The Politics of Mutually Assured Destruction

On August 6th, 1945 at 8:15 in morning the United States dropped a nuclear bomb out of the bottom of a B-29 Super Fortress flying over Hiroshima. 44 seconds later, it detonated 2,000 feet above the city, instantly killing 70,000 of the city’s 350,000 inhabitants. 115 days into his term, President Truman authorized the beginning of the age of nuclear weapons. On his 118^th day he confirmed it by authorizing a second nuclear attack on Nagasaki that killed 55,000 of its 240,000 inhabitants. Five days later, the Empire of Japan surrendered, ending the war that started 57 months earlier with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. By August,1945 the United States stood alone in the world with the power to win any war it chose through use of nuclear weapons.

We would not be alone for long.

By 1949, Russia would join America as a nuclear power. The United Kingdom followed in 1952. France joined by 1960.

By 1953 with the development of the Hydrogen bomb, the capability of nuclear weapons began to transition from the capacity to end a war to the capacity to end the world. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of nuclear weapons wrote in an article in Foreign Affairs that year about the U.S. and the Soviets being on a path where they would soon be “two scorpions in a bottle each capable of killing the other, only at the risk of his own life.”

In a letter to his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles from September of 1953, President Eisenhower showed how earnestly he measured our options. “We would be forced to consider whether or not our duty to future generations did not require us to initiate war at the most propitious moment we could designate.” Few realize how close we came to a pre-emptive strike on the Soviet Union. Much to his credit, Eisenhower wrestled the initiative of nuclear weapons from those who would wield them for tactical utility by making their impact a global societal prerogative. Only something the President could do. And we soon settled on a policy of massive response as Dulles would put it, to “retain the mighty land power of the Communist world.”

By the Kennedy administration, the Soviet Union and the United States reached the plateau of mutually assured destruction. We both possessed the quantity and delivery methods of nuclear weapons at a scale to ensure that one could destroy the other even if they managed to shoot second. The optimistic outcome of such a predicament was the reduction of the risk of atomic war in service to self-preservation. In 1962 the Cuban missile crisis would test that theory.

The world was on edge while the U.S. and the Soviet Union stood at the brink of nuclear war over the discovery of the tactical placement of nuclear missiles 90 miles from the U.S. in Cuba. As President Kennedy measured his options for response, he contacted Iowa corn seed salesmen Roswell Garst.

Three years earlier Russian Premier Vladimir Khrushchev visited Garst to discuss corn seeds. More specifically, the he was interested in increasing the output of Russia’s crop to better feed his people. Kennedy learned from Garst the only material thing that anyone has to know about nuclear war amongst the backdrop of mutually assured destruction. He knew that the other guy wasn’t interested in the extinction of his people. That was the key to Kennedy opening up a back channel of communication that ultimately ended the crisis without war.

According to the CIA fact book, eight countries, the U.S., Russia, U.K., France, China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea have successfully detonated a nuclear bomb. Israel is rumored to be able to, but has not been confirmed. In 2011 the Atomic Energy Agency released a publication citing “credible” information that Iran may be developing a nuclear weapon. That’s where we are today, 70 years after we started.

This September, Congress will vote to approve or reject a deal that would halt nuclear weapons development in Iran in return for the lifting of long-standing economic sanctions. Critics of the deal state that it will enable Iran to develop weapons earlier than the present policy would enable. Supporters believe it will not. That is a gross over simplification of the details but it’s a fair summation of the principles of the argument. There’s something horribly wrong with the debate though. And it’s politics. When asked about Iran and nuclear weapons, 99 year old Bernard Lewis, the uncontested greatest living authority on 20^th century Middle Eastern history and culture, gave dire warning. When it comes to mutually assured destruction, he stated, “for them (Iran), it’s not a deterrent. It’s an inducement.” Which in corn seed salesmen terms means, the other guy might be ok with extinction. Which means that Iran and Israel are quickly approaching territory with nuclear weapons that we haven’t seen in 60 years.

And we’re addressing this issue the same way we’re debating taxes or healthcare or gun control; right down party lines. And that’s a problem.

With such enormity of consequence, I ask not a specific outcome for the vote. To be clear, it’s a complicated issue. But it’s not one beyond the grasp of the legislative body of the most powerful democracy the world has ever seen. It’s going to take a more evolved approach than politics though; one more suitable to the task. One adopted by former New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Thomas Friedman. You see, Tom Friedman won the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for his coverage of the war in Lebanon. He won it again in 1988 for his reporting on Israel. He won it again in 2002 for reporting on the impact of international terrorism. It’s safe to say that Tom knows more about Middle Eastern affairs than any ten members of congress. About the time that our elected officials were downloading their opinions from their partisan benefactors, Tom Freidman said this. “Personally, I want more time to study the deal, hear from the nonpartisan experts, listen to what the Iranian leaders tell their own people and hear what credible alternative strategies the critics have to offer.” This one matters too much, to settle for any less. But right now, less is what we’re getting. Let history remind us, 70 years to the day since it started, what power is at stake here, and what ends we must gain in order to survive.

election military Politics presidents war

The Prospect of Service

Of the 20 Americans that have officially announced their candidacy for President of the United States for the 2016 election, three have served on active duty in the United States armed forces. One, Lindsey Graham (R) was a JAG (military for lawyer) in the Air Force. One, Rick Perry (R), was a cargo pilot in the post Vietnam era Air Force. One, Jim Webb (D), is a real life honest to goodness bona fide war hero, having been awarded the Navy Cross (one step down from the Medal of Honor) Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart for his service in Vietnam. Which means that of those who have raised their hand to participate in the pursuit of our country’s highest office of public service, 15% of them have served in our armed forces; 5% in war. Though that may seem low, and it certainly is relative to previous presidential races, it’s actually more than representative of our overall population base with respect to military service. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, presently, about 7% of Americans have ever served on active duty in the military. And so we should be somewhat satisfied by our turnout of candidates. Somehow it doesn’t feel that way though. Perhaps because we hold the office to a higher standard. Perhaps because we value military service differently than other vocations when it comes to presidentiality. As usual though, if we take a look at the history behind it, we can gain some perspective on how much this really matters.

Does military service matter? At the highest level, there’s an interesting pattern that makes logical sense when you take some time to think about it. We’ve had three presidents who have served in the highest ranks during a time of war and have therefore met what we would consider to be the most relevant prior experience to being commander in chief. Washington, Grant and Eisenhower all were, in whatever historically appropriate capacity possible, the highest ranking officer engaged in the highest level of combat during our three most consequential armed conflicts. Of the 24 years those three men served as president, a total of 6 months was spent at war, the sole contribution to our war history being the 186 days it took for Ike to pull the plug on Korea. Now, there’s a case to be made that those men had seen war and therefore had no stomach for more of it. Which we know from their memoir’s is at least a little true. What probably played more of a factor was simple chronology though. Being “General of the Army” is not a young man’s game. So if you were doing it at the time of war, and you went on to become president, you did so in a very short period of time, within the scope of a decade in each case. We tend to steer clear of large scale war within the scope of the same generation if we can help it. And so the requirement for lofty military command to qualify a presidential candidate for the job is not one that history supports.

If we flip the question around and ask what was the prior military experience of our most effective commanders in chief, we get a somewhat surprising answer. For one, we actually didn’t have a president during our first important war, the American Revolution. So when we look at those who played critically tactical roles as President, the list is quite short. It includes two men with exactly zero days of active duty service in the military. Lincoln and FDR were, head and shoulders above the rest, the most important and successful commanders in chief to ever hold the office of President. When you think about the scope and scale of their burden, it’s remarkable all that they were able to accomplish. Lincoln waged war a stone’s throw from the White House personally transmitting orders to generals in the field from the War Department Telegraph room. FDR engaged daily with a joint allied staff on strategy in Europe and the Pacific until the day he died. The decisions these men both made, regularly, are unequaled in their complexity and their impact on the nation and the world. Neither ever wore a uniform.

History makes a pretty strong case. Military service is a poor predictor of performance as commander in chief. So does it matter at all? If not as a qualification to lead the military, then what does it tell us? Does it tell us a candidate is dedicated to a life of service? Perhaps, but to be honest, agree with their politics or not, the list of 20 or so names on this candidate list includes hundreds of years of public service not specific to the military. So, it’s not really about service either. But it is about something. To be clear its actually about two things.

First, it’s a validation that at some point in their life, a candidate has done something that took some grit. Of the three war-time deployments that I had, two were with what we’ll call elite units. The third, the one that I’m least likely to tell war stories about at parties, was with what we would call a “conventional” unit. That deployment, by a country mile, was the one that absolutely beat me down the most. It was brutal relentless and absolutely representative of what most of our men and women in uniform experience when they deploy. So when we see someone who has served, we can say with confidence, that at some point in their lives, they lived through a truly trying experience. Which is something to benchmark them with when so much of everything else that we see out of them feels less genuine and more contrived. Military service is real. And there’s no way to hide from the “suck”. When you look at this field of 20, it definitely feels light on grit. But maybe that’s just from where I’m sitting.

The other thing that prior military service does, and this is more relevant for war time service, is that it validates resiliency. Which is actually entirely different than being a hero. There’s something to the notion that heroism is less important than recovery. My experience during the 14 years of war that we’ve been engaged in is a fairly common one for those that served. I saw less “action” than those who served in the worst of it, yet more than those that managed to serve in more peripheral roles. Of the 20 or so months I spent in active war zones, I can clearly count two instances where I legitimately thought that I was going to die. Some level of danger and vigilance were constants but those moments where I actually thought that I wasn’t getting out of it were rare. And frankly, the reason I did was because of luck and other people, not heroism or skill. The fall out of those events was not necessarily contributory to a life well lived either. That which does not kill us…sometimes leaves us with nightmares, anxiety and a propensity to self medicate. There’s something important that follows though. We’re beginning to talk about this more these days but we used to ignore it entirely. It’s the recovery that matters. The richest part of the human experience is the walk back to the path our life was on when something knocks us off of it. And so for men like James Webb, it’s less about the citation from his Navy Cross, which I encourage you to read, and more about what he no doubt went through in the years after he returned from war to live the worthy and full life that he has. It’s not that you can’t get those experiences without serving. War simply tends to provide those that experience it with more acute opportunities to survive.

With all this in mind, what should we be considering when it comes to military service and our presidential candidates? I think it’s the following question. What did a candidate do with the prospect of military service? For some, because of the time in which they lived and the paths that their lives have taken, the opportunity to serve simply never materialized as a serious consideration. And that’s ok. Lincoln and FDR show that. But for others, the prospect of service was a question that couldn’t be avoided, like those of the “Greatest Generation”. Of the eight presidents that held office after WWII, all of them actively served in some capacity in the military during the war. A little closer to home for this election, there’s the question of Vietnam service. What did a candidate do with prospect of serving in Vietnam? Did they pursue it? Did they leave it to fate? Or did they run from it? I think it’s fair to put the last of those three choices into the “not suitable” bucket. But that’s just my opinion. And it’s an opinion informed by asking that one critical question of what a candidate did with the prospect of service. The snapshot in time that will be the 2016 election is as such that we ought to be slightly fine with the lean yield of the answer to that question. But the future will likely hold a very different outcome. Here’s why.

My generation of service member has been at war a long time. For many of us, we spent our whole professional careers at war. I was deployed when the war started and finished my active duty career months before the end of combat operations in Iraq. Our chance to participate in a new life of service is coming. And when it does, the question of the prospect of service will become much more important. My generation has been knocked far off of life’s path and for those of us fortunate to make the long journey back to it, there will be a calling to serve again. We’ve seen much, sacrificed more and fear little. And our time is coming. So when 2024 rolls around or maybe even 2020, ask yourself that question with regard to your candidate of choice. What did they do with the prospect of service? Because what it tells of my generation is important. And we’re getting closer to the door every day.

history Politics social isues

Sharing is Caring: Our Memes and What They Say About Us

Meme mēm/ noun

1. an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.

2. a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc. that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users.

Like it or not, what we share, like or retweet in our social media presence actually says something about us. I know many of us spend little time filtering or applying judgement to such a simple action as hitting a button on our smart phones or web browsers. My Facebook newsfeed is a clear testament to that. But what we choose to share is after all, a choice. So I took some time over the last few weeks to capture some of the memes that illustrate some common themes that my “friends” have chosen to share. Here’s a little slice of what I found and what opinions it may serve to inform about those who chose to share them.

1. The Warning From The Past

What it sounds like to the rest of us:

“I’m not that big on understanding the history of America, but I’ve got an opinion about what’s historically been good for her”

I’m about as big a fan of Abraham Lincoln as you are going to find. But finding and using a quote by Abraham Lincoln as a warning against executive overreach is akin to using a Bill Clinton quote to warn about the dangers of infidelity or finding a John Boehner quote highlighting the evils of spray tan. Lincoln’s presidency, beginning to end, is a shining example of the expansion of executive power; thankfully or we might be two countries today. Most of the legislation he did sign was passed by a congress who lost a little less than half of its members because they quit the government and started their own country in protest. More over, The Emancipation Proclamation, issued in 1863 declaring all slaves living in states participating in the rebellion free, is considered the Babe Ruth of all executive directives. A meme like this is a softball for anyone who remembers third grade social studies, but I’ve seen it shared by educated people who should know better about a dozen times. Apparently, when we see something that agrees with our gut, context and accuracy play little role in whether or not we want to share it.

2. The Obscure, Unverifiable Reference

What it sounds like to the rest of us:

“I don’t know who this is or if he said it and neither do you but man does it sound smart.”

Louis Brandeis served with distinction on the United States Supreme Court from 1916 to 1939 during which time he wrote countless dissenting and majority opinions. He also published a book Other People’s Money and How Bank’s Use It. He was without a doubt a supporter for social causes and considered progressive for his time. There is, however, nothing in any of the volumes of his work that remotely resembles this quote. He may have said it, but no one knows when. I’ve seen it multiple times on my own Facebook feed and if I didn’t have a sworn policy against sharing memes, I probably would have shared it myself. Which is one of the reasons I don’t share these things. Because frankly, I have absolutely no idea if it’s accurate. And that matters to me.

3. The Playful Quip About the Good Ole Days

What it sounds like to the rest of us:

“I’m older…and new things scare me.”

If there’s one consistent theme that lives throughout history it’s the notion that the next generation is completely screwed up, at least compared to the last one….according to the last one. The simple truth is that each generation is better equipped to handle the next fifty years than it is to handle the last fifty years. Which is scary for those of us who learned how to live in the last fifty years. I see it in the interns that we pull into my tech firm each summer who do things that I couldn’t imagine were possible at their age. I was a history major for crying out loud. Most of the things that run our world today didn’t exist 20 years ago when I was in school. That’s a little frightening for some people so we have to come up with something to help us feel empowered. And that’s youth bashing. Here’s the thing about kids these days. We’re right. They’re not cut out for the industrial world. Which is actually good for them because we don’t live in the industrial world any more. And yes, they lack wisdom and social skills and can seem entitled. Because they are. Because they’re young. And just like the world moved forward with every screwed up generation in the past, it will move forward with them. So try to spend a little time understanding what they can do well. Because its what people will be doing for the next 50 years.

What else it says to us:

“I think it’s a good idea to beat your kids.”

As a licensed foster care provider and someone married to a mental health professional, I can say with some experience and authority exactly one thing about parenting. If you want to ensure that your children have the best chance of being a destructive, non-functioning member of society, go ahead and beat them regularly. It’s the most common thread amongst people with substance abuse, a history of violence or a propensity to abuse their own children. So, thank you FM 95.9 The Hawk (Southern Utah’s Classic Rock) for sharing your support for beating your kids. If anyone actually listened to FM radio any more, this may have actually bothered someone.

4. The Slippery Slope

What it says To the Rest Of Us:

“I’m Crazy”

I have more than one Facebook friend who shared this. In doing so they freely proclaimed that they are so warped by their own political views that they’ve confused advocating for healthcare, gun control and immigration reform with murdering 11 million people because of their ethnicity or disabilities and invading 16 countries on three continents en route to starting the deadliest armed conflict in the history of mankind. Fortunately for us, that slope isn’t that slippery. And if you think it is, you may be crazy.

So What?

It’s good fun to poke fun at those who are predisposed to share their political views through the venue of social media. After all, this is a blog about political and social issues and those that choose to do so through the turnstile of sharing or liking memes are pretty easy targets. There’s an important message in here somewhere though. It’s this. A lot of this stuff actually matters. This isn’t Yankees v Red Sox where you get to spout off endless rhetoric about how you loathe Derek Jeter and how he’s over rated despite all evidence to the contrary. This isn’t reality TV where it’s open season to poke fun at or mock those who voluntarily allow us into their lives to do so. Those things don’t matter so if you want to invest no time in forming your opinion on them and continue to distribute nonsense, that’s acceptable and encouraged. It’s all in good fun. When it comes to political and social issues though, remember one thing. You’re participating in generating a collective opinion about things that actually effect people’s lives. So that should require some thought. Don’t like Obamacare? That’s your right as an American to disagree with the government. But there are 17 million people who get get healthcare through that bill, many of which couldn’t without it so before you spread rhetoric about it, do a little work to understand it. Think our foreign enemies view our country as weak and we need to go put “boots on the ground” to go teach someone a lesson? That’s your right to believe it. But someone has to go do that and someone’s going to die in service to that opinion. So do a little work to inform it. So what am I asking for? It’s pretty basic really. Before you hit share, ask yourself two questions. 1) Does this issue have a material impact on someone’s life? 2) Do I actually have any substantive knowledge about it? If it’s “yes” to #1 and “no” to #2, just move on. If you can’t do that, then at least understand how it sounds to the rest of us who can.

crime data Deep Dive gun control Politics poverty

Guns, People and Poverty: A Study in What Kills Who

Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. It’s a logical statement and one that’s hard to argue against. It usually pops up in some form on your social media stream in the aftermath of a mass shooting. Clearly it’s unfortunate that mass shootings happen with enough regularity to be able to present a pattern. The patterned response exists nonetheless. Since it does, we probably owe it to ourselves to do a little digging on its validity. So we did. We compiled data from three sources: the CIA Fact Book, The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and the World Bank Group. In doing so we were able to establish a complete data set on 71 countries from all regions of the globe that could provide current data on socioeconomic status, homicide, gun violence and urban/rural population density. What the data shows was very telling. Here’s what we found:

If you are going to murder someone, you’re probably going to do it with a gun

Of all the homicides in the 71 countries that contributed to the analysis, two-thirds of them were committed with a firearm. By itself this data point alone says nothing specifically about whether or not guns actually contribute to the chance that someone is going to get murdered. It only shows that the method of choice in homicides is a gun. It leaves plenty of room for the argument that once a person decides to kill someone, they’re going to do it by any means available. The gun is simply the most available. It’s not an impossible argument, though its hard to imagine how people would figure out how to pick up the slack in the absence of such an efficient tool as the gun.

An interesting pattern appears when you include the overall homicide rate along with the percentage of homicides committed by firearm though. What we saw was that as homicide rates rise, so does the percentage of homicides committed by gun. Take Honduras for example, the murder capital of the world at almost twice the murder rate of the next most murderous country Venezuela. The percent of homicides by firearm in Honduras is 83%. Venezuela’s is 80%. On the other end of the spectrum we have Denmark. Denmark has the lowest homicide rate of any country in the analysis. Less than a third of their homicides were committed by firearm. What the data tells us is pretty clear. If you want to contend for the title of murder capital of the world, you can’t do it without using guns. After all, if you’re in the volume business, efficiency is key. When it comes to killing, guns are as efficient as it gets.

Guns alone actually don’t kill people.

Does the presence of guns alone lead to gun violence? Chalk one up for the gun advocate lobby here. The amount of civilian owned firearms in any given country alone actually has no correlation to the homicide rate. According to the annual UN survey, there’s a lot more guns out there then you would think. Our love affair with the firearm in America is well publicized. With 88 guns for every 100 people, our reputation is warranted. We’re more than twice the next highest country. Not far behind us in the rankings is a country like France. France has about 31 firearms for every 100 people. Both the U.S. and France are nowhere near the top of the homicide list, despite being at the top of the list of the countries with most civilian owned firearms though. To answer the narrowly focused question, do guns kill people? The data is clear. Guns alone do not kill people. There’s a trend hiding in the data though. You just need to add one more ingredient to see it.

Something very interesting happens when you include poverty in the analysis. What we see is that though having a lot of guns does not make for a dangerous society, adding poor people and guns together does. Take a country like Liberia in West Africa. Liberia is the poorest country in the analysis with 80% of its population living below the poverty line. With that level of poverty, it’s pretty easy to assume that they also have a high homicide rate. That would be a poor assumption. You’re actually more likely to get murdered walking the streets in America than in Liberia. In fact you’re almost 50% more likely. Why? Again, the data is pretty clear. Liberia has no guns. Liberia has one gun for every 100 Liberians. We have 88.

Liberia isn’t an outlier either. Chad, Niger, Senegal, India, Bangladesh and Cambodia are all countries with huge poverty rates from different regions of the globe that all have the types of low homicide rates that rival first world countries. They also all rank in the lower third of all countries in civilian owned guns. When you add guns to poverty you have places like Honduras, Colombia, Mexico and South Africa. These titans of murder find themselves in the top third in poverty and civilian firearm ownership. The data is clear and unambiguous. The secret sauce that leads to the highest murder rates in the world is one part poverty, one part fire arms. Guns don’t kill people. Poor people with guns kill poor people.

So what about America?

Using the Liberia example again we can actually do a pretty useful comparison. If you live in Liberia, you are five times more likely to live below the poverty line than in America. If you live in America you are 88 times more likely to own a firearm than if you live in Liberia. If you live in America, you are 50% more likely to be murdered than if you live in Liberia. There’s really only one theory to take away from that comparison. Either we Americans are just inherently more violent than Liberians, or it has something to do with the guns. When you add other countries into that same comparison and we see the same thing over and over again, we start to approach a pretty sound conclusion. Our propensity to own firearms appears to make us less safe than other first world countries and even some third world ones. But if guns alone don’t make us unsafe, which is what we clearly stated previously, then why are we less safe then other countries?

For one, we have so many more guns than everyone else, it’s almost impossible to think that there would be no consequences to that. Even if you were willing to make that leap though, there’s another interesting dynamic with America that you have to consider. Though we are undoubtedly one of the world’s most prosperous countries, we have a much higher poverty rate than our more socialist or communist counterparts. This is no commentary on the evils of capitalism. I’m a big fan. So let’s quickly get past that. What is important though is the fact that we do have concentrated pockets poverty that also have high civilian gun ownership. The result of this is that though our national homicide rate is low relative to the whole group, the consequences of the pattern of poverty and guns on our urban areas has an acutely destructive impact on them. Let’s use Chicago as an example. Chicago is the murder capital of the United States. Pockets of Chicago’s South and West Side have between 40-60% of their residents living below the poverty level. Now add the high civilian gun ownership rate that is experienced across America, you get a very rough outcome.

Numerically speaking, the Chicago Metropolitan area has a homicide rate that would put it in the top ten countries on the planet wedged between Nigeria and Panama. Chicago is not alone. Baltimore is actually worse percentage wise. It’s on par with Rwanda. Yes, Rwanda, the place with the movies about genocide. Even less prolific metropolitan areas like Philadelphia, from a homicide perspective, are on par with places like Angola or the Sudan. When you put it in perspective, it starts to feel like something that requires more than a bumper sticker for a solution.

So What?
The striking conclusion that we can take away from this broad analysis is that guns are just another one of many aspects of the human experience that make it much harder to be poor. Like drugs, disease, and recessions, adding guns into poor environments has a disproportionately negative effect when compared to more affluent areas. In America, the gun control discussion is one of the most divisive and partisan ones that we encounter. The debate involves special interest groups, culture, tradition and a standing Constitutional debate about what our founding father’s intended. What it rarely involves is fact, data and perspective. When the loudest voice in a debate leads with rhetoric you get bumper stickers and memes instead of informed insights and decisions.

The data is clear. Without question, guns kill people. Not by themselves of course. No one ever claimed that a gun by itself killed anyone. We should find that particular challenge to gun control insufficient if not insulting. When the conviction in a debate is on the side least impacted by the negative outcomes of an issue, it should signal a call for those objective few among us to look harder into reality to demand more of the discussion. The analysis is done. The conclusion is a hard one. Guns kill poor people. Whether or not you care about that is up to you.

history immigration Politics

Fear and Immigration: A Journey Through America’s Sense of Self

The American story is one long continuous struggle to expand our sense of self. Our charter identifies our union as an establishment of the people, by the people, for the people. In that we have been universally consistent. The grand internal struggle has been and still is answering one question. Who are the people?

The great civil rights saga of the past 230 years has played itself out in the form of protest, legislation and even war. Nowhere is this more clear than in the evolution of our immigration policy. Few things serve as a more accurate proxy of our collective efforts to include or exclude than how we guard access to our most sacred gift of citizenship. One underlying theme flows through our past though. Exclusion gives way to inclusion, and our country grows in strength and relevance. We’ve long since determined that the eligibility for the honor of being ordained American lies not in one’s specificity of race or national origin. Hundreds of years of painful, sometimes violent, change has beaten back that particular call for nativism into the dark corners of our society. Instead we have but one more hard question to answer. And this question sits at the heart of our 21^st century immigration debate. How should one become one of “We the people”?

Understanding that we Americans have varying degrees of comfort with the concept of inclusion, it may be hard for some to accept the theme that exclusion giving way to inclusion is universally positive. Taking a little time to study the language of our legislation and the light it sheds on the horrifying ideologies that motivated it can help with that. Here’s what happened over the first 180 years or so.

The United States Naturalization Law of 1790 granted citizenship to free white persons of “good character.” The emphasis of course being on white. We were less specific about the metrics of good character. We added all people born in America with the 14^th Amendment 80 years later after we killed about 600 thousand of each other to solve the question of slavery.

In 1870, we included “aliens of African nativity and persons of African decent” but excluded “all other non-whites” from citizenship. It’s not particularly clear what is included in “all other non-whites” but it was implied that it meant everyone else…in the world.

By the 1890’s we opened the floodgates at Ellis Island and started to realize that we needed a national strategy for immigration. After all, our citizenship laws were pretty basic. White’s and blacks are in. All others are out. There were a lot of other people out there though so we needed to take action. Enter the immigration Act of 1917. The act was specific in barring, “homosexuals, idiots, feeble minded persons, criminals, epeleptics, insane persons, alcoholics, professional beggars (amatuers were fine), all mentally or physically defective, polygamists and anarchists”. And one other group….all Asians. Previously only Chinese were not allowed to immigrate. We let them back in 1943.

By 1921, we shifted to an emergency quota system, which allowed up to 3% of any given national origin, as documented in the 1890 census, to immigrate to the United States. This sounds on the surface to be an equitable approach. Though somehow people of Asian decent still weren’t allowed to be citizens yet. Since most people in America in 1890 were of German, Irish or British decent, from 1921 to 1965, 70% of all immigrants came from those countries. We did make progress though. The Luce-Celler Act let people of Asian decent be real live American citizens in 1946. It also allowed for 100 immigrants a year from each Asian country. Yes….100

Enter the Hart-Celler Act of 1965. This actually, for the most part, is our current policy of record. It focused on skills based Visas and immediate family of American citizens.

Oddly, there’s little mention at all in any of the immigration policies aimed specifically at Latin America. Which is interesting because the term immigration in 2015 is almost entirely about Latinos. Referring to the United States Census Bureau adds to the confusion because Hispanic is actually not a race according to them. It’s an ethnicity. I encourage anyone to read their explanation of the difference and make heads or tails of it.

If you’re confused and amazed and potentially outraged by this collection of facts and timelines, don’t fear, that’s normal. If anything, it strengthens my resolve in the belief that applying high level intellectual thought to the categorization of human beings isn’t a great use of our time.

So what does it all really tell us. It tells us that our history on immigration and citizenship is not a straight line. Our preferences and policies bounce from one crisis to another with knee-jerk reaction to whatever hysteria is happening at the time. Without question though, when you read out loud the actual words of exclusion in our policies, it sounds ridiculous. Because it is. Nowhere in our history does it show a period of inclusion followed by horrifying social or economic outcomes as a result. Since we broadened the scope of our immigration allowances, we have seen a massive influx of people from around the world of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. We are not, however, overrun by foreign-born people. By 2013, 13% of people residing in our country were not born here. With the exception of the 30 years following WWII, 13% is entirely aligned with our historic norms. It’s usually been about 12-13%. Certainly since 1965, innovation and economic growth have not been impacted. We have been and are still as relevant, profitable and prosperous as we’ve ever been. So what’s the problem? It relates back to our original question. How does one become one of “We the people”? In this, we actually find two problems. One of them isn’t hard at all, if we’re honest about it. The other is tougher.

The first problem: What do we do with the 12M undocumented immigrants presently living on our country? This is not going to be a popular answer in certain circles but it’s pretty clear if you look at it through a historically contextual lens. Which is what you do when you want to make a good decision. What we do is we find a way to make as many of those who are not here in a legal status, legal residents with the fastest path to citizenship possible. And we do it quickly. They are already here and participating in our economy and our society. 60% of them are located in six states, Texas, California, Arizona, New Jersey, New York and Florida. Which means that for 44 of our 50 states, this is an issue in principle only. This isn’t about skills either. They’re already doing the work that others won’t. The engine of an upwardly mobile society fires best when those at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum are there because they just arrived; not because they’ve been held there by generations of exclusive and divisive policy (see Jim Crow).

I am also not forgetting that this group of people “broke the law”. One of the wonderful bi-products of military service over the past 15 years or so, is that you get to see the world, one destitute wasteland at a time. In doing so you truly appreciate the beacon of hope and progress that is the first world. Having had that experience, I will not begrudge any person who, assuming they’ve broke no other laws, simply does exactly what I would do if I were born into the hopeless poverty that these people come from. When we’re truly honest with ourselves, most people can find a way to accept that. Unless of course they are in the throws of the second issue. Good old fashion fear. That issue will be more difficult to crack.

The fear of foreigners in our country is as old as our country. From the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, all the way up through our modern debate about undocumented residents, it has been present. The level of fear, like the common ebb and flow of modern opinions tends to be related to our reactions to whichever event we’re closest to in our history. To highlight just how different our views can and have swung, check out a comparison of two national party platforms.

Platform 1:

We believe there should be local educational programs which enable those who grew up learning another language such as Spanish to become proficient in English while also maintaining their own language and cultural heritage. Neither Hispanics nor any other American citizens should be barred from education or employment opportunities because English is not their first language.

Platform 2:

To ensure that all students have access to the mainstream of American life, we support the English First approach and oppose divisive programs that limit students’ ability to advance in American society.

Surprisingly, both of these platforms come from the same party; The Republican Party. The first one was what Ronald Reagan ran on in 1980. The second is the one Mitt Romney ran on in 2012. By definition, both highlight the conservative view on the most basic of cultural identity aspects, language. They also show that, even in the conservative circles, our points of view are highly subject to our national mood. And right now, our mood is still very afraid.

We’re 14 years beyond the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and quickly approaching, I hope, the back slope of a fear peak. As we approach the great political debate that will be the 2016 presidential election, how can we have the most effective outcomes relative to immigration? Take the fear out of it. If we don’t we’ll get something that resembles the “birther” debate, which has a special place in my heart. I’ve actually lived in Kenya. Any person who is one generation removed from someone who figured out how to get out of there should be celebrated, not forced to show their birth certificate or called a religion that they’re not. Kenya, by the way, is about 70% Christian. As an independent, nothing turned me off more to the conservative cause during the 2008 presidential election than the layers of stupidity that was the “birther “debate. So when it comes to immigration, let’s not do that. When it comes to immigration, let’s be fearless. Because in war, business and policy, the motivation of fear is an absolute killer. Replace your fear with thoughtfulness and perspective. The history shows it’s the path to prosperity and progress.

data Deep Dive Economics Politics

The Great American Economy: A Study in Data and Self Deception

Economy noun econ·o·my \i-ˈkä-nə-mē, ə-, ē-\ the production, distribution or trade, and consumption of limited goods and services by different agents in a given geographical location.

When we ask the American people what their top considerations are in any congressional or presidential election, without question one of the top issues they raise is the economy. From the definition above, it’s hard to actually imagine that people care about the economy in a literal sense though. The theories and systems related to that which is described by the definition of an economy are best left to classrooms. What people actually mean when they say “the economy” is that they care about aspects of our fiscal and monetary policy that actually impact our lives. Fiscal being budgetary and taxation activities. Monetary being activities conducted by the Federal Reserve that impact interest rates. We choose to use the word “economy” to sum all that up in one average sized word. We like terms that we can put in our back pocket so we can pull them out when required in discussion or debate to prove a point. So the “economy” is what we care about. And so it becomes top issue.

If you think about it just a little bit more though, you can actually give some purposeful voice to the demands of the people’s economy. When you think about it in reasonable terms, and its important to be reasonable here because there’s quite a bit at stake, you can produce a pretty distinct list of exactly what we care about. To be even more precise, you can get to eight portions of the economy that we really care about. Here they are in a somewhat particular order.

What American people want of their “economy”:

1. Income that keeps pace with inflation

2. Job growth equal to employment demand

3. Stable employment rates

4. Historically moderate tax rates

5. Affordable cost of borrowing

6. Participation in growth through investment

7. The ability to retire at a reasonable age

8. A safety net in hard times.

The good news is, we actually have data on all eight of these categories. When you throw economic theory and political principles out the window, you can do some unbiased statistical analysis. So we did that. We analyzed 19 separate economic categories that included government spending, income tax rates, interest rates, trade deficits, financial markets, GDP, budget surplus/defecit and corporate profits. By simple correlation analysis, we can ignore the rhetoric and theory and look at simply what the data tells us. So here it is both in raw form and commentary.

What happens when taxes went up?

People had less money. But you didn’t need data to tell you that. But interestingly, job growth increased and unemployment decreased. The S&P 500 went up. Corporate profits decreased, which makes sense, because they were paying higher taxes. In the statistical world, we are always careful to point out that correlation is not causation. Which means in lay terms, just because two points of data showed a pattern, it doesn’t mean one caused the other. What we do know is that the data alone does not support the history of dire economic consequences from tax increases. That doesn’t mean we have to like them though.

What happens when corporate profits increase?

Surprisingly nothing. Though profits increased with lower taxation, the growth doesn’t appear to materialize into wage increases, job growth or significant financial market gains. From a data perspective, the only thing that appears to benefit from corporate profits, is well, corporate profits. This isn’t a purposeful commentary about the evils of corporate America. It’s simply what the data says.

What happens when corporate profits decrease?

We don’t know because it’s never happened. Even during the great recession that started in 2008, corporate profits continued to grow at record rates. What correlates to the spike in unemployment and the crash in financial markets is a slow down in the rate of growth. Which means companies were more profitable during that time than in the years previous to the crash, they just weren’t more profitable enough. And why did it slow down? As far as the data shows, for no reason at all related to taxes, wages, spending, interest rates etc. Which leads us to believe that free market forces of expansion and contraction dictate rate of growth; not taxation, wages, spending, trade, currency exchange rate etc. Again, this is not principle or rhetoric, just data.

Do we spend more tax payers money when we raise taxes?

Oddly, no. One of the strongest correlations in the entire analysis shows that we spend more when taxes are lower. Clearly no one is arguing that when we lower taxes, we spend more because taxes are lower. What we are saying however, is that the data shows us that we spend independent of how much money we collect from taxes. Which is why our national debt is higher now as a percentage of GDP than at any time in our history. The conclusion is that it has at least as much to do with historically low tax rates than it is out of control spending.

Is our spending out of control?

We do spend more than we used to. The increases in spending exist in social security, medicare and medicaid, and social safety net programs. People live longer then ever before and medical care that simply didn’t exist in the recent past presently does exist. What we choose to spend on safety net programs is a choice. When unemployment spikes, our government spending does as a result. Choosing to do so however appears to have no negative impact on any economic outcomes that we care about, other than supplying us with income and resources when we fall on hard times. It simply means we spend more money. Which matters, especially when you don’t fund it.

So what’s the “so what”?

What does it all mean? The rhetoric around taxes and spending and how it impacts our lives is not supported by the data. We certainly don’t like to pay higher taxes. Nor should we. But the increased costs associated with modern lifespans and healthcare are taking their toll. And this is not because of the Affordable Care Act. At least not yet. Most of this data comes from well before it was in place.. There is one important consideration though. Whatever our political affiliation, we all agree that at a minimum, a government’s role is to exist and remain solvent so it can continue to govern. Which is a pretty low bar. If you take this data seriously, and I do, you see that there’s nothing that actually supports the “trickle down” effect from lower taxes. Which is actually good in one way. It leaves us with a clear choice; to have the services that our government presently provides or to not have the services that our government presently provides. Right now we’re choosing to have them and not pay for them because we’re hiding behind the rhetoric that choosing to pay for them would be bad for the economy. The data doesn’t support it but our inability to have effective political debates in congress, or anywhere won’t let us get to that choice. My guess, is we’d have some, divest of others and maybe even improve ones that weren’t working. We’d be forced to prioritize. That is, if we could actually talk about this. Which we can’t.

This level of analysis isn’t particularly hard to do and the conclusions that it yields are strikingly conclusive. They’re just not popular ones to advocate for because frankly, we can’t have honest discussions any more without being stuck in the irrelevant loop of “government bad” -v- “government good” paralysis. Which puts us in the impossibly dysfunctional position of having more, paying less and not being able to prioritize anything until we drive off a cliff of insolvency. Painful truths hurt. So we don’t say them. If we don’t want to pay for the social programs, then cut them. But there will be no denying that we are cutting them in order to preserve the lowest tax rate in my life time. Or, maybe we try reviewing and prioritizing, like any organization on the planet that has a budget. But we can’t, because we’ve stopped talking. And so the self deception continues and our deficit grows as does our compliance with our insolvency as a nation. This one actually isn’t that hard. But it’s going to take a discussion. And we can’t do that any more.

Chartwell West

The World of 2015 to 2020

Politics

The Politics of Mutually Assured Destruction

The Prospect of Service

Guns, People and Poverty: A Study in What Kills Who

Fear and Immigration: A Journey Through America’s Sense of Self

The Great American Economy: A Study in Data and Self Deception