Sara Robinson

Debunked: Ten Conservative Myths About National Security

Sara Robinson — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 23:59:23 -0700

True confession: I was terrified on 9/11—for all the right reasons.

I wasn't afraid of the terrorists. There are plenty of countries where people have lived for decades under the constant threat of unholy acts of terror—and yet people still get on buses and subways and airplanes, and life goes on. I'd like to think that Americans are at least as courageous as Israelis or Indonesians. Our "land of the free and home of the brave" mythos insists we should be. So I was damned if I was going to respond to the crisis by giving into irrational fears and thereby, as we used to say, "let the terrorists win."

The Ten Myths

"Islamofascism" is our biggest national security threat.
We're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here.
Military solutions are the only effective national security solutions.
What we're doing is working; we haven't had another 9/11.
"Law enforcement" approaches to terrorism don't work.
We don't need allies; we can do this on our own.
You don't negotiate with dictators.
National security spending is different from pork-barrel spending on other programs.
Airport security is critical to our anti-terrorism effort.
It's always necessary to give up our civil liberties in a time of war.

No, what I was really afraid of was that too many of my fellow Americans would forget the lessons of their own history—that they'd lose track of who we are and where we've been and what we're made of. I knew there was a real possibility that this time, we'd fail to live up to our reputation for cool, calm clarity in the face of crisis, and instead be goaded into taking counsel of our fears. I feared the bad choices that would inevitably follow if we stampeded down that road. And I dreaded that it would be the soul death of the country I loved.

I hate having been right about this, though I can hardly blame average citizens for succumbing to the sirens of chaos. Americans trying to make correct sense of the new reality found their efforts stymied everywhere they turned. With the White House distorting intelligence to sell a war, corporate opportunists fanning the coals of panic to heat up vast new business opportunities, media editors milking the drama to keep their ratings high, and terrified hordes quick to shout "treason" whenever anyone dared to question the path we were taking, it was hard for even thoughtful Americans to locate the truth of the matter. And as long as confusion reigned, the terrorists really did keep winning.

Seven years later, as the miasma dissipates, more and more of us are able to calm down, take a step back, draw a big, cleansing breath and start to sort things out more rationally. Unfortunately, though, a few of the myths promulgated in those first few years have hardened firmly into a new conventional wisdom—some so stubbornly that you often won't even find progressives questioning them any more. The time has come to call out a few of these persistent myths that are still being taken as fact and start firing back on them.

1. "Islamofascism" is America's biggest national security threat.

Not hardly. This is the hot new idea among far-right demagogues who literally can't define who they are without a devil to contrast themselves against, and military hawks looking for an excuse to keep the military-industrial complex's big all-night party rolling in the bleary morning-after of a post-Cold War world. But, as the Center for American Progress notes in this article, it's a dangerous meme that disables our ability to think clearly, and it will almost certainly lead us into even more catastrophic misadventures.

To begin with, "Islamofascism" itself is an impossible idea, and those who promote it betray a fundamental political ignorance. True fascism can only occur within an industrialized nation-state, few of which exist in the Islamic world. And many of our most intransigent problems with terrorism come from the opposite problem: modern terrorists have no state affiliations, and are thus free to drift across international borders with fluid ease. Defeating them means coming to grips with this fact. Calling them "fascists" makes it that much harder to grasp.

Worse, "Islamofascism" suggests that the Muslim world is some kind of vast monolithic conspiracy, equal in might and will to the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany back in the day—and that's another dangerous delusion. Just like Christianity, Islam covers a widely diverse range of cultures and political attitudes. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims are not jihadis, and consider terrorism abhorrent. Turning one-quarter of the world's people into The Enemy will blind us to the subtle but critical distinctions within Islam. It will doom us to serious blunders, alienate potential allies, and cost us important opportunities to make real inroads against terrorism.

Spencer Ackerman suggests the term "anti-Western Salafist jihadism" as a replacement. Less catchy, perhaps, but more specific and not nearly so fraught with wrong assumptions that can cloud our thinking.

Having dispatched "Islamofascism," though, the more important point remains: Anti-Western Salafist jihadism isn't even America's biggest security threat. It's on the short list—but so are global pandemics, loose nukes, our dependence on foreign energy, the catastrophic effects of climate change, the U.S.'s vast and bloated national debt, and our growing helplessness at producing essential goods for ourselves. As long as we're mired in an endless war to "defeat Islamofascism," we're going to remain weak, distracted, and grossly unprepared for the other serious security threats we face.

2. We're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here.

False. The image here is that Iraq is some kind of roach hotel for global terrorism. The truth is, it's become the international finishing school where a new generation of terrorists is getting a front-line, real-time education against the American war machine—and perfecting low-tech ways to close the gap against a high-tech army.

The U.S. official National Intelligence Estimate concludes that the war in Iraq has made new Islamic radicals where none existed before, greatly increasing the terror threat around the world. The number of significant terrorist incidents worldwide has risen every year of the war. In a bipartisan survey of national security experts last year, the consensus found that that the war in Iraq is making the world more dangerous for Americans. (To be fair, this same panel is a bit more upbeat this year, but still thinks the war is a grave mistake.) In the meantime, al-Qaida has regrouped in Pakistan, and is back at full strength—while we've suffered more than 35,000 casualties and spent more than $550 billion, while alienating friends around the world.

"Fighting them there" hasn't been nearly the solution we were promised it would be. But too many of us were eager to buy into that promise, because we'd already been sold on another persistent myth:

3. Military solutions are the only effective national security solutions.

Wrong. So wrong that Boston University professor Andrew Bacevich (who is nobody's liberal) has written an entire book on America's dangerously naïve faith in the military as the only viable solution to everything that ails us.

Which is ridiculous, when you consider all the things military force can't do. Smart bombs won't stop global warming. Battlefield nukes won't cure pandemics. Air strikes won't reduce our reliance on foreign energy sources. Sending in the Marines is no way to reduce the national debt. As we saw above in No. 1, terrorism is just one of a number of real national security threats we're facing—and as we'll see, it's not even clear that that the military is the right answer there, either.

On the other hand, there's a surprising level of consensus among security experts on both the left and right on what real, effective national security would look like:

We need to beef up our intelligence agencies—in a way that's consistent with the Constitution—so they can monitor terrorist groups and keep dangerous technologies out of their hands.
We need to provide consistent and effective domestic security around ports, chemical plants, and other high-risk targets—something that should have been done immediately after 9/11, but is still largely neglected.
We need to revisit our national infrastructure for disaster preparedness and response. Whether it's floods or fires, evacuation or epidemic, insurgents or industrial accidents, we will be more secure if we have a well-planned, coordinated response, and trained people prepared and in place to handle it.
We need our friends. Diplomacy, alliances, international cooperation, intelligence sharing and police work are the essential tools for pre-empting real threats to our security.
We need to become more self-sufficient. Asked by the Foreign Policy Index to rate strategies for strengthening the nation’s security, 55% of Americans listed “Becoming less dependent on other countries for our supply of energy. Only 17% said “Attacking countries that develop weapons of mass destruction” would enhance our security.

America has very few problems that can best be solved by military means—and a great many problems that require us to look for other strategies.

4. But—what we're doing is working! After all, we haven't had another 9/11...

True, we haven't—but not for the reasons you think. Which leads us to another myth....

5. Everybody knows that "law enforcement" approaches to terrorism don't work.

False. They do work. In fact, they're about the only thing that really does work. Every single terrorist plot that's been prevented since 9/11—both the serious ones, and the ones that were "more aspirational than operational"—were prevented through good old-fashioned police and intelligence work.

Taking the wide view, the fateful choice to send in soldiers rather than international cops turned out to be a major win for the terrorists. Conservative blogger Steve Chapman explained it this way: "By framing the fight as a global war, we have helped Osama bin Laden and hurt ourselves. Had we treated him and his confederates as the moral equivalent of international drug lords or sex traffickers, the organization might not have the romantic image it has acquired. By exaggerating the potential impact, we also magnified the disruptive effect of any plots, which is just what the terrorists seek."

6. We don't need allies: we can do this on our own. Besides, moral authority doesn't matter when you have superior firepower.

More fatal hubris. One of the more noxious side effects of American exceptionalism is that we cling stubbornly to the idea that we're the only country on earth that matters and owe nothing to anyone else.

That wasn't even true back in 1776, when Thomas Jefferson duly noted the new nation's obligation to have "a decent respect" for "the opinions of mankind" in the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. It's considerably less true now that we are so dependent on so many for so much. Insisting that we can go it alone in this deeply interconnected world—where our oil comes from the Saudis, our cars come from the Japanese, and our money and everything else comes from China—is very much like a headstrong 14-year-old who insists that they don't need Mom and Dad for anything—except maybe housing and food and an allowance and a ride to the mall.

And that's about how Americans look to the rest of the world whenever we strike this "I'll do it myself, so there" posture: immature, petulant, spoiled and ignorant of all the ways we depend on the family of nations for our continued well-being. Yes, we're big and strong and capable of doing tremendous damage if we get angry. But we can only throw that weight around for so long—by and by, the other nations will band together to find alternatives to dealing with us, and may even start actively looking for ways to knock us down to size. In some places, this is already happening, and it's not in our long-term interest for it to continue.

It's time for us to remember our grown-up manners and return to our seat at the global family table.

7. Negotiating with "irrational" dictators is pointless, and a sign of weakness.

Catastrophically dumb. Conservatives condemn the idea of presidents talking to their counterparts from "enemy" countries, but 67 percent of Americans disagree, according to a June 2 Gallup poll. "Large majorities of Democrats and independents, and even half of Republicans, believe the president of the United States should meet with the leaders of countries that are considered enemies of the United States," the poll says. Fifty-nine percent of Americans, for example, would support the U.S. president meeting with the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

If FDR could confer with Stalin and JFK could negotiate with Khrushchev and Nixon could go to China and sit down with Mao, there's no reason whatsoever our current president can't arrange a meeting with Ahmedinejad. Bush's refusal to do this is a sign of his essential smallness of character and the narrowness of his worldview. The problem with all ideologues is that once they decide that "you're with us or against us," then no further discussion—let alone compromise—with the other side is possible. That's a dangerous trait in a president, and one we should watch out carefully for in the future.

8. Government spending on national security is different than pork-barrel spending on other programs.

Another myth busted. Recall that when the Republicans controlled Congress, they devised a formula that diverted security money from high-risk (and mostly liberal) states like New York and California to lower-risk (and mostly conservative) places like Wyoming and Nebraska. This made no logical sense from a security standpoint—the only explanation was that the Republican Congress was using 9/11 as an excuse to dole out pork.

Homeland security has grown up to become one of the biggest pork barrels in American politics. Security professionals are quick to point out that too many of these efforts aren't designed to provide objectively effective security—in fact, as we'll see below, many of them are based on flawed assumptions about how effective security works. Instead, the contracts are written in such a way that the only way to fulfill them is to funnel our tax dollars into the pockets of well-connected conservative cronies. The upshot is that we spend more than we should, and get less real protection than we deserve.

And perhaps worst of all: Seven years of this unregulated, unfocused spending has created a booming new industry that can only survive as long as it keeps selling us on new threats to fear—which has long-term implications for our entire national culture.

9. Airport security is a critical part of our anti-terrorism effort.

True, but not as true as it should be. Security experts are still deeply concerned about at least two big holes in the system that make the high drama of the passenger screening area into nothing much more than a farce.

The first one is that we're still not adequately inspecting air cargo. Any competent engineering student can make and ship a timed bomb, which is why the 9/11 Commission Report insisted on aggressive inspection of all air cargo. At this point, most airports are doing random profiling and screening of parcels; but it's a far cry from the careful one-by-one inspection being given to people and luggage traveling on the same plane. In 2007, the Transportation Security Administration spent $5 billion inspecting passengers and luggage, and just $55 million on cargo going on the same planes. Cargo inspectors comprise less than 1 percent of the TSA workforce. Feeling safer yet?

The other security hole big enough to fly another 9/11 through comprises the various programs that allow crew members, frequent fliers, people with security clearances, and other "trusted travelers" to bypass inspection. As Bruce Schneier points out, these programs are based on the dangerous myth that terrorists match a particular profile, and that we can somehow pick terrorists out of a crowd if we only can identify everyone and get them all on watch lists.

Schneier, who has consulted with the TSA, is emphatic that dividing the world into "trusted travelers" and people on watch lists creates more security problems than it solves. "Most of the 9/11 terrorists were unknown and not on any watch list. Timothy McVeigh was an upstanding U.S. citizen before he blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building. Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel are normal, nondescript people. Intelligence reports indicate that al-Qaida is recruiting non-Arab terrorists for U.S. operations." Furthermore, if you create a low-inspection loophole in the system, would-be terrorists will aim for that loophole—and are more likely to get through it. The only way to prevent this is to throw out the watch lists and inspect everyone—no exceptions.

Schneier and other airline security experts will tell you that most of the safety gains since 9/11 come about through just two developments: hardening cockpit doors, and passengers who now know that they may have to fight back. "Everything else—Secure Flight and Trusted Traveler included—is security theater," writes Schneier. "We would all be a lot safer if, instead, we implemented enhanced baggage security—both ensuring that a passenger's bags don't fly unless he does, and explosives screening for all baggage—as well as background checks and increased screening for airport employees."

10. It's always necessary to give up our civil liberties in a time of war.

Wrong. So horribly wrong, in fact, that my very conservative eighth-grade civics teacher wouldn't have graduated a kid who failed this part of the exam. She put the fear of the Founders in us, along with a clear sense of our obligations and rights as citizens. There hasn't been a day since 9/11 that I haven't mourned the fact that America has not produced nearly enough Mrs. Hermans.

Last night, I was watching NBC's presentation of "9/11: As It Happened," a two-hour summary of its coverage that awful morning seven years ago. At one point, late in the broadcast, Tom Brokaw made a comment: "We are a country at war now....we're going to have to reconsider some of the freedoms we now enjoy." The smoke of the towers was still rolling up the streets of Manhattan, and NBC's senior anchor was already declaring a new era in which patriotic Americans must be willing to surrender their liberty for security. I was left wondering how someone who wouldn't have made it out of eighth grade at Home Street School ended up in a national anchor spot—and remembering all over again just what it was on that day that made me so deeply, truly afraid for my country.

Lincoln suspended habeus corpus during the Civil War, and FDR claimed extraordinary powers for himself during World War II—but neither of them ever tried to argue that being at war was a natural excuse for suspending the entire Bill of Rights. In fact (as we have seen) the more dangerous the times, the more important those liberties become. In times of huge social transformation or economic upheaval, when everything else is up for grabs, our worldview and our values—the internal qualities that define who we are, the things nobody can ever take away from us—move to the front and center. Everything else can go up in smoke; but as long as we hold onto those core beliefs, we will be able to survive the worst, and find everything we need within us to rebuild the world anew.

The Declaration and the Constitution are the defining documents of our country, expressing the central ideals that determine who we are. If we abandon those ideals, we will simply cease to be American—and, perhaps, lose the chance of ever restoring America again. If we are truly concerned about national security, this is, beyond a doubt, the worst thing we could ever allow to happen.

Outright Barbarism vs. The Civil Society

Sara Robinson — Tue, 06 May 2008 16:35:14 -0700

I live in a nice place.

I mean that literally. It took some getting used to. After 20 years in Silicon Valley, where people put a premium on being direct and to the point, have no time to waste on small talk or personal sharing, and will call a stupid idea stupid to your face, moving to Canada required a whole lot of gearing back on that brusque American aggressive-in-your-face thing. The humbling fact was: We had to learn to mind our manners.

Much of the adjustment work that first year involved re-learning the art of Being Nice. We had to get used to meetings that started with 10 or 15 minutes of personal chit-chat. We had to train ourselves to stop interrupting people, and to be more careful to say "please" and "thank you." We had to discover (sometimes, the hard way) that losing your temper with Canadians means that you will invariably lose the conflict. The more terse and irritated you get, the more determinedly calm and polite Canadians become, until you're standing there looking like a raving idiot and they're still firmly in control (though they're very sorry you're having such a bad day).

We also learned the unofficial Canadian motto, which is "I'm sorry." Canadians will say "I'm sorry" even if you were the one who bumped into them. (Americans, on the other hand, won't say it at all: apologizing is admitting fault, which is an invitation to lawsuits.) We used to respond to this by pleading with them out of our own misguided sense of Niceness: "No. Please. Don't be sorry. It was MY fault." But after a while, we gave up, went with the flow, and started apologizing for everything, too. It was really...well, nice, once we got used to it.

The whole world makes fun of Canadians' resolute civility -- but once I'd read a little Canadian history, I realized that this Being Nice thing isn't just a cute cultural quirk. In fact, up here, it's is a deadly serious matter of national survival. Canada's 13 provinces and territories are, effectively, three separate nations—each with its own culture, language, religion, and history. On top of that, the country is the world's largest importer of new immigrants, a large fraction of whom are from cultures very different from Canada's aboriginal and European bedrock. The federal constitution that binds all this together is very weak (it's not unlike the U.S.'s original Articles of Confederation), and the overwhelming bulk of government power is still tightly concentrated in the hands of the provincial premiers (that's Canadian for "state governors"). Secession is eminently possible, as the Quebecois so often like to remind us.

In the face of all that, there's the constant possibility—which does not exist in the U.S.—that one cranky politician having one bad day could stand up and say one idiot thing that would cause one faction or another to decamp en masse, thus precipitating the instant demise of Canada-as-we-know-it. The threat is real. It could happen. And the only thing that keeps it from happening is that resolute collective determination to stay calm, keep the peace, and Be Nice.

Civility is, in a very real sense, the glue that holds this big, diverse nation together. Name-calling, othering, and losing one's temper is, quite simply, un-Canadian and unpatriotic. Failure to be civil in public is the fastest way (perhaps the only way) to get Canadians genuinely peeved at you. In the land where "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is supplanted by "peace, order, and good government" as the organizing values, there is simply no excuse at all for that kind of behavior, ever.

Our essential reliance on civil discourse—and the big trouble that awaits us when we try to function without it—is the same idea that Jeffrey Feldman explores, far more pointedly, in his new book, Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy. Feldman, whose indispensable Frameshop blog has done a lot of the heavy lifting in deconstructing the way the American right uses and abuses language, briskly and thoughtfully deconstructs seven specific ways 30 years of us-versus-them rhetoric has polarized the country, forced us into unnecessary conflicts against each other and everyone else, and virtually destroyed our ability to govern ourselves.

Dave Neiwert, who coined the term "eliminationist rhetoric" to describe the language Americans have so often used to justify violence against each other, has carefully outlined the process by which ugly talk can easily devolve into horrific action. Call it holocaust, lynching, or apartheid -- whatever the atrocity, it always begins with language that privileges us, dehumanizes them, and somehow justifies their removal from our midst. Feldman's book breaks out another side to this conversation, by showing that the right wing has scored some very specific and tangible (and otherwise politically untenable) benefits by the simple act of grinding our discourse down the point where it's now mostly conduced in the coarsest of us-versus-them terms.

For each of the seven topics Feldman calls out, there's one conservative spokesperson who's led the rhetorical race to the bottom -- and one specific long-term conservative political agenda item that got served as a result. In his first example, the NRA's Wayne LaPierre sells a "vision of the world where violent assaults on individuals are inevitable, all laws and institutions are powerless to stop them, and the only guarantee for survival is for citizens to be prepared to fire a gun at the oncoming danger." Feldman argues that America can only adopt this worldview at the cost of its own democratic ideals, by fostering a "command-obedience" relationship between the governors and the governed—one that places the use of force outside the rule of law and beyond the control of the people's government. In the presence of arms, people are silenced, and the creative give-and-take required for good problem-solving suffers. Those who hold the guns prevail. This way, he warns, lies tyranny.

Then there's Pat Buchanan, leading the charge against immigration, which he insists is a calculated, well-planned "Reconquista" which has enlisted millions of triumphant Mexicans to invade America and exact their terrible revenge for the defeat of Santa Anna 160 years ago. Our only defense against the barbarian horde is to kill or be killed. Feldman notes that this kind of overheated eliminationist framing has been a boon to corporate conservatives, because it's made it impossible to have a nuanced (or even coherent) conversation that acknowledges NAFTA's grotesque destruction of the economy and the environment on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border.

"Immigration has become a political issue because of trade, not because of race or 'civilization,'" notes Feldman. "At its most primary, political level, America's immigration problem is a product of what David Sirota has aptly named the 'hostile takeover' of key economic policies in our government by vast corporations in control of unimaginable wealth."

But as long as we're talking about anchor babies and bilingual culture, we won't be talking about that. And that's just fine with those who are making a killing of their own on the status quo.

Ann Coulter's success is largely built on her ability to take any issue and instantly use it to justify violence against the right wing's favorite targets. Feldman traces the way this dubious gift has defined the trajectory of her career, culminating in her insistence that liberals need to be eliminated because they're traitors who are ready to hand the country over to al-Qaida. That's always the bottom line with Ann—and that quickness to write off anyone capable of a creative or nuanced thought creates a climate that stifles our ability to solve problems together, which is the essence of democratic government. It also effectively discourages people from participating in politics at all, lest they become targets of people who've learned their moves from Ann. "Coulter's rhetoric," writes Feldman, "poisons the soil in which civic identity takes root."

Feldman goes on to unmask Bill O'Reilly's bluster as a smokescreen that makes it impossible to talk seriously about national security and the things that really threaten us; John Gibson's "War on Christmas" as an assault on our ability to teach diversity in schools; and James Dobson's weird ideas about child discipline and family authority as a noxious cognitive pattern that influences the way we approach larger issues of community, authoritarianism, citizen discipline, and even foreign policy (inasmuch as some policymakers tend to view smaller countries exercising their sovereignty as wayward children in need of correction).

In the final chapters, his dissection of Dinesh D'Souza's rhetoric ties it all up with a bow. According to Feldman, every issue D'Souza touches down to the inevitable conclusion that liberals are to blame—a broad and breathtaking act of scapegoating that makes it impossible for us to get a collective handle on the true chain of responsibility that resulted in everything from 9/11 to the disastrous war that followed.

Taken as a whole, Feldman argues persuasively that the right wing's use of violent language and imagery over the past 30 years has gravely, deeply—perhaps even mortally—wounded the American body politic. As social theorists from John Dewey to Miss Manners have pointed out—and as my Canadian neighbors seem to understand as the central fact of their civic existence—civility is the necessary ingredient that allows democracies to function. Without it, there is no common good, no mutual respect, no reason to have faith in our ability to govern together wisely and well. When these basic agreements fail, so does our ability to self-govern. Reading this book from my peaceable perch on a mountainside in western Canada, the destruction of America's civic order, as Feldman describes it, looks utter and complete.

Somehow, we need to find our way back to each other. And, as simple as it sounds, it may start with a determined resolution that we are going to be civil to each other. Always. Even to your obnoxious Dittohead neighbor. Even to your annoying fundamentalist sister-in-law. Even to that jerk with the faded W'04 bumper sticker who stole your parking space. Even to the whinging concern troll in the comments thread. Catharsis feels like a birthright in our I-want-it-now society; but it's a luxury that progressives can no longer afford. Every time we give into it, the culture splits a little wider, and our odds of ever healing again it grow a bit more remote. It's time for progressives to step up and show the rest of the country how grownups behave. We've got an example to set, and a hundred million people to educate.

It's a lot to ask of "please" and "thank you." But the stakes are too high to ignore.

If we want democracy, we need to be able to see our fellow citizens as human beings, possessed of their own inherent worth and dignity.

If we want justice, we need to grant them the same rights and respect we feel entitled to—even when they're strenuously disagreeing with us, or when their interests and ours line up on opposite poles.

If we want security, we must first learn to be safe with each other, and trust ourselves as guardians of our collective well-being.

If we want to rebuild the country, we need to remember that we are all heirs to the same vast trust of social, political, and physical capital built up by previous generations; that our livelihood and liberties depend entirely on how well we can manage to sustain that common legacy; and that we share a duty to ensure our children's future by passing all of that on to them, not only intact but richer yet.

The only disagreements we should have are over the best means to achieve all this. The goals themselves should be beyond question. Feldman gives us a useful primer on how the right wing has carefully and deliberately separated us from both our founding goals and the means to achieve them. It's up to us to put put it all back together, and that starts with Being Nice.

A final note. The idea that Being Nice is a sign of weakness is, as noted above, inherent in the conservative narrative Feldman describes. Anger merchants like Coulter and O'Reilly have sold an entire generation of Americans on the idea that the mere desire to gather facts, contemplate them calmly, and discuss them rationally with people who might have other points of view makes one a traitor to the nation—weak, ineffectual, and dangerously liberal.

The horrifying result of this is a political climate in which many Americans believe that those who can throw the biggest tantrum deserve to get their way. (Which is not democracy, or anything like it. It's rule by bullies.) If you want to know why American politics sounds like a sandbox fight in the kindergarten playground, there's one good answer. Look at it this way, and it becomes clear that the Obama/Hillary partisan pissing matches of the past many weeks are, once again, playing right into conservative hands. Never mind the fact that when those two fight, McCain wins. Look beyond that to the more distressing fact, which is that too many Democrats have finally become every bit as ugly as the GOP has always been. They've gotten to us. We've finally become what we most despise.

For the record: Being Nice, done well, has a ferocious strength all its own, as anyone who's watched a CBC news interviewer or dealt with a Canadian school headmaster can tell you. Over the past four years, I've seen fastidious politeness and heartbreaking compassion used in the hands of master practitioners, and marveled at the power of sheer civility to defeat hotheads, deflect crazy ideas, and send shit-stirrers right out the door. It's a skill we need to relearn, and soon. Fortunately, we have 32 million neighbors and authors like Jeffrey Feldman to show us the way.

Jeremiah Wright: What (Else) Is Going On

Sara Robinson — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:38:13 -0700

Jeremiah Wright is everywhere this week -- and the media doesn't quite know what to make of it. Mostly, they're stuck so hard in the election horse-race narrative that they only question they can think to ask is: Does having Wright out there hurt Obama, or help him?

Lost in the tortured pondering over this narrow question -- apparently the only one that matters, to hear them tell it -- is a lot of deeper context, without which none of Wright's current situation and status make a whole lot of sense.

Some of that context has to do with who Wright is, and what role he plays on the larger stage of American religion. Some of it of it is rooted in popular narratives about religion that the GOP has worked overtime to sell; and that the media (along with many Christians) have never questioned. Some of may have to do with the way our broader assumptions about the role religion can and should play in 21st-century American culture and politics could be changing. These three factors are driving a whole backstory that nobody's talking about; but which provides the deeper subtext we need to have if we're going to understand what Jeremiah Wright represents, and the role he plays not just for Obama, but for the country.

Since the corporate media isn't remotely up to the job of explaining all this -- and probably wouldn't if they could -- let me fill you in on what else is going on here.

Liberation Theology versus the Prosperity Gospel
The basic elements of this backstory are deftly laid out in Sarah Posner's thoughtful new book, God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters. The book takes a hard look at the explosive growth of the "prosperity gospel" evangelical subculture, which is frequently found in suburban megachurches -- and is supplanting Martin Luther King's liberation theology in some black churches around the country as well. Posner describes the essence of this consumerist "Word of Faith" gospel:

Word of Faith...emphasizes the power of the born-again believer in Jesus Christ to call things into existence, including the believer's own physical and mental health and, more important, the believer's financial prosperity. Because of its emphasis on the believer's divine right to physical well-being and financial riches, Word of Faith is often called the "prosperity gospel" or the "health and wealth gospel."

...Yet while it presents itself as a benign message of hope and purpose, critics of Word of Faith charge that it is a heresy that robs its followers of spiritual fulfillment, an affinity fraud that robs them of their money, and a distortion of the Scriptures, run by authoritarian preachers who rob their followers of their autonomy.

According to the "Word of Faith" panjandrums, whatever followers give to their preacher, God will return several times over. Forget the bank: if you need a thousand dollars, give the church a hundred, and wait for your supernatural return on investment. Forget the doctor: if you're sick or injured, a little extra in the bucket will incentivize God to restore your health. In an unapologetic return to the glory days before the Reformation, the system even allows people to buy indulgences: you can atone for your sins by helping the pastor buy that new Palm Springs golf retreat his ministry so badly needs!

Taking these mites from desperate and hopeful widows nets top prosperity gospel ministers millions of dollars a year: successful Word of Faith ministers own numerous homes, private jets and expensive cars. And these preachers' followers support their imperial lifestyles wholeheartedly. Jesus said, "By their fruits you shall know them." According to this theology, you can tell the Elect, because they're the ones with the biggest bowl of fruit. It's a belief system tailor - made to justify the most rapacious consumer society in history.

(This divinely-ordained pyramid scheme has not gone unnoticed. Six months ago, Senator Charles Grassley -- R-IA and a staunch Baptist -- took an interest in the way these ministers are using their non-profit status to generate vast fortunes. He asked six of the richest ministers, including Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn, to open their books and submit to investigation of their operations. Four have complied in whole or part; two, including Copeland, are refusing outright, howling that this is a breach of the church-state wall -- you know, that same one they've been working overtime for years to tear down.)

The movement also a strong conservative political undercurrent, which Posner makes explicit:

Politically, Word of Faith is essentially a conservative movement that benefits from conservative policies....The prosperity gospel doesn't need regulation or legislation. A believer doesn't need the government to regulate corporations. If you don't make enough money, it's your own fault for not believing enough, for not speaking the word, for not claiming what is divinely yours. A believer doesn't need a government safety net if things go wrong. As [Rod] Parsley says, "The best thing government can do to help the poor is get out of the way. If government reduced taxes, removed industrial restraints, eliminated wage controls, and abolished subsidies, tariff[s], and other constraints on free enterprise, the poor would be helped in a way that AFDC, Social Security, and unemployment could never match." ...His gospel is the ultimate laissez-faire capitalism, regulated only by the invisible hand of God.

Starting in the Reagan years -- and with considerable practical and moral support from the GOP, which Posner documents -- the prosperity gospel swept through the country's Pentecostal churches, both black and white. To give you some idea of how incestuously this movement is bedded down in GOP politics, consider the fact that John McCain claims Rod Parsley and John Hagee -- two of the nation's biggest purveyors of the prosperity gospel -- as his "spiritual advisors." (A lot of us wondered why he chose these two, who are regarded as nutcases even by many Evangelicals; but reading Posner, the political ends being served become obvious.)

Needless to say: not everybody welcomed this new gospel with open arms. Millions of devout Evangelicals who've read their Bibles and noted Jesus' contempt for greed, as well as those who hew to older and more rigorous theologies like the Social Gospel and King-style liberation theology, find the whole thing beyond offensive and verging on blasphemy. From the beginning, some of the country's leading ministers, both black and white, have taken public exception to the idea of reducing God to the status of a personal ATM machine -- and have pushed back hard against a movement that they feel is a not only an IRS-sanctioned form of fraud, but also a heresy against 2,000 years of Christian teaching.

And here's where Jeremiah Wright comes into the story. According to Posner, Wright has been a visible and articulate critic of the GOP's new pet theology over the years -- one of a noisy clutch of ministers who've made no bones about the mischief inherent in this new theology. He's also a respected and insightful proponent of black liberation theology, holding King's torch high in the face of unscrupulous preachers who think they're helping poor people by cajoling them to vote away their safety net and toss their government checks in the offering plate.

Beyond that: unlike the vast majority of these ministers, most of whom attended small Bible colleges of dubious accreditation (if they attended seminary at all), Wright has degrees from Howard University and the University of Chicago Theological Seminary. It's gotta go down hard that he's a black man who is far better-educated than they are, and can argue circles around them about the Bible or anything else. Take it as a whole picture, and it's not hard to see that Wright is very sharp thorn in these people's sides. As long as he and his friends out there, their 30-year investment in the whole Word of Life movement is at risk. Obama's candidacy put him in the spotlight, and thus magnified the threat. So now he has very powerful enemies on the religious and political right.

Furthermore, turning Wright into a national demon was a two-fer. They could not only tank the Democrats' front-runner; they'd also take down a serious and persuasive theologian who's been calling them out hard on one of their longest-running and most successful efforts to sell the conservative worldview to the very people who stand to be most harmed by it.

That's a big part of what's driving the animus against Wright. It's the issue he was addressing head-on at the National Press Club on Saturday, when he talked about how the storm of criticism surrounding his remarks was, in effect, criticism of the traditions of the black church. It also answers the burning question of why the GOP and the corporate media will not let this go. What's happening here is bigger than just Barack and Hillary and John. It's a struggle between two competing Protestant theologies, both of which claim tens of millions of adherents -- and a galvanizing figure who hasn't gotten the hint, and still keeps standing up for his flock against those bent on shearing them.

A Voice for The Silent Majority
There's another part to this backstory as well. It has to do with the media's dominant narratives about religion in general over the past three decades.

Ever since Reagan came to power, media stories having to do with religion have almost always reflected a basic duality. On one hand, you had urban secularists (including the media people themselves) who had no connection at all to religion, which they regarded as backward and the sign of an inferior mind -- a contempt that was reflected in their generally incomplete and inaccurate coverage of the subject.

On the other hand, you had far-right preachers with loud voices and red faces hollering ignorant and irrational rants about gays, feminists, and liberals. To the secularists, these preachers' histrionics came to represent the evils of all religion; and furthermore, they verified every bias they had against every form of religion. And the hostility was returned in full: to these preachers and their followers, the condescending media coverage nourished their already overfed inferiority and persecution complexes, driving them further and further out of the mainstream.

This polarization was a boon to the conservative movement, because it's exactly the kind of us-versus-them story that conservatism feeds on. It was a key split that created the space to define the preposterously unreal stereotypes of the coastal latte liberal versus the "real American" -- the heartland values voter. And it made those two positions the only acceptable ones in the political or religious dialogue. It forced people to take sides in a war that nobody but the right wing even wanted to fight.

And in drawing that false and forced line, it also rendered vast stretches of America's religious, cultural, and political landscape absolutely invisible. The vast majority of Americans -- educated and moderate believers of many faiths whose understanding of God informs their passionate belief in justice, compassion, equality, and democracy -- got cut out of the conversation entirely, because they lived in a far more nuanced place that didn't look like either side. You never saw their intelligent, well-modulated religious leaders on TV talk shows; you never read interviews with their thinkers and writers in the paper. There was simply no place for them in that artificial narrative -- and since they didn't fit, the vast majority of America's religious people simply ceased to exist as a public or political entity at all.

The conservative ascendancy depended on keeping these people completely cut out of the conversation; and the media, driven by their own biases, dutifully cooperated for years in accomplishing that goal. Without the balance these other voices could offer, the religious right was free to define "religion" (including civil religion) on their own terms, and claim full control of the country's discourse. The first thing they did, of course, was declare all the moderate and liberal people of faith to be apostates, which only silenced them further. They've been out there, quietly fuming and frustrated, ever since.

But Jeremiah Wright appears to be turning his current notoriety into a bully pulpit from which, at long last, that forced silence might finally be broken. Listening to his interview with Bill Moyers last Friday, I felt like I was hearing something strong and intelligent and real and wise -- the kind of nuanced spiritual voice most of us have never heard on TV in our lifetimes (though the fortunate among us have always heard them in our churches). It was the voice of that suppressed and silent majority, the people of faith whose concerns and insights have been so thoroughly stifled that they've been utterly absent from the discourse for three long decades. Wright gave us a sharp reminder of what liberal Christian voices can sound like at their best. I hope he also whetted an appetite for out-of-the-box moral thinking that will allow us to hear more -- not just from Christians, but from many traditions. The broader the perspectives and the more corners we hear from, the better our responses to the current challenges will be.

Wright's current media blitz is no doubt an effort to capitalize on his infamy -- and, perhaps, help Obama by leaning into the controversy rather than shying away from it. (Honestly: does he have any other choice?) He may be hoping that the more we see of him, the more people will understand who he is, and the harder it will be for the slanders to stick.

But whatever his motives, I wish him well. It's just so remarkable, after all these years of blackout and blacklisting, to hear a moral voice that's not bought and paid for by the religious right, and not out there selling more fraudulent scams in the Great Republican Con. In Wright, we've finally got strong voice out there who knows how to call them on their game.

How Dangerous is The FLDS?

Sara Robinson — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:41:34 -0700

One of the trickiest parts of dealing with the extremist right is figuring out whether a given group is just harmless garden-variety crazy -- or harboring the special kind of insanity that will lead to acts of local violence or outright domestic terror.

it's a question worth asking in the wake of the state of Texas' intervention in the Eldorado colony of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints. As the country is thrust into a fresh debate over individual religious freedom versus our collective interest in protecting people's civil rights, we're struggling once again with the deeper question: When should we leave people alone? And when does the state have a public duty to intervene?

As it turns out, enlightened governments have been pondering this same question for the past two decades. In the post-mortems on Waco and Ruby Ridge and the Aum Shinrikyo attacks in Tokyo; in preparations made a decade ago for possible millennialist terror; and especially in sussing out which Islamic radical groups are dangerous and which are likely benign; government agencies throughout North America and Europe have been forced to think clearly about what constitutes a real threat, what's just a bogeyman, and how to respond to both. Over time, they've worked out a solid consensus on what the danger signs look like when a religious or political group's passions are beginning to spin toward violence, and worked up policy documents to help them move more wisely in the future.

The most public of these documents is one issued by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service that summarized some of the tell-tale signs they look for to determine who's gone over the edge and around the bend, and might be turning into a security threat. (The American government has its own less public documents that lay out similar guidelines.) The signs are simple and elegant -- and useful rules of thumb for anyone who's trying to decide if a group is just disaffected, or likely to become real trouble.

A few months ago, I did a fairly in-depth examination of this report at Orcinus (you can read the three parts here, here and here). This article compares the 12 main signs of brewing trouble discussed in the CSIS report to the church's recent behavior, and scores the FLDS on a five-point risk scale for each of the signs.

A Few Words Before Beginning
Let me begin by saying that I believe that the raid was necessary, and long overdue. The FLDS has a 60-year history of abusing women, raping young girls, and exploiting or abandoning its boys. Those who have long familiarity with the church know beyond a doubt that it violates the civil rights of its members in more ways that one lone blogger can possibly recount. (I've outlined some of these recently at Orcinus, and will be writing more there in coming days.) People in authority have been well aware for over 50 years just what this group was up to. But, for one reason or another, nobody found the political will to stop it until just a few years ago.

But as various public authorities begin to examine and dismantle the group's incredibly complex community defenses, we also need to be aware that these interventions may come at a cost of their own. As we'll see, the FLDS fits almost all of the known criteria for a potentially dangerous group in the making. And unless we tread carefully, there's strong potential that the things we do could make things worse, even as we're trying to make them better. The possible trouble spots will become clearer as we review the CSIS criteria, and see how they apply.

The Twelve Criteria
1. Marching Toward the Apocalypse -- Dangerous groups invariably hold to the urgent and fervent belief that the End is Near. The world is about to end in fire, ice, Rapture, or a Racial Holy War, and people had better be getting themselves right with God. Groups that believe that history is about to come to an end (even a peaceful one) have already taken one giant step back from consensus reality.

The FLDS' focus on polygamy is directly rooted in their own apocalyptic view of the future. While mainstream Mormons believe that polygamy exists in heaven and is God's preferred way of organizing families, they also accept that 21st century America is neither the time or the place to practice that principle on earth. The FLDS, on the other hand, preaches that because the end is so near, pious men who intend to rule in heaven can't afford to be bound by the mainstream church's sinful accommodations to man's law. They need to get right with God now -- and that starts with taking at least three wives each. This is a mandate that cannot wait; and that strong sense of apocalyptic urgency is why most of the church's founders left mainstream Mormonism in the first place.

According to Daphne Bramham, author of a new book, The Secret Lives of Saints, this obsession with the coming end has intensified in recent years, as officials in Utah and Arizona have taken a wide range of official actions against the group. One side effect of this pressure has been to lower the age of marriage even further, as more and more men try to catch their three-wife minimum before the looming end arrives. If securing the men's salvation means they have to marry off their 13-year-olds, well, it's better to marry than languish forever in the Outer Darkness.

Score: 4 out of 5

2. A Theology of Violence -- Almost all violent religious or political groups hold a specific set of beliefs that set the stage for -- and ultimately, justify -- violent action. These beliefs include 1) us-versus-them or good-versus-evil thinking; 2) a view of themselves as a persecuted elite; 3) the conviction that the apocalypse is imminent; 4) a desire to bring on the final conflict by their own actions; and 5) a belief that participating in that conflict will guarantee their own salvation and a better world to come.

Whenever a group embraces in-group/out-group thinking to the point of paranoia -- and to where it's actively anticipating, preparing for, and perhaps even making plans to precipitate the coming end -- you can safely say it's veered into dangerous territory.

The FLDS's status here is mixed. It does hold to a strong us-versus-them view of the world -- much of it the result of earlier rounds of official persecution (such as the Short Creek raid in 1953) and the knowledge that what they do is held in contempt by much of the larger culture. They absolutely view themselves as a persecuted elite, and comfort themselves with the thought that come God's kingdom (in heaven or here), they will be set up to rule over us all. As noted above, they believe the apocalypse is imminent. On the first three beliefs, count them a strong yes.

However, on the last two points, they diverge from the pattern; and these differences may explain why they've never set out to force a confrontation in all their six decades. For one thing, historically, they've been more of a fertility cult than a warrior cult. They stake their salvation mainly on their own sexual behavior, rather than visions of glorious combat against the infidel. For another, their theology doesn't tell them that they can bring about apocalypse by instigating war, or promise them salvation if they participate in that war. The absence of holy war narratives may be one reason their past encounters with authority haven't turned them into an armed camp, as it does with many other groups.

At this point, they just want to be left alone to pursue salvation in their own way. But, as we'll see, with the right kind of outside instigation -- or the rise of a prophet with a raging case of paranoia -- that could change very quickly.

Score: 3 out of 5

3. The Chosen One -- At-risk groups are almost always dominated by a charismatic leader who dictates every detail of the members' existence, and co-opts their moral centers. In most cases, the group will fold after he dies or (as often happens) is sentenced to a long jail term. He convinces followers that society's rules no longer apply to them because they follow his "higher code," and this belief opens the door to antisocial or violent action. And the leaders themselves, unanswerable to any other authority, often create a culture of violence by heaping unchecked and escalating abuse on their own followers over time.

The FLDS has gone through several brutal succession battles; but so far, they've always ended with relatively peaceful acceptance of a new leader. This continuity is unusual among violent groups, and suggests a relatively low level of threat.

However, there are signs that the overall level of control exercised by FDLS prophets -- and the amount of abuse they dish out on their flock -- rose dramatically when Warren Jeffs succeeded his father as Prophet in 2002. Even though Jeffs is in jail for the next several years, the control and abuse levels in the group are considerably higher now than they were just a couple decades ago. And it would fit the pattern if the church's next prophet (one has not yet been named) responds to the present situation by becoming even more controlling in the future. Past history and current long-term trends suggests that if the church survives, its future leaders are at high risk of becoming far more domineering with time.

Score: 4 out of 5

4. Goin' Up To The Country -- The decision to withdraw to a closed rural compound is often the first overt act of paranoia in the development of a dangerous group -- and a Rubicon that, once crossed, greatly increases the likelihood of violence. Groups withdraw because they believe mainstream authority is "out to get us." They may also be strongly asserting their intention to live outside the law.

The isolation frees leaders to consolidate their arbitrary control over the group's members, intensifies the followers' dependency, and fosters growing suspicion of outsiders that feeds their sense of persecution. Groups turning dangerous will respond to all these developments by arming their compounds and making other preparations for an expected apocalyptic showdown.

The FLDS has turned "goin' up to the country" into an art form for the ages. They have at least half a dozen colonies stretching from Canada to Mexico, and shuffle members around between them to keep inquiring authorities on goosechases. As the CSIS predicts, this isolation, which was rooted in their determination to break the country's marriage laws, has bred deep suspicion of the outside world. It's also created an ever-deepening dependency on the Prophet, and allowed him to greatly consolidate his control over every aspect of his followers' lives.

While earlier prophets have seemed willing to let the apocalypse come in God's own time, many people familiar with the FLDS found Warren Jeffs far more worrisome. John Dougherty of the Phoenix New Times, reporting in 2005 on the group's mass migration from Colorado City to the new colony in Texas, noted that Jeff's shiny new YFZ Ranch was far more tightly defended than the twin towns were. Former members told Dougherty that Jeffs was preaching "blood atonement" (the practice of killing apostates to save their souls) and took steps to install a crematorium in the YFZ temple capable of burning DNA. The New Times concluded that Jeffs was laying the groundwork for a violent Waco-style confrontation with authorities -- a confrontation that may have been averted when he was captured and convicted as an accomplice to rape last year.

Jeffs resigned as prophet last November. Since the church hasn't yet publicly named a new leader, it's hard to know how the community will respond to its current troubles. Where there's no strong leader in place, there's some opportunity for lasting change. But if a new leader uses these events to consolidate power by rallying the faithful against an outside enemy, the church may adopt a far more militant and confrontational stance going forward.

Score: 4 out of 5

5. Political Influence -- Despite their urge to retreat from society, at-risk groups also seek political power, often by corrupting or recruiting officials, or by putting their own members in positions of civil authority. And this is one of the areas in which the FLDS has proven most effective -- and most dangerous.

Since the late 1940s, the FLDS has made its headquarters in two dusty towns that straddle the Arizona/Utah border. Hildale, UT blends almost seamlessly into Colorado City, AZ -- though the border between them comes in handy when outside authorities start sniffing around. Both are fully incorporated cities, completely with city councils, police forces, schools, an airstrip, and a hospital; yet all the land in both towns is owned by a church trust that was until recently in the sole control of the prophet.

These towns receive all the same state and federal funds that other small towns get to sustain themselves. In 2005, according to the New Times, it was estimated that the two cities were getting upwards of $20 million per year in welfare and food stamps, health care and education subsidies, and shared revenue grants -- much of which ended up in church coffers. Until the two states intervened a few years ago, every single council member, doctor, nurse, cop, and teacher was an FLDS member who swore his or her first loyalty to the church's prophet.

That infrastructure meant, in effect, that the two towns' 8,000 members knew to no law but the Prophet. The police were there to enforce not the people's law, but the Prophet's will. Judges based their decisions on church scripture and the Prophet's edicts. Teachers openly taught the Prophet's curricula in the publicly-funded schools. Doctors ignored mandated reporter laws and quietly delivered babies from 14-year-old girls, and slipped women Prozac or committed them to mental institutions when they complained about their lives.

According to Dougherty, some of the resources used to build the YFZ ranch were diverted from the Colorado City government to the new private Texas colony. City employees were dispatched to work on the ranch for weeks at a time. City property was moved to the site under questionable circumstances. This was possible because the church so thoroughly controlled the entire political, fiscal, and civic infrastructure its followers lived under, and used that control to deprive them of any recourse to their rights. There are few religious groups in the history of the country that have done such a thorough job of co-opting civil institutions for so many illegal ends.

Score: 5+

6. Takin' Care of Business -- Buying country property and turning it into a self-sufficient redoubt costs money. A lot of money. So, sooner or later, most extremist groups go into some sort of business. And these businesses often evolve into a handy legal cover for illegal activity.

The Fundamentalist LDS's United Effort Plan started out as a church cooperative that ran the businesses and properties belonging to the church. As originally set up, members' tithes went into the trust, and all members were its beneficiaries. Under Rulon Jeffs' careful management, the trust holdings eventually included grain farms, cattle ranches, aerospace companies with NASA contracts, and tin mines in Bolivia. These businesses provided jobs for the faithful, and money to expand the church.

However, over time, control over the trust was gradually concentrated into the hands of the Prophet; and the beneficiaries received less and less benefit. By the time Warren Jeffs came to power, the trust had become the Prophet's personal piggybank and extortion racket. Men went into debt so they could tithe the tens of thousands of dollars the Prophet demanded of them every year. Those who failed to pay were subject to getting fired, excommunicated, evicted from their homes (typically, homes they'd built at their own expense on church-owned land), and/or having their wives and kids reassigned to other men. As noted before, the UEP has also been the vehicle for financial sleight-of-hand that appropriated civic money for the personal profit of the prophets. One example: until the state of Arizona intervened, Rulon Jeffs and his elders had an airplane, private cars, and personal credit cards all paid for by funds diverted from the Colorado City school district.

Daphne Bramham also reports that UEP businesses in some colonies have relied heavily on the slave labor of the church's "lost boys" -- unmarriageable (and thus expendable) boys who are put to work on dangerous jobs like logging, roofing, and roadbuilding without adequate training or safety equipment, and are paid wages well under a dollar an hour, if that. This unlimited access to virtually free unskilled labor, along with the willful violation of OSHA regulations, has allowed FLDS-owned businesses to undercut local contractors (who pay the prevailing wage and follow sound safety practices) for large jobs throughout the Intermountain West. To my knowledge, this situation has never been seriously investigated by authorities.

Score: 5

7. Crimes of Intimidation -- Groups heading toward violent confrontation usually start with threats and petty violence against members and outsiders who dare to cross them. (Occasionally, these people end up dead -- which only makes them a useful warning to others.) Knowing that they can intimidate and silence people raises the leader's sense of invincibility, and teaches him that violence works. Both lessons raise the odds he'll resort to more violence more quickly in the future. It also makes life much harder for investigators gathering new information on the group as the risk level rises.

For FLDS members, the cultural atmosphere has always been one of dawn-to-dusk intimidation. As noted, men who don't comply will simply lose everything. Women risk being sent away from their families, reassigned to other households or colonies, or committed to mental hospitals. Children have no choices about marriage, work, or education. Whatever the Prophet says, goes -- and God have mercy on you if you dare to refuse.

The New Times account strongly suggests that Warren Jeffs was rapidly ratcheting up the overall level of intimidation within the group -- and hinting strongly at violence -- before he was arrested. His growing paranoia led him to purge dozens of men from the church as suspected enemies, banishing them and seizing their wives on a scale no prophet had dared attempt before. Removing him from the picture may have slowed the group's acceleration toward violent confrontation; but if he comes back -- or another leader takes up these same themes -- the group could once again move into the danger zone. After all: they live their lives on the edge of that line.

Score: 4 out of 5

8. Increasingly violent rhetoric -- Strong words are often a rehearsal -- a promise of strong action to come. According to the CSIS, you can usually hear a fundamental shift in a group's rhetoric as the gear up for violent confrontation. In the early stages, they establish the lines of conflict by obsessively focusing on the group's enemies and denouncing their essential evilness. In the later stage, the talk turns overtly eliminationist, and the group starts expressing its clear intention to eradicate those enemies. When they shift to the second stage, it's a sign that they have mentally committed themselves to violent action -- and have justified it to the point where they may be actively planning something.

Those who were around when Warren Jeffs succeeded his father in 2002 say that this shift in rhetoric pretty much defined his behavior as the church's Prophet. Where the elder Jeffs had seen to the group's security by acquiring money, land, and political power, his son was more focused on building a more secure and isolated compound, punishing his enemies with every means available to him, and allegedly making plans to dispose of bodies in an untraceable way. He knew who his enemies were -- and he was making specific plans to get rid of them.

There's no way of knowing whether Jeff's successor will be inclined to that same paranoid edge. However, having the Texas Rangers invade their compound is just the kind of event that could trigger a resurgence of Jeffs' eliminationist spirit within the group, as they identify new enemies and make plans to fight back.

Score: 4 out of 5

9. Blaming the government -- It's a truism of conspiracy theories that no matter who the bad guys start out to be, sooner or later it'll turn out that they're all in cahoots with the government. Paranoia is a close cousin of narcissism, and people who believe they're locked in a Great Cosmic Struggle tend to assess their own importance by the size of the enemies they attract. In that sweepstakes, Uncle Sam is the biggest contender this side of Satan -- so it follows that if the government is out to get you, you must be somebody Very Important Indeed.

This belief adds layers of meaning to every encounter between authoritarian group members and any kind of government authority. A simple traffic stop or construction inspection sets off all kinds of alarms (They know! They're watching us!). Congressman Leo Ryan probably didn't understand this when he decided to respond to constituent requests and fly down to Jonestown; but Jim Jones and his followers were strongly predisposed to view his visit as a hostile invasion, and over-reacted accordingly.

This, too, is a signaling shift, as first-stage beliefs that "our group is above the law" harden into a second stage belief that overt revolt against the state is necessary. When the rhetoric calls for revolution, it's one sign of looming trouble.

The FLDS isn't there -- yet. They've been so successful at co-opting government for their own ends that revolution has hardly been necessary. Why bother to kill the beast when you can keep it alive and bleed it? However, it's very likely that attitude could change as the community regroups in the aftermath of the YFZ raid. They now have a clear government enemy: the Texas Rangers, the courts, and the social workers whom they will view having instigated a military assault on them. They wouldn't be the first group to interpret a criminal investigation as an overt act of war -- and make plans to respond in kind.

Score: 3 out of 5

10. Intensification of illegal activities -- As violent confrontation becomes imminent, the group starts behaving in more overtly illegal ways. Petty crime goes up, and people who were never much trouble before are suddenly coming into frequent contact with the authorities. This is a sign that the group has begun to adopt an attitude of open defiance and contempt toward the larger society, and is moving into the strongly oppositional stance that precedes a large-scale attack or confrontation.

The CSIS observes that this pattern of increasingly lawless behavior almost always goes hand-in-hand with weapons laws violations. When they reach this point, the group is probably arming up to either defend its home turf from perceived enemies, or making concrete plans to eradicate those enemies.

As far as the FLDS goes: the YFZ Ranch was clearly built to be a well-defended fort; but there's no evidence yet that the group was stockpiling weapons. (This assessment may change when the Rangers tell us what they found.) Furthermore: FLDS members haven't been any more confrontational than usual; in fact, if anything, they've been more honest and forthcoming about their lives in recent years. This is a very late-stage sign of approaching trouble; and it seems clear, based on what we know, that the FLDS isn't anywhere near there.

Score: 1 out of 5

11. Shaming the Leader -- The final flashpoint is almost a triggered by a specific event that humiliates the group's leaders, or makes them feel that they're losing their control over the group and its vision. Unfortunately, their egos are huge and their need for control is insatiable -- and, therefore, even relatively small events have the potential to set them off in very big ways.

All I can say to this is: Thank God the YFZ raid didn't happen while Jeffs was still free, because it's terrifying to contemplate how he might have responded. As it is, the community is embarrassed and chastened by these events, and it's a safe bet that they will never be allowed to operate anywhere without close government oversight again. But it could have been so much worse if all of this had gone down with a paranoid leader's pride riding on the line -- especially a True Believer like Jeffs who believed his word was God's. It could have been a real mess.

Score: 2 out of 5

12. Blundering Authority -- In the end, the final confrontation is too often triggered when authorities -- not realizing their special place in the unfolding eschatological drama -- blunder right into their assigned role. As the CSIS put it: "Authorities often fail to appreciate the leverage they have over doomsday movements, which depend upon them to fulfill their apocalyptic scenarios. Failure to fully comprehend this symbolic role often results in actions that trigger violence." They also note that law enforcement agencies are especially prone to respond to small acts of defiance with punitive force -- and that groups spoiling for a confrontation will interpret this as an assault, and vastly escalate their response. This creates a "spiral of amplification" that can very quickly spin toward catastrophe, as it did in Waco.

That's why the authorities in charge of these confrontations need to move slowly; avoid humiliating the leader or backing him into a corner; keep the cops in the background; and rely on negotiators who have a detailed understanding of the group's specific worldview and belief structure, and can describe how each unfolding event is being perceived on the inside.

Fortunately, the officials in Texas have given us the textbook example of how this is done. They have moved slowly and deliberately, taking the time to explain to everyone -- not just the people involved, but also the entire nation -- just what they were doing, and why. They have been very careful not to back the church's leaders into unnecessary corners. Wherever possible, they have tried to behave with compassion and great cultural sensitivity; but they have not allowed that to compromise their firmness in enforcing the law. It's obvious from every news report I've seen that the state government has learned the lessons of Waco, and taken them very much to heart.

Score: 0 out of 5

Conclusions
Total score: 39 out of a possible 60. The FLDS has clearly assembled all the basic ingredients required to create exactly the kind of authoritarian group that's at high risk of souring into domestic terrorism and violence. They've got the right kind of apocalyptic theology, the all-powerful leaders, the thoroughly intimidated and dependent followers, the remote compounds, the political and business infrastructure, and a truly audacious contempt for the laws the rest of us live by.

However, these steps describe an unfolding process; and while the FLDS appears to be all packed up and ready to head down that road, they haven't yet made the whole journey. The evidence suggests that Warren Jeffs, had he remained at large, had the requisite level of grandiose paranoia to take them there over the course of the next few years -- and was, in fact, making concrete plans to do just that. But with him safely out of the way for at least another few years, that bad outcome is far less likely.

Now, there are choices. Over the past several years, the governments of Utah, Arizona, and other states hosting FLDS colonies have begun to work together to dismantle the infrastructure that kept the church beyond official reach for so long. The Utah attorney general put the UEP into receivership. State authorities have forced reforms in the Hildale/Colorado City police forces, courts, and schools. Other states are keeping a close eye on the new colonies rising in their jurisdiction. And the State of Texas has put everyone on notice that it will not look the other way while the FLDS breaks its laws.

Polygamous Mormons won't go away. There are several other groups (the FLDS wasn't even the biggest of them) that will carry on, quietly and mostly lawfully. And the FLDS community itself will probably regroup and continue, in one or more of several possible forms.

The worst case is that another equally paranoid patriarch uses these events to consolidate power, resurrect a large piece of the community, and proceed on the path Jeffs seemed so determined to follow. Resolving that they will never again give up their children to Gentiles, these members will be determined to retreat completely from this evil world. They may finally succeed in turning one or more of their colonies into an armed camp -- and ultimately force a confrontation tailor-made for their apocalyptic fantasies.

The best case is that the Texas authorities continue to move deliberately, with transparency and compassion -- and don't stop until every aspect of the church has been properly investigated, prosecuted, reformed, or dismantled. Along the way, some members will be arrested. Some will move to the emerging colonies in Idaho, Colorado, or South Dakota. Quite a few may decide they like life on the outside after all, and leave the church for good.

In the meantime, we can only hope that the national conversation we're having about this case will help us refine our collective understanding about where the line between religious liberty and collective responsibility and security falls. Whatever happens, the FLDS will never be the same. And, in the end, neither will we.

Two Kinds of Americans, Part II: From "Us versus Them" to "We the People"

Sara Robinson — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 21:59:20 -0700

In last week's essay, I noted that our ability to function effectively as a nation has been deeply compromised by the conservative movement's reflexive reliance on Us-versus-Them politics. Allowing a winners-and-losers worldview to dominate our country is a dangerous self-indulgence, I argued. History is littered with the corpses of great empires and economies that were toppled when their people got distracted from their shared identity and goals, and gave in to internal culture wars that weakened their countries to the point of eventual collapse or conquest. And it's all too clear now, looking back on what 40 years of wanton right-wing civil war has wrought, that America cannot hope to be history's first exception.

When the conservatives declared their "culture war" and effectively seceded from America in the early 1970s, they recklessly (and, on at least some fronts, knowingly) doomed us. When we reckon the toll -- the loss of a broad middle class and the educational, financial, social, and physical infrastructure that produced it; the criminal abuse of military and police power; the squandering of the intangible capital of our economic and diplomatic prestige in the world; and now the complete structural inability to address the most important issues we face -- we can no longer deny that the conservatives' inbred compulsion to create and fight external demons has weakened us militarily, economically, environmentally, and culturally.

Our survival depends on finding an alternative. Fortunately, there is one.

Several commenters on last week's piece fretted that I might be winding up to the suggestion that we get all kum-by-yah and fuzzy with the conservatives, admit they were right, and find a way to build bridges to them. Fret not. I grew up with these people, and have written extensively on how and why the hard core authoritarians among them -- the intransigent 12-15% -- can never be reasoned with. They have always been among us; and they always will be. But -- and here's the point of this week's essay -- we have not always allowed their paranoia to run the show. For much of America's history, we chose another path. And it's a path we can get back to, if we choose, with progressives showing the way.

Two Kinds of Americans, Revisited
The legendary historian Arnold Toynbee postulated that all cultures throughout history have run under one of three basic cultural operating systems (or, more often, a hybrid of two or all three in which one was usually dominant). These essential storylines appear in all cultures; and every culture has unique variations on these archetypes at play. Most importantly: each of the three has its own internal logic; and that logic deeply influences the way we view the future, interpret reality, and assess events.

The first of these cultural archetypes is Us versus Them (or Winners and Losers), which is all too familiar to anyone who's spent the past 30 years in America. In this view, the world is seen in polarities: black/white, right/wrong, male/female, either/or. Humans are driven by competition and conflict; life is a zero-sum game in which survival depends on your ability to seize control over a piece of a finite pie. Winners (who are assumed to be high-prestige males) matter, and deserve to dominate. Losers deserve whatever happens to them; and winners cannot be bothered to care. Evil is caused by the deliberate workings of the enemy, and its existence is proof that that enemy must be defeated at all costs.

Us versus Them exists because it's a useful and adaptive worldview in a few limited circumstances. It's the natural logic of war and revolution -- and also of political elections, class and race conflicts, and fundamentalist religion and holy warriors. Business often operates in this mode (though not always). So do certain professions, most notably law enforcement. But, as we've seen, this winners-and-losers logic can corrode the foundations of a civilization if we allow it to dominate every aspect of our lives, or stay stuck in it too long. It's useful in short doses, but extremely toxic in the long run.

The biggest danger of Us-versus-Them is that it makes it almost impossible for cultures to invest in the common good, let alone plan coherently for the future. When people are in this mode, ideology and fear carry every decision. Those who want to discuss other worldviews or see a wider range of possibilities are considered traitors; and this forecloses almost all creative responses to problems. Furthermore, every resource the culture has must be diverted to winning the battle at hand, without regard for the future costs. Over time, relying on the Us-versus-Them archetype drives societies to eat their seed corn, leaving them bankrupt on every possible front. Still, this is the worldview that defines conservatism.

The second archetype might be called "Challenge and Response." In this view, problems aren't seen as evidence of evil; and they're not framed in terms of victory or defeat. At best, they're character-building opportunities for personal growth or gain; at worst, they're just a natural part of life that must be responded to with wisdom and ingenuity. Identifying allies and enemies is incidental to the larger goal -- which is to fix the problem, not the blame. There is no Them. There's just Us, and We have a situation on our hands that We need to figure out how to handle.

Challenge-and-response thinking is the natural logic of extended families and towns of all sizes. It's the basic habit of mind for a wide range of professions -- medicine, agriculture, engineering, management, and all the creative arts. You can't blame a virus, blight, gravity, or the behavior of markets on an evil Other -- and it's a waste of resources to try. Your job is to deal with the situation you're given today, as intelligently and resourcefully as you can; and think through preparations that will allow you to respond better or avoid this kind of problem entirely in the future. In these cultures, your level of status and prestige depends at least as much on your proven reliability as a wise and effective problem-solver as it does on how much of the pie you control. (Furthermore: owning more of the pie increases both your ability and your obligation to solve problems.) This is the world most progressives would far prefer to live in.

On a grander scale, solving problems and recovering from great challenges together builds up the internal levels of mutual trust and confidence within a society, which in turn fosters ambitious and well-considered future planning and encourages large investments in the common good. It enables groups to forge lasting alliances with other groups, expanding their networks of influence and trade. It lends itself to the establishment of meritocracies, flatter hierarchies, and other types of social order that are highly adaptive and flexible in the face of change. According to French historian Emmanuel Todd, every successful empire the world has ever seen ran on an expansive, inclusive challenge-and-response paradigm during its glory years -- and invariably fell apart when that ecumenical view devolved, for whatever reason, into defensive Us-versus-Them blame games.

One of the advantages of a Challenge-and-Response culture is that it provides a secure playing field for small and often very productive Us-versus-Them games. Police can be set to catch crooks, under the authority of the state; an army can be raised, as long as it remains under civilian control; the zero-sum games of business can be played for keeps under the watchful eye of government regulators and courts. But this only works as long as none of these zero-sum activities is allowed to become the society's guiding purpose. According to Toynbee and his modern heirs, successful societies throughout history grew and prospered as long as Challenge-and-Response remained the dominant mode -- and lost ground rapidly when that balance changed.

(Toynbee's third archetype, which isn't really germane to this discussion, is the logic of evolutionary change. These narratives assert that human cultures are prone to grow and mutate slowly over time. Evolution stories can be positive (things are slowly getting better) or negative (we're in a gradual state of decay). You often see this assumption at work in technology, biology, some of the social sciences, and certain religions; and it's not unusual to find it blended up with one of the other two archetypes as well. For the purposes of this discussion, we're going to sidestep this less common archetype, and focus on the first two.)

Both of these major storylines feature largely in American history -- and both are accessible (and usually operating simultaneously, with one dominating) at any given time. We've slipped back and forth often as history demanded different things from us. Breaking a frontier and building a farm is a Challenge-and-Response endeavor. Starting a revolution against a distant king -- or fighting a Cold War -- is Us-versus-Them.

However, over the grand sweep of our history, America has drawn strength from its persistent preference for the logic of challenge and response. And looking back, it's easy to see how our historical commitment to this confident, trusting, open-minded worldview had a lot to do with our eventual rise to power.

But it's also easy to see how the growth of the postwar military-industrial complex, and its entrenched position at the core of our economic and political life, has empowered an elite who are constantly seeking to pull us away from Challenge-and-Response, and plunge us into a permanent (and permanently profitable) state of Us-versus-Them. In recent decades, the two narratives come into serious competition, with Us-versus-Them enjoying a level of widespread, long-term acceptance we've seldom seen in the country's history. Right now, it's not clear which one will dominate the country's discourse in the years ahead.

Getting Back to Challenge and Response
But we do know how the shifts between these two worldviews happen -- and it's almost always through some combination of design and default. Something changes in the world, and a historical moment opens up that requires a different response. And, usually, there's a leader -- often backed by a movement -- standing by, ready to seize the wheel and turn it in the other direction.

FDR took power at the worst economic moment in the nation's history, as Us-versus-Them power struggles were threatening to destabilize the nation -- and then leveraged that chaos to discredit entrenched power, and justify a great progressive restructuring that unleashed our best problem-solving instincts. We have nothing to fear, he told us, but fear itself. It was a classic challenge-and-response thing to say.

Nine years later, that same president confronted the devastation of Pearl Harbor, and moved us deftly and productively back to an all-out Us-versus-Them war footing.

After the war, JFK captured the rising challenge-and-response spirit of an optimistic nation, and aimed it directly at the moon.

Conversely, Bill Clinton came to power as the Communist world was collapsing -- but failed to realize the full potential of that extraordinary moment because he failed to reckon with the ferocity of the old cold warriors' backlash. He might have had it in him to slap down this resurgence of Us-versus-Them -- but this time, that mindset turned out to be more fiercely stubborn than anyone thought. Failing to locate any other new enemy to demonize, the conservatives settled for destroying Clinton himself.

We've been stuck in the resulting mess for the past 15 years. At this point, it seems, we no longer know who We are unless we have a Them to triangulate ourselves against. Vast sectors of our economy are now invested in identifying, tracking, and defeating Them. And our increasingly desperate and paranoid search-and-destroy missions to root Them out wherever They may lurk have made Us a serious threat to much of the rest of the world.

If we want to change this, here's what we need to do:

1. Be clear on where we're going. The open-ended, inclusive communal problem-solving style of challenge-and-response cultures is inherently progressive -- and deeply ingrained in the American character.

Half the battle is simply being aware that we have a choice -- and then making the true nature of that choice clear to everyone involved. We can listen to the blamers and take the counsel of our fears -- and produce cramped, narrow solutions that usually benefit a few a at the expense of the many, and will in time doom the nation. Or we can remind our fellow citizens -- over and over, for as long as it takes -- that Americans have always done best when they've taken on big problems with implacable courage, extravagant generosity, and incandescent ingenuity. Moreover: they've often enriched the entire culture in the process. Which way to go? It's a choice we get to make all over again with every fresh problem we face.

Another way to keep the difference clear in our minds is to find and celebrate the people who are making challenge-and-response politics work -- people like Majora Carter and Van Jones, who received progressive service awards at Take Back America. Those people are everywhere (and remember: they're not all progressive), and they're creating a vast store of intangible social capital that makes us all a little wealthier. In a time of grinding and intractable Us-versus-Them thinking, we need to make an affirmative example out of everyone who's choosing to operate the other way.

2. Be ready for the moment. You can push and push until you're black and blue; but this kind of shift doesn't happen until the stars line up just right and that historical window pops open. Still, the best definition of "luck" I've ever heard is that it's what happens when preparation meets opportunity. And, after 15 years of non-stop conservative hatemongering, you gotta know that moment's not too far off now.

And that's why we organize and blog and write letters and donate money and support new media and volunteer down at the party office. We're gaining skills and building the infrastructure of a movement -- and one of the goals of that movement is to be standing by, ready to lean hard on our leaders and make them do the right thing when the moment comes. Even Bill Clinton might have made different choices when his moment came if we'd been this organized in 1993.

3. Leaders matter. We all know this anyway, but this is one major reason why. The right leader can act in ways that help us make the most of those moments when we must transition from one set of assumptions to another. As we've learned bitterly every day since 9/11, the wrong one can seize those moments and turn them into ruinous disaster. And a truly extraordinary leader may even be able to create the shift from one paradigm to the other without any kind of external moment presenting itself at all.

When we vet candidates, this should be one of the major traits we look for. If we want a challenge-and-response culture, we need to elect people who operate naturally in that mode. If we elect people who play a mean game of Us-versus-Them, we'll have nobody but ourselves to blame when their worst authoritarian impulses kick in, and our politics curdle back into fear and division.

The difference between these two modes of thinking -- Us versus them and Challenge and Response -- is one of those things that's so obviously simple (and so simply obvious) that we seldom stop to realize that it is the core difference between civilizations that prosper and flourish; and those that rapidly spiral into decline and death. The difference is not in the specific problems we face; it's in the logic and processes we choose when we set about solving them. In deciding which of these two worldviews will govern our decisions and our politics, it's not an exaggeration to say that we are deciding nothing less than the country's future.