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The American Liberalism Project

Individual Liberty—Progress—Humanity—Ethics—Rule of Law

"...if by a liberal they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people—their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, their civil liberties—if that is what they mean by a "liberal," then I am proud to be a liberal."
-- John F. Kennedy

The Internet Now

by: James R. Brett

Mon Feb 08, 2010 at 10:20:40 AM CST

Last week ABC News—obviously not clear on the concept—promoted the idea that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made the internet the center of U.S. foreign policy! I hope the ABC News watching public understands that "the center" and "a centerpiece" are very distinctly different concepts. But make no mistake about this, Washington believes that the internet is crucial to modern American jingoism—the promotion of American values and our form of government (corrupt and otherwise ... certainly not the model of representative democracy that the Framers had in mind ... certainly the form that best suits a nation reduced to selling guns and peon-izing its citizens) across the breath and length of this planet.

There is more than just a cynical thread of truth in this notion of the importance of the internet, but Washington in its hubris misses the point that the internet, whatever its sources of funding, is essentially two things: it is democratic to a fair-the-well, and it is fragile.

I shudder when my computer crashes and I imagine millions of computers "crashed" because government has gotten control of the hubs and nodes and closes us down. Absolutist Control is a work in progress in China, of course, and that is the putative model for this notion that ABC has misunderstood. When the internet goes down for political reasons, there is no substitute for what we have evolved over these last twenty years. Commerce will plummet, in fact, there will be a depression, panic, and political upheaval. The internet is extremely important, but there is one thing that it is not.

The democracy of the internet is not a form of government. It is the democracy of three billion voices and ears and eyes. The internet is what we make of it, and sex is what we have made of it. This may speak more to the weird notions we have about the sexual nature of our species, but it is what happened. Sex and political propaganda, then commerce. The American ideal, if you are to read ABC News straightforwardly, is that people have the god-given right to access (and even contribute to) the array of sexual content, the political propaganda, and especially to buy stuff. ABC believes (and maybe Hillary does too) that the motives energizing the internet are "manageable" in the same way that television audiences are "managed" into bogus "reality shows" and news media that express corporate interests. ABC and Hillary may be right, for the facts are that the vast majority of people do not stop to question authority, assertions, or much less the psychology of presentation on TV. Why would they on the Internet?

We come to the conclusion that the "centerpiece" of American outreach to the rest of the world is for the rest of the world to emulate the American way of being docile and managed citizens. The hubris of this idea is astounding, and the possibility that it is accurate utterly horrifying.

JB

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Today in History

by: SueZ

Mon Feb 08, 2010 at 02:00:00 AM CST

1943 - Battle of Guadalcanal occurred in World War II

1820 - William Sherman was born

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Today's Quote

by: SueZ

Mon Feb 08, 2010 at 00:30:00 AM CST

Animals have these advantages over man:  they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.

François-Marie Arouet
Nom de plume Voltaire (1694-1778)
French Enlightenment writer, essayist, and philosopher

Letter to Count Schomberg, 31 August 1769

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Greek Tragedy

by: James R. Brett

Sun Feb 07, 2010 at 09:57:45 AM CST

You will search high and low for news of Greece and her economic problems, her political problems, the precipice over which the Greeks stare in horror at this very moment. The press in the United States is oblivious. No, not oblivious, "managed."

Here is what is happening in a nutshell. Greece has piled up a national debt equal to that of Germany, but without the productive capacity to resolve that debt within the frame of financial obligations. The result is that Greece was poised on the brink of defaulting to its European neighbors, who, when they got wind of the immediacy of the situation began to act like market managers always do—irrationally. Immediately, Portugal, Spain, and Italy began to survey their own situations and their financial connections to Greece. All at once, the horrid truth emerges that these countries, too, are very fragile and closer to the brink than generally reported, even in Europe.

Here is a reasonably good set of articles from the Guardian in the UK about Greece and her problems.

My colleague in Montreal, whose access to information and whose keen eye sees the situation for what it is, reported these matters to me yesterday and I was appalled ... primarily at the domestic U.S. press's obliviousness and collusion with Wall Street to keep this "greatest financial crisis in Europe since the meltdown two years ago" out of the imaginations and thoughts of snowbound Americans. Thank you, "Justina!"

Yes, the Euro is in danger, and yes, the problem affects the almighty dollar as well. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is trying to get involved, but the folks in Brussels, Belgium, the seat of the EU leadership has asked IMF to play a smaller role than IMF wants. So, the international repercussions will extend outward like low waves in deep water, but treatening tsunami when reaching the shallower waters of individual nations.

As "Justina" says, keep an eye on the Greece situation. There may be portents for the future here that threaten contemporary politics far more than Sarah Palin and her teapot revolution talk down in the bowels of Tennessee.

JB

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Sunday Art & Discussion

by: SueZ

Sun Feb 07, 2010 at 04:00:00 AM CST

Young Girl Leaning on a Windowsill (1645)

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606 - 1669)

With all the talk lately about the sort of inheritance we are leaving our children, just what exactly do you think this young girl felt was in her generation's future?  Just what are we really leaving for future generations?

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Today in History

by: SueZ

Sun Feb 07, 2010 at 02:00:00 AM CST

1795 - 11th Amendment to the Constitution was passed.

1964 - The Beatles arrived in United States for their first visit

1885 - Sinclair Lewis was born

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Today's Quote

by: SueZ

Sun Feb 07, 2010 at 00:30:00 AM CST

The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.

Sigmund Freud (1858-1939)
Austrian neurologist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology.

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Today in History

by: SueZ

Sat Feb 06, 2010 at 02:00:00 AM CST

1788 - Massachusetts was admitted as the 6th state

1899 - The Treaty of Paris was ratified to officially end the Spanish-American War.

1833 - JEB Stuart was born

1895 - Babe Ruth was born

1911 - Ronald Reagan was born

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Today's Quote

by: SueZ

Sat Feb 06, 2010 at 00:30:00 AM CST

And the wind shall say "Here were decent godless people;
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls."

T.S. Eliot(1888-1965)
American-born English poet, playwright, and literary critic

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It's Up to Biden???

by: James R. Brett

Fri Feb 05, 2010 at 11:13:20 AM CST

Steven Pearlstein, a columnist for the Business Section of the Washington Post defies gravity today in his article about the impending lockjaw or log jam in the U.S. Senate now that the Democrats are down to 59 potential votes. I say this because the forces that have created this mess in Washington are not the least unlike the pervasiveness and irreducibility of physical gravity. Ubiquitous and inexorable are these forces and the cure is not for Vice President Biden to become CEO of the Senate and get himself impeached or worse. The problem is also way deeper than newly sworn-in Senator Brown, although he does seem to resemble a talisman of the problem.

The problem in Washington is partly the deliberately inherent clash of forces envisioned by the Framers as a bulwark against tyranny of the Legislature or the other two branches. Understanding that representatives have split personalities ... if not the mental wherewithall to carry that off ... they are tossed by the need to teach and listen at home, on the one hand, and to rise above their petty concerns towards the "statesmanship" required for legislating in the 3rd most populace nation on earth.

Then, with statesmanship in the tool box, ideology must give way occasionally to pragmatism. The Republicans' idea of pragmatism currently is to understand that thwarting anything Obama tries to accomplish will accrue to their general benefit, that is, a program completely devoid of the substance of ideology and purely obstructionist. Joe Biden cannot fix that with the slender powers given him by the Constitution!

The failure in Washington, as always, is one of leadership. Nancy Pelosi and her team seem to have the House in some kind of herded cats order, but dear old Harry Reid and the rest of the pompinjays on the Democratic side in the Senate are utterly bereft of statesmanlike leadership. True, Harry can make a deal, but equally those deals fall apart the moment Harry leaves the room. He just does not have clout ... and the White House cannot give it to him, especially a White House "run" by Rahm Emanuel, whose cachet is rampant vulgarity, childish temper tantrums, and ineffective persuasion. Rahm has not accomplished anything in Congress, and I defy anyone to point out a single instance of success. Just one!

Pearlstein is right about one thing. We are nearly at a state of paralysis from this misbegotten sloganeering about bipartisanship. Obama is completely deluded if he thinks that the center will hold for him if he plays these games. There is no way that the center holds; it is a fiction and a state of mind based in indecision and clearly not statesmanship. Obama must change, Emanuel must leave or be tossed out on his ass, and the Senate must look elsewhere than Nevada for Majority leadership. Joe Biden can work with these folks, but his titular Presidency of the Senate is another of those buckets of warm spit.

JB

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Note: SueZ Rehospitalized

by: James R. Brett

Fri Feb 05, 2010 at 10:32:03 AM CST

We have nearly 4,000 members of this website. While SueZ is recovering (hopefully), some of you could consider writing an essay about things that concern you ... or articles you have read recently ... and publish them under Essays (upper right menu).  I will be checking here for good matches to the goals of the Project and promoting the best to frontpage. No commercials please.

JB

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Prescribing Improved Nutrition to Combat HIV/AIDS in Africa

by: borderjumpers

Fri Feb 05, 2010 at 09:21:51 AM CST

( - promoted by James R. Brett)

Everywhere I travel in Africa, there's increasing acknowledgement about the importance of nutrition when it comes to treating HIV/AIDS.  Many retroviral and HIV/AIDS drugs don't work if patients aren't getting enough vitamins and nutrients in their diets or accumulating enough body fat.

According to Dr. Rosa Costa, Director of the Kyeema Foundation in Mozambique, many farmers are often too sick to grow crops, but "chickens are easy."

The International Rural Poultry Center of the Kyeema Foundation and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics are working with farmers-most of them women-to raise chickens on their farms. Because women are often the primary caregivers for family members with HIV/AIDS, they need easy, low-cost sources of both food and income.

Unlike many crops, raising free-range birds can require few outside inputs and very little maintenance from farmers. Birds can forage for insects and eat kitchen scraps, instead of expensive grains. They provide not only meat and eggs for household use and income, but also pest control and manure for fertilizer.

Cross posted from Nourishing the Planet.  
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Today in History

by: SueZ

Fri Feb 05, 2010 at 02:00:00 AM CST

1945 - General Douglas MacArthur entered Manila during World War II

1974 - Patti Hearst was kidnapped

1848 - Belle Starr was born

1900 - Adlai Stevenson was born

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Today's Quote

by: SueZ

Fri Feb 05, 2010 at 00:30:00 AM CST

Man - despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments - owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.  

Author Unknown

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TED: Regenerating Our Bodies

by: SueZ

Thu Feb 04, 2010 at 10:31:01 AM CST

In this TED offering, Alan Russell gives a short lecture on the workings in medicine to be able to regenerate our bodies. Another reason for healthcare reform!
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Hatewatch

by: SueZ

Thu Feb 04, 2010 at 10:19:01 AM CST

Maybe I missed something but I do not recall ever hearing anything about the government coming to take my guns away...not that I own any personally, but you know what I mean.  I am a great believer in the Constitution's second amendment which gives one the right to bear arms but as it is stated in that august document, in order to have a "well ordered militia." Still, since Barack Obama was elected President the myth that those who own firearms are in constant danger of having them removed has persisted and the noise about it is increasing.  

In this week's Hatewatch, the Southern Poverty Law Center would like you to be aware that there is going to be a protest march aginst what is perceived as a real threat.

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Do It Again

by: SueZ

Thu Feb 04, 2010 at 08:26:46 AM CST

Last Friday's Q&A with President Obama and the Republicans was such an outstanding success that many are anxious to see it repeated.  Can we do it again, Mr. President, please?  It would be nice to see this happen on a monthly basis, or perhaps quarterly? David Corn has this report in Mother Jones News.
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The Truth, The Whole Truth and With Republicans It's Anything but....

by: SueZ

Thu Feb 04, 2010 at 07:07:45 AM CST

The Republicans just will not give up.  It's as if the have OCD when it comes to telling the truth!

In this piece we hear Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) tell her version of what happened with the interviewing of the Christmas day bomber, Umar Abdulmutallab. In fact Mr.Abdulmutallab has been most forthcoming, but not in Ms. Collins version of events.  As Rachel Maddow points up, even though he had "lawyered up", a benefit accorded anyone in our criminal justice system, he was still cooperating with investigators.

I keep remembering the words to the old song, It's A Sin to Tell A Lie!  

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Today in History

by: SueZ

Thu Feb 04, 2010 at 02:00:00 AM CST

1789 - George Washington was unanimously elected to be the first President of the United States.

1902 - Charles Lindbergh was born

1913 - Rosa Parks was born

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Today's Quote

by: SueZ

Thu Feb 04, 2010 at 00:30:00 AM CST

"The newspaper is of necessity something of a monopoly, and its first duty is to shun the temptations of monopoly. Its primary office is the gathering of news. At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not tainted. Neither in what it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in the mode of presentation, must the unclouded face of truth suffer wrong. Comment is free but facts are sacred."

C. P. Scott (1846-1932)
British journalist, publisher and politician

Manchester Guardian, 6 May 1926

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Give 'Em Hell

by: SueZ

Wed Feb 03, 2010 at 09:29:05 AM CST

Since last week's meeting (confrontation?) between President Obama and the Republican members of Congress, (with televison cameras rolling at the suggestion of the Republicans we remind you) there has been much consternation on the part of the Republicans.  Why?  Because the President has decided to come out of the neutral corner and start slugging. He is finally calling out the Republicans on their constant negative yammering and untruths about his agenda.

And he is taking his voice back to the American public.  He has been quiet too long and has allowed those on the right, in Congress, to usurp the truth. This from the Rachel Maddow show.

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A Cartoon for Today

by: SueZ

Wed Feb 03, 2010 at 07:50:19 AM CST

Mike Keefe, The Denver Post  

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Today in History

by: SueZ

Wed Feb 03, 2010 at 02:00:00 AM CST

1787 - Shay's Rebellion ended.

1870 - 15th Amendment to the Constitution was passed.

1913 - 16th Amendment was ratified.

1811 - Horace Greeley was born

1924 - Woodrow Wilson died

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Today's Quote

by: SueZ

Wed Feb 03, 2010 at 00:30:00 AM CST

"The true measure of a man
is how he treats someone
who can do him absolutely no good."
-

Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
Essayist, lexicographer, biographer, poet

Discuss :: (0 Comments)

Someday, The Moon

by: James R. Brett

Tue Feb 02, 2010 at 14:06:14 PM CST

We are not going to the moon in my lifetime. By "we" I mean the U.S., and by "lifetime" I mean that I am old and the prospects are therefore dim for mounting and executing an effort to establish a permanent base on our moon that I will see. It is a sad thing, I think, despite the many reasons that have contributed to the decision.
There's More... :: (3 Comments, 299 words in story)
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