From the Empirical Archives: The Corpsman by Kenneth Weene

The Corpsman

Kenneth Weene

Originally published in the January 2013 issue of Empirical

They called him Doc. It wasn’t his title or even his nickname, but it was what they called him. He knew if he were ever hit, killed, air-vacced out, they’d call the next guy Doc, too. Doc was better than the other name, “Medic, Medic.” That was what they called when somebody was hit, hit bad, bad enough to need him. Some nights it still woke him–in his dreams, them yelling, “Medic, Medic.” Him paralyzed, unable to help.

He is a bright guy. Career Navy, he’d worked his way up from corpsman to officer, gone to school–college. For all that education, he still didn’t have any insight, no self-awareness. Self-awareness isn’t something that comes easy with PTSD. Too busy reliving, too busy trying to keep his shit together.

Retired, going a bit to gray and pot, he and his wife were on a trip; they were staying at the same Bed and Breakfast as my wife and I. The ladies had gone to bed; so there we were: just two guys sitting in a comfortable living room in small town Arizona.

He starts out telling me that he doesn’t much like being with people, being part of a group, doesn’t really join in, stays to himself. Then he spends the evening talking. Talking and sharing and talking some more. Guess what he really doesn’t like is listening. If the other guy is talking, how can he be back there, back then, reliving?

He starts by telling me about PTSD.

I don’t interrupt–to tell him that I’m a shrink–not until he finishes telling me about what a Navy psychiatrist had explained to him–how if you take a cat, nice little cat, and put him in a backyard and start shooting at him and blowing shit up around him and then you take him back into the house, why that cat will be changed and that was how post-traumatic stress worked.

Then I told him about my background; I mentioned there was usually something else about Post Traumatic Stress–something that cats couldn’t figure–not just the being scared but the guilt that somehow you should have changed things.

That’s when he talked about the ambush.

He was supposed to go out with this patrol. They were going to do a sweep and set up an ambush, a standard night operation in Vietnam.

Bunch of kids; oldest, the corporal leading it, wasn’t any older than nineteen–kids, just kids. So this corporal tells me, “Doc, you ain’t coming with us.”

“Of course I am. You got to have a corpsman.”

“You ain’t coming,” he says again.

“Yeah, I am.”

They go back and forth a bit before the corporal tells him that the patrol isn’t going anywhere, that they’re just too damned tired so they’re going to get a little way out of camp, and hunker down for the night. Just call in like they’re really out on patrol.

Get a night’s sleep before they fall apart.

Well, he isn’t happy about not doing his job; so he decides that the least he can do is take a radio shift back at HQ, do something instead of taking the night off. At two, he takes over the CP radio. Everything’s quiet. The corporal calls in, his scheduled contact. Everything’s fine. A few seconds later, he hears hell breaking loose over that radio. First there’s a single shot. Then that patrol, the one he was supposed to be on, is screaming for help. Over the radio he hears the firing. Deep shit!

He’s one of the team that goes out for the rescue. Four medics, couple of officers, a bunch of riflemen. By the time they get to where this platoon is hunkered, every last one of those Marines has been hit. But everything is quiet, quiet as death.

“Where the hell are they?”

“Sneaky bastards.”

Then they figure it out. The corporal had called in at two, just like he was supposed to. Then he decided to check his men, make sure nothing was wrong. Damn kid forgot to put on his helmet. In Marine world after dark and no helmet, you’re the enemy. Shoot to kill. That first shot he’d heard over the radio.

Well, that shot and the other Marines had jumped up–still no helmets. More fucking shooting.

All those guys hit; all by their own friendly fire.

Friendly fire. Jesus, who could have thought. Too damned tired to know what they were…

His eyes clouded. He was someplace else. 

I should have been there. Never could figure out why I wasn’t. I should have been out there with those guys, but … but I wasn’t. Why? … Why? The thing was, he was serious. He didn’t understand why the corporal had told him to stay in camp.

“You were too valuable to waste,” I offered.

What do you mean?

“They knew they weren’t going to be fighting so why waste a corpsman’s time? Just like if they needed to dig a hole or some other grunt work, you’re not the guy to hand the shovel. Medics were too valuable to  squander that way. Why have you waste your energy when you might need it to save one of them some time?”

Shit, I must have asked a dozen doctors why; and nobody ever… He sat–quiet, nodding his head from time to time.

Thing is I came back. I was never even wounded.

“That was damn lucky. Corpsmen, you guys–only ones more likely to get it were Second Lieutenants.” I hadn’t served, but I wanted him to know that I understood. 

Yeah, butter-bars. You see a Lieutenant with a map and you knew you were in shit. Fresh from training and not knowing a thing about what they was doing.

I laughed. He smiled wanly.

When I was fresh in the field, you know maybe six weeks in, I noticed something strange. There was this snapping noise. I’d be working on a guy and suddenly I’d hear this snapping. I’d look around, but there wasn’t anything breaking–no sticks or anything –just that sound. I asked this Gunnery Sergeant, “Gunny,” I asked, “There’s something I want to ask you.”

“So ask, Doc.”

“When I’m out there and I’m working on a guy, I hear this noise, this snapping, any idea what it is?”

“Sure, Doc, that’s bullets. Those sons-ofbitches are shooting at you. When a bullet gets close enough it snaps. Most of the time you hear a whine, but when it gets close enough.”

“After that, when I was working on a guy, I’d kind of dart around.”

He acted it out, reaching for something quickly, changing direction, moving suddenly in another direction. He stopped moving, sat still and looked at me.

“It sounds awful,” I said to break the silence.

Nothing.

“You must have…”

Some, a lot didn’t make it. Some I didn’t think would, but they did. Worst one, one I saved but I didn’t think he’d make it–there was this kid. We were on patrol and all hell breaks out. I’m working on some other guy, nothing too bad, when one of the Marines comes up, says, “Doc, you got to come.”

“I’m working on this guy,” I say.

He grabs me; pulls me right away, right down to his buddy.

This grunt is leaning against a tree. His arm is broken in two; he’s holding it up, and it’s just hanging down from here. 

He gestures to show that the bottom two thirds of the guy’s left forearm is hanging down like everything inside it is broken, like it’s held on by skin.

“And his right leg is gone right to here.” He indicates the hip. “I could see his hip joint. The leg is a couple of yards away, lying on the ground like it’s waiting for him. And blood. Shit, you ain’t seen a femoral until you’ve seen a femoral. A femoral and a radial and both going at once.

He jerked his hands in different directions like they were supposed to be the spurting blood.

First thing I need is a tourniquet. I dump my pack right there on the ground, but I don’t have another one. None of the guys have one either; we’ve just used them all. So I think about it, and we’re wearing these new uniforms, not the cammies, those hadn’t come in yet, but these green nylon uniforms.

At least we were out of the cottons–sweat to death in nylon, but they dried faster. These new uni-s, they got pockets on the legs, and there are these cords sewn in to tie those pockets tight so your shit doesn’t jiggle around in there. I never put anything in those pockets, but I grab the cord from my left leg and pull until it rips free.

Again his hands are flying around.

I use the strap to tie up that stump of his. Use some stump pads and there’s all this jungle shit right in the wound, but I got it tied off … and the arm, and I say, “Call a dust off; we got to get him out of here.”

That’s when this guy–his leg gone, his arm gone–he says, “Hey, Doc, you looked down there.”

I nod yeah.

“So is it all there. Do I still got what I need?”

“Yeah,” I tell him and that son-of-a-bitch smiles back at me like there’s not a damn thing wrong in the world.

Course we’ve got that chopper all ready coming in; and he starts coming down, but then he pulls away.

“What the fuck?” I ask.

“Taking fire, can’t land,” the sergeant explains.

So we load this guy on a poncho and his leg and we carry him down to an LZ not too far off. But the chopper still can’t land. Sarge says, “They’ll lower the basket. We put him in fast, and they get the hell out of here.”

So they get about a hundred feet above us and they lower this drogue, and it starts rotating like a crazy-ass pendulum, but then that pilot–damn he’s good–he gets it under control and sets it down gentle. Somebody yells, “Get him in.”

We get that guy and his leg into the bucket and the copter takes off.

“Shit,” I yell, “We didn’t get him tied in.”

That basket is swinging around again, and we watch it gyrating as the copter pulls up and meanwhile I guess they’re pulling him in, too; but for a minute I expected to see that guy flying out of that bucket and…

Couple of months later, we get back from patrol and the shirt whose in charge of our platoon calls a meeting. “We got a letter,” he says, “from Clere. You guys remember him?”

Well, most of us–except the new guys–say yeah, and he reads the letter. How this guy’s back in the states and learning to use a prosthetic arm, one of those things that go across the back and you can move them around with your other shoulder and you can open and close these hooks.

He illustrated hunching his shoulders and clawing with two fingers of his own hand.

“They can’t do anything about a leg, too much of that was gone. But I’ll be going home and that’s what counts. So, I just wanted to let you guys know I made it out okay.”

The shirt gives us a piece of paper and a pen and tells us we should all write something back to this guy. Being I’m Navy, you know a corpsman and not a Marine, I get that piece of paper last and there isn’t much room; so I just write how most of us would give an arm and a leg to get out of Nam.

He nodded in appreciation of his own little joke. I tried to smile in response.

Didn’t hear from that guy for years. Then the VFW puts together a list of all of us members all over the country. Computers you know; they’re great. And each of us has written down his information. Forty bucks and you got a great big book to tell you where all your buddies are. It was brand new; my copy hadn’t come yet, but I was looking forward to it, maybe looking up a few of the guys.

Meanwhile, it was first day of deer hunting season and I’d spent it out in the swamps, wandering around and not seeing a single animal. I get home tired, hungry, out of sorts. Last thing I want is to talk to anyone. Just as my ass is finding my favorite chair, the phone rings. I don’t answer; but it keeps ringing, and my wife can’t stand it so she answers: You know a woman, can’t leave a crying baby or a ringing phone.

“Tell them we don’t want any.” He says it while making a cutting sign across his neck.

Don’t you hate those telemarketers? I figured nobody else would be bothering with us.

Anyway, my wife gets to talking, and I tell her again, “We don’t want any.”

Then she hands me the phone. “It’s for you.”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know. Ask him.”

So I kind of shout into the phone, “Who is this?”

And this deep, rough voice says, “Did you use to be in the Navy?”

“Yeah. And I still am. Who…?”

“A corpsman?”

“Yeah. But…”

“And you served in Vietnam?”

Now he was getting into some painful water, “Look, I don’t know what you’re selling, but who the hell are you?”

“Shit, Doc, now that ain’t any way to talk to a guy who gave an arm and leg to get out of Nam.”

“Clere, is that you? You know I never could find you, find out…How the hell are you? Wondered a lot of time, but couldn’t find you in any reports.”

He laughs. “That’s ‘cause my name’s not Clere, it’s Lehr.”

“So where are you? What are you doing?”

“We still live in Missouri. I work for the IRS.”

“Shit, I saved your life so you could go to work for the IRS? What the fuck?”

He looked at me and shook his head like something worried at him but that nothing mattered. We sat quiet  for a while. We both knew there were no answers, no reasons, just the randomness of war. But on that night, that one night: yeah, there had been a reason.

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From the Empirical Archives: Recipe for Peace by Devreaux Baker

Recipe for Peace 

Devreaux Baker

Originally published in the January 2013 issue of Empirical

Bare your feet, roll up your sleeves

oil the immigrant’s bowl

open the doors and windows of your house

invite in the neighbors, invite in strangers off the street

roll out the dough, add the spices for a good life

cardamom and soul, cumin and tears

stir in sesame and sorrow, a dash of salt

pink as new hope

rub marjoram and thyme, lemon grass and holy basil

on your fingers and pat the dough

bless the table, bless the bread

bless your hands and feet

bless the neighbors and strangers

off the street

bake the bread for a century or more

on a moderate heat

under the olive trees in your back yard

or on the sun filled stones of Syria

in the white rocks of Beirut

or behind the walls of Jerusalem

in the mountains of Afghanistan

and in the sky scrapers of New York

feast with all the migrant tongues

until your mouth understands

the taste of many different homes

and your belly is full so you fall asleep

cradled in the skirts of the world

curled in the lap of peace.

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From the Empirical Archives: An Interview with Stephen Zunes by Emanuel Stoakes

An Interview with Stephen Zunes

Emanuel Stoakes

Originally published in the January 2013 issue of Empirical

Given that this is the first issue of Empirical in 2013 and the human race has survived yet another turbulent year (despite the predictions of Mayan calendar enthusiasts and others), it may be appropriate to take stock in some way, in keeping with the ancient traditions of New Year festivals across the world.

During the Jewish High Holy Days, the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is traditionally a time in which observant Jews are obliged to engage in sustained reflection on what’s been and resolve to do things better in the future. Other major cultural festivals such as Nowruz in Iran, Seol-Nal in Korea, and the Chaitra in the Hindu tradition, among many others, encourage varying degrees of contemplation and self searching amidst celebration of the year’s renewal.

With this in mind (albeit with a political focus), Empirical magazine caught up with the estimable San Francisco Bay Area scholar Stephen Zunes to discuss a cluster of controversial, sobering, and thought-provoking issues linked to the past and present actions of the government of the United States at home and abroad.

Professor Zunes is Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, and is considered one of America’s leading scholars on US foreign policy, in particular Middle-Eastern policy. Professor Zunes has produced many widely read articles on Middle Eastern politics, US foreign policy, international terrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, strategic nonviolent action, and human rights. He also spent many hours reading internal government documents in the national archives, as well as travelling extensively throughout west Asia and meeting key political actors in the region.

I began by asking him about perhaps the most explosive issue of the last decade–the Iraq war.

Emanuel: What’s your opinion of the case that was made for the Iraq war? And what influence do you think that Project for the New American Century and its neoconservative membership had on how things turned out? [PNAC were an influential right-wing think tank during the 90s and 2000s who advocated “a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity.” Supporters of the Iraq war, many PNAC members were part of the Bush administration.]

Stephen Zunes: They were a strong intellectual force behind it, in their intellectual rationalization, and a series of events, including 9/11, helped make it possible, along with some more traditional conservatives and the Christian evangelicals, and so on. So, it was a tragic confluence of various ideological and strategic tendencies, and they were certainly a major piece of it. I think a lot of people overplay their role in a sense–especially the Zionist connection. If you read that famous memo from 1996, it’s more along the lines of what Israel can do for the US, than what the US can do for Israel. While I’ve certainly been attacked quite viciously by various Zionist groups, I’ve generally been one of those who has argued that the whole Israeli-lobby angle is overstated, and so I agree with Noam Chomsky on this point. The invasion had a lot more to do with a broader hegemonic priorities than any one special interest group. I think what PNAC and those guys really were talking about was an idea–in many ways it is not a new idea–but by their very name, it goes back to that post-World War II period, when there really was that sense that the United States could  reshape the world in our image. And again, it goes back in some ways to the Puritans. So in that sense I think they were able to capitalize on that part of American culture, by appealing to those that would be susceptible to that sort of thinking.

Emanuel: To what degree do you think that US foreign policy is driven by self-referential ideology?

Stephen Zunes: The older I get, the less I tend to think in terms of conspiracies and the more I am inclined to recognize the power of ideology. It’s huge. Again, Chomsky’s pretty good at recognizing this too. I have disagreements with Chomsky on some things but I think he’s a lot more on target than, say, people like Michael Parenti and other kinds of vulgar Marxists who see political smoke-filled rooms of people planning all these things.

Emanuel: I guess people like Parenti are being self-referential too.

Stephen Zunes: Yeah, and I think that’s the case with much of US policy, including when people realize that  we are supporting some pretty nasty characters. I don’t think they like the fact that these people are terrible dictators, but they believe the end justifies the means, basically. And of course you can use the idea of democracy [as a justification], and when people link free markets with that, that’s part and parcel of what freedom means. So you go on to have that play a disproportionate role in your calculations. I think its interesting with the Helms-Burton Bill on Cuba, if you look at what they say–that sanctions will be lifted when there’s “free and fair elections and Cuba embraces a free market economy.” So, if suddenly tomorrow Cuba was democratic, had free elections, but had a democratic socialist government, by law, sanctions would still be in place!

Emanuel: Does neoliberalism [extreme free market economics] necessarily make people more free and countries more democratic, or can it actually intrude on the sovereignty, economic sovereignty at least, of poorer nations?

Stephen Zunes: The current neoliberal model–[governed by] international institutions and the like–greatly compromises sovereignty. Although, I can certainly see how you can make the case that you can get more political space in a system where a government doesn’t have a monopoly on the economy. So in that sense it can be a democratizing force. And it’s interesting, because I know some folks at Otpor, and a number of them are pretty left-wing in their politics, but they actually supported some of the privatization efforts because it was a way of getting rid of the kind of crony capitalism that Milosevic and those guys had put together. In many ways, they had to clean out the old system. Although, again, their views would be well to the left of most of the neoliberals and others. But the main point is that–this is one of the big questions right now–you have all these countries becoming democratic throughout the world. I forget the figures, but the number of dictatorships had decreased by half in the past 20 to 30 years. However, the decisions that affect people’s lives the most are made less and less in the national capitals, and more and more in New York and Frankfurt and London and Geneva, etc.

Emanuel: What’s been your general experience in terms of government secrecy–is it often used to make sure that what the government is doing is held in occultation, in a sense, to provide cover for reprehensible activities as opposed to just things hidden from the public for necessary security purposes?

Stephen Zunes: Very much so, I think it’s particularly true in the United States, because one of the great contradictions in American culture is that on one hand, we’re a superpower, with all the imperial prerogatives thereof, working in a realpolitik environment, at the same time Americans themselves hold on to these strong idealistic values about democracy, about rule of law and that sort of thing. And on the one hand, every empire has tried to rationalize its actions: white man’s burden, “la mission civilisatrice” [“the civilizing mission,” a French colonial saying], that kind of thing. But in general, again to the use the example of France, France intervened in Africa the way the US has in Latin America and the French shrug their shoulders. Of course that’s what governments do. That’s their sphere of influence. Some of it’s pretty nasty. Americans get this real sense of righteous moral outrage when they find out about [their government] supporting terrorists and dictatorships. So, I think because of this, the US government, more than any other, really has to hide [these things], and especially since we’ve supported some of the worst thugs in the world in the name of defending democracy. If people knew what was going on, it would be hard to get away with that. I think in many ways the fact that the US government has to go to the extent that it does in order to cover up embarrassing details about our favorite dictators and that kind of stuff is. . . a validation of the American people that they feel the need to keep this kind of thing under wraps.

Emanuel: I notice that you bring up the term empire in relation to US activities abroad. Can you clarify what you mean by that?

Stephen Zunes: Ok. It’s a term that I don’t usually use that much, as people usually get defensive about that kind of thing. I certainly don’t think there’s a big difference between lowercase i imperialism and uppercase I Imperialism, but it is to some degree about hegemony–any kind of great power trying to maximize its influence for strategic and economic reasons. Again, on the one hand the United States is different from previous empires in that, with a few short-term exceptions, we haven’t controlled colonies outright. But also there is this: because of our own history, in revolution against empire, it’s not something we really like to acknowledge. At the same time, the kind of American exceptionalism we feel goes back to the Puritans: John Winthrop, the City on the Hill, you know, the New Jerusalem, manifest destiny. There is this sense that we are special, that we can get away with stuff that other countries can’t. It is an unspoken assumption, but it’s there, especially at the presidential debate–where the debate is on how American exceptionalism should manifest itself. No one’s questioning anything.

Emanuel: To what degree do you think that religious aspects play into that? For example, not to ask a leading question, but the former Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney–a Mormon–reportedly has a view of America as being a big part of the world’s salvific destiny. Do you think there’s a bit of that which feeds into such exceptionalist worldviews?

Stephen Zunes: Very much so. It also reflects a lot of trends within American Protestantism. In fact, I couldn’t help but notice that. I mostly work on the Middle East. I couldn’t help but notice the difference in public opinion between mainline Protestants and Catholics and more humanist-orientated people on the one hand, and fundamentalist Protestants on the other, was exceptionally wide when it came to Iraq. That many Protestants really did see [the war] in terms that Bush was using–the quasi-religious rationalization. It’s even greater than it is on Israel-Palestine where there’s that evangelical need to ensure the second coming of Christ, that sort of thing. I think that both Mahmoud Abbas and the French Prime Minister said that Bush told them point blank that God had told him to invade Iraq, for example.

Emanuel: Sorry, I know this is a bit speculative, but do you think that Bush actually believed that–or do you think it was a way of, for example, manipulating other people?

Stephen Zunes: I’d doubt it–I can could see him saying it to some fellow American evangelicals, but him saying that to a Palestinian Muslim and an agnostic Frenchman is [pause]–I wouldn’t see how that would carry him very far.

Emanuel: What’s your analysis of the political economy of the relationship between the religious right within America and the government, in terms of foreign policy?

Stephen Zunes: There is this very strong belief in American exceptionalism. I mean it’s an interesting thing that, if you look at it, virtually all the mainline Protestant denominations and the Catholic church came out against the Iraq war, and yet Congress–which consists primarily of members of these denominations voted otherwise. The Catholic bishops were very clearly against the war; the Pope was against the war! It’s interesting that in certain ways–that on issues of war and peace–the leadership of American churches are more peace-oriented than their congregants. On the fundamentalist side, they have rarely been among the most militarist. Maybe you’d think it would after the end of the cold war. It was no longer a struggle against Godless communists. But, if anything, these tendencies seem to have gotten stronger.

Emanuel: What do you think of Samuel Huntingdon’s influential clash of civilizations narrative [that major cultural spheres–in particular, Islam and the West–are set to be the future points of international confrontation. Some people have said it’s an attempt to rehabilitate cold-war thinking?

Stephen Zunes: I very much agree with that critique [the “clash of civilizations” thesis]. There’s not much of an historical or empirical basis to back [the narrative] up, but it does help rationalize the kinds of behavior that would not otherwise be acceptable to a large number of Americans. I don’t know if you saw a piece I did maybe five years ago when Ahmadinejad came to the UN and I got to be part of a group (I work at a Catholic University), so I was brought in with a number of clergy and laity who were meeting with him in New York. And I mostly talked about him in many ways as being more pathetic than evil–obviously, I was quite critical of him. But I did explore this whole question of why there is this obsession with Ahmadinejad, especially since the Iranian president is not particularly powerful and doesn’t control the military, and how when there is a moderate Iranian President like Khatami [Ahmadinejad’s predecessor], he was virtually ignored by the US media. I basically argue that Ahmadinejad fits so perfectly with the image of the stereotypical middle-eastern leader we love to hate–prior to him it was Saddam; prior to that it was Gaddafi, you know. You find some crazy dictator who does irrational things, and Idi Amin played a similar role a couple of years earlier–a third-world leader, and some of these people are indeed horrific thugs, but they also play into the whole self-righteousness idea, and this idea that we Westerners need to have a strong military presence to protect us from these crazy, crazy, crazy people. And that’s why I think these guys often get far more press than they deserve, especially when you compare them to some of the thugs that the West supports–N’Guema in Equatorial Guinea; Karamov in Uzbekistan, who boils his enemies alive. These guys have done things at least as crazy as some of these other tyrants, but it doesn’t quite fit into the paradigm.

[An interesting quote from Zunes’ aforementioned piece about his meeting with the Iranian President: “My Meeting with Ahmadinejad,” for Foreign Policy in Focus": “[Ahmadinejad] was quite unimpressive. Indeed, with his ramblings and the superficiality of his analysis, he came across as more pathetic than evil. . . . The Iranian president impressed me as someone sincerely devout in his religious faith, yet rather superficial in his understanding, and inclined to twist his faith tradition in ways to correspond with his pre-conceived ideological positions.”]

Emanuel: With regard to government secrecy, again, can you give examples of secrecy laws being used to cover up reprehensible actions by the US government or its allies–in terms of it being an abuse of government secrecy?

Stephen Zunes: A clear example is during the Gulf War in 1991. A report on a friendly aircraft carrier, about how some of the fighters would watch pornographic movies to get psyched up before their attacks, and governments censored this. And when they referred to them returning from their missions “giddy,” military censors changed it to “proud.” In terms of outright secrecy, certainly the infamous massacre in El Salvador in 1981 [is an example]. The New York Times actually had an article that exposed it, but the government denied it, and had no record [of it]. The Reagan people went after the Times’ editors, and the poor guy who wrote the thing got transferred out of El Salvador to cover school board meetings in New York, or something, as a result. But it turned out the initial account was, in fact, accurate. Certainly, the issues centering around the Contras [in Nicaragua in the 1980s]–[from] their attacks on civilians to their role in the cocaine trade–those were censored. I had [written] an article recently about a human rights situation where the US government was denying one thing, and then Wikileaks came out saying that they, in fact, were quite aware of what was going on.

Emanuel: Changing subjects rather dramatically, with regards to Iraq, were there alternatives to the sanctions there that came about in the 90s and early 2000s? The human cost, which Madeline Albright insisted was “worth it” to the crew of 60 Minutes, was estimated by UNICEF as including the lives of 500,000 children. Why did they persist? Why didn’t they change their policy given that they could see that a huge number of people were being killed?

Stephen Zunes: The only thing that I can think of is that they laid down the rules, or the law, and assuming that consequences would be so bad, they’d give in. But they didn’t, and then couldn’t back down, even though they knew it didn’t work, ‘cause they had to stand by what they said. I don’t know if you’re a parent or not, but if you have any kids, you probably know what I’m talking about. “You can’t go to this birthday party unless you clean your room,” assuming they would, and then they don’t, and you feel terrible about not letting them go to the party, but you don’t want to back down–that kind of thing. I think part of it was that, and bureaucratic inertia, and just the idea that if we compromised it would seem to be rewarding him [Saddam Hussein] and nobody wanted to do that. And I think it was also just like a lot of foreign policies, unfortunately, when we’re frustrated, it’s almost by catharsis: we don’t care if it works or not. When the United States has bombed countries, like bombing Libya in ‘86 around the terrorist attacks, it felt good, almost starting foreign policy by catharsis.

Emanuel: Finally, what do you think about Hugo Chavez in Venezuela? Do you think he’s a monstrous dictator, or is that a bit of a false image?

Stephen Zunes: I think in his election, he won fair and square, though I think that part of the problem is that the old opposition is still dominated by the old elites. And if you’re Venezuelan, you have the choice of the status quo or the status quo anti. So you may not be happy with either, but you’d probably choose the status quo, because at least under Chavez he’s provided the political space for some exciting grassroots socialist initiatives that have helped a lot of people and have given hope to a lot of people that didn’t have much of that in the old system. At the same time, he’s definitely suppressed civil liberties. I have one Venezuelan friend who’s decidedly left-wing in her politics, but she referred to him as the Berlusconi of the poor [Berlusconi was an Italian Prime Minister with a reputation for corruption and media domination.] There’s definitely a demagogic quality to him, and certainly when he embraces Ahmadinejad and Assad and the dictator of Belarus, these guys–I mean c’mon give me a break–that’s inexcusable. On another hand, he’s given money to end Venezuela’s odious debt, he’s given money to Evo Morales, who is more democratic and by certain measures, more left-wing, given him space to do some good things in Bolivia, so I’m very mixed on Chavez.

Emanuel: Professor Zunes, thank you very much.

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From the Empirical Archives: Cold Mountain by Wayne Lee

Cold Mountain

Wayne Lee

Originally published in the January 2013 issue of Empirical

Han-shan says after a moment of bliss,

This is better than where I live. I see

Cold Mountain disappearing into mist.

My life among these thousand-meter cliffs,

my days of hermitage and poverty

evanescing in a moment of bliss.

I look in the mirror and I see wisps

of white, like clouds among the leafless trees,

Cold Mountain disappears into mist.

This day and the years gone by are endless

ripples, like rivers flowing to the east –

Han-shan vanishing on moments of bliss.

I have no desire now to reminisce

about my profession or family

as Cold Mountain disappears into mist.

Some may ask, did Han-shan ever exist?

Yes, I did, but now I have been set free –

a puff of smoke in a moment of bliss,

Cold Mountain disappearing into mist . . . .

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From the Empirical Archives: Fiddling While Rome Burns by Hugh Mercer Curtler

Fiddling While Rome Burns

Hugh Mercer Curtler

Originally published in the January 2013 issue of Empirical

There is considerable talk these days about climate change and whether or not global warming is a fact or merely an opinion. Well, it is assuredly a fact in the sense that any verifiable empirical claim is a fact. The only thing that can still be debated at all is whether or not humans are part of the problem and that consideration is gradually shifting from opinion to cold, hard fact as well. But, as Diane Keaton recently said, “Climate change, like gravity, doesn’t give a damn whether you ‘believe’ in it or not. It’s happening regardless.

While we sit around and debate its existence, it’s taking full advantage of the situation and using the time we’re giving it to make life miserable.” The problem is that in talking about it we may get the impression we are actually doing something about it when in fact we are not. As Keaton says, it just keeps happening. 

The problem was made very real to me recently as I returned from Minneapolis to my home 150 miles west and south of that city with my two little granddaughters in the car. We passed dried-up drainage ditches and creeks; rivers where the water was barely visible and slowed to a crawl; we saw dust hovering in the air as far as the eye could see; we noted the burned-out lawns and the scattered crop residue in the parched fields now that the farmers have finished their harvest, such as it was. We also noted the small lakes and ponds that have shrunk below the grasses and reeds on the shore leaving several feet of dry shoreline exposed to the relentless winds. The words I have read and written myself about global warming began to be replaced by stark images as the message they convey moved from the head to the heart causing considerable distress and mild anxiety. 

I worried about the future of these two little girls. 

This is no longer an intellectual problem: at the risk of sounding dramatic, if something isn’t done to alter present conditions we will soon face a struggle for survival. In this part of the upper Midwest the farmers have had a relatively decent year. It has been dry, but there were scattered but timely rains earlier in the summer and the farmers in this area will do fairly well–unlike others in the Midwest who have been hit hard by the prolonged dry spell that promises to drag on. However, the signs point to the severe drought spreading into this part of the country as well. And that’s the problem: the drought isn’t just part of the normal “cycle” of weather, as many of the farmers I talk with contend; it is something we are going to have to learn to live with–resulting in higher prices in the grocery stores and even the real possibility of rationing as food becomes scarce.

And we could eventually be dealing with increasing levels of violence as well from growing numbers of hungry people who cannot find food to eat. In a word, the problem is here and talking about it won’t solve it. Unfortunately, as we all know, the issue of climate change has become a political football in this country. Politicians are lined up facing one another and neither side wants to give an inch. Or so it would appear. As it happens, there may be more agreement in Washington on this issue than we might think. Michael Brune, Executive Director of the Sierra Club, has spoken with politicians on both sides of the aisle and is convinced that there is near unanimity in Washington that something simply must be done about climate change. 

As he says, both Republicans (who speak to him “off the record”) and Democrats agree that Congress must address the issue, and soon. One prominent Republican said to him, “Mike, we may not agree on much, but on climate change, there’s not really that much separating us.” As Brune notes in the Sierra magazine, the Union of Concerned Scientists has already adopted “a national renewable-electricity standard that ensures that utilities obtain at least 25 percent of their power from wind, solar, and bioenergy by 2025,” pointing out that this would “create 297,000 new jobs, $13.5 billion in income to rural landowners, and $15.3 billion in new local tax revenues.”

And yet politicians remain encamped with their party opposite one another on the issue of climate change and merely exchange mindless barbs. Publicly, only 26% of Congressional Republicans will admit there is a problem that is accepted by 97% of the scientific community as of this writing. This fact was recently reported on PBS Newshour where it was also noted that Professor Richard Muller of Cal-Berkeley had published an Op-Ed piece in late July in which he had radically altered his view of the problem of climate change. He had been one of the most outspoken skeptics of global warming but he and his daughter, a trained mathematician, had studied the available data and concluded he had been wrong. He said in his Op Ed piece that the data show that global warming is occurring and it is worse than others have portrayed. He added that “Humans are almost entirely the cause.”

The empirical evidence continues to mount even as the oceans rise. The Carteret Islands are slowly being consumed by the sea. Many of the islanders have gone to bigger islands close by in hopes of becoming permanent residents there. These are people who are less well-educated than the average American, yet they are seeing first-hand what is happening to their island and the crops they try to raise. They all speak openly of global warming and it is ironic that these people know more about the phenomenon than 74% of Congressional Republicans as well as the recent GOP candidate for the Presidency who openly mocked President Obama for trying to do something about the rising ocean levels.

A large part of the problem is that massive amounts of money in political donations by the oil/gas industry make it imprudent for those on the political right (especially) to speak out about a problem many politicians may acknowledge in private.

And this despite the fact that the Department of Defense, which the political right wing typically regards as beyond reproach, considers global warming to be one of the greatest threats it faces. Further, the US Coast Guard has requested a $1 billion ice-breaker to patrol the Northwest Passage in the expectation that it will be considerably busier in the years to come. Also as I write this the Navy is taking measures around San Diego to invest in alternative energy. And finally, the insurance industry has begun to take steps to deal with future claims rising from global catastrophes. As Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Sept. 5 issue, “the industry has absorbed many lessons from Sept. 11 about anticipating risk. One is that the recent spate of weather extremes is likely to continue–and the insurance market must reflect that.”

As if to underscore this prediction the recent Frankenstorm by the name of “Superstorm Sandy” demands our attention. A recent article in the New Yorker by Elizabeth Kolbert points out, “As with any particular ‘weather-related loss event,’ it’s impossible to attribute Sandy to climate change. However, it is possible to say that the storm fits the general pattern in North America, and indeed around the world, toward more extreme weather, a pattern that, increasingly, can be attributed to climate change.” In fact Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance company, has noted that “Nowhere in the world is the rising number of catastrophes more evident than in North America.”

And they, too, are taking steps to factor climate change into their computer models. While we may be hesitant to blame climate change for the freakish confluence of three storms coming together over the Northeast of this continent, the evidence is compelling. And, as the Weather Channel reports, we can expect more freakish weather in the years to come, quite possibly including storms like Sandy.

The evidence keeps mounting. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration completed another study earlier in 2012 and said global warming is occurring, it is man-influenced, and it is worse than projected. They even pointed to Governor Rick Perry’s Texas and noted that the droughts in Texas are definitely influenced by man. Perry as you recall is a naysayer and also wants to do away with the E.P.A. Yet, Galveston is slowly being encroached upon by the Gulf of Mexico. There is more than a little irony here.

To put the problem in terms that most people can understand, let’s take a quick glance at what the financial costs will be if we continue to look the other way and ignore climate change. Last year, Mercer, one of the largest investment consultants to corporate and public trusteed assets for pension plans (401(k) and non-US capital accumulation) partnered with 14 global institutional investors (Calpers, Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, Norwegian Ministry of Finance, Government of Singapore Investment corporation, to name a few) to conduct a study on the investment portfolio risk of climate change. Some of the key findings of the study show that by 2030:

• Climate change increases uncertainty for long-term institutional investors and as such, needs to be proactively managed.
• Investment opportunities in low carbon technologies could reach $5 trillion.
• The cost of impacts on the physical environment, health and food security could exceed $4 trillion.
• Climate change related policy changes could increase the cost of carbon emissions by as much as $8 trillion.
• Increasing allocation to “climate sensitive” assets will help to mitigate risks and capture new opportunities.
• Engagement with policy makers is crucial for institutional investors to proactively manage the potential costs of delayed and poorly coordinated climate policy action.
• The European Union and China/East Asia are set to lead investment in low carbon technology and efficiency improvements over the coming decades.

According to Rachel Kyte, Vice President of I.F.C., one of the study sponsors, “That climate change poses significant financial and economic risks has only been accentuated by the tens of billions of dollars in losses due to recent climate related natural disasters such as the floods in Australia and Pakistan and the wildfires in Russia.”

Since that study we have had extreme floods, droughts, and wildfires in other parts of the world, including the US. China and Germany are way ahead of us on eco-energy planning. Brazil is entirely bio-fueled with a mixture of sugar cane ethanol and gas. Denmark has an eco-energy plan that has survived at least one election. When your land is beneath sea level, global warming takes on great importance–as we are about to find out.

The current path we are on will leave us even worse off than we are at present. 

Natural gas is seen as a viable alternative despite the fact that it is obtained by a process known as “fracking,” which is an environmental powder-keg and drains vast amounts of water from our diminishing supply. A major debate is occurring right now between the frackers, government, and farmers in Kansas over water usage during the drought. Fracking takes 4 to 6 million gallons of water per fracking well. So, there needs to be more rational debate with all of the facts and all of the constituents involved before we buy into the “fracking” solution. Further, off-shore drilling for oil is terribly risky as the British Petroleum/ Deepwater Horizon disaster proves–the Gulf of Mexico is seeing continued impact from that spill; the Keystone Pipeline invites a number of environmental disasters; “clean” coal is by no means clean, as we are learning to our chagrin; and nuclear power plants present a permanent hazard with toxic waste that we cannot hide and the ever-present threat of meltdowns.

But above all else our attitudes need to change. We need to get our heads out of the sand and confront the situation honestly and intelligently. The urge to hide from the truth was nowhere more in evidence than in North Carolina recently where the legislature refused to accept a peer-reviewed and revalidated scientific paper which notes the sea will rise 39 inches by 2100. So, with pressure applied from the tourism and real estate industries, they passed a law making it illegal to mention the fact in the public media.

This would appear to be the bottom line: the alternatives to clean energy are not rationally acceptable. The cost of failing to plan for an uncertain global future is staggering and will impact investments in a huge way not to mention the impact it will have on our lives. I have noticed in passing that post-apocalyptic games our kids play always speak of a nuclear disaster. The more likely candidate for causing a disaster will be climate change as our planet heats up and impacts our food and water supply; the toxic chemicals in the land, air, and water brew some more; and the sea consumes key port cities such as Norfolk, Galveston, etc. Scientists like to compare the rising sea level to elevating a basketball court: storms coming ashore will find it easier to dunk a basketball. There is much work to be done.

The news is not all bad, however. Small steps are being taken by thoughtful investors and a number of state legislatures in the direction of changing our thinking about how we treat the planet and they provide reason to hope that more will be done. While Congress largely ignores the problem, people like Warren Buffett and T. Boone Pickens have invested heavily in clean energy systems and General Electric is increasing the manufacture of wind turbines. There are more small steps as well. Solar panels are improving in efficiency and becoming less expensive and more readily available. The proposed Topaz solar farm planned in San Louis Obispo Country, California will produce 550 megawatts of electricity that will benefit 160,000 homes in the state and will also produce an estimated $417 million in positive benefits to the region in the form of new jobs and savings to homeowners. Further, a solar panel firm called Semprius will be opening a manufacturing facility in Henderson, North Carolina which will employ 250 people in assembling state of the art solar panels. These solar panels are based on a concept called Concentrated Photovoltaic or C.P.V. panels which use lenses to focus sunlight cells increasing the amount of electricity produced. The C.P.V. panels convert 33.9% of sunlight energy into electricity as contrasted to the typical poly silicon solar cells which convert around 24%.

The technology created by Semprius was supported by the US Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Siemens which now has a 16% stake in Semprius. Its major customers will be Pratt & Whitney, Rocketdyne, and Siemens. The plant will produce solar panels that generate up to 5 to 6 megawatts of energy with plans to expand to panels that generate 35 megawatts of energy. This is an excellent example of public/private investment in the US It also shows the global nature of business since Siemens, which has a huge US and North Carolina presence, is a German firm. Siemens’ reputation is stellar and their involvement as an investor and key user of the product worldwide will be key to its success. We might also note the new Risk Management program on climate change established by Georgia State University, one of the largest risk management programs in the US.

Another encouraging sign comes from Duke Energy which was reported to have retired three older coal powered plants in the Carolinas and its new subsidiary, Progress Energy, is retiring one of its older coal powered plants and three oil-fired plants. Duke said it has shut down 587 megawatts of coal-powered plants and will shut down 1,080 more megawatts by 2015. It has been replacing these plants with cleaner coal (“clean” coal being a misnomer) and natural gas-powered plants. They still have issues with retrieval of the coal and natural gas–hence the term “cleaner”–but they are far better than the older coal-powered plants. The cleaner coal actually converts the coal to a gas that is then burned with many of its by-products captured.

I mention this as Duke is leading the way by gradually diminishing its use of fossil fuel based power. This process is not dissimilar to what is being done in China. Duke reported in 2011 that only 46% of its energy comes from coal, so they are continuing to make strides. Energy companies in the region announced they have retired 12 gigawatts of coal-fired power since 2009 and will retire 30 gigawatts more by 2015, when two federal air-pollution measures for power plants take effect. It has been reliably reported that the amount retired may be closer to 54 gigawatts.

As noted above, the US is third in the world behind China and Germany in alternative energy development. What developments have taken place have been due to federal pollution standards, the miles per gallon standards, and what independent states and private investors have done. Thus a great deal of the current US standing is based on a smattering of smaller efforts which are unfocused, but replicable. With solar energy on the uptick and wind energy in 38 states, along with various biomass, tidal, and river current efforts,we have much to build on. At this point, we simply lack the holistic, long-term eco-energy strategy which will tie this all together and help us move as rapidly as we can away from our dependence on fossil fuels. In the meantime we must be content with hit-or-miss measures on a comparably small scale.

Ironically, those measures have made a few far-seeing people quite wealthy from investing in clean energy. Let me close by looking at one of the more public figures, Al Gore, who has become a very rich man. The Washington Post recently reported that his net worth these days is around $100 million–50 times what it was after leaving the office of Vice President–mostly as a result of investments in clean energy. This gives the lie to those nay-sayers who insist that investing in clean energy will not pay dividends and that the government should ignore clean energy and continue to pursue such projects as off-shore drilling, fracking, “clean” coal–while maintaining the $2.7 - $4 billion a year in tax subsidies to Big Oil.

Moreover, the success rate of renewable energy companies may be far higher than some opponents of clean energy would like to admit. During the first Presidential debate candidate Romney claimed that over half the green energy companies benefiting from stimulus dollars failed. In fact, just 1.4 percent of the US dollars invested in green energy went to companies that had failed by the end of 2011, according to CleanTechnica.

In this country we need to begin coordinated long-range planning with all concerned parties involved. The fact the European Union and Asia-Pacific regions are leading the charge is telling. We cannot have one of the major US political parties denying publicly what they know privately is perfectly true. They are doing a disservice to their voters, their country and the planet in encouraging us to continue down our present path. As I said above, this is a path that will lead to calamity. To be sure, the US cannot divorce itself completely from fossil fuels. But we need a coherent plan to lessen their use beginning yesterday. The fuel for solar energy is free and harnessing it continues to become more efficient and cost-effective. The same is true for energy from the tides as well as wind energy which blows almost constantly in many regions in the US and off its shores.

The stimulus packages made available by the Obama administration clearly have helped bring money into the clean energy industry, but Congress has been known to play keep-away with those subsidies; both sides of the political aisle need to get foursquare behind the clean energy movement, help create jobs, boost the economy, and head in the direction of countries like Germany and China. The reason this has not happened to this point is a matter of some speculation. But it is fairly clear that the companies that make huge profits from the continued use of fossil fuels would prefer that we not wean ourselves from those sources of energy (despite the damage we are doing to the environment and the planet itself ), and they pour large amounts of money into the pockets of politicians to see to it that it doesn’t happen. One would like to think that these companies will eventually see the handwriting on the wall and come on board the clean energy train: there’s money to be made and theirs are, after all, finite resources. In the meantime the clean energy success stories continue to pop up from time to time and people like Al Gore still believe and their belief is clearly paying off. 

It’s time for the dirty energy industry and the Congress to join people like Al Gore, Warren Buffet, and T. Boone Pickens and stop fiddling while Rome (and the rest of the world) burns. [Note: This paper is a collaborative effort that draws on a good deal of material provided by a friend and fellow-blogger who prefers to remain anonymous. You are encouraged to visit his blog at www.musingsofanoldfart. wordpress.com.]

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From the Empirical Archives: Democracy: From the Ground Up by Gar Alperovitz

Democracy: From the Ground Up

Gar Alperovitz

Originally published in the January 2013 issue of Empirical

What of the central question of democracy itself ? Many have noted the trends of failing belief, the radical decline in voting, the massive role of money and corporate influence in lobbying, media, and elections–and in general, the large numbers who surveys show feel that “our national experiment in self-government is faltering.” That millions of Americans believe “people like me have almost no say in the political system” has been a wake-up call for many on the left, right, and center.

Several lines of reassessment have become increasingly important as the crisis has deepened. The first, directed to foundational “grassroots” community issues, has come into ever more sharply defined focus in recent years. The work of Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam kicked off a major debate on one aspect of the problem. Putnam probed well beneath such surface-level issues as the fall-off in voting to focus instead on local citizen associations, networks, formal and informal clubs, neighborhood groups, unions, and the like. Large numbers of Americans, he suggested, were now both actually and metaphorically “bowling alone” rather than in association with others. Putnam suggested that a decline in associational activity, in turn, had produced a decline in trust and “social capital”–foundational requirements of democracy in general. His response was straightforward: the nation should develop as many ways as possible to encourage local involvement–the only way, he held, Americans could hope to renew the basis of democracy throughout the larger system.

Quite apart from Putnam’s studies, general analysis, and recommendations (many of which were challenged by scholars), of particular interest was the explosive reaction to his argument–and the reorientation of strategic concern it represented. The outpouring of interest his first rather academic article on the subject produced revealed that Putnam had struck a powerful nerve. “Seldom has a thesis moved so quickly from scholarly obscurity to conventional wisdom,” observed former White House aide and political scientist William Galston.

Especially important was what was not at the center of attention: Putnam and many who responded to him did not focus on national parties, national interest groups, national lobbying, national campaign finance laws, or national political phenomena in general. What he and they focused on was the “micro” level of citizen groups and citizen involvement. Here, at the very local level, was now the place to begin to look for democratic renewal.

The heart of the larger foundational argument–and this is a critical emphasis–might be put thus: Is it possible to have Democracy with a Big D in the system as a whole if you do not have real democracy with a small d at the level where people live, work, and raise families in their local communities? If the answer is no, then a necessary if not sufficient condition of rebuilding democracy in general is to get to work locally.

Putnam essentially put into modern form Tocqueville’s contention that “in democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge.” There is also clearly a close connection between Nisbet-style “intermediate association” arguments for liberty and neo-Tocquevillian associational arguments for democracy.

But Tocqueville, in fact, had gone beyond “associations” to take up the deeper question of how–and whether–democratic practice is reflected not only in civil society, but in actual local government. “Municipal institutions,” he stressed, “constitute the strength of free nations. Town meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within the people’s reach, they teach men how to use and enjoy it.”

John Stuart Mill similarly held that direct experience with local governance was essential to “the peculiar training of a citizen, the practical part of the political education of a free people.” Mill pointed out that “we do not learn to read or write, to ride or swim, by being merely told how to do it, but by doing it, so it is only by practicing popular government on a limited scale, that the people will ever learn how to exercise it on a larger.”

Understood in this broader framework, Putnam’s thesis is only one of a group of arguments that focus primary attention on what goes on in local communities. Indeed, an important and expanding group of theorists have picked up on the more demanding “small d” Tocqueville-Mill argument that an authentic experience of participation in local government decision making is essential if democracy is to be meaningful. 

A forceful statement of the more fundamental judgment is that of political scientist Stephen Elkin, a theorist who stresses that citizens must experience the actual use of power: “Civic associations cannot do [this] job: The element of authority is missing.” Again, “for citizens to have any concern for the public interest . . . they must have the experience of grappling with its elements. For any significant number of citizens this can happen only through local political life.”

Other democratic theorists who urge reinvigorating democracy through a renewal of local governing institutions include Jane Mansbridge, Michael Sandel, and Benjamin Barber. Mansbridge argues that citizens are “most likely to come to understand their real interests in a small democracy, like a town or workplace, where members make a conscious effort to choose democratic procedures appropriate to the various issues that arise.” In his study, Democracy’s Discontent, Sandel holds that it is important to recover the meaning of the “republican tradition” in American political life–a tradition that “taught that to be free is to share in governing a political community that controls its own fate. Self-government . . . requires political communities that control their destinies, and citizens who identify sufficiently with those communities to think and act with a view to the common good.”

Barber’s treatise on Strong Democracy emphasizes the importance of different forms of knowledge to different degrees of democratic practice: “[K]nowing your rights and knowing the law are concomitants,” he suggests, “of minimalist or weak democratic politics.” Something far more powerful is needed–and this requires a very different understanding of how knowledge is acquired. “In the strong democratic perspective, knowledge and the quest for knowledge tend to follow rather than to precede political engagement: give people some significant power and they will quickly appreciate the need for knowledge, but foist knowledge on them without giving them responsibility and they will display only indifference.” It follows that “only direct political participation–activity that is explicitly public” can achieve real civic education in a democracy.

The necessity of an authentic experience of government has, of course, also been stressed over the years by numerous conservative theorists–and they, too, have consistently urged the importance of direct local involvement. Hayek speaks for many: “Nowhere has democracy ever worked well without a great measure of local self-government, providing a school of political training for the people at large . . . where responsibility can be learned and practiced in affairs with which most people are familiar, where it is the awareness of one’s neighbor rather than some theoretical knowledge of the needs of other people which guides action.”

The basic community-oriented emphasis can also be found in a line of arguments urging decentralization of government within large cities so as to increase opportunities for genuine participation. Early in the postwar era, philosopher Hannah Arendt (drawing on a Jeffersonian idea) suggested that “ward republics” be established at the neighborhood level. “It is futile,” urban theorist Jane Jacobs similarly urges, “to expect that citizens will act with responsibility, verve and experience on big, city-wide issues when self-government has been rendered all but impossible on localized issues, which are often of the most direct importance to people.” Jacobs, too, proposed transferring a number of municipal decisions to the level of neighborhood

districts.

There are also converging themes of community self-determination in the work of important black theorists: political scientist Phillip Thompson, for instance, draws on the earlier work of W. E. B. DuBois to argue, “Mass incarceration of black male youth, extensive state ‘therapeutic’ management of poor African American communities . . . make it clear that African American communities are in need of strong independent civic institutions capable of providing their own civic voice and social order in the face of extensive external corporate and governmental control.” (A number of specific proposals to undergird local organizations, neighborhood efforts, and broader public participation have been offered by different writers. In connection with their “associative democracy” approach, Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers have proposed devolution of certain public functions and financial assistance to citizen groups so that among other things they can become “more supportive of the range of egalitarian-democratic norms.” Jeremy Rifkin suggests public payment of a “social wage” for community-serving work in–and tax deductions for time contributed to–legally certified tax-exempt, nonprofit organizations. Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis have urged limited tax credits (rather than deductions) for contributions to nonprofit organizations.)

The argument that nurturing democracy with a small d is necessary if big-D Democracy in the system as a whole is ever to be renewed brings into sharp relief some of the real-world conditions required to make this meaningful. A central question concerns the economic underpinnings of local democracy. It is obvious, for instance, that active citizen participation in local community efforts is all but impossible if the economic rug is regularly pulled out from under them. What, precisely, is “the community” when citizens are forced to move in and out of specific geographic localities because of volatile local economic conditions? 

Who has any real stake in long-term decisions?

That a substantial degree of economic stability is one of the critical preconditions of local involvement is documented in several important studies. A recent analysis of the 2000 election by the U.S. Census Bureau demonstrates that “citizens who had lived in the same home for five or more years had a voting rate of 72 percent . . . ”–much higher than rates for individuals who had lived at their residences for a shorter time. Again, Sidney Verba, Kay Schlozman, and Henry Brady have shown that “years in community” is a positive predictor of both national and local-level civic involvement, with the effect nearly twice as strong for local involvement. Another detailed survey of nearly thirty thousand Americans undertaken in 2000 similarly shows that years lived in one’s community and the expectation of staying in one’s community are correlated with increased civic participation.

A related issue involves the power relationships that set the terms of reference for municipal government. Numerous scholarly studies have demonstrated that local government decision making commonly is heavily dominated by the local business community. Commonly, too, the thrust of decisions favorable to business groups radically constrains all other choices. The use of scarce resources to develop downtown areas, and especially to attract or retain major corporations, inevitably absorbs funds that might alternatively be used to help low- and moderate-income neighborhood housing, schools, and community services.

The issue is not simply one of distribution. City Limits, an aptly titled study by Harvard political scientist Paul Peterson, demonstrates that as a result of the underlying relationships, policy choices are often “limited to those few which can plausibly be shown to be conducive to the community’s economic prosperity.” Partly this is because business owners have more money, hence usually more political influence. But quite apart from such considerations, local political leaders feel they must promote economic development, and they accordingly feel they need the help of the business community.

The “democracy with a small d” question is whether there can be any meaningful democratic decision making when allocations to achieve business priorities implicitly preempt alternative choices. If not–if most choices are radically hemmed in from the start by the need to be responsive to business–what is there to decide? And if there is little to decide, what is the meaning of democracy? And how, precisely, might the situation be altered, given the power of business interests in the system?

The conclusion–though not always brought into clear focus by theorists concerned with democracy and civil society–is inescapable: if the local foundations of democracy are to be meaningfully rebuilt, this also requires an approach to achieving greater local economic stability that does not rely so heavily on traditional business-oriented strategies. If municipalities are to be “delivered from their present economic bondage,” political scientist David Imbroscio observes, they must find ways “to promote economic vitality in their jurisdictions via the implementation of ‘alternative’ economic development strategies based on something other than capturing footloose investment.”

To the extent local economies can be made more stable, the economic environment in which local entrepreneurial businesses may flourish also obviously improves; hence, one of the foundational institutions of traditional conservative theories of liberty can also thereby be strengthened.

How to do this becomes the key question.

One method is obvious: as many have noted, cities anchored by universities, state capitals, and other major public facilities commonly enjoy greater economic stability. Economist Ann Markusen also points to many community-stabilizing policies that have been used to deal with dislocations associated with the Department of Defense base closings and related experience. Many experts–for instance, city planning professor Arthur C. Nelson, and sociologists John R. Logan and Harvey L. Molotch–have proposed a range of “development-from-below” strategies. These include diverse education and training programs, and loan, tax, procurement, and other policies to encourage business retention, entrepreneurship, and neighborhood capital accumulation.

A more fundamental structural approach intersects with the asset-based strategies considered in my article “Equality,” published in the August issue of Empirical. An important feature of worker-owned firms is that they not only change the ownership of wealth but also are far more anchored in local communities by virtue of the simple fact that worker-owners live in the community. “The only real way a community can regain control over its economic future is to rebuild from the ground up,” urges Michael Shuman, the author of Going Local. Over the long haul, he adds, this can only be done by supporting the development of noncorporate “community-friendly” enterprises that have many integral links to the locality. Real community democracy, in short, requires real community economic health–and the kinds of institutions that can sustain it. But this is obviously only one element in a comprehensive approach.

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