Nontrivial Pursuits

In my last blog entry, I asserted that the Palestinians would happily give up the fight and embrace Israel’s existence if (1) they were given an extremely generous cash settlement for their loss of land, and if (2) the United States were to officially recognize that the Palestinians had been victims of a great injustice for all of these years. Today I want to address condition #2.

If the Palestinians were offered only an extremely generous cash settlement, it still might not be enough to win Israel the true peace and good will of the Palestinians that we want. Fortunately, there is an additional something we could do that would cinch the deal. We could give them something that would finally enable them to bury all of the bitterness they’ve carried around for all these years. Interestingly, it is something that Israel cannot give them, but the United States can. Also, it is something that would not cost the American taxpayers a cent. What is it? A formal admission by the United States government that we had been ‘wrong all along’ in getting ourselves involved in the dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Why would we do such a thing? Let’s ask John Edwards.

In “The America We Believe In”, John told us, “…the foundation for moral leadership is telling the truth. While we can’t change the past, we need to accept responsibility, because a key part of restoring America’s moral leadership is acknowledging when we’ve made mistakes or been proven wrong—and showing that we have the creativity and guts to make it right.” Of course, John was not talking about the same issue that I’m now addressing, but I think his wise words also give us guidance on how to end the Israeli/Arab conflict.

Mistakes made in the past are responsible for the fear we currently have of one day suffering a nuclear terrorist attack. It was good old Harry Truman who first got us involved in the Arab-Israeli dispute and it was his decision that put us on the side of the Israelis. At the time, the American people were feeling a lot of sympathy for the Jewish people after the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed, so it was easy for them to consent to a plan to ‘give them a homeland’ where they would be free of persecution. Unfortunately, everyone in the press conveniently forgot that the land the U.N. decided to give to the Jews happened to belong to someone else.

To understand how the Palestinians (and some Jews ) see the creation of the state of Israel, imagine a similar thing happening here, in America. What if the Indians who lived in New Jersey 300 years ago fled by boat to Europe instead of becoming assimilated into the developing American culture? What if, over the years, those Indians educated themselves and kept their sense of ‘nationhood’ alive and maintained a dream of some day returning to their homeland? What if they started emigrating back into New Jersey 50 years ago and made it clear that they intended to get their land back? What if the majority of European nations supported their cause and sent them military hardware and financial support? How do you think the modern inhabitants of New Jersey would feel about the claim that the land really belonged to the Indians because they had once lived there 300 years ago?

I’m pretty sure I know how most property owners in New Jersey would respond. Outraged? You bet. Militant? You can count on it, if the seizure took place at gunpoint, as it did in Israel in 1948. The truth is that it is impossible for the United States to justify its support for Israel while declaring loudly to the world that it is outrageous and immoral for one country to invade and annex another. It’s theft at gunpoint, any way you look at it. This is why the Palestinians and their Muslim sympathizers are so crazy angry at the United States, because they see the incredible hypocrisy of our political leaders and are outraged that we do not see the injustice and sympathize with their plight.

Yes, it’s true. Our sympathy for the Jews is the thing that led us to make an incredibly stupid decision to approve of an illegal and immoral act. Maybe we weren’t guilty of malevolence, but we are nevertheless paying the price now for the moral/intellectual lapse we had back then. Since Nine Eleven, we have been spending hundreds of billions of dollars on Homeland Security and on the Iraq & Afghanistan wars and we will be spending trillions more in the future if we cannot get ourselves on the right side of history. Does this mean that we are supposed to start hating the Israeli Jews now? Of course not. But no longer can we play favorites.

John Edwards is right; if we could only start to admit our past mistakes in this area and demonstrate some ‘creativity and guts to make it right’, we would be able to restore our moral leadership in the world and actually bring an end to the long nightmare that has tortured the Middle East. We need to admit to the Palestinians and their Muslim sympathizers that we were wrong to see them as mindless “haters” and not recognize that their anger and outrage have been justified. If we were to give the Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims of the world this apology, there would not be a dry eye anywhere in the Muslim world.

If you think about it, the Arabs have always wanted to like us and for us to like them. That’s why they’ve always tried to reason with us and explain why it is that they are the victims in their dispute with the Israelis. They can see that there is good in the American people, but they can also see that our sense of loyalty has clouded our judgment. With an American mea culpa, we would finally be able to use our leverage to bring an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. (It would probably work out for the best if it appeared to the Palestinians that we had pressured the Israelis into committing themselves to the Extreme Generosity Settlement plan).

There is, of course, a heckofa lot more that can be said on this topic, but I think I’m going to end it right here for now.

Oh yeah, here’s another link to some Jews who are not Jew-haters, in spite of the fact that they don’t support modern Israel’s ‘right to exist.’

James Kroeger<—e985a1979852f8bcde4c46329d153701—>

Nontrivial Pursuits links of interest:
Republican Nemesis
Economic Justice

After my last Dailykos blog entry (also seen here below), I received a number of the comments that I responded to. Still, I thought it would be a good idea to answer a couple of the questions in this blog entry…

One commenter, dvo asked me: Why should not Arabs apologize first? ... What makes you think Israel and the US should be the ones apologizing?

I don’t think it would make much sense to ask the Palestinians to apologize first since they were the original victims in this whole feud (that now has Americans facing a risk of nuclear attack). That’s like asking a victim in a self-defense case to apologize to the attacker for hurting him while she was trying to stop him from killing/raping her. None of the violence that the Palestinians have directed at the Israeli Jews would have occurred if the Zionists of 1948 not wronged them by taking their land. That simple truth explains everything that has happened since.

I should make it clear that I don’t think there’s much the Israelis could say in the form of an apology that would be effective in moving the Palestinians toward real peace. They took the land and don’t intend to give it [all] back. The only thing the Israelis can really do is express their apologies through actions that seek to `make amends’ for the suffering they put the Palestinians through. If/when an extreme generosity peace deal is brokered, the Israelis would have to invest themselves in efforts to build the Palestinians a modern economy. It might be helpful if they said things like, “I’m sorry that this whole thing happened and I hope we can be friends now.” Ultimately, just being kind and helpful to the Palestinians would be all the apology they would need in order to go forward without bitterness.

The apology that the Palestinians need to hear is from America. We are the ones who enabled the Big Theft to happen. Because we are the most powerful and influential nation on the earth and also because we have often presented ourselves as defenders of victims and as outspoken proponents of justice, the Palestinians have been especially incensed by our failure to recognize their victimization in this whole affair. We inserted ourselves into their dispute with the Israeli Jews and we made it impossible for them to obtain justice through their own efforts. What makes the idea of a U.S. apology especially poignant is the fact that the Palestinians have long nurtured a hope that if only they could get us to listen to them, we would be able to see the injustice that had been imposed on them.

The extreme generosity approach I am recommending would still allow the Israelis to ultimately get away with theft, but it should still be successful in eliciting the Good Will of the Palestinian people because it would be suddenly generous. They’ve been fighting for scraps of dignity without success in their negotiations with the US and Israel over the past 30 years because they’ve had absolutely no leverage in their negotiations. From that gloomy perspective, the prospect of finally getting everything they’ve been asking for [at the negotiating table] plus much more and then, to top it off, a U.S. apology, is the kind of thing that can produce a cathartic change within all parties.

LarryInNYC asked for a clarification on whether or not I am “...advocating peace between Israel and Palestine, or the wholesale eradication of Israel.” I want to make it clear that I am not advocating the eradication of Israel. I regret that the conflict between the Israelis and the Arabs has been so bitter and profound that one cannot express any amount of sympathy for one of the parties without being accused by the other of harboring ‘disguised hatred.’ Please understand that my earnest desire is for the Jews in Israel to live in peace with their Arab neighbors.

As far as my own personal experience is concerned, I have only known Jews who have been kind and appealing in various ways. But the fact that I have liked the Jews I’ve met does not mean that I can ignore historical facts. I know that the Jews were victimized horribly in the last century, but that does not make them—-collectively—-a Sinless People for all time. It almost seems as though they have become—-in the minds of some—-the world’s only true Victim Race. Whenever they hear that the Israelis are involved in a dispute with some other people, they naturally assume that it must be because they are again being victimized by people who have a pathological hatred of Jews. It can’t possibly be because these Jews might have done something wrong.

Like it or not, because human nature is what it is, it is always quite within the realm of possibility for a tribe of people who were once victimized to turn around and become victimizers of others later on. It’s something that happens. Believe me, I’m not saying that we need to start hating the Jews; I’m just saying that we need to get them some peace and the only moral way they’re going to be able to achieve it is by agreeing to an extremely generous settlement in favor of the Palestinians.

James Kroeger

The Democratic Party has been victimized by Republican Party strategists in a number of different ways. One of the things they’ve done in recent years is “brand” the Democrats as ‘pro-gay’ and ‘pro-abortion.’ Today I am going to argue that it is both possible and desirable for the Democratic Party to separate itself completely from the divisive abortion rights and gay rights issues. How might it do such a thing?

Well, formally, by declaring in its platform that the Democratic Party has no identification whatsoever with either the pro- or anti-abortion positions, or the pro- or anti-gay rights positions. It should also formally state that Democrats welcome opponents of abortion and gay marriage into the party as long as they sincerely identify with the Democratic Party’s historic mission to pursue economic justice and improve economic security. We want them to feel free to express their opinions on these hot topics as individuals, but not as Democrats.

If we can do this, the Democratic Party will succeed in becoming a true Big Tent Party, since it will become more inclusive than ever before.

It should not be a secret any more that there are gay Republicans who like the GOP’s anti-tax policy, and anti-abortion Democrats who believe passionately in the goal of economic justice. In distancing itself from any specific position on the most polarizing of social/moral issues, the Democratic Party would be telling the American people that it recognizes (1) that these divisive issues cut across party lines, and (2) that none of the positions on any of these moral issues is necessarily connected to either the economic agenda historically pursued by the Republican Party or the economic agenda historically pursued by the Democratic Party.

Yes, Values Liberals who currently identify with the Democratic Party can be expected to scream and yell and protest this proposal vehemently, but nothing is stopping them from focusing their energy on building up a strong, passionate non-partisan Advocacy Movement that would promote their agenda across party lines.

After all, we have to ask why those who are passionate advocates of, say…gay rights…would want to intentionally alienate those Republicans who might be sympathetic with their cause? There is a reason why there are Gay Republicans. It’s because they do not agree with the economic agenda that the Democratic Party has historically pursued.

If gay rights advocates were to separate their cause from the Democratic Party and make it `non-partisan’, they might even find that their funding would improve substantially. Why intentionally alienate potential financial contributors by unnecessarily connecting your cause to a particular economic philosophy?

It is certainly not dishonorable to promote a moral cause you feel deeply about in a non-partisan fashion. Indeed, doing so tends to give your movement a claim to moral superiority above partisan interests.

In order to successfully pull off this identity makeover, all Democrats—no matter what their persuasions—-would need to zealously defend the Party’s non-partisan stance on divisive social morality issues. Any Democrats who try to represent their personal views on these hot-button issues as the views of the Democratic Party should be zealously reprimanded by the party faithful.

We should encourage those who feel strongly about Abortion rights, Gay Rights, etc. to speak loudly for their causes—-not as Democrats—-but as advocates of certain causes who also happen to identify with the Democrats’ economic agenda.

What we’re talking about, people, is tolerance. Tolerance of differing opinions on `peripheral’ topics. Democrats already have to tolerate different viewpoints within the party on foreign policy and other issues. Why shouldn’t we be tolerating different opinions within the party on the issues of abortion and gay rights?

It’s a solution that I think almost all parties would benefit from. Gay Rights and Abortion Rights advocates would be free to directly appeal to sympathizers in both parties and the Democratic Party would be able to escape the branding that has worked so well for the Republicans for so long.

The only interest group that would really stand to lose from this kind of Identity Makeover would be—-you guessed it—-THE REPUBLICANS!
(Reposted from 8/12/05

Nontrivial Pursuits links of interest:
Republican Nemesis
Economic Justice

Democrats need to stop letting the Republicans get away with their constant efforts to associate income tax cuts with economic growth and prosperity. It’s true that Congress has the power to do certain things that will stimulate economic growth, but cutting income taxes isn’t one of them. The actual truth is quite the opposite of what Republican politicians have been repeating for years: income tax cuts, by themselves, only have the power to contract the economy, not stimulate it.

ECONOMICS 101:

The one thing all Democrats need to understand about the economy above all other considerations is the key relationship that exists between aggregate spending & jobs. It’s as simple as this: all jobs in the economy are dependent on the SPENDING of others. When unemployment is high, it is because an insufficient amount of aggregate spending is taking place. When economic growth occurs and unemployment drops, it is because a net increase in aggregate spending has occurred. Any time there is any level of unemployment, it is because insufficient spending is taking place. (Note: GDP is a measurement of spending.)

By themselves, income tax cuts cannot stimulate the economy because they cannot cause a net increase in aggregate spending to occur. This is because any money that taxpayers receive from an income tax cut is money that the government can no longer spend. Tax cuts reduce government spending by exactly the same amount that they increase taxpayers disposable incomes. So even if you were to pass an income tax cut that would go only to people who would spend all of it, the net effect of the cut would be no change in aggregate spending. No net economic stimulus.

If you have an income tax cut that is distributed primarily to the wealthy, then your tax cut is going to have a contractionary effect on the economy. That’s because rich people are far more likely to save a good bit of any tax cut they receive rather than spend it. When this happens, the result is a net reduction in aggregate spending because at least some of the money that would have been spent by the government is taken out of the economy by wealthy savers, instead. A net reduction in aggregate spending occurs. This causes a reduction in jobs.

If the government wants to stimulate the economy to achieve higher levels of economic growth, it should increase the amount of income taxes it collects from the wealthy, not reduce them. When you increase the taxes that the government collects from the wealthy, you are collecting money that otherwise would have been saved (removed from the economy) and are spending it, instead. Aggregate spending levels increase, unemployment drops. The economic value/disvalue of income tax cuts is exactly the opposite of what the Republicans have been telling the American people for decades.

The tax cuts that the wealthy received from George Bush and the Republicans over the past five years are the reason why the economy’s `recovery’ since the 2001 recession has been one of the most anemic on record. The only reason why Bush’s tax cuts did not throw the economy into a deep recession is because Congress also did something else that actually did provide a true economic stimulus to the economy. It maintained and even increased federal spending by using borrowed money instead of tax revenues.

So let’s make sure we understand what the Republicans have been doing. They have been promoting their ‘belief’ that tax cuts will provide a stimulus to the economy, in spite of the undeniable fact that it is not possible for an income tax cut to do any such thing. They’ve been able to cover up the failure of their ‘belief’ only because they combined their tax cuts with other fiscal options that actually did have a stimulative effect on the economy. Now they are trying to claim that their tax cuts are the special ingredient that has caused the economy to finally recover. It’s an outrageous misrepresentation of the truth.

It’s time for Democrats to start telling the American people the truth about the stupidity of Republican Tax Cut Populism. Tell them the whole story. Insist that credit be given to those initiatives that actually do improve economic growth. Explain why increasing taxes (on the incomes of the wealthy) is actually the best way to stimulate the economy and expand prosperity. Make sure that the media understand that the only way we’re going to be able to eliminate poverty is by SPENDING enough as a nation to employ all those who are in need of a job.

James Kroeger