James S. Turner – Page 4 – The Transpartisan Review

“We Are Better Than This”

Transpartisan Note #126

shared by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

On Wednesday, June 03, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter adding his voice to the sentiments shared by past leaders by releasing a statement expressing his “great sorrow and disappointment” at having to repeat a declaration he made during his 1971 inaugural, gubernatorial address: “the time for racial discrimination is over.”

With deep respect to those involved and those affected, we share his thoughtful and important message with our readers…

Jimmy Carter’s June 03, 2020 message:

Rosalynn and I are pained by the tragic racial injustices and consequent backlash across our nation in recent weeks. Our hearts are with the victims’ families and all who feel hopeless in the face of pervasive racial discrimination and outright cruelty. We all must shine a spotlight on the immorality of racial discrimination. But violence, whether spontaneous or consciously incited, is not a solution.

As a white male of the South, I know all too well the impact of segregation and injustice to African Americans. As a politician, I felt a responsibility to bring equity to my state and our country. In my 1971 inaugural address as Georgia’s governor, I said: “The time for racial discrimination is over.” With great sorrow and disappointment, I repeat those words today, nearly five decades later. Dehumanizing people debases us all; humanity is beautifully and almost infinitely diverse. The bonds of our common humanity must overcome the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices.

Since leaving the White House in 1981, Rosalynn and I have strived to advance human rights in countries around the world. In this quest, we have seen that silence can be as deadly as violence. People of power, privilege, and moral conscience must stand up and say “no more” to a racially discriminatory police and justice system, immoral economic disparities between whites and blacks, and government actions that undermine our unified democracy. We are responsible for creating a world of peace and equality for ourselves and future generations.

We need a government as good as its people, and we are better than this.

www.cartercenter.org/news/pr/2020/statement-060320.html

(Photo from the Carter Presidential Library.)

“A Consistent, Courageous & Creative Effort”

Transpartisan Note #125

shared by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

On Tuesday, June 02, former U.S. President George W. Bush released a statement expressing his, and his wife Laura’s, “anguish” at the “injustice and fear” witnessed in our cities’ streets – calling on “America to examine our tragic failures”.

With deep respect to those involved and those affected, we share his thoughtful and important message with our readers…

George W. Bush’s June 02, 2020 message:

Laura and I are anguished by the brutal suffocation of George Floyd and disturbed by the injustice and fear that suffocate our country. Yet we have resisted the urge to speak out, because this is not the time for us to lecture. It is time for us to listen. It is time for America to examine our tragic failures – and as we do, we will also see some of our redeeming strengths.

It remains a shocking failure that many African Americans, especially young African American men, are harassed and threatened in their own country. It is a strength when protesters, protected by responsible law enforcement, march for a better future. This tragedy — in a long series of similar tragedies — raises a long overdue question: How do we end systemic racism in our society? The only way to see ourselves in a true light is to listen to the voices of so many who are hurting and grieving. Those who set out to silence those voices do not understand the meaning of America — or how it becomes a better place.

America’s greatest challenge has long been to unite people of very different backgrounds into a single nation of justice and opportunity. The doctrine and habits of racial superiority, which once nearly split our country, still threaten our Union. The answers to American problems are found by living up to American ideals — to the fundamental truth that all human beings are created equal and endowed by God with certain rights. We have often underestimated how radical that quest really is, and how our cherished principles challenge systems of intended or assumed injustice. The heroes of America — from Frederick Douglass, to Harriet Tubman, to Abraham Lincoln, to Martin Luther King, Jr. — are heroes of unity. Their calling has never been for the fainthearted. They often revealed the nation’s disturbing bigotry and exploitation — stains on our character sometimes difficult for the American majority to examine. We can only see the reality of America’s need by seeing it through the eyes of the threatened, oppressed, and disenfranchised.

That is exactly where we now stand. Many doubt the justice of our country, and with good reason. Black people see the repeated violation of their rights without an urgent and adequate response from American institutions. We know that lasting justice will only come by peaceful means. Looting is not liberation, and destruction is not progress. But we also know that lasting peace in our communities requires truly equal justice. The rule of law ultimately depends on the fairness and legitimacy of the legal system. And achieving justice for all is the duty of all.

This will require a consistent, courageous, and creative effort. We serve our neighbors best when we try to understand their experience. We love our neighbors as ourselves when we treat them as equals, in both protection and compassion. There is a better way — the way of empathy, and shared commitment, and bold action, and a peace rooted in justice. I am confident that together, Americans will choose the better way.

www.bushcenter.org/about-the-center/newsroom/press-releases/2020/06/statement-by-president-george-w-bush.html

(Photo from the Wikimedia Commons.)

Transpartisan Pandemic

Anomalies in the Coronavirus Pandemic Debate

Transpartisan Note #124

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

To mask or not to mask, that is the question. The current public debate on the Coronavirus Pandemic features two conflicting narratives: 1) Minimize infections to prevent as many deaths as possible; 2) Let infections spread to build “herd immunity”. This narratives-clash makes it difficult to know how to think about the virus – how to fight it. How we might manage our concerns about it. What ‘public policy’ makes the most sense.

The two narratives, now politicized into partisan cudgels, run in absolutely opposite directions. Before summarizing the clash we note that there appears to be significant agreement (hope) that when (if) we discover a vaccine the problem ends.

President Trump says we will have a vaccine by the end of the year. Public health experts widely agree that this is extremely optimistic. The polio vaccine took five years from recognition of need to creation. Any serious strategy on the Pandemic must move forward without counting on a vaccine anytime soon.

Experts suggest a second intervention – a quick test for infection – might be nearly as effective as a vaccine. Such test might largely overcome the major impediment to re-opening major industries, like sports venues, airlines, restaurants, etc.

If everyone seeking to enter a restaurant, airplane, or ball game is tested, the argument goes, and only those testing negative for the virus are admitted, the problem vanishes in those industries. The discriminatory potential in this approach looms ominously.

The political tension in the conflicting narratives becomes obvious in the current environment. Minimize infections – close, wear a mask. Free access to the virus, build herd immunity – open, no mask. In current polls 80% of the public supports a managed opening – back to work with masks?

The partisans appear something like this:

1. Minimizing infections. This is the dominant narrative on, e.g., CNN. The touchstone of success is the focus on minimizing the deaths caused by the virus.
2. ‘Herd immunity’. This approach is based on the widely-accepted theory that infected people build up antibodies to fight the virus. In the covid-19 pandemic, it is best known as the Swedish solution – voluntary lockdown. [1]

So, we have two narratives, one to minimize infections to maximize prevention of individual deaths from the virus and the other to increase infections so that we can more quickly reach the 70% infected that some projections estimate will allow herd immunity to solve the problem.

David L. Katz founding director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, entered the national debate with a third way in a March 20 New York Times Op-ed “Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease?” He argued the U.S. should adopt a milder strategy than total lockdown to preserve the economy while stopping deaths from COVID-19. Katz sparked opposition from current Yale University epidemiologists – some of whom were quick to refute what they saw as his suggestion that the US lockdown was an overreaction to the pandemic.

Katz and others propose that serious research focus on who is dying from the virus. Vulnerable people include the elderly, people with serious health issues, and people with high blood pressure (one study shows 75% of deaths in this group). The proposal here is to protect these vulnerable groups and open the economy for less vulnerable populations. This proposal moves closer to a controlled opening strategy favored in polls by 80% of the public.

Our point here is less about what is the “right” policy than to suggest a more transpartisan way of thinking about the problem. To imagine any controlled opening strategy will require less pious certainty and more pragmatic honesty about the public policy trade-offs of death and disability between mortality created by the virus and mortality created by a closed economy.

While doctors committed to the Hippocratic Oath protect every life as sacred, many policies favor ‘efficiency’ and work to reduce the resulting increase in deaths. Highway speed is an example. No one seriously advocates reducing speed limits to 20 miles-an-hour even though it would enormously reduce traffic deaths. Still over the last fifty years public policy has helped reduce auto accident deaths from 5.21 per hundred million miles driven in 1968 to 1.22 in 2018—a more than 75% reduction. [2]

We have no proposed “right” answer to the pandemic. We do suggest a form of thinking about an issue that integrates clashing narratives rather than forcing people to choose sides. A controlled opening may mean targeted pragmatic policy that risks lives from the virus in order to save lives from a dead economy.

One integration might be to wear a mask, go to work. Could it even mean choosing to go to a ball game once in a while?

This note suggests a form for thinking about the pandemic problem, or any problem, in a transpartisan way. Another important part of the issue lies in changing the language we use to discuss the trade-offs. We will address this language issue in another Note.

[1] Herd immunity is discussed in Is Herd Immunity Our Best Weapon Against COVID-19?

[2] Car Crash Death from the National Safety Council

A New, Transpartisan Voice In Foreign Policy

Transpartisan Note #123

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

On February 26, The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft cohosted (with Foreign Policy magazine) a foreign policy event in Washington, D.C. focused on ‘A New Vision for America in the World’. (Featured in Transpartisan Note #122.) Co-sponsored by Charles Koch and George Soros, the Quincy Institute proclaims itself a new, transpartisan voice searching for an engaged, internationalist foreign policy that does not depend on fighting endless wars.

General David H. Petraeus, former Commander of the U.S. Central Command and former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, led the discussion by describing the military’s role in what is sometimes called a ‘strategic concept of peace’. The conference, following Quincy’s mission, aimed at presenting an alternative to this vision, based on ‘military restraint and vigorous diplomacy’ and the pursuit of peace.

Transpartisans seeing political relationships through the Four-Quadrant Matrix believe that solutions are strongest when they integrate values from all quadrants, bringing together all ideologies. Integrating the quadrants first depends on avoiding binary (‘either-or’) views, while seeking common ground in apparently opposing positions.

Gen. Petraeus is an ideal subject on which to built a transpartisan dialogue. Although he presented a case for a strong military role, his widely-read 2006 article on the fourteen principles of counterinsurgency warfare explored important non-military activities, which he noted in his talk are essential to ‘military’ victories in irregular warfare.[i]

His first principle relies on a widely-quoted statement by T.E. Lawrence, writing in 1917:

‘Do not try to do too much with your own hands,’ Lawrence wrote about the Arabs. ‘Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. . . . [T]he work . . . may take them longer and it may not be as good as you think, but if it is theirs, it will be better.’

The idea here is that what they do is more important than what you do. This insight is crucial for promoting empowerment of people, especially in traditional societies, to play an active – even primary role – in promoting democracy, development, and especially security.

It is widely believed, even in ‘difficult’ places like Afghanistan, that when a community owns a school or a well, people will protect it from terrorists and insurgents. The central element is ownership – ownership of what they do and also from deciding what to do.

The importance of ownership is evident in Hernando de Soto’s pioneering work on property rights for the ‘informal sector’ and also in the work of Educate Girls Globally, promoting shared community ownership of government schools. Both experiences promote empowerment of passive, preconscious traditional people to become active, self-determined community citizens.

Where people are strongly influenced by traditional cultures, their passivity makes them vulnerable targets for insurgents, thus creating ‘vacuums’ for military force to fill. When people are passive, diplomacy, even if ‘vigorous’, is a weak instrument for promoting peace. When they become active citizens, protecting what they own, they present no targets, thus greatly reducing the need for military action.

We believe Quincy will succeed in its transpartisan mission by focusing attention on empowering citizens for nation-building, democracy, and security. Pursuing this objective, their greatest challenge will not be to change the attitudes of military leaders like Gen. Petraeus, but to promote development of capacity in our governmental institutions, both military and civilian, to promote citizen empowerment as a major objective of foreign policy.

[i] LTG David Petraeus, “Learning Counterinsurgency: Observations from Soldiering in Iraq”, Military Review, January/February 2006.

(Feature image of Gen. Petraeus taken from the Twitter feed of the Quincy Institute.)

A New Vision for America in the World

Transpartisan Note #122

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a peace-advocating, action-oriented think tank funded by an unlikely, but potent, transpartisan partnership between the foundations of George Soros and Charles Koch, launched in December 2019 to “focus on promoting peace and diplomatic agreement rather than war and military action in U.S. foreign policy.” (George Soros, Charles Koch Foundations Help Launch Pro-Peace Think Tank, The Hill, 12/03/19)

This week the Quincy Institute, in partnership with Foreign Policy magazine, will share their transpartisan vision with the world during a one day “peace forum” at the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington D.C.

Focusing on issues of national security, world peace, and U.S. foreign policy from a transpartisan matrix view of managed order without suppressed freedom with leaders from left and right, their February 26th one-day event will explore topics like ending the endless wars in the Middle East; the impact of the Sino-American antagonism; democratizing foreign policy; and international cooperation in an era of American restraint.

This leadership forum brings together voices from across the Transpartisan Matrix, featuring speakers including retired General David H. Petraeus; Matt Duss, Senator Bernie Sanders’ Foreign-Policy Advisor; retired Ambassador Gerald Feierstein; and Foreign Policy magazine Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Tepperman. Congress members conservative Arizona Representative Andy Biggs and progressive Representatives Pramila Jayapal from Washington and Ro Khanna from California will also speak.

We are delighted to see that General Petraeus is one of the speakers at the conference because he wrote in a powerful way about one transpartisan principle having to do with the empowerment of citizens to promote social and political development and reduce conflict. In a widely-cited article in 2006, he laid out fourteen basic principles of counterinsurgency warfare.* His first principle relied on T. E. Lawrence (in 1917) writing about empowerment of the Arabs. His principal strategy for doing this was to give them authority in making and implementing plans. This would in turn encourage them to take leadership in promoting social and political development, thus promoting solidarity against external enemies. A common mechanism for thus motivating them is by sharing ownership of schools, wells, and other resources important for local welfare. Such empowerment would add significantly to local assets supporting economic and political development, following examples of successful civil society empowerment programs in many areas.

Most importantly, this event signals growing awareness of the “Transpartisan” impulse and the transpartisan vision toward which it points. The Quincy Institute announcement of this forum says “Volatility in the Middle East and tensions between the U.S. and Iran have reached a new high, while public frustration with U.S. military involvements, and transpartisan calls for restraint, suggest a historic opening for a new mode of American foreign policy.”

The transpartisan impulse points to historic openings on every issue throughout the American Political Matrix. The Foreign Policy – Quincy Institute Forum opens the door to transpartisan foreign policy. We will be there reporting on the forum’s events.

* LTG David Petraeus, “Learning Counterinsurgency: Observations from Soldiering in Iraq”, Military Review, January/February 2006.

Brexit Has Arrived

Transpartisan Note #121

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

New York Times writer, Richard Seymore, in his op-ed Brexit Has Arrived, But Boris Johnson’s Reign Is Just Beginning, offers a glimpse of the left/right amalgamation that drove England out of the EU, propelled Boris Johnson into a “Conservative” Parliamentary majority (by “borrowing” traditionally labor votes), and secured promises, and even some action, on some of Labour Party’s strongest held positions, such as expanding funding to the National Health Service.

But by fulfilling his pledge, Seymore writes, Mr. Johnson has won enormous good will from nationalist voters across England and Wales. Outside the European Union, he will also have more scope to change the British government’s role in the economy. This gives him a unique opportunity to do what his predecessors could not: build a lasting popular base for the Conservative Party. Mr. Johnson can now take advantage of his big majority to overhaul British capitalism, incentivizing long-term Conservative voters while permanently annexing chunks of the Labour Party’s historic base.

This article, written on January 31st, Brexit Day – the day England left the European Union – states, with his signature campaign promise fulfilled, “the prime minister can now reshape Britain for a generation.” But Seymore cautions us to remember who Boris Johnson is:

Mr. Johnson is not a nationalist by conviction. He is the epitome of the “reckless opportunists” that, as the sociologist Aeron Davis says, run Britain. His voting record in Parliament shows him to be slightly more liberal than his party. But his performance over the last few months — during which he agitated against Parliament, accused opponents of “collaboration” with Europe, and saber-rattled against the courts and media — showed him to be adept at using the far right’s template. Whenever the contradictions in his government threaten to unravel, he is likely to return to these tactics.

Our initial, “first blush” impression suggests to us that the Prime Minister is combining the Order-Left and Freedom-Right quadrants of the Transpartisan Matrix. This also suggest to us that, like any two-quadrant political approach, Johnson fasces choppy waters ahead.

The waters could smooth if either the Order-Right or Free-Left quadrants embrace the Johnson program. Of course, from our point of view, the most lasting solution comes from an integration of all four quadrants. We see the Transpartisan Matrix pointing a way forward for Johnson after Brexit. What do you see?

(Image CC BY-ND 2.0 by the Boris Johnson campaign, photo by Andrew Parsons.)

Trump’s “Sturm und Drang”

Transpartisan Note #120

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

In his January 9th N.Y. Times op-ed, provocatively titled Trump Has Made Us All Stupid, self-described “conservative columnist” David Brooks says we Americans are all mixed up in trying to understand the real issue behind the Trump-led killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, turning it into another American fight over the character/nature/syntax of Donald Trump.

This “fear-stoking apocalyptic language,” Brooks explains, disguises the real important issue at the core of the matter: what, if any, role can the US play in insuring peace, not war, in the Middle East.

We at The Transpartisan Review believe that the Transpartisan Matrix helps sort out the overheated, media-fueled rhetorical combat. Do you see the Matrix in Brooks’ examination of the oratorical battle surrounding Iran and the Soleimani killing?

In Trump Has Made Us All Stupid he writes:

“We fight viciously about Trump, but underneath, a populist left-right curtain is descending around America, separating us from the Mideast, China, even Europe. The real high-risk move is the one both parties are making together: that if we ignore the world it will ignore us. (It won’t.)”

“…the anti-Trump echo chamber is becoming a mirror image of Trump himself.”

“Most of this week’s argument about the Middle East wasn’t really about the Middle East. It was all narcissistically about ourselves!”

“Love or hate him, Trump has used military force less than any other president since Jimmy Carter.”

“And this is the final paradox. For all the “Sturm und Drang” that surrounds Trump, populist Republicans and Democrats are gravitating toward the same foreign policy: We’re in the middle of a clash of civilizations; the Middle East is so screwed up, we should just get out; we’re too stupid/ineffective/racist/imperialistic to do any good there anyway.”

We transpartisan advocates see a Transpartisan Matrix of Order/Left and Freedom/Right sorting our sense of the “multiplicity of impulses” Brooks writes about and, when integrated, how they might create useful policy.

What do you see?

(The term Sturm und Drang first appeared as the title of a play by Friedrich Maximilian Klinger, written for Abel Seyler’s Seylersche Schauspiel-Gesellschaft and published in 1776. Sturm und Drang came to be associated with literature or music aimed at shocking the audience or imbuing them with extremes of emotion. From Wikipedia.)

A Historian’s View of Brexit

Transpartisan Note #119

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

David Edgerton (@DEHEdgerton), a professor of history at Kings College London and the author, most recently, of “The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History” tells an arresting story of the “British nation” as a post WWII construct that began to disappear during the 1970s and 80s.

In a recent N.Y. Times op-ed, “Boris Johnson Might Break Up the U.K. That’s a Good Thing,” Mr. Edgerton suggests that “it’s time to let the fantasy of the ‘British nation’ die”, writing:

“The idea of breaking up the union isn’t quite as outrageous as it might seem. The ‘United Kingdom’ is neither ancient nor stable. Before 1945, ‘national’ Irish, Welsh, Scottish and English identities were for many not local varieties of national Britishness but part of something much bigger: an imperial identity.

“British World War II propaganda explained that the United Kingdom was just one equal element of a British Commonwealth of Nations that, along with India and the colonies, made up ‘the British Empire.’ It was the empire that fought the war, not the United Kingdom. Soldiers died for king and country” — but that country had no name. No one died for ‘the United Kingdom.’

“After 1945, ‘Britain’ — a national United Kingdom — was one of many post-imperial constructions that emerged from the ashes of the British Empire. From then into the 1970s, the United Kingdom existed as a coherent economic, political and ideological unit, distinct from the rest of the world. There was a national British economy, a national British Army and a national British politics dominated by two national, unionist parties. It was a brief period of British nationhood. In fact, it was the only one. This national United Kingdom was broken up economically starting in the 1970s by the closely related processes of globalization and deepening economic integration with Europe.”

To us at The Transpartisan Review, we see the Order/Freedom – Left/Right Matrix creating a way to account for the powerful transitional/trans-national forces rocking the British Isles—and every other nation of the world. Pundits were surprised when working class Labor and more affluent Conservative party members seemed to vote against their personal economic self-interest in the 2016 Brexit Referendum to pull Great Britain out of the European Union. The spectacle deepened as former Labor and Conservative prime ministers broke with their parties to endorse “remain” candidates of all stripes in the 2019 General Election.

Unpredicted strange-bedfellow votes brought down two Conservative prime ministers and, as in many other countries, a media-master entertainer arrived at the seat of “power” (if sitting in the front seat of a runaway train can be called the seat of power). Boris Johnson, the consummate actor that he is, then proceeded to summarily expel twenty-one (some high profile) members from his Conservative party. All this to keep the “extreme right” (pundit talk) from driving the country off other rails.

We think the Transpartisan Matrix offers an additional way to look at the forces loose in the land and the way we are relating to them. Do you see the Matrix in these events?

(Image by ChiralJon and licensed CC BY 2.0.)

Find the Matrix: Evangelicals

Transpartisan Note #118

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

If you are a subscriber to our weekly Transpartisan Mailing, you are aware, for the past year, we have been sharing “Find the Matrix” articles from major news outlets as examples of the application of our Transpartisan Matrix. On December 19, in the article “Trump Should Be Removed from Office,” Christianity Today’s editor-in-chief wrote, in the very spirit of transpartisan:

We have reserved judgment on Mr. Trump for years now. Some have criticized us for our reserve. But when it comes to condemning the behavior of another, patient charity must come first. So, we have done our best to give evangelical Trump supporters their due, to try to understand their point of view, to see the prudential nature of so many political decisions they have made regarding Mr. Trump.

This editorial launched a nation-wide conversation focused on the political role of religious leaders and the evangelical press.

In this week’s “Find the Matrix” article, “Journalist leaves Christian Post amid its plans to attack Christianity Today,” Sarah Pullman Bailey of the Washington Post explores the impact of this conversation which recently included the resignation of a Christian Post journalist, Napp Nazworth, in protest of a Christian Post article condemning Christianity Today.

In our time of powerful forces – demographic, technological, economic, moral and others – sweeping across the country and the globe, every institution feels its moorings shifting. This Washington Post article on the ‘Trump Evangelicals’ and Trump’s evangelical critics shows the Transpartisan Matrix form taking shape within the ranks of American Evangelism. Making up about 25% of the American population, Evangelicals occupy various political positions on various issues.

To get a flavor of the history and development of Evangelical politics, see Wikipedia entries on Evangelicalism in the United States and on the Evangelical Left. In the Washington Post article, note the references to efforts at dialogue – sticking to religious, moral and biblical issues; staying away from explicitly political issues; and questioning the notion that the Bible defines who a Christian should vote for. These would tend toward what we call Transpartisan comments.

For a further context to consider in grasping the Evangelical situation in relation to politics in general and Trump in particular, note the following articles. In 2016, The Gospel Coalition shared “No, the Majority of American Evangelicals Did Not Vote for Trump” which suggests that about 35% of American Evangelicals voted for Trump and explains how the author arrived at that number. The data-driven Outside the Walls regularly posts “This Week’s Shocking Stats” about religion in America. It reports only 8% of regular church attenders believe that sharing their faith is ‘very important.’

When looking at Evangelicals in American politics, it is useful to remember that the most successful Evangelical in those politics remains Democrat Jimmy Carter, 39^th President of the United States. In 2018, Cater wrote in Faith: A Journey for All:

“I believe now, more than then, that Christians are called to plunge into the life of the world, and to inject the moral and ethical values of our faith into the processes of governing.”

The powerful forces roiling the Earth flow through every institution, including those of American Evangelicals. Read the articles and look for the Matrix.

(Feature image by ToBeDaniel and shared as CC BY 3.0 on Wikimedia.)