Gifting a Green Bean Casserole: Social Capital Update

Where has the heart of the community gone to?     

     Who among you wants to hear some good news? Who yearns for a bit of gospel? Whose bones, beside mine, are hungry for that sustenance so vital for holistic growth? If you or a friend/family member of yours have tuned in to these questions with eager anticipation, then I have encouraging answers for the lot of you all. To hear them will only require a moment of your time.

     Building off of the attention paid to and theme of my latest post, "Social Capital as a Remedy for Our Modern 'State of Nature,'" I can thankfully report that my effort to build Social Capital -- by baking a 4th of July dish for my neighbor -- succeeded by every measure imaginable. Not only did my neighbor, Dennis, accept my green bean casserole with open and affectionate arms, but he also repaid my act with more consideration than I expected would be forthcoming.

     He genuinely appreciated my gift. However tasty or filling my dish may have been, his reaction -- after the initial surprise -- was a wave of elation that shown through his emotions. He actually invited me into his home for a beer after I gave him the dish. I'm not sure if he responded thusly as a matter of form or genuine appreciation, but I was flattered nonetheless. I politely declined because I planned to meet with a friend soon thereafter, but our exchange was refreshing. We parted with kind words and giddy enthusiasm. Honestly, giving Dennis that gift was an electric feeling because it felt so free of social constraints or obligations. 

     The following day -- the 5th of July -- I was busy hacking away at my pile of golf balls in my backyard with a handful of old, rusty clubs that I had collected over the years. Dennis had watched me from time-to-time with aloof interest as someone watches a deer cross the open road; better if one watches while not disturbing. He was keen to observe but not interact. On only a handful of instances can I remember him offering a friendly tip or word of flattering encouragement. But the day following our 4th of July exchange, out walked Dennis from the side of his house with a shiny golf club in-hand. Strolling up to me with a slick grin across his face, he came close and this is what he said,

"Cory, we don't talk a lot, but I was really happy the other day when you took the time to give me that dish; that was really nice of you and I appreciated that..." 

He paused for a moment to jack the club up into both of his hands and looked down at it like he was weighing the value of it. He lifted his arms from his waist, hands open but cupping the club gently and with such severity as if it were a sword re-forged from the crafty hands of the elvish-kind from Rivendell in the Lord of the Rings. He spoke up and said,

"I've had this club sitting in my basement for awhile, now, and I haven't used it for years because I don't play anymore. I see you practicing all the time and thought you could use another wedge."

     I remember the way he lifted the club and offered it to me; his seriousness surprised me. I noticed how polite he was to not mention how shitty my rusted clubs were when he said,

 "... and thought you could use another wedge." 

Not a good wedge or better wedge, only another wedge. I was struck by his posture, his demeanor, his approach, all of which showed either deference or a sense of formality that -- at the time -- seemed out-of-place but upon reflection were the very types of tailored reactions I had hoped for. Only later that day did I appreciate the degree to which our relationship had evolved from one of a casual nature to one of an interwoven, more complex, and valuable variety. Unwittingly or not, we had crossed a threshold: behind lay the passive, at-arms-length treatment of our interactions which were punctuated by the passing nod, wave, or meaningless greeting that is more often dis-engaging than it is engaging. Beyond lay the full-range of active, contributive relations made possible by a simple exchange of gifts. We had shared an antiquated swap of material things the act of which was notable more for the emotional effect it had upon us than any physical benefit we may have enjoyed. 

     I told Dennis, of course, that I couldn't accept his gift because it's value was worth far more than my simple casserole. How did he respond?

"Are you kidding?!?! You baked a casserole for me. That took time and effort. God knows I can't cook. That was a nice gesture and is worth more than any golf club," 

he said before shaking my hand in confirmation of the deal and his firm insistence that I accept the club. He then told me to have fun before he turned to walk back to his household, Friday chores. 

     I stood there for a moment trying hard to grasp the weight of what had occurred given the theme which my last blog post had specifically dealt with. In that treatment of Social Capital, I had hypothesized that he would respond to my spontaneous -- but no less genuine -- gesture with a similarly kind act of selfless consideration. Only, I had hoped he would respond in kind by helping me work out the construction of a crude back-yard garden. But beggars aren't choosers and my hypothesis was confirmed by experimentation in a technical sense if only lacking in quality. Sure, Dennis did not assist my gardening efforts, but I also hadn't started that project in the first place. His reciprocation, however, was immediate, genuine, and valuable. 

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     I don't mean to build a convenient case for the idea of Social Capital as an answer for the social ills that plague American communities. To use the story from above as a panacea for communal-strife witnessed throughout the U.S. would be to lend too much value to anecdotal evidence or to confuse correlation with causation. In other words, "A blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then." With that said, this exchange between my neighbor and I has excited a certain node within my thought process where the arteries of theory and experience meet. I've fed the experimental hunger of my academic work but have only begun to calm that voracious appetite. It  calls for more tests and further action.

     Perhaps I should leverage the nascent upsurge of goodwill felt between myself and Dennis by replicating an act of similar or of a more ambitious character. Maybe I should try to affect a similarly positive reaction from a different neighbor of mine. Or, if time and effort should allow, I could do both at the same time. If momentum builds, my focus upon door-to-door relationships could gravitate towards the realm of a goal with more mass and ambition: a neighborhood-wide exchange of old belongings or the organization of a monthly cook-out. This brainstorming taps into the bottomless well of activities that are both capable and efficient means of generating Social Capital.

     Again, I must reiterate a point made from my last post: generating Social Capital requires efforts that might seem counterintuitive because they are done for free and offer no immediate value to those performing the actions which generate that capital. After all, why should I take the time to bake a casserole for my neighbor? There's no guarantee that he will reciprocate, or even return my dish for that matter. That chance of a null effect is eminently plausible. And yet, the opposite effect is eminently plausible, too. And along with reciprocation comes the added benefit of an upgraded, more integrated relationship between individual members of the community. 

     The eventual goal of these efforts to build Social Capital within a community is to achieve a level of involvement and active, contributive participation by individual members of the community which is self-sustaining. Any community that achieves this status will look inwards to solve problems as they arise by employing resources internal to the group instead of relying on assistance from a third party. This community will have low crime because its ethical standards will be locally appropriate, explicit, and accessible to all. Community-wide activities should occur both spontaneously and according to static schedules which are widely communicated. Individual members of the community should find assistance forthcoming from their neighbors should they need it, and such assistance should be offered as an end in-and-of-itself, with no strings attached. Crucially, each member of the model community of which I speak should acknowledge their responsibilities within the community as a list of explicit, productive duties to be performed, not for the sake of the individual's well-being, but for the sake of the health of the community. 

     Keep in mind, duties performed for the community's sake will ultimately benefit the individual, but that effect could be neither immediate nor direct. To neglect one's duties within the community, however, is to trigger the first domino that initiates the "Free-Rider" wave. As this process progresses, individual members violate their social contract with the community with increasing frequency, and as the number of violations mounts the cooperative pressure that pumps the group's life-blood eases until no connections -- or a negligible amount -- exist to sustain the community. It is nearly impossible to arrest this process within a community because irrationality weighs heavy upon the longer, more pragmatic view which most community members are accustomed to seeing. 

     Better to not let this Free-Rider dilemma -- this sharp apathy -- take hold within one's community. To do so, communities need two essential types of members: 

• (1) leaders to exercise a strategic vision of their community's future which is defined by: 
• (a) current trends of finance, demographics, locations, economy, etc., and 
• (b) the ability to manufacture a community-wide adaptability to the full range of unforeseen opportunities and threats that are bound to foist themselves upon the most meticulously-laid plans; and 

• (2) tireless, everyday enthusiasts whose active lifestyles maintain a reliable and visible daily reminder of the community's physical existence (through walking clubs, crossing-guard stations for elementary school bus-stops, maintaining cork post-boards, street trash clean-up, etc.) 

The remainder of community members will naturally follow the lead of these two crucial types of leaders; most people take their social cues from community leaders and it is this tendency that we should rely upon and exploit to ensure community resilience.

"Social capital" refers to features of social organization, such as networks, norms, and trust, that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit."

     - Robert D. Putnam, "The Prosperous Community," The American Prospect vol. 4 no. 13,   March 21, 1993, pp. 2.  

Social Capital as a Remedy for Our Modern 'State of Nature'

BETTER TOGETHER: Restoring the American Community by Robert D. Putnam and Lewis M. Feldstein with Don Cohen (Simon and Shuster; September 10, 2003)

150 ways to generate Social Capital on your own.

Stories of successful efforts to generate Social Capital.

     I was turned on to the idea of Social Capital after reading Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam (New York: Simon and Shuster; 2000). Professor David Moscowitz from Roger Williams University used the lessons drawn  from Putnam's study to diagnosis the sickness which plagues our American republican institutions (It pains me to do so, but I must give credit where credit is due and have therefore chosen to give kudos to Professor Moscowitz.)

     At its most fundamental level, the idea of Social Capital can be explained by studying the interpersonal relationships between individuals whose actions directly affect one another within a social group. These relationships are typified by their subtle delivery of non-monetary value between individuals on the one hand, and the cumulative health of the entire community which is seemingly borne out of thin air, immaculately conceived, on the other hand. Block parties, bowling leagues (Putnam's favorite example), neighborhood watches, baby-sitting, house-warming gifts, Christmas parties, etc., are but a few of the activities Putnam identifies that generate Social Capital.

     Simply listing these activities shows one that Social Capital is a topic more dynamic than most would think. More than funding or income levels, Social Capital is the lifeblood of a community, the latter of which in its most basic form is the chosen vehicle for organizing the members of society into complex yet stable groups. The common factor that each community identifies as its binding agent can take many forms, but that factor is important enough to convince individual members that 'belonging' is valuable. When the value individuals expect from their membership in the group disappears so, too, does the community vanish. Communities are fluid systems; members come and go as the group's organizing principle is subject to change. For some, qualitative changes of a community's raison d'etre can not be tolerated and so they leave. For others, that same change is tolerable, and for another group the change might prompt them to join the community. The important insight for me is that most community's manage philosophical and structural changes very well; rarely does a community undergo a change so dramatic that it ceases to exist soon thereafter.  And yet, communities are fragile phenomena. The idea of a 'community' is nothing more than an idea so long as the individuals who make-up that community refuse to express loyalty to the group in exchange for social value. Loyalty is felt for a group if its members share both a reasonably similar vision with one another and a belief that their collective efforts, when directed towards the pursuit of that vision, will bear fruit. Self-interest still exists, of course, but individuals loyal to a healthy community learn to subordinate their immediate desires in order to capture the benefits only attainable by a community. Communities, in all of their shapes, sizes, and operations, most often flourish and grow when their members secure the bonds of trust and confidence between one another. Trust and confidence, if plentiful, lubricate the community's delicate need to use collaboration as its modus operandi, and in-so-doing achieving what on the face of things looks to be a counterintuitive act. Collaboration is an end in-and-of-itself among community members and the value they create is Social Capital.

     If we take a moment to survey the landscape of our country's community structures it doesn't take long to notice that collaborative efforts at every level of society are few and far between. Coupled with this indifference, an elite class of autocrats and powerful personages work at the moral fringe of the rule of law, manipulate the legislative processes to favor their interests, and additionally leverage their abilities to work through loopholes and dense legal frameworks in order to monopolize power. The class of the elite is no monolith, but its preferential access to republican levers of power is highly problematic from both a theoretical and actual viewpoint.

To the general public, the specter of an elite class siphoning off scare resources and influence only aggravates the offense. If the common citizen believes the republic to be corrupted thusly, and if he is unable to remedy his poor position through legal or democratic channels, then he must eventually abandon the last vestiges of faith in his republic. If he felt anger and frustration before in the face of corruption, he will next show signs of civic exhaustion and despair, both of which work upon his conscience until he settles into a type of lethargic citizenship. Instead of seeking redress for himself or closing ranks with his under-represented comrades, the now disillusioned man focuses his efforts inwards towards himself, his career, his family, etc., because to do otherwise would be to squander valuable time and resources upon a lost cause. The moment our citizen chooses not to actively participate in the mechanics of his republic is the moment his social contract has broken. Sure, he will still live within the realm of and be subject to the authority of republican institutions, but in a way the authority those institutions wield is not legitimate. Notwithstanding his attempts in the past to redress his injuries through constitutional means - rather, perhaps in spite of them - our citizen can only find justice if some outside, systemic change re-calibrates the weight of representation each class deserves. If he finds himself hoping for such a fortuitous deliverance then he will unknowingly do himself harm; his lethargic attitude towards politics will suddenly be punctuated by flashes of anger and deeply bitter, shamefully regretful reminders of the chasm between what his republic owes him on the one hand and the paltry amount he has received on the other. Perhaps, even, under extreme circumstances he will mistrust and then dismiss his moment of deliverance because his helpless position has shattered the frame of reference through which he would normally use to judge political considerations.

      What's important to note is that this process which ends in isolation - or the construction of silos within which the individual and his nuclear family restrict their civic activities to - this degeneration away from republican activism washes over the brim of an individual's life and into that of the community. As the members of a community start to individually turn inwards, and concern themselves more often with self-preservation instead of collective security, the bonds that hold the disparate parts of the communal whole break one-by-one and do so with increasing regularity. Eventually, this process of communal dissociation picks up enough violent momentum to ensure the community's death. Perhaps more discouraging than the actual death of the community, is the pitiful phenomenon of neighbors living in close proximity to one another but who have little to no interaction and therefore no chance of generating Social Capital. With time, interaction between neighbors practically ceases because each actor's appreciation for civic action has atrophied beyond hope. The next generation will be born as civic introverts; not only would Social Capital be seen as a truly peculiar idea, but this new generation would actually believe that their private lives and spheres of influence were the norm, not the exception.

     When self-preservation is valued more than collective-security/collaboration by the public, only an unforeseen political cataclysm can resurrect the ideal of republicanism. And that shift is oftentimes a very messy ordeal. More than likely, however, the new norm -- individual self-preservation -- will endure. We are nearing this shift in the U.S. and all of the signs indicate that community structures are so weak that they might not withstand the stress of a republican revival. This atmosphere, in a modern sense, can be thought to parallel Hobbes' more brutal "State of Nature," an image of society he used to illustrate the formation of the first human communities. While Hobbes' "State of Nature" posed real, existential threats to its inhabitants, today's reincarnation of Hobbes' illustration has all of the logical hallmarks of the original. If the members of local communities focused more upon day-to-day, intimate burden-sharing amongst themselves, then many of our national problems would vanish. But we are heading in the opposite direction. Communities fall to bitter infighting as blame is assigned to everyone like a hot potato. Frugal residents complain about expenses or taxes they pay to support services they barely use. Those who have had stable upbringings fail to empathize with those who lacked that foundation and no allowance is made on the grounds that "life isn't fair." We must swallow our pride at times in order to accept that our neighbors may simply have fallen on hard times. We need to have faith in the idea that an honest deed done for someone else for free can be more rewarding than a paycheck. Value takes many forms and it is hidden within our communities; it is our duty to mine for it using the right tools and practice.

     Today's 'State of Nature,' unlike Hobbe's original articulation of that brutish life, does not pose an existential threat to individuals and families, not yet at least. But the same underlying logic that fed Hobbe's anarchic, chaotic life of self-interested brutes and clans is present today and it undermines any semblance of social security. Whether one analyzes cheating within the nation's tax system, insider trading on Wall Street, library late fees, increasing rates of traffic within the nation's major cities, etc., it becomes patently clear that individuals are more willing - by a large margin - to act in their best interests than they are to engage in collaborative efforts. It's not enough to believe or claim that self-interest and collaboration are mutually exclusive options; they are not, as is shown by the classic 'Prisoner's Dilemma': collaboration satisfies the interests of all those concerned.

     However, in the Prisoner's Dilemma the suspects are motivated by a clear, tangible goal: avoiding a long prison sentence. To come full circle, this discussion must show that the American public can no longer identify a worthy goal to direct its efforts towards. Collaboration is dismissed because the public doubts the legitimacy of the social institutions and legal frameworks within which collaboration is supposed to operate. It's as if burden-sharing or collective action are risky endeavors because neither are able to gain traction, ultimately exhausting themselves leaving the public more tired and bitter than before. This positive feedback system has been looping for some time now and, in my opinion, a critical threshold for pain and frustration will be crossed shortly in America.

     While those in power are, to all appearances, actively aggravating some of the causes and the symptoms of the nation's sickness, most of the blame rests with everyday Joes and Janes. An encouraging ray of hope still shines from the same idea of communities which I did my best to criticize above. In effect, the structure and operation of communities are so fluid that they can spring to life as fast as, or faster than, the time it takes for their predecessors to dissolve. If we can not bring ourselves to offer our loyalty to the community of the nation because it is a corrupt bargain, then we should look closer to home for inspiration. The lower and middle classes need to once again invest their time and effort into their neighborhoods in the hopes of constructing the valuable bonds of collaboration that generate Social Capital. More block parties, bringing a favorite cooked recipe to a neighbor's house during the holidays, organizing a volunteer street-cleaning crew, organizing pick-up basketball games at the local park, assisting young parents with baby-sitting and tutoring, etc. Take a look at the list linked above, pick out a few of the easier tasks you feel comfortable with and do them, no questions asked. I for one plan to bake a green-bean casserole for my new(er) next-door neighbor for the upcoming Fourth of July. I expect neither a reward nor an immediate reciprocation, but I guarantee that our relationship - between myself and Dennis - will become more dynamic. Maybe in the not too distant future he'll remember that shitty casserole - at least the effort I put into it - and the warmth he feels inside will prompt him to help me with my garden I plan on digging.

     And eventually, as you cross off tasks and your stock of Social Capital accumulates ever higher, hopefully you will graduate to more ambitious labors. Perhaps you will organize an after-school parent-teacher tutoring service for struggling students. Maybe you'll mentor troublesome adolescents. While the list of opportunities will present themselves ad infinitum, the bedrock of your philosophy should never change: a community that organizes itself around the natural attraction between its members can only survive if those same members work for an ideal that transcends self-interest or material benefits. Within some recess of each individual's conscience, space must be kept for a stoic appreciation of republican foundations, the mortar of persistent civic duty, and the peculiar community-facades that are as variegated as they are familiar to their members.

Random Thoughts Upon (Still) Desperate Times

     (cont'd) The American republic - the rule of law more specifically - needs to be reinvigorated. We need a new constitution. Legal integrity needs to be upheld with a degree of vigilance similar to republican Rome: lying in court (perjury) was considered so heinous an act that the guilty person would be thrown to their death from a cliff onto a jagged rock. Marion Jones lied during a Department of Justice inquiry and was given a slap on the wrist. If caught accepting bribes while serving as a public servant, Roman officials would first have their nose cut off before they were stuffed and sewn into a large bag with a wild animal and then finally tossed into a raging river to either drown to death or eaten by the animal. 

     I surely do not recommend we resuscitate these punishments from antiquity to lend more legitimacy to our legal system. However, the modern American legal system is plagued by double-standards, biases, dishonestly, and a faithlessness that is so acute that the entire system is seen by most Americans as a vehicle to be manipulated by actors within society instead of the other way around. 

     We need to end the "Tyranny of the Legislature": implement consecutive term-limits for Senators and Representatives in order to nip the "re-election" effort in the bud. Or we could elect Congressmen for terms to take place in the future instead of soon after ballots are cast. Even better, anonymous elections! Sure, we've have great presidents, but republics are not sustained by the executive branch. Rather, it was the sage legislators such as the Spartan Lycurgus or the Athenians Solon or Draco whose cool-headed, systemic organization of republican institutions gave to posterity an ideal to marvel at and imitate. 

     Today, the solutions to most of the problems that plague our economy, society, and political institutions reveal themselves with little to no effort. In other words, we know how to succeed as a nation - or at the very least how to control the damage - yet Congress is unwilling to act. In effect, Congress can not do its job! And yet we tolerate Congressional incompetence because we either believe no remedy exists or that the status quo works well enough. On both counts we are mistaken. 

     I understand that dramatic changes to, inter alia, our tax code, Electoral College, capital and financial debt markets, etc., should be implemented with care in order to avoid unnecessary shocks to society. But for the love of all that you hold dear: When are we going to control our nation's fucking debt!?!? When, if ever, will Congress reconfigure the nation's social safety nets in order to ensure either their affordability on the one hand, or control the runaway prices of services on the other? It's incredible. Our nation's Constitution is a quaint reminder of what a republican ideal used to be. "Oh, what a nice document! How peculiar!?" or we simultaneously cling to that mythical belief that ours' is the most just and free republic while we see with our own eyes how our institutions have grown hollow and corrupt. The checks, balances, and restrictions placed within and upon our republican form of government are overridden and side-stepped by an elite class of plutocrats to whom corporate bodies owe their allegiance, and vice versa. What our republic once was and what it is today are two wholly different things and, sadly, no effort to revive the former by rebuilding the latter has sprung to life. 

     The Arab spring of recent years and contemporary protests in Turkey and Brazil have shown us how to right these wrongs. What's more, we laud the courageous efforts of the citizens from these states as they demanded honest representation through democratic activism. They bled and often died for the republican ideal. "Good for them! They are taking back their democracy," we say but then turn off the television and think of those lessons no more. Our jobs and the paychecks they deliver dictate how we define our republic. To be certain, work and pay are necessary, but there exists a short list of ideals to which we as a community should strive to realize and maintain; republicanism is at the top of that list. Material things, money, and social status can neither - for the most part - nourish our conscience nor fulfill our desire to find an answer or meaning to life. A smaller paycheck or less affluent lifestyle are paltry trade-offs for the enjoyment of true liberty, active democracy, and healthy republican institutions. When and if we shift our focus to demand these types of priorities, then we will see how far we have strayed from the path of philosophical righteousness. But what will it take for that threshold to be crossed? 

     The body-politic in the U.S. is activated by a fitful and sputtery motor. High voter turnout is no longer driven by the issues of the day, but by the race or gender of the President, or the raging public/private civil wars at the state and local levels. "Politics," to all intents, constructions, and purposes, has leap-frogged the idea of being divisive or a 'touchy' subject; to fish for a political discussion in most social circles is to invite disaster, punish oneself, be ironic, etc. To talk about politics is to talk about a naturally distasteful subject. Could I think of a warning sign, a red-flag more indicative of a dying body-politic? Other than a coup, I think not. 

     Our aspirations and actions look to me like Eisenberg's electron in his elegant "Uncertainty Principle": chaotic in nature, an electron moves around its shell, or the electron cloud, in a purely random fashion. In order for a scientist to observe that electron during its fitful travels, he must observe that electron in a single instant, like a camera snapshot. Viewed in this way, the scientist can observe the electron with remarkable clarity. And yet, because the scientist is viewing the electron frozen in time, he must therefore forfeit his ability to observe the speed at which the electron is moving, or in what direction it is traveling. To observe the electron on the one hand, and to chart its movement on the other, is to confront two mutually exclusive choices. 

     Likewise in America we are incapable of simultaneously articulating goals - or a strategic aim - and acting in accordance with those goals, or at the very least how reality treats our goals. U.S. support for representational government the world over is, in theory, universally accepted. But when one analyzes our recognition (or lack-there-of) of Middle Eastern political parties/movements, one is unable to confirm our republican credentials. It wrinkles our brain to entertain the idea that a strategy can - indeed, should - be pursued in the face of chaos and uncertainty. A state can not articulate a grand strategy and control reality at the same time. Our domestic affairs are no different. "Affordable credit for young, middle-income homebuyers as a goal? Awesome!" "We've found a new way to effectively package a bundle of different mortgages into a single portfolio for optimal cash flow? That's fucking amazing! And it's legal? Sweet Baby Jesus!" BAM! Worst recession since the Great Depression. "What's that? The justice system is popularly thought to be unfair, rigged, and downright broken? Damn, that sucks. We should have the nation's first ever black President promise to make government more transparent, help the middle/lower-income families, hold banks and large corporations responsible for irresponsible actions, punish 'white-collar' crime more vigorously. Yeah, that will breath trust, confidence, and life back into our democratic foundations!" BAM! God damn National Security Agency (NSA) hacked the entire nation and Guantonomo is STILL open!

Random Thoughts Upon Desperate Times (Part 1)

Lycurgus

     

     The Athenian republic did not fall after the Great Peloponnesian War (431 - 404 BC). Far from it. Athenian republicanism survived for another hundred years. I repeat: the Athenian republic did not fall until 322 BC. Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, destroyed Athenian republicanism. For an honest, contemporary treatment of that final death-struggle, one need only read Demosthenes' "Phillipics". That group of orations laments - inter alia - local corruption at the highest level of government, citizen apathy, and the perils of hiring a mercenary army to fight one's own battles. 

     "The only thing that stays the same is the antagonistic behavior of states." That claim seeks to sweep over the particulars of international relations like a matador's muleta hides the horns of a Spanish bull. Come now, let us try a bit harder. Are states deliberately antagonistic? No. The complex system of international relations - state to state relations - pushes states this way and that, arrests state progress with no warning, propels state movement when time and momentum are thought to have frozen, and this uncertainty - this CHAOS - is often identified by observers to be the necessary and sufficient cause of a state's health. We are mistaken to think that it is the system that controls states. States are phantoms if their social institutions disappear. 

     The Roman republic was laid low from within, during the upswing of that state's growth. Beginning in earnest with Marius and Sulla, thrown into overdrive by Gaius Julius Caesar, and finished by Octavian (soon to be Augustus Caesar) after his civil struggle with Mac Antony, the legal and constitutional institutions of republican Rome were destroyed by the elite class. Marius reformed the structure of the army and rewarded his troops with massive booty. While this threshold was crossed by Scipio (Africanus) after his defeat of Hannibal (202 BC), profit and treasure were not the envy of legionarres until Marius and Sulla served as Consuls. Julius Caesar and his triumvirate colleague (one of them) Gnaeus Pompey institutionalized this profiteering norm as the Levant and Mediterranean coastline were taken hold of, first, by Pompey, followed shortly thereafter by Caesar's conquest of Gaul. After the latter of these two men achieved his Pyrrhic victory of that civil war, he was soon assassinated by Brutus, Cassius, and Co: the Senatorial republicans who saw tyranny for what it was (Fun fact: before his assasination, Caesar changed his will to bequeath roughly 3/4's of his wealth and estate, along with his name, to his nephew Octavian, but should the latter not accept that dangerous inheritance then guess who was next in line for Caesar's willful favor? BRUTUS!!!). Octavian and Marc Antony - Julius Caesar's 1st Lieutenant - quickly locked horns with one another, burdening the Roman body politic with the second bloody civil war in a single generation. Triumphant, Caesar Augustus dismantled the Roman republic (27 BC) after rewriting the constitution. The SYSTEM within which Rome acted had no effect upon the dramatic shift from republic to empire. 

     There is a period of grandeur which follows the establishment of any repubic in history, and yes, history does repeat itself. Classical Athens and republican Rome burst outwards upon and into the system of international relations because the rule of law and the strength of the citizen body-politic complemented one another. This symbiotic relationship was - and is - the sine qua non of the foundation of republican institutions. With time, however, - and to varying degrees - the general body-politic becomes either apathetic or indifferent towards civic participation. In and of themselves, apathy and indifference are not capable of taking the legs out from below a republic; a more active, pernicious effort is required by the elite class to sully accepted norms. At this point in the life of a republic, the rule of law is still in force and governs the actions and behaviors of a majority of citizens. However, a minority of actors - the elite plutocrats - takes it upon itself to slyly work at the fringe of legal boundaries to seize opportunities. Whether these opportunities manifest themselves as monetary gains, political power, etc., is no matter. It is the sense of unfairness that the everyday Joe and Jane perceive that matters. They see the rich and powerful as capable, willing, and eager gluttons. The rich and powerful elite are seen to 'rollover' their success at little to no cost to themselves on the one hand, while disenfranchising the low to middle class workers on the other. When confidence within, and trust of, republican institutions disappears, then those very institutions vanish like the ephemeral dreams they are. 

     The American republic is teetering upon a precipice because. While the rule of law was used to build the state's democratic institutions, the elite are working to gain more power while acting contrary to what Montesquie termed "The Spirit of the Laws". Campaign finance is a web of re-allocated, mysterious channels; the Electoral College and 'gerrymandering' are relied upon by institutional actors to stratify and strategize legislative/executive power; an objective media presence does not exist; wealth and value have pooled along the corners of the national economy as a result of finance; the nation's top political leaders are incapable - indeed, CANNOT - tell the truth and we know this; the "ability to govern" is a distant consideration of legislators who are above all else intent upon re-election campaigns; the national and state legal codes would befuddle a Byzantine government official; and, most depressing of all, ordinary citizens are told what is legal, how law is to be interpreted, and how the nation's code of ethics should be updated as a result instead of the process of legal interpretation growing organically from the body-politic. 

Solon

     To recap: (1) the Athenian republic did not fall after the Great Peloponnesian War: Philip II ended that dream nearly one-hundred years later. (2) The Roman republic was dismantled from within by the elite class. Period. (3) The system within which states act is chaotic, yes, but states can rise or fall from their own inertia just as easy as sudden, outside shocks. (4) The rule of law is the seed from which republicanism grows, but as that plant grows to maturity it must be cared for and attended to lest some of the "healthy" branches use their pride of place to capture a disproportional amount of sunlight and in so doing gorge themselves while choking the life out of the entire plant's body. (5) History not only repeats itself when we look at the rise and fall of republics, but it is a narrative from which we see the rule of law borne, grow, and then manipulated as a five-dollar-hooker. As she is jaded, so does a republic violate and contradict the very institutions upon which it derives its life.

The Modern City-State, Part II

"I change too quickly: my today refutes my yesterday. When I ascend I often jump over steps, and no step forgives me that." 

"Oh great star! What would your happiness be if you did not have us to shine for?"  

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

      Globalization is a contemporary word for what history has shown to be a group of reoccurring phenomenon: the spread of disruptive technologies, migrant populations, capital, ideas, etc., across state borders. Contemporary globalization is simultaneously undermining a facet of state sovereignty on the one hand while further embedding cities into the fabric of International Relations (IR) on the other. Far from a period of decline, however, states are still the primary actors in IR and as such, are the foundation upon which today's state-centric system of IR rests.

      Exercising less formal authority than their national overlords do, cities increasingly act as release valves for the state; they lessen the degree to which pressures of globalization work upon and through state borders. Today we undoubtedly live in a world that is undergoing a period of authoritative re-calibration (re-territorialization) whereby states writ large are failing to manage the forces both within and without of society, economics, finance, security, etc. But make no mistake: this period of adjustment will approach an equilibrium sooner or later.

      This is not only expected but welcomed because, whatever faults or weaknesses the Westphalian, state-centric model of IR may harbor today, society has yet to design a better system to manage international affairs. And yet, the steady march of urban expansion, connectivity, and evolution in the past couple of decades has progressed in lock-step  with the establishment of a more accommodating socio-economic regime within which cities have nested themselves. In other words, cities are more wealthy, numerous, healthy, and connected than they've ever been in the past. Most cities enjoy protection from foreign militaries: the cosmopolitan city - however autonomous it may be - resides within national borders and is therefore subject to state-centric domestic legal structures and authorities. In contrast, classical Greek city-states valued liberty over collective security and - the Greek alliance against the Persian invaders notwithstanding - as a result, every individual city-state fell prey to, first, the Macedonians and then Rome. Today's 'city-states' - New York, Chicago, Hong Kong, Doha, Dubai, etc., - are thankfully not responsible for their own security. This has enabled the modern city to focus more of its attention toward, inter alia, capital accumulation, expansion of their service sectors, and trade networks. At least since the late 1970's, cities have leveraged this comparative advantage to secure and strengthen more power within the state-centric arena of IR. And as the number of large, commercial cities continues to expand within and across state borders, both their relative power vis a v. the state and their absolute power in international affairs will increase exponentially.

      This development is encouraging because the state as the principal actor within IR is finding itself frequently unable or ill-suited to manage social, economic, financial, cultural, etc., issues in a globalizing society. This doesn't mean, however, that the state-centric system is doomed. Far from it. In fact, the relative power of states in military and managerial terms has grown rapidly since the end of World War II. How can that be? How can the state simultaneously lose and gain power in international affairs? Wouldn't the result of globalization as a negative force, and military expansion as a positive force, cancel out each other thereby having a neutral effect upon state sovereignty? The answers to these questions are easy to answer so long as one understands that the institution - the principle - of sovereignty is not unified, but very dynamic.

      When most people think of sovereignty, they are thinking of what IR scholars - particularly Stephen Krasner - call "Westphalian Sovereignty", or the universal legal protection of states from foreign intervention. The norm of non-intervention began to be codified after the conclusion of the central European Thirty Years' War between, amongst many others, the Holy Roman Empire and its souther-German allies on one side, against Protestant (more or less) northern-German principalities, Sweden, and - eventually - France. The Holy Roman Empire was ruled by the Habsburg Dynasty which, in 1521, split into two family branches that resided on opposite sides of continental Europe. The senior branch resided in Spain while the junior branch governed from Austria. The conflict lasted for thirty years and decimated the population of central Europe, particularly the populations of the Germanic principalities: some 30% of the citizenry died in the heart of Europe. The respective combatant rulers were so moved by the war's devastation that they brought an end to the conflict and began the process of reconciliation whereby it was decided that each prince (sovereign ruler for that matter) had the exclusive right of determining the religion of his lands and, as a result, the religion of his subjects. (read: the Protestant Reformation and Catholic counter-Reformation triggered the war by divorcing huge swaths of populations and lands from their former Catholic overlords). This right of religious exclusivity given to sovereign rulers was the foundation for today's international norm of non-intervention. Interestingly enough, the Peace of Westphalia also required rulers to honor universal minority rights: Protestant Lutheranism and Calvinism were given the status of full socio-politico legitimacy, freeing those individuals who were religious minorities from confessional persecution. After all, the truest catalyst for the war's beginning was the Habsburg's strategy of minority persecution at the local level and institutional marginalization of Protestants at the Imperial level. So in a way, the Peace of Westphalia established conflicting norms: the universal norm of non-intervention on the one hand, and continental protections accorded to religious minorities on the other.

      Here is where most discussions of sovereignty end, but in so doing they fail to capture the other institutional dynamics of sovereignty. Would you believe that, in addition to non-intervention/Westphalian sovereignty, there exist today three (3) more types of sovereignty? That was a rhetorical question; they exist.

1. International Legal Sovereignty - according to Krasner (2002): "Recognized jurisdictionally independent territorial entities which [have] the right to freely decide which agreements or treaties they will enter into" (3). A state with international legal sovereignty can join, for instance, the World Trade Organization (WTO), sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), etc;
2. Effective Domestic Sovereignty - which "implies that there is an independent authority structure within a recognized territory capable of effectively regulating activities within its own borders" (ibid). So is the police apparatus of state X capable of maintaining law and order throughout the territory of the state? Are their pockets of unrest and militant extremism that are so isolated that the central government can not bring them to heel? At this point, one should start to notice that, unlike the purely legal nature of international legal sovereignty, effective domestic sovereignty can be lacking in state with weak central authority structures. Look at Somalia. So to a certain degree, the forces that enable or prohibit a state from controlling events inside its borders can operate against and outside of the state's ability to control them;  
3. Interdependence/Globalization Sovereignty - This is the newest articulation of sovereignty (or is it?), and this type of sovereignty is the one we hear of most often in the news. The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman drew upon his... extensive experience from his... long career as a scholar of international relations (read: he has no experience and, therefore, had no career in that field) to reach the conclusion that technological advances in communication, fiber-optic wiring, cell phones, travel, etc., have collectively "shrunk" the world by reducing the amount of time and space needed to act in today's globalized world, and as a result "The World is Flat". In other words, the state-centric approach to IR analysis is now inappropriate because these advances have, firstly, more or less leveled the playing field between strong and weak state actors and, secondly, enabled non-state actors like NGO's, transnational corporations, and militant extremists, to exert power on the world stage. Friedman's argument is interesting, but absolutely false. Power, or the ability to act, is still the single-most important force in the world today. The U.S. military apparatus and price-tag is larger than its next 14-15 competitors combined. Is that flat? Of course not. 

      Granted, ideas of political equality can permeate through state borders and 'infect' the populations of tyrannical regimes leading to popular protests, viz. the Arab Spring. But most of the now defunct regimes from the Middle East (Tunisia, Egypt, Libya) were brought down from within and after major world powers called for the dictators to step down. While the regime changes in Tunisia and Egypt were relatively bloodless, Libya erupted into all out civil war costing thousands of lives. The death toll from today's raging Syrian civil war has undoubtedly topped 70,000 people. So while Twitter and Facebook served as the platforms through which popular uprisings were channeled, the very real response from authority structures was deadly. Communication networks, ideas, protests, etc., in and of themselves can not topple a regime: only cold steel and hot lead can.

     If one is able to see sovereignty as a multi-faceted - indeed, more complex - system of legal norms, social processes, and power relations then one has the ability to study the modern interaction between the primary agents within the system of IR. The two most important actors in this system are states and cities. It is true that globalizing forces of communication, transport, capital flows, etc., are ceaselessly conflicting with state sovereignty. How states are to compensate for this relative loss of sovereignty is unknown and many states will be forced to discover the answer alone. A more troubling reality will be the inability of weak states to adopt strategies for controlling globalized forces that have been implemented by more powerful states. In effect, the complexity of today's world is inherently chaotic and chaos is the antithesis to the state-centric model of IR.

      An encouraging insight for IR theory is this: while the forces of globalization pose challenges for state authority, these forces are a boon for urban centers, particularly cities. By nature, cities are chaotic, informal, and the processes by which urban institutions manifest themselves are the result of unplanned opportunities just as much as planned initiatives.

      Crucially, however, cities will begin to - and indeed are encouraged to - resemble the ancient city-states of Classical Greece, China, and the early Islamic Caliphate, etc. The key to this reemergence of city-states is the ease with which urbanites construct urban identities. To be a citizen of Athens, Aleppo, Cordoba, Corinth, etc., was to identify oneself as an Athenian, Aleppan, etc., etc., before anything else. Urban identities are more tangible, more salient - more dear - to city-dwellers than the geographic identities of either the state or of the nation. While the developed world struggles to both escape its stagnant economic recovery and reverse negative demographic trends, modern city-states should be encouraged to flourish not only because they are engines of growth, but because they are the most appropriate model for the 21st-century economy.

      As sure as the sun rises from behind the eastern horizon, the city-state is today reborn: shield thicker than before, bronze helmet polished to Athenian-gold, and a Spartan blood-crimson cloak unfurled in the wind.

HISTORICAL NARRATIVE OF THE CITY-STATE

A non-Apologetic Appraisal of Hizballah, Hamas, and Political Islam

     If there's any lesson to be drawn from the Boston Marathon bombings it is that Americans will grab for any answer to the dilemma of militant extremism which is neither Islamic nor political by nature. To conjure the specter of "terrorism' - an image clear to the U.S. and Western publics - is to choose the path of least resistance. Terrorism, viewed as a militant corruption of political activism, serves as a convenient, albeit misguided, coping mechanism. Do not misinterpret my intention this early in the post: al-Qaeda perpetrated a heinous act of cold-blooded murder on 9/11, and the Tsaranev brothers are guilty of a similar offense. If I had my chance to exact revenge on bin-Laden (UBL), I'd tell him the same thing Marcellus Wallace told "Zed" he was about to do in Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction": "I'm gonna' get medieval on your ass!" But after exhausting my efforts of putting UBL through the gauntlet, I suspect a cold feeling of discomfort would continue unabated so long as chaos and uncertainty threatened to disrupt my life.

     It wasn't surprising that most U.S. news agencies speculated that the Boston bombers established connections with the Chechen separatist movement of southern Russia. That speculation was expected and is typical of our media institutions, led by individuals unworthy of Walter Cronkite, David Halberstam, and other paragons of honest journalism. What surprised me was the instantaneous public reaction to this speculation: if it's on T.V. it must be true. Never mind the Tsaranev's upbringing in central Asia's Kyrgyzstan, a state as difficult to locate on a map as is its name is to pronounce (10 street credit points to those who know its capital city!). And let us disregard the fact that the Chechen separatist movement - notwithstanding a particularly horrific episode where hundreds of Russian schoolchildren were murdered in cold blood - has one of the more legitimate claims for independence amongst the spectrum of resistance movements throughout the world. No, these considerations and many more were overridden by the public's need to establish connections, assign blame, in anticipation of the eventual military response against an identified threat which - unsurprisingly - was motivated by that same vein of Salafiyyah militant Islam characteristic of al-Qaeda (not the Taliban: the Taliban's ideology, the Deobandi school of thought, grew out of an Indian sect of missionary Islam (al-dawah) based in the Muslim enclave of Deoband).

     Alas, unless George W. abrogates the Constitution by winning the Presidency once more, it is unlikely that the U.S. public will swallow another pile of bull-shit ala Iraqi WMDs. No, the conclusion to the Boston attack will be more anti-climatic than the public realizes. Ironically, this letdown is the very reason why the public will not rest easy: a ruthless attack perpetrated by 'lone-wolf' outcasts who were motivated by anger and a desire to hurt innocents is more destabilizing than an orchestrated attack. In the meantime, we'll blame political Islam and the phenomenon of Islamic Terrorism.

     By doing so we will stay mired in what George Friedman calls the "Terror Trap" in his book The Next Decade: Empire and Republic in a Changing World (2012). The trap was sprung when the U.S. launched its "War on Terror." How does one defeat terrorism? Rather, how does one defeat a battlefield tactic? It's as if the British sought to defeat the act of 'sniping' carried out by militia sharpshooters during the U.S. Revolutionary War of Independence. To win, the British would have to kill or capture every single person capable of becoming a sniper! Impossible. And what do we make of the D.C. sniper attacks in 2002? The greater D.C. area was gripped with fear as John Allen Muhammad and his younger accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo roamed Interstate 95 in Virgina eventually killing 10 random civilians. After arrested, however, Muhammad and Malvo were tried in Virginia state court for murder instead of terrorism despite all indications that acts of 'Terror,' as we understand the term, were perpetrated. As for the Tsaranev brothers' attack in Boston recently, President Obama tried to indirectly moderate the national discussion through his reluctance to label the attack an "Act of Terror,' and for good reason. In the face of political pressure though, a White House aide quickly placated the American public by confirming, in fact, that the attack was an act of terror because "Whenever multiple bombs are used, it is an act of terror" (paraphrase). Wait a minute? Isn't terrorism the act of instilling fear in the public in order to, inter alia, achieve political goals? So how or why did the Obama administration think it legitimate to label this an act of terror before the perpetrators were arrested and before their motives were known? The truth is is that we've latched on to terrorists as a familiar enemy just like we did during the Cold War; Communism was then the monolithic creature haunting our dreams at night. Better to be haunted by a known enemy than a unknown one, or so the logic demands.

     We have now exposed the truest cause of our need to apply a catch-all phrase, Terrorism, to a infinitely complex array of chaotic forces. The issue is more fundamental than a strategic imperative. Terrorists of today stand in stark moral contrast to extremists from the past. Sure, al-Qaeda and global jihadi groups seek neither political representation nor accommodation. There's is a struggle between civilizations. But what of Hizballah and Hamas? the Shia' resistance movement based in southern Lebanon and the Palestinian terrorist organization pursuing 'self-determination' as a political end by employing military and political means, respectively. Both of these groups are guilty of murder, but murder is not their modus operandi; grassroots political activism is. In fact, they've relied consistently upon political institutions more than missionary or jihadi alternatives. Contrary to secular practice, religion and politics are not mutually exclusive options, and in the case of Islam the two are inextricably linked. Unlike Christianity, the birth of Islam developed in lock-step with a correspondingly successful military campaign that swept through the Arabian Peninsula and across North Africa. The result of that dichotomous relationship between church and state legitimacy was an unimpeded infusion of Islamic ideals into the state apparatus. Social norms and state institutions were built upon Islamic foundations. Christians, on the other hand, were suppressed by the Roman Empire and forced to obey pagan institutions that honored Caesar as God. The one true irony of Western liberal democracy is that its institutions were borne from weakness not an inherent strength that the Muslim Umma lacked.

     How do we categorize the anarchist movements of the nineteenth century? Is it not a mark of progress today that laborers enjoy safe work conditions and reasonable five-day work weeks? Whence did these rights come from? Answer: from the collective strike, the hidden gun, and well-timed bomb. British suffragettes used extreme measures to achieve political ends. "They broke windows, planted bombs, and hurled Molotov cocktails through the windows of politicians' homes, public buildings, and shops" (Norton, On the Muslim Question, 2013, p. 83 ). Their successful efforts informed today's constitutions of the UK, France, and the United States. Women's' right to vote and access to equal pay in the workplace "were, as Nietzsche said of all great things, 'soaked in blood thoroughly, and for a long time' " (Ibid, 85).

     Likewise, the nascent independence movement of the U.S. colonies finally broke free from British suzerainty, not through political machinations, but in spite of them. Only a military struggle achieved what parliamentary democracy could not. Similar to today's resistance movements in Palestine and the Levant, General Washington's regular army and supplement of rag-tag militias refused to lay down their arms as "a precondition for negotiations." It is therefore puzzling that the West so easily labels Hizballah and Hamas as evil forces on the one hand, while romanticizing the exploits of colonial militias on the other.

     We forget to interpret our struggle for independence as an historical precursor to Islamic resistance movements. Our struggle for independence was not a random disruption in our minds, but an explosive reaction to long-simmering forces. Then again, we framed the issue. Because we were actors in that continental drama, the randomness of events and the violent overthrow of the colonial status quo were validations of our political aims. British fear, panic, and unease were the corollaries to our frustration with political servitude, an apathetic crown, and the eventual decision to work outside of British institutions that neither addressed nor respected colonial grievances. These were the reasons the colonies employed militant tactics; tactics considered then by the British and the U.S. today as anathema to liberal democratic institutions.

     Our militant independence movement manifest itself only after non-violent, political petitions for representation were rebuffed. Petitions for a redress from grievances were exhausted. Independence was achieved, but not without a great loss of life and presumable lesson for posterity: in life and death, ends often justify the means.

     After two-and-a-quarter centuries the U.S. enjoyed the status as the pre-eminent superpower - the only superpower - capable of subduing the world with hot lead and warm ideals. 9/11 shattered that confidence, not because al-Qaeda represented an existential threat - it didn't then and surely does not today. Our paranoia was borne from a more pernicious fear of chaos. "When the world becomes uncertain, people feel that a once orderly place has become random. Randomness, when it concerns matters of life and death, of change and an uncertain future, is terrifying" (Ibid, 87). However shocking and disgusting the attacks on 9/11 were a priori, it was the perceived loss of control the U.S. experienced and the introduction into the U.S. hegemonic narrative of chaos that terrified the U.S. public. This rupture was compounded by our naive belief that we had succeeded in establishing a new world order after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, an order built by the U.S. and, for the foreseeable future, controlled by the U.S. While some added control did accrue to U.S. institutions, that development was not the cause but an effect of a power vacuum. Crucially, chaos as a force acting within the field of international relations could never - and will never - be eradicated.

     Al-Qaeda's attack was nothing more than a harbinger of a more chaotic field of unconventional forces working at the seams of an outdated system built upon Westphalian sovereignty. Asymmetric warfare as practiced by, inter alia, Hizballah and Hamas today is relied upon because these groups must redefine the rules of war. Up until the successful resistance of two Israeli invasions of souther Lebanon - in 1982 and 2006 -  separatist movements only succeeded at damage control. The Chechens were bombed into the Neolithic age during their second war with Russia. On the streets mean streets of Balbek in southern Lebanon, however, Hizballah used bottlenecks and blind-spots to effectively deploy their rocket forces. Hamas military victories have proven more allusive for other reasons, chiefly the overwhelming force applied to the Gaza Strip by the Israeli armed forces. And the 1983 U.S. Marines barracks bombing carried out by the cover group "The Free Islamic Revolutionary Movement," resulted in the deaths of 241 U.S. troops (It should be noted that at this time the U.S. had effectively sided with the Maronite coalition against the Shia' in the Lebanese Sectarian Civil War). The immediate result of this attack was the removal by the late President Reagan of U.S. Marines from Lebanese soil the following year. What were the costs to Hizballah from that attack? A single bomber's life, the name of which is to this day unknown. The truck and explosives cost the organization roughtly $1,500-$2,000. Hizballah had discovered a strategy that allowed them to even the odds with Israel and the U.S.

     This is not an attempt to either excuse the targeting of innocent civilians or accept the premise that resistance movements and dialogue are mutually exclusive options. Moreover, I suspect a majority of Hizballah and Hamas leaders share a similar distaste for plain murder and uncompromising militancy as well. Full disclosure: These groups have been guilty of atrocious acts of unwarranted violence. And yet, it's surprising why the West tries to differentiate between war writ large, and the atrocities perpetrated during war. War, for all intents and purposes, is the effort to extinguish life, and it is therefore expected that enemy combatants will err on the side of caution at the regrettable expense of acting immorally. Similar to the passage of time, Death waits for no man.

     Hizballah and Hamas either have been or currently are engaged in outright war with the West. It is telling, however that these groups have insisted upon operating within political frameworks, however imperfect the results. Neither these groups nor their benefactor, Iran, espouse the hatred typical of al-Qaeda. The former use militancy as a means to a political end, and grandstand to garner popular support (al-Qaeda's actions are not so subtle). Our forefathers did very much the same, and resistance movements will do the same not so much if they are able, but when they have no other choice.

     Those who insist that Hizballah lay down their weapons forget why they picked them up in the first place in 1982. And to lament Hamas' unwillingness to renounce violence as a precondition for negotiations with Israel and the U.S. is tantamount to laying the blame at the feet of David if he were to refuse the entreaties of moderates for him to lay down his sling before 'negotiating' with Goliath. "What am I to do," he would respond, "if a peaceful accord should prove allusive? Where then should I find safety if not from my sling?!" That 'moderate' precondition, however genuine, exposed him to the giant's sudden wrath the moment dialogue broke down.

     We must eradicate all forms of the word "Terrorism" from our political discussions. Each and every one of its forms are poisonous. Asymmetry is a far more appropriate substitute that at once conveys a useful description of reality while moderating the discussion so that an honest appraisal of contentious politics can take place. Asymmetry is an admission of weakness by a group with real political claims as they are confronted with an asymmetrical balance of conventional forces.