Wheat from the Chaff

An Exchange on Multiculturalism

I pulled myself into a discussion of multiculturalism and had a surprisingly civil discussion with another respondent. I say "surprising" because it was in the online discussion forum for Maclean's magazine, a place I normally avoid. [The extremism of the current editorial board has really taken its toll on a once venerable institution.] I suppose I was fascinated with this person's belief that multiculturalism (and especially his rather relativistic notion of it) is the dominant political value in Canadian politics, an increasingly common belief that nevertheless goes against any serious reading of Canadian politics and history.

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[The other person] ... Canada is more influenced by America than any non-Christian groups. Shall we start expelling them?

And just look at what the Internet has done to free expression and the invasion of foreign ideas. I don't think people realize that Muslim's use the Internet. Is it time to start filtering foreign websites?

Are Francophones to be skimmed off? Atheists and agnostics too? Increasing godless Ontario?

As Canadians we can only define our culture by what it is not. We are a country of immigrants that has changed significantly decade-over-decade, generation-over-generation and if you think asking immigrants to accept our culture will stem the tides of change, you are being very naive.

[My first response] I couldn't disagree more. Canada is a liberal democracy, and that entails many substantive traditions and obligations. There are many things that we ARE. The Charter is a good place to start, though by no means the only point of reference. At Canada's core is a moral and legal injunction to respect individual freedom and autonomy. We are also a society that is said to respect the rule of law and equality before the law. Thus, multiculturalism is not the core of Canadianism; indeed, it was an afterthought in the Charter process, and its position in Sec. 27 has a lexical ranking clearly below the individual freedoms and legal entitlements that come in the sections before it.

If newcomers, like both of my parents, can live within these obligations, then there is no problem. If they can't, then Canada is not a place for them. And if we can't ask for newcomers to respect these boundaries, then we are a society for which there is little to defend. And to think this is acceptable is what I think is naive.

[The other person] Fair enough. We can apply some cultural definition through our adaptations of British (and French) basis of law and sense of social contract, but socially speaking we are a society constantly in flux, which is why we went from excommunicating homosexuals from many aspects of society 50 years ago to allowing them to marry today, for example.

You say multiculturalism isn't a core of Canadianism, ranking below individual freedoms and legal entitlements, but I would say that such freedoms and entitlements inevitably lead to multiculturalism by their very nature because it provides in law protection to minority groups from the rule of the majority (J.S. Mill would like it I am sure), resting heavily on the most important word in the Charter; 'reasonable.'

The point I was making was against the rather disgusting bigotry directed towards a group of people who for the overwhelming part meet our societal obligations the best they can, with each generation meeting them better than the one before.

[My second response] I'd argue that Canadian multiculturalism is a fairly recent phenomenon that has its roots in the rise of "identity politics", changing post-war immigration patterns and the struggle by many non-Brits and Francophones (including Ukranian and German Canadians) to battle the arrogance of "biculturalism".

On the other hand, the liberal democratic principles I mentioned earlier have been around much longer, and many scholars argue that the Charter is just an extension and codification of long-held principles and beliefs (much of them inherent in British common law). As such, the changes in recognition that you rightly point out do not represent a fundamental change in our society, but a long overdue and logical extension of the universal promise inherent in liberal democratic societies and constitutions.

I do agree that bigots are never far from view, and often target those who have met or surpassed the "bar". However, bigotry can work both ways. When I see certain Muslim families arrive on an annual basis to register their kids in our public distance ed. school, I am overwhelmed. The mothers (I think) arrive in a full burqa, they walk in the back, and they are mute [and thus moot]. The fathers control the registration. And I almost never see daughters.

It is obscene. It is the worst form of bigotry I can imagine. Unlike head coverings and religious symbols, which do not block interaction, the burqa is a portable wall of separation.

What is worse is that nobody says a word (out loud). I would lose my job if I objected.

And while I'm sure some would argue this is a "choice", I recall those lines from Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" - perhaps the best promulgation of Western values in the last 50 years:

... Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I it" relationship for an "I thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness?...

How Wall Street Lobbied Itself Into A Crisis

In today's Globe and Mail (Dec. 31, 2009: B5), economics reporter Kevin Carmichael discusses a recent report from the IMF that draws a direct connection between Wall Street, political lobbying, and the current financial crisis. The IMF report has apparently caused quite a stir in the blogosphere and among the American political class. Here is the opening portion of Carmichael's article:

The case against Wall Street is getting stronger.

Since the financial crisis plunged the world economy into recession in the autumn of 2008, there has been a swirl of reports suggesting that financial firms used their clout in Washington to avoid tighter regulations in the years leading up to the meltdown. Most of those reports, however, have been anecdotal.

Now, in a landmark analysis, three economists at the International Monetary Fund have pulled together the public lobbying records of U.S. mortgage lenders and have drawn an empirical link between the money spent influencing politicians and firms' tendencies to engage in high-risk lending.

Their report, published this week as a "working paper" and therefore without the official stamp of the IMF, supports previous accounts in The Wall Street Journal and other publications that lenders such as Ameriquest Mortgage Co. and Countrywide Financial Corp. spent millions in the years ahead of the financial crisis to defeat legislation that would have curbed their ability to issue home loans to riskier borrowers.

Aside from documenting the persuasive power of Wall Street, the paper also highlights another challenge facing U.S. President Barack Obama and the various legislators leading the effort to diminish the risks facing the financial system. The findings suggest that some financial firms sought to profit by shaping the regulatory system to fit their business strategies or to position for a government bailout. To reduce that risk in the future, policy makers may need to weaken the financial industry's political influence - but it's not clear how that can be done. (The authors of the report declined to give specific solutions.)

"[O]ur analysis suggests that the political influence of the financial industry can be a source of systemic risk," Deniz Igan, Prachi Mishra and Thierry Tressel wrote in their conclusion....

According to the report, the most intensive lobbying came from the firms that ended up with the highest rate of financial "delinquencies".

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A few things come to mind after reading the newspaper article and the International Monetary Fund report.

My first thought is, "Is this actually news?" It appears that only economists and business reporters are surprised by the report's conclusions. Left-wing critics have been making similar critiques of the current financial crisis for many years. [For example, check out virtually every edition of The New York Review of Books for the last 4 years, or the critiques of David Harvey.] Indeed, the relationship between capitalism and the state has been an essential part of the socialist analysis of capitalism for 150 years. Nevertheless, it is interesting that such a direct rebuke of Wall Street and America's capitalist system has come from an organization that is emblematic of the American (and global) financial system. And, as the writers of the report add, "To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine empirically the relationship between lobbying by financial institutions and mortgage lending in the run-up to the financial crisis."

A second point is that the current Wall Street example illustrates how corporate capitalism exists in large part because the government has provided a regulatory environment where short-term profits override responsible, long-term decision making. Government is, in this example, integral to capitalism. It is not the enemy of the market society. It is not minor player or a neutral night watchmen. It makes and implements policy which is absolutely essential for capitalism to pursue its interests, however short-sighted they turn out to be.

This example also sheds light on the Ralph Miliband-Nicos Poulantzas debate about the nature of the state in a capitalist society. Poulantzas, for whom I have great respect, argues that the state is the "unifying element" in capitalism. In this, he follows people like Karl Polanyi, who believes that the historical development of the modern market economy and the modern state were tightly and inevitably linked. But Poulantzas goes beyond this analysis, and explores the idea (building on Gramsci and Althusser) that while the state and capitalism are intertwined, the state nevertheless does (and must) have a certain degree of autonomy. The state must have this "relative autonomy" because, according to Poulantzas, the capitalist class is a fractious group that is dominated by short-term interests, and often pursues policies that are inimical to itself. If capitalism is to survive, it requires a state to save capitalism from itself.

Under Clinton and Bush, the corporate class almost succeeded in convincing the American government that short term profit was in everybody's interest. If the state was potentially autonomous, it did not utilize its potential. It will be interesting to see if the Obama administration wants to take a longer-term perspective and repair American capitalism, and, assuming it does, if it even can.

Firefighting: A Public Good?

In a 2008 speech for TVO, Naomi Klein discussed the shrinking public sphere in the United States. Already small by Western standards, America's public sphere appears to be shrinking by the week. One of the few realms of American society that is still considered to be a public good is firefighting and disaster relief. But even that is disappearing. AIG Insurance (as well as Chubb Alarm) have set up their own private fire fighting forces to help insurees protect their homes... assuming your house is important enough to save. (For Chubb, that means a market value of at least one million dollars.)

Two stories that explain the trend can be found here and here. Notice that the business website (link 2) paints a substantially rosier picture in its conclusion compared to the Bloomberg article (link 1).

A "public good" can be defined as any item or service that is publically funded and available to all. Moreover, it's good for you if other people also have it. For example, public education is a public good because it's a benefit for you if other people around you are educated. Presumably firefighting is a public good, too, as the protection of all helps protect you as an individual.

The same is not true of a private good. This type of good does not require equal access to a product or service. The fact that others lack what I have (let's say, a Porsche) is not a hindrance to me if they can still move efficiently with public transit, a bicycle or a Kia. Inequality in this case is a matter of reward and preference, rather than mutual benefit.

Canada's ratio of public to private goods is slightly higher than the United States (especially with health care), but less than most western European countries. Even within Canada, Quebec sees child care as more of a public good, while most other provinces do not. BC still views basic auto insurance as a public good ("it's good for me that other people are insured"), while Alberta or Ontario consider it a private good.

What constitutes a public good varies greatly. Each country tends to have a different ratio of public to private goods, but this ratio is a relatively stable predictor of daily politics. In other words, the dominant ideology of any country can be measured by this ratio. It shows how much we (or the political elites, at least) are other-regarding or egoists.

If we are living in an age of increasing political egoism, perhaps those who defend public goods, or seek their expansion, need to emphasize the self-interested nature of public goods (they help you, too). It wouldn't hurt to also emphasize the efficiency of public enterprises when delivering goods we all need, in the sense that private enterprises replicate bureacracies and lead to higher administrative costs, like in the American medical system.

Jane Jacobs and Gentrification

The West Village was saved, but as with all victories, unintended consequences ensued. Clarence Davies, a Felt ally and head of the Housing and Redevelopment Board that

replaced [Moses's] Committeeon Slum Clearance wrote ... "that if the Village area is left alone and if no middle-income housing is projected by the Board ... eventually the Village will consist solely of luxury housing, which we, of course, will be powerless to prevent ... This trend is already quite obvious and would itself destroy any semblance of the present Village that [Jacobs and her allies] seem so anxious to preserve."

The term was not yet in use but Davies had foreseen the gentrification that would within twenty years turn the Village into some of the most expensive real estate on earth. The mixed-income neighborhood of dockworkers and middle-class households and artists’ lofts that Jacobs championed would become the victim of its own charm. There would be little room for working-class families or struggling artists in the Greenwich Village that Jacobs fought to preserve. "Her vision of organic city growth," Flint writes, "would do little to curb gentrification."

My Review of Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?

Susan Moller Okin’s Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? is a fascinating application of liberal feminist theory to a major issue in western politics. Okin starts with the proposition that many ethnic minorities in multicultural societies do not believe that women are equal to men. This poses a particular problem for those who fight for equality if one of these ethnic minorities seeks constitutional protections under the policies of multiculturalism. Okin maintains that any ethnic minority that demands protective rights must not be granted those rights if it means the subordination of women. It would mean a liberal majority endorsing illiberal practices. Okin asks us to make a choice: if there is direct conflict between women's and minority rights, the former should prevail.

The book is organized in a readable format. It starts with Okin’s original 1999 essay on the topic, a series of responses from fellow academics and writers, and Okin’s rejoinder to their arguments. All of the essays are relatively brief, and there is a good balance between those who support Okin and those who don’t. Most of the essays (though not all) are free of unnecessary academic jargon, and the book in general strikes a good balance between thoroughness and brevity.

Though I generally liked the book, there are some weaknesses. The most obvious to me is Okin’s refusal to say that, in the West at least, some values (especially gender equality) ought to be considered superior to others. She implies this several times, but she never seems to come out directly and say it. In addition, much of her evidence about gender discrimination comes from high profile court cases. I would feel more comfortable with more comprehensive statistical references. Nevertheless, I generally find Okin’s position (and rebuttals) to be very persuasive. Her emphasis on the fluidity and fractures within minority cultures is commendable, and she argues convincingly that young minority women – who are not yet assimilated into discriminatory values – ought to have their autonomy protected. Many of her detractors focus on the illiberality of western societies, and never seem to confront the even greater illiberality in many religions and non-western cultures. They seem to miss that Okin herself uses the promise of liberal universality against those who don’t practice what they preach. Others criticize her for not going far enough to include issues of race and economic inequality. Yet it seems that one essay cannot really be blamed for not discussing all forms of inequality, and Okin’s point of view certainly doesn’t exclude such considerations. Similarly, her argument is really about minority cultures in western societies, and is not a global condemnation of hierarchal cultures. Her critics sometimes go beyond the scope that Okin sets for herself. Finally, many of Okin’s most vehement critics are Muslim men, and the irony of their defensiveness never seems to dawn on them.

On the whole, I would recommend this book for those interested in multiculturalism, equality and the hierarchy of values within open societies.

Is it the "Surge" that's worked?

While many conservative supporters of the Iraq War have quietly disappeared - Dick Cheney notwithstanding - many have taken comfort in the apparent success of George Bush's "troop surge" of 2007.

Nevertheless, a great number of commentators have pointed to other factors in the decline of Iraqi violence. The New York Review of Books has published a number of articles [here and here, for example] that point to the salutary effects of the cease-fire declared by the powerful Shia leader, Moqtada al-Sadr, and the revolt by dozens of Sunni tribes and community groups against the violence of al-Qaeda "foreigners".

Michaels Massing's recent review of Thomas Ricks' latest book on General Patraeus nicely summarizes these factors, even though Ricks himself prefers to focus on the tactical changes brought upon by the leadership of General Patraeus and his staff. Massing notes that Ricks barely mentions al-Sadr, but Ricks is at least

... more expansive on the Sunni Awakening, recounting in detail how the tribes in Anbar province, enraged by al-Qaeda's growing brutality, began in September 2006 to turn against the group, and how the Americans quickly took advantage. "Whenever a tribe flipped and joined the Awakening," says a colonel who helped oversee the initial turnaround, "all the attacks on coalition forces in that area would stop, and all the caches of ammunition would come up out of the ground."

What's really interesting is that a major player in the troop surge, David Kilcullen, doesn't believe that the surge is the major reason for the decline in Iraqi violence. Massing goes on to explain that

The regularity of this pattern has led some observers—including many US officers—to conclude that the Sunni revolt was the main cause of the improvement in Iraq. They include David Kilcullen, Petraeus's counterinsurgency adviser. In his new book, The Accidental Guerrilla, Kilcullen writes that "the tribal revolt was arguably the most significant change in the Iraqi operating environment in several years."* Its impact, he argues, ran counter to what had been anticipated under the surge: instead of security improving as a result of changes imposed from the top down by US commanders, it occurred from the bottom up, with the US scrambling to respond.

The Red Cross Torture Report

Mark Danner is well known journalist and professor of journalism at Berkeley. He has written dozens of articles for the New York Review of Books, and has, in my mind, provided the definitive reportage on the Serbian massacre of Muslims at Srebrenica.

His latest article is a thorough yet blistering summary of the "ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen 'High Value Detainees' in CIA Custody", otherwise known as the "Red Cross Torture Report". We may be tired of the issue, as it's been a focal point for criticism of the Bush administration since 2001. However, Danner may have written the definitive summary again, and I think the question of torture will continue to haunt American politics for many years to come. The current debate over the release of the Bush torture memos, a possible South African-style truth and reconciliation commission, and possible war crime charges against Bush-era politicians, will ensure the past continues to inform (and deform) the present. Plus, the descriptions of torture, especially the waterboarding and beatings against plywood sheets, is too gripping to ignore. After reading Danner's article, it's almost impossible to believe that America hasn't crossed some irreversible, unrepairable moral divide. The rank hypocrisy of American foreign policy has never been more exposed.

Here are some excerpts from his review:

... An awareness of this history makes reading the International Committee of the Red Cross report a strange exercise in climbing back through the looking glass. For in interviewing the fourteen "high-value detainees," who had been imprisoned secretly in the "black sites" anywhere from "16 months to almost four and a half years," the Red Cross experts were listening to descriptions of techniques applied to them that had been originally designed to be illegal "under the rules listed in the 1949 Geneva Conventions." And then the Red Cross investigators, as members of the body designated by the Geneva Conventions to supervise treatment of prisoners of war and to judge that treatment's legality, were called on to pronounce whether or not the techniques conformed to the conventions in the first place. In this judgment, they are, not surprisingly, unequivocal:

The allegations of ill-treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill-treatment to which they were subjected while held in the CIA program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill-treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel and inhuman or degrading treatment....

... One fact, seemingly incontrovertible, after the descriptions contained and the judgments made in the ICRC report, is that officials of the United States, in interrogating prisoners in the "War on Terror," have tortured and done so systematically. From many other sources, including the former president himself, we know that the decision to do so was taken at the highest level of the American government and carried out with the full knowledge and support of its most senior officials....

...Mr. Abu Zubaydah commented that when the collar was first used on him in his third place of detention, he was slammed directly against a hard concrete wall. He was then placed in a tall box for several hours (see Section 1.3.5, Confinement in boxes). After he was taken out of the box he noticed that a sheet of plywood had been placed against the wall. The collar was then used to slam him against the plywood sheet. He thought that the plywood was in order to absorb some of the impact so as to avoid the risk of physical injury....

... Torture has undermined the United States' reputation for respecting and following the law and thus has crippled its political influence. By torturing, the United States has wounded itself and helped its enemies in what is in the end an inherently political war—a war, that is, in which the critical target to be conquered is the allegiances and attitudes of young Muslims. And by torturing prisoners, many of whom were implicated in committing great crimes against Americans, the United States has made it impossible to render justice on those criminals [because torture=inadmissable evidence], instead sentencing them—and the country itself—to an endless limbo of injustice. That limbo stands as a kind of worldwide advertisement for the costs of the US reversion to torture, whose power President Obama has tried to reduce by announcing that he will close Guantánamo....

... The only way to defuse the political volatility of torture and to remove it from the center of the "politics of fear" is to replace its lingering mystique, owed mostly to secrecy, with authoritative and convincing information about how it was really used and what it really achieved. That this has not yet happened is the reason why, despite the innumerable reports and studies and revelations that have given us a rich and vivid picture of the Bush administration's policies of torture, we as a society have barely advanced along this path. We have not so far managed, despite all the investigations, to produce a bipartisan, broadly credible, and politically decisive effort, and pronounce authoritatively on whether or not these activities accomplished anything at all in their stated and still asserted purpose: to protect the security interests of the country....

The full article can be found at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22614. Here is a video of Mark Danner talking with Bill Moyers: