The Best and the Brightest: A Modest Proposal

 

The Best and the Brightest: A Modest Proposal

Peter Schultz

 

            What the United States needs most of all is to develop a sense of community and commitment among its elites. Too often, it seems that our elites think and act primarily for themselves and their cohorts. They display a passion for their own well-being that is “peculiarly intense” – to quote Tocqueville – that makes this passion “the prominent and indelible feature” of their lives.

 

            Therefore, to moderate and redirect this passion, it seems to me necessary and beneficial that the offspring of our elites – social, economic, political elites – be made to perform national service for two years, one year of military service and one year of domestic service in some needy place in the homeland. These two years would best occur prior to enrollment in college and after high school and would of course be compensated in a way that would reduce the burdens of college tuition, at least marginally. And because wealthy and prominent families now can afford what is called “a gap year,” that is, a year off between high school and college, this proposal can hardly be pronounced radical.

 

            This chance to serve our nation would be, of course, “means tested.” That is, it would be limited to young persons of wealthy and socially or politically prominent families. For example, the children of congresspersons, of presidents, of high-level bureaucrats, of governors and other state officials, as well as those of federal justices and judges would qualify for this opportunity for national service.

 

            To the objection that such a program would be discriminatory against the wealthy and the prominent, it has been said many times, “From those who have much, much is to be expected.” Moreover, allowing these young people the opportunity, the compensated opportunity to serve the homeland seems sufficient to redeem whatever discrimination might exist. And given the appropriate rituals, like reciting the pledge of allegiance and honoring the national anthem, along with enjoying thoroughly patriotic movies like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Saving Private Ryan, Forest Gump, and Apollo 13, these youths would emerge from their two years of service as patriotic Americans capable of appreciating just how exceptional America is.

 

            They would also be ready, even invested in something other than their own well-being. And because some would not complete the two years – let’s be honest here – either by resigning or by being dismissed, it might even be said that this program is a way of transforming a socially based elite with a naturally based elite. At the very least, it would allow us to produce and identify “the best and the brightest.”

Pelosi v. Trump

 

Pelosi v. Trump

Peter Schultz

 

            The headline read: “Nancy and Paul Pelosi Making Millions in Stock Trades in Companies She Actively Regulates.”

 

            Pelosi has proved herself no better than Trump. In fact, though, she is worse than Trump in that her respectability serves to disguise her venality, making it and her appear respectable. Trump’s venality lies exposed for what it is, greed and egotism. It is less destructive than Pelosi’s because it’s less attractive, less seductive. No trapping of being “cultured” can hide Trump’s venality, whereas such trappings gild Pelosi’s venality. In Pelosi’s cases, putting earrings and make-up on do in fact hide her piggishness. Unlike Trump, Pelosi makes venality respectable. And she, like Trump, destroys the basis of a decent and just political order.

Critical Race Theory: Convenient and Guilt Free

 

Critical Race Theory: Convenient and Guilt Free

Peter Schultz

 

            CRT, Critical Race Theory, is all the rage. Simplified, it’s the theory that racism in the United States is systemic, deeply-rooted, pervasive, and long-standing. Which raises the question: Why is it so popular?

 

            It’s popularity is due to its redemptive qualities. That is, if I embrace CRT and advocate teaching it, then I am no longer embracing racism. It’s a way of saying, at exactly the same time, that I am racist and I am not a racist. Like a magic act, I both acknowledge my racism and erase it in the same act. The thought is, apparently, that by acknowledging “the system’s” racism, I am no longer a racist. So CRT is both convenient and guilt free.

 

            This is weird. Suppose I were to say that savagery in the United States in systemic. That is, suppose I were to say that US elites engage in or manage savagery both at home and abroad. And this is true across the political spectrum and is pervasive and deeply-rooted. Let’s call this “Critical Savagery Theory,” or “CST.”

 

            Ask yourself: What would the response be to CST and the idea it should be advocated and taught throughout the United States? That is, we are to assert and teach that US elites, across the board, are engaged in savagery. Seems doubtful that CST would be as popular as CRT, right? Of course it would not.

 

            What does this mean for CRT? It means that the racism CRT refers to has been tamed or domesticated, has been made abstract, has even been made to disappear when we say the magic words, “Critical Race Theory,” or “systemic racism.” That is, the racism that CRT refers to wasn’t and isn’t savagery, because no one would take kindly to being called a savage or with being held complicit in savagery, no matter how “systemic” that savagery might be. And very few indeed are those who would or do advocate that the US is a savage nation. And those who do are marginalized, at best.

 

            In other words, CRT fits quite nicely into the conventional wisdom that the United States, despite some flaws, is a decent, freedom-loving, egalitarian, compassionate, and peace-loving society. It is popular precisely because, even while claiming to recognize that we are vicious, that our elites and even we the people have behaved like savages, it confirms our virtues. But those virtues seem elusive while the savagery is crystal clear, at least for those who look for it.

The FBI, the CIA, Ali Soufan, and the War on Terror

 

The FBI, the CIA, Ali Soufan, and the War on Terror

Peter Schultz

 

            Ali Soufan has written a book, The Black Banners: Declassified: How Torture Derailed the War on Terror After 9/11, in which he delineates how the CIA’s reliance on torture and its interference with the FBI led to several terrorists attacks that would have become known and likely stopped if the Soufan and the FBI had been allowed to interrogate captured terrorists using proven, humane methods of interrogation.

 

            Some of those attacks, which happened because of the CIA’s reliance on torture and their banning of Soufan from interrogating the terrorists, are the following:

 

1.     An attack on the oil tanker, Limburg, on October 6, 2002, off the coast of Yemen, killing one and injuring 12, and spilling 90,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Aden.

2.     March 11, 2004 attack by al Qaeda Madrid’s train system, killing 191 and injuring around 1800 people.

3.     July 7, 2005 attack in London, killing 52 and injuring more than 700.

4.     October 1, 2005 attack in Bali, killing 20 and injuring more than 100.

 

The CIA had banned Soufan and the FBI from interrogating a major terrorist, KSM, tortured him and never got the intelligence that might have led to these attacks being prevented. As Soufan puts it: “Those of us in the FBI who had seen what had happened with Abu Zubaydah, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Liby, Qahtani, Ramzi Binalshibh, Karim, and others now had to sit on the sidelines as even more important al Qaeda terrorists were put into a program that didn’t work and created faulty intelligence.” [514] All of those named above had been providing the FBI with good intelligence until they were subjected to torture by the CIA.

 

Soufan is too polite to say so, but it should be remembered that the CIA had little to lose from successful terrorist attacks because they knew such attacks, which they would write off as impossible to stop given their existing resources, would eventually lead to more power for the CIA. So not only did the CIA not have much to lose when terror attacks succeeded; they also had much to gain. So long as the war on terror is ongoing, the CIA is going to prosper both financially and politically.