Middle East Gang Warfare

Once again President Obama has shown his inestimable skill as a community organizer. His detractors may have been too hasty in condemning his lack of foreign policy experience. I do not claim to know what he really thinks, but it would be understandable if he looks at the troubles in the Middle East as a gang conflict. Since he cut his political teeth on Chicago's south side, one assumes he has experience with gangs. Voila: foreign policy experience.

The President may be onto something. The parallels to gang culture are striking. The typical gang and the factious parties in the Middle East both serve as their societies' organizing forces, much as family does in other places. Both lay claim to certain territory as rightfully theirs. Both usually involve acts of violence to prove one's loyalty and commitment. Both demand ultimate allegiance. Both have aspects of positive community building alongside the dreadful violence that dominates their public face. Both are fatally intolerant of any view but their own. Many think both stem from the boredom and perceived disenfranchisement of impressionable young men.

Perhaps the President's Chicago style approach has been to let the gangs fight it out to see who is the strongest, then work with the winner to create a livable situation. A wait-and-see attitude seems to have characterized his response to Iran, Egypt, Libya and Syria. Maybe his delay was caused by the uncertainty in his "community." US voters are not uniform in what they want in the way of "organization." Then too, many US citizens question the need for any involvement in the Middle East at all.

Whatever the President is thinking, his new stance concerning the conflict with Israel and the Palestinians seems stunningly ignorant. The so-called two state solution cannot work unless one of the parties surrenders claim to the temple mount in Jerusalem. I suspect it will snow in Hades before that happens. Making Israel return to pre-1967 War boundaries as a prerequisite to negotiation asks one "gang" to abandon their corner unilaterally. Netanyahu would be run out of the country if he agreed to that. Finally, it is lunacy to imagine that Hamas will put aside their blood feud with Israel just because they are asked nicely. The President has a better chance for a hole-in-one on a par five than seeing all this come about.

For a fuller explanation of why Obama's approach is fruitless, I invite you to follow the link to my blog from last September. Briefly, one might say peace in the Middle East just isn't in the cards. The roots of the conflict run not centuries, but millennia deep. Believing history has a planned and orchestrated end helps, but it gives few clues as to how to navigate the stormy seas of our generation. One thing does seem certain: whether you believe Israel has a divinely ordained place in history or not, democratic Israel is our ally. Obama's speech this week appears to throw Israel under the bus. You don't have to be John Hagee to know that's just not right.

Diogenes Shrugged

Ayn Rand's classic novel, Atlas Shrugged, is being introduced to a new generation with the release of a movie by the same name this spring. The title comes from a line in the novel where a character asks what sort of advice one should give to the mythological Atlas considering that "the greater [Atlas'] effort, the heavier the [weight of the] world bore down on his shoulders". The response: "To shrug".

I do not share Rand's libertine, anti-religious world-view by any means. However, the world she fictionalized in 1957 is becoming fact in 2011. The collapse of society Ayn Rand predicted in Atlas Shrugged took place because government gradually took control of everything. Doubtless she was influenced by Orwell's 1949 novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which also features a dystopian society brought about by an excess of government. Both authors share worthy cautions, but they misunderstand a significant element of American society as it was originally conceived.

Our nation's founders recognized that the government they envisioned could not exist apart from the moral underpinnings of the Judeo-Christian world-view. Rand and Orwell discount religion as an escape mechanism which harms rather than helps society. They have it exactly backwards. Without a moral compass the engine of commerce will inevitably drive the ship of state onto the rocks. As I said recently in my blog, "True Lies", dishonesty abounds today. Purveyors of false information seem to be multiplying like a cancer eating at the core of our world. Without good information, a republic cannot survive; it will devolve into some form of tyranny.

Allow me to present two more examples of the deceit which infects the decision making process in current national debate. New York's billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is a rabid anti-gun advocate. He recently paid for a national ad campaign which declares that 34 Americans are murdered every day. This is deceptive on a number of levels. First, Bloomberg has the count wrong. FBI statistics for 2010 list 26 murders being reported daily, not 34. Even 26 is slightly overstated because police report as "murders" cases which are subsequently reclassified as other causes of death (negligent homicide, manslaughter, suicide, self-defense, etc.) Second, while any number of murders is tragic, in a population of more than 300 million depraved human beings, that only twenty-some are murdered each day might be considered remarkable. Third, not Bloomberg nor any of his fellow anti-gunners will report that states with liberal gun policies (like Arizona) have lower murder rates than those with draconian laws (like New York.) A 42 page study by eminent researchers concludes that European countries which have tried to eliminate private gun ownership have not seen a decrease in murders. Much to the contrary, Florida State criminologist, Gary Kleck has written that, "civilian ownership and defensive use of guns deter violent crime and reduce burglar-linked injuries."

My second example of public deception involves the link between vaccination and autism. The details on this issue are not yet clear to the public, but I think I know what is coming on this front. Government agencies and pharmaceutical companies have repeatedly claimed that there is no link between autism and vaccination. Yet just days ago a citizen group brought to light the fact that dozens of families with autistic children have been paid large settlements by the federal government's "vaccination court," a body established to protect private companies from lawsuits. Investigative reporter Trace Gallagher of Fox News recently asked, "If there is no cause and effect, why the multi-million dollar rewards?" Why indeed.

Trust is vital in any relationship. This applies double in the relationship between a people and their government. One need not be a Christian or any religious type to want the ninth commandment upheld in public enterprise, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." I fear the American experiment will fail at last if we do not rediscover the cost of deception and the value of honesty. Diogenes' search for an honest man might prove fruitless on Madison Avenue or in the halls of Congress these days. Pray he is not forced to shrug.