Frenzy, Females and Free Expression

www.hannaharendtcenter.org

This is number one of a three part series: Frenzy.

    The ferocious attack on Charlie Hebdo was symptomatic of much more than it is commonly recognized. The ongoing depredations of Boko Haram in Nigeria are even more indicative of a raging global derangement.  These brutal and dreadful actions are conspicuous examples of a ferocious reactionary war waged against the true foundations of the modern world order. While too many do not know it, all citizens of top tier nations live in a global culture that is rooted in the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason in Europe.

    Before the Enlightenment made its profound impact superstition and sophistry ran rampant. There was little thought to governing, but a veritable fixation on ruling. The cunning exploited the credulous to open their path to dominion. Monarchs and Theocrats variously colluded and competed for supremacy and most people were subjects rather than citizens. Gradually and imperfectly the champions of reason and naturalism pushed the clouds of ignorance away and drove the minions of might from power. 

    In the interval known as the Enlightenment, rationality became the predominant practice and liberty, equality, and unity became primary aspirational ideals. People became citizens and progress became the normal expectation. Constitutional governance spread first in the United States, then in France and finally in England and much of the world-spanning British Empire. This did not create a world free of problems, injustices, or threats by any means, but it allowed for a significantly different approach in response to many of longstanding flaws and failures. 

     While the political and economic systems in much of the world diverged farther from their traditional predecessors, the institutions, ideologies, and roles which flourished in the traditional settings did not vanish. They had been deprived of hegemony, not eradicated. The Enlightenment began in the middle of the 17^th century and extended through the 18^th. The scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries progressively undermined the ancient geocentric conception of the cosmos, and, along with it, the entire set of traditional perspectives that had constrained and guided philosophical thinking, social mores and personal conduct. The dramatic successes of the scientific approach in explaining the natural world and devising and deploying “a relatively small number of elegant mathematical formulae” promoted philosophy, including the natural sciences, from the handmaiden of theology, to an independent and rival power able to challenge the old and conceive and commend the new. In both theory and practice, on the basis of its own principles and processes, philosophy often called natural philosophy in regard to what we now usually call science, illuminated a world hitherto cloaked in shadows and drowning incredulity. “D'Alembert, a leading figure of the French Enlightenment, characterizes his eighteenth century, in the midst of it, as “the century of philosophy par excellence”, because of the tremendous intellectual progress of the age, the advance of the sciences, and the enthusiasm for that progress.”  Furthermore, the characteristic expectation of the Enlightenment is that philosophy (in this broad sense) would dramatically improve human life and substantially resolve almost any problem. Rationalism, empiricism, and skepticism were the prevailing perspectives and processes of the Enlightenment for studying and understanding reality.

The principal accomplishments of the Enlightenment, however, were in the political realm. The period featured three revolutions: the English, the American, and the French from 1688 to 1799. “We owe to this period the basic model of government founded upon the consent of the governed; the articulation of the political ideals of freedom and equality and the theory of their institutional realization; the articulation of a list of basic individual human rights to be respected and realized by any legitimate political system; the articulation and promotion of toleration of religious diversity as a virtue to be respected in a well ordered society; the conception of the basic political powers as organized in a system of checks and balances; and other now-familiar features of western democracies.” Despite the success of Enlightenment political philosophy, however, it did not utterly vanquish the traditional institutions, creeds, and interests it so tellingly critiqued and so largely deposed. Therein lays the source of the threat rising in the 21^st century.

Enlightenment political writings, built on rationalist naturalism, opposed superstition, argued for toleration and advocated the subordination of religion to the state, and favored qualified democracy. What we today call liberalism is perhaps the most characteristic political philosophy of the Enlightenment, and philosophers beginning with Spinoza are its originators. To the extent that the Enlightenment ideals succeeded civil society and civil authorities became the more powerful than ecclesiastical authorities – politics became more influential than religion.

Philosophers of the Enlightenment confronted the problem of ethics “on a secular, broadly naturalistic basis for the first time since the rise of Christianity eclipsed the great classical ethical systems.” Whatever good and evil were, Enlightenment theorists sought to discern and describe them in regard to this life and this world, not an afterlife and a supernatural realm. This effort also took root among the general populace to greater and lesser extents in different places. The prevailing attitude was that human reason could figure out what ethical behavior required and establish workable guidelines for all people. The combination of political and ethical theories developed during the Enlightenment pushed religious creeds and religiously based conflict off the center stage of human society.

 During the time since the Enlightenment ended, its legacy has slowly but unevenly advanced the ideals throughout the developed world. For much of the globe, however, there is at best a veneer of Enlightenment idealism. What we are seeing now is regression in the strongholds of the Enlightenment that concurrently opens the gates for attacks from the more benighted areas of the world. Thus, our civilization is imperiled from both without and within.  

The shortfalls and failings of the original Enlightenment movement provided both means and opportunities for the proponents of sophistry and superstition to launch counterattacks. In the parts of the globe conquered by the West, local populations were left to their own devices and virtual theocracies pulsated just under the surface waiting for the waning of Western dominance. Inside nations such as France, England, and America, other purveyors of sophistry and superstition waged a struggle for power against the champions of skepticism, empiricism and rationalism. In both situations, the quest of the counterattacking forces was neither knowledge, nor truth, nor understanding, but power. As political theorist, Corey Robin observes, conservatism from the 17th century to today is based on the principle, "that some are fit, and thus ought, to rule others." Robin argues that rather than being about liberty, limited government, resistance to change, or public virtue, conservatism is a "mode of counterrevolutionary practice" to preserve hierarchy and power.” While those who wage this “counterrevolutionary practice” style themselves as conservative, they are actually reactionary.

From their perspective, evidence, learning, knowledge, logic, and truth are all incidental and unnecessary. They believe some people should be saddled and bridled while others are booted and spurred. Their only concerns are gaining, wielding, expanding, and retaining power. They do not see all people as free and equal human beings. They see some as elect, in variously defined ways, and all others as nothing other than serfs and cannon fodder.

The struggle that never ends, but merely ebbs and flows is between those who lust to rule and those who strive to govern. While both often use the term government, they mean diametrically opposed things and wish to put the state to dramatically different ends. The reactionaries seek to use government as a weapon to protect the privileges, status, and dominance of those they believe deserve to rule. The revolutionaries seek to use government as a means to redress the injustices and inequalities in society and afford to every citizen civil rights, civil liberties, and equal protection through due process of law. The reactionaries believe might makes right and the revolutionaries believe in government through the consent of the governed.

In the second decade of the 21^st century neither the revolutionaries nor the reactionaries are in unchallenged control. All human beings now live in a world shaped by the ideals of the revolutionaries although these ideals have been only imperfectly realized. A substantial proportion of humankind, however, either believes in or is compelled by those who believe in a starkly different set of ideals. The reactionary proportion of humanity now wages overt and covert battle against our contemporary civilization.

         The violent attacks unsurprisingly attract the overwhelming bulk of media attention. But these attacks have forced their way back into humanity’s experience because of steady erosion in the rationalism and civility that formed the foundation of our technological and scientific society. As Timothy Ferris states in The Science of Liberty, “Democratic governance and individual rights did not emerge from some amorphous “brew of humanistic and scientific thinking,” he argues, but were “sparked” by science itself — the crucial “innovative ingredient” that “continues to foster political freedom today.” It was this mindset so characteristic of the Enlightenment that enabled people to improve their material situations and their political institutions.

       Now, however, in the nations where the Enlightenment arose and flourished, sophistry, superstition, and reaction are virulent. Anything near a complete victory has not been achieved and the purveyors of irrationality, credulity, fanaticism and authoritarianism are openly hawking their wares and plying their trade. These harbingers of a New Dark Age are the political officials and candidates who treat their feelings as the best guide to public policy and who pit citizens against one another based on ethnic, religious, or other distinctions.

       As cases in point, consider three contentious topics in American politics today. Climate change, trickle-down economics, and health reform are all major policy disputes where facts actually do not seem to matter for one side of the controversy; for the self-styled conservative pundits, preachers, and politicians unshakable dogma reigns, across the board. In Kansas, supply-side economics was heavily implemented and it failed spectacularly. Nonetheless, the magical belief in the efficacy of tax cuts as a form of economic stimulus persists. Good news on health reform keeps coming in. It remains even more favorable than its supporters expected. The number of Americans without insurance is dropping fast, even as the growth in health care costs moderates and reactionaries continue to be as relentlessly opposed to it as they ever were. The particular issues are not as significant as the fundamentally flawed approach this sizable faction of politically Americans uses to assess them.

      Joseph Heath, in Enlightenment 2.0, says “conservatives have become enamored of the idea that politics is ultimately not about plans and policies, it’s about gut feelings and values. Elections are decided by appealing to people’s hearts, not their heads.” This approach is often described as “common sense conservatism.”  It elevated intuition over rational thinking, gut feeling over deliberation, and belief over knowledge. The profound problem, however, when reason and evidence are abandoned in favor cleverness and sentiment is  that there is no way to actually discern which side of a controversy is correct, which claim is true, what program is sound. This means issues are resolved through trickery or skullduggery rather than agreement based on good faith discussion and authentic understanding.  

       The proponents, protectors, and friends of Enlightenment ideals became complacent. They stopped striving to achieve their ideals more and more fully. Consequently, they inadvertently put millions of people at risk of disaffection, and left these same millions vulnerable to inducements from the champions of a new Dark Age. The people who attacked Charlie Hebdo and the miscreants of Boko Haram along with the fanatics of ISIS exemplify the blatantly violent Dark Agers! Neoconfederates in America and crypto-fascist parties and politicians elsewhere exemplify the genteel specimens of this horde. This creates a genuine danger to us all. If we continue to ignore these corrosive practices, civilization may deteriorate beyond our power to sustain it. For as Joseph Heath observes,  “Just as it is easier to get the toothpaste out of the tube than it is to get it back in again, it is much easier to undermine the rationality of public discourse than it is to restore it.”

      Despite the dramatic difference in their behaviors both the brutal and the beguiling variants of the Dark Agers are treacherous. For either variety, the defenders of Enlightenment ideals are seen as infidels, subversives, and adversaries. What must be understood is the beguiling Dark Agers pave the way for the rise and rampage of the brutal Dark Agers by muting the alarms and reducing the sentinels all along the watch tower. We must sound the alarm and mount the barricades far more than our own well-being and futures are at stake. 

 The ferocious attack on Charlie Hebdo was symptomatic of much more than it is commonly recognized. The ongoing depredations of Boko Haram in Nigeria are even more indicative of a raging global derangement.  These brutal and dreadful actions are conspicuous examples of a ferocious reactionary war waged against the true foundations of the modern world order. While too many do not know it, all citizens of top tier nations live in a global culture that is rooted in the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason in Europe.

    Before the Enlightenment made its profound impact superstition and sophistry ran rampant. There was little thought to governing, but a veritable fixation on ruling. The cunning exploited the credulous to open their path to dominion. Monarchs and Theocrats variously colluded and competed for supremacy and most people were subjects rather than citizens. Gradually and imperfectly the champions of reason and naturalism pushed the clouds of ignorance away and drove the minions of might from power. 

    In the interval known as the Enlightenment, rationality became the predominant practice and liberty, equality, and unity became primary aspirational ideals. People became citizens and progress became the normal expectation. Constitutional governance spread first in the United States, then in France and finally in England and much of the world-spanning British Empire. This did not create a world free of problems, injustices, or threats by any means, but it allowed for a significantly different approach in response to many of longstanding flaws and failures. 

     While the political and economic systems in much of the world diverged farther from their traditional predecessors, the institutions, ideologies, and roles which flourished in the traditional settings did not vanish. They had been deprived of hegemony, not eradicated. The Enlightenment began in the middle of the 17^th century and extended through the 18^th. The scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries progressively undermined the ancient geocentric conception of the cosmos, and, along with it, the entire set of traditional perspectives that had constrained and guided philosophical thinking, social mores and personal conduct. The dramatic successes of the scientific approach in explaining the natural world and devising and deploying “a relatively small number of elegant mathematical formulae” promoted philosophy, including the natural sciences, from the handmaiden of theology, to an independent and rival power able to challenge the old and conceive and commend the new. In both theory and practice, on the basis of its own principles and processes, philosophy often called natural philosophy in regard to what we now usually call science, illuminated a world hitherto cloaked in shadows and drowning incredulity. “D'Alembert, a leading figure of the French Enlightenment, characterizes his eighteenth century, in the midst of it, as “the century of philosophy par excellence”, because of the tremendous intellectual progress of the age, the advance of the sciences, and the enthusiasm for that progress.”  Furthermore, the characteristic expectation of the Enlightenment is that philosophy (in this broad sense) would dramatically improve human life and substantially resolve almost any problem. Rationalism, empiricism, and skepticism were the prevailing perspectives and processes of the Enlightenment for studying and understanding reality.

The principal accomplishments of the Enlightenment, however, were in the political realm. The period featured three revolutions: the English, the American, and the French from 1688 to 1799. “We owe to this period the basic model of government founded upon the consent of the governed; the articulation of the political ideals of freedom and equality and the theory of their institutional realization; the articulation of a list of basic individual human rights to be respected and realized by any legitimate political system; the articulation and promotion of toleration of religious diversity as a virtue to be respected in a well ordered society; the conception of the basic political powers as organized in a system of checks and balances; and other now-familiar features of western democracies.” Despite the success of Enlightenment political philosophy, however, it did not utterly vanquish the traditional institutions, creeds, and interests it so tellingly critiqued and so largely deposed. Therein lays the source of the threat rising in the 21^st century.

Enlightenment political writings, built on rationalist naturalism, opposed superstition, argued for toleration and advocated the subordination of religion to the state, and favored qualified democracy. What we today call liberalism is perhaps the most characteristic political philosophy of the Enlightenment, and philosophers beginning with Spinoza are its originators. To the extent that the Enlightenment ideals succeeded civil society and civil authorities became the more powerful than ecclesiastical authorities – politics became more influential than religion.

Philosophers of the Enlightenment confronted the problem of ethics “on a secular, broadly naturalistic basis for the first time since the rise of Christianity eclipsed the great classical ethical systems.” Whatever good and evil were, Enlightenment theorists sought to discern and describe them in regard to this life and this world, not an afterlife and a supernatural realm. This effort also took root among the general populace to greater and lesser extents in different places. The prevailing attitude was that human reason could figure out what ethical behavior required and establish workable guidelines for all people. The combination of political and ethical theories developed during the Enlightenment pushed religious creeds and religiously based conflict off the center stage of human society.

 During the time since the Enlightenment ended, its legacy has slowly but unevenly advanced the ideals throughout the developed world. For much of the globe, however, there is at best a veneer of Enlightenment idealism. What we are seeing now is regression in the strongholds of the Enlightenment that concurrently opens the gates for attacks from the more benighted areas of the world. Thus, our civilization is imperiled from both without and within.  

The shortfalls and failings of the original Enlightenment movement provided both means and opportunities for the proponents of sophistry and superstition to launch counterattacks. In the parts of the globe conquered by the West, local populations were left to their own devices and virtual theocracies pulsated just under the surface waiting for the waning of Western dominance. Inside nations such as France, England, and America, other purveyors of sophistry and superstition waged a struggle for power against the champions of skepticism, empiricism and rationalism. In both situations, the quest of the counterattacking forces was neither knowledge, nor truth, nor understanding, but power. As political theorist, Corey Robin observes, conservatism from the 17th century to today is based on the principle, "that some are fit, and thus ought, to rule others." Robin argues that rather than being about liberty, limited government, resistance to change, or public virtue, conservatism is a "mode of counterrevolutionary practice" to preserve hierarchy and power.” While those who wage this “counterrevolutionary practice” style themselves as conservative, they are actually reactionary.

From their perspective, evidence, learning, knowledge, logic, truth are all incidental and unnecessary. They believe some people should be saddled and bridled while others are booted and spurred. Their only concerns are gaining, wielding, expanding, and retaining power. They do not see all people as free and equal human beings. They see some as elect, in variously defined ways, and all others as nothing other than serfs and cannon fodder.

The struggle that never ends, but merely ebbs and flows is between those who lust to rule and those who strive to govern. While both often use the term government, they mean diametrically opposed things and wish to put the state to dramatically different ends. The reactionaries seek to use government as a weapon to protect the privileges, status, and dominance of those they believe deserve to rule. The revolutionaries seek to use government as a means to redress the injustices and inequalities in society and afford to every citizen civil rights, civil liberties, and equal protection through due process of law. The reactionaries believe might makes right and the revolutionaries believe in government through the consent of the governed.

In the second decade of the 21^st century neither the revolutionaries nor the reactionaries are in unchallenged control. All human beings now live in a world shaped by the ideals of the revolutionaries although these ideals have been only imperfectly realized. A substantial proportion of humankind, however, either believes in or is compelled by those who believe in a starkly different set of ideals. The reactionary proportion of humanity now wages overt and covert battle against our contemporary civilization.

         The violent attacks unsurprisingly attract the overwhelming bulk of media attention. But these attacks have forced their way back into humanity’s experience because of steady erosion in the rationalism and civility that formed the foundation of our technological and scientific society. As Timothy Ferris states in The Science of Liberty, “Democratic governance and individual rights did not emerge from some amorphous “brew of humanistic and scientific thinking,” he argues, but were “sparked” by science itself — the crucial “innovative ingredient” that “continues to foster political freedom today.” It was this mindset so characteristic of the Enlightenment that enabled people to improve their material situations and their political institutions.

       Now, however, in the nations where the Enlightenment arose and flourished, sophistry, superstition, and reaction are virulent. Anything near a complete victory has not been achieved and the purveyors of irrationality, credulity, fanaticism and authoritarianism are openly hawking their wares and plying their trade. These harbingers of a New Dark Age are the political officials and candidates who treat their feelings as the best guide to public policy and who pit citizens against one another based on ethnic, religious, or other distinctions.

       As cases in point, consider three contentious topics in American politics today. Climate change, trickle-down economics, and health reform are all major policy disputes where facts actually do not seem to matter for one side of the controversy; for the self-styled conservative pundits, preachers, and politicians unshakable dogma reigns, across the board. In Kansas, supply-side economics was heavily implemented and it failed spectacularly. Nonetheless, the magical belief in the efficacy of tax cuts as a form of economic stimulus persists. Good news on health reform keeps coming in. It remains even more favorable than its supporters expected. The number of Americans without insurance is dropping fast, even as the growth in health care costs moderates and reactionaries continue to be as relentlessly opposed to it as they ever were. The particular issues are not as significant as the fundamentally flawed approach this sizable faction of politically Americans uses to assess them.

      Joseph Heath, in Enlightenment 2.0, says “conservatives have become enamored of the idea that politics is ultimately not about plans and policies, it’s about gut feelings and values. Elections are decided by appealing to people’s hearts, not their heads.” This approach is often described as “common sense conservatism.”  It elevated intuition over rational thinking, gut feeling over deliberation, and belief over knowledge. The profound problem, however, when reason and evidence are abandoned in favor cleverness and sentiment is  that there is no way to actually discern which side of a controversy is correct, which claim is true, what program is sound. This means issues are resolved through trickery or skulduggery rather than agreement based on good faith discussion and authentic understanding.  

       The proponents, protectors, and friends of Enlightenment ideals became complacent. They stopped striving to achieve their ideals more and more fully. Consequently, they inadvertently put millions of people at risk of disaffection, and left these same millions vulnerable to inducements from the champions of a new Dark Age. The people who attacked Charlie Hebdo and the miscreants of Boko Haram along with the fanatics of ISIS exemplify the blatantly violent Dark Agers! Neoconfederates in America and crypto-fascist parties and politicians elsewhere exemplify the genteel specimens of this horde. This creates a genuine danger to us all. If we continue to ignore these corrosive practices, civilization may deteriorate beyond our power to sustain it. For as Joseph Heath observes,  “Just as it is easier to get the toothpaste out of the tube than it is to get it back in again, it is much easier to undermine the rationality of public discourse than it is to restore it.”

      Despite the dramatic difference in their behaviors both the brutal and the beguiling variants of the Dark Agers are treacherous. For either variety, the defenders of Enlightenment ideals are seen as infidels, subversives, and adversaries. What must be understood is the beguiling Dark Agers pave the way for the rise and rampage of the brutal Dark Agers by muting the alarms and reducing the sentinels all along the watch tower. We must sound the alarm and mount the barricades far more than our own well-being and futures are at stake. 

The whole world is struggling tonight
From the disease of deceit.
Lots of people are suffering tonight
From the disease of deceit.

It comes right through the airwaves, straight into the home
Smashes through all defenses and leaves nobody alone.
No part of this plague is easy to beat.
The disease of deceit

There are a whole lot of hopes dying tonight
From the disease of deceit.
Lots of confidence has been shaken tonight
By the disease of deceit.

Steps onto the stage, seeps into the soul
Overpowers our senses and we lose control.
Nothing is sacred and it is not discreet
All that’s precious is threatened by the disease of deceit.

There are a thousand plans failing tonight
From the disease of deceit.
Millions of people are flailing tonight
From the disease of deceit.

Comes at us from everywhere and knocks us down for the count
From the inside and outside the pressure will mount
Puts us into an all-out retreat
The disease of deceit

Deceit is a disease
But there is no medical treatment or magical cure
There has been much research about it
But what it really is nobody’s quite sure

In the whole world over there is trouble tonight
From the disease of deceit.
Lots of heads are spinning tonight
From the disease of deceit.

If delusions of grandeur and an aversion to clues
Give us the feeling we are too smart to lose.
Then our next experience surely will not be sweet
From the disease of deceit.

There is only one way we can turn this around.
Take our heads from the clouds and put our feet on the ground.
This is the only way we can combat and hope to defeat
The threat to us all of the disease of deceit.

It is up to each of us whether we’re high or we’re low.
The treasure of truth is something we all instinctively know.
We must make a commitment and it must be complete.
To the candor that cures the disease of deceit.

Admission of Impotence

www.cotemaison.fr

Once again fanatical followers of Islam have murdered while shouting: Allahu Akbar, literally God is great. This time the atrocity happened in Paris, France, and the attack was directed at editors and cartoonists for the satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo. By perpetrating this viciousness, the people involved and the movement in which they swarm, showed the weakness and utter futility cloaked within their fury. Although weaponry can make the weak appear mighty and allow malice to murder the peaceful, resorting to violence is an admission of intellectual impotence. The following paragraph makes this point well.

“More than anything, masked gunmen—hiding their faces and shouting "God is great”—show the appalling lack of confidence in their ideas, their ability to participate in public debates, to stand by their arguments, and return to the political process day after day if they suffer setbacks. This is why they are cowards, bullies, killers and yes, evil. This is one version of what evil looks like today.”

When twelve people are killed and eleven are injured in a brutal, premeditated attack, the shock this produces can make it seem as though the attackers or the movement they adhere to are powerful because they are obviously dangerous. In reality, these incidents are admissions of weakness and absolute loss of confidence on the part of the fanatics. They are killing people who dispute their beliefs and refuse to honor their conceptions of the sacred. No matter how fervently they believe what they profess, they have been largely unable to win people to their side.

 Since September 2001many of the fanatics who have restored to outlandish violence have been characterized as Muslim or Islamic. Consequently discussion has often tried to distinguish these brutal actors from Islam itself by talking about a religion of peace. This is intellectually slipshod if it is not intellectually dishonest. Islam does not mean peace; it means submission. In particular, submission to the commands of Allah as revealed by the Prophet Mohammed. True believing Muslims neither support nor recognize the concept of freedom of expression, because their speech and actions are determined by the will of Allah as divinely revealed and not derived from their choices or desires. In other words, true believers deny all others the right to challenge their interpretation of the will of Allah [God, Adonai] and they insist that all others accept their right to dictate proper behavior. While this imparts immense arrogance to the zealots, it does nothing to win the assent of any among the uninitiated.

Consequently, while fanatics feverishly demand that the world submits to their chosen creed, everyone else ignores them, disputes their claim, or even makes fun of their doctrines and dogmas. Because all varieties of fanaticism are so thoroughly unsupported by evidence and logical argument based on evidence, attempts to convince unbelievers are frustrating to put it mildly. Therefore, there is an almost unbearable tension in the minds of fanatics who think they have the one true faith that every human being should accept and follow but are perpetually unable to win over masses outside their circle of belief.

The Prophet Muhammad had little if any humility in regard to the honor he was due saying: "Whoever insults a Prophet kill him." Muhammad convinced many that he was channeling the will of Allah. Thus, all who ignored what he said should be believed or done were thwarting the will of the Almighty. This seemed not a mere difference of opinion, but a potential cosmic calamity. If the Almighty says think this and do this, refusing to comply is stunning and probably dangerous insubordination.

It is this realization that shows what is sought by all zealots whatever creed they claim justifies their fanaticism: they want obedience and they want it now and forever. Because they are the champions of the divine will, this means that others must obey them in all aspects of their earthly lives. People must profess the creed the zealots dictate; behave in the way the zealots demand; dress as the zealots command, and generally never suggest that the zealots are full of bilge water and swamp gas. 

Whether fanatics claim to serve Allah, God or Adonai, the Master Race, the Proletariat, or the Knights of the White Camelia, they are deluded, malicious, and deserve only opposition and defeat. In France, America, England and many other nations we have true and benign ideals that require none to comply unwillingly. Our civic ideals justify the abuse and execution of no one simply for what they think and express. While these ideals are peaceful at times we may have to bear arms in their defense against the comparatively few fanatics who mistake tolerance and openness for vacuity and cowardice.

The newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, and those who worked there, dared to speak uncomfortable truths about people, parties, beliefs and institutions that were intolerant, driven by fanaticism and completely unhesitating in imposing their views on those who did not share them. This malicious and lethal attack was not one on a periodical or journalism but on inquiry, ideas, competing perspectives and beliefs, and on the principle that enlightened societies can allow differences to exist and sustain discourse, debate and a quest for what truly unites people rather than imposing a forced conformity on all citizens.

This ideal of a society of citizens rather than subjects with all rightfully pursuing the truth in the way they choose rather than a realm of indoctrinated and subjugated people submitting to the divine revelation of one or another prophet is worth working for, worth living for, worth fighting for and if need be worth dying for. 

Let Americans be Americans Again

The problems plaguing America are caused by and can be cured by Americans becoming Americans again in the truest and best sense to the word. Americans have either abandoned or forgotten five foundational ideals that at times made them listen to the better angels of their nature and strive to make their country what it was meant and ought to be. This poem is inspired by the classic by Langston Hughes and it shares that poems view that many people have come to America with hopes and dreams and they and many others are being let down. This stems from the great economic disparity between people which is built into the system. Essentially the rich get ever richer, and the poor get ever  poorer. This is allowed because too many of us lack real, sustained commitment to equality, democracy. inherent rights, shared opportunity and authentic liberty for all.

If America is to fulfill its promise and be true to its premise, Americans must rediscover and revive their devotion to these ideals.


Let Americans be Americans again.
Let them dream once more the dream that made us see.
Let true patriots arise and renew America’s claim
To being the home of the brave and the land of the free

Let Americans recall the Framers’ aims—
Let them build that bountiful land we swear to love
Where neither tyrants ploys nor traitors games
Force anyone to bow to those above.

Let Americans stand for a true land of Liberty
One unscarred by false pride or jealous greed,
Where the air is redolent of the scent of true Equality,
And Opportunity proliferates to answer every need.

Let us reclaim the poorer Whites, incited, fooled and driven wild,
And welcome the Reds from whom far too much has been seized.
And embrace the Blacks still scarred from being slavery’s child
And accept the Yellows once into interment wrongly squeezed.

Welcome the immigrants clutching fast to hope in desperate need—
Fighting bravely against the same callous, vicious plan
Of hate, fear, spite and power crushing all with rapacious greed.
While seeking to make this country their new and promised land.

Let Americans look to the youth, all full of courage, hope, and daring-do
And keep them safe from that vast, far reaching web of vile shams
Of propaganda, plots and profiteering gain, of malice through and through!
Of broken promises and devious tales promoting nefarious scams

Let Americans demand an end to drive the workers and steal their pay!
Of everything for one’s own lust and none for any other’s need
Let them rally the farmer so dependent on the soil and weather's whim each day.
And enlist the worker enthralled in the corporation’s strangling greed.

Let all Americans dream again the storied dreams.
That hard work, skill and ingenuity can lift them to new heights
That today’s struggle presages the dawn more abundant means.
Let us, though embattled even now, secure to all their Rights.

O, Patriots! You are they who never bowed in the face of woe and fears,
You are they who bravely raised the banner of the hallowed ideals
And battled on while battered and disrespected all these many years.
You alone  never forgot how devotion to the best within us feels.

While dreaming a dream so bright, so right, so true,
It shown through all the stone, concrete and steel,
So forever more its mighty clarion rings forth anew
To make Americans strive to be what they must now become for real.

Americans are children of those who crossed the storm tossed sea
All descendants of travelers from obscure and ominous climes,
Who searched for what might and ought to be
Braving the waves in different ships at different times,

Americans no matter the strand from which their families came
Hope against hope to make themselves and their posterity free.
Can rightly claim American as their honored name
And make America everything to everyone that it might and ought to be.

Let Americans once again recall all the evils we have fought and felled
And sing again all the songs we so long have sung
And hope again all the soaring hopes we have so well and truly held
And lift again all the brave banners that we decades ago had hung,

Though millions now have lost so much almost nothing is left to lose—
Though many are yet striving the cherished name to win
We vow the dream has never died and will not die while we dare to rightly choose!
O’ let Americans be Americans again

We, the people, who have as yet almost never been
Must now see, the land we have is the land we make
And despite the odds, rise and insist Americans be Americans again.
Through the truths we tell and the risks we take

We must recall the meaning of ideals we once so cherished
And as Americans boldly and solemnly true Democracy reclaim
Our principles, purposes, and promises before they have perished
We must again lift our national vision and focus on the highest plain.

Americans: Female, Male, Brown, Red, Yellow, Black and White
All need to focus on the who, what, where, why and when
And, come together to awaken and renew the glorious fight
That as Americans we resolutely unite and truly are Americans once again!