Race and the Challenge of Community in America.

I wish to comment on Robert Bernasconi's essay entitled "The Invisibility of Racial Minorities in the Public Realm of Apperances," in Walter Brogan and James Risser, eds., American Continental Philosophy: A Reader (Bloomington: Indiana U. Press, 2000), p. 353.

It is difficult to know where to begin because there is so much that I admire in this essay, not least the willingness to tackle the subject of race and of America's painful history of slavery and racism by making use of the tools of philosophy -- specifically, phenomenology and hermeneutic method.

This is what philosophy is "for," to help us think about pressing and difficult public issues and not merely to allow some of us to display our cleverness in performing intellectual figure-eights before an appreciative audience of colleagues. I heard Robert Nozick -- a Republican and outstanding Harvard philosopher -- make this point to an interviewer shortly before his premature death from cancer. ("Is clarity enough?")

Professor Bernasconi is an expert on the ethical thinking of Emmanuel Levinas and is a subtle and original philosopher. His discussion is, thus, much richer and more profound than anything one is likely to encounter in the popular media. I begin with a summary and exposition of Professor Bernasconi's argument; I then offer some comments. Finally, I offer speculations concerning the possible direction of a continuing philosophical dialogue on race in America and the possibilities of community.

I.

The United States is the classic example of a society born out of the Enlightenment conviction that fundamental human rights must be regarded as universal and also from the contradiction that the original understanding of a "universal human nature with its inalienable rights" excluded, for most political purposes, all women together with men and women of African ancestry trapped in the "peculiar institution" of slavery. This contradiction and its consequences is the "trauma," literally the "unhealed wound," in the national psyche. Professor Bernasconi states the issue:

"... the focus of this paper is not the history of the contradiction between the principle and the practice [of thinking in terms of a universal human nature,] but the underlying phenomenological truth that racial difference, as what is most visible, is within the public realm rendered invisible to the extent that the dominant group succeeds in overlooking a minority, denying its members their place in the sun." (p. 355.)

Is it possible for African-Americans to think of themselves primarily in terms of their American national identity, as members of a multiracial and multicultural but politically unified community? Or is the brutal and primary fact of race made inescapable, as a form of consciousness, in a society coping with the legacy of slavery and the effects of "separate but un-equal" institutions for most of its bloody history? Must the "African" come before the "American" in one's hyphenated sense of self to the extent that one wishes to remain both dark-skinned, physically and even more culturally, proudly African and American? Or can it be the other way around? ("America's Holocaust" and "Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz.")

Hannah Arendt said that being hated as a Jew by the Nazis required her to respond as a Jew to that hatred. Must African-Americans similarly respond to the demonization of blackness by "being black," in confrontational ways, thereby seeking to challenge and undermine the belittling stereotypes that have aimed to hurt them and those they love?

This is an issue on which, even great leaders like Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., have disagreed. ("Is Western Philosophy Racist?" and "America's Holocaust.")

This is also an issue which neither Professor Bernasconi (nor I) can hope to answer with great confidence, much less to answer for others.

Each African-American person in the U.S. should wish to come to terms with this problem for him- or herself. Let us recognize that men and women of good faith, of any race, may have different opinions on this matter. No one has a monopoly on virtue. And the situation of other minority groups in American society is sufficiently analogous and comparable to the predicament of African-Americans, though never exactly like that unique (and uniquely tragic) situation, that the choice between community and separatism is inescapable for all of us.

A point to bear in mind -- especially if you are a separatist -- is that what hurts African-Americans and those they love also hurts those of us who love them, who love and are grateful for their great artistic or cultural gifts to us.

It is not so easy these days to separate the various components of American national identity, to think in terms of "us" and "them" -- because we have come to realize that, like it or not, it is all "us." (See the film "Crash" for a compelling dramatization of the effects of Balkanization and the fact of interdependence in contemporary America.)

I suggest that part of being an American in our time, regardless of one's ethnicity or race, involves devoting some time and serious thought to understanding the African-American experience and dilemma, to a study of the forms of resistance developed by an oppressed and tortured people, especially the important role of culture in that resistance -- which has served to strengthen a tormented people while enriching others, including their own oppressors, in an inspiring example of the human capacity to "transcend evil through love" and by means of the creation of beauty.

"If there were no racism," Cornel West asks, "then why were these people singing the blues?" ("Cornel West On Universality" and "Carlos Fuentes and Multiculturalism.")

For myself, the answer to this question of separatism versus community has been slow to arrive, but it is one to which I am firmly committed and with which I am satisfied.

I believe that community may be founded upon the notion of a shared fundamental humanity expressed in national identity and in other ways -- a national identity which is primary over all other forms and categories of selfhood/community. ("Manifesto For the Unfinished American Revolution.")

I am an American first, and only then do I see myself as a Latino, or in terms of my cultural particularity. I am also, even more fundamentally, a human being. I see the free choice of being an American as the acceptance of pluralism and not its denial, since I believe that the United States is not only the essential Enlightenment society, but also, paradoxically, what today might be described as the postmodern society.

Besides this unapologetic and clear-eyed Americanism, I think of myself as a humanist. ("Is Humanism Still Possible.")

In its best self-understanding the United States is committed, from its origins, to the acceptance of diversity, to the free self-creation of the individual, and to the forging of a unique national identity -- at the level of moral principle -- which celebrates our different origins. Self-invention is what the frontier was all about.

An American is a person engaged in a life-long task of self-creation (Kantian freedom) that becomes a shared project of "community-creation" (Hegelian Stillichkeit) under the vision of the Constitution. Think of the trajectory from Jefferson to Lincoln, Holmes to Warren, JFK to Obama.

This is also relevant to the expansive understanding of what we mean by an "individual." In other words, I accept the possibility of the American "miracle," which I have seen and experienced at first hand, by which out of the many sources of ourselves one people is created. E pluribus unum.

This is not to minimize the difficulties in this task. I say this while recognizing that for African-Americans, the challenge of coming to terms with themselves "as a problem" (to use W.E.B. Du Bois's ironic term), complicates the issue greatly.

The attempt by white America to make Africanism "invisible," to deny the reality of the crushing burden of race for most of the nation's history, for millions of people, could only make the affirmation of race a necessity:

"One does not in the standard case see another human being as simply that, another human being. If one did, it would not have been necessary for the Memphis sanitation workers to line the streets with the signs that read: 'I AM A MAN.' " (p. 358.)

It is also significant, I think, that Memphis workers did not carry signs that said: "I AM A BLACK MAN."

Toni Morrison explores the related phenomenon of the denial of the presence of Africans as the defining "others" in American literary self-understandings. The presence of persons of African ancestry, Professor Morrison writes, "... was, I have come to believe, one of the most furtively radical impinging forces on the country's literature. The contemplation of this black presence is central to any understanding of our national literature" -- and of ourselves as Americans -- "and should not be permitted to hover at the margins of the literary imagination."

Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (New York: Vintage, 1993), p. 5.

In a revealing passage, Professor Morrison places herself within this problematic history:

"I am interested in what prompts and makes possible this process of entering what one is estranged from -- and in what disables the foray, for purposes of fiction, into the corners of the consciousness held off and away from the reach of the writer's imagination. My work requires me to think about how free I can be as an African-American woman writer in my genderized, sexualized, wholly racialized world."

Playing in the Dark, p. 4.

This is the challenge for every great artist: to address the universal concerns of human beings, while retaining the idiom of the particular struggles and inheritance of a single artist as creator, to become F.H. Bradley's "concrete universal." It is a challenge that Professor Morrison has faced with great success, revealing in this passage and others in her essay, I think, a form of humanism that I accept.

It is fitting that this great essay by Ms. Morrison (like my essay) has been attacked, defaced, "whipped," maybe "lynched." I am struggling against persons who seek to enslave those with whom they disagree. For such persons to speak of "ethics" is absurd. ("For America to Lead Again: A Speech for U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama.")

Ms. Morrison's lack of freedom resulting from gender or race must be seen as every other American's lack of freedom by those other Americans. This is because such a deprivation of freedom undermines the Constitutional scheme which gives meaning to the idea of any of us being an American.

II.

I now turn to the specifics of Professor Bernasconi's argument which consists, on the one hand, of denying or challenging the idea of a universal human nature, then of suggesting, on the other hand, that even if we accept the reality and validity of the universal -- that is, of a fundamental aspect of persons in the American context that transcends specifics of gender, ethnicity, race, religion and so on -- that this ideal of universality is unavailable to those who are systematically denied meaningful participation (or made "invisible") through racism.

"The double bind that racism imposes on its targets lies in demanding assimilation while at the same time denying its possibility. Racism says, 'Become like us,' while always asserting under its breath, 'You can never become like us, because you are not one of us and we will not mistake you for one of us.' " (p. 360.)

I can certainly understand this predicament. It is the dilemma of every immigrant. To become American, is to give up some of one's identity, knowing that many of one's fellow citizens will never accept one as fully equal. Conversely, many members of the immigrant's ethnic group will reject that individual's successful assimilation as a form of betrayal, or a display of excessive "whiteness."

For me, and others like me, being "white" in skin color, if not necessarily in all or even most aspects of culture or sensitivity, complicates the issue -- since we fit the somatic norm of the society and yet have the consciousness of the outsider and minority group member. Culturally and politically, we can never be "white," whatever we may look like on the outside. This means that we are outsiders everywhere.

Come to think of it, this is ideal for writers and artists of all sorts -- to be the observer, the one who is different in every group. Ironically, many of those who reject new immigrants as "not American enough" forget that their own grandparents were similarly rejected by earlier arrivals.

African-Americans face the additional difficulty that race is not a hidden characteristic, but something immediately visible and at the center of the most painful issues in the nation's history, thus making persons instantly hateful (and in a way, very much invisible) to some others, usually powerful others, exclusively on the basis of this immutable characteristic.

In the words of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Carolene Products case, race is a visible identification of persons as members of one of the "discrete and insular minorities" that are worthy of additional judicial protection from public discrimination. Actually, "discrete and insular" sounds like something I would wish to be.

Setting Sartrean pessimism aside, I still think that it is possible to regard my neighbor as, first of all, an American -- regardless of race or other characteristics. I worry that those who wish to discard that which unites us, national identity or universals, fail to appreciate the danger of violent division in our complex society and world in which all of us have become targets for America's enemies. On 9/11 African-Americans, Latinos, Jews, Christians, Muslims, men and women, rich and poor died together. We must not lose sight of that fact. (Think of the final image in the film "Glory.")

I am reminded of Michel Foucault's writings and warnings concerning the techniques by which power seeks to constitute ALL of us as subjects, including methods of social division and fragmentation that are internalized by selves:

"The first mode of objectification of the subject is somewhat cryptically called [by Foucault] 'dividing practices.' The most famous examples from Foucault's work are the isolation of lepers during the Middle Ages; the confinement of the poor; the insane, and vagabonds ..."

Paul Rabinow, "Introduction," in The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon, 1984), p. 8. (See the essay "Judith Butler and Gender Theory.")

In Foucault's words: "The subject is objectified by a process of division either within himself [or herself,] or from others."

Michel Foucault, "The Subject and Power," in Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, eds., Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 208. ("Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz" and "Michel Foucault and The Authorship Question.")

Even the "antihumanist" Foucault might suggest that the ultimate victory of the racist is to prevent African-Americans from seeing themselves as not racially defined so as to unite with others in the recognition of a common humanity that transcends race and achieving a true community. In Peter Gabel's terms, the goal is that "unalienated relatedness." I prefer, like Dr. King, to call it "love."

Among those wounded or killed while serving with America's military in Iraq and Afghanistan are hundreds of Muslims. Many Muslims died in the Twin Towers on 9/11 -- many more Muslims were victims of the strikes against the buildings in Manhattan than committed those great crimes.

Do we really wish to burn the Koran? Whose Scriptures will be next to be thrown into the fire? Is it likely that Jews will be discriminated against if we indulge in religious bigotry? I believe that Jews are always endangered in all Western societies.

Women assigned to the ostracized categories of "witches" or "prostitutes" -- these were often the same women and the identical category -- were excluded from humanity less for qualities they displayed (usually impermissible independence or originality) than because they called into question the shibboleths of their societies.

This is always the role of the other: to insist that we think about our concepts of normality and identity anew. Those who are "different" make the defenders of normality and sameness nervous and uncomfortable.

This self-questioning is a good thing in a free society. The "other" in Western modernity has been the dark Romantic mirror of reason which is a burden imposed on African-Americans in U.S. society.

There is a lesson in this insight for the Palestinian people in their struggle: It may be that their most important potential allies are Israeli Jews sympathetic to their plight. A commitment to non-violence and peaceful negotiation would go a long way towards winning that alliance as well as a just and lasting solution to their struggle.

Is Hamas the greatest obstacle to peace in Israel for Palestinians?

If I am correct in seeing the essence of humanity as a kind of freedom which is universal then the attempt to limit that freedom by confinement to a category, whether racial, ethnic, or gender-based, is merely a more subtle and recent form of slavery -- call it intellectual, or conceptual, or philosophical slavery.

It is time to break those chains too, recognizing that it is for African-Americans and for each of us, individually, to decide who we are, as an exercise of a hard-won freedom. In making that choice, no matter what it might be, each individual demonstrates what I mean concerning what we are: FREE human beings. (See "Hilary Putnam is Keeping it Real.")

The racist wins only by instilling a "divisive" separatism that relies on a consciousness of "race as difference," which is precisely the racist credo.

Not surprisingly, James Baldwin -- possibly the finest African-American essayist of the twentieth century and one of the greatest American writers of any ethnicity or race of his generation -- anticipated Foucault on this point and he would have agreed with me in calling simply for "love":

"I wanted to find out in what way the specialness of my experience could be made to connect me with other people instead of dividing me from them. ..."

Recognizing that leaving the country only made it clear to what extent, even as an African-American, Mr. Baldwin was (and could only be) an American to the rest of the world, he says:

"Europe has what we do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a new sense of life's possibilities."

So that:

"[We are led] to wed the visions of the Old World with that of the New, [that of the blacks to that of whites, and in doing so] it is the writer, not the statesman who is our strongest arm. Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world."

"The Discovery of What it Means to be an American," in The Price of the Ticket: Collected Non-Fiction of James Baldwin 1948-1985 (New York: St. Martin's, 1985), p. 171.

To insist on one's "visibility" is just one more way of being American, of making one's dreams for the nation into a reality. There's nothing more American than insisting on your rights. Relying in good faith on one's ability to make one's case or one's demand for visibility in the public square, may lead to the surprising discovery that others -- including very different others -- will be persuaded to accept the moral validity of one's request for recognition.

If we complain that we are being treated unfairly there is a chance that other Americans may agree with us and join in our call for equal rights. This certainly happened during the civil rights era. All sorts of Americans joined in that struggle, freely, sometimes paying the ultimate price for it. And this sharing in struggle also speaks to the fundamental decency and integrity of most Americans, especially those who are not particularly powerful or influential. ("Is there a gay marriage right?")

I am certain that the humanism underlying the U.S. Constitution directs us to respect the equality and freedom of others as rights-bearing persons, whose welfare we should identify with our own. This means that among racists, we should all see ourselves as members of the racial group that they despise; among anti-semites, we should all see ourselves as Jews; among misogynists, we should all see ourselves as feminine; among homophobes, we should all identify with gays.

The ideal of "visibility" as opposed to "invisibility" amounts to a request for recognition in the "gaze of the other" (Emmanuel Levinas), while community means the equal willingness to confer that recognition on all others. If we want to call this a new "politics of meaning," with Lerner and Gabel, that is fine by me.

Conservatives may prefer the language of community in our founding or foundational principles. Philosopher Hadley Arkes, a more rigorous and powerful thinker than any other I have read among Republicans or Conservatives, suggests much the same in his discussion of foundational principles emerging from the Lincoln and Douglas debate. See First Principles (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 30-85.

This is to read into the U.S. Constitution an ethics of love, which need not be identified with Christianity or any other religion, but which can be seen as part of the humanism which is essential to modernity in the West that is certainly part of the philosophical background to the writing of the Constitution. This humanism is found in the correspondence of men like Thomas Jefferson -- despite his own historical blindness and moral flaws -- and the authors of the Federalist Papers, whether "deists" or not.

There are important Constitutional theorists, such as Michael Perry (who speaks of an American Israel and of "prophecy" in terms similar to those of Cornel West), while R.M. Dworkin's work may be read, creatively and selectively, to lend support to these ideas. ("Civilization and Terrorism.")

When I mention these beliefs, people on city streets tell me that the American Constitution is "bullshit" and that the courts and government in this country are corrupt. Yes, there is corruption in the U.S., as there is everywhere else in the world. No doubt much of what happens in any courtroom, anywhere in the world has to do with power and politics, but -- perhaps in a naive manner given some of my own experiences and my personal failures in life -- I continue to believe in law as an aspiration and a possibility, if nothing else. It is my secular prayer. More importantly, I continue to believe in the principles contained in the founding documents of the U.S., also in the good faith and general competence of most courts.

Keep your fingers crossed and stay away from New Jersey.

By "failure," I mean a past reluctance to confront New Jersey with the racism and evil that, I am sure, too often characterizes the state's failed legal system in betrayal of the U.S. Constitution. ("America's Holocaust" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" then "Driving While Black [DWB] in New Jersey.")

I continue to regard the U.S. Constitution as one of the greatest liberating achievements of humanity. American hopes for law as an institution are both necessary and real, no matter how excessive they may seem to others. I continue to believe in the basic integrity of the American judicial process, despite its many human flaws -- and I very much cherish the universality of the principles at the heart of the American experiment.

I like to quote the comment of a debator defending American idealism: "If America is a disappointment this is only because America is a hope."

Can each of us not say exactly this about him- or herself?

This American religion of hope is more necessary now than ever before. It sure is necessary for me to hang on to some hope in my moments of despair. If America remains a secular prayer for me, then the U.S. and its Constitution must be more than hopes for many others, but also aspirations for all of humanity. For millions of people -- many of them African-Americans, like Dr. King and Justice Thurgood Marshall in their day -- America was and must now continue to be a secular faith.

Events such as the recent tortures at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo undermine public and international appreciation and understanding of these core American values. Apart from the intrinsic evil of those events, they have and will hurt U.S. interests for decades to come because they diminish U.S. credibility on human rights issues.

Much depends on how the U.S. deals with the reality of torture. Whether by punishing those responsible, wherever it occurs, so as to enforce Constitutional guarantees and make it clear what are the true values of this society or by allowing culprits to escape the consequences of crimes against humanity. Defacements of this text only indicate how unreal these hopes for America have become. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "Is America's Legal Ethics a Lie? then "America's Unethical Medical Torturers.")

III.

African-Americans and all of us should see the celebration of race and its affirmation -- the right to be "visible" in terms of race -- as consistent with what is fundamental to national identity for all Americans, but also, I believe, with what is most universally human.

Nothing is more human than the insistence on dignity and freedom, especially the freedom to define oneself.

The possible extensions in the application of this principle are obvious enough, especially when considering the plight of all who are defined as "marginal" to what is "central" in our culture, whether with regard to sexual preference or gender-identity, or in terms of the distribution of power for women as compared with men. Freedom must be compatible with equality, but both values must be compatible with the ultimate quest for community or social justice in the United States and throughout the world.

My Argument With Ayn Rand.

A link for this essay has been created at the home page of the Objectivism Reference Center at http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/books/rand/pwni.html for which I am grateful. Sadly, this essay has been vandalized and censored, I believe, by Cuban-American Right-wingers. Many people believe that "Right-wing" and "Cuban-American" are coextensive terms. I am sure that this assumption is false. ("Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba" and "Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'")

Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It? (New York: MacMillan, 1982), $11.00.
Jonathan Chait, "Wealth Care," in The New Republic, September 23, 2009, at p. 46.

The name of Ayn Rand is usually mentioned in discussions of philosophy in the U.S. This is bizarre because Ms. Rand was not really a philosopher. Among academic philosophers there is intense disagreement about the merits of her work. She is much admired by some far Right luminaries (who now wish to be called "neo-conservatives") and disliked by almost everybody else, yet she continues to be a popular writer for many people throughout the world.

I thought it appropriate, therefore, to examine one of Rand's essays in detail and then to publish my reactions to it. Anyone who wishes to respond to what I say is welcome to do so. I have selected a fairly typical essay entitled: "From the Horse's Mouth" dating from 1975, which appeared in her collection Philosophy: Who Needs It? (New York: MacMillan, 1982), at p. 77.

This brief work is highly representative of Randian method and conclusions. There are, literally, hundreds -- even thousands -- of pages written by Ms. Rand on roughly the same level of competence and analysis concerning basic philosophical issues. To know this essay is to have a pretty good idea of the quality of her philosophical writings.

Before turning to my criticisms of that essay, I should acknowledge what I consider to be Ayn Rand's very real talents and achievements. She writes well, for one thing, with clarity and elegance, vividly, while displaying a gift for metaphor and imagery which is rare among writers of philosophical prose. In a person whose first language is not English, this is remarkable. Not surprisingly, she is first and foremost a novelist. While I do not consider Rand a great novelist -- a novelist on a par with, say, Tolstoy or Dickens, Cervantes or Melville -- she is certainly a competent literary artist.

Literary skills are a virtue in a would-be philosopher or in anyone who feels a need to communicate by means of the written word and are not to be underestimated. The literary talents of thinkers such as Plato, Nietzsche or Schopenhauer -- or Iris Murdoch in our own day -- accounts for a great part of their success.

Regrettably, literary skills alone are not sufficient for a philosopher. A powerful intellect is also needed to do original philosophical work. Even with both of those qualities, a thinker who lacks a thorough and accurate knowledge of the history of philosophy (and knowledge of a great deal more besides), simply cannot produce philosophical work at the highest levels in the twentieth century and beyond. This is because of the great technicality and complexity of the subject.

An "error" was inserted in the foregoing sentence since my previous review of this essay. I have corrected that "error." However, the process of defacing these writings will continue indefinitely. The goal of this process is to enhance and create long-term emotional harm for the victim of these tactics. Experiments with "frustration-inducements" have produced nervous breakdowns in some victims. Others subjected to such barbarism become indestructible and motivated by intense hatred resulting from the experience of torture. Psychological torture is a dangerous weapon to use. ("What is it like to be censored in America?" and "More Cybercrime and Censorship.")

Philosophy is impossibly difficult. Iris Murdoch says: "Philosophy, unless one is a genius, is a mug's game." Some of us, who are quite ordinary in our talents and aptitudes, have no choice in the matter and find ourselves drawn to the subject, to this "mug's game," writing on philosophical topics as a matter of being human. We have to think "philosophically" and sometimes resort to writing stories out of frustration -- as did Murdoch and Rand, along with Sartre and Camus -- often discovering our best philosophical ideas, in altered form, in those stories.

Writing what Truman Capote called "non-fiction" stories and novels, or allegories, can also be a way of coping with painful trauma in our lives. Not many of us will be great philosophers, but all of us will benefit from philosophical study and effort, especially those of us concerned to examine fundamental political and legal ideas. I agree with Ms. Rand's famous response to her own question. After asking: "Who needs philosophy?" She answered: "We all do."

I suspect that Ms. Rand meant this statement to apply to scientists as well as the rest of us. We need philosophical stories or myths to make sense of things. (For one view of Rand's ideology in cinema, see "High Noon.") Keep your fingers crossed and we may avoid inserted "errors" for a while.

Ms. Rand's greatest deficiency, however, is that there are obvious and visible gaps in her knowledge of the writings of the great philosophers which no amount of literary talent can conceal even from the alert student (like me), let alone from the professionals. She has no formal training in philosophy and has not read enough independently -- or maybe, not systematically enough -- to compensate for this lack of training, so as to master the subtleties of philosophical doctrine at a highly sophisticated level. When examining the writings of philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, for example, she is simply way out of her depth.

Ms. Rand begins her essay by remarking that, during a period of illness, she came to read Friedrich Paulsen's 1898 work Immanuel Kant: His Life and Doctrine -- "I saw the long, dismal, slithering disintegration of the twentieth century held implicitly in a few sentences. I wanted to scream a warning, but it was too late."

Naturally, this sounds dramatic. But I want to focus on what is actually being said and whether it makes any sense. Friedrich Paulsen was a dry nineteenth century commentator on Kant. He is hardly worthy of being deemed a "threat" to a century that has mostly ignored his work. To lay the great crimes of a bloody century at his doorstep is absurdly excessive. Ms. Rand really wishes to attack Kant himself (the man she loves to hate), but abdicates her responsibility to actually read Kant -- all of Kant -- or most of the important texts. Although her essay is entitled "From the Horse's Mouth," she has concentrated on the wrong horse.

Only after having read at least some of Kant's writings, should she turn to the commentators, like Paulsen, as well as any of the others since, who have agreed or disagreed with Paulsen's once influential interpretations. For example, Kant is criticized and admired by thinkers from both ends of the political spectrum. This is a tribute to his achievement. There is little doubt that Western thought may be divided into "before" and "after" Kant eras. Western philosophy is still working out the implications of the dialogue between Kant and Hegel, a dialogue to which later thinkers contribute in important (if lesser) ways -- thinkers including Marx and Nietzsche, James and Wittgenstein, Husserl and Sartre, Foucault and Derrida, Rorty and West.

More "errors" inserted and corrected. In a way, it is flattering to realize that, if I were not better than the people doing such things, they would feel no need to cheat in these ways. What is disturbing is not the resort to such tactics, but the ability to get away with such crimes thanks to corruption. It was not always so in America. ("How Censorship Works in America" and "What is it like to be censored in America" then "What is it like to be plagiarized?")

To initiate a discussion of the highly difficult ideas of Immanuel Kant -- possibly the most important philosopher of the last 200 years and one of the most difficult -- with a sweeping generalization based on a casual reading of the introduction to a commentator's book from the last century, is simply not acceptable scholarly practice. If you want to fake it, something all of us who were college students have done at some point, then at least read a number of commentaries on Kant's work. Much can be learned about the richness in Kant's writings just from the disagreements among commentators about the meaning and value of his ideas. Ideally, you should not "fake it" at all.

After reading one of Kant's most famous essays, I find it surprising how much more accessible he is than I remembered. (Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals.) Kant is very readable, especially in new translations. Best of all, why not actually quote the words of Kant to which one objects? My guess is that Kant simply does not say or believe the things that Rand thinks he does, but that she refuses to be deterred by this fact from ventilating her hostility to a set of despised ideas that, for some reason, she believes are derived from Kant.

One of the major disadvantages of not having read Kant -- nor even much about him -- is that one is likely to be mistaken about what Kant actually said and believed or advocated. Maybe the person disfiguring this essay is a loyal Randian upset at discovering that her heroine has clay feet. ("Anne Milgram Does it Again!")

We all make mistakes in reading difficult thinkers. Fortunately, there are ways to minimize the risk of this. My policy is to quote the offending passage from a text that I wish to attack. That way, if I am mistaken in my interpretation, someone can point this out to me or can direct me to a text that does so. The Rand method of not reading your adversary's work at all, not even quoting from it, is unwise for many reasons: for one thing, one is apt to find oneself arguing with a strawman, constructed by oneself, on the basis of platitudes and half-truths. This is what I think Ayn Rand does for the most part.

Gore Vidal and other critics have commented on Ms. Rand's unattractive lack of charity and absence of compassion for the poor in what is best described as a nineteenth century brand of liberalism that falls just short of endorsing slavery. Also, there is no excuse for failing to supply footnotes that might help the reader to identify interpretations and/or verify their accuracy. Significantly, again, in an essay that turns into a total rejection of "Kant's" ideas, there is not a single quotation from or reference to Kant's published works. The reader is expected to accept Ms. Rand's oracular comments about what Kant allegedly "believed."

I am less concerned with what Kant "believed" than with his arguments and philosophical conclusions. These Kantian arguments will not be found in Rand's critique. Ms. Rand's substantive criticism begins: "Existentially (i.e., in regard to the conditions of living, scale of achievement, and rapidity of progress), the nineteenth century was the best in Western history. Philosophically, it was one of the worst." (p. 78.)

This is a startling thing to say about the century of Hegel, Bentham, Mill, Niezsche, Schopenhauer, Compte, Bergson, James and many others. One of the worst? As compared with, for instance, the sixth or ninth centuries? I doubt it. The sheer explosive production of ideas in the nineteenth century -- agree with them or not -- should preclude such a judgment. At the very least, Ms. Rand should explain why this is so. She goes on to say:

"People thought they had entered an era of inexhaustible radiance; but it was merely the sunset of Aristotle's influence, which the philosophers were extinguishing." (p. 78.)

In fact, the "sunset of Aristotle's influence" dates from no later than the seventeenth century. But there is more:

"If you have felt an occasional touch of wistful envy at the thought that there was a time when men went to the opening of a new play, and what they saw was not 'Hair' or 'Grease,' but 'Cyrano de Bergerac,' which opened in 1897 -- take a wider look. I wish that borrowing from Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, someone had pointed to the Paulsen book, then the play and said: 'This will kill that.' ..." (p. 78.)

To suggest that poor Professor Paulsen (and/or Kant) from their respective armchairs, are responsible for the alleged decline in aesthetic standards since the nineteenth century is controversial and wildly speculative, but this conclusion is not even defended by Rand; rather, it is simply anounced as fact. While it is true that "Cyrano de Bergerac" opened in 1897, so did quite a few terrible plays. Worse, the terrible plays were usually far more popular than the good ones, just as in our own time. One has only to think of the potboilers of William Somerset Maugham for the London stage of the Edwardian period to relish the prospect of a performance of "Grease."

In our time, plays by Miller, Williams, O'neil and Beckett have opened alongside middle-brow trash like Lloyd-Weber's glitzy (but fun!) "Phantom of the Opera" and pop rip-offs of Puccini's La Boheme, like "Rent." Are these works by great contemporary authors and composers not every bit as good as what was available in 1897 in New York or London? I think so.

Ms. Rand's method is not to argue the point on the basis of the available evidence or a close reading of a text, but only to offer a startling and sweeping generalization, or to throw out a value judgment that appeals to the emotions of the reader, and then to assume that her generalization is established. None of these generalizations are even adequately stated and defended, let alone proven. At last she is ready to attack Kant directly:

"Kant gave to science the entire material world (which, however, was to be regarded as 'unreal'), and left ('conserved') one thing to faith: morality. If you are not sure which side would win in a division of that kind, look around you today." (p. 79.)

Nowhere does Kant suggest that the phenomenal (i.e., empirical) world is "unreal." On the contrary, he regards it as the very real source of sense data for the categories of the understanding. See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 2nd ed., (1787), Introduction, Part I. It was Ms. Rand's next statement that took my breath away:

"The Kantian division allows man's reason to conquer the material world, but eliminates reason from the choice of goals for which material achievements are to be used. Man's goals, actions, choices and values -- according to Kant -- are to be determined irrationally, i.e., by faith." (p. 79.)

This is false. Kant is the ultimate Enlightenment thinker who celebrates freedom and the ubiquity of reason. For Kant, morality is very much a matter of practical reason, it is a necessary inference from the fact that we know ourselves to be free. To suggest that Kant regards morality as a matter of "faith" or "eliminates reason" from moral life is simply totally inaccurate. Here is what Kant has to say on this subject:

"But inasmuch as reason has been imparted to us as a practical faculty, i.e., as one which is to have an influence on the will, its true function must be to produce a will which is not merely good as a means to some further end, but is good in itself. To produce a will good in itself reason was absolutely necessary, inasmuch as nature in distributing her capacities has everywhere gone to work in a purposive manner."

Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, p. 9.

Kant insists also that rationality or reason dictates the necessary framework for experience and ethics. We simply know ourselves to be free, again, and this is to accept ourselves as moral subjects, necessarily, who are responsible for their actions. In its emphasis on intention and duty, Kant's ethics reveals Chritianity's influence on him, and in its attempt to ground duty in reason, Kant's theory showed him to be a thinker of the Enlightenment. By positing freedom as if it were based on a "synthetic a priori truth" (for without freedom, there can be no ethics), one can derive an ethical structure from Kant's minimalist foundations in reason.

Notice that Kant is referring to the unimpaired rational agent capable of reasoning. Kant is well-aware that not everyone is equally free, nor is everyone free in the same way. He certainly understands that some people are mentally impaired or otherwise constrained in the exercise of freedom. These impaired people like to deface the writings of others. Contemporary criticisms of the Enlightenment rational subject -- criticisms which I share -- wish to expand the scope of the concept of a "rational subject" to include previously excluded persons, not to deny rationality in human life. ("Immanuel Kant and the Narrative of Freedom" and "Is Western Philosophy Racist?")

Being a rule-guided activity, for instance, reasoning itself is based on a respect for law and rules. The rules of logic dictate that A = A. One cannot claim to disregard such rules and yet continue to reason logically. The difficult issues arising in the twentieth century and beyond have to do with the connections between sound logic and reason (if any) and empirical reality (whatever that is). I am aware of subsequent revolutions in logic. All attempts to challenge classical logical principles or understandings should begin by being clear concerning what are those principles of classical logic, not by starting from zero. I urge readers to ponder Bradley's writings on relations in logic, then P.F. Strawson's discussion of the same topic in The Bounds of Sense.

From a comparable respect for the requirements of "practical" rationality, Kant deduced his ultimate moral command, the "categorical imperative": "So act that the maxim of your action can be willed as a universal law." (Groundwork)

In the Critique of Practical Reason, the formulation is slightly different: "So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means."

Notice that this second formulation involves two distinct principles: (1) the "universalization principle"; and (2) the "principle of ends." The first says that all moral acts can be derived from principles that can be generalized rationally without contradiction. The second insists on the dignity of each person and demands that you not use people as a means to your ends. "We are all sovereigns," Kant says, "in the kingdom of ends." Hence, Kant was among the modern philosophers to reject torture and slavery -- or experimentation without consent on persons -- as a way of "using" people for purposes that are not their own. (Again: "Is Western Philosophy Racist?" and "John Rawls and Justice.")

Kant's work, thus, represents a great intellectual achievement with unique influence on subsequent humanistic reforms -- reforms having to do with the recognition of the dignity of every person, with concepts such as equality before the law, with the notion of the universality of human rights. These ideas bear no resemblance to the caricature constructed by Ayn Rand, so that she might tear it down. I find recent Leftist critiques of rights equally unsatisfying.

We need the concept of rights as fundamental and universal attributes of human nature, now more than ever. The very people who criticize "rights-talk," will then complain (rightly!) of the violations of human "rights" by torturers and dictators. Among the worst such violations is the denial of rights to self-expression through censorship or the alteration -- even destruction -- of the writings of persons with whom we disagree. To deny words to a person is to deny that human being's status as a person. For this reason, slaves who learned to read were risking their lives. ("Is there a gay marriage right?")

The tortures I have described and defacements of my writings at these blogs, witnessed by readers from many places, are examples of the sort of evil to which I refer. Furthermore, I am sure that Ayn Rand would agree with me on that point, even if many Cuban-Americans -- whose fanaticism and despicable racism embarasses me -- would reject this principle in practice. ("Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'")

"In Kant's ethical system," writes Rand, "morality has nothing to do with this world, nor with reason, nor with science ... " (p.79.)

Well, I have no idea what Rand means by claiming that Kantian ethics "have nothing to do with the world," but it seems pretty clear to me that Kant's ethics is all about reason. The Kantian system has everything to do with reason, as I have indicated in my summary, so that one does not know where to begin to correct these misimpressions. Rand, once again, offers no citations to support her claim because she is in her "guru" mode. Fair criticisms of Kant may challenge his understanding of reason or autonomy. ("Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz.") However, even such contemporary critics acknowledge their indebtedness to Kant's formulation of the essential issues in Modernity as a "philosophical project that is still underway." (Jurgen Habermas)

When my daughter was seven, she won all arguments by pausing and holding her open hand before my eyes, while uttering the immortal words: "Talk to the hand!" At that age, unknowingly, my child was a Randian Objectivist. Now, of course -- as a teenager -- she is a postmodernist-deconstructionist-nihilist of the "Whatever" school. Anyone seen "The Colbert Report" recently? As a student at an "elite" (expensive) university -- some time has passed since my previous review of this work! -- my child is developing a feminist postmodernist elaboration on Judith Butler's theory and novel brand of pragmatism inspired by Cornel West.

When a "Randian" critique of Kant's philosophy appears in print under the name of a writer one otherwise respects, who wishes to be taken seriously as a philosopher, the result is only embarassment for intelligent readers and students of philosophy. However, for readers whose understanding of the subject is even more nonexistent than Ayn Rand's superficial summaries, Rand's pontifical pronouncements may seem profound. They sure sound good, even if they do not amount to much. Rand concludes her essay with this remark:

"[Kant] sets philosophy against reason, i.e., against man's power of cognition, to turn philosophy into an apologist for and a protector of superstition." (p. 82.)

She does not quote the passage from Kant's writings in which he supposedly does this. In fact, once again, the opposite of her conclusion is true: Kant's work was an attack on traditional forms of speculative metaphysics and a plea for the application of reason to matters traditionally clouded in superstition. Kant is a symbol of everything that Rand wishes to be.

Finally, it occurs to me that the most important question for readers to consider today is not how such an ill-informed and poorly argued essay gets into print and how its author manages to be taken seriously by so many people, but how is it possible that the educational system in the U.S. can fail to provide most people with the modicum of philosophical learning necessary to identify such an essay for what it is? ("Nihilists in Disneyworld.")

Prominent American politicians and others continue to invoke the name of Ayn Rand as an important philosopher of the twentieth century, something that I do not think can be plausibly maintained, as opposed to a polemicist or novelist of influence. Ayn Rand is simply not a great philosopher. Maybe there can be no hope for moral progress and genuine social justice in U.S. society until we do something about our appalling and prevalent philosophical ignorance. Even among university graduates in related fields -- like psychology, politics and history -- real philosophy is a non-subject. If I am right about this, then a sound critique of Ms. Rand's essay may be a good place to start to build an awareness of the difference between what is truly philosophically respectable and what is the opposite.

There is so much fascinating philosophical work being done right now -- much of it by American thinkers -- that the thought that most American students will know only the name of one "philosopher" and that it will be "Ayn Rand," is frustrating and depressing for me. Frustration and depression are things one learns to overcome in a torture chamber. Read Ayn Rand, if you must, but you will be much better off reading her novels than her philosophical works -- and neither will be as good as anything written by, or about, Kant.

As for contemporary American and British philosophers, here is a partial list of my favorites: Richard Rorty (often wrong, but fun and fascinating to read); Martha Nussbaum (literary sensibility combined with philosophical rigor); Cornel West (excellent and provides a much needed perspective in America and a keen synthesizing intellect); Hilary Putnam (writes exactly as a surgeon uses a scalpel, except that he is apt to change his mind at any moment, performing an appendectomy instead of the planned vasectomy on the unsuspecting patient-reader); Robert C. Solomon (existentialist-phenomenologist, witty, clear, prolific, often agreeing with me and hence, right about most things); Camille Paglia (literary theorist, crazy, but fun and sexy, because she is not afraid of sex as a topic); Roger Scruton (usually fox hunting when not "doing" philosophy, but the best teacher of the subject out there); Bryan Magee (very readable); Bernard Williams (genius); Rick Roderick (wonderful lecturer, makes Habermas comprehensible); Iris Murdoch (superb writer, great novelist, British and an existentialist, but still made it to the National Portrait Gallery in the UK); Paul Ricoeur (elegant, almost superhumanly learned, the philosopher from "Central Casting"); Angela Davis (Hegel and Marx combined with the African-American tradition of resistance, Frankfurt School heavy theory by way of California dreaming).

Any one of these people, and lots of others, offer a much better reading experience than Ayn Rand. Read, study, write about philosophers and philosophy. "Know yourself."

U.S. Crimes Without Punishment.

James Risen, "Study Cites Breaches of Medical Ethics in Investigation of Terrorism Suspects," in The New York Times, June 7, 2010, at p. A7.

Many persons, including Americans not accused of any crime, may have been experimented upon, secretly, by U.S. physicians developing psychological torture methods for state and federal government "entities." ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "The Experiments in Guatemala.")

The following letter by David Cole appeared in a recent issue of The New York Review of Books:

"Readers will not be surprised to hear that authorizing US officials to strip suspects naked, deprive them of sleep for up to eleven days straight, hit them, slam them into walls, force them into painful stress positions, and waterboard them violates a number of binding legal obligations."

I am sure that the insertions of "errors" in my writings, as a strategy, is only one part of a deliberate psychological torture campaign emanating from New Jersey government. ("American Doctors and Torture.")

"The federal torture statute, 18 USC 2340A, makes it a crime to subject an individual to torture. [This includes psychological torture, rape, choking persons in their home and other such offenses, among these offenses are induced frustrations, censorship, isolation, slanders, suppression and destruction of creative works.] At the time the memos were written by the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush Administration's Justice Department, the federal War Crime's Act, 18 USC 2441, made it a felony to breach any of the guarantees of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which requires that all wartime detainees be treated humanely. (After the Supreme Court made clear that the Geneva Conventions applied to the conflict with Al Qaeda, Congress then watered down the War Crimes Act, making prosecution under that provision somewhat more difficult today. But that does not erase the fact that the conduct was criminal at the time that it occurred, and at the time that the Bush lawyers and Cabinet officials authorized it.)"

"In addition, the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, a multilateral treaty that the United States has signed and ratified, prohibits both torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, and allows no exceptions. (It also obligates its signatories to investigate for criminal prosecution ANY credible allegation that a person within the nation's jurisdiction has been complicit in torture or degrading treatment.)"

I suggest that America's treatment of female inmates especially, but also of all inmates, may violate these provisions of law. Certainly, the treatment that I have received at the hands of N.J. public officials and attorneys merits criminal investigation by the authorities. I have retained copies of security records showing the number of intrusions into my computer. I am sure that Mr. Cole and many other legal scholars will agree with this claim. I am publicly raising this issue and inviting the world to make note of my requests for the truth concerning my life from Paula Dow, New Jersey Attorney General; Stuart Rabner, New Jersey Chief Justice; Christopher Christie, New Jersey's Governor; and Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney General. Silence on the part of these officials can only be understood as complicity in atrocity.

"Moreover, international law recognizes torture as one of the few crimes that is subject to 'universal jurisdiction,' meaning that it can be prosecuted anywhere, regardless of where torture occurred. [This includes Cuba which is a member of the United Nations.] The reason for this is that countries may be reluctant to hold their own agents accountable -- as President Obama's actions since coming to office have confirmed."

"So the question is not whether laws were broken by the Bush administration and its lawyers. They clearly were. The question is whether we the American people will insist that the laws be enforced. As I have argued in these pages ['The Torture Memo Lawyers,' NYR, October 8, 2009], what is critical -- as a moral, historical, and legal matter -- is that we acknowledge in some official manner that what was done in our name was not just a terrible idea, not just an unfortunate mistake whose consequences we will live with for a long, long time. It was illegal. That accountability can take many forms. But what is unacceptable is to proceed as if no wrongs were done." (emphasis added)

Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner? As you wear your judicial robes and comment upon the legality and ethics of others, Mr. Rabner, should you not display some concern to behave ethically and legally yourself in your soiled tribunal while presiding over what is now, demonstrably, the most corrupt and criminally failed legal system in America?

Mr. Rabner, you disgrace the office that you hold.

(AP), "Cuba: Disidents Support U.S. Bill" [to end the embargo against Cuba] in The New York Times, June 11, 2010, at p. A10.

"Seventy-four Cuban opposition activists signed a letter Thursday supporting a bill in the United States Congress that would lift the American ban on travel to Cuba and increase American food exports to the island. 'We share the opinion that the isolation of the people of Cuba benefits the most inflexible interests of its government, while any opening serves to inform and empower the Cuban people and helps to further strengthen our civil society,' said the letter, whose signers include the blogger Yoani Sanchez, ... the hunger striker Guillermo Farinas, and the human rights leader [philosopher] Elizardo Sanchez."

Please add my name to that letter and let us make the letter available to the world. The harassments and obstructions I experience may prevent my writing at any time, further slanders are always expected, together with additional economic harms against me. Continuing silence in the American corporate media must be expected.

For as long as I am able to write, I will join these dissidents in Cuba -- as well as American dissidents -- in calling for peace and an end to the embargo. If I should suffer a fatal accident, this will continue to be my protest: It is time to end the embargo against Cuba. ("What is it like to be tortured?" and "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" then "How Censorship Works in America" and "What is it like to be censored in America?")

A Report Card for President Barack Obama.

July 31, 2011 at 6:15 P.M. Spacing was altered in this essay since my previous review of this work. I will try to repair the harm done from a public computer in New York. I cannot say how many other writings have been altered or damaged by New Jersey's hackers. I will struggle to discover and correct any and/or all additional inserted "errors" in my writings by making use of public computers in New York city.

June 8, 2010 at 12:06 P.M. "Errors" inserted overnight have been corrected, once again. ("Roberto Unger's Revolutionary Legal Theory" and "More Cybercrime and Censorship.")

June 6, 2010 at 12:19 P.M. Any time that the e-mail address in this essay is altered or incomplete, it means that N.J.'s hackers are still permitted to get away with their crimes. This spectacle has become symbolic of America today.

June 4, 2010 at 11:46 A.M. The e-mail address that was corrected after several inserted "errors" yesterday was altered, again, overnight. The goal of these methods is to maximize psychological harm to the victim. ("What is it like to be tortured?" and "More Censorship and Cybercrime.")

June 3, 2010 at 11:19 P.M. The e-mail address cited in this essay has been corrected three times during the first day that the work was posted as a result of hacker-inserted "errors." The correct address may be found in The New York Review of Books page 17, where it is also listed, in the event that the web site address continues to be defaced. Sadly, this vandalism is very likely due to New Jersey corruption.

June 3, 2010 6:51 P.M. "Errors" were inserted by hackers several times after my posting of this essay today. I expect more alterations of the text over the next few days in violation of copyright laws and the U.S. Constitution. Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner? Mr. Menendez, do you condone these crimes? ("Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?" and "Is Senator Bob 'For' Human Rights?")

As I type these words it is early in the month of June, 2010. Barack Obama's presidency has settled into a comfortable cruising speed. Some reflections and assessments may be in order. In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I voted for Obama and wish him (like any American president) to do well for the nation.

During an interview after his first year in office, Mr. Obama gave himself a B+ as president. I would have given him an A, at that time. Today, I concur with his assessment and award Mr. Obama a B+ for his efforts. Faced with the same candidates, I would vote for Obama again.

The interim elections will not be good for Democrats. As America's first African-American president, a B+ may not be good enough. I want many more African-Americans in the White House. Excellence is a moral obligation for Mr. Obama.

The stagnation in Afghanistan and Iraq, dangerous spreading of the cancers of fanaticism and international terrorism, armed conflict, revolutionary movements and religious fundamentalism that is, essentially, anti-Western -- all of these forces are worse today than when the president took office. How much of this reality may be attributed to Mr. Obama is difficult to say. It is impossible to deny that President Obama inherited a catastrophe from Bush/Cheney.

At the end of July, 2010 we are witnessing the most bloody month in terms of American casualties since the conflict in Afghanistan began. Things will get worse before they get better -- if they get better in Afghanistan. The revolutionary movement in India and the deepening chaos in Pakistan are highly worrisome developments -- as is China's increasing power in the world and intense displeasure at the evident disasters in the making in the Middle East, Korea, South Asia, and elsewhere. China does not wish the US to remain in the neighborhood forever.

Like many people in the farthest and most dismal places on earth, this soon to be "rival Superpower" wonders who or what (if anyone) is in control in America? No wonder China is creating its rival global news source for the world in the English language. I do not believe that China -- or the U.S. -- will be "prodded" in one direction or another by anyone. To suggest such a thing -- that a huge country can be "prodded" to do something by a rival -- is to insult people.

I wish I could say who is in charge in America. We continue to deliver mixed and/or confused messages, appear ignorant and ill-informed on the issues, indulge in torture and our own forms of censorship and terrorism (i.e., "robot bombs" dropped on villages to kill one man, maybe), then make decisions behind closed doors that contradict our public protests and promises. This hypocrisy is not missed by observers in the world.

Torture is not a trivial issue for billions of persons on the planet in danger of losing their faith in America. ("What is it like to be tortured?") A nation with 16 independent intelligence agencies is bound to lack coordination and efficiency in information flow to the top, that is, we are not effectively synthesizing or filtering data. It is possible that we will fail to prevent a future attack because of this inefficiency and inadequate interpretive mechanisms.

The U.S. intelligence community and military seem to ignore the president and American courts, notably in the continuing public criminality which you are witnessing at these blogs, also in hideous forms of cruelty to detainees, or even unfortunate members of the population, like inmates and all poor women. Government is spying on Americans to an astonishing extent and shows no sign of revealing the whereabouts of information gathered about each of us. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")

New Jersey is a spectacle of corruption, mafia control of police and courts, inept and bribed officials top-to-bottom that is horrifying and unacceptable in countries like Brazil or Chile, even Peru and Cuba, to say nothing of Europe. People have begun to wonder whether the United States of America is in irreversible decline or still exists as anything more than a pale shadow of what it once was. The feds cannot control Trenton. How will they control Iraq?

New Jersey's level of corruption in government cannot be tolerated in America. Any more "errors" to be inserted in this text? Tim Arango, "Iraq War Defies a U.S. Timetable," in The New York Times, July 3, 2010, at p. 1 and Richard A. Opel, "Bombers Hit U.S. Aid Compound in Afghanistan," in The New York Times, July 3, 2010, at p. A8. (1,134 U.S. service people killed in Afghanistan alone.)

Living in New York affords the intelligent and attentive person who reads and thinks -- I do a little of both -- ample opportunity to listen to people chatting in several languages, often at fancy locations, thus picking up items of information that provide a good notion of what people on the street are saying in many places in the world. At the moment, we are not highly regarded or very impressive to foreigners. I wish America to be both -- a marvel to the world and the "City on a Hill" that all of humanity admires and emulates.

With all our faults, we have been exactly that ideal during much of the twentieth century. We must be that political ideal once again. I am referring to a moral and political-legal ideal, I emphasize this point, not weapons or military bases. The U.S. once provided the standard to the world on human rights and legality. No one makes this claim for the U.S. today.

Mr. Obama's promise to close the Guantanamo facility will not be kept. The photographs of U.S. atrocities will not be made public to the media or people. 1,000 photos of American tortures of detainees are being suppressed. Denials and cover-ups are never the answer to a crisis of legitimacy. The protection of friends and cover-ups after the disclosure that U.S. lawyers and doctors participated in this Holocaust-like evil undermines respect for the medical and legal professions in this country -- deservedly, in the state of New Jersey, especially, whose tribunals are adjuncts to the mafia -- diminishing American credibility on human rights issues throughout the world.

We still refuse to join the world criminal court. "Holocaust-like" is not an inappropriate analogy considering the one million plus deaths in the aftermath of the two Iraq wars, Afghanistan, Pakistan and "elsewhere" and (by some reckonings) this includes 500,000 children. Philosopher Joy Gordon has documented this death toll with compelling thoroughness.

"In some respects this is worse than Bush. First, because Obama has claimed the right to assassinate American citizens whom he suspects of 'terrorism,' merely on the grounds of his own suspicion or that of the C.I.A., something Bush never claimed publicly. Second, Obama says that the government can detain you indefinitely, even if you have been exonerated in a trial, and he has publicly floated the idea of 'preventive detention.' Third, the Obama administration, in expanding the use of unmanned drone attacks, argues that the U.S. has the authority under international law to use extrajudicial killing in sovereign countries with which it is not at war." ["Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'"]

"Such measures by Bush were widely considered by liberals and progressives to be outrages and were roundly, and correctly, protested. But those acts which may have been construed (wishfully or not) as anomalies under the Bush regime have now been consecrated into 'standard operating procedure' by Obama, who claims, as did Bush, executive privilege and state secrecy in defending the crime of aggressive war." http://www.worldcantwait.org/ (305 Broadway #185, New York, N.Y. 10013, 866-973-4463.)

This e-mail address is altered, periodically, by New Jersey's hackers: "WORLD-CAN'T-WAIT.ORG" ("Roberto Unger's Revolutionary Legal Theory" and, again, "Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me."")

8 million jobs lost from the economy. A few hundred thousand new jobs created after the stimulus will not make much difference, especially if they are temporary census jobs paying peanuts. Michael Powell, "U.S. Reports Job Growth Lagged in Private Sector," in The New York Times, July 3, 2010, at p. 1. (9.5% jobless rate as labor force shrinks -- people stop looking for work -- means a rise in crime rates in about 30 days. Real unemployment is over 10%; officially, the rate is 9.6% of Americans are jobless.)

Obama's broken promise to close Guantanamo and our double standards increase the dangers and will reduce the options for dissidents throughout the world. We cannot condone or be a part of torture, rape, secrecy, betraying the rule of law on fundamental human rights issues, like freedom of speech and religion. Sanctioned cybercrime and censorship, burning the Qu'ran, raping and murdering tortured detaineees, who are often uncharged and unconvicted of any offense, takes our legal system back to the ninth century before Magna Carta. (Again: "Is Senator Bob 'For' Human Rights?")

"Unsurprisingly, the Obama administration has refused to prosecute any members of the Bush regime who are responsible for war crimes, including some who admitted to waterboarding and other forms of torture, thereby making their actions acceptable for him or any future president."

"Crimes Are Crimes No Matter Who Commits Them," in The New York Review of Books, May 17, 2010, at p. 17. ("How Censorship Works in America" and "What is it like to be tortured?")

Is this our commitment to legal ethics? Mr. Obama seems indecisive or powerless to do anything about this horror for which history will not be kind to America's first African-American president presiding over the enslavement of brown people from the Third World. "Magna Carta" may or may not be italicized, depending on the writer's choice. ("America's Holocaust.")

The American economy is "failing to adjust" to new circumstances in the world. We are not "moving on" from the fiscal meltdown. ("How Censorship Works in America.")

We are falling behind in research and development, losing brilliant minds to incarceration, criminality, corruption and cronyism in many key industries, even academia in addition to the arts is losing amazing people to Asian competitors. Excellence has become a category of guilt. Mediocrity is celebrated as a form of democracy. Genius is deemed "offensive" also as a category of guilt, especially among minority men. It is a fault to "try to be better than everyone else" at anything. Genius is dismissed as the result of "lots of practice." This sort of effort to achieve excellence was once deemed a virtue. A few inserted "errors" since earlier today, but fewer than I expected. ("More Censorship and Cybercrime" and "What is it like to be censored in America?" then "Is Humanism Still Possible?")

Our educational system reflects this collapse into listless "averageness." We are now 20th in the world in intellectual achievement among college graduates. Most of my fellow citizens will not read a single book during their adult lifetimes, many are incapable of doing so (especially among N.J. judges), while ephemera like "Grey's Anatomy" or "Glee" produces orgasmic rapture among critics in once respected publications such as The New York Times. ("Nihilists in Disneyworld" and "Manohla Dargis Strikes Again!")

You are invited to draw your own conclusions, once more, concerning the spectacle that you are witnessing at these blogs. A review of "Robin Hood" has now been altered at least five times in a 24-hour period by hackers using N.J. government computers. U.S. media is untroubled by this public censorship.

Who will be next? What publications will be subjected to organized content-based computer crime and harassment by persons using government technology in the future? Violations of my Constitutional rights are the potential violations of anyone's rights. ("What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "What is it like to be censored in America?")

The oil spill in Louisiana has made it abundantly clear that federal reactions have been slow and incompetent, no better than under President Bush when Katrina struck the same territory. Many people in the Gulf area will suffer for generations to come and the ecosystem will be severely damaged. Happily, Dick Cheney is feeling just fine. If Mr. Obama is not careful, this oil spill will become emblematic of his presidency, a fitting symbol of forces of contamination permitted to grow out-of-control. New Jersey? Iraq? Public censorship, organized crime controlling an American jurisdiction cannot be permitted to stand, Mr. Obama, even when it is Democrat territory. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")

I appreciate that we have a docile corporate media in this country, but it saddens me to realize that we also have a corporate government. It really does not matter all that much who occupies the White House, the executives at BP and other megacorporations "gotta get theirs." Normally, this would be O.K. Lately, average Americans have been getting screwed on a colossal scale by these corporations and paid-off politicians. (New Jersey!)

Please see "Is Congressman Steven Rothman (D) on the take?" A friend said: "They're all on the take." This corruption charge does not include Mr. Obama, whose honesty is beyond question. Working and poor families do not seem to matter to anyone in Washington -- after election day. Rural folks may not matter much even on election day if politicians can win the big cities. This is not O.K.

$20 billion will not solve the environmental disaster resulting from an oil leak that is still not under control in terms of the environmental damage we have suffered. This estrangement from our values is not what Americans expect of their government at this difficult moment in our history. There is a great deal of anger and frustration expressed by ordinary people. These emotions may explain the Tea Party's success, so far. This is probably when N.J. should try to insert more "errors" in this essay or to alter some of the names mentioned. ("What is it like to be tortured?" then "What is it like to be censored in America?")

Mr. President: People are hurting beyond the beltway. There are few jobs, not many educational or other opportunities, sexism is rampant, racism is still with us, women suffer from persistent and evil forms of sexism in jobs and schools, children are at greater risk than ever from child-porn and -prostitution which has become yet another protected criminal industry in New Jersey.

State officials inserting "errors" in these essays make it clear to the world that our commitment to free speech is a lie, unless we happen to be media millionaires. ("More Child-Porn and -Prostitution in New Jersey" and "Judges Protect Child Molesters in Bayonne, New Jersey.")

Judicial appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court are a plus for the president. It is sad that such appointments have recently become opportunities to debate everything except competence and intellect, especially "representation" for various groups. We will no longer have a white male Protestant on the High Court after Mr. Stevens departs to write his memoirs. I suspect that "White Male Protestants" have become America's latest minority group.

Some people feel that they are not being remembered by decision makers despite bearing the bulk of the load in American history. I see their point. I think this recognition of the plight of "working poor" families, especially in rural areas, made John Edwards an attractive candidate in the primaries. Maybe that is why the attack machine went after Mr. Edwards. I suspect that some of the people inserting "errors" in these writings disapprove of Mr. Edwards because (like the rest of us) he is a flawed human being.

Why are you worrying about poor and rural whites, Senator Edwards? They don't have big lobbyists, do they? Well, they have the Constitution just like everybody else. That's Communism! No, it's called "fairness." Either "T-Party" or "Tea Party" is fine by the way.

Poor people includes whites, browns, blacks and many Asians. Arizona demands to see their "papers." Fifty states creating fifty immigration policies is not a very good idea. Recently, Arizona legislators have suggested denying and/or revoking the citizenship of persons BORN in the U.S. whose parents are (or were) illegal immigrants, despite the provisions of the Constitution.

We also do not have much of the Bill of Rights left as the Conservative Phalanx continues to chip away at the exclusionary rule, Miranda rights and the 6th Amendment right to counsel, as well as allowing for occasional torture, rape, and eavesdropping by the government without "good cause." Evidently, the 5th Amendment's protections against being made to testify against oneself and the 4th Amendment's requirement of "reasonableness" in searches are "plots by the Taliban" to make us unsafe. I hate to say it, but I think we are more unsafe than ever thanks to the C.I.A.

Based on what you are seeing at these blogs, you decide how much of the First Amendment still stands. ("Morality Tale.") What the hell? Are you with Al Qaeda? Don't you wanna get Ossama bin Laden? Dead or alive? Well, then? Whatever it takes. The rights of ordinary Americans are being lost in this "War on Terror." What will we do when the terror comes from our own government?

We have abandoned the peace process in the Middle East. As a result, there is no control over the actions of Israel -- including the appalling embargo which is causing so much suffering to many people in Gaza and in Turkey, the one Islamic country with a previously cordial relationship with Israel -- and there is a further heightening of the tensions in the entire region. We must be more active in bringing the parties to the negotiating table.

Mercifully, we have health insurance. Unmercifully, we will need that health insurance soon unless we control the polluters and do something to cure the AIDS epidemic. MILLIONS continue to die from AIDS, including many children, as we cut funds for research. Please provide all the help you can to organizations such as "AIDS Walk, New York." I would rather spend $1 billion per month on research to end the AIDS epidemic and in the fight against cancer than in the continuing Iraq/Afghanistan military efforts.

Despite the proclamation of "ending the military component" of our efforts in Iraq, 50,000 U.S. troops will remain in Iraq for the foreseeable future; Iran's nuclear program will require "attention"; and Afghanistan's Taliban brigades continue to make Pakistan and "other places" their home away from home. Al Qaeda has spread to Africa and Latin America.

What exactly have we accomplished with these wars -- other than the removal of Mr. Hussein in Iraq and his replacement by the Ghandi-like honesty of Mr. Karzai's government in Afghanistan -- after so much effort? Is Mr. Karzai a true democrat?

Mr. Obama, much of the hope and romance associated with your candidacy has vanished in a morning after fit of depression as we appreciate just what we got ourselves into. We need your best efforts to cope with this Hydra-headed monster called "America's decline" against which we struggle.

The state of the American Union is uncertain and endangered. Peace and prosperity appear to be things of the past. The future for America's young people looks very grim indeed. We need reason to hope that things will be better. The number one word spoken by persons asked about the Obama administration -- in New York's liberal centers! -- is "disappointment." What is it like in the rest of the country? ("Obama Says: 'Torture is a Secret!'")

The following letter by Jeremy Varon was published in the Times, July 2, 2010, at page A24:

The failure of President Obama to use the powers of his office and his personality to make good on his pledge to close Guantanamo Bay is despicable. If the detention camp was a moral blight and a foreign policy liability on Day 1 of the administration, it certainly remains so today. That the administration would claim credit, as a senior official says, for "trying to close" the prison, while actually failing in its goal, is a level of cynicism that is mind-boggling. I voted for Mr. Obama on the basis of his promise of real change. With respect to Guantanamo, there has been none. For this reason he has lost my vote. On some things, like undoing a legacy of extrajudicial detention and torture, there can be no compromise.