Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton & Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2015) ("One half of current precarity is the fate of the earth: what kinds of human disturbances can we live with? Despite talk of sustainability, how much chance do we have for passing a habitable environment to out multispecies descendants?" Id. at 3. "Progress is embedded, too, in widely accepted assumptions about what it means to be human. Even when disguised through other terms, such as 'agency,' 'consciousness,' and 'intention,' we learn over and over that humans are different form the rest of the living world because we look forward--while other species, which live day to day, are thus dependent on us. As long as we imagine that humans are made through progress, nonhumans are stuck withing this imaginative framework too." "Progress is a forward march, drawing other kinds of time into its rhythms. Without that driving beat, we might notice other temporal patterns. Each living thing remakes the world through seasonal pulses of growth, lifetime reproductive patterns, and geographies of expansion. With a given species, too, there are multiple time-making projects, as organisms enlist each other and coordinate in making landscapes. [] The curiosity I advocate follows such multiple temporalities, revitalizing description and imagination. This is not simple empiricism, in which the world invents its own categories. Instead, agnostic about where we are going, we might look for what has been ignored because it never fit the time line of progress." Id. at 11.).
Joel K. Bourne Jr., The End of Plenty: The Race to Feed a Crowded World (New York: Norton, 2015) ("You can have the best soils and the most highly capitalized, technologically advanced farmers planting the best seeds in the world. But without water, you don't have squat. Nothing grows without water, save cactus and tumbleweeds. That why we use 70 percent of the world's available freshwater supplies to irrigate our crops and water our livestock. Most of it is piped form rivers, lakes, and reservoirs, or pumped from groundwater aquifers--the latter amount having tripled since the 1950s. Water tables are falling dramatically in many of the world's grain baskets. According to the World Bank, 15-33 percent of global water withdrawals were unsustainable in 2009--meaning that water is being pumped out faster than it is being replenished. Over the next few decades, groundwater depletion could cripple agriculture around the world." Id. at 152-153. "Water is no longer simple an environmental or food security issue, but a national security issue. In early 2012, a report from the US Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that global freshwater demand was likely to rise to more than 40 percent of the estimated sustainable supplies as early as 2030, threatening world food markets and leading to increasing political instability and reduced economic growth. South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa will be hit the hardest and may lack the water necessary to grow food and produce energy through hydropower. The risks of the water wars are rising, particularly in areas that are already suffering political conflicts, including India, Pakistan, Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Syria, and Iraq. Key water basins at risk include the Brahmaputra shared by India and Bangladesh and the great Amu Darya of central Asia. The latter is an aquatic lifeline for more than 40 million people living in several 'stans'--Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan--before it dries up in the desert that once was the Aral Sea." Id. at 183.).
Marion Nestle, Soda Politics: Taking On Big Soda (and Winning), with a foreword by Mark Bittman, and an afterword by Neal Baer (Oxford & New York: Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2015) ("In considering soda industry lobbying, I can never get over the extent of the effort these companies are willing to undertake to market a nutritionally empty sugary drink that contributes to poor health. The amounts of money spent on such efforts testify to the enormous profits generated by sales of such products. Although such issues may seem remote from immediate concerns about soda, health advocates could do well to form alliances with groups devoted to overturning Citizens United, requiring lobbying to b more transparent, and funding election campaigns inlays that are less corrupting." Id. at 327.).
Wil Haygood, Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America (New York: Knopf, 2015) (From South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond questioning Thurgood Marshall on the third day of the confirmation hearings: "THURMOND: Do you think that the Supreme Court must adhere to the original understanding of the Constitution as set forth by its framers, or may it ignore the intent of the framers and hold that a provision of the Constitution means whatever the Court chooses to have it mean at the moment? MARSHALL: I don't agree with that statement at all, because I know of no instance where the Supreme Court has done what you said." Id. at 253. "THURMOND: I want to advert to the theory you propounded last week that the Constitution is a living document which does not have to be interpreted historically, but may be construed in accordance with the needs of the hour . . . If your theory is followed, if Congress is not bound by the historical meaning of the clause, may Congress give the President authority to take reprisals on rioters, for example, by shooting them on sight? MARSHALL: Certainly not." Id. at 253-254.).
Valentina Gentile, From Identity-Conflict to Civil Society: Restoring Human Dignity and Pluralism in Deeply Divided Societies, 2d ed., with a foreword by Sebastiano Maffettone, Post-scriptum by Neera Chandhoke (Rome: Luiss U. Press, 2013) ("Toda,y we are facing a revival of the concept of civil society." Id. at 70. "[A]lthough it would be misleading to assume that forms of peaceful coexistence have always existed in all these societies, it is worth noting that ethnicity or religion cannot be considered per se as divisive factors. In general, the thesis of alleged incendiary effect of religion on politics cannot grasp the complexity of the relationship between citizens' comprehensive doctrines and public political culture in contemporary liberal democracies, and it is not sufficiently supported by empirical evidence. In particular . . . , in most divided societies ethnic or religious divisions are the product of years of war and ethnics violence nurtured by the condition of capability-deprivation and lack of recognition within society. [S]everal empirical studies have shown that ethnic and religious heterogeneity does not represent per se an obstacle to peace, democracy and stability. In many divided societies some economic factors, political interests rather than ethnic or religious divisions are at the root of the conflicts. These feature shape the basis of the conflict while identity-based arguments become a strong instrument of consent. In this perspective, the idea of culture of civility becomes necessary to break the vicious circle of ethnic and religious violence and can contribute to put forth the moral basis for the creation of new forms of citizenship by challenging the culture of impunity and reaffirming the human dignity of all individuals." Id. at 122 (citations omitted).).
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities,: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev'd ed. (London & New York: Verso, 1991) ("In an anthropological spirit, then, I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community--and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign." "It is imagined because members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the images of their communion. . . . " "The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them, encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. No nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind. the most messianic nationals do not dream of a day when all members of the human race will join their nation into way that it was possible, in certain epoch, for, say, Christians to dream of a wholly Christian planet. " [Query: Might one argue that some messianic Islamists dream of a wholly Islamic planet?] "It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm Coming to maturity at a stage of human history when even the most devout adherents of any universal religion were inescapably confronted with the living pluralism of such religions, and the allomorphism between each faith's ontological claims and territorial stretch,nations dream of being free, and, if under God, directly so. he gage and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state." "Finally, it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Untimely it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingness to die for such limited imaginings." "These deaths bring us abruptly face to face with the central problem posed by nationalism: what makes the shrunken imaginings of recent history (scarcely more than two centuries) generate such colossal sacrifices? Believe that the beginnings of an answer lie in the cultural roots of nationalism." Id. at 5-7. [Note: Americans don't usually speak in terms of their own nationalism. Rather, they speak of the national interests (e.g., national security) and patriotism. Patriotism and nationalism are, for the most part, interchangeable. One notable exception to Americans not alluding to nationalism is the use of the term "nation" by extremist groups (e.g., Aryan Nation, White Nationalism, Black Nationalism, and such.) Often, but certainly not always, these groups refer to, and think of, themselves) as the only "true ," "real." or "patriotic" Americans.]).
Sarah Vowell, Lafayette in the Somewhat Untied States (New York: Riverhead Books, 2015) ('[T]he quintessential experience of living in the United States: constantly worrying whether or not the country is about to fall apart." Id. at 14. "I don't think that there can ever be enough books about anything; and I say that knowing that some of them are going to be about Pilates. The more knowledge, the better seems like a solid rule of thumb, even though I have watched enough science fiction films to accept that humanity's unchecked pursuit of learning will end with robots taking over the world." Id. at 111-112. "After the war, in 1790, Newport's synagogue would go on to inspire one of Washington's finer moments as a president and person. Responding to a letter form Touro's Moses Seixas, who asked the new president if ratifying the Bill of Rights really was, to paraphrase, good for the Jews, Washington would send a letter addressed to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport. The First Amendment, he explained, exposed tolerance as a sham, because tolerance implies one superior group of people deigning to put up with their inferiors." "'It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights,' Washington wrote. 'For, happily, the Government of the United States . . . gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.'" Id. at 197. "The most meaningful namesake by far is Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House. Also known as Lafayette Park, this is the nation's capital of protest, the place where we the people gather together to yell at our presidents." Id. at 263.).
David Roberts, Once They Moved Like the Wind: Cochise, Geronimo, and The Apache Wars (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993) (From the bookjacket: "Of the many tales of conflict and warfare between the U.S. government and the Indian tribes, perhaps none is more dramatic or revealing than the story of the Apache wars. Those wars were the final episode in the U.S. government's subjugation of the indigenous peoples; the surrender of Geronimo in 1886 effectively ended the Indian wars. . . . Geronimo, upset about the loss of his freedom, accepted the reservation for months at a time, only to break out and resume resistance. In September 1886, recognizing the hopelessness of endless flight, he surrendered for good, having successfully eluded one-fourth of the U.S. Army. . . . David Roberts recognizes that in struggling to save their land, the Apaches were fighting to preserve their way of life. Evenhandedly, he describes the sorry history of the reservations, where the Apaches were deceived and abused by the U.S. government and its agents, while at the same time he acknowledges reliable contemporary sources that reported on the Apaches' cruelty.").
Christopher Hitchens, Why Orwell Matters (New York: Basic Books, 2002) ("Because of its long alliance with France, and because of its ancestry in the English revolution of the 1640s, the American revolution fully deserves its place in the pedigree of radical upheavals. It has had its full share of contradictions and negations--its original proclamation by slave holders who insisted that 'all men are created equal' is one of the first affirmations on record that some are more equal than others. But as the third millennium gets under way, and as the Russian and Chinese and Cuban revolutions drop below the horizon, it is possible to argue that the American revolution, with its promise of cosmopolitan democracy, is the only 'model' revolution that humanity has left to it." Id. at 104.).
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, The Cosmoplites: The Coming of the Global Citizen (New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2015) ("Statelessness in the twenty-first century is confounding for another reason: globalization. In a world governed by free trade, the fate of the stateless is largely dependent on whether the nation in which they were born will accept them. Edward Kleinbard, a tax professor at the University of Southern California, has been studying the topic of stateless income: money generated by multinational companies which, thanks to loopholes and creative accounting, has no discernible country of origin. 'Stateless persons wander a hostile globe, looking for asylum,' Kleinbard noted in a paper. 'By contrast, stateless income takes a bearing for any of a number of zero or low-tax jurisdictions, where it finds a ready welcome.'" "Such are the paradoxical effects of globalization. While corporate entities are able to take full advantage of the opportunities presented to them--cheap foreign labor, lower taxes, bigger markets--the people these companies depend on to buy, sell, and create their products are still forcibly contained and constrained by the territories that claim them, if they're lucky enough to have one at all." Id. at 56.).
T. H. Marshall & Tom Bottomore, Citizens and Social Class, with a foreword by Robert Moore, preface by Tom Bottomore (Pluto Classic) (London: Pluto Press, 1992) (From the "Foreword": "It may seem perverse to include T. H. Marshall's seminal 1950 essay on citizenship in a series of books devoted to a critical analysis of the work of the New Right in the 1970s and 1980s. But if there has been one central target for the New Right it has been the idea of citizenship. None has chosen to confront Marshall's work directly but the increasing extent to which Marshall has been discussed and footnoted in the last two decades is evidence enough of his influence." "For the authoritarian New Right . . . the idea of citizenship is a liberal absurdity that gives people idea above their stations. It leads subjects to cease thinking of themselves as subjects and to believe themselves to be persons endowed with rights, rather than under the obligation to be governed. They regret the American and French revolutions, which celebrated citizenship. They regard liberalism as more dangerous than Marxism because it is less self-evidently absurd (in their view) and contains seductive ideas of individual freedom and civil rights." Id. at vi. From the backcover: "T. H. Marshall's seminal essay in citizenship and social class in postwar Britain has acquired the status of a classic. His lucid analysis of the principal elements of citizenship--namely, the possession of civil, political and social rights--is as relevant today as it was when it first appeared. It is reissued here with a complementary monograph by Tom Bottomore in which the meaning of citizenship is re-examined, in very different historical circumstances. In asking how far the prospects for class equality have been realized, Bottomore continues the discussion in a context that encompasses the restoration of civil and political rights in Eastern Europe, problems of welfare capitalism, citizenship and the nation state and the broader issues of equality and democratic institutions." Both the essay and the monograph are pertinent to the discussion of citizenship, equality, political and civil right in twenty-first-century America: think weakened status of Voting Rights Act, efforts to reduce access to the ballot, efforts to move from one-person-one-vote to one-voter-one-vote, Citizens United, and the widening earnings and wealth gap between the 99 percent and the 1 percent.).
Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, rev'd ed. (New York: George Brazier, 1959) ("The subject of this book is the effects of Darwin's work upon social thinking in America. In some respects the United States during the last three decades of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century was the Darwinian country. England gave Darwin to the world, but the United States gave to Darwinism an unusually quick and sympathetic reception. [] Understandably Darwinism was seized upon as a welcome addition, perhaps the most powerful of all, to the store of ideas to which solid and conservative men appealed when they wished to reconcile their fellows to some of the hardships of life and to prevail upon them not to support hasty and ill-considered reforms. Darwinism was one of the great informing insights of this long phase in the history of the conservative mind in America. It was those who wished to defend the political status quo, above all the laissez-faire conservatives, who were first to pick up the instruments of social argument that were forged out of the Darwinism concepts. Only later, only after a style of social thought that can be called 'social Darwinism' had taken clear and recognizable form, did the dissenters from this point of view move into the arena with formidable arguments. [] And hardly had they begun to succeed in showing that the individualist-competitive uses of Darwinism were open to question when a wholly new problem began to emerge, on which they were themselves unable to agree: a discussion arose over the question whether racist and imperialist invocations of Darwinism had any real justification." Id. at 4-6. "Acceptance of the Spencerian philosophy brought with it a paralysis of the will to reform." Id. at 47. There was dissent to social Darwinism, Lester Ward is a good example: "Just as there are two kinds of dynamic processes, so are there two distinct kinds of economics--the animal economics of life and the human economics of mind. Animal economics, the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence, results from the multiplication of organisms beyond the means of subsistence. Nature produces organisms in superabundance and relies upon the wind, water, birds, and animals to sow her seed. A rational being, on the other hand, prepares the ground, eliminates weeds, drills holes, and plants at proper intervals; this is the way of human economics. While environment transforms the animal, man transform the environment." "Competition actually prevents the most fit from surviving. Rational economics not only saves resources but produces superior organisms. The best evidence for this is that when ever competition is wholly removed, as it is when man artificially cultivates a particular form of life, that form immediately makes greater strides and soon outstrips those dependent upon competition for their progress. Hence the superior quality of fruit trees, cereals, domestic cattle. Even in the most rational form, competition is prodigiously wasteful. Witness the social waste involved in advertising, a good example of 'the modified form of animal cunning' which is the hallmark of business shrewdness. Finally, with the gusto of a debater making his clinching point, Ward argued that laissez faire actually destroys whatever value competition might have in human affairs; for since complete laissez faire allows combinations and finally monopoly, free competition can be secure only through some measure of regulation." Id at 74-75. "In a brilliant essay which he never published . . . [William Graham] Sumner divined the intention of the founding fathers in the making of the American Constitution. They feared democracy, Sumner pointed out, and attempted to set limits upon in the federal structure; but since the whole genius of the country has inevitably been democratic, the history of the United States has been one of continual war between the democratic temper of the people and their constitutional framework." Id. at 60.).
Peter Longerich, Goebbels: A Biography, translated from the German by Alan Bance, Jeremy Noakes, & Lesley Sharpe (New York: Random House, 2015) ("'What drives an ideological movement,' Goebbels asserted in a speech to the national Party rally in August 1927, was in essence 'not a matter of knowledge but of faith.' Besides Jean-Jacques Rousseau's writings and Karl Marx's Kapital, he cited as an example above all the Sermon on the Mount. 'Christ did not offer proofs in his Sermon on the Mount,' wrote Goebbels in an article around this time. 'He simply made assertions. Self-evident truths don't have to be proven.' It could not have been clearer: Goebbels had no intention of conducting party propaganda in terms of argument. The only thing that mattered was a successful impact on the masses: 'Berlin needs sensation like a fish needs water. This city lives off them, and any political propaganda that fails to recognize this is bound miss its target.'" Id. at 79. "As the author and chief propagandist of the Third Reich, Goebbels was concerned above all to hold up a mirror with which to admire a larger-than-life reflection of himself. Gazing into this mirror, he could give full vent to his narcissistic cravings. Lacking both inner balance and external confidence and profoundly mistrusting his effect on other people, he needed constant affirmation that the magnificent image in the mirror really did represent him, Joseph Goebbels. He derive this affirmation from the leader he had chosen, a leader sent from God, as he supposed, to whom he subordinated himself. The more completely he subjugated himself, the more weight he ascribed to the judgment of this idol." Id. at xvi. "But however Goebbels presented himself, the most important driving force in his life was a deeply narcissistic personality, which fed a desire for recognition that was never satisfied." Id. at 689.).
95,000 Words, Many of Them Ominous, From Donald Trump's Tongue
By PATRICK HEALY and MAGGIE HABERMAN
An analysis of 95,000 words Mr. Trump said in public in the past week reveals powerful patterns in his speech which, historians say, echo the appeals of demagogues of the past century.
Amy Gutmann, Democratic Education (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1987) ("We all learn about education from experience, but we do not learn the same things. Nor should we, as long as we value freedom for parents, professionals, public officials, friends, citizens, or children. By securing these freedoms, the ideal of democratic education all but guarantees that people will be variously educated and therefore will continue to disagree over what constitutes an ideal education. But the ideal of democratic education also insists upon instituting a common standard compatible with diversity: children must be taught enough to participate intelligently as adults in the political processes that shape heir society. If my understanding of democratic education is correct, I cannot hope to convince every rational person of this ideal, but I should still aim at rational persuasion. The rest of his book defends the democratic ideal against others and elaborates its implications for educational practices in the United States today." "It would take another book to defend fully the conception of democracy that coincides with the ideal of democratic education. Without writing that book, I want to convey that democracy is not merely a political process--of rule by majorities (or pluralities). Like democratic education, democracy is a political ideal--of society whose adult members are, and continue to be, equipped by their education and authorized by political structures to share in ruling. Democratic societies must therefore prevent majorities (as well ans minorities) from repressing critical inquiry or restricting political access. I derive these constraints on majority rule from the democratic ideal itself, but the constraints are also consistent with a certain (contractarian) conception of liberalism. Liberals need not go any further in constraining majority will than is necessary to support democratic deliberation, although most do go further. Those who do not may want to call my theory 'liberal democratic' education. I would not object. Were we to agree on the principles to guide education and politics, the labels would not matter." Id at xi. Note: One ought to wonder, question really, whether the present state of education system in America--from preschool through professional and graduate school--is educating citizens in democracy. For instance, the decline in the humanities, the rise in practical, job-readiness education, etc., would not appear to bode well for a good, democratic citizenry. Even critical thinking has been debased: today "critical thinking" is limited to reasoning from given assumptions, it does not seem to include questioning one's assumptions. Society seems to want, and seems to be getting--well-trained sheep. So, who wins if citizens in a so-called democracy cannot, or do not, think critically?).
Wolfgang Streeck, Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, translated from the German by Patrick Camiller (London & New York: Verso, 2014) ("Whereas the struggle against 'consumption terror' still had some resonance among students in 1968, the great majority of the generation that had fought the marketization of life under capitalism actively took part in the unprecedented wave of consumerism and commercialism that began shortly afterwards. Markets for goods such as cars, clothing, cosmetics, food and consumer electronics, and for services such as body care, tourism or entertainment, expanded with a dynamism never seen before and became the foremost engines of capitalism growth. Ever faster process and product innovations, made possible by the rapid spread of microelectronics, shortened the life-cycle of more and more consumer goods and allowed them to be geared to ever more narrowly defined groups of customers. At the same time, the money economy tirelessly conquered new spheres of social existence that had previously been reserves of unpaid activity, opening them up for the production and absorption of surplus-value. One example among many was sport, which in the 1980s became a global industry worth billions of dollars." Id. at 16-17. From the backcover: "The financial and economic crisis that began in 2008 still has the world on tenterhooks. The gravity of the situation is matched by a general paucity of understanding about what is happening and how it started." "In this book . . . Wolfgang Streeck places the crisis in the context of the long neoliberal transformation of postwar capitalism that began in the 1970s. He analyses the subsequent tensions and conflicts involving states, governments, voters and capitalist interests, as expressed in inflation, public debt, and rising private indebtedness. Streeck traces the transformation of the tax state into a debt state, and from there into the consolidation state of today. At the centre of the analysis is the changing relationship between capitalism and democracy, in Europe and elsewhere, and the advancing immunization of the former against the later.").
Mehrsa Baradaran, How the Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Threat to Democracy (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2015) ("[T]he banks and the people were one--if the banks fell, so too, would we. We must lend to banks so that they can lend to us. The codependency of the government-banking system is not always clear, but the justifications given for the bailouts brought this crucial relationship into sharp focus: we need them and they need us. Many describe modern banks as private enterprises, but this is illusory--half-revealing and half-concealing their true nature. To be sure, individual banks are private companies, but each of these private banks sits atop a foundation of state support . . ." Id at 4. "Yet this depiction of unity between the banks and the people could not be further from the truth. If 'we're all in this together,' why must such a large segment of the public be left to modern-day loan sharks? The Wall Street Crisis cannot be 'an American crisis' if its remedy means that unprecedented federal support goes to a banking system that has effectively shut out much of the population. We do not 'rise and fall as one people' if two banking systems exist in America: government-supported banks that serve the well off, and a Wild West of fringe lenders and check-cashing joints that answer the needs of everyone else--at a hefty price." Id. at 5. "Reasonable credit not only serves as a bridge over financial trouble, but for millions of Americans, credit provides the only means to build assets, start a business, or get an education. Most Americans' lives are enhanced by loans, usually enabled by the federal government (virtually all mortgage and student loans are made possible by federal government-created, supported, and bailed-out credit markets). Without this access to credit, most of us cannot take advantage of the American dream made possible by our robust market-based economy. So although inexpensive credit allows half the American public to improve their economic prospects, very costly credit is crushing the other half. A hard look into the history of banking and the role of banks in our society can help us find solutions to reach this other half." Id. at 10.).
Claire A. Hill & Richard W. Painter, Better Bankers, Better Banks: Promoting Good Business Through Contractual Commitment ( Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2015) ("Every month--if not week--brings new reports of allegations, settlements, and, in some cases, admissions involving the banking industry. [T]he amounts of fines, penalties, and judgments at issue, and associated legal fees, exceed a hundred billion dollars. Other matters include manipulation of currency exchange rates and electricity and commodities markets, and the use of financial engineering techniques to help their clients or themselves conceal excessive borrowing or other problematic aspects of their financial condition. Cases concerning illegal practices in the sale of mortgage-backed securities continue to be brought, proceed, and be settled. Large settlements have been reached in cases involving allegations of abuses in mortgage servicing and foreclosures. This list of alleged (and in some cases admitted or proven) wrongdoing goes on and on." "These events suggest the severity of the problem. They suggest, too, that not enough has changed in the banking industry since the financial crisis of 2008. There are new laws and regulations. Some banks have deemphasized or exited certain businesses, or reemphasized other businesses. . . . Some banks have publicly announced commitments to cultural change. But much remains the same." "Why isn't there more change? One major reason is that while banks have paid extremely large fines, these fines are effectively paid by the bank' shareholders. Individual bankers rarely have to pay anything themselves and are almost never put in jail. Law has not sufficiently constrained bank behavior. It did not do so before Dodd-Fank, and does not so so now." Id. at 2. "[W]e have argued that the most highly compensated bankers--those that, had banks been organized as general partnerships, would probably have been general partners--should bear more personal liability for what happens at their banks. They should bear significant liability if their banks fail, and they should have to pay a portion of fines, civil judgments involving fraud, and settlements in lieu of such fines or judgments." Id. at 190. "The solution we propose . . . , covenant banking, is in a sense about money, insofar as exposure to liability would change bankers' monetary incentives. But money is not nearly as important a part of the story as is has been thought to be. Behavior is far more complicated--in ways that matter to an understanding of the problem and to a formulation of effective solutions. Bankers, banks, and the broader society have gotten caught up in a race for more--more money, but also more symbols of accomplishment or 'points.' In the banking industry, points are awarded for some things that hurt society and run counter to what 'professionals' should be doing. Ability to maneuver around rules, contractual agreements, and bonus formulas is rewarded, as in ;salesmanship' that may sometimes consist in convincing buyers that low-quality investments are actually of high quality. The problem is thus about more than just money. It is also about values of the industry and some of the people who work in it." Id. at 191. And some of those people are banking and corporate lawyers!).
John Kay, Other People's Money: The Real Business of Finance (New York: PublicAffairs, 2015) ("A country can be prosperous only if it has a well-functioning financial system, but that does not imply that the larger the financial system a country has, the more prosperous it is likely to be. It is possible to have too much of a good thing. Financial innovation was critical to the creation of an industrial society; it does not follow that every modern financial innovation contributes to economic growth. Many good ideas become bad ideas when pursued to excess." "And so it is with fine. The finance sector today plays a major role in politics: it is the most powerful industrial lobby and a major provider of campaign finance. News bulletins report daily on what is happening in 'the markets'--by which they mean securities markets. Business policy is dominated by finance: the promotion of 'shareholder value' has been a mantra for two decades. Economic policy is conducted with a view to what 'the market' thinks, and household are increasingly forced to rely on 'the markets' for their retirement security. Finance is the career of choice for a high proportion to top graduates of the top schools and universities." "I will describe the process by which the finance sector as gained such a dominant economic role over the last thirty to forty years as 'financialisation'. This ugly word provides a useful shorthand description for a historical process that hashed profound implications for our politics, our economy and out society." Id. at 3-4. "But finance is not special, and our willingness to accept uncritically the proposition that finance has a unique status has done much damage. . . . The industry mostly trades with itself, talks to itself and judges itself by reference to performance criteria that it has itself generated. Two branches of economics--finance theory and monetary economics--are devoted to it, a phenomenon that Larry Summers mocked as 'ketchup economics'--the exercise of comparing the price of quart and pint bottles of ketchup without regard to the underlying value of the ketchup." Id. at 5. "The proposals here are intended to represent a guide for the democratic politicians who will be confronted with the next financial crisis. And there will be another major financial crisis: the underlying determinants of the recurrent crises of financialisation are unchanged, and this book has tried to explain how and why fragility has continued to increase. The current policy trajectory is one characterised by financial crises of increasing seriousness. That does not necessary imply that every crisis will be more serious than it predecessor: only that the trend is upward. Regulatory measures have been addressed, not every effectively, to the last crisis rather than the next." Id. at 291. Note: There is a real sense in which regulators (many of whom are lawyers), like soldiers, always seem to be fighting the last war. They implement regulations (or deregulation) that, had such regulations been in place, would have prevented the last crisis. Or, so they think. What the regulators (again, many of them lawyers) are not good at is anticipating the next crisis. For the most part, regulators (and lawyers) are not forward thinkers. Yes, they see what is a few feet down the road; but they do not anticipate what is around the bend in the road.).
Gabriel Zucman, The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens, translated from the French by Teresa Lavender Fagan, with a foreword by Thomas Piketty (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2015) ("The main conclusion of my investigation is that, despite some progress in curtailing it in recent years, tax evasion is doing just fine. There has, in fact, never been as much wealth in tax havens as today. On a global scale, 8% of the financial wealth of households is held in tax havens. According to the latest available information, in the spring of 2015 foreign wealth held in Switzerland reached $2.3 trillion. Since April 2009, when countries of the G20 held a summit in London and decreed the 'end of banking secrecy,' the amount of money in Switzerland has increased by 18%. For all the world's tax havens combined, the increase is even higher, closer to 25%. And we are only talking about individuals here." "Corporations also use tax havens. Corporate filings show that US companies are shifting profits to Bermuda, Luxembourg, and smaller countries on a massive and growing scale. Fifty-five percent of all the foreign profits of US firms are now kept in such havens. Since multinationals usually try to operate within the letter--if not the spirit--of the law, this profit shifting is better described as 'tax avoidance' rather than outright fraud. But its costs is enormous---$130 billion a year for US firms and--and since equity ownership is very concentrated, it essentially benefits only the wealthiest among us." Id. at 3-4.).
Alistair Horne, Hubris: The Tragedy of War in the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper, 2015) ("The ancient Greeks defined hubris as the worst sin a leader, or a nation, could commit. It was the attitude of supreme arrogance, in which mortals in their folly would set themselves up against the gods. Its consequences were invariably severe. The Greeks also had a word for what usually followed hubris. That was call peripeteia, meaning a dramatic reversal of fortune. In practice, it signified a falling from the grace of a great height to unimaginable depths. Disaster would often embrace not only the offender, but also his nearest and dearest, and all those responsible to him." Id. at 1. "A thread running all the way through my selection is a kind of racist distortion whereby one power persists in writing off its foes because of the color of their skin or the slant of their eyes, or the supposed backwardness of their culture." Id. at 5. "One of the incidental questions prompted by this study is: Why don't successful generals know when to stop? [] The answer of course is that it is hubris itself that blinds generals. But we students of history should not succumb to our own arrogance in supposing that hubris is easy to avoid. It arises out of success. In the aftermath of triumph, anything seems possible. And that, as this book tries to show, is when so many calamitous decisions are made. If a leaser is successful, why hold him back? This book tries to prove an answer." Id. at 6.).
Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS (New York: Doubleday, 2015) ("Had it not been for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Islamic State's greatest butcher would likely have lived out his years as a college professor. Until 2003, life was steering him toward a quiet career of teaching Islamic jurisprudence to twenty-year-olds, rather than strapping bombs to their chests." "Islamist biographers later ascribed to Baghdadi great intellectual gifts and a natural bent toward jihad, though none of this is bourne out in the extensive profiles pieced together by Western intelligence agencies. Nothing in his formative years suggested that the man born as Ibrahim Awad al-Badri possessed unusual talents or proclivities, except for a fascination with fiqh, or the legal interpretation of the thousand saying and edicts contained in Islam's holy texts. He was not a violent troublemaker like Zarqawi, or an adventurer like Osama bin Laden, who moved to Pakistan after college to join the cause of Afghanistan's mujahideen. There was no early flashes of charisma or cruelty. Instead, acquaintances remember a shy, nearsighted youth who like soccer and kept mostly to himself. Indeed, in his first thirty-to years, Baghdadi seems to have drawn little notice even in his own neighborhood. One family friend recalled a young man 'so quiet you could barely hear his voice.'" Id. at 253. "The prison where Baghdadi landed was a two-square-mile city of barbed wire and tents, erected on a sun-scorched plain a few miles form Iraqi's border with Kuwait. To those helicoptering in at night, as the U.S. sailors who guarded the prison often did, Camp Bucca looked at bit like Law Vegas: an immense city of lights in the middle of empty desert. But inside the wire, it was more like the Wild West." Id. at 255. "One of the camp's señor managers acknowledged that the Camp Bucca of Baghdadi's time was both dysfunctional and, from the perspective of commanders looking to quell the Sunni insurgency, counterproductive. By corralling Islamist radicals and ordinary Iraqis in a lawless desert pen, U.S. officials inadvertently created a 'jihadi university' that helped inculcate Islamist ideas into a new generation of fighter, the officer said." Id. at 256. "Baghdadi emerged from his ten-month exposure to U.S. forces with an even greater determination to fight them. Years later, his quest to defeat America became a prayerful refrain. 'Deal with America and its allies, O Allah,' he would say in one of his public prayers. 'Harshen your grip on them. . . . Defeat them with the worst of defeats they will ever suffer. Divide their gatherings, split their body, dismember them completely, and make us raid them, and not them raid us.'" Id.. at 257.).
David S. Cohen & Krysten Connon, Living in the Crosshairs: The Untold Stories of Anti-Abortion Terrorism (New York & Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2105) ("This book is about . . . what we call targeted harassment of abortion providers. This term refers to acts of anti-abortion protest that are or are perceived to be specifically focused on individual abortion providers. Two parts of this definition require explanation." "First, since targeted harassment of abortion providers is or is perceived to be directed toward individuals, this type of protest differs from general clinic protest, which is is focused on the clinic, the clinic's patients, or the larger issue of abortion, not the specific individuals who work inside the clinic. Targeted harassment of abortion providers also differs from anti-abortion rallies or political events that are focused on the general issue of abortion. These categories are not hermetically sealed as general clinic protest and political rallies can also target individuals, but the distinction is important. . . ." "Second, the targeted harassment that is the focus of this book includes harassment against anyone who works in providing abortion care. Some people within the world of abortion use the term 'abortion provider' to mean only doctors who perform the procedure. However, we use the term more broadly to encompass the many people who work to provide women a safe, caring, and medically-skilled environment in which to have an abortion. This includes not only the doctors who perform abortions but also referring physicians, nurses, physician assistants, administrative staff, counselors, clinic owners, security guards, and volunteer escorts and supporters. All of these people have been the subject of individualized targeted harassment by anti-abortion protesters. . . ." Id at 6-7.).
David Livingstone Smith, The Most Dangerous Animal:Human Nature and the Origins of War (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2007) ("This is not an antiwar book, in any obvious sense of the word. I believe that war is a tragic fact of life, and that it is sometimes inevitable. But I also believe that it is vitally important to understand just what we are getting into when we decide to go to war. More specifically, we need to understand the irrational allure of mass violence, the forms of self-deception that are its handmaidens, and the true human costs concealed behind fantasies of valor and righteousness. It is only by taking these factors into account that we can decide where we stand--as individuals and as nations--with respect to the momentous and potentially catastrophic decisions that confront us when we consider going to war." Id. at xvi. [Note: Has not much of the post-9/11 American wars been reactionary. not well-thought out, discussed and debated beforehand? (And just a jingo-driven as 'Remember the Maine.') If we had thought it out perhaps we probably would still have invaded Afghanistan, less so Iraq. However, in either case there was not much reasoned debate before the invasion.] "'Terrorism,' 'atrocity,' and 'genocide' are words for the dirty side of war. Unfortunately, they are at best vague, and a worst meaningless. They are obstacles to getting a clear perspective on war. . . . " "Ever since 9/11, it has become customary to sharply distinguish war from terrorism. According to one definition accepted by the United States government, war is military action by a nation-state, whereas terrorism is 'premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.' The definition not only presupposes a restrictive definition of war as an activity of nation-states, it also implies that the very same act of aggression that counts as 'war' when overtly implemented by a national government is 'terrorism' if carried out covertly or by a subnational group. This is unblushingly arbitrary: a distinction of convenience, rather than of substance." "What about noncombatant targets? It certainly sounds nice to speak about civil deaths as merely occasional by-products of soldierly shoot-outs, but this idea is far removed from the truth. Wars kill more civilians than they do combatants. Of the 87,500,000 or so deaths in twentieth-century wars, around 54,000,000, or just over 60 percent, were civilians. This percentage is an average; some wars kill less, but others kill far more (during the 1990s, 75 to 90 percent of the world's war fatalities were civilians). Under international law, civilian deaths are permissible if they are 'proportional'o the anticipated military advantage (however, what counts as an acceptable proportion of civil deaths is left unspecified). Former war correspondent Chris Hedges points out that noncombatants are routinely 'shot, bombed, raped, starved and driven from their homes.' Displaced people typically suffer from hunger, disease, and hideously elevated morality rates." Id at 17-18 (citations omitted). "There are various forms and degrees of dehumanization. United States soldiers in Iraq sometimes call Iraqis 'hadjis,' 'ragheads,' or 'camel jockeys.' These are derogatory terms that create psychological distance. Clearly, it is easier to do violence to a raghead than it is to harm a full-fledged human being. But these are not especially nasty epithets. They may contribute to an attitude of callousness, but they do not inspire hate, fear, or repugnance. Not all instances of dehumanization are s moderate. Soldiers sometimes imagine their enemies as dangerous, subhuman beasts. As Vietnam War veteran Bob McGowan explained to CNN, 'They're subhuman. They're animals. They're going to rape our women and kill our children.. . . Kill them.' This is a step beyond dehumanizing the enemy: it is demonizing them." "When we demonize others, we perceive them as having a dangerous nonhuman essence." Id. at 185. "The evolutionary psychology of dehumanization is intuitively grasped by propagandists, who use it to inspire young men to do their bidding, and it also arises spontaneously in situations of mortal conflicts. The scope of these illusions about 'the Other' extends far beyond the battlefield. They may even be more prevalent behind the lines, where slogan-spouting politicians and flag-waving crowds get their pleasure on the cheap. They can bay for the enemy's blood without ever putting their lives on the line or paying the terrible spiritual price of killing." Id. at 211.).
Dan Ephorn, Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel (New York: Norton, 2015) ("Killing a King is a detailed account of the murder and the two years leading up to it--a narrative about a twentysomething law student, smart and exceedingly radical, who set out to alter the slope of history and succeeded. In a broader sense it is about Israel at a unique point in its existence, a moment when the isolation and hostility that had defined its position in the region for decades seems to finally lift--but only temporarily. Through the lens of the murder, much can be gleaned about Israel today." Id. at xii.).
Alexander Stille, Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic (New York: Pantheon Books, 1995) (Excellent Cadavers is the story of the extraordinary efforts of two Sicilian magistrates, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who took the war against the mafia further than anyone had dared before. That war would ultimately claim their lives as well as help topple the ruling coalition that had governed Italy since World War II. The engineers of the renowned 'maxi-trials,' Falcone and Borsellino succeeded in penetrating the mafia's code of saline and revealing, for the first time, the inner structure of Sicily's Cosa Nostra." Read this a a morality tale about how corruption (not just the crime, but the money) threatens democracy.).
Manfred Stanley, The Technological Conscience: Survival and Dignity in an Age of Expertise (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 1978) ("This book is about culture, not the social organization, of mechanism; it focuses on intangible features of technicism; and it addressed itself to personal fate, personal destiny, in a technicist environment. More specifically, it is about linguistic technicism--the misuse of scientific and technological vocabularies with regard to human activities better described in other ways. This focus reflects my view that the essence of technicism is not some fateful technological determinism but rather a mistaken understanding of the uses of language, arising not out of willful deception or ignorance but as a result of the slower evolution of the human understanding of language as compared with other kins of evolution (e.g, technological, scientific, and social). It is a peculiarity of this century's intellectual history that we have become more sensitive than at perhaps any other period to language itself as a form of community, as a form of consciousness (and false consciousness), and as an instrument of world creation, destruction, corruption, and control. I say this in full awareness that in one sense we have returned to a primordial insight: primitive tribe and ancient civilization alike were characterized by respect for the magical powers of the Word. But faith in magic is not the same thing as secular respect based on theoretical understanding. I believe that the evolution of creative and responsible power over language among democratic polities is the next great challenge of moral progress. If his challenge is not met, democracy itself will succumb to subversion through linguistic self-mystification." "This book, then, is based on the assumption that technicism consists in metaphorical misapplications of some of the assumptions, imagery and linguistic habits of science and technology to areas of discourse in which such mistakes obscure the free and responsible nature of human action. As such, technicism is a break in the evolution of linguistic understanding and self-control, a cul-de-sac of mystification. With this book, I hope to make a small contribution to the rational evolution of human self-direction." Id. at xii-xiii. "The concept of technicism, as it is used in this book, thus encompasses two acts and their consequences. The first act is ignoring, within science, the need to pay attention to the discontinuities between the human world and other worlds that are also the object of scientific attention. The second act is ignoring the epistemological limits of science relative to other modes of reflection and action. Like any other systematic activity, the scientific mode of inquiry is defined and regulated by assumptions that constitute that particular activity. To accept these constitutive assumptions as ultimate truths is an act of almost religious commitment. Such a commitment to constitutive assumptions is not required as a condition for profitably engaging in an activity. One may engage in an activity for moral, aesthetic, prudential or technological reasons; all these are worthy motives short of total ultimate-truth seeking. Indeed, such redemptive benefits of an activity could well be canceled by idolatrous fixation on the constitutive assumptions of that activity as ultimate forms of truth." "Technicism, then, is basically a species of cognitive conquest. . . ." Id. at 13-14. "One of the more lasting cliches of American culture is that of the redemptive benefits of education. At present . . . this faith in education has fallen upon cynical times." Id. at 188. "In an environment of social specialization [Note: Now, in the early twenty-first century, we, including so-called educators and their student-products, speak less of "specialization" and more of "branding," that is, packaging and marketing of the student-products.], people feel free to restrict their attention to the outcomes of institutional activities rather than worry about processes. Processes are regarded as safely delegated to specialists. We must not assume, however, that this concern with outcomes necessary occurs on a high level of sophistication. It is more accurate to say that people are not normally very clear about just what it is they expect from any institution. In the case of schools it appears that outcomes have been assessed largely in utilitarian terms. These include the production of literary skills, habits appropriate to business oriented social intercourse, plus motives and information useful for occupational advancement. Other aspects of the moral content of education simply received less attention. Such selective assessment helped to keep in the wings issues that could, in principle, be very controversial if placed directly under the spotlight." Id. at 192-193.)
William T. Vollmann, The Afghanistan Picture Show; or, How I Saved the World (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1992) ("As long as they grow in the wild, principles of life and meaningful action do quite well, but when they are plucked and brought into our dreary world of imperfect results, they begin to wilt. Happily, our noses are so accustomed to the stink of our enemies' putrefying ideas that when our own give over wilting and commence to decay we can use them nonetheless." Id. at 174.).
DO NOT HARNESS YOURSELF TO THE NARROW WAYS OF THINKING EMBODIED IN MERELY 'THINKING-LIKE-A-LAWYER'! THE WORLD IS FAR BIGGER, FAR MORE COMPLEX . . . AND FAR MORE INTERESTING! SEEK OUT THE LARGER PERSPECTIVES!
