.

Absent the war, how many world-class buildings could we construct? How many schools? How many truly capable young people could we attract to teaching, the most important but most underpaid of our professions? How much health care could we provide? How much progress could we make in developing alternative fuel technologies, or first rate mass transport that could move us toward energy independence? How much improvement might we build into such things as our levees, water supplies, sewage and waste disposal systems and electric power generation using renewable sources? How many new roadways or parks could we build? How much progress might we have made in rebuilding New Orleans, whose continuing deterioration has become a national disgrace?

How many “hearts and minds” could we win by directing just a small fraction of our Iraq War money to provision of massive aid to impoverished people around the world? And how much would that contribute to our security, compared to what we’re getting from comparable amounts spent on “shock and awe,” and by standing between Sunnis and Shiites as they fight a civil war that we cannot understand, which has been raging for 1,000 years, a war in which we have no reason too “back” either side over the other, and for which there seems to be no foreseeable end.

America abounds with energy and intelligence. We are harder working, are more productive, and spend more on research than any other country. Yet, we run irresponsibly massive annual deficits and incur embarrassingly large negative balances of trade that combine to leave our economy vulnerable to the slightest shift in domestic or international events. With our superior industrial base, the strongest science, the best universities, diligent workforce and strong moral streak for setting goals and achieving them, America could and should be awash in surplus rather than deficit, should have a positive balance of trade, should be “green,” energy independent, a source to the world of the best products and the best ideas. We should be moral icons, intellectual leaders, nothing less than the envy of the world. We should be the healthiest, the best educated, the safest, the happiest, the most beautiful of all countries. But we are not – in large measure because of our 60-year binge of “defense” spending, and particularly the cost of wasteful and counterproductive wars in Vietnam and Iraq, which in neither case was fought in defense of our homeland.

The term: “national security,” has come to mean, exclusively, military superiority. While it is true that our nation is not fully secure if we are vulnerable to possible aggressors, our security remains at risk if our children are undereducated, and it is at risk when year after year after year our national debt and our balance of trade are increasingly in arrears. Our national security is at risk when our infrastructure is allowed to deteriorate, and when minority groups in our country feel disenfranchised, and when polls tell us that the rest of the world now sees our country as a threat to world peace. Our America bristles with military power, which we have learned is of little value in combating car bombs and suicide bombers. Our military budget exceeds the sum total of all other military spending in the world, yet we are vulnerable in so many ways. Is it not time to redefine “national security,” and to reorder our priorities?

by Eric Anschutz, June, 2007

Most Americans would say that they hate war, and we proclaim ourselves to be a peace-loving nation. Yet, in recent years, our country has engaged in two major wars of choice, first Vietnam, and now Iraq. Both are now widely regretted. Let’s consider how it has come about.

As I think about our readiness to fight, often without due consideration of non-lethal alternatives, I think words have a lot to do with it. Remember “better dead than red,” the oft-repeated cliché of the cold war? Remember the “domino theory,” that supported our entry into the Vietnam War? And, most recently, in the run-up to the war in Iraq, we heard again and again that “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” And during these last four years of the war in Iraq, the war of words has continued: we have heard repeatedly about “rouge nations;” “those who hate freedom;” “the axis of evil;” “we will never surrender to terrorists;” “if we don’t defeat them over there, they will attack us over here.” Strong words, all designed to instill fear, hatred for the enemy, and to sustain support for the war.

Compare the power and patriotic fervor generated by that pro-war language to the timidity and weakness suggested by the words used to malign those who urged caution and negotiation and patience in the lead-up to the war in Iraq: “soft on terrorism;” “wimpish;” “unpatriotic;” “defeatist;” “cut and run;” “naïve;” And the ultimate pejorative: Frenchified, Birkenstock-wearing, Volvo-driving, granola-eating wooly-headed liberals! The message was and remains clear: it is un-manly and un-American to oppose war, to not “stand-up” to our enemies.

This war of words (and the waving of flags) succeeded in generating early media support for the Iraq war, and incited a large majority of Americans to support the war with enthusiasm. The Senate, after very little discussion and no real debate, voted 77-23 to authorize the President to attack Iraq if Saddam Hussein refused to give up weapons of mass destruction as required by UN resolutions. The House approved an identical resolution 296-133. Oh, yes, I almost forgot, the Senate did take important action: they changed the name of French Fries to “Freedom Fries” on the Senate dining room menu.

Now that four long years of this war have led our country into a quagmire, and now that the 2006 elections have demonstrated public disenchantment with the war, congressional democrats have finally mustered the courage to seek to force an end to the war by linking continued funding to a timetable for withdrawal. In vetoing that congressional action, the President continues his war of words by reframing the Democrat’s call to withdraw the troops as a call by the Democrats to deprive the troops of resources needed to fight.
Senator McCain, who has become even more hawkish than the President, has maligned Democrats by labeling their legislation as the “Date Certain to Surrender Act.” And Republican presidential candidate Rudi Giuliani has continued the poisonous rhetoric with his foolish assertion that if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America would be at greater risk of another terrorist attack on the scale of September 11, 2001.

My own view is that we should withdraw our troops from Iraq and the entire Mid-East completely, as soon as logistically possible, letting the Shiites and the Sunnis resolve their 1,000 year old differences without US troops standing between them, attempting to shield the various combatants from one another, refereeing a conflict we don’t really understand, and in which we have no reasoned preference as to the outcome. We long ago liberated Iraqi’s from their brutal tyrant, Saddam. It is their task, and theirs alone, to take the political steps needed build a viable and stable Iraq. Our continued military presence in Iraq does not facilitate the political task facing the Iraqi leadership; indeed, it may impede their work or even make it more difficult by fueling the Sunni insurgency and the in-fighting among Shiite factions. American troops will be gone one day, and Iraq’s political leaders must find ways to bring these disparate factions into harmony. We can never do it for them.

by Eric Anschutz, June, 2007

The recent murderous rampage at Virginia Tech turns our attention once again to the issue of gun control. 32 beautiful young people lost their lives because a crazed young man had ready access to the purchase of two rapid-fire guns, and enough ammunition to fight a small war. The United States averages 63 murders each year per 1 million of population. Japan averages 0.3, Germany, 6.1, UK, 6.3. No other country’s murder rate comes anywhere close to ours.

Picture this: as the police were carrying out the 32 bodies, it has been reported that cell-phones in the pockets of the now-dead kids kept ringing – with those endless varieties of merry musical ring tones that we all use. Parents and other loved ones were calling to see if their kids were OK. It’s terrible when one person is murdered; it’s a national tragedy when 32 die in a single needless action. Not an accident. Not because someone hated or even knew the victims. This massacre was for no reason other than the irrationality stemming from a tortured mind – and a society that enables such carnage by virtue of our lax gun laws.

I don’t profess to have a definitive answer. But surely our residual frontier mentality has something to do with it. Too many Americans are John Wayne or Rambo at heart. We want to think of ourselves as rugged individualists: “Nobody is going to tell me what to do.” We admire the Marlboro Man (who, by the way, died recently, of lung cancer). We admire swagger, and disdain wimps, though both behaviors can be misleading. Swagger may indicate arrogance, or it may be a cover for self-doubt and weakness. Wimpishness, on the other hand, may indicate timidity, or it may be a cover for the kind of quiet inner strength that feels no need to show itself publicly.

Guns play a central role here. We are a nation of gun lovers. Our Second Amendment “right to bear arms” has, in my view, been stretched well beyond its intended “well armed militia” to somehow legitimize guns in the hands of any nut with $50 for a “Saturday night special,” and an urge to rob a gas station or the local 7-11, or to provide the wherewithal to bring bravado to an otherwise weak person. Guns, the National Rifle Association tells us, do not kill people. People do. Right, but generally these people that kill do so with guns. So it would seem self-evident that fewer guns would result in less violence. The second amendment wasn’t meant to legitimize guns in schools.

We are met with the NRA’s inane argument that guns are needed to defend ourselves against those who would commit violence against us. But unless we have guns in hand, always at the ready, doesn’t the aggressor have the advantage of surprise? Even if I had a gun, I’m not sure I could get to it in time to ward off or defend against a criminal. Indeed, the very act of pulling my gun for defense could cause the aggressor to shoot. Statistics tell us that houses with guns in or on the parent’s nightstand are also houses where kids can accidentally shoot their siblings or themselves.

Another NRA inspired pro-gun argument centers on the idea that the “government” seeks to take guns from citizens so that the citizenry can be controlled. “The first thing that Stalin and Hitler did”, I once read in a militia-inspired diatribe, “was to take guns out of the hands of people.” Loony as such a concern might seem in 21st century America, it does resonate with many Americans.

Hunters present another pro-gun constituency. Killing deer, or pheasants, or rabbits, seems to be a big sport for many. Not just Americans; hunting is big in Europe, too, but in Europe only hunting rifles are legal; small arms are not. American hunters don’t need semi-automatic Glocks and Walthers, the weapons used at Blacksburg. Honest outdoorsmen would not object to the strictest possible controls over the purchase of guns and ammunition, nor do those who use guns for sport need the right to purchase a new gun every thirty days – which the law in Virginia permits, thereby entitling the Virginia Tech killer to buy two guns within thirty days as he prepared his massacre.

The power of the gun lobby, and the reluctance of politicians on both sides of the political spectrum to face them down, tells us that guns will continue to be present in America for the foreseeable future. All we can do is pass as much restrictive legislation as possible. The Brady Law seems timid and tepid, but it and similar small steps are all that seem to be possible. I give President Clinton major credit for having had the courage to take on the NRA, and for enacting such gun-restrictive legislation as he did. President Bush and the Republican-led congress allowed Clinton’s most important gun law, the ban on assault weapons, to lapse in 2004. And, just days after the Virginia massacre, Senate Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat and hero of the NRA, said “I hope there’s no rush to do anything (about gun laws).”