…not as good as Goedel, Escher, Bach, but the best I can do in the moment.

Monday night TG and I went back to Disney Hall (or “our place” as we like to call it) for the annual Messiah Sing-Along held by the Los Angeles Master Chorale. I’ve been going to this for a dozen years, since my friend Steven was alive and took us. There is a small orchestra, a few soloists, and the audience sings the choral parts of a limited portion of Handel’s Messiah.

At the old concert hall, everyone would walk down the stairs singing Christmas carols; that doesn’t work as well at the new one. But the acoustics inside the hall itself make it more powerful, and maybe it’s me but the quality of audience singing seems to be going up as well. TG sings in a serious church choir; my voice is better suited to punk or country, but I manage to find my way through the score as well. And maybe because I wasn’t so worried about when to come in or what to sing, I listened to the words and thought about what it meant to be standing in 21st Century Los Angeles singing

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

Other than weddings and funerals, and the occasional visit to a church of architectural or cultural interest, I don’t go to church. I have spiritual sentiments, but don’t in any way consider myself religious – i.e. there’s no big, bearded white guy sitting on a throne for me.

But it was hard not to be moved and uplifted by the voices raised in a song rooted in spirituality.

And, of course, that made me think of something.

The Messiah is powerful in ways that “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” could never be, because it is rooted not just in a religious tradition, but in the religious traditions from which our culture grew.

And then the values question unlocked itself in my head. Let’s see how it flies when I get it typed out and you folks take a run at it.

Because the issue is that each of us is standing on lots of shoulders. We didn’t get here by ourselves. We participate in, but did not create, our culture, society, and polity – in part, they had as much of a hand in creating us.

While we may not be happy with everything they did, we don’t have to cut ourselves off from them; we can both acknowledge our debt and their shortcomings. the problem tends to come when we lean too much on one or the other. Today, liberals are entirely focussed on the shortcomings.

America is a racist project. We are the engine of environmental and cultural destruction. Blah Blah Blah.

Were the Founders racist? It’s hard not to say ‘yes’. Does that devalue what they contributed? It’s impossible to say yes. Does Western consumerism pose serious social and environmental challenges? Damn straight. But as opposed to the alternative – the one with high rates of mother and infant mortality, child labor, and a ‘simple but poor’ lifestyle, people are voting with their feet all over the world.

Before I get all buried in historicity, let me try and make this a bit concrete.

I sat in Disney Hall last night as someone raised in a culture that has many roots, but which has its deepest roots in the world that produced Handel’s music – a world of Christian devotion.

I can’t escape that. I can reject it, but in doing so I lose some valuable things. There are some not-so valuable things in our shared history as well, and the reaction of our post-modernity has been to push ourselves away from them as fast and hard as we can.

“We’re not this thing,” we say. Not witch burnings, not slavery, not standing in front of Beziers saying “Kill them all, God will know his own.”

But we are descended from them. And maybe – just maybe we can embrace our unlovable, prejudiced ancestors while acknowledging the better future we want to build – as our descendants will criticize us for faults we can’t begin to see yet.

Those defects talk about where we – as a people, as a culture – have been. They don’t talk about where we’re going.

And that’s why it doesn’t bother me to be uplifted in song about a God I’m not personally close to, and why I don’t get upset at the idea that there are people who are close to that historic God and whose views on issues today may clash with mine because they are closer to that old-school God.

Because this is all part of a path, a narrative arc from somewhere to somewhere else. And the joke about it is that we’ll never know exactly where we’re going, never know which of us is right, because none of us alive today will be alive to get there.

And maybe that does mean that I have more faith than I thought I did.

Here’s a good document on where the Democrats go from here by Will Marshall (of the PPI).

He suggests that the Democrats can once again become competitive in the ‘heartland’ by doing a few sensible things:

Let’s face facts: America is at war, and the public isn’t yet convinced that Democrats have the stomach for the fight. Democrats themselves seem unsure of their true identity: Are they the anti-war party or the party of tough-minded liberals, the party of Gov. Howard Dean or the party of Sen. Joe Biden? Resolving this ambivalence is essential to making headway in the heartland states.

Like the liberal hawks who fashioned America’s winning Cold War strategy, today’s Democrats must demonstrate that they are tough enough to wage an aggressive war on Muslim extremism, and smart enough to enlist influential allies and international institutions in that fight.

and

Instead, Democrats should do a better job of linking their economic interests and moral outlook. In his 1992 campaign, Clinton wove personal responsibility and middle-class opportunity into a single narrative that promised to reward families that “work hard and play by the rules” and to oppose policies that entrench unearned privilege. He spoke of honoring work and family by ending welfare as a way of life and supplementing the wages of low-income workers. He called for national service as a way to balance the rights and duties of citizenship, and to replace the politics of entitlement with a new ethic of reciprocal responsibility. Four years later, Clinton’s proposals for school uniforms and television V-chips struck a resonant chord with middle class families trying to shield their kids from pop culture.

Since then, Democrats have had little success in challenging the GOP’s claim to be the party of “family values” and its hold on married families with children. A heartland strategy should include a new progressive family policy that addresses both the economic and cultural strains on American parents.

and

Just as religious advocates of the “Social Gospel” infused early 20th century progressivism with moral fervor, Democrats should couch their social initiatives in the language of faith and morality. The sad truth is that since Clinton’s departure, Democrats have had little to say about growing poverty and inequality in America. Surely, they are moral issues no less than abortion and gay marriage, and they give Democrats an opportunity to speak unambiguously of right and wrong.

Makes sense to me, on every front.

Go read the whole thing.

I have one quibble (of course).

The article starts with an electoral calculation, and then makes the policy arguments that the author believes are needed to make that electoral math happen.

When I read his conservative equivalents, the impression I get is that they start with a strong sense of belief, from which flows policy, which is then vetted and tailored to be electorally palatable.

I think the Democratic Party does need to be a party of believers – they need to believe in some core values and the policies that flow naturally from them. It’s a very different animal than donning a ghillie suit of beliefs to try and concoct a winning electoral strategy.

Finished an amazing book while on the way back and forth to Boston.

“The Man Who Would Be King,” by Ben Macintyre.

It turns out that in November of 1827, Pennsylvania native Josiah Harlan set out into the Punjab and Afghanistan with the intent of making himself a prince.

And, amazingly enough he succeeded, becoming the prince of the Hazaras in central Afghanistan under Dost Mohammed Khan, the ruler forced out by Macnaghten and Burnes. Dost Mohammed’s son, Akbar Khan, led the bloody revolt which drove the British out of Afghanistan and murdered all but one of the British forces, wives, children, and camp followers.

But Harlan had already left.

There’s an interesting and prescient quote in the book about Afghanistan:

As a student of Dost Mohammed Khan’s rule, Harlan firmly believed there was only one way to ensure peace in Afghanistan: co-option and bribery, using the existing system of chieftainships. “The government of the Avghauns by their own institutions would have been facile,” he declared. “If the English had conciliated the heads of the tribes [and] arranged them around the king as sustainers of the government, which privilege they had a right to expect, they would have become willing hostages to the good conduct of their tribes.” Instead, Shah Sujah was bent on vengeance. With the sanction of the British, he “imprisoned many who represented themselves for employment and honours [and] deputed the offices of state to a swarm of hungry expectants, who attended him during his 30 years exile.” The invaders might easily have purchased acquiescence: “The English, who now well the value of gold, could have controlled the Avghans by fiscal diplomacy, without incurring the odium of invading and subjugating an unoffending people.”

-p 249

The next time someone suggests that we need 100,000 more NATO troops in Afghanistan, keep this in mind…

A county museum in Chester County, Pennsylvania revealed Harlan’s manuscripts. He died, alone and poor, in San Francisco in 1871.

Jarvis has his own beef with Cole, over Prof. Cole’s ridiculous accusation that Mohammed, Omar & Ali of Iraq the Model are a CIA project. This isn’t about that. I don’t want this to become all Juan Cole-bashing all the time, but I just read something so horrible that I needed to blog it.

It wasn’t on Cole’s site – or rather, only part of it was.

Cole blogged the murder of U.S. Navy officer Kylan Jones-Hoffman in Iraq.Cole dismisses the murder with this comment:

The assassin said that he felt that Jones-Huffman “looked Jewish.” The fruits of hatred sowed in the Middle East by aggressive and expansionist Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza against the Palestinians and in south Lebanon against Shiites continue to be harvested by Americans.

And then adds this:

(Some readers have written to say that the Iraqi assassin’s association of all Jews with the misdeeds of the rightwing hawks in the Occupied Territories is outrageous. I, of course, entirely agree. It is the essence of bigotry to blame all members of a group for the actions of a few.)

Nice rhetorical dance; say it and then disavow responsibility. But that’s not what’s horrible. I sadly have just come to kinda expect this kind of thing from Cole.

It gets much worse.

Over on Smash’s site, he also comments on the murder – and on the recent trial and conviction of the murderer in an Iraqi court. Smash has a cause to be paying attention here – he was Jones-Hoffman’s roomate at Annapolis.

But then he points out that Cole does, too:

KYLAN didn’t support the decision to go to war in Iraq. But he believed that once begun, it was crucial for us to finish the job. He had a running email dialogue with anti-war University of Michigan professor Juan Cole, right up to a few days before his death.

Professor Cole had a personal correspondance with the murdered sailor, and didn’t fucking mention it.

He doesn’t have the simple decency to recognize – even in passing – the humanity of the murdered man. Why do that? It would get in the way of his ideologically sound point. Back in August, Kylan was a human being. Now he’s a token in Cole’s ideological game.

Cole is a true keeper of the totalitarian flame; with this latest, I have no trouble envisioning him ordering the camps being built. After all, those liquidated in them wouldn’t really be human anyway.

If we assume there is a finite supply of talent in the world, how can it be that Gerard Van der Leun is one of the smartest and funniest writers I know, and now I have to discover that his drop-dead gorgeous, motorcycle riding wife Sheryl is as well?? Is this what I’m up against as I rail against overconcentration in media?

I’m bitter…but laughing.

Since you asked, the ‘Paris Hilton’ gift cards are my favorites.

I haven’t weighed in on the Boston conference or meeting the Iraq The Model guys too heavily – I came back to consultant heck, one contract finished early, the next one delayed, the fallback uncertain and have been playing air traffic controller to try and get things sorted out – and meanwhile the mortgage is still due…sigh.

Mohammed and Ali were in fact amazing. The most incredible thing about them, to me, is their ordinariness. The courage it must take to do what they do is remarkable – and yet, they are on the surface unremarkable men. What does that mean about the reserves of greatness within each of us?

I wrote about soldiers on Veteran’s Day, and suggested that “they are just like me, except better.” That wasn’t meant as a slam on me or anyone else who isn’t serving in some way (and there are many ways to serve). It’s about the notion that we are a nation of ordinary men and women who do extraordinary things – in fact, we depend on our ordinary people to accomplish the extraordinary.
Mohammed and Omar (and, I’m sure Ali, who I did not get to meet) are ordinary men from Iraq, who are setting out to do extraordinary things. And if our efforts can help them in some small way, then that’s bitchen’.

Speaking of bitching, Juan Cole picks up uber-troll Joseph “ALL CAPS” Mailander’s paranoid rant suggesting that the brothers are somehow CIA disinformation – his evidence? They don’t agree with him.

Note: there’s an interesting blog post on the subject of astroturfing and blogs. Daschle v Thune figure in it – but so does Oliver Willis and Eschaton.

But, since I’m the guy who connected Spirit of America to the brothers – by contacting and then recruiting Kerry Dupont, who I found from a link on Jeff Jarvis’ website in which she took on the project of getting them laptops – may I suggest that I have direct experience that contradicts this fantasy?

I had an interesting correspondence with Professor Cole after I criticized him for having engaged in SLAPP activity while reaching out to the blogging community to defend him against someone else’s SLAPP threat.

And both the correspondence, and his bizarre logic here point out something that actually frightens me.

I regularly read a number of lefty antiwar blogs – I still consider myself a leftist, and understand that there are people who disagree with me about the war. I read these blogs – including Professor Cole’s, MyDD, TPM, Eschaton and others because I want to learn. I want to check my assumptions and test my beliefs. I’ve changed my mind on things based on what I’ve read there, and believe that I’m likely to do so again in the future, which is why I’ll keep reading them.

But as the comments flap with TalkLeft shows, and as Professor Cole shows in his assertion (couched in careful rhetoric so that he’s not saying it, he’s just – you know – passing it along) that Riverbend must be the voice of the real Iraqi citizens because she agrees with him while ITM must be disinformation because it doesn’t – they’re more interested in shaping information to meet their beliefs than their beliefs to fit information.

And, sadly, that’s the germ from which totalitarianism springs. Because you need the power to shape information to keep your beliefs intact, which means you need power over people as well. And meanwhile, Winston Smith just sits there, trembling.

I’m having a very good-news Saturday here at Harvard. Jeff Jarvis says it perfectly, so I’ll just point you over to his post:

Mohammed now says: “It’s from person to person, from heart to heart. I did not have any trouble understanding people thousands of miles away from me in spite of language and distance…. We share many things. Media try to show only the differences between groups and countries but really human beings have many, many things to share…. Here in blogging, I learn from my readers…. I think through blogging we can spread love more than we can spread hate. I started blogging because I saw through the media that they just want to spread hate… I have a different story and many Iraqi people agree with me.

Asked why they called their blog Iraq The Model, they said, “Iraq will be a model for the Middle East region and the world….”

I’ve spent a fair amount of time face to face with Omar and Mohammed, and I wish that each of you could as well. They’ll be on the West Coast next week, and I’ll see if any of them are open, and will publicize them here.

UPDATE: Judith has a roundup of blog posts and news links covering Mohammed & Omar’s tour.

I’m in Boston, at the Beckman conference on the Internet and Politics.

We’re about halfway through it; we’ve just finished lunch on the 1st day, and I’ll comment on the form of the conference, which is extremely traditional before I’ll comment too much on the content. Little of the content will be news to folks who read the political blogs; Internet tools are both effective in making existing campaign structures more efficient (think the Bush campaign) and in making new political structures possible.

The nature of those new structures is as yet undefined, but Joe Trippi is questioning the future of political parties, and suggests that the Democratic Party may well be about the first to go…Trent, you there?

What’s the most interesting is that – just like any other convention – all the other people who are here who are interested in the topic are far and away the most interesting part of the event. I’m getting to meet a bunch of smart folks and working on building the network that will at some point help build the coalition of the sensible.

I’m taking notes, and will blog a bit about it on the flight home…

Have I mentioned how much I love living in L.A.?

TG and I were reading the paper last week when they mentioned a ‘concert performance’ of Wagner’s “Tristan & Isolde” at the Disney Hall, with video from Bill Viola.

I’ve been a fan of Viola’s video art for years, and last year we saw his show at the Getty – ‘The Passions.’ It seemed nicely in synch with Wagner.

And yes, I know that when I talk about and criticize the Romanticism that prefers death to mundane life, I’m definitely talking about Wagner. Sometime I have to do something on the politics of art…

But we saw the article, and grabbed two tickets to Friday’s performance of Act One.

We’re fond of Disney Hall for our own reasons (we got married there) and have been to a few concerts there this year.

But this was the doozy, the champeen, the winnah.

Damn.It was amazing; I don’t think I’ve heard an orchestra play Wagner better; the singers were amazing, and the video backdrop was interesting, until the very end when it became transcendental. In case you think it’s the rube in me saying this, here’s the review:

So the journey that began over the weekend had all the promise of a glorified workshop at premium prices. The singers were not the stars (Ben Heppner and Waltraud Meier) who will appear in Paris. There was little attempt at staging. Viola’s videos had to compete with the Disney Hall architecture, which does not make screens easily visible to all, and with bleeding illumination from orchestra stands and spotlighted singers. It was Salonen’s first time with the score, Viola’s entrance into the world of opera.

But “Tristan” — the once famously unsingable opera about a love so potent it can be realized only by the removal of all obstacles, those of the physical world, those of life itself — stretches to the breaking point everyone who confronts it. Any performance that doesn’t try too much fails before it starts.

The Philharmonic tried too much. Everything that should have worked, worked. Everything that shouldn’t have worked, worked. If the “Tristan Project” is not the greatest moment in the orchestra’s history, I can’t imagine what was.

After we stood to applaud, TG and I just sat in our seats in awe.

I know that High Art is a bit of a boondoggle in this society; that edifices like Disney Hall are in part responsible for the decline of our cities.

But somehow – there’s a part of me that thinks that when they’re done right – when the hall works and the music isn’t mediocre – they become boons instead.

The concerts will be held this weekend as well (I’ll be gone, TG threatens to go, and I hope she does).

The fully staged opera, directed by Peter Sellars, will premiere in April of next year in Paris.

I’m going to start saving my money now.

I’ll be in Boston this weekend, at the Berkman Center conference on politics at the Kennedy School.

Who else is going to be there?