The Useless Tree

Confucius in Congress

The US House of Representatives filed a resolution (H. Res. 784) on September 29 honoring the 2,560th anniversary of the birth of Confucius. I'm really not sure of the politics here, but it would seem, to me, that this has something to do with showing respect for Chinese-American voters in various constituencies. 

Is this a soft power victory for the PRC?  Perhaps.  But, as I have argued before (here and here), it is not at all clear that Confucianism can be made to serve exclusively nationalist purposes.  Of course, historically, Confucianism was combined with Legalism to function as an ideology of state power in China.  But the danger for nationalists is that Confucianism contains an imminent critique of power and power-holders.  That is why, for example, Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, decreed that this line from Mencius be deleted: 

The people are the most elevated, next comes the state, the sovereign comes last.

But excising this line hardly saves the apologist who is searching for a historically distorted nationalist narrative or a rationalization for established power structures.  The entire text of Mencius is an extended critique of wrong-headed and immoral leaders.

So, members of Congress should take this resolution seriously and consider what Confucius and Mencius might have to say about their own behavior.  It would not be pretty...

Full text of the resolution here for your consideration:

Resolution

Honoring the 2,560th anniversary of the birth of Confucius and recognizing his invaluable contributions to philosophy and social and political thought.

Whereas September 28, 551 B.C., is recognized as the date on which Confucius was born in the town of Qufu, in what is now the Shandong Province of China;

Whereas Confucius, who is one of the greatest thinkers, teachers, and social philosophers in history, developed a philosophy that has deeply influenced, and continues to influence, the social and political thought of countries around the world, including China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Vietnam;

Whereas Confucius counseled introspection, self-cultivation, sincerity, and the observance of respect within social relationships as a means of achieving justice and attaining morality in personal and public life, reflecting a moral fiber of the highest degree;

Whereas the teaching of Confucius that `what one does not wish for oneself, one ought not to do to anyone else; what one recognizes as desirable for oneself, one ought to be willing to grant to others' is a model for ethical behavior and for the promotion of harmony among us;

Whereas Confucius taught that an ideal government is founded upon loyalty, respect for elders, and recognition of the importance of family; and Whereas Confucius taught that politicians must be models of truthfulness and morality, which serves as a reminder to all of our duty to serve with the utmost honor and respect: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives honors the 2,560th anniversary of the birth of Confucius and recognizes his invaluable contributions to philosophy and social and political thought.

Another Sad Reminder: Bush Lost the War

Massive, coordinated car bomb attacks in Baghdad. The loud right-wing Obama haters will no doubt jump on this to argue that Obama is losing the war in Iraq.  But that is not true.  Iraq was lost long ago and it was lost due to the initial failures of Bush and company.  Sullivan gets at some of this:

...But the surge failed in its core task: to create an environment in which the three major sects in Iraq could form a national government, a national army, and a stable balance between the three major centrifugal forces in the country and in Baghdad. Maliki's bid for a post-sectarian polity rests fundamentally on his claim to have restored some semblance of security. But how easy it will be for that semblance to be wiped out by violence of the kind demonstrated today.

From a Sun Zi perspective, the US, from the very get go, failed to understand the adversary as well as ourselves, and while perhaps initially taking the state intact, let that momentary advantage slip away with an overbearing occupation.

The Iraq war was ill-advised from the beginning.  It was based on false premises (WMD!) and driven by misinformation (which the movie "In the Loop" captured well).  The cavalier attitude of the Bush administration toward the loss of Iraqi life in the pursuit of their neo-con obsessions stands as a horrible monument of immorality.  And it has left a continuing tragedy for Iraqi people. 

But it is important for us to remember how it all started and why it has turned out so badly:

Bush lost the war.

William Safire and Singapore and Williams College

I noticed today that Williams Safire died.  So, perhaps it is an appropriate time to recount the time, twelve years ago, that our paths crossed politically.

That crossing was rather unexpected.  Safire was, famously, a libertarian, conservative Republican, who had worked not only for Nixon but also Agnew ("nattering nabobs of negativism.").  I am a standard issue left-liberal Northeastern academic, who was raised on a deep antipathy to Nixon and Agnew.  But Safire and I shared a certain skepticism about the faux-democratic government of Singapore.

In 1995, Williams College, where I teach, decided to grant an honorary degree to Prime Minister Goh Chok-Tong of Singapore.  Some faculty, myself included, thought this was a bad idea, given the Singaporean government's track record on limiting academic freedom.  We asked that the invitation be rescinded.  The president of the college - a true gentleman, Hank Payne - said that he could not do that.  So, we took our protest to the national level.  Knowing that Safire had a history of challenging Singapore, we contacted him and alerted him to both the upcoming award and our protest of it.  He responded magnificently, with an NYT op-ed on July 10, 1995, entitled "Honoring Repression."  In it, he published my email address in an effort to link up our protest with others who might be sympathetic:

Should Williams College rescind its invitation, as "No Goh" faculty urge? Quite the contrary; let's hear his anti-freedom pitch. But a Williams political scientist (George.T.Crane at williams.edu) is organizing a serious, educational counter-award ceremony.

We did, indeed, have a counter-award ceremony, a weekend of talks and panels from leading Singaporean opposition figures. 

In the run-up to the weekend Goh and his apparatchiks came up with the idea of inviting both Safire and me (I had become infamous in the city-state for an op-ed I had published in the Washington Post on August 30, reprinted in full below the fold; no link available) to come and debate him in Singapore.  They would pay all of our expenses.  Of course, it was a set-up, an attempt to lure us into a venue packed with ardent Young PAP.  When the offer was made, I got a message to contact Safire.  We talked on the phone.  He asked me: "What should we do?"  I thought to myself: "This is rich.  Here's a moment when William Safire and I have been lumped together."  I told him I had no thought of going (my wife, worried I might get arrested, would not let me!) and that his idea of another op-ed in response was a good one.   It was a scathing and hilarious piece, "Singapore's Fear:"

Evidently Goh Chok Tung, the puppet who is keeping the Prime Minister's seat warm for one of Dictator Lee Kuan Yew's sons, became fearful at the revelation in this space that he may be confronted on his great day by the exiled Singaporean dissident Francis Seow, now a fellow at Harvard Law School.

Supporters of academic freedom at Williams want to arrange a debate between Goh and Seow. The trustees, who recently voted (8 to 7) to stick with the embarrassing invitation, hope the college's mistake in honoring repression can be rectified by having such a debate.

But dictator Lee wants Goh to avoid it at all costs. How to duck the dissident without appearing craven?

Result: A left-handed invitation has been extended to me and the Williams "no-Goh" organizer to come to Singapore to debate Mr. Goh. (The all-expense-paid invitation, in a letter to The Times that I hope runs today, is only "to" that island state, but presumably it is not intended to be one-way.)

But the best part was Safire's description of the crowd that would pack the hall in Singapore:

I would be pleased to engage in a one-on-one debate on universal values. But it's no fun to go up against anybody's "stooge," as Mr. Goh recently complained he is so frequently called. I'm ready to debate Lee Kuan Yew himself, and the dictator only.

The venue? A nation under the rule of law -- not Singapore, and not in front of an audience selected for me of Lee's relatives, cane-wielding thugs, Serbian generals, B.N.L. bankers, Packwood accusers and the Saddam Hussein Fan Club.

Since Dictator Lee admires the work of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, where we have both spoken in recent years, a debate at the next Davos meeting would be accessible to an unintimidated press.

How about it, Mr. Lee? My one proviso: that your man Goh also agrees to debate Francis Seow, the Singaporean opponent your uptight regime obviously fears most, at Williams college this fall.

The Goh-Seow debate never happened, even though I had the pleasure and honor of spending a weekend with Mr. Seow.  And neither did the Lee-Safire debate.  It was all posturing on the part of the Singaporean leaders. 

I never met Safire face-to-face, but one late summer we found ourselves thrown together as adversaries of the Singapore government.  Rest in peace.

My WaPo piece is below the fold.  

No Ayn is an Island

Jonathan Chait has a review of a couple of new biographies of Ayn Rand (h/t Sullivan).  This passage struck me:

....Rand held up her own meteoric rise from penniless immigrant to wealthy author as a case study of the individualist ethos. "No one helped me," she wrote, "nor did I think at any time that it was anyone’s duty to help me."

But this was false. Rand spent her first months in this country subsisting on loans from relatives in Chicago, which she promised to repay lavishly when she struck it rich. (She reneged, never speaking to her Chicago family again.) She also enjoyed the great fortune of breaking into Hollywood at the moment it was exploding in size, and of bumping into DeMille. Many writers equal to her in their talents never got the chance to develop their abilities. That was not because they were bad or delinquent people. They were merely the victims of the commonplace phenomenon that Bernard Williams described as "moral luck."

The denial of familial help and social support is most striking, especially from an ancient Chinese philosophical perspective.  It is, simply, a pure yet deluded selfishness that ignores the most fundamental features of human life.  For a Taoist those features are an inescapable embeddedness in a vast and uncontrollable Way, and a profound limitation of human knowledge and action.  For a Confucian those features are an axiomatic sociality of humanity and a clear impossibility of morality in isolation. 

The contradiction may be greatest with Confucianism, since Rand seems to believe that she is developing a moral theory.  She wants to contend that morality is best achieved through the cultivation and empowerment of the individual without reference to social context.  This is an absurdity to a Confucian.  Morality can only be defined in social terms; we find our moral selves precisely in our relations to others.  Our individuality is determined by our familial and social roles and duties.  Indeed, that was the reality of Rand's life: she did, despite her protestations to the contrary, receive help from her family.  And she chose to simply ignored her obligations to reciprocate that care.  In that, and in other aspects of her life, she was deeply immoral.

Canadian Confucians

This will come as no surprise to my Canadian friend Daniel A. Bell, but, according to Adam Gopnik's recent New Yorker profile of Michael Ignatieff (the full article can only be seen through subscription), folks north of the border have more of a collectivist sensibility than do those of us in the USA.  This passage captures the contrast:

     Yet the belief that the right of the community can trump the rights of the individual - and that this is not incompatible with liberalism but exactly what humanizes it - really is a distinctly Canadian intuition.  It is argued in different ways, and with different emphasis, by the influential McGill philosopher, Charles Taylor - who as an N.D.P. candidate in the 1965 elections, was defeated by the newcomer Trudeau in his first run for Parliament - and by the essayist John Ralston Saul and the Queens University philosopher Will Kymlicka.

     We are not, and have never been, the Canadian collectivists argue - in conscious opposition to older Anglo-American traditions - the rational individuals of liberal contract theory.  No man is an island, and rule made for imaginary islands ignore the fragile ecology of the actual archipelago.  We are people who live in communities, and our sense of who we are derives from what the people around us are like.  To exalt the individual and his rights at the expense of nurturing the tenuous threads of togetherness leads to violence, alienation, political apathy, and the growth of crazy movements that can supply, in moonshine form, the sense of solidarity that pure "rights" liberalism can't - the very traits that Canadians see in a nearby country, they name no names.

To me Gopnik's description of Canadians sounds rather like a modern day Confucianism, with an emphasis on an individual's embeddedness in community.  "No man is an island," indeed.  And I think the point about this kind of perspective being compatible with liberalism is an important thing to keep in mind regarding the contemporary relevance of Confucianism.   To my mind, if Confucianism is to be applicable in modern settings - and this extends not only to North America and Europe but to China as well - it cannot simply reject the concerns of liberalism but, rather, must work to compromise with a concern for individual rights.  While Confucianism would also reject what Gopnik refers to as "pure rights" liberalism, it cannot simply throw the liberal baby out with the individualist bath water. 

This is not an easy task: how can we know where to strike the balance between individual rights and community interests?  At the very least, if you are interested in Confucian answers to that question, Canada might be a place to look.

Time to end the Tehran/Tiananmen comparisons

With the escalation in violence, Iran appears to have moved into its Tiananmen moment, the time when the regime brings much more deadly force to bear against popular mobilization.  But events in Iran have moved away from the China comparison.

The key distinction between China in 1989 and Iran in 2009 is the strength of elite-level factionalism in the latter.  In China, Zhao Ziyang and some close lieutenants pushed back against hard liners and tried to prevent martial law and the violence that ultimately erupted.  But Zhao did not fully reveal his opposition until very late in the game, most famously when he went to Tiananmen Square on the night of May 19th, when martial law was announced, and said to the students that he was too late.  He was essentially defeated then, and the elite-level split was resolved in favor of the hard-liners. 

Iran looks much different at this moment.  Mousavi is still issuing defiant statements (even though some reports suggest he is under house arrest).  More importantly, the elite opposition appears to run much deeper: Rafsanjani is said to be working hard behind the scenes to thwart Khamenei and Ahmadinejad.  Ahmadinejad has his own sources of power, so it is not clear who will prevail in this showdown, but the sides are more evenly matched than was the case in China in 1989.  Much will depend on the military: if it stays strong behind the President and the Supreme Leader, the reformists could be thwarted.  But if the military splits, with some moving in the direction of Rafsanjani, then some more significant political change could come down.

In short, while on the street level Iran now looks like something less than the massive mobilization of China 1989, at the elite level it appears to be something considerably more.

Teheran and Tiananmen, IV

There is a sad truth about the 1989 Beijing Massacre.  It is a truth that those of us who live in liberal democracies would rather avoid.  But it is a truth nonetheless: in Beijing in 1989 repression worked.

Repression worked in that it put an end to a fundamental challenge to the state's authority and power.  It worked in that a split within the ruling elite was resolved in favor of hardliners, and scapegoats, most notably Zhao Ziyang, were created.  It worked in that the the state was able to redevelop its legitimacy through economic growth and material development.  Thus, in the twenty years since that horrible night, June 3-4, 1989, there has not been a repeat popular mobilization of such massive scale.  For younger Chinese people the "lesson learned" seems to be: don't protest, it can get you killed; better to study hard and find a way to make money in the expanding economy; don't rock the boat.  Repression thus worked to preserve the Party's power.

When we compare Tehran today with Beijing of twenty years ago, we need to keep this in mind.  The heady hopefulness of political change can be shot down by state power.  And, if the regime plays its cards shrewdly, the movement can wither and fade. 

The challenge for Iranian reformers, then, is: how to avoid such drastic repression, which might just kill the movement, while maintaining sufficient momentum and pressure to gain some sort of political victory?  With the Revolutionary Guards threatened more deadly force, the reformers may have to back down, at least for a time, to avoid the worst outcome.

Teheran and Tiananmen, III

Events in Iran have reached a new stage. The defiant Saturday demonstrations and protests, which came after Supreme Leader Khamenei called for a return to normalcy, are a direct challenge not only to Ahmadinejad but to the very basis of state legitimacy.  The people are now defying the Supreme Leader, and by their actions they are rejecting his authority.   This is the functional equivalent of the April 27th marches in Beijing twenty years ago.  Then, students took to the streets in direct violation of Deng Xiaoping's call for order (scroll down for my other posts that make this comparison).

Thus, we have half of what is needed for the movement to succeed (and success here I take to be a fairly significant political change - the forced resignation of Ahmadinejad for example).  It is, of course, impossible to predict.  But the populace has clearly demonstrated its rejection of the political status quo.  The other thing that must now follow is a more fundamental rupture within the political elite.  If the leadership remains fairly united, or if a split is resolved in favor of hardliners, then we may well have a Tiananmen style escalation of state violence against the people.  I dearly hope that does not happen.  But to avoid that, and secure some sort of political victory, the reformist forces must hold firm and bring at least some sectors of the security apparatus over to their side.  This will depend on political dynamics that we will not see in the streets.  It will take place in the halls of power, as various key players assess the national situation and figure out how to align themselves.  If some combination of Mousavi and Rafsanjani can convince other senior leaders that larger scale violence will do irreparable harm to the regime, then political change might be possible.  Zhao Ziyang failed, ultimately, in this regard.  Let's hope Iranian reformers have better luck.

Alternatively, reformers could decide to back down, take a longer view and try to consolidate their political positions for the future.  This might fail politically (they could be out-maneuvered by Ahmadinejad down the road), but it could be a way of avoiding larger scale bloodshed.

Reports in the US press suggest that political divisions in the elite are deepening.  This might be wishful thinking on the part of Western analysts.  But it might also be true.  Indeed, the statement by the Guardian Council (h/t TPM) admitting that some 3 million votes in fifty cities may have been fraudulent could be seen as a first step in a move away from Ahmadinejad.  We'll see.

In the meantime, let's remember those who struggle for justice in Iran.  Remember Neda.

Tehran and Tiananmen

Watching the extraordinary political events unfold in Iran, I am reminded of the massive protests that swept across China twenty years ago.  Here are a couple of comparative ideas:

1) Protests of this sort start out spontaneously, in response to some unexpected political event (election fraud in Iran, Hu Yaobang's death in China).  But they create a self-reinforcing momentum, driven by the regime's response to popular mobilization.  In China, an editorial, reportedly written under the supervision of Deng Xiaoping, was published on April 26th that harshly (in PRC political terms) criticized the student demonstrators.  This sparked the massive march of April 27th, which propelled the movement forward.  

Are we at that moment in Iran?  Whether yesterday's big march develops into a more sustained political movement will depend, in large part, on how the regime proceeds.  In China, as the government hardened its position and attempted to isolate and repress the movement, the students came to focus upon those actions as the rationale for protest. It could be that leaders in Iran have learned from that experience.  Although there has been some early violent repression, the announcement that a recount will be undertaken could diffuse the situation.  It creates a moment when protest leaders will have to reconsider their strategy.  Should they stay in the streets (as more radical dissidents might prefer), or should they wait and see what compromises might be possible (as more moderate opponents might desire).  Harsher government repression can unite radical and moderate dissident groups.  If the regime is smart, it will avoid such repression.  But hardliners in the government will want to heighten the crack-down.  It is a critical moment right now...

2)  Sustaining a movement of this sort requires a split within the regime.  We like to think of popular struggles as being driven primarily from the bottom up, from the people in the streets.  The popular facet is important.  But just as important are the political dynamics within the regime itself.  In China, as the protests of 1989 unfolded, a split emerged within the Communist Party, with Zhao Ziyang calling for a more compromising approach, and Deng Xiaoping and Li Peng taking a sterner, hard line position.  That split limited the state's response and gave the movement political space within which to operate.

Speculation about the role and influence of Ayatullah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani raise the possibility of a significant political split.  But his positions at present may not be powerful enough to make a critical difference.  He does not, it appears, have direct authority over any security forces.  Zhao, by contrast, was the General Secretary of the Party, the highest formal ranking position in the Party with significant say over the use of force. 

But there could be other splits emerging in Iran.  Thus, while the drama in the streets captures our attention we should also keep an eye on the halls of power.

UPDATE: more thoughts on this comparison here., here and here.

Mencius in Lhasa

There are people in the PRC, brave people, who are willing to stand up to power and present facts that run contrary to both popular perceptions (which, after all, are shaped by official media control) and political interests:

A group of prominent Chinese lawyers and legal scholars have released a research report arguing that the Tibetan riots and protests of March 2008 were rooted in legitimate grievances brought about by failed government policies — and not through a plot of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.

The lengthy paper is the result of interviews conducted over a month in two Tibetan regions. It represents the first independent investigation into the causes of the widespread protests, which the Chinese government harshly suppressed. The government blamed the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan exiles in Dharamsala for the unrest.

Mencius comes to mind here not just in the style of the critique - openly challenging power holders - but also in its substance.  Consider this:

The report also said: “When the land you’re accustomed to living in, and the land of the culture you identify with, when the lifestyle and religiosity is suddenly changed into a ‘modern city’ that you no longer recognize; when you can no longer find work in your own land, and feel the unfairness of lack of opportunity, and when you realize that your core value systems are under attack, then the Tibetan people’s panic and sense of crisis is not difficult to understand.”

This makes me "think about barley" as Mencius would have us do:

Mencius said: "In good years, young men are mostly fine.  In bad years, they're mostly cruel and violent.  It isn't that Heaven endows them with such different capacities, only that their hearts are mired in such different situations.  Think about barley: if you plant the seeds carefully at the same time and in the same place, they'll all sprout and grow ripe by summer solstice.  If they don't grow the same - it because of the inequities in richness of soil, amounts of rainfall, or the care given them by farmers...(11.7).

Obviously, some young Tibetan men in Lhasa violently rioted in March, 2008.  What the report is asking (as Mencius asks) is, essentially: why did they act in that manner?   What were the causes of the violence?  They are not inherently bad individuals but, rather, they have found themselves in intolerable circumstances.  When they compare their situations to those Han-Chinese immigrants in Lhasa who have moved in and taken good jobs and are prospering, they are enraged by the difference and discrimination.  And that anger, born of exclusion and poverty, can explode into violence.  This strikes me as rather similar to the racial problems in the US over the years, divisions and discrimination especially between black and white.  

Thus, the question becomes, what will the PRC government do to address the disparities?  The first thing that needs to be done is to openly recognize that the core of the problem is internal to the PRC. The report makes this point as well:

The report also cast blame on the governing structure in Tibetan regions, saying that there had been problems adapting Tibetan culture and society to the “ruling state’s systems.” It also criticized the central government for putting into power incompetent Tibetan local officials who, the researchers said, play up the threat of separatist movements to acquire more power and money from Beijing.

The report quoted Phuntsok Wangyal, one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party in Tibet, as saying, “They are unable to admit their mistakes and instead put all of their effort into shifting accountability onto ‘hostile foreign forces.’ ”

This goes to the heart of CCP power.  The "incompetent Tibetan local officials" are Party apparatchiks. The central authorities cannot let go of them because to do so would undermine the power of the single Party and open up possibilities for alternative sources of local power.  (Note to all fenqing out there: "alternative sources of local power" does not here suggest Tibetan separatism but, simply, greater Tibetan autonomy within the PRC). Socio-economic improvement in Tibet would seem to require political reform, something the CCP has studious avoided these past twenty years.

As Phuntsok Wangyal says, Party leaders must admit their mistakes in managing Tibet, and stop looking to blame outside forces.  Something Mencius would also agree with:

...in ancient times, when the noble-minded made mistakes, they knew how to change.  These days, when the noble-minded make mistakes, they persevere to the bitter end.  In ancient times, mistakes of the noble-minded were like eclipses of the sun and moon: there for all the people to see.  And when a mistake was made right, the people all looked up in awe.  But these days, the noble-minded just persevere to the bitter end, and they they invent all kinds of explanations. (4.9)