The Window of Opportunity is Now Closed and Locked Down: Passing Goldstone Resolution Marks End of Peace Process Era
By Barry Rubin *
October 16, 2009
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The UN Human Rights Council has now endorsed the Goldstone Report. There are important implications to this decision that make it a turning point.
It means the first make or break test for Obama's foreign policy. There is no easy way out. The president must either block a disastrous UN resolution through effective diplomacy in the UN corridors, accept a bad resolution in order to avoid a confrontation, or veto such a resolution an accept the price in unpopularity. Oh, and it also marks the end of the peace process era that began in 1993, showing both sides why they don't want a compromise deal.
Of course, it says a great deal about the nature of international affairs nowadays. What does it say about the UN that it condemns Israel but says not a word and does not a deed against Hamas, which is guilty of aggression, terrorism, seizure of power by force, calls for genocide, antisemitism, indoctrination of children to become suicide bombers, oppression of women, systematic use of civilians as human shields, and a range of war crimes.
Trying to present the Goldstone report in a more favorable light, Western media overstated its “evenhandedness,” playing up a few mentions of Hamas to pretend that both sides in the conflict were condemned. The UNRC drops this pretense and only speaks of Israel, totally removing the factors that forced a reluctant Israel to launch an operation on the Gaza Strip.
This is not merely another of the many ritual condemnations of Israel but a demonization. Israel is now accused of massive war crimes on a remarkably flimsy basis. Of course it is all political but this is a step toward delegitimization. The Arabic-speaking, Muslim-majority, and left-wing governments that supported the resolution see this as a step not toward a compromise peace but an elimination of Israel altogether.
I am not saying that this is going to happen, or that the resolution will have any actual negative impact on Israel itself. Yet what is most important is that having tasted blood, these forces will not be interested in getting less. Why should they—including the Palestinian Authority—settle for a stable two-state solution when they believe they can get far more without giving up anything?
It is an accident but not a coincidence that the Palestinian Authority signed a unity agreement with Hamas in the same week that the resolution was passed. The two groups won’t actually cooperate but the document they reluctantly signed for reasons of organizational rivalry symbolizes the fact that their strategies, though not tactics, now coincide to a large degree.
This, then, is the first reason why the passage of this resolution is an important development. It marks not only the end of the peace process but the end of the peace process era. Arabic-speaking, Muslim-majority, and some states governed by left-wing governments (Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua in Latin America and others) seek a one-state solution in which Israel no longer exists. It marks a return—in thinking but not in military practice—to the pre-1993 period where there is nothing to talk about.
The most important country that voted for passing the Goldstone resolution in the UNHRC, Russia, doesn’t think that way, nor does China. European states also do not support such a development. Loud sectors in intellectual life and media do, though these do not set policy. But the point is that these countries also won’t act to stop it. The many abstentions on the vote is symbolic of the fact that most Western democracies and countries that don’t support directly endorse this campaign are, at best, bystanders, at worst, appeasers.
The second reason why this development is so important is what it tells about U.S. policy. Remember that the Obama Administration joined the UNHRC based on the explicit argument that it could moderate the radical-dominated group. This strategy has failed.
But so, on a larger-scale, is the concept that President Barack Obama’s “popularity offensive” in which he distanced himself from Israel, lavished devotion on the Palestinian cause, extolled the glories of Islam, and apologized for past U.S. policies would have some beneficial effect.
The policy has done worse than failing it has, predictably, backfired. The question is whether this will be recognized, much less reversed, by the Obama Administration.
But there’s more. The United States now faces more tests.
Step 1: Can it stop the progress of this resolution and report into implementation through judicial decisions and sanctions against Israel or not? Certainly, the United States will work to water down the ensuing resolutions. To do so it will need to use leverage and even threats in order to succeed. A “nice guy” strategy could fail miserably here.
Step 2: The next possible failure would be if the U.S. government accepted a resolution which was somewhat watered down but still too extreme. In other words, it would buy off immediate trouble in exchange for longer-term woes.
Step 3: If the resolution is still too far-out, the Administration may have to veto it. (European states know they can afford to be cowardly and leave it to America to stop the madness.)
If the United States does veto the resolution, it will have to brave condemnation and unpopularity. Does Obama have the guts for this?
[There is also another alternative being mentioned, to pass an anti-Israel General Assembly resolution if the United States vetoes one in the Security Council.]
Finally, there is the lesson for Israel. Let’s cut away all the obvious points about relying on itself, mistrusting the world, and so on. There is one item of overriding importance:
Israel knows that if it yields territory and is attacked from that territory, no matter how great the provocation, it cannot depend on international support but can rather know it will face international condemnation.
What does this say about a two-state solution? Israel pulls out of the West Bank, a Palestinian state is created (either on the West Bank or that plus the Gaza Strip), that state either attacks Israel or allows (and encourages) terrorists to do so across the border.
Israel has no response to defend itself that isn’t highly costly.
Bottom line: No Israeli government will make such a deal; the Israeli people will not support such a deal.
Along with myriad other reasons, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas can now argue persuasively that they enjoy broad international support for wiping out Israel altogether. They have no incentive--since both are indifferent to the welfare of their people--to make any compromise peace.
Good-bye hope for peace. I now declare the window of opportunity that had seemed to open in the late 1980s, which met and failed the test of the Oslo process, and yet which continues to inspire false hope for many people to be fully and officially closed.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Civil Law and Common Law
The difference between a common law and civil law system is not widely known, but this difference matters in how easily the law adapts to different situations.
Written by johnleemk on 5:07:32 pm May 19, 2007.
The difference between a system of civil law and common law is often not appreciated by those outside the legal profession. For the most part, knowing the difference between these legal systems is not relevant to our daily lives.
However, understanding how our laws are developed and enforced always has a relevance to the bigger picture of our society, for if we understand this, we understand how the laws we live by are made.
Part of the problem is that explaining the difference between a civil law system and a system of common law is not exactly easy. I remember a couple of years back when I was asked whether Singapore has a civil law or common law system — I tried to discern the difference from Wikipedia, and came away stumped.
In a sense, the meaning of "common law" should be obvious from phrases such as "common law wife" — this is law which exists by unwritten convention, not written statutes.
Meanwhile, a civil law system develops through an existing legislative process. This is a system followed by most countries around the world, especially in Europe, and so we can see a very neat contrast between the United Kingdom and its European neighbours.
The common law system is predominant throughout the Commonwealth of Nations, thanks to their shared British heritage. Most former British colonies derive their laws from the same common law as England (the common law is actually a thoroughly English creature — the Scots and Irish were not subject to this system).
Now, you might be scratching your head at this point, because virtually all former British colonies, and even Britain herself, have legislative bodies. Don't these legislatures make written laws?
Well, yes, they do. However, the old body of common law continues to coexist with written law (although the written civil law does override the common law when they come in conflict).
Moreover, the body of common law continues to develop. Common law develops from the judgments handed down by the judiciary. The English legal system (and thus the legal systems of most of its former colonies) is marked by a very strict following of judicial precedent.
This principle, known in Latin as stare decisis, means that the courts follow the judgments of courts above them in the hierarchy.
They can deviate from these judgments creatively by distinguishing a particular situation, but otherwise, they have to follow precedent.
This of course confers quite a few benefits. I've touched on one of them before — the flexibility offered by the common law in wedge cases or grey areas. This flexibility is not easy to achieve under a civil law system, as only the legislature can modify the law if the law is unjust.
But at the same time, the common law is markedly inflexible. It is difficult to update common law to change with the times. For example, it was established in the early 19th century by Adams v Lindsell that an offer to make a contract takes effect the moment its acceptance is posted — not received.
This judgment, which was creatively used to correct the uniquely unjust situation of the Adams case, does not make much logic to the ears of the ordinary man — nor should it.
Similarly, another tenet of contract law according to the common law is that there must be consideration provided for any contract — I need to provide something for you to provide something else to me (a typical quid pro quo deal) unless the contract is written.
The problem is that in the case of unwritten contracts which should be enforced, there are times when the courts have had to lay down ridiculous judgments, declaring that, for example, a peppercorn counts as consideration.
With the development of the principle that a binding contract should have the intention to create legal relations in the early 20th century, the idea of consideration no longer has much use — and yet it remains.
Why? Because the courts are notorious for finding it difficult to retreat from the body of legal tradition which already exists. The legislature could act to change the law — as the legislative bodies of some former British colonies have done — but Parliamentarians are not known for caring about these obscure but nevertheless important details.
In a civil system, on the other hand, once a law has proven to be bad, it is amended or repealed. Because only the legislature can provide recourse in such a situation, there is no need to get one's hands dirty and file a lawsuit, hoping that it will reach the highest court of the land, and the judges here will be radical enough to depart from precedent.
Clearly, the common and civil law systems both have their advantages and disadvantages. Having been exposed to the common law system for much of my life, I must say I prefer it to a purely civil law system because of the flexibility that judicial precedent and statutory interpretation can offer judges.
Oh, and as for Singapore? I'm still not sure, but as far as I can ascertain, it operates under a common law system, and until a few decades ago, it was possible to appeal to the English Privy Council in a Singaporean case.
Written by johnleemk on 5:07:32 pm May 19, 2007.
The difference between a system of civil law and common law is often not appreciated by those outside the legal profession. For the most part, knowing the difference between these legal systems is not relevant to our daily lives.
However, understanding how our laws are developed and enforced always has a relevance to the bigger picture of our society, for if we understand this, we understand how the laws we live by are made.
Part of the problem is that explaining the difference between a civil law system and a system of common law is not exactly easy. I remember a couple of years back when I was asked whether Singapore has a civil law or common law system — I tried to discern the difference from Wikipedia, and came away stumped.
In a sense, the meaning of "common law" should be obvious from phrases such as "common law wife" — this is law which exists by unwritten convention, not written statutes.
Meanwhile, a civil law system develops through an existing legislative process. This is a system followed by most countries around the world, especially in Europe, and so we can see a very neat contrast between the United Kingdom and its European neighbours.
The common law system is predominant throughout the Commonwealth of Nations, thanks to their shared British heritage. Most former British colonies derive their laws from the same common law as England (the common law is actually a thoroughly English creature — the Scots and Irish were not subject to this system).
Now, you might be scratching your head at this point, because virtually all former British colonies, and even Britain herself, have legislative bodies. Don't these legislatures make written laws?
Well, yes, they do. However, the old body of common law continues to coexist with written law (although the written civil law does override the common law when they come in conflict).
Moreover, the body of common law continues to develop. Common law develops from the judgments handed down by the judiciary. The English legal system (and thus the legal systems of most of its former colonies) is marked by a very strict following of judicial precedent.
This principle, known in Latin as stare decisis, means that the courts follow the judgments of courts above them in the hierarchy.
They can deviate from these judgments creatively by distinguishing a particular situation, but otherwise, they have to follow precedent.
This of course confers quite a few benefits. I've touched on one of them before — the flexibility offered by the common law in wedge cases or grey areas. This flexibility is not easy to achieve under a civil law system, as only the legislature can modify the law if the law is unjust.
But at the same time, the common law is markedly inflexible. It is difficult to update common law to change with the times. For example, it was established in the early 19th century by Adams v Lindsell that an offer to make a contract takes effect the moment its acceptance is posted — not received.
This judgment, which was creatively used to correct the uniquely unjust situation of the Adams case, does not make much logic to the ears of the ordinary man — nor should it.
Similarly, another tenet of contract law according to the common law is that there must be consideration provided for any contract — I need to provide something for you to provide something else to me (a typical quid pro quo deal) unless the contract is written.
The problem is that in the case of unwritten contracts which should be enforced, there are times when the courts have had to lay down ridiculous judgments, declaring that, for example, a peppercorn counts as consideration.
With the development of the principle that a binding contract should have the intention to create legal relations in the early 20th century, the idea of consideration no longer has much use — and yet it remains.
Why? Because the courts are notorious for finding it difficult to retreat from the body of legal tradition which already exists. The legislature could act to change the law — as the legislative bodies of some former British colonies have done — but Parliamentarians are not known for caring about these obscure but nevertheless important details.
In a civil system, on the other hand, once a law has proven to be bad, it is amended or repealed. Because only the legislature can provide recourse in such a situation, there is no need to get one's hands dirty and file a lawsuit, hoping that it will reach the highest court of the land, and the judges here will be radical enough to depart from precedent.
Clearly, the common and civil law systems both have their advantages and disadvantages. Having been exposed to the common law system for much of my life, I must say I prefer it to a purely civil law system because of the flexibility that judicial precedent and statutory interpretation can offer judges.
Oh, and as for Singapore? I'm still not sure, but as far as I can ascertain, it operates under a common law system, and until a few decades ago, it was possible to appeal to the English Privy Council in a Singaporean case.
A Visit to First Principles: Including Briefing a Case
Hadley v. Baxendale, Court of Exchequer, 9 Exch. 341, 156 Eng. Rep 145 (1854)
FACTS: Plaintiffs were the owners of a mill whose operation was stopped due to the breakage of a crank shaft. The shaft had to be sent to engineers of the manufacturer [Joyce & Company] as a pattern for a new one. Plaintiffs used Pickford & Company as carriers. The clerk advised them that the shaft must be sent immediately, as the mill was stopped. The clerk was promised delivery in one day and paid 2 pounds 4 shillings for the delivery. However, Pickford failed to perform as promised and delivery was delayed for several days. As a result, plaintiff lost several days’ profits from the mill that otherwise would have been made if the shaft had been delivered on time. Plaintiff sues Defendant for lost profits.
HISTORY: In the trial case, the jury returned a verdict for the Plaintiffs for 25 pounds, plus the amount paid into Court. Defendant appeals and a new trial is ordered. Appellate court reverses.
ISSUE: Can Plaintiffs recover lost profits?
HOLDING: No.
RULE/ANALYSIS: A New Rule was created in this case: The court found that an aggrieved buyer of services will be unable to recover consequential losses resulting from breach unless the losses are 1) a “natural” consequence of breach; or 2) the buyer brings the circumstances which would generate the losses expressly to the seller’s attention. The court reasoned that Pickford had no way of knowing that Plaintiffs would lose profits if the shipment of the shaft was delayed, as this information wasn’t communicated directly to them and therefore the loss of profits was not reasonably contemplated by both the parties when they made the contract. Although the fact that the mill was closed was communicated, it wasn’t made completely clear to the Defendants that the mill was closed because of the broken shaft and couldn’t re-open again until it was fixed. For all the Defendants knew, the mill was closed for another reason.
SUMMARY: Indirect or consequential damages are only recoverable if reasonably foreseeable by both of the parties at the time of the contract and arising naturally from such breach. This legal concept is still alive today – 150 years later. If the Plaintiffs had made it clear that the mill’s operation was dependent upon getting the new crank shaft, the outcome would have been in their favor.
FACTS: Plaintiffs were the owners of a mill whose operation was stopped due to the breakage of a crank shaft. The shaft had to be sent to engineers of the manufacturer [Joyce & Company] as a pattern for a new one. Plaintiffs used Pickford & Company as carriers. The clerk advised them that the shaft must be sent immediately, as the mill was stopped. The clerk was promised delivery in one day and paid 2 pounds 4 shillings for the delivery. However, Pickford failed to perform as promised and delivery was delayed for several days. As a result, plaintiff lost several days’ profits from the mill that otherwise would have been made if the shaft had been delivered on time. Plaintiff sues Defendant for lost profits.
HISTORY: In the trial case, the jury returned a verdict for the Plaintiffs for 25 pounds, plus the amount paid into Court. Defendant appeals and a new trial is ordered. Appellate court reverses.
ISSUE: Can Plaintiffs recover lost profits?
HOLDING: No.
RULE/ANALYSIS: A New Rule was created in this case: The court found that an aggrieved buyer of services will be unable to recover consequential losses resulting from breach unless the losses are 1) a “natural” consequence of breach; or 2) the buyer brings the circumstances which would generate the losses expressly to the seller’s attention. The court reasoned that Pickford had no way of knowing that Plaintiffs would lose profits if the shipment of the shaft was delayed, as this information wasn’t communicated directly to them and therefore the loss of profits was not reasonably contemplated by both the parties when they made the contract. Although the fact that the mill was closed was communicated, it wasn’t made completely clear to the Defendants that the mill was closed because of the broken shaft and couldn’t re-open again until it was fixed. For all the Defendants knew, the mill was closed for another reason.
SUMMARY: Indirect or consequential damages are only recoverable if reasonably foreseeable by both of the parties at the time of the contract and arising naturally from such breach. This legal concept is still alive today – 150 years later. If the Plaintiffs had made it clear that the mill’s operation was dependent upon getting the new crank shaft, the outcome would have been in their favor.
A.M. Klein: Canadian Lawyer; Canadian Poet
A.M. Klein: Portrait of the Poet as Person
By Ezra Glinter
In a 1943 letter to his colleague A.J.M. Smith, Montreal poet A.M. Klein complained of critics’ tendency to identify him primarily as a Jewish poet.
Our Man In Montreal: Klein often complained about critics who identified him primarily as a Jewish poet.
“Why did they… have to go flaunting my circumcision?” he asked. “It’s an adolescent trick — this whimsical opening of another man’s fly.”
Despite his protestations, Klein is still largely remembered as a Jewish poet — and not without justification. As both a person and an artist, he was deeply in love with the heritage he received from his parents and from his teachers, a fact fittingly reflected in his nostalgic recollections of his childhood in the once heavily Jewish Montreal neighborhood surrounding Saint Lawrence Boulevard. His poetry, as he explained in a letter to Yiddish critic Shmuel Niger, dealt with cultural synthesis and the problem of expressing one culture in the language of another. And contrary to his complaints to Smith, he was critical of Jewish artists who disregarded their cultural identity. Klein accused these artists of having “nothing original to contribute.” After all, he reasoned, “one cannot create with another’s genitals.”
But while much of Klein’s writing did, in fact, take Jewish themes as its subject, his quest for general literary acceptance was also fulfilled. As delegates at a recent international conference on Klein indicated, his contributions to Canadian and modernist literature went beyond the Jewish content of his poetry. Held at Montreal’s Concordia University and sponsored by Concordia’s Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies, the conference featured such noted Canadian literary scholars as Klein authority Zailig Pollock, of Trent University, and Brian Trehearne, a McGill University expert of Canadian modernism.
While the discussion of Klein included his early work, such as the collection “Hath Not a Jew,” the most enduring part of Klein’s legacy is undoubtedly his 1948 collection, “The Rocking Chair and Other Poems,” which received Canada’s prestigious Governor General’s Literary Award. The collection dealt not with Jewish subjects but with the province of Quebec and its people. While many of the poems are written in Klein’s frequently complex style, such as the multilingual homage to the city of Montreal, some of the collection’s most powerful pieces are simple and direct, such as Klein’s critical portrayal of Quebec nationalism in “Political Meeting,” or the rural nostalgia of the titular “The Rocking Chair.”
The collection also includes what many consider to be Klein’s finest poem, “Portrait of the Poet as Landscape,” a haunting meditation on the fate of the poetic vocation in the face of modernity. Along with his acclaimed novel “The Second Scroll,” the poem represents the zenith of Klein’s literary career, though its allusions to paranoia and madness also foreshadow its author’s mental collapse in the mid-1950s and Klein’s ensuing retreat into silence and solitude for the final decades of his life.
Though Klein is celebrated today primarily for his foundational role in Canadian letters (The Quebec Writers’ Federation Prize for Poetry is named in his honor), he was a man of many talents, many interests and many occupations. By profession he was a lawyer, having studied law at the Université de Montréal, and for a few years he lived in the small Quebec mining town of Rouyn, where he opened a modest legal practice. For two-and-a-half decades he was also the editor of the Canadian Jewish Chronicle, the English counterpart to the seminal Yiddish newspaper Der Kanader Adler. In his weekly editorials, Klein commented on such topics as antisemitism both at home and abroad, Canada’s involvement in the Second World War and Zionism, of which he was a life-long supporter.
Though Klein’s artistic aspirations remained primarily poetic, the editorial position served as an important creative outlet for him and as a channel for his essays, reviews and translations of Yiddish and Hebrew works. His career also included a three-year stint teaching poetry at McGill University, two unsuccessful forays into federal politics under the banner of the socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (later to develop into the New Democratic Party) and speaking engagements all over North America on behalf of the fledgling State of Israel.
While for the most part, Klein was able to reconcile his multiple activities and obligations, they eventually took a toll on his personal life as well as on his artistic sensibilities. In addition to his literary work, Klein was a longtime speechwriter and public relations consultant for business magnate Samuel Bronfman, head of the Seagram Company, and president of the Canadian Jewish Congress from 1939 to 1962. In a 1942 journal entry, Klein lamented his role writing souvenir programs for philanthropic banquets. “Poor me!” he wrote. “Poet parsleyate to a menu… it is a humiliation only a philanthropic world makes possible.”
Despite his self-disgust, Klein remained an employee and personal friend of Bronfman’s for decades. He continued to send him birthday greetings long after he had ceased to communicate with most others. According to his son Colman, who spoke at the Concordia University international conference, Klein was fascinated by power and by those who wield it.
But despite his affiliation with Bronfman, it was not just commercial or political power that interested Klein. As a socialist candidate he believed in the power of the people, and as a young rabbinical student in the power of God. But it was the power of language that fascinated him most of all, a power to which he gave lasting expression through his true vocation — poetry.
By Ezra Glinter
In a 1943 letter to his colleague A.J.M. Smith, Montreal poet A.M. Klein complained of critics’ tendency to identify him primarily as a Jewish poet.
Our Man In Montreal: Klein often complained about critics who identified him primarily as a Jewish poet.
“Why did they… have to go flaunting my circumcision?” he asked. “It’s an adolescent trick — this whimsical opening of another man’s fly.”
Despite his protestations, Klein is still largely remembered as a Jewish poet — and not without justification. As both a person and an artist, he was deeply in love with the heritage he received from his parents and from his teachers, a fact fittingly reflected in his nostalgic recollections of his childhood in the once heavily Jewish Montreal neighborhood surrounding Saint Lawrence Boulevard. His poetry, as he explained in a letter to Yiddish critic Shmuel Niger, dealt with cultural synthesis and the problem of expressing one culture in the language of another. And contrary to his complaints to Smith, he was critical of Jewish artists who disregarded their cultural identity. Klein accused these artists of having “nothing original to contribute.” After all, he reasoned, “one cannot create with another’s genitals.”
But while much of Klein’s writing did, in fact, take Jewish themes as its subject, his quest for general literary acceptance was also fulfilled. As delegates at a recent international conference on Klein indicated, his contributions to Canadian and modernist literature went beyond the Jewish content of his poetry. Held at Montreal’s Concordia University and sponsored by Concordia’s Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies, the conference featured such noted Canadian literary scholars as Klein authority Zailig Pollock, of Trent University, and Brian Trehearne, a McGill University expert of Canadian modernism.
While the discussion of Klein included his early work, such as the collection “Hath Not a Jew,” the most enduring part of Klein’s legacy is undoubtedly his 1948 collection, “The Rocking Chair and Other Poems,” which received Canada’s prestigious Governor General’s Literary Award. The collection dealt not with Jewish subjects but with the province of Quebec and its people. While many of the poems are written in Klein’s frequently complex style, such as the multilingual homage to the city of Montreal, some of the collection’s most powerful pieces are simple and direct, such as Klein’s critical portrayal of Quebec nationalism in “Political Meeting,” or the rural nostalgia of the titular “The Rocking Chair.”
The collection also includes what many consider to be Klein’s finest poem, “Portrait of the Poet as Landscape,” a haunting meditation on the fate of the poetic vocation in the face of modernity. Along with his acclaimed novel “The Second Scroll,” the poem represents the zenith of Klein’s literary career, though its allusions to paranoia and madness also foreshadow its author’s mental collapse in the mid-1950s and Klein’s ensuing retreat into silence and solitude for the final decades of his life.
Though Klein is celebrated today primarily for his foundational role in Canadian letters (The Quebec Writers’ Federation Prize for Poetry is named in his honor), he was a man of many talents, many interests and many occupations. By profession he was a lawyer, having studied law at the Université de Montréal, and for a few years he lived in the small Quebec mining town of Rouyn, where he opened a modest legal practice. For two-and-a-half decades he was also the editor of the Canadian Jewish Chronicle, the English counterpart to the seminal Yiddish newspaper Der Kanader Adler. In his weekly editorials, Klein commented on such topics as antisemitism both at home and abroad, Canada’s involvement in the Second World War and Zionism, of which he was a life-long supporter.
Though Klein’s artistic aspirations remained primarily poetic, the editorial position served as an important creative outlet for him and as a channel for his essays, reviews and translations of Yiddish and Hebrew works. His career also included a three-year stint teaching poetry at McGill University, two unsuccessful forays into federal politics under the banner of the socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (later to develop into the New Democratic Party) and speaking engagements all over North America on behalf of the fledgling State of Israel.
While for the most part, Klein was able to reconcile his multiple activities and obligations, they eventually took a toll on his personal life as well as on his artistic sensibilities. In addition to his literary work, Klein was a longtime speechwriter and public relations consultant for business magnate Samuel Bronfman, head of the Seagram Company, and president of the Canadian Jewish Congress from 1939 to 1962. In a 1942 journal entry, Klein lamented his role writing souvenir programs for philanthropic banquets. “Poor me!” he wrote. “Poet parsleyate to a menu… it is a humiliation only a philanthropic world makes possible.”
Despite his self-disgust, Klein remained an employee and personal friend of Bronfman’s for decades. He continued to send him birthday greetings long after he had ceased to communicate with most others. According to his son Colman, who spoke at the Concordia University international conference, Klein was fascinated by power and by those who wield it.
But despite his affiliation with Bronfman, it was not just commercial or political power that interested Klein. As a socialist candidate he believed in the power of the people, and as a young rabbinical student in the power of God. But it was the power of language that fascinated him most of all, a power to which he gave lasting expression through his true vocation — poetry.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Adam Kirsch Clarifies The Last Man
Life On Venus: Europe’s Last Man
Adam Kirsch
There are not many moments in history when it is possible to worry that the world has become too happy for its own good. One such moment came in Europe during the late nineteenth century, when the Napoleonic Wars had receded into the distance and the First World War was still hidden over the horizon. For a brief period, it became possible to believe that the West was headed for a condition of permanent peace; that technology, democracy, and globalization were driving a virtuous circle that no atavistic violence could disrupt.
This vision never came very close to becoming a reality; the late nineteenth century was, after all, the era of communism and anarchism, imperialism and scientific racism. It is remarkable, then, to consider how many of the greatest writers of the period were exercised by the possibility that reason, progress, and material well-being—in short, the bourgeois order—might destroy the human spirit. The definitive statement of this view was offered by Nietzsche in the prologue to Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where he summons the specter of the Last Man—or, as R. J. Hollingdale renders it in his translation, the Ultimate Man:
The earth has become small, and upon it hops the Ultimate Man, who makes everything small. His race is as inexterminable as the flea; the Ultimate Man lives longest.
“We have discovered happiness,” say the Ultimate Men and blink. . . .
They still work, for work is entertainment. But they take care the entertainment does not exhaust them.
Nobody grows rich or poor any more: both are too much of a burden. Who still wants to rule? Who obey?
Both are too much of a burden.
The twentieth century, of course, did not turn out to be the age of the Last Man after all. The two world wars and the global violence of the Cold War demonstrated to anyone’s satisfaction that irrationality and cruelty, which Nietzsche feared were dwindling resources, still flourished in abundance just underneath the thin crust of modern civilization. But then came 1989 and the end of history—or at least The End of History and the Last Man, as Francis Fukuyama put it in his influential book. It is almost always referred to simply by the first part of its title; to his critics, Fukuyama is the man who declared “the end of history,” triumphally and, needless to say, prematurely.
But the second part of the book’s title is actually more telling, and more representative of Fukuyama’s argument. No sooner had humanity emerged from a century of hot and cold wars than Fukuyama was resurrecting Nietzsche’s admonition that a world of peace and prosperity would be a world of Last Men. “The life of the last men is one of physical security and material plenty, precisely what Western politicians are fond of promising their electorates,” he pointed out. “Should we fear that we will be both happy and satisfied with our situation, no longer human beings but animals of the species homo sapiens?”
While Fukuyama appreciates the seriousness of the Nietzschean warning, he hears it from the perspective of a partisan, not a foe, of liberalism. The danger he foresees is not simply that bourgeois democracy will cause human beings to degenerate, but that degenerate human beings will be unable to preserve democracy. Without the sense of pride and the love of struggle that Fukuyama, following Plato, calls thymos, men—and there is always an implication that thymos is a specifically masculine virtue—cannot establish freedom or protect it:
It is only thymotic man, the man of anger who is jealous of his own dignity and the dignity of his fellow citizens, the man who feels that his worth is constituted by something more than the complex set of desires that make up his physical existence—it is this man alone who is willing to walk in front of a tank or confront a line of soldiers. And it is frequently the case that without such small acts of bravery in response to small acts of injustice, the larger train of events leading to fundamental changes in political and economic structures would never occur.
When Fukuyama published his book in 1992, he was specifically concerned about the loss of thymos among Americans. Today, his predictions about the debility of the post-historical world still pass for common currency among neoconservatives; what has changed, dramatically, is the consensus view about where that post-historical world can be found. The American response to the 9/11 attacks—the war on terror, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—have banished any fear that America might grow passive and debellicized. The opposite complaint is much more likely to be heard, especially from European critics of America. And partly for that reason, it is to Europe that Americans now look for examples of the Last Man. The opposition of Europeans to the Iraq War, from a neoconservative perspective, all but epitomizes the inability “to walk in front of a tank or confront a line of soldiers” that Fukuyama warned about.
This was the essence of Robert Kagan’s argument in Of Paradise and Power, published in 2003 on the eve of the Iraq War. Europe, Kagan wrote, “is turning away from power” and “entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity,” while the United States “remains mired in history.” He dwelled, in terminology purposefully reminiscent of Nietzsche and Fukuyama, on the psychological frailty, the thymotic decay, of contemporary European society. “The real question,” he writes, “is one of intangibles—of fears, passions, and beliefs.”
Kagan’s much-quoted formula, “Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus,” is a more or less overt accusation of European effeminacy. Or, as James Sheehan puts it, in more value-neutral terms, in Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?: “The eclipse of the willingness and ability to use violence that was once so central to statehood has created a new kind of European state, firmly rooted in new forms of public and private identity and power. As a result, the European Union may become a superstate—a super civilian state—but not a superpower.”...
Adam Kirsch
There are not many moments in history when it is possible to worry that the world has become too happy for its own good. One such moment came in Europe during the late nineteenth century, when the Napoleonic Wars had receded into the distance and the First World War was still hidden over the horizon. For a brief period, it became possible to believe that the West was headed for a condition of permanent peace; that technology, democracy, and globalization were driving a virtuous circle that no atavistic violence could disrupt.
This vision never came very close to becoming a reality; the late nineteenth century was, after all, the era of communism and anarchism, imperialism and scientific racism. It is remarkable, then, to consider how many of the greatest writers of the period were exercised by the possibility that reason, progress, and material well-being—in short, the bourgeois order—might destroy the human spirit. The definitive statement of this view was offered by Nietzsche in the prologue to Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where he summons the specter of the Last Man—or, as R. J. Hollingdale renders it in his translation, the Ultimate Man:
The earth has become small, and upon it hops the Ultimate Man, who makes everything small. His race is as inexterminable as the flea; the Ultimate Man lives longest.
“We have discovered happiness,” say the Ultimate Men and blink. . . .
They still work, for work is entertainment. But they take care the entertainment does not exhaust them.
Nobody grows rich or poor any more: both are too much of a burden. Who still wants to rule? Who obey?
Both are too much of a burden.
The twentieth century, of course, did not turn out to be the age of the Last Man after all. The two world wars and the global violence of the Cold War demonstrated to anyone’s satisfaction that irrationality and cruelty, which Nietzsche feared were dwindling resources, still flourished in abundance just underneath the thin crust of modern civilization. But then came 1989 and the end of history—or at least The End of History and the Last Man, as Francis Fukuyama put it in his influential book. It is almost always referred to simply by the first part of its title; to his critics, Fukuyama is the man who declared “the end of history,” triumphally and, needless to say, prematurely.
But the second part of the book’s title is actually more telling, and more representative of Fukuyama’s argument. No sooner had humanity emerged from a century of hot and cold wars than Fukuyama was resurrecting Nietzsche’s admonition that a world of peace and prosperity would be a world of Last Men. “The life of the last men is one of physical security and material plenty, precisely what Western politicians are fond of promising their electorates,” he pointed out. “Should we fear that we will be both happy and satisfied with our situation, no longer human beings but animals of the species homo sapiens?”
While Fukuyama appreciates the seriousness of the Nietzschean warning, he hears it from the perspective of a partisan, not a foe, of liberalism. The danger he foresees is not simply that bourgeois democracy will cause human beings to degenerate, but that degenerate human beings will be unable to preserve democracy. Without the sense of pride and the love of struggle that Fukuyama, following Plato, calls thymos, men—and there is always an implication that thymos is a specifically masculine virtue—cannot establish freedom or protect it:
It is only thymotic man, the man of anger who is jealous of his own dignity and the dignity of his fellow citizens, the man who feels that his worth is constituted by something more than the complex set of desires that make up his physical existence—it is this man alone who is willing to walk in front of a tank or confront a line of soldiers. And it is frequently the case that without such small acts of bravery in response to small acts of injustice, the larger train of events leading to fundamental changes in political and economic structures would never occur.
When Fukuyama published his book in 1992, he was specifically concerned about the loss of thymos among Americans. Today, his predictions about the debility of the post-historical world still pass for common currency among neoconservatives; what has changed, dramatically, is the consensus view about where that post-historical world can be found. The American response to the 9/11 attacks—the war on terror, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—have banished any fear that America might grow passive and debellicized. The opposite complaint is much more likely to be heard, especially from European critics of America. And partly for that reason, it is to Europe that Americans now look for examples of the Last Man. The opposition of Europeans to the Iraq War, from a neoconservative perspective, all but epitomizes the inability “to walk in front of a tank or confront a line of soldiers” that Fukuyama warned about.
This was the essence of Robert Kagan’s argument in Of Paradise and Power, published in 2003 on the eve of the Iraq War. Europe, Kagan wrote, “is turning away from power” and “entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity,” while the United States “remains mired in history.” He dwelled, in terminology purposefully reminiscent of Nietzsche and Fukuyama, on the psychological frailty, the thymotic decay, of contemporary European society. “The real question,” he writes, “is one of intangibles—of fears, passions, and beliefs.”
Kagan’s much-quoted formula, “Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus,” is a more or less overt accusation of European effeminacy. Or, as James Sheehan puts it, in more value-neutral terms, in Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?: “The eclipse of the willingness and ability to use violence that was once so central to statehood has created a new kind of European state, firmly rooted in new forms of public and private identity and power. As a result, the European Union may become a superstate—a super civilian state—but not a superpower.”...
And Another Medvedian Note
The state has an interest in marriage alright but that interest of itself does not foreclose same sex marriage.
The issue is whether the difference between same sex couples and straight couples affords reasons for disallowing same sex marriage. The reasons, after all, do not speak for themselves.
The issue is whether the difference between same sex couples and straight couples affords reasons for disallowing same sex marriage. The reasons, after all, do not speak for themselves.
Further Notes on Medved
Gay Marriage
1. Separate but equal before Brown meant equal at law. Equality before the law and marriage are not concepts carved in stone. What they can include will change with good reasons and broad sentiment. Those changes aren’t politics narrowly conceived. They are the progress of rights and liberties.
2. Matrimony isn’t holy though it can be. Religion offers no cognizable ground for disallowing gay marriage.
3. It’s wrong to say miscegenation was overruled because of legal principles and not because of bad distinctions. Before it was overruled it was the law. What to make of the legal principles then? Distinguishing precedes and informs the legal principles. And they are general enough—equality, due process—to expand with changes based on good arguments.
4. There is no wall between principled arguments and social policy arguments. They feed and structure each other.
5. Procreation does not exhaust the functionality and purposes of marriage. Plus gay parents have means beyond their own procreation of having children. Children with loving gay parents are well off.
1. Separate but equal before Brown meant equal at law. Equality before the law and marriage are not concepts carved in stone. What they can include will change with good reasons and broad sentiment. Those changes aren’t politics narrowly conceived. They are the progress of rights and liberties.
2. Matrimony isn’t holy though it can be. Religion offers no cognizable ground for disallowing gay marriage.
3. It’s wrong to say miscegenation was overruled because of legal principles and not because of bad distinctions. Before it was overruled it was the law. What to make of the legal principles then? Distinguishing precedes and informs the legal principles. And they are general enough—equality, due process—to expand with changes based on good arguments.
4. There is no wall between principled arguments and social policy arguments. They feed and structure each other.
5. Procreation does not exhaust the functionality and purposes of marriage. Plus gay parents have means beyond their own procreation of having children. Children with loving gay parents are well off.
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