Brave Humans

Scanning the news, you will find several signs the U.S. is preparing for war with Iran. There has been a build-up of U.S. Naval ships in the gulf for some time, but recently things seem to be coming to a head. Plans for attacking Iran seem to be well established, and the White House appears to be softening up public opinion in preparation for war. For example the U.S. military has accused Iran of supplying Iraqi insurgents with roadside bombs, though this has not been independently verified.

I have to admit when I read such accusations I get the feeling of “fool me twice…uh…can’t get fooled again.” The White House stance against Iran plays like Iraq redux, so I’m inclined to take their assertions against Iran with a large grain of salt. Still, it is very clear why the U.S. is nervous about Iran: Iran is developing nuclear power.

For its part, Iran claims its development of nuclear technology is purely peaceful. In fairness, this could be true. There are lots of advantages to nuclear power, even for an oil-rich country such as Iran. If Iran were to develop nuclear power, it would give Iran greater flexibility in developing an industrial base in our information age. If Iran were forced to rely only on its oil resources, it would have a much harder time entering the 21st century. This is particularly true if the world wises up to global warming and demand for Iran’s greatest natural resource wanes. So Iran is perfectly justified in wanting to develop peaceful nuclear power.

Of course it could also be true that Iran will simply use their nuclear plants to make nuclear weapons. It would be phenomenally easy to do, and Iran has plenty of reasons for wanting to join the “big boom” club.

Therein lies the rub. On the one hand, nuclear fission is an extremely powerful source of energy. On the other hand, going from power source to weapon is relatively easy to do. Historically, the U.S. has dealt with this issue by dividing the world into friend and foe. Those countries we like, such as Israel, are given nuclear power, which they quietly (or not so quietly) use to make weapons on the side. Those countries we don’t like, such as Iran, are forbidden to have nuclear power of any kind. Given the ease in transforming peaceful technology into weapons of war, it would seem to be the only option.

But it’s not.

What if I told you there was a type of nuclear power generator that was poorly suited for making weapons grade nuclear material?

What if I told you this kind of generator creates less than half the radioactive waste of regular power stations?

What if I told you this type of power generator can burn the plutonium waste from traditional power plants?

What if I told you this type of power station couldn’t melt-down the way Chernobyl did?

Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it. It isn’t. In fact we have known about this technology for decades.

Traditional nuclear power is based upon uranium. The alternative is based on thorium. You probably haven’t heard of thorium. It is the element with an atomic number of 90, whereas uranium has an atomic number of 92. Both are metallic solids, both are radioactive, and both occur in the Earth’s crust in significant quantities. In fact of the two thorium is more plentiful by a factor of three.

Despite its advantages, thorium is more difficult to use. Unlike certain uranium isotopes, thorium does not undergo spontaneous fission. This is why a thorium meltdown is impossible, but it also makes it much trickier to induce a nuclear reaction with thorium. But while traditional uranium-based power plants generate plutonium (the stuff of weapons), thorium-based power plants only generate uranium. Thorium nuclear power is really only useful for generating power, which is the other reason why you’ve never heard of it.

The U.S. could allow Iran to have nuclear power. It would give Iran the advantages of nuclear energy without the risks of traditional uranium. But to walk such a path would require a huge political shift for both countries. The U.S. would have to work with Iran to develop the technology, and Iran would have to be open and honest about its nuclear ambitions.

To be honest, I don’t think Iran’s intentions are purely peaceful. I don’t think they would accept a U.S. offer to develop thorium power. But I do think the U.S. would be in a stronger political position if they made such an offer.

Be Brave. Be Human.
Brian

I’m writing this in defense of a friend. He has a business, and people like what he’s selling. Who wouldn’t, really? It’s ice cream! He was asked to be a vendor at a very popular street festival last year, and even though the weather was horrid (i.e. it rained almost every day), he was there with his ice cream truck and a big smile on his face. He loved being a part of it. He was asked to return again this year. Hooray!

But after he accepted, and the announcement was made as to what vendors would be working the fair, another frozen treat business offered the festival a large sum of money to replace him. This comes with a large number of blocks around the festival site that are protected from competitors. And the festival accepted. Bummer!

So then the fair organizers contacted my friend again to tell him, sorry, he can’t work there this year. It’s not even that these are competing products. One sells ice cream bars and similar frozen treats, and the other sells frozen custard. Why can’t they both work the venue? There’s plenty of space to share….

What bothers me the most about it is the “give and take back.” My friend was ASKED to provide his business to the attendees. He was INVITED. And then when they were given money from someone else, they took back their invitation. Let me frame this another way:

Let’s say my son invited Bobby to his birthday party, but then he called him back two weeks later and told him, “Sorry, you can’t come to my party. Johnny’s giving me $100 to come to my party in your place. Oh, and during my party, you aren’t allowed to go the playground down the street or visit the zoo four blocks away.”

As parents, we wouldn’t allow that. We would sit down and have a serious discussion. Johnny may or may not be allowed to come to the party, and we would certainly talk with his parents about what happened. But Bobby would definitely be invited.

Why can businesses be allowed to get away with this kind of behavior? In pursuit of the almighty dollar, the highest bidder wins. It’s all about the bottom line. The little guy doesn’t have a chance. And the worse part of all, no one knows. I’d guess it’s happening around us all the time, but we don’t know about it.

And while I’m thinking of it, the two major political parties seem to operate in the same way, preventing smaller parties from participating in debates, say, or sending protesters to far distant locations away from media.

We wouldn’t tolerate this sort of behavior in our children. Why should we tolerate it in our democracy?

Be human,
Julia

I’m against the Iraq War, I think I’m for a surge, and I think we need to stand up a government in Iraq that will stand up to us and maybe even be chosen by a populace that will in all likelihood hate us for at least a decade. And the topper is that I don’t think these are contradictory.

So first, how can I be against the war and for more war? No, this is not flip-flopping or moral uncertainty. The Iraq campaign was promulgated in an atmosphere of fear-mongering and deception of the American people. The Iraqis were not buying uranium, the 9-11 terrorists had no connection to Mr. Saddam Hussein, and destroying the Ba’athist government in Iraq did not make the world (or everyday life in Iraq or America) safer. To clarify my position slightly, I was in support of the Afghan campaign, as there was enough evidence that two administrations (Clinton and Bush II) were both able to make cogent (and, so far as I know, truthful) arguments for that action. But that is a whole other topic. The Iraq campaign should never have started. It was wrong.

Some of my support of pursuing the war and the idea of a “surge” is based on a sense of national responsibility. It’s the china shop rule- “You break it, you bought it”- and yes, I believe we broke it. The early mis-steps have been hashed over substantially by both liberal groups and disaffected military who have been driven, against most precedent, to speak out against the hierarchy and the Commander-in Chief. Take it that I accept that we had no plan to “win the peace”, that we arrogantly and mistakenly disbanded the Iraqi Army (thereby creating the well-armed base of one portion of the insurgency), and that we showed a callous disregard for the lives and the culture of the Iraqi people by following the overweaning arrogance of civilian “authorities” like Mr. Rumsfield who wanted to impose his own fingerprints on this war. He has done so to our detriment. The body count of Iraqi civilians has been debated, but the day-to-day killings are a tragedy for which someone must take responsibility as well as action to address. As humanitarians mourn the human cost, scholars will count the historical cost of artifacts, sacred places, and knowledge that was lost, looted, or destroyed because we, as the only standing army, took no precautions to protect anything but Iraqi oil. Museums, neighborhoods, and infrastructure were all left exposed to the spoilers, the disaffected, and the people who really do just want us to look bad so that it is OK to kill us.

Someone has said that the first job of government is to have a monopoly on violence. As a man of peace, I dislike that spin and would prefer to say “Government must provide security.” There is also a pragmatist in me. It’s the same side that abhors the death penalty and also considers that the state may have a vested interest in having some people be dead- but that’s another story too. That pragmatist is telling me that we may need to provide enough force in Baghdad to stand up an Iraqi Army that is capable of holding Baghdad without us. America must help an Iraqi government develop a relative monopoly on violence. If we can get an Iraqi Army developed that is responsible to an elected government, that is strong enough to secure life around Baghdad, and then spread the peace of the sword to other relatively peaceful places such as Basra, then we could probably bring our surviving children home. If we can help them face down the spoilers, who will continue to destroy any humanitarian or infrastructure successes we make and kill our people just because they need to see us fail, or because they need the secular government to fail so that they can re-establish the Caliphate, or because they want a Shia-based government friendly to Iran, or because they are just opportunistic criminal gangs, or because we have killed their mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters, or any other of the complex reasons that we have not troubled to understand……yeah, it gets overwhelming. But unless we help someone get a grip on things, the steady day-to-day bloodshed will continue, and if we leave now, the streets will be piled with the corpses of anyone who ever helped Americans or espoused secular government. So we must be in a strong enough position to hand the opportunity for power and a relative monopoly on violence to someone. And since most folks there hate us now, the new government will need to hate us to have a chance of survival.

To do this, I suspect that the very best we might do is to set in place people who are more secular than religious in nature. But any government is going to need to win the support of the populace to last, and in the Middle East that seems to mean working with religion to some degree, and Sadr is not going away. He will most likely need to be co-opted, or if not him, someone else like him who can deliver the populace. So I assert that we most likely need to support people who will vilify us and will not act as friends in many crucial points over the next few decades.

The current application of the old imperialist model of exporting our Democratic values with guns is not working. So maybe the addition of numbers to establish some stability and to pacify an area forcefully for long enough for Americans to come home, set our own house in order, and face the next round of anti-imperialist hatreds through diplomacy is the best we can do in cleaning up this mess. Perhaps we could decide to pay a tenth of the current cost of the war to make reparations, to fund hospitals and schools and therapists and infrastructure. Perhaps we could reflect on how to really show what our values are and on more peaceful ways to export them. And while that seems as out of reach as peace in our time, if we do not plan and hope, what will we become?

In a recent set of 3 articles 1, 2 and 3, in the Wall Street Journal, Charles Murray makes a series of provocative assertions and proposals concerning education in the United States. In short order, he argues:

1. By definition, 50% of the human race has below average intelligence.

2. Even the highest quality education cannot overcome basic
intellectual limitations in individual students

3. We need to simply accept these facts and restructure
education to embrace them by:

-Recognizing that a large minority of students will NEVER meet basic academic standards for reading, math and science in high school as they are now defined

-Recognizing that far too many American students go to 4-year-colleges despite the fact that they simply do not possess the basic intellectual capacity to benefit from that experience in any meaningful way

-Dramatically increasing the focus on high-paying, high quality vocational education both in high school and beyond

-Refocusing advanced education on moral values and responsible action for those of high intelligence who will both benefit from that education and develop a corresponding sense of responsibility to live their lives to a higher standard for the general good of humanity.

A bit of background on Murray is warranted. He has written extensively on the importance of IQ in determining social policy with his most famous work being The Bell Curve with his colleague Richard Herrnstein. Both the book and its authors have been lauded and vilified for trumpeting the importance of individual and group differences in intelligence in modern society.

That being said, I would like to focus Murray’s current argument concerning education. I think he accurately lays out several points, then radically misses others. I should mention at this point that my own training and background is in research psychology and I’ve both taught and thought on the subject of IQ a fair amount myself.

Point 1: By definition half of the human race has below average
intelligence.

This is Murray’s strongest and most obvious point. Because, like many other aspects of human behavior, intelligence in the population is distributed in the classic bell-shaped (normal) distribution, then just about half of us are above the mean and half are below. It is important to be clear here that Murray is explicitly NOT talking about scores on any given test, IQ or otherwise. He is making an accurate statement about the nature of human intelligence itself. Just as our changing understanding of gravity over time has had no impact on the fact of gravity’s existence and characteristics, our changing understanding and measurement of human intelligence has had no impact on the existence and characteristics of that phenomenon.

Point 2: Even the highest quality education cannot overcome basic
intellectual limitations in individual students.

This is also completely accurate. Individual intelligence sets intellectual limits beyond which a person cannot pass, just as limitations in athletics, musical ability, etc. set boundaries regardless of whatever environmental experiences (education/training) may be provided.

Point 3: Given limitations in intelligence, we need to simply accept the fact that some significant minority of US school children will never achieve even minimal proficiency in math, reading and science regardless of how well they are taught or what level of resources we throw at schools.

Again true. Despite rhetoric and federal mandates (like No Child Left Behind), some children simply can’t academically cut it and never will in ANY school.

Given these points, the fundamental question that arises is: how do we accurately determine who these individuals are? If we could do this, we could choose much more effectively how to expend our resources in education.

Here’s where Dr. Murray and I part company. He firmly believes that:

a) we have a solid screening mechanism in existing standard general IQ tests, and b) assuming we can measure it accurately, IQ is the primary criterion for success in school. I’m sure he’s wrong on the first count, and I’ve a strong hunch he’s wrong on the second.

Both of these problems center on what behavioral scientists often refer to as predictive validity. In short, if your test measures what you think it does, then a given score on that test should accurately predict how you would perform on the tasks/abilities the test measures. Think of a test for a pilot’s license. A higher score should indicate a better pilot. If you apply this logic to IQ tests, however, you run into a problem. We know what a good pilot is and what skills and abilities differentiate a poor pilot from a good one. We’re a whole lot less certain in answering these questions about intelligence. What exactly marks an intelligent person? What skills and abilities do these individuals possess that less intelligent individuals do not? We can make these distinctions at the extremes of intelligence pretty easily. Someone with an IQ score of 140 (”genius” level) thinks and behaves profoundly differently from a person with an IQ of 75 (mild mental retardation),and no amount of education is going to change this in any meaningful way. But we could likely figure this out just as well without IQ tests at all.

What Murray is talking about are comparatively more subtle distinctions on the order of 10 to 15 points on a standard IQ test. So, for example, he argues that in order to benefit from a typical college education, a person likely needs an IQ of about 110 (100 is average), and 115 would be better. In contrast, an elementary school child with an IQ of 95 may well be too stupid to ever pass the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test for reading in 4th grade.

My point here is this: Right now, despite its legitimate importance to academic performance, behavioral scientists simply do not know enough about intelligence to design a test of intelligence that would support the level of fine-grained distinction that Murray is making.

The second problem concerns the general power of IQ to predict success in school. Here the picture is clearer: in short, IQ score is a very good predictor of success in western schools. A score on a standardized IQ test may, in fact, be the best single predictor of success in western schools.

The problem is that this isn’t the whole story. Even given it is the single best predictor, by itself IQ still isn’t that powerful. The statistical argument is a bit esoteric, but try it this way. If you add up all the different factors that could reasonably be expected to influence school performance (IQ, nutrition, illness, study habits, motivation, stability of home-life, quality of school, drug/alcohol use, etc.) and assume that all those factors together sum to 100% of the things that can influence school performance, IQ by itself accounts for about 25% of that theoretical 100%. That’s more than any other single factor that we can reasonably measure, but it’s still only 25%. That means 75% is left to all those other things we just mentioned. If we apply this to Murray’s argument, we can see that not only are the finer-grained distinctions he recommends difficult to make, even if we are successful, the majority of factors determining school success is still completely up in the air.

OK. On to Murray’s next point: dramatically increasing the focus on high-paying, high quality vocational education both in high school and beyond.

As far as his assertion that far too many American kids go to 4- years of college, I think he is absolutely right. Some sort of college degree has become the accepted entry ticket to the kind of stable, well-paying jobs that we want our kids to have. Except it’s not. As an example, a Master Electrician requires no college degree and makes about $50,000 a year in the US. Journeymen make about $40,000, and apprentices make about $30-35,000. Now ask yourself, how much that C+ average BS in business from some middle of the pack college is worth. If you’re still not convinced, open the phone book and try to find an electrician or plumber or carpenter who isn’t booked 2 or 3
weeks (or months) ahead. Murray recognizes this and rightly calls for greater emphasis on skilled trades education at the high school level and beyond. What bothers me is his assertion that we need to do this because much of our population is too stupid to benefit from college, and that skilled- trade work clearly requires a lower level of intellectual capacity than does college. He simply has no evidence for this assertion, and it strikes me as the intellectual elitism of which academics are constantly accused.

I also agree with Murray that as a result of the pressure to admit pretty much anyone with money (loaned or otherwise) to college, the intellectual experience of a college education is in danger of disintegrating entirely. I teach college for a living and based on my experience and that of my colleagues, a depressingly large number of students (and often even their parents) simply neither know nor care about the larger goals or values of higher education and see college as the 4- year hoop one must jump through to obtain a higher salary. Murray effectively argues that this belief is both increasingly incorrect and profoundly destructive to the intellectual climate on campus, but he insists on tying these problems predominantly to individual differences in intelligence and our cultural unwillingness to recognize them. Yes, there are some students on US college campuses who simply lack the basic intellectual skills to be there, but the assertion that this accounts for the majority of the apathetic, disinterested and poorly performing students is profoundly overstated and unsupported. Again, intelligence is simply the first among MANY variables that predict success in college.

One additional variable that certainly asserts a powerful impact on student performance is student motivation. Independent of their ability to comprehend college level material, a good chunk of the traditional 18-21-year-old student body would fundamentally rather be doing something else with their time. This desire may be a function of being overwhelmed by tasks some are ill-equipped to master, but it is likely also an issue of young-adulthood in U.S. society. Many traditional college students quite understandably have greater interest in material goods and social activities than issues of philosophy. One admittedly unsystematic measure of this is returning older students who are actively seeking the courses and knowledge they once dismissed as irrelevant to “real” life. A recent psychological research paper(discussed and referenced here) focusing on the importance of motivation and self discipline for academic sucess provides more rigorous evidence.

This brings us to Dr. Murray’s final suggestion concerning the education of that intellectual elite that we have now identified as capable of absorbing higher education. Again, his position is that these are the individuals who are going to end up running things,so as a society we must do all we can to ensure that they are well-educated to take up this responsibility.

My first problem is simply that I don’t believe we can identify that intellectual elite effectively. My second problem is that, even if correctly identified, there is no clear evidence that the intellectual elite either do now or will, in the future, be running things. This is the point that really bugs me. It’s hard not to see this as old-style class warfare. It sounds to my ear that Murray is saying that the great majority of us are simply too stupid to make good decisions for ourselves, and we should just stick to nice, solid trades like building houses and leave the real thinking to the few smart folks. This not just incorrect; it is profoundly dangerous and inflammatory.

Be smart. Be human.
Grant

Blacks need to shut up. They complain too much about being “oppressed,” and keep shoving things like “equality” in our faces. This is a WHITE nation, founded by white people, and black people should realize it and deal. If black folk weren’t so uppity, they wouldn’t inspire people to hate them.

Do you find statements like that offensive?

Suppose CNN ran a piece on how a black family was driven out of their home because of their race. Suppose afterward the program had a discussion panel consisting entirely of white people. Suppose one of the panelists made a statement like the one above, and the rest of the panel generally agreed with this view.

Would you be offended? Would you condemn it as racist?

Suppose it was Jews instead of blacks, and Muslims instead of whites. Still offended?

How about Muslims criticized by Christians?

Protestants criticized by Catholics?

What if it was an atheist family instead of a black one, and the panel consisted of Jews and Christians? Would you still be offended? Would you condemn it as bigotry?

The last one actually happened. Here is the piece on an atheist family:

Here is the panel discussion. Listen closely to what they are saying. Try watching it again, and replace “atheist” with “black” or “Christian” or “Muslim”.

In my last post, I urged you to not take it anymore. I urged you to join with me, come together and be heard. Last time I cited the need to move beyond the sound-bite as a reason to join me.

Here is another reason to come together: don’t let the media tell you to shut up.

I’ve just presented one example where those of a differing view are being told to shut up. I’m sure you can name others. Are you tired of creeping secularism? Stand up. Tired of being called a loony liberal? Be heard.

The simple fact is that we have the power to set the tone of discourse in this country. Together we can create a voice which is honest and fair. We can create a forum where we grant each other the respect due all human beings, even while we may adamantly disagree with each other. Where no one is ever told they should simply shut up.

We’ve made a start (cheers to Rick and Scott). You can join us.

Be Brave. Be Human. Never Shut Up.
Brian

Update: Debbie Schlussel has commented about her part in the disscussion, and the response she got, on her weblog.

Update 2: CNN has run a follow-up piece (on Darwin Day no less), featuring Richard Dawkins and a more balanced panel. You can check it out here.

I’m going to make some seemingly incongruous connections here, so stick with me…

Today my daughter was telling me about some photos she saw in her kindergarten class, and she described them as “breathtaking.” I was impressed at her word selection (far more expressive than “pretty” or “cool”).

Follow along…
Last night my husband and I watched an episode from the BBC series “Chef,” about a brilliant and volatile, well, chef. His behavior is shocking and hilarious because it’s so outrageous. Last night he called a high-priced vendor a “grasping, extortionate, avaricious, rapacious, usurious, devious, and deceitful personage.” Vicious, yet beautiful. We actually replayed that scene several times to catch the precise language.

Hang in there…
I have time daily to listen to the radio while I drive my daughter to and from school. Apparently having a short attention span, I often spin the dial. Recently I’ve been monitoring various “personality” political shows, both right- and left-wing.

Within the past week, I’ve regularly heard language such as “shut up,” “jerk,” and “idiot” from liberals and conservatives alike. I know it’s shocking and inciting; designed to rile up an audience (already likely riled), but it’s also inelegant, vague, vulgar, and imprecise.

Now, I’m not for name-calling; as humorous as I find “Chef,” I also find his manner appalling… but he does have a way with words. He used those adjectives because he believed he was being misled and overcharged, and those words provided a vivid and specific description. (He’s also fictional.)

To me, words such as “jerk” invoke (less than pleasant) memories of childhood, when many of us lacked the patience or vocabulary to state our positions better. Adults should be above this…just look at the size of a dictionary. I’m not advocating multi-syllabic words that few understand… I’m just suggesting precision, clarity, civility, and imagination when we discuss and contest issues. (Anyone else remember Salada teabags, with the pithy sayings on the tags? There was one that read, “Too bad we can’t disagree without being disagreeable.” No? Just me, then.) I know civil discussion with opposing viewpoints was a core belief in the founding of Brave Humans, and I’m been impressed and delighted at the diversity of views and the eloquence of language we’ve seen so far.

If this would happen in the mainstream media, I’d find it… breathtaking. Here’s hoping we become mainstream.

Be brave. Be human.
Susan

Not being a science guy, my reaction to science reporting in the news is to take my initial, knee-jerk reaction as the appropriate one: Trust your instincts, the media is just trying to sell you a bill of goods.

Take global warming, for example. What is it? That depends on who is delivering the communication. How can global warming be both the reason for the earth getting warmer, and for the “cold cycles” that existed in the 1970s? (Remember when we were going to have the new ice age?)

I may do this on occasion when I am specifically looking for more info than my narrow scope has either time or resources to access, so bear with me. Business approach is much easier for me to understand. Here is my first RFI:

Forsaking media tag lines and definitions, political spin, and emotion:

1. What are the litany of topics comprised under the umbrella of “global warming”? (i.e. the scope)
2. Why are they seen as legitimate topics, and do they have merit outside of the politicking on global warming? (the purpose)
3. What are the viable scientific arguments against them, even if you don’t believe them personally? (remote similarity to cost/benefit)
4. What is the longetivity cycle on each study? Ten, twenty, thirty years? One hundred years? (validation)
5. What assumptions have been made in each study and/or topic? Have they been validated or assigned probabilities? (assumptions verification, risk analysis)
6. What are the probabilities of the outcomes in the “widely accepted” models? (risk analysis)
7. What is stopping us from knowing and communicating more? (constraints)
8. (Added 2/5) What is the relative priority in terms of time and resources spent vs. other issues that may or should consume our government’s time?  (opportunity cost)

Speaking in science terms exclusively may only confuse me; however, using science terms to supplement a layman’s explanation helps.

Thank you.

Periodically, I get weird flashes in my head. Since they don’t incite me to perform anti-social behavior, I generally ignore them. This morning, though, a flash got me thinking…

Our local NPR station is having its fund drive, so this morning I was checking out different radio stations. I paused at an interview with Carl Levin (D-Michigan); he was on the syndicated Bill Press Show talking about the bipartisan resolution against troop increase in Iraq. During the discussion, he mentioned that instead of more troops, they were hoping to enact diplomatic measures in Iraq. I found myself asking, “At this point, will talks even work? Or will they need to keep pounding on the insurgents until they surrender or die?”

FLASH!
Immediately, an image formed in my head. You’ve seen this in lots of movies (OK, maybe you don’t these kind of movies, so you’ll have to take my word on it). Someone has just perpetrated a spontaneous heinous act (usually murder), and now reality is sinking in. What did I do? How could I have done that? How will I get away with it? Panic and desperation set in, and soon that one act leads to others; killing witnesses, bystanders, anyone who stands between the criminal and freedom. There’s no plan; there seems to be an irrational thought that “if I can remove any link to the crime I can make it all go away.” Of course, the offender is caught and thus faces a host of sins instead of just the original one.

So why did that picture pop into my head? Does this scenario parallel the war in Iraq? Having made a mistake originally by attacking Iraq (debatable, I know), will a troop increase just compound errors in judgment? Can the chaos in Iraq be fixed with further violence?

I’m asking a real question here, and no one can know the answer yet. Perhaps diplomacy can’t work at this stage; without trying it, we won’t know. But one thing is certain: we’ll never be able to “make it all go away…”

Be brave. Be human.
Susan

I was going to title this post “A Modest Proposal,” but I decided against it because what I want to propose is far from modest. Bold, yes. Crazy, yes. But not modest.

I’m tired of listening to politicians puppet the party standard. I’m tired of hearing how corporations own the government, and how the media controls the message. I’m tired of being told that an ordinary person can’t make a difference in politics. I’m not going to take it anymore.

My proposal is that you don’t take it anymore either.

I propose that together we make BraveHumans a voice to be reckoned with. A voice that stands up to the mainstream media. A voice that crosses party lines. A voice that lets real people be heard. We have the power to make it happen. YOU have the power to make it happen.

The mainstream media doesn’t control the message anymore. The web does. Make a loud enough noise on the web, and the media latches onto it. Any website which is powerful on the web is powerful in the media. We can control the message if we want to. But we can only do it if we stand together.

If you look at the most powerful political voices of the blogosphere, all of them follow a particular ideology. Some pundit on the left, others on the right. They serve a purpose in mobilizing people of similar views, but they don’t force people to consider the views of others. There is no popular site on the web where all sides are heard. There is no site where one is led to consider views you oppose. I’d like BraveHumans to become that site. I would like BraveHumans to become the watering hole for all political views, where Americans from all walks of life can come together and discuss their government, their views, their hopes and their fears without being labeled as ignorant or crazy by the other side. We need to come together as Americans, united by the ideals of a government of the people, by the people, for the people.

So here is my challenge: There are 28 days in the month of February. If you have a weblog, then I call on you to write four posts about BraveHumans. One a week. Write about what what you would like the site to become. Write about reclaiming our government, or about tearing down the walls of partisanship. Write about what drives you and motivates you. Compel your readers into action, and call on them to write four posts on THEIR weblogs. If you don’t have a weblog, then post on message boards, or make a video for YouTube. Stand up and be heard. The internet gives everyone a voice. Imagine what can happen when we all stand together.

I will write four posts as well. This one is my first. I will also ask for input on what YOU would like BraveHumans to become. If enough people want it, I will open a forum, otherwise we can discuss things through comments. I don’t want BraveHumans to be a quiet little site where people vent their frustrations and go home. BraveHumans can be so much more if we work together.

I believe we can do this. I’m willing to make a stand and try. If you join me, and if you urge others to join us, we can make this happen.

Let’s do this. Let’s join forces and be heard. Let’s make a noise so loud the mainstream media can’t ignore us.

And then when we have their attention, we can say, “We’re Brave Humans. We’re Americans. And we’ve come to reclaim our government.”

Be Brave. Be Human. Change the world.
Brian

Update: If you take up this challenge, just say so in the comments below, and I will add your site (or YouTube post, etc.) to the list.

You have all likely heard variations of the comment “he’s not _____; he’s my brother.”  The point of the comment is that you cannot give someone in my family grief.  The converse is that I can. 

I have a difficult time digesting most exclusively left-wing and right-wing blogs.  Left-wing blogs give me problems because I disagree with most of what they say and the tone in which they say it.  Right-wing blogs give me problems – let me know if you’ve heard this before – because I disagree with most of what they say and the tone in which they say it.

It’s easy to pick apart your enemy.  It’s much more difficult to pick apart your friend.

When was the last time you performed an introspective on your political party of choice?

When you triage political issues in order of importance to you, based on your beliefs and daily practices, which bubble up to the top?  Which fall off the table?  Which do you subordinate in order to keep your party in power?

I believe that, as Americans, our politicians should be presenting a united front outside of our borders, no matter how much they bicker, argue and fight behind closed doors.  I understand how extremely difficult that is in practice, and how much this practice would undermine political posturing. (I can’t believe I just wrote that.)

I believe we should have a loyalty to our country.  I question loyalty to party, though.  Yes, you can have too many options, but is having only two viable options any better?  I say not.