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I was hanging out with Doc in Santa Barbara the day after the UCSB CITS Forum on Digital Transitions, when he threw away one of his many throwaway lines. “Most people go wrong because they fall in love with their own rectitude. It keeps them from being practical.” Our usual scatological riffs began, so I immediately labeled him:

Doc Searls, Practicologist

I’m not sure what kind of scope we can use to peer up each other’s rectitudes, but we sorely need one. In Sunday’s NYTimes Magazine, Peter Beinart offered The Rehabilitation of the Cold-War Liberal, suggesting that old-school cold-war liberals can provide a circumspect model to lead America out of our current long days journey into right:

In America, no less than in the Islamic world, the struggle for democracy relies on economic opportunity. To contemporary ears, the phrase “struggle for American democracy” sounds odd. In George W. Bush’s Washington, such struggles are for lesser nations. But in the liberal tradition, it is not odd at all. Almost six decades ago, Americans for Democratic Action was born, in the words of its first national director, to wage a “two-front fight for democracy, both at home and abroad,” recognizing that the two were ultimately indivisible. That remains true today. America is not a fixed model for a benighted world. It is the democratic struggle here at home, against the evil in our society, that offers a beacon to people in other nations struggling against the evil in theirs. “The fact of the matter,” Kennan declared, “is that there is a little bit of the totalitarian buried somewhere, way down deep, in each and every one of us.” America can be the greatest nation on earth, as long as Americans remember that they are inherently no better than anyone else.

In other words, we are being hoisted by our own rectitude. This is a theme that many have tried to teach us. Just the other day, Musician Neil Young offered a clue when interviewed by Showbiz Tonight’s fabulously big-haired Sibila Vargas. Forgive a moment of ad wominem carping: I swear, as David Weinberger reports, these words actually escape her collagen-blessed lips: “You’ve got one song, called ‘Let’s Impeach the President’ What is this song about?” 

A question so colossally dumb that Young hardly knows what to do with it.

She goes on to ask if he’s concerned that he’ll be considered unpatriotic, suggesting that “cynics” might say that Neil Young is capitalizing on the Bush backlash to sell more records and that he might not be justified in saying these things because he’s a Canadian (who has lived in the US longer than Sibila Vargas has been alive. If this made-for-TV hottie had a triple-digit IQ, she might have better questions.

Neil Young: “If you have a conscience, you can’t go through your day without realizing what’s going on and questioning, and saying, ‘Is this right?’ We have to be cognizant of the fact that we can make mistakes. That’s part of freedom. We don’t all have to believe in what our President believes to be patriotic. . . No one, George Bush or anyone else, owns the 9-11 mentality.”

She still didn’t get it. “Are you concerned about any backlash?” Young: “I’m not in the least bit concerned. I expect it. I respect other people’s opinions. That’s what makes the United States and Canada great is the fact that you can differ from your friends you can still sit down at the same table and break bread with your friend.”

Don’t miss the Anchor’s heated, pointed retort to the surprised Sibila: “It’s terrific hearing Neil Young speaking out on this very controversial subject, and, on the theme of what he said, anybody who feels that the themes of this album are motivated by the need for publicity, I think that‘s ridiculous.”

As Victor Frankel put it:

“From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two  the “race” of the decent man and the “race” of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people. In this sense, no group is of “pure race”  and therefore one occasionally found a decent fellow among the camp guards.

“Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its depths. Is it surprising that in those depths we again found only human qualities which in their very nature were a mixture of good and evil? The rift dividing good and evil, which goes through all human beings, reaches into the lowest depths and becomes apparent even on the bottom of the abyss which is laid open by the concentration camp.”

Al Solzhenitsyn Chimes In

Then there’s the Alexander Solzhenitsyn viewpoint, troubling to absolutists because he’s an even more famous concentration camp survivor, in his native Russia.

“The universal dividing line between good and evil runs not between countries, not between nations, not between parties, not between classes, not between good and bad men: the dividing line cuts across nations and parties, shifting constantly. . . . It divides the heart of every man.”

Old News

Why Bother?

“For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best. So let us be alert – alert in a twofold sense:

Yep, we need to guard against our own rectitude and its codependent, Certitude.
11:02:09 PM