Nuclear Pakistan bad; Nuclear India good?

I just checked my e-mail and saw an "e-action alert" put out by Peace Action West dealing with the Bush Administration's recent success in what the Washington Post calls "reversing three decades of nonproliferation policy." Lacking knowledge of the existence of sources to contradict WaPo's characterization, although of course always suspicious of appearances of sudden reversals of US policy (since most of what the Bushistas have been doing has been an intensification or enhancement of previous policies), I will pass over this without further comment. However, the implication is very interesting, especially in light of the administration's bleating about Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and the general stir over the "Islamic bomb." Evidently, Pakistan can no longer be relied upon to be a nuclear partner. This role must pass to India, at least on the Subcontinent.

But why? Obviously, the recent upheavals in Pakistan must have something to do with this. Musharraf, our faithful client, was forced by an indigenous movement with no clear external sponsor or benefactor to step down. Although Benazir Bhutto may not have been a great democrat, and certainly the PPP has its own issues; although the movement has, at least as far as the media coverage I've seen of it would have it, largely been led by members of the indigenous elite; this is obviously in stark opposition to the interests of the Imperium. So a nuclear-armed Pakistan is no longer acceptable, although it may be again in the future if the Pakistani elites currently in power can be co-opted. This, of course, is simply the latest expression of the difficulty that the Imperium has had with Pakista; if it hadn't been for 9/11, we may very well not have accepted Pakistan as we did.

India, on the other hand, shows no such difficulty. Furthermore, one suspects that it has a significant advantage, at least in the eyes of the administration; it's not an Islamic state. In fact, with the BJP gaining power lately (and the Bushistas love their religious fanatics), one might characterize it as an explicitly anti-Islamic state. We see the typical divide-and-rule game being played here; support one group of religious fanatics against another. Israel vs. various Salafists and Shi‘ah extremists, Salafists vs. Shi‘ah, Hindus vs. Muslims, etc. So obviously the Bushistas are hoping to curry favor with a group that they know won't traffic with the enemy.

But what else do they get out of it?

Chevron posts record profits. Wall Street is not happy!

I was reading the Contra Costa Times yesterday, and came across an interesting story. It seems that Chevron is reporting record quarterly profits for the 2nd quarter of 2008, to the tune of $5.98 billion. But Wall Street is unhappy that their per-share profit was 13 ¢ less than what was expected, and so they're dumping Chevron stock because they can't meet performance expectations. It doesn't matter that Chevron's been breaking records, Wall Street has to have more!

Lest this be mistaken for an isolated incident, ExxonMobil is facing similar demands. This captures what's wrong with the American economy (and, incidentally, the global economy, since the American economy is the world economy, and vice versa); it's not enough that Chevron, ExxonMobil, et. al. are ripping the heart out of indigenous communities the world 'round (this includes the US, where the indigenous communities are largely people of color whose ancestors have only been here a few generations), destroying the biosphere around them, and destroying their cultures. Wall Street demands more. But why are financial markets so damned important? Who cares about Wall Street? Corporations apparently do.

Most corporations have significant amounts of shares owned by voting blocs of major institutional investors, e.g. banks and private equity firms. These firms have no interest in the management of the company except as a profit-making enterprise, and therefore impose requirements on the officers of the company, who have a fiduciary duty to the shareholders to provide the latter with a return on their investment (called "creating value for the shareholders"). Officers, such as CEOs, CFOs, et. al., can be removed if they aren't performing to the expectations of the investors. Piss off a big enough group of investors, and you find yourself faced with a shareholder revolt. That this doesn't happen often is a testament to the hegemony that the major financial players have over executives. Business school is designed to teach you how to run a business properly, and above all else this means ensuring that enough of your investors are satisfied enough with the return they're getting on their investment.

It doesn't matter how you accomplish this. The only thing that matters is that you provide your most powerful investors with enough of a return to keep them from breathing down your back. But these investors, who are, after all, in the business to get rich, aren't satisfied with getting the same rate of return; first, there's inflation, which means that a given return this year isn't worth as much as last year, and is worth more than it will be next year. But there are so many other opportunities for investment out there, and the option for re-investment must be open. This is a second factor. But perhaps the most telling point is that, with the way the economy fluctuates, and the periodic (and it seems increasingly frequent) crises, these investors want their money now before they can't get it anymore because the value that was once possessed by this company is lost, and anyway it's best to be rich now and not later.

The venality, the sheer avarice, is overwhelming. This is the "free market" that our "leaders" seek to protect. Is it worth saving?

Mea Culpa and more Propaganda Model

Ok, so the promised follow-up post on Ron Paul never materialized. Months later, it's no longer such a pressing issue, as McCain has sewn up the nomination. Obama has all but sewn up the Democrats'. Ron Paul has once again been relegated to the sidelines (where he belongs, IMO, but not for the reasons he's been relegated there). But Glenn Greenwald posted something a couple weeks ago (I don't have regular internet access, so I'm having to play catch-up) which I think highlights a favorite topic of mine when it comes to media behavior, namely Chomsky and Herman's propaganda model of journalism. To wit, on July 21st, Glenn wrote

There are all sorts of reasons why our presidential elections center on personality-based sideshows (even Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell said as much about her own paper's coverage today). Those gossipy matters are easier for our slothful, vapid media stars to digest and spout. They require very few resources to cover. The campaign consultants who run national political campaigns are experts in P.R. strategies for packaging personalities and indifferent to policy debates, etc. etc.

(emphasis mine).

This is my obligatory plug for this theory that I find so powerful a tool for understanding why the major commercial media outlets so such an execrable job of covering politics. See my first post for a summary of the theory. What Glenn talks about in his post fits right in with the "official sources" filter that Chomsky and Herman posit as part of their model. Because media outlets are for-profit, in our stock-market-driven economy, their parent companies do everything they can to reduce the cost of doing business while maximizing revenue (mostly selling ads) because their shareholders demand it. Forget long-term sustainability; we're after the most bang for our buck now, before the market goes south on us again (because it inevitably will). Who wants to wait ten or twenty years to see a good return on their investment, when there are so many more profitable investments to be made in the interim?

This provides me with a neat segue to my next topic, Chevron profits and why they're not enough...

Something to Tide You Over

The following is a paper I wrote for my freshman English composition course. Although there are parts (mostly my transition from talking about the Propaganda Model to the poll) that I now wish were better-written, I liked it, overall. FWIW, the paper received an "A."

How the Media Led us to War: 9/11, Iraq, and Government Propaganda

As the primary source through which most people gain information about the world around them, mass media plays a major role in shaping how they think about it. In order to effectively disseminate its message, the media must present itself as objective and unbiased. Too often, the media does just the opposite. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, media coverage became more biased than ever. As the United States began preparing for its invasion of Iraq in 2003, a slew of justifications were offered, none of which have proven true in retrospect, but all of which were unquestioningly disseminated by the mass media. One key to understanding how the media allowed itself to be duped is the propaganda model developed by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. In “The Propaganda Model,” Herman formulates the structural critique of media institutions he and Chomsky first promulgated in Manufacturing Consent, arguing that the mass media perform a vital role in disseminating information that is helpful to elite – defined as corporate and government – interests. In this respect, they can be described as propaganda organs. Using a series of five filters to describe the selection decisions, Herman finds that the mass media are, by default, outlets of official propaganda due to the nature of the filters. However, in “Judith Miller, The New York Times, and the Propaganda Model,” Oliver Boyd-Barrett argues that the normal media practices upon which the propaganda model depend fail to fully explain why the media was such a willing participant in the official disinformation campaign leading up to the Iraq War. He traces this willingness to co-optation of journalists by the government. Judith Miller recently became well-known for her refusal to testify before the Special Prosecutor investingate the Plame CIA Leak scandal. Before this, however, Barrett demonstrates that she is part of a long tradition of journalists who were subverted by the CIA. He maintains that this use of journalists by the government is a factor for which Herman's model fails to account. Therefore, the misperceptions that the elite media spread and which the Program on International Policy Attitudes and Knowledge Networks (PIPA/KN) detail in their report Misperceptions, The Media, and the Iraq War are the result of a deliberate government misinformation campaign. The government was able to get support for the war through its media campaign, which effectively imparted the message that the reports that Miller was publishing, reinforced by TV news, was the truth. The propaganda model predicts that this is partially the result of ideological confluence between major media figures, ownership, and editorial boards with regards to the broad policy agendas of the incumbent government. Julie Charlip’s experiences, as discussed in “A Real Class Act: Searching for Identity in a Classless Society,” confirm this. Going to the right schools and getting the right kind of education translates into success, according to her observations. The correlation she observes between attendance at elite universities and success in the newsroom is very strong. So, too, is the correlation between the success of this class of person and the rise of unscrupulous agents within the media. Charlip observes that since these agents tend to be from more privileged backgrounds, they will attend the elite schools. The operation of these factors serves to create an institution that is incapable of exposing government lies for what they are. In order to do so, the media itself would have to admit that it is not fair, balanced, or objective. If the illusion of media objectivity were compromised, journalists and editors would soon be out of jobs and media holding companies would face financial ruin. It is for these reasons that the media allowed themselves to be accomplices in government propagandizing in the run-up to the Iraq War.

In order to explain how formally free news media in a market economy operating without external censorship become a set of propaganda outlets, Herman proposes a set of five filters that collectively strain media content that is unsupportive of what he terms elite agendas. Herman discusses the history of the working-class press in England, as a means of demonstrating how elite dominance of media ownership came about. One might question why government censorship is not practiced, as in China; apart from the fact that this would be unpalatable, it has proven to be counterproductive in the past. The British tried it in the nineteenth century “by using libel laws and prosecutions, by requiring an expensive security bond as a condition for publication, and by imposing various taxes to drive out radical media by raising their costs” (24). It was not until the repeal of these laws that the working-class press began to lose ground to the commercial press. Herman cites the increase in newspaper circulation and associated increase in capital requirements as the factor that led to its demise. Unable to keep up with the increased costs doing business due to a lack of advertising revenues, the alternative press was unable to compete (24). Papers that did attract advertisers, in contrast, could substantially lower the price of a copy of their publications. Lower per-copy costs meant greater circulation, and thus greater revenues (25). A positive feedback loop is therefore initialized, wherein media products that successfully draw advertisers are able to lower their copy prices, gaining more market-share and more advertisers. Thus, market forces prove themselves to be a more efficacious means of controlling media output than state censorship. Similarly, the media is dependent on large institutions for the raw information that becomes news. Herman identifies three main reasons why the media tends to treat these sources as authoritative: first, the media require a “steady, reliable flow” of newsworthy information, which they can obtain from these sources at low cost to themselves; second, the fact that these institutions have the status that they do in our society causes the media grant them credibility by default; and third, the fact that the media purports to be objective requires that they maintain this image both to maintain their own credibility and to protect them from the flak machine (26). As to the journalists themselves, Herman indicates that journalists accept the official ideology of the time. Although Herman focused mainly on anti-communism, Barrett suggests that one can understand this convergence in a broader context, namely “the benefits of neo-liberal global capitalism” (Barrett 436). Extending the propaganda model to apply to the media coverage of the events leading up to the US invasion of Iraq, Barrett finds that he requires a sixth filter, namely that of official subversion of journalists and media outlets. Examining media performance, he concludes that they went “well beyond, or rather against the call of duty,” in their reporting of the events due to the total lack of examination of the administration's arguments (437). In particular, he examines the performance of Judith Miller whom he claims was involved with various right-wing organizations including the American Enterprise Institute, and Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. What he observes in Miller's coverage is nothing short of disgraceful. Time and again, she prints reports that rely on little more than hearsay and innuendo, treated as authoritative because it's from an official source. Even more than this, however, she appears to have had the ear of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Undersecretary Douglas Feith, since she “threatened army personnel that she would report decisions about which she disagreed” to these figures (439). However, Barrett suggests a more complex reason than simple ideological convergence for this behavior. In fact, as New York Metro.com columnist Franklin Foer observes, the Pentagon Office of Special Plans was a major source for her reporting (440). Observing that “Miller had cultivated strong sources…among the neoconservatives” who consistently supplied her with stories and quotes, Barrett indicates that the editorial board of The New York Times deliberately compromised its position by giving Miller carte blanche to uncritically parrot the information these sources gave her (440). Just as advertisers reward media compliance with continued patronage and threaten disobedience with withdrawal of the same, then, official sources can reward compliant journalists with the opportunity for scoops that are guaranteed to make the front page. Normal journalistic practices alone, then, cannot wholly explain the behavior in question.

Because they explain behavior and performance, neither Herman’s not Barrett’s propaganda models predict effects. But they point out deficiencies in coverage whose effects can be measured, and they explain why the news we get is propaganda. Since the Iraq War was clearly supported by the government, it is an excellent case-study for these models. Having conducted numerous polls regarding beliefs and attitudes towards Iraq before and after the initial invasion, the PIPA/KN discovered that a majority of those polled “believed that Iraq played an important role” in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11), one of the official justifications for the invasion, and that “a minority even expressed the belief that they had seen 'conclusive evidence' of such involvement,” despite the fact that the intelligence community expressly denied the existence of any such evidence, and even admitted that the link between Iraq and 9/11 was unsupported by evidence (1). Furthermore, even though a clear majority of public opinion throughout the world was against the invasion, PIPA/KN found that a minority of Americans were aware of this (1). What the polls found was that between June and September of 2003, 57% of Americans believed that Iraq had some connection with 9/11, in August 2003, 69% thought it was likely that Saddam Hussein was personally involved, and that an average of 48% of people between June and September of 2003 believed that the US had found evidence linking Iraq and al-Qaeda, a militant Islamic group blamed for organizing and executing the attacks (4). Unsurprisingly, PIPA/KN found that the highest incidences of persons holding these and other misperceptions (such as Iraqi possession of WMD) were among those who got their information primarily from major news outlets, and that these constituted a majority of those surveyed. Viewers of FOX news outlets (famous for its tagline of “fair and balanced reporting”) were the most likely to hold these misperceptions, according to the poll (14). The propaganda model appears to work here. The media spread information in a highly credulous manner, and appears to have done it so well that President Bush was re-elected on the strength of the reports. Since the government was the party most responsible for selling the war, the majority of press items obviously came from official (and unofficial) government sources. Instead of being “adversarial” as the media likes to portray itself, it was, in fact, a propaganda organ for the Bush administration and beat the war drum along with administration figures. Charlip grants an insider’s view on some reasons why journalists act in this manner. Notwithstanding the timeline conflict observed between her account and Herman’s analysis, she keenly observes the rise of the professional journalist, as initially “to [her] it felt like [she’d] learned a trade rather than received an education” at Rider College (88). A key admission, here: when she learned of the large journalism programs at Midwestern universities, and encountered people with college degrees, she was blown away. Her class background – and therefore educational background – was not conducive to assimilation into the system. Seeing a trend toward “better-educated reporters, self-educated professionals” who were inevitably children of the elite, Charlip notes that the “scrappy self-trained reporters could still go far” but they lacked access to choice assignments such as Washington or foreign affairs (89). Her later experiences reinforce Herman's assertions about the nature of the media, when she comments on “editors who were ambitious climbers and publishers just out to make money,” observing first-hand the confluence between editorial and financial decisions and the intense desire on the part of the publishers to maintain profitability (89). Time and again, Charlip returns to reference her class background as a major factor in why she becomes dissatisfied with journalism. Implicit in this is the fact that she self-identifies as working class, and regards herself as an outsider. Perhaps her rejection by higher-class schools, Bates and Colby Colleges, Wesleyan University, and Ithaca College, had something to do with this (87-88). She cites an incident in which she visited one of the aforementioned institutions with her mother who was regarded by the dean of students “with a sniff of disdain” (88). She was positive that this would not have occurred if her class background had been better. Charlip demonstrates clearly that journalists themselves think along lines that are more friendly to business, with their professional attitudes. Her experiences, in fact, confirm the propaganda model’s expectations about the confluence of interests between journalism and business.

What emerges is a picture in which journalistic norms play a role in selecting what news gets covered. Charlip’s experiences in journalism provide confirmation of the ideological confluence between journalists and elites. The “professional” attitude she describes, which expressly avoids and even implicitly condemns the labor struggles of the class of journalists to which she belongs, is precisely the attitude which survives today. Although the concepts and practices of journalistic professionalism actually predate the 1970’s, the fact remains that any attitude that regards itself as “professional” and above the fray is necessarily siding with institutional dominance because these attitudes regard direct struggle as unbecoming, and will respond well to co-optation by superiors within the institution. However, the adherence to the norms of the journalistic profession upon which the propaganda model as defined by Herman depends cannot alone predict all the biased coverage that emerges, as Barrett observes. Reporters often go above and beyond the call of duty, as it were, to present a biased viewpoint. Although journalistic norms will explain why other journalists follow, they do not explain why the behavior originates. Barrett’s co-optation filter, however, does fill this role. Institutions that subvert media institutions and journalists have a leg up on those that cannot. Because of their access to the resources necessary to do this, the elites will always be able to subvert journalism more often than those that oppose them. Since the mass media, as the PIPA/KN report indicates, influences popular opinion as the primary means of dissemination of the propaganda that elite institutions desire to propagate, the media bubble is very resistant to penetration by outside influences. If journalists and media institutions were to admit their role in disseminating government propaganda, their credibility would be forever compromised. Although, in their more candid moments, many of them admit that they aren’t as objective as they claim to be, even here they dissemble in an effort to avoid exposing the truth of their complicity. As the propaganda campaign surrounding Iraq War demonstrates, the elite media cannot be relied upon as critical opponents of the state. Greater attention must be paid to alternative sources of information if the American public wishes to avoid being duped by unscrupulous administrations because it is clear that the structural factors that create the environment in which the journalistic practices detailed herein flourish will not permit current institutions do this job. But no mistake should be made; those same factors will necessarily condition any successful movement in journalism.

Works Cited

Boyd-Barrett, Oliver. “Judith Miller, The New York Times, and the Propaganda Model.” Journalism Studies 5 (2004): 435-449. EBSCOHost. Franklin D. Schurz Library, South Bend, IN. 28 November 2005 http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&an=15306410

Charlip, Julie. “A Real Class Act: Searching for Identity in a Classless Society.” Making Sense: Essays on Art, Science, and Culture. Eds. Brittenham, Coleman, et. al. Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006.

Herman, Edward S. “The Propaganda Model.” The Myth of the Liberal Media: An Edward Herman Reader. Ed. Edward Herman. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1999. 23-39.

Program on International Policy Attitudes / Knowledge Networks. Misperceptions, The Media, and the Iraq War. Washington: Program on International Policy Attitudes, 2003.

The substance of this paper should not come as a surprise to most. It's intended not as a "look what I figured out" piece so much as a reinforcement and refinement of readers' existing attitudes. I hope to have my next post on Ron Paul up before the week is out, and I'll expand the scope of my criticism. I'm also planning something on the Indian Casino initiatives, in an attempt to be reasonably topical.

Ron Paul's Racism (Part 1)

On Sunday, December 23rd, 2007, Ron Paul appeared on Meet the Press. In the course of the interview, Russert asked Paul a number of very predictable softball questions. But about three-quarters of the way through the interview, the topic turned to race and civil rights. Since this an area that is of keen interest to me (and in fact an area I've studied), my curiosity was piqued. It was all the more interesting because of the controversy surrounding some of Paul's past communiqués, and the racism supposedly found in them. The transcript can be found here (the relevant portion is on page 4), and the interview was captured on YouTube (the relevant portion, beginning around 04:045, can be found here):

Russert begins by referring to a speech that Ron Paul gave in 2004, in which, as Russert quotes him saying, Paul claims that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "did not improve race relations or enhance freedom," "contrary to the claims of its supporters." Rather, Paul argues, it "increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty." Russert claims that the Act "gave equal rights African-Americans to vote, to live, to go to lunch counters, and you seem to be criticizing it." Although Timmeh is being really stupid and patronizing, as appears to be his wont, since the Act didn't give rights to anyone, but attempted to ensure that those rights ceased being infringed, the voting-rights provisions weren't given any teeth, there were no housing discrimination provisions in the '64 Civil Rights Act, and the fight was about a hell of a lot more than just being able to sit at a lunch counter, he is nevertheless correct in raising it as an issue.

Paul's response is to suggest that it would be appropriate for the federal government to desegregate "a federal lunch counter...or...the military." As a non sequitur, he throws out that the "government...caused all the segregation in the military until after World War II," as if the government was not simply reflecting the social norms of the people that made it up and that it represented; but his real point is that "you're not compelled in your house to invade strangers that you don't like. So it's a property rights issue. And this idea that all private property is under the domain of the federal government I think is wrong." Leaving aside the malapropism here (since it's clear that Paul means "invite" and not "invade"), not only was this not the rubric under which the Act was passed, it completely ignores the fact that the Act was very limited in its scope, especially as compared to later bills; this is a favorite libertarian scare-tactic, and the targeting happens to make it a favorite White Supremacist scare-tactic as well. The suggestion that African-Americans were demanding that the federal government force whites to let the former into their homes is ludicrous as well as blatantly prejudiced. Indeed, the Act was specifically passed pursuant to the Congress' powers to regulate interstate commerce as a result of late-19th-century Supreme Court cases that held that the Congress was not able to regulate private behavior that may violate equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, only States.

The Constitution expressly gives the Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce; even if Paul were to try to argue that this does not apply to industry, substantial provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would still be applicable to the lunch counter situation, as it is unambiguously engaged in commerce, i.e. the sale of goods. Let's assume for a moment that the interstate commerce clause does not give the Congress the power to regulate a Woolworth's lunch counter; wouldn't a judgment in favor of the government in suits brought under the Act be a failure of the courts to properly interpret the definition of interstate commerce, rather than the law itself? Paul seems to think that the federal government basically doesn't have the power to regulate commerce unless the commerce in question is specifically interstate, i.e. the goods are in the process of being moved across state lines. This sort of strict interpretation is laughable, and also dangerous; Paul claims to be an originalist, but in Gibbons v. Ogden, the Supreme Court under John Marshall (who wrote the opinion) ruled that "[T]he power of Congress does not stop at the jurisdictional lines of the several states. It would be a very useless power if it could not pass those lines." Subsequent courts have upheld this interpretation.

One could argue about the merits of this position, and this is not intended as a blanket endorsement of the opinions of the Court, but I will say that I lean toward a favorable position even if I'm not wholly in agreement. I think that, in order for the Congress to effectively be able to exercise its power to regulate interstate commerce, it necessarily requires the power to act even where goods are not in the act of crossing state lines. Of course, this means that virtually all commerce is now subject to the jurisdiction of the US Congress, as virtually all commerce involves something that crosses state lines or national boundaries. I can empathize with an argument that the power is interpreted too broadly in some instances, but if Paul wishes to restrict the power of the US Congress to regulate this kind of commerce, then he should sponsor a Constitutional Amendment and say so, not complain that the federal government is unconstitutionally infringing on individual liberties.

But complain he does. "If it were written the same way, where the federal government's taken over property--has nothing to do with race relations," he replies to Russert's question whether he would vote against the Civil Rights Act "if it [were] today." It has nothing to do with race relations? According to the definition of race relations I found in the dictionary, "cultural contacts and relations between people of different races," where relations are defined as "[t]he mutual dealings or connections of persons, groups, or nations in social, business, or diplomatic matters." This seems the most logical and precise definition of "race relations" for this situation; clearly, the Civil Rights Act does have something to do with race relations in this sense. I'm inclined to suspect that Paul is speaking in some sort of code, here; I can't say with any certainty what he actually means, but his statement is prima facie false.

Although I can't say with any certainty what he actually means, I can make a few educated guesses. The first thing that comes to mind is that he means some sense of "diplomatic relations" between the races; I'm tempted to leave aside the obvious category errors here, but then they'd just be white elephants in the room and hinder my purpose here. Race as a sociological category may be useful in analyzing society but it is not a valid anthropological category; it's purely social construct, with no real empirical basis. Race is a vague reflection of certain physiological differences that appear as a result of selective adaptation of sub-populations to differing environments, and maps these onto cultural adaptations and variances. Unfortunately, culture differs so wildly even among "racial" groups that it's impossible to do this in a way that will be verifiable with empirical observation; you're always going to get false positives and false negatives because you're comparing apples and oranges.

That aside, one can legitimately, while acknowledging the lack of anthropological validity of racial categories, speak of race as a sociological phenomenon. But the sense in which Paul appears to be speaking of race relations, that is, explicitly excluding anything but racial sentiment, excludes most of the empirical underpinnings of real race relations. Ron Paul knows full well that you can't legislate racial sentiment; he is arguing against precisely this point, so the statement is valid only rhetorically. Thus, he effectively argues that the government should not and can not pass legislation that makes it illegal for someone engaged in commerce to discriminate against anyone on the basis of several factors, race being the most salient for the purposes of this discussion. Paul, then, is arguing that property rights trump all other considerations.

This is a fairly extreme stance, and one I'm sure a great number of Americans would disagree with if they thought it about it even briefly. Leaving aside the complex issue of what precisely constitutes property (which is a legal concept in the first place), let's allow that there is such a thing and that there are rights attached to having it. Also leaving aside the complex issues surrounding the purpose of our property rights regime and its history, we can agree that at its basis it's intended to prevent wholesale expropriation by any party of the basis of human livelihood. That material goods are necessary for human survival, happiness, and progress cannot be questioned, and so in order to promote what we feel is the best use of these goods, we create this concept of property and attach rights to its use. So property is intended as a means of ensuring people's welfare; property rights were never intended to be sovereign.

Only people can own property. But Paul's argument only makes sense if real people aren't involved, since ownership of property is only intended as a means of ensuring welfare. Property rights being sovereign in themselves only make sense if property itself is viewed as a person: but this is fetishism! Ron Paul is acting as if property itself can have rights. In addition to leading to racism, this is just nonsensical and irrational.

Moving on, he takes a curious position about Lincoln and the Civil War: That he started the Civil War to free the slaves, and expand the power of the Federal Government. There are a few problems with this statement. First, Lincoln didn't start the Civil War. Second, the war wasn't started to free the slaves. Third, Lincoln's intent was not to expand the power of the Federal Government.

As with any conflict, the Civil War was the culmination of a long series of events. Ascribing the beginning of any war to a single event is dangerous, because it risks oversimplifying the complex way that events tend to slide into war; World War II, for example, is commonly regarded as having begun with the Nazi invasion of Poland, but one could argue that it actually began with the invasion of the Sudetenland, or the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. In order to be able to discuss the conflict as a meaningful whole, it's necessary to somewhat arbitrarily pick a point which one can label as the beginning and to go on from there. In the case of World War II, the invasion of Poland is chosen because the UK and France finally chose to go to war after this, precipitating the global conflagration that we call World War II.

The Civil War, however, is even more complex because of the ongoing violence over slavery. The question of slavery was controversial as far back as the Founding, and the drafting of the Constitution; many people were opposed to its continuation, but in order to get the Constitution ratified, several compromises were reached, including the "Three-fifths compromise," and the clause preventing abolition of the slave trade before 1801. As successive compromises allowed the further expansion of slavery, the issue became more and more controversial. In particular, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created the conditions which led to Bleeding Kansas, arguably the true beginning of the Civil War.

The South had been threatening to secede for decades. The question of secession came up in 1828, during the crisis provoked by the Tariff of 1828, called the "Tariff of Abominations" in the South. Jackson, and the Congress, responded by passing legislation aimed at preventing any attempt at secession or resistance to federal authority in enforcing the Tariff. The Southern response was to abandon support for Jackson and the formation of the southern wing of the Whig Party, and attempted to re-define "states' rights," (which Paul references) away from merely a "weak, inactive, and frugal" federal government, according to historian Richard Ellis, toward one which "expand[ed] the powers of the federal government so that it could more effectively protect the peculiar institution," i.e. slavery. So much for states' rights!

The Missouri Compromise had been designed to prevent this by balancing the number of slave states with the number of free states admitted to the Union; for every free state that was admitted, a slave state had to be admitted, so as to preserve parity in the Congress, and especially the Senate, ensuring that slavery was protected from abolition and tariffs such as the Tariff of 1828. Since the South had very little manufacturing capacity, it was dependent upon imports; Europe, and especially Great Britain, had a stronger manufacturing sector than the United States and so could afford to sell better goods at lower prices. The Tariff of 1828 was designed to raise a protective wall to assist the nascent American manufacturing sector in building up its capacity; cheap British imports were hampering this, and industrial capacity was the key to economic and military success against other "civilized" powers. It was for this reason that it was so vociferously opposed by the South; they wanted continued access to cheap British imports. However, the North was beginning to heavily industrialize and therefore wanted to create internal conditions favorable to the kind of economic development that would be required to build (what then constituted) a modern industrial base. Since free states hosted a larger proportion of independent craftsmen and manufacturing centers than slave states (where free labor had a harder time competing with slave labor), the populations were more generally in favor of these sorts of measures.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act did away with this system, which, although imperfect, was generally regarded in its time as a reasonable compromise. In its place, it instituted the system of popular sovereignty, in which the population of a state would decide whether it would come into the Union free or slave. This, of course, was ripe for abuse. Southerners had a history of filibustering expeditions aimed at expanding the amount of land brought under cultivation by slaves (agriculture was the predominant pursuit of slave labor); a prime example of this was Texas, and the Mexican-American War was triggered largely by White Southerners invading and attempting to bring it into the Union, supported by a sympathetic Federal government. Much like Israel today, they sought to create "facts on the ground" that would promote their agenda. It was for this reason that they sought to colonize Kansas. The first large-scale settlement of the territory was by pro-slavery Southerners who, for various strategic reasons in addition to the Senate seats it would create, sought to bring Kansas in as a slave state. Anti-slavery Notherners organized their own immigrations to bring it in as a free state.

In November 1854, several thousand Southerners poured into Missouri in order to steal an election to Congress of a territorial delegate, in which 6,000 votes were cast in a territory which had 2,900 registered voters. A repeat of this scenario occurred in March 1855, during the territorial legislative elections. In response to the legislature's acts to cement slavery in Kansas, anti-slavery forces began an armed uprising. However, it was the "border ruffians" which committed the first major act of violence, the massacre at Lawrence, Kansas. It was arguably the electoral fraud in 1854-1855 that started the Civil War; they certainly precipitated Bleeding Kansas. The die had been cast; after this, there would be no peaceful resolution of the controversy. In fact, so polarized had the issue become that the infamous beating of Senator Charles Sumner by Congressman Preston Brooks occurred the next day in the Senate chambers.

If, however, one wishes to stick to the traditional date of April 12, 1861, the fiing on Fort Sumter, then hostilities were undeniably begun by the South. All questions of whether, upon secession, the property of Ft. Sumter should have gone to the State of South Carolina aside, there were ongoing negotiations on the issue. Indeed, Lincoln inherited a state of tension over the Fort, as his predecessor, James Buchanan, had refused to surrender the Fort. Further, the State of South Carolina had already acted to seize control of other installations and customs houses, without waiting for Lincoln to be inaugurated. They had already created a hostile environment; when Lincoln sent in an expedition to deliver supplies, which he notified the Governor of South Carolina he was doing, the Confederates opened fire. Whatever claim they might have had was abrogated by their initiation of hostilities. Ft. Sumter was designed to protect Charleston Harbor from naval bombardment, not shore bombardment, and thus posed little threat to the Confederate forces besieging it; if the fort had opened fire on Confederate ships, then the Confederates would have been well within their rights to open fire. However, until that happened, because of the complicated nature of the secession question, cooler heads should have prevailed. But the reality was that neither side was much in the mood for compromise; indeed, that word had become an epithet.

As to the question of freeing the slaves, Lincoln, although he was opposed to slavery, made it absolutely clear that he had no intention of pressing for abolition. Even then, no lover of the Black Man was he; as a solution to the race problem, he advocated "colonization," that is, transporting freedmen to Africa. He also supported the Corwin Amendment, which, although aimed at the border states and not the deep south, would have preserved slavery where it already existed. Although, of course, the question was always present and everyone understood that the war was provoked by slavery, there was no talk of abolishing slavery or freeing slaves up until the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862. During his first inaugural address, Lincoln said

Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that—

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

Furthermore, he stated

The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. Where hostility to the United States in any interior locality shall be so great and universal as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object.

So much for freeing the slaves! Ron Paul claims that Lincoln went to war "just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic" (I assume he means enhance the power of the federal government and get rid of the original intent of the republic). I'm not sure what Paul understands to be the original intent of the republic, but I also question what the relevance was. Lincoln was elected in 1860; the Constitution had been ratified 72 years previously, and the generation that brought it about was long dead. It's unlikely that anyone was around that remembered the ratification debates, and even more unlikely that there was anyone around that remembered life under the Articles of Confederation. The social and economic conditions facing the Framers no longer existed, and the understanding of what it meant to be American had changed. Furthermore, I'm sure the Framers would have been turning in their graves if they'd known about such things as the Fugitive Slave Act. Notwithstanding the questionable relevance of the "original intent" (whose original intent?), it should be observed that Madison wrote a letter intended for publication to Edward Everett repudiating secession during the Nullification Crisis.

As to enhancing the power of the federal government, Lincoln's expansion of the federal government's powers were a result of necessary emergency measures taken to prosecute the war. One does not need to accept the Civil War as legitimate in order to at least understand that Lincoln was doing what he thought needed to be done in order to ensure that the federal government prevailed. His imprisonment without trial of the Maryland government was arguably excessive, but the fact remained that the government was pro-secession and tolerated anti-Union rioting; Lincoln sent in troops to restore order. If Lincoln's aim were to quash all internal opposition, to push a radically centralizing agenda, and to free the slaves, why did he countermand orders confiscating slaves and release copperhead politicians? Furthermore, he claimed in a letter to A. G. Hodges, editor of the Frankfort, KY Commonwealth, "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong … And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling ... I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me." Hardly the thoughts of a man pushing a strongly centralizing agenda. Of course, we never got an opportunity to find out precisely what Lincoln had in store for the postwar period, since he was assassinated by John Wilkes Boothe in 1865.

Paul also claims that slavery "was phased out in every other country of the world. And the way I'm advising that it should have been done is do like the British empire did. You, you buy the slaves and release them." His first sentence requires careful parsing; does he mean that slavery had already been phased out in every other country of the world? Given the ignorance he's already shown toward the actual history of the Civil War, Civil Rights, and race relations, it would not be at all surprising if, in Ron Paul's fantasy world, this was the case. Like his position on the Civil Rights Act and race relations, but unlike his interpretation of the causes and consequences of the Civil War, this is empirically false. Slavery has continued into the present day; even assuming that Paul means the sort of chattel slavery that was practiced by European colonies, it's still false, as Brazil did not abolish slavery until 1888. One might excuse this as a minor error (one country), but Brazil had a significant slave population. Furthermore, although persons of African descent were being freed, other peoples (natives) were being enslaved into the early 20th Century in South America during the rubber boom. I suppose his ignorance on this count can be excused, since the topic is relatively obscure, but one would think that he or his staff would do more research before making such a categorical statement.

Moving on to his claim that, if only Lincoln would have offered to compensate slaveholders for their property, the Civil War could have been avoided, he again shows his preference for his ideological constructs over real history. I would like to see his evidence that anyone in what became the CSA would have been interested in selling their "property," or that there would have been such an opportunity if Lincoln had offered to do so (which he did). The entire basis of the South's position was the maintenance of slavery; they "rights" that belong to the states that they were complaining about was the right to own other people as property. There is ample evidence in the historical record that, even when faced with obsolescence, ruling classes prefer to remain in power (threatened with obsolescence in the sense that the economic system upon which their power rests is threatened with obsolescence; since the are the system (the system is theirs, only benefits them qua a class, and continues to exist because they will it), they are themselves threatened qua a class). If Paul has evidence that enough important Southerners were talking about getting rid of slavery altogether (there was talk, and the South did call some Blacks into service, but this was an act of desperation; the proposal to arm Blacks did not come until 1865, and they never saw action) or replacing it with some other form of servitude, I would like to see it. Indeed, there was resistance within the CSA to many of the measures that Richmond wished to institute to win the war; many state governors believed that Davis was trying to impose the same sort of "tyranny" which they'd just seceded in order to escape. As I mentioned in a discussion with bucky1 on Glenn Greenwald's Salon blog awhile back (on this same topic, ironically), the South would have itself faced a civil war if the central government had tried to seriously manumit the slaves, one which Richmond was by no means guaranteed to win.

Paul also makes a curious assertion, that "it [slavery] lingered for 100 years" after the Civil War; he's obviously referring to the second slavery, the re-impositions of conditions of bondage and servitude (without the formal legal construct of slavery) following the end of Reconstruction. Yet I thought the Civil Rights Act of 1964 didn't improve race relations? I thought we got rid of slavery after the Civil War? This is a very deep, internal contradiction to Paul's position on this matter. He's concerned about two groups with absolutely irreconcilable differences; which one is he going to pick? It's obvious that Paul is courting the African-American vote, but his position is not going to sit well with the black masses, since, by and large, they think the federal government is still cheating them out of their just desserts (and it's hard to argue with this position, even if some of them have strange ideas about what they've been promised). Many of them don't think white people are even capable of viewing them as human, and indeed they appear to be relegated to the ranks of the subhuman in the way they're treated by society at large. They're unlikely to be sympathetic to the argument that government intervention cannot help them, although many would be quick to agree that it hasn't helped much (of course, many of them realize that these programs were designed to fail in many ways and were only half-heartedly carried out in the best of times). They want the law to represent them as equally as it does whites and asians, and they want their fair share of the pie.

But Ron Paul appears to be arguing that the pie should not only not be divided more fairly, but that the common table upon which the pie sits should be done away with and everyone should go get their own pie. This argument may sit well with more prosperous blacks, especially the ones that have a family history of relative wealth and prosperity and have become assimilated into the mainstream American "middle class." There will, of course, be the elements within the masses that think this would solve their problem as well. For those blacks who have had and continue to have access to the financial and other economic and social resources necessary to carry out this program successfully, I'm sure it would work rather well as they would be able to exploit their fellow African-American just as their white classmates do. But the majority would be utterly undercut, forced into a life of crime or indigence (which amounts to a life of petty crime and drug use).

I submit, then, that Paul's core audience is the lunatic fringe of the Old Right, the petty-bourgeois "rugged individualist" type that regards dark skin as a mark of inferiority or savagery; Nativists, in other words (as badly as this word is misused, as they are far from native). White Nationalists and other such fringe elements of the Old Right, the ones that weren't allowed into the New & Improved GOP when it went completely off the deep end under the Reaganuts. Oh, they've always been welcome to stop by, but it was the evangelical movement, the Religious Right, that provided the majority of the cannon-fodder for the flanking manuever on the American worker that the Reaganuts executed from the right. Increasingly, of course, none of these groups have seen their demands met, and while there's a certain degree of overlap between the Religious Right and these other groups, there are obvious fault-lines as well (and analyzing the complexities of this is a topic for another blog post, not to say a book). Paul is speaking to the Republican that isn't interested in seeing a theocracy (or, at least, a non-Christian Identity theocracy), wants his guns, wants to start a race war, thinks the US is under the rule of the ZOG, etc. He is reaching out to other demographics, in order to get himself elected President, but I believe that this remains his base.

None of this requires any particular bigotry on Paul's part. It may very well be that Paul is personally not prejudiced against blacks or other minorities. But racism is not (just) a belief system. Indeed, while racism entails a belief system justifying the racism, it is not necessary for that belief system to include positive assumptions of inferiority. What I mean by racism here is not an ideology of racial prejudice, but a set of policies and social institutions that, as a consequence of failing to correct for the damage that racial ideology has done to racial minorities, or through positive efforts to prevent this damange from being corrected, perpetuates inequalities based on racial identities. This does not have to be motivated by any particular belief about race; instead, it can be motivated on the basis of class. Paul's ideas may benefit some blacks, and Paul himself probably believes this; but it will benefit a particular social class within black society, while disadvantaging the majority, because Paul believes in a particular model of property and social organization that, as a consequence of the unequitable distribution of wealth that would result from implementation of that model, would end up hurting them.

On this basis, then, assertions of racism against Ron Paul are justified.