Until now, all the assumptions about Obama's aspirations to the presidential nomination have been based on the view that the Democratic party will decide which of the two candidates shall be nominated. This is surely the case with Hillary Clinton, whose own roots are deeply and inextricably bound up with the Democratic party's, and whose husband was a former Democratic president. For Hillary Clinton to break free of the Democratic party and run an independent campaign for the presidency is almost unthinkable. But is the same true of Obama?
Imagine, for a moment, that Clinton managed to do exceptionally well in Pennsylvania and the remaining primaries and caucuses, and - though still behind in pledged delegates - was able to persuade a significant majority of superdelegates that the clouds of doubt generated by the Rev Wright would render Obama too susceptible to the McCain candidacy to risk giving him the presidential nomination. Is it inconceivable that Obama would simply reject the vote of the superdelegates, claim the moral high ground, and launch his own independent campaign?
Throw into the equation that from the first opening salvoes of the campaign Obama has laid claim to moderates and centrists as his main electoral base, and that he has consistently deplored America's political polarisation into "red and blue states". An independent campaign for the presidency would be highly consistent with both his ideological stance and the profile of his voter appeal.
The particular circumstances which might trigger this hypothetical independent campaign are precisely the ones in which he won both the highest total of numerical votes and the largest number of pledged delegates, but was denied the Democratic nomination by superdelegates who were willing to override the votes of the majority. Since Obama has also consistently criticised the "old ways" of the Washington political classes, and has refused to be "pickled" by old-style politics, he would surely appear to be justified in rejecting a decision based on senior party apparatchiks conspiring in smoke-filled rooms.
Finally, would his rejection of the judgment of the Democratic party old guard, on a point of high moral principle, also not constitute the boldest and most direct rejection of the old style of politics, and a leap into the new, non-polarised polity of the future?
I raise these points because I believe they constitute a serious challenge to the universally accepted view that the Democratic party holds final say over Obama's presidential campaign. Perhaps he has become too large to be contained by a single party.
There are now signs that Obama's remarkable Pennsylvania speech last week on Tuesday 18 March has turned the tide of his political losses due to Rev Wright. Faced with a "firestorm" of criticism over the revelations about Rev Wright, Obama had a choice: to attempt to make a clean break from the incendiary anti-American comments of his former mentor, or to face directly into the problem and take the position that the Rev Wright's anger, though expressed in extreme terms, was common to black and ethnic experience in America, and needed to be faced and examined before genuine healing was possible. He took the latter option, and the signs are that his extraordinary and courageous gamble is paying off.
In the wake of the Pennsylvania speech, an increasing number of the more thoughtful commentators are reaching the view that this speech may have given final weight and shape to Obama's presidential ambitions. Few can deny that it was a magnificent oration, delivered under the highest pressure of circumstances, with a calm force and authority. It has transformed the Obama campaign from one which depended for its appeal on vague hopes of healing into a campaign of substance, able to stare the toxic problem of race directly in the eye and still hold out genuine hope of a larger eventual solution.
Perhaps it signals a qualitative change, too, in the way that we should look at Barack Obama and his campaign. Might it be that Obama, not least through that historic Pennsylvania speech, has simply become too large to stop, even by the superdelegates of the Democratic party? A candidate who was effectively a more powerful force in current politics than his nominating party would be an unprecedented event. But so much of Obama is remarkable that we should now consider even this as a distinct and plausible possibility.
If there is merit in these speculations, then the superdelegates of the Democratic party should be careful that are not under a delusion in believing they have the power to choose the presidential nominee, particularly against a majority of votes and pledged delegates. Instead of confirming Hillary Clinton as their nominee, their actions might merely launch an unprecedentedly powerful third candidate into the presidential race, one genuinely capable of breaking the mould of two-party politics.
Monday, 24 March 2008
Obama's Pennsylvania speech - the full text
Here is the full text of Obama's historic Pennsylvania speech of 18 March 2008:
"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign - to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.
But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters ... And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about ... memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild."
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.
Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American - and yes, conservative - notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today - a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."
"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign - to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.
But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters ... And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about ... memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild."
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.
Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American - and yes, conservative - notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today - a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."
"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
Friday, 21 March 2008
Obama's Pennsylvania speech - one of the greatest in history?
Barack Obama's Pennsylvania speech on Tuesday 18 March still continues to reverberate in the Western press. Matthew Norman, writing today in the Independent, heads his article The audacity of treating voters like adults, and begins:
Wherever the coming months lead along the serpentine and endlessly captivating trail to become the 44th President of the United States, something unforgettable and potentially transformative happened in Philadelphia on Tuesday. A major Western politician talked about the most enduringly incendiary issue of the past half century as if he were addressing adults. If Barack Obama's speech on race has passed you by, find 37 and a half minutes to watch it on YouTube and judge for yourself whether you've ever seen one like him in your life.
In earlier posts, such as Can Obama Write? and Can Obama Think? I discussed Obama's literary talents and the clarity and originality of his political philosophy. My own interest in Obama's progress is partly literary, partly political. On the political side, Joe Klein, the author of Primary Colours, asked rhetorically whether Obama's biography Dreams from my Father was not the best political biography ever written by a politician. I believe it is. I also believe that The Audacity of Hope is a candidate for the most lucid work of political philosophy ever written by a practicing Western politician in living memory.
Looked at in these terms, Obama is something of a monster, by which I mean a being of such unusual features that it is difficult to assess him within the conventional frameworks. He brings together so many talents and virtues in a single character that in certain respects he defies comparison with other politicians. That is what makes his candidacy so arresting.
For what it is worth, I am a long way from believing that intelligence, profound literary capacity, and philosophical lucidity of a high order are certain foundations for a great statesman. Ronald Reagan was not a supremely gifted individual, but he made an extraordinary president (and one whose influence, incidentally, Obama gracefully recognises). Jimmy Carter was a highly intelligent and sensitive man, though his presidency was characterised largely by prevarication and significant historical failure. The alchemy of character and history in the formation of presidents is subtle. It will be both interesting and instructive, on deeper levels than mere politics, to see where they lead Obama.
Matthew Norman, in one of the finest articles I have so far read on Obama's candidacy, and whom I have quoted above, ends his piece as follows:
Barack Obama talked to Americans on Tuesday, as I said, as if they were adults. He did unto them, to adapt a closing line from a speech the commentator Andrew Sullivan called deeply Christian, as he would have them do unto him. Whether Americans have the capacity to respond as adults, or whether they cling to the comforting blanket of sideshows like the ranting Rev Wright, will go as far as anything towards deciding the Presidency.
The deep and complex ramifications of this extraordinary speech will continue to send their waves through the American body politic.
Wherever the coming months lead along the serpentine and endlessly captivating trail to become the 44th President of the United States, something unforgettable and potentially transformative happened in Philadelphia on Tuesday. A major Western politician talked about the most enduringly incendiary issue of the past half century as if he were addressing adults. If Barack Obama's speech on race has passed you by, find 37 and a half minutes to watch it on YouTube and judge for yourself whether you've ever seen one like him in your life.
In earlier posts, such as Can Obama Write? and Can Obama Think? I discussed Obama's literary talents and the clarity and originality of his political philosophy. My own interest in Obama's progress is partly literary, partly political. On the political side, Joe Klein, the author of Primary Colours, asked rhetorically whether Obama's biography Dreams from my Father was not the best political biography ever written by a politician. I believe it is. I also believe that The Audacity of Hope is a candidate for the most lucid work of political philosophy ever written by a practicing Western politician in living memory.
Looked at in these terms, Obama is something of a monster, by which I mean a being of such unusual features that it is difficult to assess him within the conventional frameworks. He brings together so many talents and virtues in a single character that in certain respects he defies comparison with other politicians. That is what makes his candidacy so arresting.
For what it is worth, I am a long way from believing that intelligence, profound literary capacity, and philosophical lucidity of a high order are certain foundations for a great statesman. Ronald Reagan was not a supremely gifted individual, but he made an extraordinary president (and one whose influence, incidentally, Obama gracefully recognises). Jimmy Carter was a highly intelligent and sensitive man, though his presidency was characterised largely by prevarication and significant historical failure. The alchemy of character and history in the formation of presidents is subtle. It will be both interesting and instructive, on deeper levels than mere politics, to see where they lead Obama.
Matthew Norman, in one of the finest articles I have so far read on Obama's candidacy, and whom I have quoted above, ends his piece as follows:
Barack Obama talked to Americans on Tuesday, as I said, as if they were adults. He did unto them, to adapt a closing line from a speech the commentator Andrew Sullivan called deeply Christian, as he would have them do unto him. Whether Americans have the capacity to respond as adults, or whether they cling to the comforting blanket of sideshows like the ranting Rev Wright, will go as far as anything towards deciding the Presidency.
The deep and complex ramifications of this extraordinary speech will continue to send their waves through the American body politic.
New Template - an apology to readers
I apologise to my kind readers for the change in the look of Public Poems. The earlier template which I was using had some technical problems, and the new one seems to have solved them (touch wood).
I've been blogging for several months now, though admittedly in the form of approximately weekly essays on subjects which interest me. It has been an educational process, not least because in the course of it I have come to know a little more about what really interests me!
"Public Poems" has been a catch-all title until now. I will continue it enthusiastically on literary/political matters, but will divert some of the subject matter to a couple of other blogs.
My libertarian beliefs, such as they are, in future will be expressed in my new blog "antiGuardian.com", which will offer occasional comments on the statist and interventionist aspects of the left. Any further subjects I which fall outside these two areas - such as my interest in sport - will be addressed in warwickcollins.com.
Should anyone wish to look at these other blogs, if you click on "view my complete profile" you will find the other blogs listed there.
Finally, one of the most gratifying aspects of Public Poems has been the interest in my essay "Free the movie industry - abolish exclusivity clauses". My Google analytics show this to be the most visited posting. Over the next months and years, I'm going to try to build support for the notion that exclusivity clauses in film contracts, which prevent films from being made (90% of contracted films are never made into films) should be rendered non-enforceable by legislation because they are in restraint of trade. Authors should be able to sell their rights (the positive rights) but not the negative rights which prevent another film being in perpetuity. I believe this would be good for writers, good for the film industry, and good for viewers. In a blog called Liberate Cinema I'll be pursuing this course.
My blog postings will continue to be intermittent because of my other writing commitments. When I write fiction or a screenplay I have tunnel vision and the particular subject on which I am writing tends to obsess me. Currently I am writing a screenplay for a Swedish production company, set during the second world war and based on a true story about a famous female Swedish dancer who fell in love with an Italian film producer. In the course of their passionate relationship he shot her, paralysing her from the waist downwards so that she never walked again. Paradoxically, she rose from the tragedy, married for a second time, had another child, and became something of an iconic figure in Sweden for her courage and optimism, while he subsided into madness and eventual death. I have been writing with the usual combination of nervousness and occasional exhilaration.
Sunday, 16 March 2008
antiGuardian - an occasional blog
Like many people of a literary inclination, I read the Guardian with attention and often with advantage. It seems to me that the literary pages are lucid and well-judged, and the finest of their kind amongst the quality papers. But as a libertarian I find myself at odds with a strain of politics endemic to the paper which assumes that the majority of people are incapable of organising their own lives, and should be regulated minutely by the state.
The Guardian is a complex and heterogeneous animal, but it has tended too often to represent and give voice to the bureaucratic side of the left. I do not find this merely an irritating quirk. It genuinely annoys me. This is largely because of my belief that during the past century, more harm has been done by the authoritarian left who believed that the state should control all aspects of society than the fascist right. Hitler’s count of 20 million deaths through war and genocide is exceeded by the estimated 100 million (and probably more) deaths caused by Stalin and Mao.
I do not think this strand of the British left wing establishment is Stalinist or Maoist (though I do wonder at the sentimental affection shown towards Castro by Labour figures such as Harriet Harman). At the same time, it seems to me that a bureaucratic left which believes that the state knows better than the adult citizen how that citizen’s life should be controlled and regulated is separated from its authoritarian cousins only by a matter of degree. If the left is to be a consistent and humane progressive force, it should detach itself not only quantitatively but qualitatively from the belief that state intervention is the answer to all problems.
As a libertarian, I’m going to set up another occasional blog called “antiGuardian”. The central assumption will be that the great majority of adults are capable of running their lives with intelligence and discrimination, and the state’s function should be highly limited to areas of clear benefit and optimum impact. The essence of this position was summarised by Walter Lippman, the American political commentator, who wrote, “In a free society, the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.” I aim to comment each week on the tendency that the state should intervene at every level, and to draw attention to some of the more egregious examples.
Having said that, I would be the first to admit that there are some fine things in the Guardian, and that credit should be given where credit is due. In a second posting in antiGuardian, I have commented on (and liberally quoted from) a superb recent article by Elizabeth Pisani, an epidemiologist who specialises in HIV prevention. She argues that the attitude towards the oldest profession epitomised by the disgraced New York state govern Eliot Spitzer — that prostitution is a form of “slavery” and should be suppressed — is just as damaging as the traditionally repressive views of the religious right. Social policies, she argues, should be moulded on reality, not morality — whether that morality is the disapproval of the conservative right, or the insistence, in some parts of the left, that all prostitutes are victims.
The Guardian is a complex and heterogeneous animal, but it has tended too often to represent and give voice to the bureaucratic side of the left. I do not find this merely an irritating quirk. It genuinely annoys me. This is largely because of my belief that during the past century, more harm has been done by the authoritarian left who believed that the state should control all aspects of society than the fascist right. Hitler’s count of 20 million deaths through war and genocide is exceeded by the estimated 100 million (and probably more) deaths caused by Stalin and Mao.
I do not think this strand of the British left wing establishment is Stalinist or Maoist (though I do wonder at the sentimental affection shown towards Castro by Labour figures such as Harriet Harman). At the same time, it seems to me that a bureaucratic left which believes that the state knows better than the adult citizen how that citizen’s life should be controlled and regulated is separated from its authoritarian cousins only by a matter of degree. If the left is to be a consistent and humane progressive force, it should detach itself not only quantitatively but qualitatively from the belief that state intervention is the answer to all problems.
As a libertarian, I’m going to set up another occasional blog called “antiGuardian”. The central assumption will be that the great majority of adults are capable of running their lives with intelligence and discrimination, and the state’s function should be highly limited to areas of clear benefit and optimum impact. The essence of this position was summarised by Walter Lippman, the American political commentator, who wrote, “In a free society, the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.” I aim to comment each week on the tendency that the state should intervene at every level, and to draw attention to some of the more egregious examples.
Having said that, I would be the first to admit that there are some fine things in the Guardian, and that credit should be given where credit is due. In a second posting in antiGuardian, I have commented on (and liberally quoted from) a superb recent article by Elizabeth Pisani, an epidemiologist who specialises in HIV prevention. She argues that the attitude towards the oldest profession epitomised by the disgraced New York state govern Eliot Spitzer — that prostitution is a form of “slavery” and should be suppressed — is just as damaging as the traditionally repressive views of the religious right. Social policies, she argues, should be moulded on reality, not morality — whether that morality is the disapproval of the conservative right, or the insistence, in some parts of the left, that all prostitutes are victims.
Friday, 7 March 2008
Wilfred Owen's war poetry
One of my favourite poems is Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est, arguably one of the greatest anti-war poems of all time. Its extraordinary vividness, combined with its manifest sincerity and power, give it an almost iconic status amongst “public poems” — poems that address a public subject.
As a reminder, here it is in full:
DULCE ET DECORUM EST
Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And onwards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! — an ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a heavy sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, —
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
In the nature of poetry, one becomes used to certain aspects, however marvellously achieved. They may even metamorphose into a kind of template, on which other poems are constructed, of a lesser nature, so that after a while it is difficult not to view them through the subsequent accretia.
One of the functions of poetry is to recreate afresh the same human experiences. When the Iraq war started I supported the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, but believed that the occupying forces should remove themselves afterwards as soon as possible. Motivated by this view, I did my best to write a poem which suggested how easily such an occupation, if it becomes protracted, can become counterproductive. The poem was written in 2003, a few months after the invasion. My beef, if I may call it that, is not with the overthrow of Saddam, but with the nature of the subsequent occupation. Called Keeping the Peace, the poem attempts to evoke the experience of an occupying detachment of American soldiers who are ambushed by an angry crowd of local citizens.
If I have a criticism of Dulce et Decorum Est, it is that one knows the position of the author in the first few lines of the poem, and the anti-war message is driven home relentlessly throughout. This does not, in my opinion, reduce its greatness; at least part of its impact is due to its unequivocal ideological commitment. In Keeping the Peace, by contrast, I tried to hide the position of the narrator, apparently taking the viewpoint of the American soldiers, so that the narrative itself could make the underlying political or philosophical argument.
Meanwhile, in the real world the recent relative success of the US “surge” in troops in Iraq has resulted in a welcome reduction of violence, and a partial return of the vestiges of civil life. I would be the last to begrudge these signs of progress in what has been a brutal and terrible conflict. Meanwhile, I also hope that the west, particularly America and Britain, studies and learns the lessons of the war.
To me at least these centre on the observation that one may easily enough successfully overthrow a tyrannical regime with a careful application of military force, but any subsequent attempt at occupation and “stabilisation” will be appallingly difficult, and may even be a unifying target for those same authoritarian forces which the invasion was originally aimed to confront.
In both Iraq and Afghanistan, I would dearly like to see some originality in the strategy of occupation in addition to the ubiquitous arguments about when to pull out. In Iraq, I believe the partitioning into three separate autonomous states should have been much more seriously considered. This could at least give Kurds, Sunnis and Shia their own national heartlands (reverting to something akin to pre-colonial boundaries), and it would underwrite the most successful aspect of the Iraq war to date — the emergence of a relatively free democratic Kurdish region after decades of Kurdish persecution. In Afghanistan, a radical overhaul of policy would I hope include the purchase of the poppy crop directly from the peasant farmers. As a number of commentators have already argued, this would both infuse life-giving funds into the rural economy and cut out the middlemen and profiteers who currently exploit the illegal crop. Equally importantly, it would help to sever the link between poor farmers and the Taliban, who currently are the major political beneficiaries of the illegal poppy industry.
For what it is worth, I reiterate the point that I am not a pacifist, and do not consider all war to be in error. Keeping the Peace is specifically about the problems which arise when an invading occupier, however well intentioned, attempts a military administration of a foreign culture. The full poem is set out below.
Keeping the Peace - a poem on the Iraq war
I mean the unit’s all out
in full kit, keeping the peace;
body armour, microphone, helmet
got up like the space man —
all of us; Hunter, Mohawk, Hammerstein
even Sergeant William ‘Bill’ Williams, his chevrons
on the camouflage jacket —
the sun coming down hard —
holding the line at the headquarters, outside
this little school we shacked up in
trying to be friendly
and in the morning there’s the usual crowd
outside the wire, in dishdashas
raising their arms in the air, shouting
this one guy whining
like a mosquito, about the injustice
tapping Mohawk’s chest, talking in his face
going on about the destruction
the Americans have bought here
Mohawk looking down at him, not moving
his jaw set
220 lbs of muscular Christian
eye to eye with this Shiite
and you tell me what happens
something is wrong, something is occurring
out there, like a cloud has come down
Hammer’s behind me, above on the roof
his machine
more than a murderous fowling-piece, its
thorntree shadow
over us
that moment
Lieutenant Leman comes out from the office, says
“There’s something going on. The people
behind are messing with AK 47s.”
An ayatollah working his way
along the speckled line, shouting some verse
that heats up the others
something weird
wheels within wheels, that hints
on his such-and-such
we’re already under siege.
Cams and pawls
springs and sprains
the safeties go off —
feel the nerves tighten, the net
shrink, the stomach knot
rising to this, as to every, occasion —
on the Humvee, Williams
a spangle of light on his cheekbone
using his thumb to push forward the lever
on the heavy machine gun.
“The fuck’s going on out there?”
Some movement in the crowd
wolves closing on sheep
as the stones start to come over
like the first drops of rain
a half-brick bounces off the bonnet
with a scary, hollow clang
you tell me what happened next
the earth got sucked out
the big machine gun is already chuntering away
like it started itself
tearing up ragheads
the crowd are butterflies
scattering before wind
then the full firestorm starts
bullets like hail.
Afterwards I heard the captain’s voice
“You say we started it, fired on innocents?
It was a set-up, a twenty minute gun-battle
like the Alamo.”
— the buildings opposite
sparkling with gunfire
like a goddamn Christmas tree —
shake and
haft of a rattle as
the jaws haul out the cartridge
pump in a new one
explode it out
the brass shells falling
like peanuts
we couldn’t winkle them out until we put in
a full 120 mm tank shell from an Abrams
that took out the heart of the building
pulled the air out with a whump
picked em off as they ran out
the machines still
prattling in tongues
steel jaws moving
no one
who can stop them
the whole square filled with dead bodies
pieces of cloth, air thick with cordite
like that good strange smell
after a bad fuck
fainting with nausea
Williams dead, Mohawk wounded
praying to my God
that I didn’t do wrong.
© Warwick Collins 2003
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