27.5.11
Old Urbanist: Did Zoning Ever Conserve Property Values?
Old Urbanist: Did Zoning Ever Conserve Property Values?: "Over at Recivilization , which has a lot of fascinating content in non-blog format, there's the following nugget under the entry for zoning ..."
24.5.11
19.5.11
"Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice"- not true
http://hubpages.com/hub/Scientists_cure_cancer__but_no_one_takes_notice
From my experience at the cancer research center- this is very close to what many of the projects my team was doing and it makes total sense (although I am curious of the side effects- we need lactic acid for muscle function). The focus of this 'cure' is programmed cell death.
What this article is not saying, however, is that so much destruction can be done before the programmed cell death, that you will likely still lose the organ. It is not like the cell becomes completely healthy again, it just stops it from giving other cells the idea of malignancy. So this is only a cure for cancer if the cancer is caught extremely early and if we have successful organ replacement or therapy techniques. The industry would still have to pour money into early detection, which is a whole other animal.
Drug companies picking it up does not surprise me in any way. Many methods and technologies are sidelined for what companies are willing to produce and fund. The team I worked with focused heavily on early detection for this reason: cures and solutions are many and emerging, but killing it before it can start to really kill the organ or person is much more site-specific, person-specific, and complex.
17.5.11
Humanist article: What do we deserve?
http://thehumanist.org/2011/05/02/what-do-we-deserve/
What Do We Deserve?
by: Namit Arora
Published in the May / June 2011 Humanist
I often think of the good life I have. By most common measures—say, type of work, income, health, leisure, and social status—I’m doing well. Despite the adage, “call no man happy until he is dead,” I wonder no less often: How much of my good life do I really deserve? Why me and not so many others?
The dominant narrative has it that I was a bright student, worked harder than most, and competed fairly to gain admission to an Indian Institute of Technology, where my promise was recognized with financial aid from a U.S. university. When I took a chance after graduate school and came to Silicon Valley, I was justly rewarded for my knowledge and labor with a measure of financial security and social status. While many happily accept this narrative, my problem is that I don’t buy it. I believe that much of my socioeconomic station in life was not realized by my own doing, but was accidental or due to my being in the right place at the right time.
A pivotal question in market-based societies is “What do we deserve?” In other words, for our learning, natural talents, and labor, what rewards and entitlements are just? How much of what we bring home is fair or unfair, and why? To chase these questions is to be drawn into the thickets of political philosophy and theories of justice. American political philosopher Michael Sandel’s 2009 book Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? proves valuable here in synthesizing a few thoughts on the matter, including a review of the three major approaches to distributive economic justice: libertarian, meritocratic, and egalitarian, undermining en route the dominant narrative on my own well-being.
The libertarian model of distributive justice favors a free market with well-defined rules that apply to all. “Citizens are assured equal basic liberties, and the distribution of income and wealth is determined by the free market,” says Sandel. This model offers a formal equality of opportunity—making it a clear advance over feudal or caste arrangements—so anyone can, in theory, strive to compete and win. But in practice, people don’t have real equality of opportunity due to various disadvantages, for example, of family income, social class, gender, race, caste, etc. So while the racetrack may look nice and shiny, the runners don’t begin at the same starting point. What does it mean to say that the first to cross the finish line deserves his or her victory? Isn’t the contest rigged from the start, based on factors that are arbitrary and derive from accidents of birth?
Take my own example. I was born into the upper-caste, riding on eons of unearned privilege over a full 80 percent of my fellow Indians. I was a also boy raised in a society that lavished far more attention on male children. My parents fell closer to the upper-middle class, had university degrees, and valued education and success—both my grandfathers had risen up to claim senior state government posts. I lived in a kid-friendly neighborhood with parks, playgrounds, and a staff clubhouse. I had role models and access to the right schools and books, the right coaching classes, and peers aspiring for professional careers. My background greatly shaped my ambition and self-confidence and no doubt put me ahead of perhaps 96 percent of other Indians—the odds that I would perform extremely well on standardized academic tests were huge from the start.
The meritocratic model, often associated with the United States, recognizes such inequities and tries to correct for socioeconomic disadvantages. At its best, meritocracy takes real equality of opportunity seriously and tries to achieve it through various means: Head Start programs, education and job training, subsidized healthcare and housing, and so forth. Meritocrats admit that market-based distribution of rewards is just only to the extent to which we can reduce endemic socioeconomic disadvantages and bring everyone to comparable starting points. But thereafter, they believe that we are the authors of our own destiny and whoever wins the race is morally deserving of the rewards they obtain from the market—and its flip side, that we morally deserve our failure too, and its consequences. Swiss writer Alain de Botton looked at this phenomenon in the United States in his 2004 documentary film, Status Anxiety.
But is this entirely fair? Even if we somehow leveled socioeconomic disparities, the winners of the race would still be the fastest runners, due in part to a natural lottery. People are often born with certain talents and attributes—for instance, oratory, musical acumen, physical beauty and health, athleticism, good memory and cognition, even extroversion—that give them unearned advantages. Are their wins not as arbitrary from a moral standpoint as the wins of those born with silver spoons in their mouths? Further, isn’t it dumb luck that our society happens to value certain aptitudes we may have—such as the leap and hand-eye coordination of Michael Jordan, sound-byte witticisms of talk show hosts like Jay Leno, or the algorithmic wizardry of Sergey Brin in the Internet age? A millennium ago, society valued other aptitudes, such as sculpting bronze in Chola India, equine archery on the Mongolian steppes, or reciting epigrammatic verse in Arabia. My own aptitude for science and math served me well in an India looking to industrialize and a United States facing a shortfall of engineers. I might have done less well in an earlier age where the best opportunities were perhaps in mercantile pursuits or the bureaucracy of government.
But how can a system of distributive justice compensate for random natural gifts that happen to be valued in a time and place? We can’t level natural gifts across people, can we? The mere thought is bizarre. The American political philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002) had much to say about this in his landmark 1971 book, A Theory of Justice, in which he developed his egalitarian model. Since we can’t undo the inequities of the natural lottery, he writes, we must find a way to address the differences in the rewards that result from them. We should certainly encourage people to hone and exercise their aptitudes, he says, but we should be clear that they do not morally deserve the rewards their aptitudes earn from the market. Since their natural gifts aren’t their own doing, and are moreover profitable only in light of the value a community places on them, they must share the rewards with the community.
One might object here: Wait a minute, what about the role of the personal drive and effort we put into cultivating our talents? Don’t we deserve the rewards that come from our striving? Not really, says Rawls. Countless factors beyond our choosing influence our ambition and effort, such as our upbringing, our family’s work ethic, our childhood experiences, subconscious insecurities, social milieu, career fads, role models, parental and peer pressure, available life paths, lucky breaks, and other contingent factors. It isn’t clear how much of it is our own doing, however militantly we may hold the illusion that we create our own life story (an illusion not without psychological and practical payoffs). Even the accident of being firstborn among siblings can be a factor in how hard we strive. Each year, Sandel reports, 75-80 percent of his freshman class at Harvard are firstborns. Besides, effort may be a virtue but even the meritocrats don’t think it deserves rewards independent of results or achievement. So, in short, we can’t claim to deserve the rewards on the basis of effort either.
Rawls deflates the idea that we morally deserve the rewards of meritocracy. If we accept this, it follows that the house of distributive justice cannot be built on the sands of moral desert (in simple terms, moral desert is a condition by which we are deserving of something, whether good or bad), but must be built on other grounds. Notably, however, Rawls doesn’t make a case for equal rewards. Instead, Rawls speaks of the “Difference Principle” in dealing with the inequities of the natural lottery. This principle, says Sandel, “permits income inequalities for the sake of incentives, provided the incentives are needed to improve the lot of the least advantaged.” In other words, income inequality is justified only to the extent to which it improves the lot of the most disadvantaged when compared to an equal income arrangement. Only if society is better off as a whole does favoring inequality seem fair. Does this approach diminish the role of human agency and free will when it comes to moral desert? Some say it does, yet the claim seems modest enough, that our achievements have many ingredients, and the contributions from agency or free will are intertwined with the contributions from social and random factors—to the point that it seems unreasonable to give by default all credit to agency or free will, which libertarians try to do in order to justify the rewards of the market. However, some philosophers find an unresolved tension in Rawls’ approach to setting up the Difference Principle. (See, for instance, Egalitarianism, Free Will, and Ultimate Justice by Saul Smilansky.)
One might ask: Why should we uphold the Difference Principle at all? Is it not an arbitrary construct? No, says Rawls, and invites us to a thought experiment on creating “a hypothetical social contract in an original position of equality.” Imagine, he says, that “when we gather to chose the principles [for governing ourselves], we don’t know where we will wind up in society. Imagine that we choose behind a ‘veil of ignorance’ that temporarily prevents us from knowing anything about who we are,” including our race, gender, class, talents, intelligence, wealth, and religion (or lack thereof). What principles would we then choose to order our society? Rawls makes a powerful case that, simply out of a desire to minimize our odds of suffering, we will always choose political equality, fair equal opportunity, and the Difference Principle.
Some have argued that the Difference Principle may not get chosen as is, not unless it has a clause to address the unfairness of propping up those who willfully make bad choices or act irresponsibly. Further, is it desirable, or even possible, to choose a social contract from behind the so-called veil of ignorance, as if, in Rawls’ words, “from the perspective of eternity,” with scant regard for context? Doesn’t Rawls implicitly presuppose a people who already value political equality, individualism, and resolving claims through public deliberation? Rawls later downplays its universality but, argues Sandel, even in the United States, Rawls’s thought experiment supports an arid secular public space detached from so much that is central to our identities. This includes historical, moral, and religious discourses, which, if squeezed out, often pop up elsewhere in worse forms, such as the religious right. If the point is to enhance the social contract, Sandel adds, political progressives should do so not by asking people to leave their deepest beliefs at home but by engaging them in the public sphere.
Sandel’s basic critique here is that Rawls’s concern with the distribution of primary goods—which Rawls defines as “things that every rational man is presumed to want”—is necessary but not sufficient for a social contract. As purposive beings, we should also consider the telos of our choices, such as our common ends as a community, the areas of life worth shielding from the market, the space we should accord to loyalty and patriotism, ties of blood, marriage, tradition, and so on. Still, Rawls’s thought experiment retains a powerful moral force and continues to inspire liberals. His theory of justice, writes Sandel, “represents the most compelling case for a more equal society that American political philosophy has yet produced.”
Theories of justice may clarify and guide our thoughts, but we still have to figure out how to change the game we want to play and where to draw the lines on the playing field. An open society does this through vigorous public debate. As British philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote, “people who want to govern themselves must choose how much liberty, equality, and justice they seek and how much they can let go. The price of a free society is that sometimes, perhaps often, we make bad choices.” Thereafter, when the rules are in place, “we are entitled to the benefits the rules of the game promise for the exercise of our talents.” It is the rules, says Sandel, and not anything outside them, that create “entitlements to legitimate expectations.” Entitlements only arise after we have chosen the rules of the competition. Only in this context can we say we deserve something, whether admission to a law school, a certain bonus, or a pension.
In Rawlsian terms, the problem in the United States is not that a minority has grown super rich, but that for decades now, it has done so to the detriment of the lower social classes. The big question is: why does the majority in a seemingly free society tolerate this, and even happily vote against its own economic interests? A plausible answer is that it is under a self-destructive meritocratic spell that sees social outcomes as moral desert—a spell at least as old as the American frontier but long since repurposed by the corporate control of public institutions and the media: news, film, TV, publishing, and so forth. It parallels a religious spell in more ways than one. Here too, powerful social institutions are invested in clouding our notions of cause and effect. Rather than move towards greater fairness and egalitarianism, they promote a libertarian gospel of the free market with minimal regulation, taxation, and public safety nets. They beguile us into thinking that the lifestyles of the rich and famous are within reach of all, and uphold rags-to-riches stories as exemplary (“if this enterprising slumdog can do it against all odds, so can you!” goes the storyline). All this gets drummed into people’s heads to the point that they only blame themselves for their lot and don’t think of questioning the rules of the game.
What would it take to break this spell? For starters, it would require Americans to realize that the distribution of wealth in their society is far less egalitarian than they think it is—a recent survey revealed that Americans think the richest fifth of them own 59 percent of the wealth, while the actual figure is 84 percent. Perhaps living on credit helps create the illusion that the average American has more than he or she does. Americans also believe that their odds of rising to the top are far better than they actually are; social mobility is quite low by international standards. A kid from the poorest fifth of all households has a 1 percent chance of reaching the top 5 percentile income bracket, while that of a kid from the richest fifth has a 22 percent chance. The task of breaking this spell, then, requires telling new kinds of stories, engaging in vigorous public debate, and employing our best arts of persuasion.
What Do We Deserve?
by: Namit Arora
Published in the May / June 2011 Humanist
I often think of the good life I have. By most common measures—say, type of work, income, health, leisure, and social status—I’m doing well. Despite the adage, “call no man happy until he is dead,” I wonder no less often: How much of my good life do I really deserve? Why me and not so many others?
The dominant narrative has it that I was a bright student, worked harder than most, and competed fairly to gain admission to an Indian Institute of Technology, where my promise was recognized with financial aid from a U.S. university. When I took a chance after graduate school and came to Silicon Valley, I was justly rewarded for my knowledge and labor with a measure of financial security and social status. While many happily accept this narrative, my problem is that I don’t buy it. I believe that much of my socioeconomic station in life was not realized by my own doing, but was accidental or due to my being in the right place at the right time.
A pivotal question in market-based societies is “What do we deserve?” In other words, for our learning, natural talents, and labor, what rewards and entitlements are just? How much of what we bring home is fair or unfair, and why? To chase these questions is to be drawn into the thickets of political philosophy and theories of justice. American political philosopher Michael Sandel’s 2009 book Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? proves valuable here in synthesizing a few thoughts on the matter, including a review of the three major approaches to distributive economic justice: libertarian, meritocratic, and egalitarian, undermining en route the dominant narrative on my own well-being.
The libertarian model of distributive justice favors a free market with well-defined rules that apply to all. “Citizens are assured equal basic liberties, and the distribution of income and wealth is determined by the free market,” says Sandel. This model offers a formal equality of opportunity—making it a clear advance over feudal or caste arrangements—so anyone can, in theory, strive to compete and win. But in practice, people don’t have real equality of opportunity due to various disadvantages, for example, of family income, social class, gender, race, caste, etc. So while the racetrack may look nice and shiny, the runners don’t begin at the same starting point. What does it mean to say that the first to cross the finish line deserves his or her victory? Isn’t the contest rigged from the start, based on factors that are arbitrary and derive from accidents of birth?
Take my own example. I was born into the upper-caste, riding on eons of unearned privilege over a full 80 percent of my fellow Indians. I was a also boy raised in a society that lavished far more attention on male children. My parents fell closer to the upper-middle class, had university degrees, and valued education and success—both my grandfathers had risen up to claim senior state government posts. I lived in a kid-friendly neighborhood with parks, playgrounds, and a staff clubhouse. I had role models and access to the right schools and books, the right coaching classes, and peers aspiring for professional careers. My background greatly shaped my ambition and self-confidence and no doubt put me ahead of perhaps 96 percent of other Indians—the odds that I would perform extremely well on standardized academic tests were huge from the start.
The meritocratic model, often associated with the United States, recognizes such inequities and tries to correct for socioeconomic disadvantages. At its best, meritocracy takes real equality of opportunity seriously and tries to achieve it through various means: Head Start programs, education and job training, subsidized healthcare and housing, and so forth. Meritocrats admit that market-based distribution of rewards is just only to the extent to which we can reduce endemic socioeconomic disadvantages and bring everyone to comparable starting points. But thereafter, they believe that we are the authors of our own destiny and whoever wins the race is morally deserving of the rewards they obtain from the market—and its flip side, that we morally deserve our failure too, and its consequences. Swiss writer Alain de Botton looked at this phenomenon in the United States in his 2004 documentary film, Status Anxiety.
But is this entirely fair? Even if we somehow leveled socioeconomic disparities, the winners of the race would still be the fastest runners, due in part to a natural lottery. People are often born with certain talents and attributes—for instance, oratory, musical acumen, physical beauty and health, athleticism, good memory and cognition, even extroversion—that give them unearned advantages. Are their wins not as arbitrary from a moral standpoint as the wins of those born with silver spoons in their mouths? Further, isn’t it dumb luck that our society happens to value certain aptitudes we may have—such as the leap and hand-eye coordination of Michael Jordan, sound-byte witticisms of talk show hosts like Jay Leno, or the algorithmic wizardry of Sergey Brin in the Internet age? A millennium ago, society valued other aptitudes, such as sculpting bronze in Chola India, equine archery on the Mongolian steppes, or reciting epigrammatic verse in Arabia. My own aptitude for science and math served me well in an India looking to industrialize and a United States facing a shortfall of engineers. I might have done less well in an earlier age where the best opportunities were perhaps in mercantile pursuits or the bureaucracy of government.
But how can a system of distributive justice compensate for random natural gifts that happen to be valued in a time and place? We can’t level natural gifts across people, can we? The mere thought is bizarre. The American political philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002) had much to say about this in his landmark 1971 book, A Theory of Justice, in which he developed his egalitarian model. Since we can’t undo the inequities of the natural lottery, he writes, we must find a way to address the differences in the rewards that result from them. We should certainly encourage people to hone and exercise their aptitudes, he says, but we should be clear that they do not morally deserve the rewards their aptitudes earn from the market. Since their natural gifts aren’t their own doing, and are moreover profitable only in light of the value a community places on them, they must share the rewards with the community.
One might object here: Wait a minute, what about the role of the personal drive and effort we put into cultivating our talents? Don’t we deserve the rewards that come from our striving? Not really, says Rawls. Countless factors beyond our choosing influence our ambition and effort, such as our upbringing, our family’s work ethic, our childhood experiences, subconscious insecurities, social milieu, career fads, role models, parental and peer pressure, available life paths, lucky breaks, and other contingent factors. It isn’t clear how much of it is our own doing, however militantly we may hold the illusion that we create our own life story (an illusion not without psychological and practical payoffs). Even the accident of being firstborn among siblings can be a factor in how hard we strive. Each year, Sandel reports, 75-80 percent of his freshman class at Harvard are firstborns. Besides, effort may be a virtue but even the meritocrats don’t think it deserves rewards independent of results or achievement. So, in short, we can’t claim to deserve the rewards on the basis of effort either.
Rawls deflates the idea that we morally deserve the rewards of meritocracy. If we accept this, it follows that the house of distributive justice cannot be built on the sands of moral desert (in simple terms, moral desert is a condition by which we are deserving of something, whether good or bad), but must be built on other grounds. Notably, however, Rawls doesn’t make a case for equal rewards. Instead, Rawls speaks of the “Difference Principle” in dealing with the inequities of the natural lottery. This principle, says Sandel, “permits income inequalities for the sake of incentives, provided the incentives are needed to improve the lot of the least advantaged.” In other words, income inequality is justified only to the extent to which it improves the lot of the most disadvantaged when compared to an equal income arrangement. Only if society is better off as a whole does favoring inequality seem fair. Does this approach diminish the role of human agency and free will when it comes to moral desert? Some say it does, yet the claim seems modest enough, that our achievements have many ingredients, and the contributions from agency or free will are intertwined with the contributions from social and random factors—to the point that it seems unreasonable to give by default all credit to agency or free will, which libertarians try to do in order to justify the rewards of the market. However, some philosophers find an unresolved tension in Rawls’ approach to setting up the Difference Principle. (See, for instance, Egalitarianism, Free Will, and Ultimate Justice by Saul Smilansky.)
One might ask: Why should we uphold the Difference Principle at all? Is it not an arbitrary construct? No, says Rawls, and invites us to a thought experiment on creating “a hypothetical social contract in an original position of equality.” Imagine, he says, that “when we gather to chose the principles [for governing ourselves], we don’t know where we will wind up in society. Imagine that we choose behind a ‘veil of ignorance’ that temporarily prevents us from knowing anything about who we are,” including our race, gender, class, talents, intelligence, wealth, and religion (or lack thereof). What principles would we then choose to order our society? Rawls makes a powerful case that, simply out of a desire to minimize our odds of suffering, we will always choose political equality, fair equal opportunity, and the Difference Principle.
Some have argued that the Difference Principle may not get chosen as is, not unless it has a clause to address the unfairness of propping up those who willfully make bad choices or act irresponsibly. Further, is it desirable, or even possible, to choose a social contract from behind the so-called veil of ignorance, as if, in Rawls’ words, “from the perspective of eternity,” with scant regard for context? Doesn’t Rawls implicitly presuppose a people who already value political equality, individualism, and resolving claims through public deliberation? Rawls later downplays its universality but, argues Sandel, even in the United States, Rawls’s thought experiment supports an arid secular public space detached from so much that is central to our identities. This includes historical, moral, and religious discourses, which, if squeezed out, often pop up elsewhere in worse forms, such as the religious right. If the point is to enhance the social contract, Sandel adds, political progressives should do so not by asking people to leave their deepest beliefs at home but by engaging them in the public sphere.
Sandel’s basic critique here is that Rawls’s concern with the distribution of primary goods—which Rawls defines as “things that every rational man is presumed to want”—is necessary but not sufficient for a social contract. As purposive beings, we should also consider the telos of our choices, such as our common ends as a community, the areas of life worth shielding from the market, the space we should accord to loyalty and patriotism, ties of blood, marriage, tradition, and so on. Still, Rawls’s thought experiment retains a powerful moral force and continues to inspire liberals. His theory of justice, writes Sandel, “represents the most compelling case for a more equal society that American political philosophy has yet produced.”
Theories of justice may clarify and guide our thoughts, but we still have to figure out how to change the game we want to play and where to draw the lines on the playing field. An open society does this through vigorous public debate. As British philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote, “people who want to govern themselves must choose how much liberty, equality, and justice they seek and how much they can let go. The price of a free society is that sometimes, perhaps often, we make bad choices.” Thereafter, when the rules are in place, “we are entitled to the benefits the rules of the game promise for the exercise of our talents.” It is the rules, says Sandel, and not anything outside them, that create “entitlements to legitimate expectations.” Entitlements only arise after we have chosen the rules of the competition. Only in this context can we say we deserve something, whether admission to a law school, a certain bonus, or a pension.
In Rawlsian terms, the problem in the United States is not that a minority has grown super rich, but that for decades now, it has done so to the detriment of the lower social classes. The big question is: why does the majority in a seemingly free society tolerate this, and even happily vote against its own economic interests? A plausible answer is that it is under a self-destructive meritocratic spell that sees social outcomes as moral desert—a spell at least as old as the American frontier but long since repurposed by the corporate control of public institutions and the media: news, film, TV, publishing, and so forth. It parallels a religious spell in more ways than one. Here too, powerful social institutions are invested in clouding our notions of cause and effect. Rather than move towards greater fairness and egalitarianism, they promote a libertarian gospel of the free market with minimal regulation, taxation, and public safety nets. They beguile us into thinking that the lifestyles of the rich and famous are within reach of all, and uphold rags-to-riches stories as exemplary (“if this enterprising slumdog can do it against all odds, so can you!” goes the storyline). All this gets drummed into people’s heads to the point that they only blame themselves for their lot and don’t think of questioning the rules of the game.
What would it take to break this spell? For starters, it would require Americans to realize that the distribution of wealth in their society is far less egalitarian than they think it is—a recent survey revealed that Americans think the richest fifth of them own 59 percent of the wealth, while the actual figure is 84 percent. Perhaps living on credit helps create the illusion that the average American has more than he or she does. Americans also believe that their odds of rising to the top are far better than they actually are; social mobility is quite low by international standards. A kid from the poorest fifth of all households has a 1 percent chance of reaching the top 5 percentile income bracket, while that of a kid from the richest fifth has a 22 percent chance. The task of breaking this spell, then, requires telling new kinds of stories, engaging in vigorous public debate, and employing our best arts of persuasion.
16.5.11
10.5.11
9.5.11
5.5.11
May- most recent fabric creation
I made this messenger-style diaper bag for my sister for her baby shower. It has 2 expandable pockets and a large zippered pocket on the interior, and 2 flush bottle/accessory pockets on the exterior. I got the interior patterned fabric from a discount fabric store in Portland. All corduroy was picked up at stores like Jo-Ann fabrics (although I don't recommend them for variety). No pattern was used, I broke 4 needles because of the layers of corduroy, and it took a total of 7 or so hours.
2.5.11
Osama's Legacy: American Drift
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/02/osamas-legacy-american-drift_n_856365.html
NEW YORK -- It takes no degree in psychology to understand why Americans flocked to the obvious gathering places -- Ground Zero, the White House -- celebrating news of Osama's demise. A decade ago we watched people we knew or might have known hurtle to their deaths from a landmark building. Someone had to pay.
The trouble is that we ourselves paid as a nation. And we have kept paying even as the price has climbed to impossible heights, via disastrous choices made in anger and vengeance more than reason and enlightened self-interest. We rushed into Afghanistan without the will to remake it. We embarked on an unnecessary war in Iraq, chasing the phantom of our national fears. We squandered our treasure on ill-conceived military misadventures just as we needed it most here at home, to rebuild our schools and invest in productive industries that might put people back to work.
Last night, on city streets in New York and in Washington, the jubilant crowds chanted and sang as if we had won some sort of sporting event, the championship banner hung in a final statement of achievement. A chorus spoke of closure and justice and healing. But we have won nothing -- even as one rightly hopes that Osama's death will weaken al Qaeda's capacity to sow terror. We completed no mission of decisive national import. Real victory will continue to elude us until we focus on rebuilding our own country, recovering from the self-inflicted wounds that have resulted from taking Osama's bait.
The attack inflicted by bin Laden's terrorist organization on September 11, 2001 came with its own unique opportunity. Here was an invitation to reckon with the limits of military strength as a vessel of foreign policy. Here was a moment that suddenly made the world sympathetic to the American situation. But the tactical brilliance of the al Qaeda strike went beyond the terrifying images that filled our television screens, provoking that sickening feeling of vulnerability combined with rage over murder: It was as if Osama and his minions placed a bet on our national character, reckoning that such an attack would tap into the hot center of the American mindset, prompting a response that would be damaging to our long-term interests. We would react in anger and fear, and hurt ourselves in the process.
Survey the last decade and it is hard to escape the conclusion that this is precisely what unfolded. Inside the prisons at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, we wasted international support and made ourselves something close to a pariah. When a hurricane wrecked New Orleans, we seemed to lack the resources to provide relief. As another American metropolis, Detroit, slipped inexorably toward the status of a failed city, we did little to arrest the decline. From California to New Jersey, we have accepted dilapidated classrooms, crumbling roads and elevated rates of unemployment as unalterable facts of contemporary life, as if we are powerless to invest in something better.
In the middle of every policy debate lies the sentiment that the country is broke and has no other option but diminished expectations. We did not fall into debt because of Osama bin Laden. A terrible recession layered atop tax cuts for wealthy Americans mostly brought us here. But the trillions we have spent in Iraq and Afghanistan exacerbated our debt troubles, and these campaigns have concentrated our focus on military entanglements, leaving little attention for the crisis at home.
And now, just as we should be having a sustained discussion about how to invest in a more bountiful future and repair the communities we have neglected, we are instead engaged in a festival of political pandering ostensibly about cutting the deficit. Cities are slashing support for public transportation. The federal government is trimming an inadequate social safety net. Congressional Republicans are threatening to vote against lifting the debt ceiling -- a step that courts panic in global financial markets -- unless they gain a blessing for another round of budget cuts that will intensify harm for the most vulnerable people. We never did find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but we have one right here in our midst, loaded and set to detonate inside the Congress through this mindless debate.
Story continues below
Osama bin Laden is gone, and that is better than the alternative. But the celebration over his death feels misplaced. The remnants of his most successful strike on American soil remain intact through the collective sense of powerlessness that frames the conversation. He has proven to our adversaries that, when we are frightened, we lose our way. Until we find our way back, standing in the street, high-fiving his death may feel good, but our circumstances are little changed.
NEW YORK -- It takes no degree in psychology to understand why Americans flocked to the obvious gathering places -- Ground Zero, the White House -- celebrating news of Osama's demise. A decade ago we watched people we knew or might have known hurtle to their deaths from a landmark building. Someone had to pay.
The trouble is that we ourselves paid as a nation. And we have kept paying even as the price has climbed to impossible heights, via disastrous choices made in anger and vengeance more than reason and enlightened self-interest. We rushed into Afghanistan without the will to remake it. We embarked on an unnecessary war in Iraq, chasing the phantom of our national fears. We squandered our treasure on ill-conceived military misadventures just as we needed it most here at home, to rebuild our schools and invest in productive industries that might put people back to work.
Last night, on city streets in New York and in Washington, the jubilant crowds chanted and sang as if we had won some sort of sporting event, the championship banner hung in a final statement of achievement. A chorus spoke of closure and justice and healing. But we have won nothing -- even as one rightly hopes that Osama's death will weaken al Qaeda's capacity to sow terror. We completed no mission of decisive national import. Real victory will continue to elude us until we focus on rebuilding our own country, recovering from the self-inflicted wounds that have resulted from taking Osama's bait.
The attack inflicted by bin Laden's terrorist organization on September 11, 2001 came with its own unique opportunity. Here was an invitation to reckon with the limits of military strength as a vessel of foreign policy. Here was a moment that suddenly made the world sympathetic to the American situation. But the tactical brilliance of the al Qaeda strike went beyond the terrifying images that filled our television screens, provoking that sickening feeling of vulnerability combined with rage over murder: It was as if Osama and his minions placed a bet on our national character, reckoning that such an attack would tap into the hot center of the American mindset, prompting a response that would be damaging to our long-term interests. We would react in anger and fear, and hurt ourselves in the process.
Survey the last decade and it is hard to escape the conclusion that this is precisely what unfolded. Inside the prisons at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, we wasted international support and made ourselves something close to a pariah. When a hurricane wrecked New Orleans, we seemed to lack the resources to provide relief. As another American metropolis, Detroit, slipped inexorably toward the status of a failed city, we did little to arrest the decline. From California to New Jersey, we have accepted dilapidated classrooms, crumbling roads and elevated rates of unemployment as unalterable facts of contemporary life, as if we are powerless to invest in something better.
In the middle of every policy debate lies the sentiment that the country is broke and has no other option but diminished expectations. We did not fall into debt because of Osama bin Laden. A terrible recession layered atop tax cuts for wealthy Americans mostly brought us here. But the trillions we have spent in Iraq and Afghanistan exacerbated our debt troubles, and these campaigns have concentrated our focus on military entanglements, leaving little attention for the crisis at home.
And now, just as we should be having a sustained discussion about how to invest in a more bountiful future and repair the communities we have neglected, we are instead engaged in a festival of political pandering ostensibly about cutting the deficit. Cities are slashing support for public transportation. The federal government is trimming an inadequate social safety net. Congressional Republicans are threatening to vote against lifting the debt ceiling -- a step that courts panic in global financial markets -- unless they gain a blessing for another round of budget cuts that will intensify harm for the most vulnerable people. We never did find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but we have one right here in our midst, loaded and set to detonate inside the Congress through this mindless debate.
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Osama bin Laden is gone, and that is better than the alternative. But the celebration over his death feels misplaced. The remnants of his most successful strike on American soil remain intact through the collective sense of powerlessness that frames the conversation. He has proven to our adversaries that, when we are frightened, we lose our way. Until we find our way back, standing in the street, high-fiving his death may feel good, but our circumstances are little changed.
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