European Federalism: Beyond “Sticks and Stones”

Domestic governance is perhaps more difficult than international relations in that real enforcement mechanisms are in force only in the former. Flaunt a UN resolution and that feckless organization is unchanged; if a state official flaunts a federal law, on the other hand, the viability of the federal system can collapse as governors and legislators in other states get the same idea. Before long, the states are once again sovereign. Unfortunately, it is easy to get distracted by political theater and miss such existential threats from the point of view of the viability of a system of public-sector governance. Yet we depend so much on governments, so to tamper with necessary beams (or cards, as in a house of cards) is quite dangerous. Along with the governors of Hungary and Slovakia, Poland’s top official knowingly compromised the viability of the European Union (E.U.) in 2023, but unfortunately I don’t think many people stood up and paid attention to the danger. Political theater staged for election purposes is more tantalizing, which raises the question: who in the E.U. was watching the proverbial store?

The full essay is at "European Federalism."

Yale's Original Sin

I take it as a matter of divine justice that redemption can elude a convenient, belated atonement, especially if the atoning individual or institution does not really grasp the root of the original sin and thus the sin continues under other manifestations even though admittedly they may be less severe. I contend that when Peter Salovey, Yale University’s president, apologized on behalf of the Yale Corporation for having oppressed two Black men nearly two centuries earlier, he was not aware of the university’s underlying exaggerated fixation on the insider/outsider dichotomy that was still salient in 2023. To be sure, Nietzsche wrote that the strong should maintain a pathos of distance from the weak, lest the latter beguile the former into voluntarily renouncing their innate strength. Kant distinguished intimacy from difference as together making up the dialectic of attraction and distance. When a customer with the strength of having money naturally distances oneself from a rude employee of a retail company who is resentful, such distance is hardly artificial. Yet when a university whose administrators and faculty feel the emotional need to distance themselves qua insiders from outsiders to such an extent that even alumni who return to campus to work on academic projects, such as writing a book, are relegated as outsiders—hence not “members of the community”—then the distancing stems from a rather unnatural pathology. I contend that such a pathology still plagued Yale like an invisible blanket in 2023, almost two-hundred years after that university had refused to allow two black auditors to speak in courses at Yale’s theological seminary (divinity school). That original sin, although atoned for, still ran through Yale’s puffed-up veins in 2023, hence intimacy and strength continued quite naturally to elude that university—the redemption of which would require more of a mirror than an apology to two dead Black auditors could provide. Although Yale appeared in 2023 to be self-confident to external stakeholders and the general public, Nietzsche’s advice applied to people considering coming or giving to Yale nonetheless: The strong should not get too close to weak, resentful birds of prey just as a healthy person should not go to a hospital lest  even such a person becomes sick too.

The full essay is at "Yale's Original Sin."

Yale : A Private Police-State on Steroids

Academia is its own sort of community, with its own distinctive culture. A university campus is not akin to a small town. To treat a campus as such, and thus to allow universities to have their own police departments rather than security guards, evinces a category mistake and presents issues of political legitimacy. The U.S. Constitution gives police power to the state governments, rather than to private companies and non-profit private organizations. Secuity guards, not police employees, belong to the categories of companies and non-profit organizations, both of which being qualitatively different than governments or states. Hence the matter of legitimacy should be raised when one organization, such as Yale, presumes not only to have its own private police force, but also to use it (and its security guards) to enforce local laws and university regulations off campus. When a university, again referring here to Yale, saturates its campus with police cars with emergency-alert blue-and-red lights blazing on top and headlights constantly and pensively on, and adds security guards on virtually every corner as if according to a military-style command coverage of the entire campus and beyond, the passive aggression and tacit message of deep distrust subtly undercut academic pursuits and the related psychological stamina of students, faculty, and even alumni who are auditing courses or conducting research as scholars "in residence." The saturated presence of pensive guns and distrustful staring eviscerates an anademic atmosphere of peace and tranquilly, and thus subtly eclipses academic learning and teaching. An academic atmosphere is vital to a college and even a large university so students and faculty can feel free to take ideas to their limits without fear of intimidation and being distrusted so. A pathological weaponizing of distrust is harmful even though the victims don't realize that they are being victimized. I contend that the unbiquitous, constant surveillance is unethical, and furthermore that university administrations that unfairly inflict such an aggressive culture of distrust should be held accountable externally by governments and internally through boards of directors and pressure from alumni.  Paranoia is at the root of this type of dysfunctional organizational culture, such as existed at Yale as of 2023. The extreme distrust backed up by hostile staring, flashing lights, and even guns ought to be flagged as toxic and unethical. 

The full essay is at "Yale: A Private Police State on Steroids."

On Trump’s Eligibility to Run for President: Who Decides?

The 14^th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution “bans anyone who took an oath to uphold the Constitution but who subsequently ‘engaged in insurrection or rebellion against,’ or gave ‘aid or comfort of the enemies’ of the Constitution from seeking any federal or state office.”[1] Did Donald Trump, when he was President of the United States, engage in insurrection? Furthermore, who decides this and bars him from office?

The full essay is at "Deciding Trump's Eligibility." 

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[1] S.V. Date, “Trump May Need Supreme Court To Say His Coup Attempt Does Not Violate Constitution,” The Huffington Post, September 2, 2023.

Oppenheimer

An artificial sun rose on an otherwise dark night when the nuclear-bomb test named Trinity ushered in the era wherein our species’ aggressive instinct could render homo sapiens extinct. Given the salience of that instinctual urge—for we are related to the chimpanzee species—the wise (i.e., sapiens) species can be its own undoing. For it took a lot of intelligence in sub-atomic physics to invent the nuclear bomb, yet very little smarts went into deciding to use it against Japan, an enemy that would have lost anyway, in order to save American lives from having to invade the mainland (as if conventional bombs could not have reduced the casualties). Even less thought was put into the need to contain the proliferation of nuclear bombs. Expediency without heeding long-term risk is not a virtue. Kant wrote that even if our species were to institute a world federation, presumably having nation-states that would be semi-sovereign as a check against global totalitarianism, peace would merely be possible, rather than probable. This does not speak well of human nature, and this in turn renders the Trinity test something less than redeeming. “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” In the film, Oppenheimer (2023), Robert Oppenheimer reads from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, as a woman is on top of him in sexual intercourse. The irony of him being an instrument of mass destruction as director of the Manhattan Project and yet being engaged in potentially reproducing life with a woman is doubtlessly the point of that scene. Hindus who leap to the conclusion that Nolan is insulting their religion miss this point. Had the director included a scene in which Oppenheimer is praying, for example for the Jews in Nazi Germany at the time, a quote from the film, Gettysburg (1993) would have been similarly fitting. In that film, Col. Chamberlain of the Union army remarks, “What a piece of work is man . . . in action how like an angel!” Sgt. Kilrain replies, “Well, if he’s an angel, all right then . . . But he damn well must be a killer angel.” In the nuclear age, killer angel takes on added significance. The question is perhaps whether we have left angel behind as our species’ intelligence has outdone itself, whether in terms of nuclear war or rendering a climate unsuitable for us.

The full essay is at "Oppenheimer."

Contending Christianities

The films Agora (2009) and Fatima (2020) contain very different depictions of Christianity. By depictions, I mean ways in which Christianity can be interpreted and lived. This is not to say that all of the interpretations are equally valid, for only those that contain internal contradictions evince hypocrisy. The sheer extent of the distance between the depictions shown in the two films demonstrates not only the huge extent of latitude that religious interpretation can have, but also just how easy it is even for self-identifying Christians, whether of the clergy or the laity, not only to fail to grasp Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels, but also to violate the two commandments even while believing that Jesus Christ is divine (i.e., the Son of God). The human mind, or brain, can have such stunning blind spots (or cognitive dissidence) when it comes to religion that even awareness of this systemic vulnerability and efforts to counter it are typically conveniently ignored or dismissed outright. This is nearly universal, in spite of claims of humility and fallibility more generally, so I contend that the human mind is blind to its own weakness or vulnerability in the religious sphere of thought, sentiment, and action. Augustine’s contention that revelation must pass through a smoky stained window before reaching us is lost on the religious among us who insist that their religious beliefs constitute knowledge. I contend that this fallacy as well as the larger vulnerability to hypocrisy should be a salient part both of Sunday School and adult religious education. For the vulnerability is correctable, but this probably requires ongoing vigilance. That is, the problem is not that the divine goes beyond the limits of human cognition (as well as perception and emotion) as Pseudodionysus pointed out to deaf ears in the 6^th century; the human brain is fully capable of spotting and countering its own lapses in the religious domain. In other words, the problem here is not that of the human mind being able to understand the contents of revelation because must travel through a darkened window before reaching us; rather, the problem lies in grasping what Jesus preaches in the Gospels and putting the spiritual principles into practice, rather than doing the opposite and being completely oblivious to the contradiction, which is otherwise known as cognitive dissidence. The two films provide us with the means both to grasp this problem and realize how much it differs from a healthy faith that has the innocence of a child’s wonder.

The full essay is at "Agora vs. Fatima." 

Fatima: The Miracle of the Sun

The film, Fatima (2020), tells the story of the three Roman Catholic children in Fatima, Portugal, who in 2017 claimed to see and hear the Virgin Mary periodically over a period of 6 months. The film centers around Lucia, the oldest of the three children, and, moreover, the question of whether the children really encounter the Virgin, or are lying, hypnotic, or even psychotic. In the film, as well as in “real life,” a miracle is associated with the last visitation. In the story world of the film, the visitation really happens, and the multitudes watching the children come to believe this when the Virgin delivers on a miracle as promised. Historically, believers as well as nonbelievers who were present at the event have testified that the Sun moved around in the sky and even came closer. If this really happened as witnesses have described, then the empirical “proof” in the story world of the film is not the whole story, and the religious truth therein is not limited to the faith narrative, but holds in an empirical, supernatural sense. An implication is that Jesus not only resurrects in the Gospel stories, but also as an empirical event in history. But, then, why have such supernatural events been so rare since the “time” of Jesus?  And, yet, witnesses as far as 40 km away from the visitation of the Virgin reported seeing the miracle of the Sun.

The full essay is at: "Fatima"

Leadership “Coaches” Using Social Media: Utopian Ideologues

Leadership as a topic in business became popular in the 1980s. It was not enough, however. James Burns distinguishes transformational leadership from the mere transactional leadership in his book, Leadership. Servant leadership raised the ethical bar by applying the ethical model of Jesus in the Gospels to leadership in business. Leadership vision quickly became a buzz word, as was charismatic leadership. All of these renderings can be interpreted as business trying to escape its mundane terms for a loftier enterprise in which ideals are more salient or applicable. As valuable as efficiency is, it is difficult to get excited about it. The problem is that many (or some) leadership consultants on social media have gotten too caught up on their utopian platitudes that leadership becomes a mere subterfuge. Certainly the utopian ideologies do not define leadership or are attributes of it, and yet the "coaches" claim that platitudes are necessary to leadership. In other words, I contend that leadership gurus, or "coaches" (a mis-applied analogy that wrongly dismisses the word "consultant" as too boring), had by 2023 taken to social media to project whatever utopian ideology they value onto leadership. The term has become too vague as a consequence. In fact, the concept of leadership became a near synonym for goodness in human relations and excellence in terms of virtue ethics. As a result, the concept approaches being a tautology whose actual meaning has been rendered vacuous from the a projection of so many subjective, utopian ideologies. Relative to such lofty remakes of leadership, management has become almost a dirty word—certainly not as flashy as visionary leadership. In actuality, the "coaches" are evangelical ideologues.

The full essay is at "Utopian Ideologues in Leadership Consulting."

See also: The Essence of Leadership

Walmart: Encroaching on Employees' Private Lives

In 2023, Walmart relaxed its policy requiring anyone applying for a job at the company to get a drug test, including for marijuana, which at the time was legal in several U.S. member states. Once hired, however, employees were still subject to random testing. An employee in a member state in which the drug is legal could be fired even if the person is never affected by the drug while working. I contend that the practice is unfair, unethical, and an over-reach in terms of the nature of a labor contract. 

The full essay is at "Walmart: Encroaching on Employees' Private Lives."

See Related: Walmart: Bad Management as Unethical

Getting the Seasons Wrong: Purblind Meteorologists

You may think you know the answer to the question, “When is the autumn season?” But do you? Watching the weather section of local news on television or the internet, you could be excused for getting the beginning date wrong because it is the meteorologist who has misled you. In itself, getting the exact day right is not a big deal; it is not as if the temperature can be expected to take a nose-dive on the first day of fall. The astonishing thing is that so many meteorologists either knowingly or out of ignorance present the astronomical beginning of the “autumn” quarter of the Earth’s orbit as the meteorological start of fall, for the two are different yet admittedly related.

The full essay is at "Getting the Seasons Wrong."

On the Infallibility of the Pope: The Assumption of Mary

What does it mean for a human being to be vested with infallibility in a religious organization even though like all humans, that one is a finite being? Ironically, it is often the ignorant who presume that they cannot be wrong (i.e., that they are infallible). That is something else entirely. The sort of infallibility granted by the Roman Catholic Church on its pope does not mean that he knows everything or can’t be wrong about anything. The infallibility is circumscribed to cover only religious doctrine. In short, Roman Catholicism gives the Pope the authority to promulgate theological truths that go beyond, yet are consistent with, the Bible. A pope cannot say that Jesus is no longer to be regarded as the Son of God, for such a claim obviously contradicts the canonical gospels. Yet more could be said that is consistent with Jesus’ divinity, and even about Mary, whose womb is regarded as blessed. The “Mother of God” is itself a title that practically invites further theological elaboration beyond the material on her that is in the Gospels. I have in mind here the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, which is celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church on August 15 annually. The feast-day is not a minor holy day for Catholics, for they are obligated to attend Mass. Indeed, a human body being admitted into a spiritual state is no small matter theologically. 

The full essay is at "The Assumption of Mary."

Judgment at Nuremberg

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) is a serious film that enables the viewers to wrestle with the demands of justice for atrocities enabled by German jurists in NAZI Germany and the post-war emerging Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., for which the American military needed the support of the German people against the Soviet Union. The film accepts the need of such support as being vital in 1947, when the actual trial took place (the film has it as 1948). To the extent that acceptance of this assumption is deemed spurious, the viewers would likely view the tension as being between the need for justice, a virtue, and expediency, a vice. Accordingly, the pressure from an American general on the prosecutor to recommend light sentences so not to turn the German people against the Americans and thus from helping them in the Cold War can be viewed as being astute political calculation in the political realist sense of international relations, or else undue influence or even corruption of a judicial proceeding. 

The full essay is at "Judgment at Nuremberg."

The Screen Actors Guild Strike: American Capitalism Is Inherently Unbalanced

On July 14, 2023, Hollywood actors joined the writers in going on strike against the studios, which had changed the business model in ways, according to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), that were leaving the vast majority of actors out financially. At the time, AI (artificial intelligence) was the red-hot buzzword, promising unheard of advances but also baleful clouds on the horizon. The president of SAG sounded the alarm on not only the threat of AI given the studios' new business models predicated on ubiquitous streaming and digital technology, but also the more long-standing and ingrained American corporate system of Capitalism wherein upper managements get away with not sharing the surplus of corporate wealth due to an inherent or institutional conflict of interest. Indeed, Fran Drescher, the president of SAG, was not far from calling into question the taken-for-granted assumption in Capitalism that residual profits should go to stockholders exclusive. Questioning that default (as well as claiming that CEOs get to set their own compensation by controlling their respective boards of directors) would have made Drescher's announcement of a strike truly revolutionary. She was so close. 

The full essay is at SAG Strike

Turkey's President Enables Euroskeptic Ideologues

The European Union is not a military alliance, like NATO or the ancient Spartan League. Nor is the E.U. merely a free-trade agreement like NAFTA. In terms of the history of federalism, the E.U. instantiates “modern federalism,” wherein governmental sovereignty is split between federal and state levels, rather than confederalism, wherein all such sovereignty is retained by the states. Both the U.S. and E.U. instantiate modern federal systems, although ironically the U.S. was originally a confederal system of sovereign states. In likening the E.U. to NATA in 2023, President Erdogan of Turkey unwittingly committed a category mistake. This in turn weakened his attempt to leverage his power in approving Sweden as a country in NATO with his demand that the E.U. admit Turkey as a state. 

The full essay is at "Turkey's President Enables Euroskeptic Ideologues."

On the Decadence of American Journalism: Journalists as Celebrities

I submit that when a conveyer of the news becomes the story, something is wrong; in typing this sentence initially, I did not include I submit that. To state my thesis statement as if it were a fact of reason (Kant’s phrase) seemed to me rather heavy-handed (i.e., arrogant). Similarly, when some Americans insisted after the U.S. presidential that Don Trump had won as if the asseveration were a fact of reason, I could sense aggressiveness along with the presumptuousness in treating one’s own opinion as a declaration of fact, especially if the actual fact—Joe Biden being sworn into the office—was otherwise. Opinion is one thing; fact is another. When a person misconstrues one’s opinion with fact, something is wrong. I believe this happens so often that it may be due to a problem innate in the human brain. Religious folks would not have to reach far to point out that in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the sin of pride manifests in wanting to be omniscient; eating of that proverbial apple of the knowledge of good and evil ushers in original sin. A person perceiving one’s own opinion as fact, or even as important as fact, implicitly regards oneself as God. A journalist who interlards one’s role in conveying the news with one’s own commentary, and an editor who then makes that commentary the point of a story both treat a means (i.e., the conveyer of news) as an end (i.e., the news itself). I contend that at least by 2023, American journalism had fallen into this hole with impunity, which involved a lack of industry self-regulation and individual self-discipline. 

 

The full essay is at "American Journalism."