The law ignores the Constitutional ban on “unreasonable search” and protecting personal documents. It also seeks to establish state-level control over an area of law that is the domain of the federal government. There is, for instance, no Arizona customs service or national border service. The border is a federal category, and immigration is controlled, by law, by various federal agencies and the jurisprudence of federal law. There is language in the law that is reportedly designed to prevent the federal government from interfering with state enforcement.

In unmistakably relevant and meaningful language, the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The president announced before the law was even signed by Arizona’s governor that he has directed the Justice Department’s civil rights division to investigate whether or not specific provisions of the Arizona law would violate federal or Constitutional civil rights protections. Numerous rights groups have said they plan to mount one or more legal challenges to the law. Constitutional scholars have begun to weigh in and some Arizona law enforcement officials have said they think it will place an unfair burden on police, and possibly take them outside their real scope of legal authority.

According to the New York Times:

Hispanics, in particular, who were not long ago courted by the Republican Party as a swing voting bloc, railed against the law as a recipe for racial and ethnic profiling. “Governor Brewer caved to the radical fringe,” a statement by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund said, predicting that the law would create “a spiral of pervasive fear, community distrust, increased crime and costly litigation, with nationwide repercussions.”

While police demands of documents are common on subways, highways and in public places in some countries, including France, Arizona is the first state to demand that immigrants meet federal requirements to carry identity documents legitimizing their presence on American soil.

For Americans who grew up during the Cold War era, the specter of totalitarian dictatorship was often represented, even in children’s cartoons, by the scene in which policemen stop people going about their daily routines, demanding “Your papers please!” There are organizing efforts going on to stage massive protests against the law, and to pressure other states to pledge not to take such action. The Miami Herald reports that a loose association of truckers traveling into or out of Arizona are planning to stage a trade boycott of the entire state.

There is also a spreading effort, across Arizona and other states, to mount a political challenge to the Republican domination of state politics, with nearly 30% of the population of Arizona being of Hispanic descent. NPR correspondent Ted Robbins reports that:

The things that are circumstantial are the fact that a larger than general portion of the Hispanic population in Arizona is under 18. So, of course, they can’t vote. And then there’s also a lot of folks who are in the country either legally or not legally, but they can’t vote because they’re not citizens yet. So, if you pair them away, what you have is 17 percent of eligible voters are Hispanic. That’s of the whole population. So they don’t, you can see that that halves the number of total Hispanics in the state. So the numbers belie their electoral power.

There is some question as to whether this law is taking place specifically because Republican party leaders in the state do not believe there is any substantial electoral risk from alienating the Hispanic voting population, which tends to lean Democratic to begin with. Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) has sought to frame the legislation as an effort to fight back against “the murderous greed of drug cartels”, even as some fear the militant bandwagoning of prominent figures like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has called for the deployment of thousands of US military personnel to the Mexican border.

The law is in some ways an expression of deep cultural paradoxes running through the rightward shift of the Republican party nationally. The anti-tax “tea party” movement has spent the better part of a year trying to oppose Pres. Obama and his agenda as a “socialist” takeover in which the government will take an egregiously authoritarian role in the private lives and economic choices of individuals, with little hint of any such possibility. But the same militant conservatism appears to be the impetus for this law, which establishes an unprecedented right for law enforcement to involve itself in people’s daily routines, with almost no adherence to Constitutional principles of due process.

That psychological conflict, inherent in the apparent radicalization of the Republican party and its public policy agenda, may ultimately be a serious problem for the party in terms of the arithmetic of general elections and of elections of national scope. It may also allow the Democratic party to rouse an under-involved political constituency whose personal, family and community interests, not to mention a committed belief in the value of American Constitutional ideals, and motivate a wave vote against such measures.

The legal challenge will likely come from three fronts. There will likely be a federal response, at least insofar as the Justice Department will seek to instruct Arizona state and municipal law enforcement that the jurisdictional scope of this legislation is, due to Constitutional provisions, far narrower than the governor and the law’s backers would like. There will also be a civil rights response, coming from one or more prominent and community-based organizations. And there may be a citizen-based response, in which individuals targeted by the law, or who fear they may be targeted for unequal treatment, will sue the state or law enforcement.

The LA Times reports:

Obama signaled that a legal showdown might be possible and that his administration would “examine the civil rights and other implications” of the law. Department of Justice officials said they “were reviewing the bill” but declined to discuss the legislation further. Immigrant rights groups have vowed a court fight, arguing that regulating immigration is a federal matter.

[...] Hundreds of high school students left classes this week in protest, pouring into the plaza outside the state Capitol and urging a veto. Religious leaders and police chiefs — and thousands of callers to the governor’s office — pressed for Brewer to reject the bill. Some Arizona officials argued it would stigmatize the state much as its past refusal to honor the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. U.S. Rep. Raul M. Grijalva, a Democrat who represents southern Arizona, called for a convention boycott of his own state.

The measure not only sets up a serious showdown over the nature of long-standing civil rights protections, and a genuine national crisis of identity over the degree to which police action and the daily activities of citizens might be in conflict, but it also challenges the historic openness of American society. The ideological movement behind this legislation favors sealing the southern border of the United States militarily, and the official establishment of what has been called in the past the “Fortress America” model of immigration enforcement.

This confrontational model is tempting to those who believe it will bring added security, especially in communities where a rise in levels of chronic poverty or violent crime appears to be associated with the black market in human smuggling. But there is little evidence that such measures would address that problem. The most likely practical outcome is the widespread, institutionalized harassment of individuals, even US citizens, most of whom are in no way violating any law, even up to and including immigration law.

The immigrant identification law has been compared to the beginnings of apartheid, in which the status of individuals had to be officially determined and classified, ostensibly in the interests of “security”. And while the specific provisions of the law would erode individual liberties in serious ways — allowing law enforcement to demand proof of residency at any moment, for virtually any reason, and possibly subjecting citizens and policemen to legal penalty for not collaborating — it contains no specific provisions that would directly impact the activities of violent smuggling cartels.

At 11:05, there remained fully 10 Democrats not having cast their vote, with rumors that one or two Republicans might also “defect” and join the Democratic majority in voting for passage. At 11:07 pm EST, the tally of yea votes reached 218, the threshold necessary to pass the comprehensive healthcare reform bill. The voting would remain open for 15 minutes, allowing for the possibility of a change in one or more votes.

At 11:10 pm, the impossible occurred, when the final Republican voting cast a yea vote, leaving only one Democrat to vote. The final vote, at 11:11 pm, was in favor, making the vote 220 in favor to 215 opposed. The vote means the House of Representatives passed healthcare reform weeks before the tentative Thanksgiving deadline, handing Pres. Obama a major legislative victory.

At 11:15 pm EST, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi dropped the gavel and declared to raucous applause that the bill had passed by a margin of 220 yeas to 215 nays. The vote was immediately followed by a 5-minute vote to honor those who died in the shooting tragedy at Fort Hood, Texas, 2 days earlier.

Rep. Anh Joseph Cao (R-LA) was the lone Republican voting to pass the reform bill. Louisiana is one of the states tat suffers from the least competition among health insurance providers, with high rates of denied claims, dropped coverage and uninsured, a large low-income population and serious budgetary challenges. His vote may put added pressure on Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu, also of Louisiana, to join her party in supporting passage.

The vote marks the first time either house of the US Congress has passed legislation that would extend healthcare coverage to nearly every American, after 100 years of attempts, some bold and visionary, some less daring and less developed. That historic achievement has been part of Pres. Obama’s rhetoric throughout the process, and the White House is expected to stress that achievement in declaring its efforts vindicated by tonight’s vote.

Earlier in the day, however, some difficult concessions were made in order to win support from conservative Democrats. The Stupak amendment will bar use of federal funds to purchase coverage under any plan that permits elective abortion procedures.

As Politico is reporting:

After hours of negotiations with a group of abortion opponents, led by Indiana Rep. Brad Ellsworth, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Pelosi made a final painful sacrifice to pick up crucial support, allowing a vote on an amendment sponsored by Ellsworth and Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak that would bar any insurance company participating in the exchange program from covering the procedure.

Rep. Diana DeGette, of Colorado, said the amendment —which passed with 240 votes in favor— has left many “furious” and that it marks a rolling back of women’s basic reproductive rights. The Stupak amendment will continue to be a point of serious contention, as there will surely be demands to remove it from the conference committee bill, if the Senate passes its reform bill.

Sen. Harry Reid, the majority leader, commended Speaker Pelosi on her leadership and said the House vote was “another mile traveled on the road to reforming our broken healthcare system”. Speaker Pelosi announced at 11:37 pm that she had received a congratulatory phone call from Pres. Obama, who she said “provided the vision and the momentum”, adding that without Pres. Obama in the White House, the process itself would not have been possible.

The Speaker personally commended Rep. John Dingell, who has introduced a universal healthcare coverage bill every year since he entered the House, as did his father, going back to the 1940s. Steny Hoyer praised Speaker Pelosi for “Her focus, her vision, her tenacity, her energy, her commitment” and said her leadership had served the future of America’s children. Rep. James Clyburn, the Democratic whip said the process had greatly strengthened the Democratic caucus.

The process of passing the legislation has only just begun, however, as the Senate still needs to finalize, present for debate, clear from debate and vote on it’s version of the reforms. Once that is done, the bills will go to conference committee to be reconciled into one merged bill, which both Houses will again have to pass, before Pres. Obama will have anything on his desk to sign into law.

UPDATE, 8 November 2009, 13:39 EST: Anh Joseph Cao has said he came to understand the need to vote to pass the sweeping healthcare reform program, after listening to the concerns of constituents desperate to find a way to secure reliable, affordable coverage for basic and/or emergency healthcare. A release on his website reads as follows:

Tonight, Congressman Anh “Joseph” Cao (LA-2) voted in favor of the comprehensive health reform bill, H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act.

Of his vote, Cao said: “Tonight, I voted to keep taxpayer dollars from funding abortion and to deliver access to affordable health care to the people of Louisiana.

Cao said: “I read the versions of the House [health reform] bill. I listened to the countless stories of Orleans and Jefferson Parish citizens whose health care costs are exploding – if they are able to obtain health care at all. Louisianans needs real options for primary care, for mental health care, and for expanded health care for seniors and children.

The bill passed the House at a 220-215 vote.

Cao said: “Today, I obtained a commitment from President Obama that he and I will work together to address the critical health care issues of Louisiana including the FMAP crisis and community disaster loan forgiveness, as well as issues related to Charity and Methodist Hospitals. And, I call on my constituents to support me as I work with him on these issues.

Cao said: “I have always said that I would put aside partisan wrangling to do the business of the people. My vote tonight was based on my priority of doing what is best for my constituents.

PoliticsDaily has put out a list of the 39 Democrats who voted against healthcare reform, their party’s banner legislative effort of the year. The list is as follows:

John Adler (NJ)
Jason Altmire (PA)
Brian Baird (WA)
John Barrow (GA)
John Boccieri (OH)
Dan Boren (OK)
Rick Boucher (VA)
Allen Boyd (FL)
Bobby Bright (AL)
Ben Chandler (KT)
Travis Childers (MS)
Artur Davis (AL)
Lincoln Davis (TN)
Chet Edwards (TX)
Bart Gordon (TN)
Parker Griffith (AL)
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD)
Tim Holden (PA)
Larry Kissell (NC)
Suzanne Kosmas (FL)
Frank Kratovil (MD)
Dennis Kucinich (OH)
Jim Marshall (GA)
Betsy Markey (CO)
Eric Massa (NY)
Jim Matheson(UT)
Mike McIntyre (NC)
Michael McMahon (NY)
Charlie Melancon (LA)
Walt Minnick (ID)
Scott Murphy (NY)
Glenn Nye (VA)
Collin Peterson (MN)
Mike Ross (AR)
Heath Shuler (NC)
Ike Skelton (MO)
John Tanner (TN)
Gene Taylor (MS)
Harry Teague (NM)

Some, but not all, of the 39 defectors are members of the Blue Dog Coalition, a caucus of conservative Democrats. The leaders of the Blue Dog Coalition had pushed for a broader uniform opposition among their membership to the passage of a public option. In the end, only three of the four leaders of the coalition —Herseth Sandlin, Melancon and Shuler— voted against passage, while Rep. Baron Hill (IN-09) voted for passage.

A statement published on Hill’s website explained his reasoning:

As an elected representative I have been tasked with the weighty responsibility of acting as a good steward of the general welfare of my constituents and a good steward of their money. My vote in support of the Affordable Health Care for America Act is a fulfillment of those responsibilities.

Out [sic] great nation has been debating how to responsibly reform our health care system for decades. And the debate has grown increasingly important as health costs have escalated sharply – growing at nearly twice the rate of inflation, premiums rising four times faster than wages, and more than 60 percent of bankruptcies due to insurmountable medical bills. Inaction is both irresponsible and dangerous.

H.R. 3962 will allow those Hoosiers who work so hard every day but cannot afford health insurance for their families to secure it. Southern Indiana is currently home to 52,000 uninsured residents – a number that will significantly decrease under this bill.

Like Republican Rep. Ahn Joseph Cao, of Louisiana, Hill’s explanation appears to make clear that ideology aside, he was convinced it was in the immediate interest of his constituents that the reform legislation be passed. Having consistently run as a conservative Democrat, Hill’s vote is important, because it shows he viewed the virtue of public service as directing a vote to pass, something conservatives in the Senate may be forced to consider more closely.

The US president said he had called for $63 billion in US spending for health initiatives across the continent, including money to fight malaria, polio, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. Disease and conflict have devastated the population of Africa, reducing life-expectancy in many countries to under 40 years. Of the 27 nations with life-expectancy under 50 years, 26 of them are in Africa (Afghanistan is the other). Life-expectancy in Ghana is just under 60, a fact which underscores the positive quality-of-life gains that can emerge from peace and rule of law.

Many observers, including across Africa, have questioned why Pres. Obama chose Ghana for his first presidential visit to subsaharan Africa, especially given his close family ties to Kenya. Ghana’s record of multiple consecutive peaceful transfers of power has been cited as the most likely explanation for the choice: Ghana is seen by Obama and by other leaders as an example of good governance, the rule of law and democracy, in a region troubled by bloody sectarian conflict, ethnic cleansing and relentless threats of coups and armed takeovers.

Obama will also visit one of the final points of embarkation used by ships engaged in the centuries’ long atrocity of the transatlantic slave trade, which brought millions of Africans to the Americas. That visit promises to be somber and bracing, as the US president confronts the most shameful aspect of his nation’s heritage, and seeks to highlight the need to establish the universal moral basis for human rights and democratic freedoms.

As reported by VOA:

Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, will visit former slave trading center Cape Coast Castle where African slaves were shipped across the Atlantic for almost 300 years. Mrs. Obama is a descendant of African slaves.

Pres. Obama is using new media to reach out to people across Africa, to ask for their input and to hear their concerns and questions. Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites, as well as online media with continental reach, like AllAfrica.com, are being used to interact with and voice concerns to the president of the United States, in what could be called the first continent-wide online town-hall meeting in Africa.

Macon Phillips, Obama’s director of new media operations, told the Voice of America that “I think that it’s less about trying to market the President in a positive way, but it’s more about having a conversation and real engagement with people that hasn’t happened before”. Phillips also explained that in Africa, the focus of new media outreach involves mobile phones, due to their widespread usage and the relatively cheap cost of text messaging.

Phillips explained that Africans can contact the president directly via sms, to expand the scope of the conversation on Africa policy: “If you’re in Africa and you want to send a message to the president, you want to ask him a question, welcome him to Africa, or just comment on things in general, you can use the following short codes… If you’re in Ghana the short code is 1731?.

The short codes for other African nations include: Nigeria (32969), South Africa (31958) and Kenya (5683). For messages from across Africa, the following numbers can be used: 614-186-01934 or 456-099-10343. The AFP reported today that over 5,000 Africans had sent text messages to Obama, taking advantage of the opportunity to communicate their concerns and observations to the president of the United States.

Observers, including African politicians, historians and political scientists, say the selection of Ghana, seen as one of the few “established” democracies in Africa, is meant to send a message to powerful politicians in other states, like Kenya, where despite a tradition of democratic processes, violence continues to spring up after elections and corruption is a threat to long-term stability and openness.

The president stressed community-building efforts, civics and volunteerism. He sought to offer a message of hope and possibility, but warned that Africans’ own actions would be the key to achieving success:

To realize that promise, we must first recognize a fundamental truth that you have given life to in Ghana: development depends upon good governance. That is the ingredient which has been missing in far too many places, for far too long. That is the change that can unlock Africa’s potential. And that is a responsibility that can only be met by Africans.

Obama sought to highlight ways in which a lack of reliable government or rule of law, and the marginalization of the views of the public in public policy, were hampering development and leading to large territories having to survive without sustainable infrastructure or even healthcare facilities. Women, in particular, have been hard hit by a lack of reliable distribution of medical training, facilities and supplies.

As this publication reported in May:

The World Health Organization has found that 1,500 women are dying every day across Africa from pregnancy-related complications or during childbirth. The figure has not improved over the last decade, largely due to the lack of adequate medical facilities. An extremely high rate of maternal mortality, as many as 1,000 per 100,000 live births (fully 1% of women giving birth), makes the situation an extreme threat to women’s health.

Speaking of the crisis of global climate destabilization, and fresh from a Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, which he had convened, Obama noted that though Africa was less responsible for greenhouse gas emissions than any other part of the world, it would be most severely affected by the ravages of climate change.

He highlighted the risks to African nations from dwindling food supplies and the depletion of already scarce fresh water resources. He also said that the need to cooperate internationally to confront the climate crisis and reform energy-producing practices the world over could lead to an unprecedented opportunity for growth and innovation in Africa, including new developments that would slow climate destabilization and protect Africa’s food supply.

Obama told Ghana’s parliamentarians:

One area that holds out both undeniable peril and extraordinary promise is energy. Africa gives off less greenhouse gas than any other part of the world, but it is the most threatened by climate change. A warming planet will spread disease, shrink water resources, and deplete crops, creating conditions that produce more famine and conflict. All of us – particularly the developed world – have a responsibility to slow these trends – through mitigation, and by changing the way that we use energy. But we can also work with Africans to turn this crisis into opportunity.

Obama cited specific examples from Ghana’s history that make the west African nation an example of commitment to good governance:

Time and again, Ghanaians have chosen Constitutional rule over autocracy, and shown a democratic spirit that allows the energy of your people to break through. We see that in leaders who accept defeat graciously, and victors who resist calls to wield power against the opposition. We see that spirit in courageous journalists like Anas Aremeyaw Anas, who risked his life to report the truth. We see it in police like Patience Quaye, who helped prosecute the first human trafficker in Ghana. We see it in the young people who are speaking up against patronage, and participating in the political process.

Across Africa, we have seen countless examples of people taking control of their destiny, and making change from the bottom up. We saw it in Kenya, where civil society and business came together to help stop post-election violence. We saw it in South Africa, where over three quarters of the country voted in the recent election – the fourth since the end of Apartheid. We saw it in Zimbabwe, where the Election Support Network braved brutal repression to stand up for the principle that a person’s vote is their sacred right.

He said that “history is on the side” of those people who stand up in the face of dark forces and seek to establish and defend democratic systems and sideline autocrats and put aside violent repression in favor of open government and participatory democracy. He also praised Ghana’s last president, who turned over power peacefully to a rival party and its new president, John Atta Mills, whom he said is “serious about reducing corruption”.

More Africa news and comment:

• Niger Unrest Could Be Attempt to Control Uranium Supply
• Obama Interview with AllAfrica, in Anticipation of Ghana Visit (video + transcript)
• Diversify Wheat Crops to Prevent Fungus-induced Global Harvest Collapse (discussion)
• Kenya Massing Troops for Intervention in Somalia
• Ug99 Stem Rust Fungus Could Wipe Out 80% of World Wheat Crop
• 400 Billion € Solar Project Makes Sahara into Key EU Energy Partner
• Bongo, Leader of Gabon for 42 Years, Dies
• Shell Agrees $15.5 Million Settlement in 1995 Killing of 9 Activists
• NOW Examines UN Peacekeeping: Record Deployments to 20 Countries
• Explaining Away Violence Against Women in Darfur, Sudan Gov’t at UN
• ICC Issues Arrest Warrant for Bashir, Charged with War Crimes
• Zimbabwe power-sharing talks collapse over allocation of ministries…
• African Nations & Movements Have Tools to Effect Change, when International Pressure Aims to Help

The Australian prime minister described the GCCSI as a “rolling global clearing house” for cutting-edge technologies that can speed concrete carbon-capture and storage (CCS) solutions to market across the globe, helping to reduce the greenhouse effect of burning carbon-based fuels. 23 governments and 100 private companies have already joined the initiative, in hopes of supporting best-practice technological innovations that can help combat climate change and ease the cost of transitioning to a clean energy model.

The GCCSI website explains:

Since the late 1940s, the concentration of several greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, notably carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane and nitrous oxides, has increased substantially. The stability of our planet’s climate is directly linked to the Earth’s atmosphere, and variations in the level, or concentration, of any one greenhouse gas will impact our climate.

Atmospheric levels of CO₂ are now higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years, standing at 385 parts per million (ppm) in 2008, compared to a pre-industrial high of 280ppm, and this figure is rising by around 2ppm each year.

The International Energy Agency projects the use of coal will increase in coming decades, with concentrations of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere “stabilizing” at 450ppm, 61% higher than pre-industrial levels. The biosphere and its natural ecosystems are not capable of metabolizing that level of atmospheric CO2, making coal itself one of the great policy challenges of the 21st century, with real economic and security ramifications for nations around the world.

CCS is focused on dampening the negative impacts of carbon-based fuel use, and Rudd was specific and firm in his assertion that the GCCSI will be oriented toward achieving what is not currently industry or public policy standard: building actual CCS projects with significant measurable real-world effects for emissions reduction.

Rudd has been extremely pro-active in championing solutions to global, economic and environmental challenges, and has sought to elevate “middle-power diplomacy” as a major contribution to building global consensus on issues of global public import. Australia’s role in helping the US to negotiate $5 trillion in global stimulus spending to slow economic contraction and spur a shift to new innovation is one example.

The GCCSI is another case of “middle-power” leadership on the global stage. Another great example is the Svalbard global seed bank, above the arctic circle in Norway. The Svalbard project is designed to ensure crop diversity potential, even if agricultural practice leads to monocropping, vulnerability to crop fungus and other plant diseases and harvest collapse. Svalbard will store seeds from every known natural or synthetic crop variety, in perpetuity.

• L’Aquila Major Economies Forum Takes on Climate Change
• Going Deep Green: renewables to guarantee clean energy supply for export (discussion)
• Official House Energy & Commerce Committee Summary of H.R. 2454: Climate Bill
• Climate Bill Would Achieve Far Lower Costs than Critics Projected
• 190-page White House Report Urges Immediate Climate Action (discussion)
• Transition to Renewables Cannot Wait, Devotion to Carbon Fuel is Folly
• Comprehensive US Energy Bill: Does it Do Enough? (discussion)
• ‘WindCube’ Marks New Phase in Wind-power Amplification
• THE END OF AN ERA: Closing the Door on Building New Coal-fired Power Plants in America
• ‘We Cannot Rebuild this Economy on the Same Pile of Sand’
• Fmr. VP Al Gore Testifies in Hearings Related to Landmark Emissions Legislation
• Obama Acts to Enable Energy Innovation, Raise Emissions Standards
• Economic Downturn Cannot Be Allowed to Slow Shift to Green Resources
• EPA Chief Says Congress Should Pass Laws to Mandate Emissions Reduction Regulations
• US Supreme Court Rules EPA Must Regulate Carbon Emissions, Citing Clean Air Act

20% of the population of the wealthiest nation on the planet is unable to access regular medical treatment or preventive care. Emergency health situations, such as heart attack, cancer or accident, are leading to rising numbers of bankruptcies. Each year, it is estimated that tens of thousands of Americans die specifically from lack of coverage.

And Cafe Sentido reported in April of this year:

It is also widely thought that ineffective insurance coverage and a punitive system that targets doctors and hospitals for providing care that is too costly grossly expand the risks for medical mistakes. Medical error is estimated to cause between 44,000 and 299,000 preventable deaths per year in the United States (estimates vary widely depending on weather only serious negligence is counted or whether additional cases of obscure human error, and potentially unforseen adverse drug interactions are included).

In 2008, 54.5% of all personal bankruptcies in the US “involved unpayable medical expenses or loss of income or insurance due to health-related causes”. In a working healthcare system, none of those bankruptcies would need to occur, and the economy broadly could escape the peripheral costs that emerge from the failure of individuals, businesses or communities to maintain good health in an affordable way.

In March, Pres. Obama hosted a forum designed to bring together all political and economic stakeholders in the healthcare policy debate, to initiate the discussions that would lead to new legislation to reform the healthcare system this year. Obama framed the event within the comment that “It’s time”.

Melody Barnes, a senior Obama policy adviser, told the gathering “Our healthcare costs are exploding our economy,” adding that as the president aims to address rapidly escalating spending costs, “one of the primary things he is focusing on is bringing our healthcare costs under control.” Doing that will require reforming the manner in which individuals are insured and in which insurers’ plan their own profit-forecasts.

At present, the private insurance industry covers less than two-thirds of the population, and devotes billions of dollars per year to fighting the right of their own clients to get coverage, despite paying for it. They also fight to keep from paying full price to doctors and hospitals, dictating to medical service providers what % of non-payment they must accept from the insurers.

The goal of reducing the pool of insured and the amount individual contributors can access is to maximize company profit margins: those legal bills, the higher profits extracted, money not paid for care given, and the reduced pool of insured, all contribute to rising costs. Part of comprehensive reform is making sure that everyone is covered: it will mean a different calculus in terms of profits, but it will also mean the insurers will have to find better ways to compete in the marketplace.

Today, Pres. Obama announced that comprehensive healthcare reform is “not a luxury that can wait” and that “out of control costs” are too “dangerous” not to be addressed. His plan aims to use the private insurance markets to extent “quality, affordable healthcare” coverage to all Americans. The expansion of coverage would be incentivized, with private businesses possibly receiving matching funds to buy mandatory policies.

Some argue that the most cost-effective system would be to re-orient the consumer insurance market to individual policy-holders, creating bulk policies much larger than those based in specific employers’ needs or means. This would require a dramatic increase in cost-competitiveness, as individual consumers are not accustomed to managing the costs of employer-based healthcare, and the larger insuree pools could help insurers spread the burden of risk.

One month ago, we published an article called “How to Solve Healthcare: Focus on Coverage, Cost and Cure”, listing the 8 top priorities that would allow for comprehensive healthcare reform to work and take root:

1. If we get everyone covered, costs will come down. Why? Because risk is spread over a broader population.

2. Getting everyone covered requires mandates. Someone has to be forced to follow a new regulation.

3. There will have to be government assistance, because the laws of the marketplace dictate that what people cannot afford, they will avoid, like paying exorbitant insurance costs, “reset” adjustable rate mortgages or high-interest credit cards.

4. Healthcare spending is an investment. Spending now to fix the system prevents massive entitlement programs from spinning out of control and bankrupting our economy, in the medium to long-term.

5. We cannot strip citizens of their existing right to sue (The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law … abridging … the right of the people … to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”) If there is an abundance of grievance claims, then perhaps the system is in grave disarray. Burying the claims does not fix the problem.

6. One way to reduce medical malpractice claims is to reduce the insurers’ ability to deny treatment, a practice which can lead to complications, mistakes, chronic inefficiencies in the system that invite further lawsuits.

7. Drug costs must be reasonable. This may have to be legislated, with or without consent from the drug companies.

8. Incentives for those providers who do the best job getting quality treatment for their contributors; this will help market dynamics to yield a cost-competitive system.

The reason this has not been done until now is because it is exceedingly complicated to bring all of these factors into line. To get everyone at the bargaining table to agree to the same best way to deal with each problem. Over the long term, a viable, affordable system will be more sustainable and more profitable for all players, but in the short term, insurers and pharmaceutical companies may have to see their profit-margins scaled back in the interest of market-wide sustainability.

Values, if those who camp along this stretch of the ideological spectrum have any allegiance to them, must always come after and be subsumed by a regime of dark and cynical manipulations. To what end? To prove that one is dark and cynical enough to be feared. This is the adolescent part of their understanding of Machiavelli — whose philosophy we will not treat in detail here. They claim to know how to be better than the brutes, thugs and villains, by imitating them.

As The Economist reported in its 11 April 2009 edition:

On April 5th in Prague, Mr Obama reiterated a campaign promise to hold talks with Russia to reduce both American and Russian nuclear stockpiles, to push for a global nuclear test ban and to set up an international nuclear fuel bank to help with peaceful nuclear-energy programmes. The same day, North Korea, which has already made at least one illegal nuclear bomb, fired a test missile over Japan.

Though the missile crashed into the sea, many Republicans think it illuminated Mr Obama’s naiveté.

Of course they do. And Newt is one of them. He has to be shocked and appalled at the irresponsible hopefulness of anyone who would dare to deliberately fashion a plan aimed at achieving the optimum outcome, because he is operating on the assumption that anything worth doing can be undone by the brute force of those with ill will. This is the real root of this aspirational pseudo-realism, the false claim that one can know future outcomes simply by betting on the worst actors.

This sort of quasi-cynic/quasi-conservative would-be ideologue is addicted to political attitudes of that kind. They indulge, almost as part of their platform, the desire to witness the naïveté of their rivals, which they believe they can then use to attack those rivals as weak. This passion stands in for solid policy formulations. So their protests must be immediate, shrill and filled with disdain and either/or absolutism. Absolutism equals strength, vision equals weakness, in this sad outlook.

But let’s be serious about the meaning of strength and the meaning of weakness. Policies based on a dogmatic commitment to paranoia are capitulation to the worst of the worst. They demonstrate weakness in terms of intellectual creativity, military cunning and the application of global influence.

To put it another way, it is not a sign of higher intelligence to think Saddam Hussein is a thug, so let’s be thugs; Kim Jong-il lives ‘on the dark side’, so we have to ‘go to the dark side’; al-Qaeda wants to annihilate us, therefore they are powerful enough to annihilate us. Cogent thought and responsible action can occur, even in the emotional area of confronting hostile opponents; to go without it is not a sign of strength, but of weakness.

The strong are able to treat failed provocations as what they are —desperate attempts to puff up one’s ego, or one’s public image—, and understanding them as such, do serious things to deal with serious problems. That Gingrich is aligning himself with the Cheney model of foreign policy, where talks-equals-weakness follow-my-orders diplomacy stands in for responsible efforts to achieve positive outcomes, is a sign he seeks to use the brutality and villainy of rogue states as a political weapon against his own fellow Americans in the political sphere.

Not only is the “naïveté” attack on Obama a sign of moral impotence and intellectual weakness, it is a sign of a will to attack one’s own nation and its values, in favor of elevating the game-plan and the methods of the world’s worst. Gingrich appears to be adopting that philosophy where the danger “out there” trumps all considerations about better values or the possibility of “defending democracy” by standing by it.

It is the “axis-of-evil” mentality, the conjuring of fictional dark alliances against freedom, the adolescent posturing of all-gunboat-diplomacy all-the-time foreign policy, that empowers and elevates Kim Jong-il, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, the Taliban, and others whose own colossal failures and detachment from reality already demonstrate their long-term inviability.

The cynicism of these shrill voices is aspirational. They want to see bad outcomes to demonstrate the need for less optimal and less well-thought practical solutions, because they seek to capitalize politically on such failures. The aspirational cynicism of adolescent thinkers like Newt Gingrich is itself a dangerous naïveté, because it assumes: 1) there is no adverse consequence to siding with the logic or the m.o. of the enemy and playing politics with serious efforts at disarmament, and 2) that even in expressing such colossal weakness as to hurl a rocket into the sea and lie about it, somehow the less powerful is actually the more.

The aspirational cynicism of Gingrich, Cheney, Frum and others —diverse as some of their policy positions may be on specifics— is rooted in an inability to think seriously about how you out-smart the logic of primitive thuggery. It is naïve and dangerous in the extreme, because it would cast aside all the best and most effective qualities of American democracy, in service of a perverse fealty to the many ineptitudes of isolated rogue states.

North Korea has given the world the clearest evidence of its weakness, and made clear the power inherent in offering talks. Wayward enough to threaten far more powerful states, lost and incapable enough to drop an 0rbit-bound rocket into the sea, with the whole world watching, when it could have gained diplomatically by not launching, the hermit regime has shown its teeth, half of them missing and the others dulled by ideological grinding.

The president of the United States knows what was happening and understands all of this, and he —unlike his critics— has the personal fortitude and the confidence in American power to press for a global regime of disarmament. Smart enough to note that any reasonable timetable for global denuclearization might be beyond his old age, he knows that credibility is, well, more credible than unsubstantiated threats and puerile tug-of-war mind games with unstable regimes.

So, the Gingrich plan for governing appears to be to complain, to imitate the enemy, take weakness as strength and strength as weakness, undermine one’s own nation’s democratic ideals and practical security goals, and dance around the realities of the world like a peacock who thinks his tail feathers are more relevant than whether or not his grandchildren die in a mushroom cloud his own policies helped to generate.

Obama’s call for a world free of nuclear weapons is not “dangerous” as Gingrich suggests, because he has not proposed that the US nuclear deterrent be eliminated while any rival nuclear power remains. It is part of a pragmatic approach to solving horrible problems: get started, do good work, serve the interests of democracy, get everyone else into a committed, transparent and effective process, and try to make the world work without forcing or risking mass death.

That is a plan. It involves pushing for ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, a new round of strategic arms reduction with the Russian Federation, serious action —secret, or not so secret— to secure Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal against Taliban takeover, and a globally backed, sharp-toothed regime capable of preventing nuclear proliferation via espionage or the black market.

Should we seriously bother to compare this with the bold idea that is let’s not talk to them? Not talking to a rogue regime about curbing its rogue behavior is capitulation. It is the best way to permit acquisition of the world’s worst weapons, granting them as much time as they need to continue working not only to acquire the weapons, but to hide the facilities and/or fashion adequate defenses against airstrikes.

So, while Barack Obama seeks to rally world leaders to a new era of nuclear disarmament, Gingrich adopts the failed “hard power” dogma of the American Enterprise Institute’s favorites, like Dick Cheney and David Frum. They would have us do nothing, sit back and watch while the risk of catastrophic mass death advances and escalates, as it has since the year 2000.

What we have to consider most seriously is, given this demonstrated will to take zero serious measures to prevent proliferation —we can’t credit Cheney or Gingrich for the Bush era 6-party talks with North Korea or Qadhafi’s voluntary negotiated disarming—, along with the willingness to use extreme force to face phantom menaces, whether we want someone of the Cheney mentality to have any proximity to nuclear weapons or to WMD policy, whether he wears American, Iranian, Pakistani or Korean dress.

• Originally published 8 May 2009, at CafeSentido.com

When David Frum writes about why the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons is not only “impossible” but also “dangerous”, he does so with two major obstacles to credibility: 1. he is arguing for the policies of an administration in which he served; 2. he is arguing that he can prove a negative (claiming to know what will never come to pass, what can never be expected from comprehensive global negotiations, the development of surveillance and inspections technologies, the enticements of a truly global regime of denuclearization).

It is astounding that Frum is so convinced of his own clarity of vision so far into the future. That is, of course, unless we understand that for the ideology Frum has long preached and defended, it is gospel that a cynical outlook can be trusted, whereas a hopeful outlook is reckless gibberish. The problem is, and many of Frum’s colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute would be well-served to look inward on this point: cynicism is not an oracle, and it does not tell the future; it is just another formula for thought, which provides no actual evidence of anything.

Cynicism often lends itself to the construction of intellectually convenient, overly facile descriptions of future events, which —bolstered by the impassioned worries and self-promotion of the cynic, the anti-prophet— quickly assume an air of prophetic certainty. Buoyed by the psychological satisfaction of carrying prophetic certainty within, the cynic then commits more and more fully to the proclamation of unshakeable doctrines about the future, based on bad-faith arguments and a passion for the despairing global outlook.

(He is known, of course, for delivering the “axis of evil” idea to George W. Bush as “axis of hatred”, again a phrase rooted in the presumption of cynical omniscience. Look at how gleefully that rhetoric was put to the task of describing, threatening and invading a country, about whom the most important claims were utterly false. This kind of zealous cynicism can get us into trouble; that much we know.)

We can thank Mr. Frum for informing us of how ideal the most recent theoretical developments in nuclear weapons technology are. Quoting:

These new weapons, on a new generation of missiles, could overwhelmingly deter any potential nuclear aggressor, while all but eliminating the risk of nuclear accident. Unlike current weapons, they do not need frequent refreshment of their nuclear core. They present near-zero risk of a radioactive leak. And they cannot be detonated by accident: According to one expert, these next-generation weapons could be loaded into a cannon and fired at a wall at four times the speed of sound without risk of unintended explosion.

“Sounds good” he writes. It does. It sounds beautiful, enticing, irresistible. The ingenuity of advanced human sciences have achieved perfection in technology. But this is where we have to be careful to remember that the cynic does not trust rosy predictions. Or does he? When he represents the American Enterprise Institute, the neo-conservative movement or the planning of war in Iraq, he often does: he uses the cynic’s claim to omniscience to rule out all dissent, then uses the powers of his assumption about the absolute fallibility of the outside world to adopt the most seductive rose-tinted expectations imaginable.

What Frum does not explain is the following:

1. Fissile material, being radioactive, must deteriorate (all radioactive materials have a “half-life”, due to complex entropy inherent in the physics of radioactivity; that half-life, the time after which the level of radioactivity is half what it was initially, is measurable and does not vary), but David Frum professes to know that nuclear scientists have successfully thwarted the universal phenomenon of entropy (the release of energy from a closed system to the surrounding environment).

2. While testing these special new nuclear devices sounds simple enough, they need to be tested somewhere, releasing a massive amount of radiation into the atmosphere, and such tests tend to provoke a militant response; they are the signal that an arms race is underway, and other nations will respond accordingly. Again, in his ignoring this problem completely, we find the willing naïveté with which Frum fuses his cynical outlook to get rosy prophetic visions.

3. He also gives us no reason whatsoever to believe that he is using sources linked to real science, just makes claims about what “one expert” has told him. It is attractive to think that by securing nuclear weapons against accidental explosion we prevent the threat of their being detonated, but once we have them, we have to deal with the appetites of human beings who have control over them. The human failsafe mechanism would still be required.

4. He does note that “President Obama did not exactly say that he would never test one of the new warheads”, adding”But he sure raised some fierce political difficulties for himself if he ever did want to test.” But he ignores completely the fact that Obama said he knows the lofty goal of global denuclearization may likely not be achieved in his lifetime (that’s 30 to 40 more years), so while he’s pressing to achieve a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, he may not be rushing to disarm.

Frum also conveniently ignores the fact that those “fierce political difficulties” related to testing a nuclear weapon aren’t necessarily the result of Obama’s favoring a ban. The reason no new devices have been tested by the US since 1992 is that the public wants to move beyond the threat of nuclear holocaust. With the Cold War ended, the US public took a strong position against the continued advancement of nuclear weapons, period.

So, we are left to consider whether or not —despite Frum’s clumsy way of using a blindly cynical approach to geo-politics in order to fashion a utopian vision of America’s nuclear future—

it is true that aspiring to the elimination of nuclear weapons is a dangerous proposition. Again, the only justifiable basis for this claim is to assume that the US intends to discard its weapons willy-nilly, without any collaboration from the world’s other nuclear powers to ensure that all weapons are phased out and no one can acquire the technology to build new ones.

Aside from its value as a genuine example of the absurd, how could Frum actually believe that? It will not be for Pres. Obama to see his goal of a nuclear-weapons-free world through; it will be for him to build the necessary diplomatic and strategic relationships capable of starting the world down that road. And those relationships can only be of benefit for the long-term security interests of a world that would rather not see itself obliterated by senseless allegiance to weapons that serve no moral purpose and whose use does not fit within any of our laws.

We must also take very seriously the logical and moral problems inherent in any position that promotes the advancement or the permanent commitment to these weapons, the very same weapons that Frum’s old boss considered the ultimate manifestation of evil in the world (at least the illusory Iraqi version of them). That administration championed its right to invade a nation to prevent its using WMD, but actively used depleted uranium shells and pronounced its intention to create new “mini-nukes” to be used on conventional targets in non-nuclear-armed states that posed only a “potential future threat”.

It is the clumsy intellectual acrobatics of the people David Frum has chosen to surround himself with that seems most irresponsible and “dangerous” in all of this. To wage war on someone for the very thing one is claiming the right to do is to exhibit total moral and intellectual bankruptcy. To claim that one must use the world’s worst weapons as a deterrent against the horrors of the human world, because the human world in its infinite perfection has conquered nature and created failsafe nukes, is just another example of that reckless use of intellect.

Mr. Frum is likely proud of himself for finding a way to put into words the insane accusation that Obama wants Iran to develop the bomb (he has been very adamant in his opposition to this and is already coordinating world leaders to prevent it). He is proud of this, because his intention is to serve a partisan argument and defend the pro-nuclear policies of the administration he served.

And he is likely also very proud of himself for finding a way to argue that some nukes are good nukes and we can have them and also be safe. Very cozy. But his argument ignores the most serious issues involved in nuclear proliferation; it is dangerous politics he is playing with these words, and he offers them, because he can’t come up with anything better.

Soft power works, because one is able to use the social force of virtue —rooted in actual qualities and demonstrable value to those concerned— and because one shows proof of being closer to shared goals than the other party, leading the other party to follow one’s lead.

Obama has demonstrated an incredible ability for a victorious politician: forgiveness. His magnanimity is, whether he intends it to be or not, an exceedingly valuable asset to him, not just in terms of public image, but because he wields power through it, and that leverage is not missed by those he is negotiating with. Imagine the awe his show of mercy to Joe Lieberman must inspire in the vigilant eyes of the fallen leaders of the Republican party’s aspirational one-party government.

They were terrified of letting one inch slip to their opponents; this man is strong enough to be generous, politically. That means he can win favor with enemies, listen to a bewildering array of intelligent concepts and proposals, and rely on his judgment, not the maneuverings of party minions, to select, adopt and enact the best and most effective. This is the position leaders of all kinds most aspire to be in, and he is reminding them from day one that he is already there.

Is it “soft power” or “3d diplomacy” —diplomacy, development, defense—, is it “smart power”, or “principled pragmatism”? There is really no need to put a label on it, because for the sake of historical argument, we can call it the Obama way: push your friend and rivals alike to adopt bold new ideas that focus on solutions in stead of ideology; be courageous enough to tackle all of the toughest issues at once; use the levers of power to your advantage, but listen to dissent and allow for crafted solutions that broaden support for your strategy.

This is the kind of unrelenting soft power that has allowed Barack Obama to continue winning an historically broad base of support, even as he takes positions that other presidents would have seen as controversial, and battles Congress for leadership in the game of national policy rhetoric.

As in the campaign, Obama’s style of governing owes much to his prowess at framing the debate within a vocabulary rooted in his ideas. Everyone is speaking his language, so inevitably, the final verdict will be rooted in his principles, even if he has to give up some ground to get the most salient projects passed.

Much has been made of his “capitulating” on renewal of the assault weapons ban… the problem is, it wasn’t his ban, it wasn’t a priority to begin with, and Congress (unbelievably) is unwilling to pass it. Despite a severe rash of mass killings and spreading gun violence, despite evidenced that American gun-shop owners have been ferrying high-powered assault weapons to Mexican drug cartels, Congress is afraid of the gun lobby.

It is not for a president with major reforms ahead to pick a fight in which his allies are few and the public’s view of the issue is so severely skewed by relentless propaganda from a commercially-interested lobby. Every time the GOP leadership comes out in support of weapons that kill children, it gets harder for them to sustain any credibility, and the question of a “fight” on gun control seems to dim.

There may come a time, but using power wisely means letting people have their say, and for now, Congress says gun control will be a political bloodbath. Obama has been very adroit, throughout his rise, at letting hostile opponents sabotage themselves, letting John McCain make nitwit pronouncements on economic policy for instance, letting the Republicans propose a pointless tax-cut-for-the-wealthy budget even as they claim they are now suddenly populist.

With each round of renewed idiocy in the sort of attack levied against him, his pragmatist agenda and his personal standing are elevated. His political capital expands as his political enemies squander their own credibility in unfounded or illogical attacks. His “record budget” is adequately explained when the Republicans produce a faux budget with just as large a deficit, but no plans for recovery, and Obama announces a deliberative process to find record spending cuts, pointing out that Bush’s spending was even higher, he just excluded the wars from his budget.

It is hard for the Republican party to grasp how this kind of exercise of authority works: using moral authority to support solution-oriented policies, instead of the bully pulpit to ram ideological concessions down people’s throats; using carefully worded policy-speak to re-frame the entire scope of debate on a given issue, forcing even opponents into a debate within one’s vocabulary, i.e. winning the debate before it begins; listening to one’s opponents, even harvesting workable ideas from their agenda, but using those ideas to bolster one’s own position.

It is incomprehensible to seasoned Washington strategists that Obama is not using his high approval ratings and his bold agenda to bludgeon beleaguered Republicans to death in a campaign of character assassination and scorched-earth attacks. But Obama’s special quality of governing from balance and confidence is rooted in his belief that while the others may waste their energy on such games, actually governing effectively will always beat them. He intends to “lap” the Republicans over and over again, by getting things done, and so far, it has worked to an historic degree.

Know your enemy’s flaws, and avoid exhibiting them yourself. He is well aware of how toxic the Republican party’s vicious blood-and-guts politicking has been; he has seen Gingrich and DeLay go down in infamy; Rove’s name is synonymous with “liar” and Cheney is seen as a man so obsessed with strength that no principle and no ethics can contain his ambition.

You will notice that Obama exhibits none of these qualities, because he understands them to be a waste of time. If one wants to achieve important improvements to the quality of life of real people, the work is hard and the negotiations may be bitter, but open combat with one’s most bitter rivals is not an effective way to get there.

Obama’s way of relentlessly releasing new ideas and making much needed policy changes, always in line with his promises of reform oriented toward expanding transparency and ridding government of entrenched monied interests, has left the Republican party reeling. They keep waiting for something they can attack him for, on an all-day everyday basis, for weeks, and the struggle has left them looking like the party of “zero ideas” as one of their own recently confessed.

If we are to understand the “preternatural calm” or the legendary poise that was so often spoken of during the campaign, we have to take seriously Obama’s frequent admission that the campaign “was never about me”, that he was in it because the people needed someone to work for them. His focus is not on accumulating wealth and power, or is it on serving interests that have built him into an institution over several decades: it’s on doing the work he promised to do, and answering to the many millions who made his power base so genuinely grassroots.

Government of the people, by the people and for the people: Obama is qualified to use his own ideas and his own principles to effect this sort of government, because he was wide open about his policy proposals and his agenda from day one. He announced his bold reform initiatives over two years ago. His ideas were unpacked and deconstructed in the public eye, and he won sweeping support from voters to carry out his agenda. His soft-power strategy is far from weak; it is the manifestation of a deep reserve of political strength and commitment to effective reform.

I realized over the weekend that I wanted to attend this event as a citizen, as a person who believes in the values of true democracy, and who believes that, flawed as the system is, it can still be bent to the virtues of those willing to engage it with principle and decency, and in that way, can be used to make life better and freer, even for the least powerful. And it came back to me what it was to witness the 15,000 people who did just this to attend then Senator Barack Obama’s campaign announcment speech, on 10 February 2007, when the conventional wisdom said he could never win.

We have to take the reins of our own connection with the world, we have to find a way to express the hopes and aspirations we have, in our manner of engaging the public sphere. Coming out to show that belief in a better way exists, that a movement can be what it says it is, that it’s worth hoping that an individual can acquire authority not for his own gain, but out of a sincere devotion to worthy service of the public good, is part of that engagement.

We drove to Silver Spring, Maryland, leaving New Jersey shortly after midnight, arriving shortly after 6 am, after a stop in Pennsylvania. The Metro station was flooded with people heading to the Mall, coming from all regions of the country. at least 4 ticket machines were out of tickets, and it looked like it could be a wait of several hours. Fortunately, one of the attendants let us through, telling us to pay on the way out.

The wait was not long and the train had room for most of us who were on the platform, around 7 am. By the next stop, it was packed to the limit and would begin skipping stations, with no one able to board. More than half our car stepped off the train at Chinatown, knowing or not knowing they would be asked to loop around the east side of the Capitol, and then walk through a tunnel crammed with foot traffic, to emerge on the other side of the Mall.

We continued on to Metro Center, and stopped in for a warm drink. I began writing, and my fellow traveler took the opportunity to answer nature’s call. We finished our drinks and walked the neighborhood in the direction of the Mall. We planned to enter around 12th Street, but were told we had to continue to 18th Street. There were now tens of thousands of people flooding in from all sides and it was virtually impossible to do anything but follow their general momentum.

We somehow pushed out from where we were and found our way to I Street, walking along to 18th, then turning down toward the Mall. We would finally enter the Mall around 10:30 am, amid a massive flock of seagulls gathering over the pond that lies between the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Washington Monument. The flood of foot traffic was coming up behind us and we made our way up the slow incline toward the foot of the giant obelisk.

We hoped to get in front of the Washington, to use the hill there as a perch from which to see the proceedings at the Capitol through binoculars. There was no chance. People had been camped there for hours, some overnight, and moving anywhere in front of the Washington Monument, far as it was from the Capitol, was time-consuming and a serious damper on the spirits.

We opted to retreat, in the direction of the Lincoln Memorial, whose famed reflecting pool was enclosed by a capacity crowd. We made our way back to the monitors we had seen just after the World War II Memorial, downhill and to the west of the Washington Monument. The area was also crammed with people, but there were gaps. We found one and planted ourselves to wait the next 40 minutes or so till the ceremonies would begin. The atmosphere was electric and people were warm and friendly, no jostling, no hostility, no mob mentality.

There were some small demonstrations of protest, reminding passersby and the new president himself that there were policy changes being called for, on moral grounds. But there were no outbursts, there was no jostling, there were no visible heated arguments among people with disagreements about the definition of American values. It was a day when private conscience was shared in public, and people treated each other with dignity and respect anyway. Perhaps impossible on any ordinary day.

There was a persistent flow of good feeling, of people being generous with strangers, smiling and expressing a kind of faith in humanity, so rare in recent times, in the public sphere. One thing that occurred to me was that this was something people felt inspired by but also had permitted themselves to actually choose and to pursue, that so often we put aside our better emotions, our truer selves, because for some reason, we feel it is not really permitted in our environment, or it is seen as less-than or too far out to be justifiable.

That feeling of principled idealism, of knowing there is a right course, that it is not a sign of weakness to be both mature and executive, but also idealistic and cooperative, that being human makes it possible to see this, and that collaboration can happen and can be worked out in viable practical applications —in short, that being human is a hopeful experience, if we let it be, that sense of better or of possible improvements, that says we know who we are, we are good at bottom, we can break the ancient mold of power, in which might makes right—, is allowed to prosper here, is the unifying thread, that secret part of ourselves that genuinely cares and wants to trust in the possible virtues of a public sphere infused with good will and ideals… all that was flooding around the gathering multitude, and seems to be the real definition of this rare moment.

Can we remember this? The glories, many and resplendent, of the most visible overcoming and transcending of racial biases yet seen, are at the heart of the force of this moment, but that asepct of this renewal is just one of the symptoms of a spirit overtaking American politics. The new spirit of refusal to adopt the sinister logic of division and discrimination, so deeply rooted in the politics of the past, is bigger than race or party: it is a philosophical shift in popular consciousness.

Pundits and strategists mired in the constancies of past politics are falling over themselves trying to find an explanation, but a vast tectonic shift has taken place in the political appetites of the electorate. As candidate Obama hoped in his February 2007 campaign launch, we are seeing an “awakened electorate” at work.

Top-down rule is out of date, bur pro-active government is not. Social networking has converged with the passion common to millions for a public discourse in which humanity itself —be it the basic humanity of “real Americans”, of thinking people tired of agit-prop standing in for good policy, or of those tens of millions who cannot treat even simple illnesses, for the lunatic costs— has a resounding, relevant and central voice.

Barack Obama “sensed” this hunger, because —if we read his meditative memoir Dreams from My Father— he had always felt the tension between what was commonly done and what people hungered for. It’s not a political trick, then, but a man who can see clearly, with his mind open and his weighty self-confidence in service of his vision, not in service of an ideology, an excuse or a raft of narrow self-interests.

2 million or more impassioned citizens have turned out to inaugurate this new way, to say yes to the more inclusive, more thoughtful, more workmanlike brand of politics, freed from ideological bias, freed from Machiavellian vitriol, freed from the poisons of character assassination, focused, in all seriousness, on making a system that is designed to aim for and longs for its own betterment, actually a vehicle for betterment of the state of the Union, and the conditions available to its inhabitants.

The feeling in the air is of relief and exuberance at having defeated the many tentacles of cynicism in public life, having demonstrated that a candidate could speak out against the time-tested levers of power by which access is granted, challenge and go without their mechanisms —something that McCain in 2000 and Dean in 2004 could not pull off—, defeat the party apparatus, overthrow the conventional hierarchy, and still achieve a resounding victory.

The 20th of January 2009 is, for those gathered on the Mall, a “new birth of freedom”, a spiritual reversal, and a threshold moment marking the transition from one era in which cynicism used its deranged arguments to foist one self-fulfilling prophecy after another on the electorate, to one in which the language of possibility and the mechanics of human imagination shape the outcome of current and future events.

It was the right choice, unmistakably, to come to this historic gathering, to see a celebration of citizenship, of free assembly, of faith in a system that values human choice. Whether the spirit of the day can be manifest in policy initiatives, cooperative political negotiations, and humanitarian politics abroad, will be a test of the system and of those elected to represent it, and millions will be watching with a huge spiritual investment in the outcome.

After the ceremonies were concluded and the new president had left the stage that elevated him over the 2 million gathered, and framed him in the white of the house through which the people, in theory, govern, the crowd quickly and peacefully began dispersing into the streets around the Mall. There were special routes planned, to keep people from intruding into the secure zone set aside for the inaugural parade, in which Pres. Obama would walk through the streets amid tens of thousands of onlookers.

Many people chose to move toward the Lincoln Memorial, so prominent in the narrative leading up to and defining the historical moment of the 2009 inauguration of the 44th president. Obama’s candidacy had featured echoes of comparison to Abraham Lincoln, a “gangly self-made Springfield lawyer”, like Obama himself, who championed the anti-slavery cause, helped found a new political party, or a new moral majority, and kept the union together under the founding ideals of the Republic.

It was vitally important to many attending that there was a thread of historical resonance, running from Lincoln, through Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who delivered his celebrated “I have a dream” speech at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, to Obama himself, an African American man ascending to the most powerful office in the world with a message of social justice, democratic ideals and principled engagement with those who differ from his perspective, an inclusive mission to cap a troubled history building up to a society of inclusion.

Politics is informed with some of our best intentions, with much of our lust for ‘improvement’ and with all of our fears, petty and grandiose, paranoid and consequential. We have seen a great and resonant turning toward better instincts in the US, with an election that for good reasons inspires hope and may allow us to manifest more than ever those “better angels of our nature”, but we must recongize that in order to manifest the best in ourselves, we must start by overcoming our own habits of fear and division.

It is still commonplace, all too much so, to hear the phrase “human nature” used to excuse or explain unspeakable betrayals. It is still commonplace for people on the street, or in grocery-store checkout lines, or at airports, to mutter under their breaths about the types of people they fear or would like to be rid of. We are still caught up, in some way, in ever corner of our global civilization, with the need to know who it is that we should dislike, ostracize or fear.

It is a temptation, like any vice, that runs throughout the entire notion of political organization, in every society that has ever existed, it would seem: figure out who the bad actors are, and then direct all the energy that would go into defending against prey in the wild, or preparing for storms gathering on the horizon, or denouncing evil spirits, at them. And thus to save ourselves from some imminent destruction.

But do we need to think this way? Is the truth of the matter that we, whoever “we” are, are always the good and the righteous and the unimpeachably well-intentioned, and they, the undefined other, the capital “They”, are always after us, snarling at the gates, ready to tear us to shreds? Or is it something more to do with the mismanagement of fear?

When we give into the zeal of collective fear, we derive all sorts of spiritual “benefits” from the exercise. We feel part of something, we feel justified, and therefore Just, we feel wise and aware, and therefore Safe, we feel insecure yet buffered against decay, we feel empowered by numbers, and therefore Powerful.

Fear is a trick of the mind: at the level of instinct, it can warn us of danger, or shade a situation just enough with doubt to let us know it is best seen as dubious. In that, it can be a virtue. But as commander of our emotional order, as master of the universe, it is a tyrant and a cheat. Fear makes up its own rules, distorts our vision and undermines every valuable perspective we might gain as to the nature of our problems.

There are degrees of fear, ranging from mortal fear of social infamy to petty fears about whether minor events in daily life will work out. Dishonor leads people in some dark corners of the world to murder women in their own families for absurd reasons: either because they have fallen in love or because they have been raped, neither of which should “dishonor” a family if there is any amount of basic empathy in the community.

It is also true that when a nation breaks down into “red states” and “blue states”, when factionalism takes over and we identify value by way of identity categories, when colors and phrasing and style and origin dictate how we should react emotionally to someone we may not even know, when we fail to give a fair hearing to people as a result of it, we have let the stingy cunning of fear into our hearts, and we will pay a price for it, whether we recognize that the payment has been taken or not.

In such climates of fear and disavowal, of denunciation and animosity, we relinquish the hopes of dialogue, we build up walls where there might be public squares, we look askance at anyone who dares to cross over and seek some amount of communication with the “unclean” that occupy the other side of the metaphorical divide.

Empathy is not a sign of weakness, but of strength. Nations should not scorn and assault one another’s dignity or good will, because only by cultivating that dignity and good will, mutually, can any agreements be made between rivals. And we should be wary of claiming for ourselves an unshakeable high-ground, lest we be ousted from it by our own arrogance and inability to see the interests of those around us clearly.

How do we deal with the hardships that have been unfairly put upon us by rogue leaders or by the common injustice of mobs steeped in confusion? How do we not adopt the logic of fear and confrontation, and yet confront the hard challenges of a moment of real peril and consequence?

Somehow, we need to find that part of ourselves that understands the basic truth of a shared humanity, even in the difficult energy that runs between us and those with whom we compete for access to resources, to power or to the mere privilege of having a voice, and respect that others should as well.

No principle, no religion, no system of government is truly strong or legitimate in its intentions and its methods, if it cannot operate within this sort of interpersonal humanity. We cannot rule out the value of others as a matter of principle; we cannot rule out the voice of those we disagree with, simply because we think we have proven their past claims inadmissible.

• Published simultaneously, 17 January 2009, at ThoughtPossible.com and CafeSentido.com
• A chapter from the collection, Cave Painting: aesthetics & the making of meaning