Historical Parallels

"I was just following orders." Such was the excuse offered by many Nazi military and political underlings later put on trial for their actions during the Second World War. This "Nuremberg defense" was judged then -- and has been repeatedly judged since -- as possessing little if any moral or legal validity; the military academy at West Point, for example, teaches that the obedience necessary to any effective fighting force does NOT mean that an American infantryman must sacrifice his or her own moral code, that soldiers must do whatever their commanders insist, no questions asked. Why should employees of the CIA be held to lesser standards? Yes, those who drafted the policies legitimating waterboarding, prolonged sleep-deprivation, and other practices now deemed immoral, illegal, or both should bear primary culpability for their subsequent implementation. And yes, the fight against terrorism has far more to recommend it -- morally and otherwise -- than an attempt to exterminate an entire people. But to condemn the architects of a given policy while, in effect, condoning the individuals who actually executed that policy seems ethically somewhat dubious: a real-life murderer, after all, may be sentenced to death, while someone who merely plots murder may win many a parlor game centered around killing. If torture is wrong, then anyone who acted as though they believed differently, whether they wielded the thumbscrews themselves or else encouraged others to do so, should be punished. If torture is acceptable (as indeed it may be in certain cases), neither promulgators nor practitioners deserve censure. Unless, of course, like Alfred Doolittle in Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, you believe that the same moral rules need not apply to the same groups of people (e.g., "the leaders" and "the led").

FURTHER EVIDENCE OF HOMO SAPIENS' PROFOUND SUPERFICIALITY

Imagine there are two men competing to become the next president of the United States (or of any other country the bulk of whose people have at least some say in choosing their government).
Candidate A -- impeccably groomed, without a single hair out of place and exuding a mellifluous fragrance of the most expensive eau de cologne -- preaches a message of social divisiveness, of ardent nationalism, of perpetual conflict against those who do not conform to the accepted norm in either behavior or thought.
Candidate B -- tieless, crumbs dotting his roughly shaven face, and always looking as though he has just rolled out of bed -- speaks of tolerance, of fairness, of international cooperation.
Who would get YOUR vote? If you are the typical voter, like 99% of virtually any electorate, you will select Candidate A -- or, at best, reject both men as equally unworthy of support. Such is the inordinate emphasis people place on dress, grooming, and hygiene -- both for their own sake and (most illogically) as indicative of one's intelligence, integrity,and moral standards. While no politician's defeat can be attributed solely to a poor sense of fashion -- even dictators want to look sartorially sharp before their subjects -- a glance inside just about any corporate headquarters or law firm or retail store or government office reveals the extent to which society at large has come to judge "respectability" first and foremost by appearance, less visible qualities be damned (or at any rate ignored unless and until the employee can show he/she is "up to snuff" in terms of clothing and cleanliness).
To be sure, homo sapiens are not the only species to demonstrate this obsession with the literal as well as figurative externals of existence. But neither do other species make as many pretensions as humans do to "superiority," physical or otherwise. Need my equanimity at the prospect of humanity's eventual extinction require any further explanation?

Of Politics and Potboilers

A few days ago I finished another novel (though not the latest) by a man who has become one of my favorite contemporary purveyors of "non-literary" fiction: Richard North Patterson. Like other novelists whose bestsellers can be found at the corner drugstore as well as at Border's, Patterson employs a hefty dose of unbelievable coincidence, soap operatic melodrama, and stereotypically hokey sex. But unlike your average potboilers, Patterson's deal with serious, relevant issues -- issues such as abortion, gun control, and racism. Not only do his novels consistently demonstrate ample familiarity with the issues themselves, they also demonstrate a keen sensitivity to the broader political, legal, and social backdrop against which debate must take place -- all without ever sacrificing their sheer page-turnability. Patterson, in short, is that rarity of rarities: a bestselling writer who makes you think.

Richard North Patterson author page at Random House

JOHN Q. PUBLIC, 1912(?) - 2009

John Q. Public died this morning after a long and painful illness. He was approximately 97 years old.

Authorities have thus far refused to disclose either the precise cause or the exact location of Mr. Public's death. The deceased, however, is known to have been afflicted for many years with an especially severe case of encephalitis lethargica. The same affliction makes it unlikely for the deceased to have moved anywhere from the site of his last confirmed residence, a sanatorium near Lake Placid in upstate New York.

A lifelong bachelor and, indeed, something of a recluse during his later years, Mr. Public leaves no known legitimate descendants -- the vociferous claims of several prominent contemporary politicians to the contrary notwithstanding.

Born within six months either way of the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912, John Public -- the distinctive Q came later -- first attracted widespread notice upon the August 1914 outbreak of "the war to end all wars" (i.e., World War I). Photographs from that period reveal a patriotic spirit no less ubiquitous than infantile: now in Trafalgar Square waving the Union Jack, now at the Brandenburg Gate donning a miniature spiked helmet, now marching (or, rather, toddling) down the Champs Elysees to the (probable) accompaniment of the Marseillaise. How this prepubescent incarnation of seemingly kaleidoscopic nationalism could fly so quickly from one warring party to the next in the age before air travel remains a mystery, as does the original parentage of the child himself. Rarely, in any event, has an orphan of such uncertain antecedents found so many strangers eager to adopt him as one of their own. By 1917 even the United States, increasingly loath to open its borders to anyone whose name was not unmistakably Anglo-Saxon (or at least Anglo-Norman), was prepared to take in young Johnny Public -- who as a de facto if not de jure American citizen would one day take in some of the most powerful members of his newfound "family," along with a good many of his erstwhile "relatives" elsewhere.

That ironic turnabout, however, lay well in the future. Through the 1920s and into the following decade, young John Public kept a generally low profile. While from time to time he could be spotted at baseball games, movie palaces, speakeasies, and other venues popular with his larger, more amorphous namesake, the future icon of indiscriminate inclusiveness is himself invisible, for the most part, among the myriad individuals self-consciously striving to epitomize the epoch to which they all professed to belong. For the adolescent Public, as for the bulk of his contemporaries, the Roaring Twenties was a period of physical growth, social (mal)adjustment, behavioral experimentation -- a period, in short, of flexing that "power without responsibility" which a famous English writer once labeled the "prerogative" of prostitutes and press lords. (At the height of the Cold War decades later, it was charged that Mr. Public -- by then, of course, a well-established Establishment Figure -- had as a teenager been kidnapped by "Leninist agents" to serve the still somewhat shaky Bolshevik regime; but research among recently released Russian archives has thus far failed to corroborate this particular charge sgainst America's former archenemy.) Nor did the onset of the Great Depression add much to young Public's public stature. Though millions were united as never before in a common quest for economic salvation, economic hardship simultaneously weakened average individuals' willingness to share the sought-after prosperity with anyone not quite as average as themselves. And John Public in the 1930s possessed neither the emotional nor the practical wherewithal to bridge these peersistent demographic rifts through the force of his own exemplary unexceptionality.

Pearl Harbor proved the making of John Public. Whether -- in common with so many of his adopted conmpatriots -- he instinctively volunteered his services in the wake of the Japanese attack, or whather he was somehow coopted by the Roosevelt administration (via, say, a threat of deportation to one of the countless other countries -- including Japan -- which claimed him as a native son), remains a matter of dispute among historians. What is undeniable is the speed with which the outwardly nondescript Public -- not yet thirty years old, and languishing in apparently contented obscurity since the heady days of the previous global armageddonn -- came to embody the fears and hopes, needs and desires, passions and aversions of the entire country (pacifists, Axis sympathizers, and diehard isolationist Republicans excepted). Like Stainbeck's Tom Joad, only on a much wider scale, the face and figure of John Public could be seen everywhere a (white, Christian, American) man was in trouble, now exhorting the troops in the Pacific to show their Japanese foes even less mercy than the Germans, now reminding the folks back home that the slice of cheese or dollop of butter they sacrficed today would help fortify their boys in the field tomorrow, now at the side of the president himself urging him to be as "tough" with the Soviets as he was with the Jews. To what extent John Public actually changed the course of the war is a moot question: historical cause and effect are too complex to be explicable solely with reference to this or that individual, even one as protean as Mr. Public. But by war's end policymakers, generals, journalists, diplomats, and Hollywood moguls were all toasting "J.P." as the single most important contributor to Allied victory. So clamorous did the applause become, in fact, that its recipient felt constrained to adopt a middle initial -- the better to sustain his firm denial whenever accosted with a demand to know if he were "that John Public."

Be that as it may, the postwar years saw the apotheosis of John Q. Public -- and not only as an entry in the dictionary. Reporters sought his views on everything from atom smashers to Barbie dolls to capital punishment; advertisers solicited his endorsement -- free or otherwise -- of their products; government office-holders of all political stripes regularly invoked his name in support of measures under attack by less favored members of the electorate. Nor, it must be emphasized, was John Q. Public himself a passive participant in this seeming exploitation of his persona. On the contrary, his very malleability rendered him an ideal spokesman for a society where differences of opinion or taste or purpose were as much a part of the landscape as the chameleon in New England. Any stance he might take one week could be abandoned the next, with nnobody being the wiser -- or, at any rate, prepared to risk the consequences (e.g., loss of office) a demonstration of their newfound wisdom might incur. No wonder Life magazine titled its -- admiring -- 1957 profile of Mr. Public: "Move Aside, Lon Chaney! Here's a Man of More than a Thousand Faces!"

A comparable article could probably not have been written ten years later. Growing divisiveness over Vietnam, civil rights, the respective merits of heroin vs. marijuana, and other vital issues of the day led to larger cleavages (i.e., within the American polity) unbridgeable -- or so it appeared -- even by so consummate a master of consistent inconsistency as John Q. Public. Yet Mr. Public's public standing remained high enough to allow him to retain the ear, the resepect, and the confidence of groups across the occupational, generational, and ideological spectrum. The White House may have been at daggers drawn wih the Fourth Estate, parents may have thought their children revolting and vice versa, integrationists and segregationists may have kept their distance from each other -- but all were at one in insisting that John Q. Public was indeed on their side of the barricades. Thus the turbulent sixties ended (c. 1974) with Mr. Public the supreme symbol of a unity from which none were excluded except the inorrigibly unique.

Symbols, however, are prone to outlive their usefulness, to be discarded once whatever they symbolize either no longer exists or, conversely, exists in such plenitude as to obviate all need for any "external" representation thereof. The 1980s in the United States witnessed a rare conjunction of both phenomena, a newly earnest solicitude for the first person singular flourishing alongside an equally impassioned determination to make all one's neighbors as oneself. Caught between these competing yet complementary forces, John Q. Public became superfluous. Though he continued to draw crowds on Capitol Hill, in the anterooms of Madison Avenue, and at American Legion outposts around the country, general neglect gradually impelled Mr. Public to withdraw from the public arena entirely. His last public appearance was at a patriotic rally outside Oswego on 12 September 2001 -- a rally at which Mr. Public was verbally assaulted for not bellowing the national anthem as lustily as everyone else; only his obvious age and frailty saved the octogenerian warbler from more tangible signs of hostility. Such is the gratitude that democracies from time immemorial have been wont to bestow upon those who most nearly exemplify the democratic ideal.

One may, of course, legitimately wonder how many would have noticed John Public's absence or presence at any point in his career. Seldom has a figure of such widespread and protracted renown left so meager a record of personal identity: there is no birth certificate, no school diploma, no driver's license, no library card, no bankbook, not even a single photograph to accompany the present obituary. Interviews, it is true, abound, but -- like the periodic references to Mr. Public in presidents' and other ostensible leaders' memoirs -- they are too contradictory to permit a definitive assessment of their subject's character and thinnking, while rumors of a massive, "tell-all" autobiography remain unsubstantiated. Someday, no doubt, an especially enterprising sociologist, political scientist, anthropologist, and/or gossip columnist will attempt to piece together the full story of this remarkable individual who paradoxically transcended mediocrity by embracing it. Yet in the final analysis John Q. Public's name and fame rest on a foundation far more durable than the printed word -- the same foundation that lent immortality to Shakespeare's "poor player." For few indeed have beem able to vent greater "sound and fury" than an aroused Mr. Public -- and fewer still, we daresay, could match Mr. Public in achieving so much of such lasting insignificance.

Burial services for the deceased will be private. A fund has been established, however, to erect a monument to Mr. Public at one or another of the literally innumerable localities where he was active. Interested parties may send their tax-deductible contributions to: The JQP Memorial Foundation, c/o Vox Populi, Inc., P.O. Box 666a, Grover's Corner, NH, 01212.

My Country Right or Wrong?

"If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend," wrote the English novelist E. M. Forster, "I hope I would have the guts to betray my country." When I first came across this statement some years ago, I thought it reflected a great deal of geopolitical naivete; and even today I think Forster's dichotomy is somewhat oversimplistic. After all, the majority of our friends are quite likely to be our compatriots as well, so betraying the one automatically means betraying the other. But the more I read and observe of the world around me, the more convinced I become that Forster had the right idea. Whether you call it patriotism, nationalism, or just plain flag-waving, blind loyalty to one's country, to ANY country, is intellectually indefensible, morally questionable, and responsible for the greatest crimes committed by humanity over the past three centuries.

Nationalism is, in the first instance, inherently irrational, because countries themselves have no eternal or completely objective reality. Of the roughly two hundred sovereign states existing today, none -- NONE -- was in existence two thousand years ago, and there's no guarantee any of them will be around two thousand years hence. So why devote one's body and soul to something that is merely a product of historical circumstances, circumstances that may -- and often do -- change from one generation to the next. Nor does it make any sense to pledge loyalty to a place just because we happen to have been born there. If the Germans, Italians, and Japanese who fought in the Second World War had grown up in one of the countries they attacked, they would have recognized the absolute absurdity of hating someone just for being Polish or French or Chinese. And the fact that we can change our country of residence almost at will -- can move from living in, say, America to living in China, and vice versa -- further illustrates the utter subjectivity of "national identification." What we term "national identity" is not an objective product of reality but an artificial construct imposed upon us by diverse elements of our surroundings -- parents, schools, the media, government. If you grew up in a household where everyone wore black all the time, does that mean the only acceptable or most desirable color is black? Loyalty to a single flag or anthem or strip of territory has equally little to commend itself to any thinking person.

Regrettably, most people don't think -- at least about their own identity. It's so much easier simply to accept whatever labels others bestow upon us. When people ask ME if I'm American, I reply, "I'm from America" -- not because I hate the country of my birth, but because I simply don't identify with it; I don't identify wholly with ANY country. To most people my answer is not so much wrong as just incomprehensible, for "the nation" is such a key part of their own identity, the single largest, most powerful group to which they belong -- always provided, naturally, that everyone else in the group agrees to let them in.

No national grouping, of course, can be large enough to encompass all of humanity, and it is this deficiency which transforms blind patriotic fervor from an individual character flaw to a grievous international scourge. Behind the assertion, "I'm American," "I'm French," "I'm German," "I'm Japanese," "I'm Chinese," lies the corresponding conviction, "You're NOT American," You're NOT French," "You're NOT German," "You're NOT Japanese," "You're NOT Chinese." And from such denial of others' similarity to ourselves it is but a short step -- a VERY short step -- to denying that others have the same rights as us, including, ultimately, the right to live. For nationalism spares us the trouble of having to make moral judgments for ourselves. That which we might heartily condemn in the abstract becomes acceptable, indeed downight admirable, when perpetrated by members ot the group to which we so proudly proclaim our unqualified allegiance. A loook at any reasonably thorough account of human behavior during the last hundred years will bear out my claim time and time and time again.

It was a nineteenth-century American admiral who coined the phrase, "My country right or wrong" -- a sentiment nowadays as prevalent in Beijing and Bogota and Budapest as it is in Washington. An uglier slogan in ANY language is hard to imagine. Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice gave eloquent expression four centuries ago to our common humanity, to the hopes and fears and desires that all of us share simply by virtue of being human. Nationalism denies that common humanity. One may legitimately respect and admire certain ideas or principles or customs which pervade a particular country and seek to extend the same elsewhere. But to make the country itself an object of unconditional veneration is to sanction thoughts and deeds as vicious as they are stupid. Better by far to confine our affections to those we know personally. Do such firsthand acquaintances always merit our affection? No, not always. But delusions about a friend usually hurt none but ourselves.

POSTSCRIPT
Above is the transcript of a speech I gave at a Toastmasters International meeting in Beijing. A week afterwards I was, in effect, kicked out of that particular TM club -- a small but telling sign of China's insistence upon intellectual conformity. Who says ideas no longer matter?

An Intractable Imperfection

Of all the practices which render "human civilization" a contradiction in terms, perhaps the most pernicious is that of irrational discrimination -- of treating others as inferior to oneself on account of their skin color or their gender or their nationality or their sexual orientation or their religious beliefs or the size of their wallets. What makes such discrimination even more horrific is that the cause of the bigotry which lies behind it is as easy to discern as it is difficult to eliminate.

While different bigotries may have different impetuses at different times, at bottom virtually all those who impose, enforce, or agree with discriminatory measures against fellow human beings they do not regard as "fellows" share one trait in common: a notable dearth of empathy. If men, whites, Christians, straights, billionaires could put themselves in the shoes of women, blacks, Jews, gays, paupers, at least half the world's injustices would vanish overnight -- or never have come to exist in the first place. And the only effective way to foster such empathy is through education -- in the form of personal examples set by parents, in the form of classroom discussions run by teachers, in the form of government- or business-sponsored programs on television, in the form of subjecting tomorrow's would-be bigots to firsthand experience of bigotry today. This last would seem an especially powerful pedagogical tool, given the average person's innate self-centeredness.

To be sure, I am hardly the first to recognize the importance of education in shaping one's attitude toward others. The musical "South Pacific" contains a dandy little tune about how "you've got to be carefully taught" to hate people who seem different from you. The same message has been hammered home in hundreds if not thousands of intellectually more "reputable" venues. And the number of individuals who dedicate their lives to preaching tolerance continues to grow.

Yet grounds for optimism remain few. Narrow in scope, most of these educational endeavors aim to reduce this or that particular manifestation of bigotry rather than bigotry per se. So the world still abounds with philosemitic Christians who hate gays, gay-friendly heterosexuals who loathe blacks, and men of every creed and color who look down upon women.

A more fundamental problem concerns the "nature of the beast" itself (and I use the word "beast" deliberately). However great their education, most human beings -- not all, by any means, but the overwhelming majority -- are simply incapable of imagining themselves to be someone other than who they are -- and thus unable to cultivate that level of empathy without which neither bigotry nor the resultant discrimination can ever be laid to permanent rest. Gradually, it is true, homo sapiens may -- MAY -- do more to deserve that appellation. But should aliens from another world one day decide to eliminate their human inferiors, humanity would certainly have no legitimate reason to protest.

Why I am a Zionist

Deeply aware of the harmful consequences wrought throughout history by unflinching adherence to this or that particular ideological creed (political, economic, theological, artistic, whatever), I have little sympathy -- intellectual or otherwise -- with "isms" of any sort. Far better, I think, to consider situations and problems on a case-by-case basis rather than try to subordinate everyithing to the kind of ideological strait-jacket that most isms represent. To this longstanding distrust of ideational systematization, however, I make two exceptions. One is individualism. The other is Zionism. And my belief in individualism is subject to all sorts of constraints.

Behind Theodor Herzl's push for a Jewish state lay two (distinct but overlapping) motives. One was his belief that the Jewish people, if joined together in their own community and allowed to give full vent to to all their abilities and aspirations, could make even more indelible contributions than they already had to human civilization. Antisemitism comprised the other, more immediately visible spur to Herzl's vision. It was the Dreyfus Affair in France which convinced Herzl that Jews could never be truly secure lving among the Gentiles, that only a state of their own could guarantee the Jews' survival, literal and otherwise. Regarding the notion of a Jewish "collectivity" whose existence would somehow benefit the whole human race I am agnostic at best; when it comes to creativity and genius, lving among one's own "kind" is often far more stultifying to individual creativity and genius than dwelling amidst strangers and enemies (as the Jewish experience itself amply attests). But Herzl's prognosis of the antisemitism which makes a Jewish state a vital necessity rather than just a desirable luxury remains all too accurate.

While I have never encountered any antisemitic remarks directed against me personally, evidence of antisemitism -- or, at the very least, of an inclination to view Jews as somehow different from, and by implication inferior to, everyone else -- has not been lacking in my experience. More memorable indications include the following:

(1) One of my students in Hungary, in an essay dealing with the subject of money, repeated the old canard about Jews controlling most of the world's finances. And a leading historian in the university department where I taught insisted that the Jews themselves -- by virtue of their wealth as well as their predominance in certain fields such as law and journalism -- bore the lion's share of responsibility for the Nazi onslaught against them. (That most Magyars continue to attribute the actual slaughter of 400,000+ Hungarian Jews in 1944-45 to the fewer than 300 Germans who entered the country in mid-1944, rather than to the thousands upon thousands of the Germans' willing Hungarian helpers, is, I believe, a reflection less of antisemitism than of nationalism. After all, today's Hungarians show a similar reluctance to criticize their forebears' discriminatory "magyarization" policy of the nineteenth century.)

(2) At a two-hour seminar I conducted on antisemitism, students of Latvia's leading university revealed a veritable array of standard antisemitic stereotypes: Jews were unduly clannish and didn't want to be friends with anyone else, Jews cared only about making money, Jews were averse to working the land (i.e., as farmers), Jews felt no attachmment to the countries where they lived, etc., etc., etc. (It was while living in Latvia, too, that I witnessed vestigial antisemitism from another, far more respected source, the BBC, whose coverage of the then-latest Israeli-Palestinian clash was hopelessly one-sided. An interview with a Palestinian spokesperson began with a civil question about why they were fighting Israel, while an immediately subsequent interview with the Israli Defense Minister began thus: "So, Mr. Minister, how many Palestinians did you kill today?" To be fair, though, it was another BBC broadcaster who reported starker proof yet of Europe's still vibrant antisemitic tradition: an editorial cartoon in Madrid's leading newspaper which depicted an image of Jesus above a Bethlehem church that Israli soldiers had fire upon in an effort to dislodge several Palestinian gunmen who had taken refuge there. The caption below the Jesus drawing read: "My God, my God, have they come to crucify me again?" Old ways of non-thinking do die hard, don't they?)

(3) In an (outwardly civil) argument on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the head of the Thai branch of an internationally renowned NGO told me that the Jews did not need a homeland of their own, that Jews who were persecuted in places like Russia or Syria could be helped by those Jewish moguls who dominated finance, government, and the media in the West.

(4) More than one Russian I met during my brief stay in Kazan referred -- casually, not maliciously -- to "Jews" and "Russians," as though a person could never be both. (This, however, was far less annoying to me than certain remarks made by a guest American lecturer -- an expert on early modern Polish Jewry -- during one of her scheduled public talks at the university. To a student who asked her assessment of Russian antisemitism past and present, the professor replied that reports of such were grossly exaggerated, that [for example] not all the czars were against the Jews [though precisely who she had in mind was never clarified], that she herself -- with a discernibly Jewish last name -- had been treated with the utmost courtesy and respect by all the Russians she had met during her trip. One harlly needs a PhD to spout -- or spot -- such nonsense.)

(5) In our first -- and last -- sustained conversation on politics, the woman whose house I lived in during my recent stay in San Francisco said that "the Zionists" were to blame for blocking the arms embargo which would've prevented Hitler from launching war in 1939. That such a claim rested on more (or should I say less?) than a singularly perverse non-reading of history was later demonstrated by (among other remarks) the woman's scathing denunciation of "the Zionist/Jewish scum" who had made her life so miserable. (Or so she loudly proclaimed in the course of a telephone conversation the bulk of which, mercifully, I could not overhear.)

(6) In talking about Israel's recent attack on Gaza, one of my newfound acquaintances here in Korea has admitted he hates Jews -- less on account of Israeli actions than because of some bad dealings he (or his company) had with an overseas Jewish financier. Further conversation seems to have changed his mind, at least as far as Israel is concerned (he freely admitting his ignorance on that subject). But to what extent he still harbors a vestigial antipathy toward "the Jewish race" I cannot say with any certainty.

Individually, each of these episodes betokens little but stupidity and/or bigotry on the part of its protagonist. And even collectively, they cannot be said to signify anything so ominous as a "trend" or a "forecast." But they do serve as sharp reminders that the antisemitism of which Herzl spoke over a century ago remains alive and well, even in places where the "Jewish question" has never really existed.

Which is not to suggest that we are on the verge of a second Shoah. For reasons having more to do with geopolitics than with humanitarianism, no sane person or government today seriously contemplates attempting to finish the job Hitler began; had the people of Darfur or the victims of the Khmer Rouge or the Muslims of Bosnia possessed nuclear weapons, the rest of the world would no doubt have looked upon their respective plights with somewhat less "blinded" vision. But personal experience as well as extensive reading has convinced me that nary a gentile eye would blink if the Jews just "disappeared," either figuratively (i.e., through assimilation) or literally. Thus I regard the continued existence of Israel as a moral no less than a strategic imperative. That Israel is also a haven of individualism represents merely another point in its favor.

Pseudo-update

Today I discovered what is likely to be the nearest equivalent to paradise that I will ever find here in Seoul: the eighth floor of one of the city's largest electronics complexes, replete with enough DVDs (at fairly cheap prices) to keep me occupied -- audiovisually -- either (1) for as long as I remain here or (2) until I run out of money. My failure to write any fresh blog entries over the past several day, however, cannot fairly be attributed to cinephilia; it's just that I've been lazier than usual. But I shall try to write something at least semi-intelligible within the next few days -- in between the movies that constitute my chief means of diversion nowadays.

A Study in Contrasts

During my six months' stay in San Francisco last year, I rented a room in a house owned by someone with strong opinions on just about everything. A self-avowed leftist who favored Dennis Kucinich for the presidency, this woman insisted that none of the mainstream media could be trusted at all, that American policymakers had no legitimate reason to criticize Russia's attack on Georgia, and that the only possible beneficiaries of genetically-engineered food were its manufacturers.

More recently, Facebook has allowed a former high-school acquaintance of mine to re-establish contact with me after a stretch of nearly thirty years. A self-professed conservative who has named his son after Ronald Reagan, this guy asserts that Barack Obama's economic plan is doomed to fail, that blame for the current crisis rests almost exclusively with the Democrats, and that American-style capitalism represents the zenith of human social development.

Any face-to-face confrontation between these two individuals would clearly lead to verbal fireworks, if not to actual physical assault. Yet in fact both share one overwhelming trait -- a trait common to virtually all ideologues: they are singularly close-minded. Convinced that they and they alone know "the truth," that they and they alone have the proper solutions to the world's problems, that anyone who disagrees with them is misguided at best and downright evil at worst. Such rigidity of thought -- or, rather, of sentiment, since ideology at bottom serves as a convenient substitute for the hard work of thinking -- makes the pursuit of human betterment -- whether on an economic, a political, a social, a physical, or an aesthetic plane -- that much more difficult.

This is not to suggest that every idea merits equal respect, or that every person deserves an equal hearing. But when it comes to rendering "human civilization" a contradiction in terms, ideologues of both the left and the right can certainly claim equal credit. As a non-ideological reading of history will demonstrate time and time again . . .

Hypocrisy

In lifting the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, Barack Obama has not only demonstrated a respect for scientific pursuits unfettered by particularistic ideological or religious constraints (the same sort of constraints that lay behind the trial of Galileo in the 17th century, the Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925, and innumerable other efforts to suppress all speculations in potential conflict with The Truth as promulgated by this or that "higher authority"). He has also given his partisan (as opposed to principled) critics a fresh opportunity to demonstrate anew their underlying hypocrisy. While on the one hand they bemoan his "unprecedented" expansion of the federal government (unprecedented, at any rate, since the reign of his predecessor), on the other they insist that government has a "God-given" responsibility to oversee what goes on in the country's universities, laboratories, libraries, and museums. This in turn points to the fundamental (or should I say fundamentalist?) dichotomy that has plagued the American right (nowadays a.k.a. the Republican Party) at least since the days of Ronald Reagan. For the right's mantra against "big government," against "obtrusive government regulation," is limited exclusively to matters economic, to measures that would somehow interfere with every American's "God-given" right to make as much money as possible. When it comes to issues of privacy, of civil liberties, of freedom to pursue activities (such as scientific research) that do not yield immediate and monetarily measurable profit to someone to one or more individuals, today's Republicans (along with many conservative Democrats) are second to none in calling for a degree of government control that, at least in intent, would have done Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin proud (though these latter figures were admittedly far more ruthless -- or, if you prefer, far more forthright -- than their American kindred of either left or right). Reversing the ban on federally-funded stem cell research is one small but important step in countering such an "un-American" (or should I say "all-too-American"?) tendency toward government-imposed conformity. Expect a far bigger -- and more strident -- battle when the legislative/legal fight over abortion is rejoined.

A word of advice to Obama's critics

Read a biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (preferably one written by a professional historian rather than by a partisan hack). Granted, the circumstances (political, economic, international) were very different in many respects. Granted, too, the New Deal was of questionable efficacy in getting America out of the Great Depression an eventuality for which the country had to await the onset of the Second World War. But at least FDR was trying to do SOMETHING, something different from just relying on the same old nostrums (and the same old personnel) that had done so much to bring about the depression in the first place. Perhaps more importantly, Roosevelt saw the crisis confronting him as an opportunity to bring about (or at least try to bring about) certain fundamental changes in the relationship between government and society, as well as in some concrete governmental policies.
Does Obama have a comparable longer-term vision? It would seem so; indeed, one might claim that the current president, more open to contemporary realities, less hidebound by traditional constraints of class and gender and race, sees even farther than his predecessor of seven decades before. To what extent he will succeed in realizing his vision remains to be seen. But if nothing else, he offers a worthy alternative to those who prefer to seek solace in the latest biography of Herbert Hoover.

My Pedagogical Philosophy

Though I have never formally studied pedagogical theory or philosophy, several years' experience in academe has exposed me to an array of pedagogical approaches: one emphasizes raising students' self-esteem, another focuses on maximizing students' competitiveness in the job market, a third stresses indoctrination in certain "invincible truths" propagated by some higher authority (political, legal, ecclesiastical). I hold to a more old-fashioned view: namely, that the primary duty of a teacher is TO TEACH -- and through his or her teaching help foster those qualities of mind which will enable students to continue their intellectual development long after they have left the university campus. Far be it from me to denigrate facts, statistics, examples, and all other concrete data essential to the study of virtually any academic discipline; but one need hardly go to a university -- or, in this era of the Internet, even a library -- to gather such information. A university classroom, however, can offer participants an almost unique opportunity to develop and exercise that capacity for critical thinking without which no individual or communal advancement worthy of the name is possible.

I say "participants" because, to my mind, learning (in an institutional setting like the university) should be a cooperative endeavor, an ongoing process of constructive dialogue between students and teachers as well as among students themselves. Over two millennia after his death, Socrates remains an unsurpassed exemplar of this process. Though perhaps not quite as infallible, philosophically, as his Platonic interlocutors were wont to profess, Socrates as a teacher exemplifies an ideal that has lost its resonance in this "age of the expert": that of encouraging individuals to seek "the truth" for themselves rather than just blindly accept whatever emanates from their supposed intellectual superiors. Yes, expertise has its place in the classroom, and I myself at the lectern will make frequent reference to the fruits of my own reading and reflection. But teachers should always be wary of measuring their ultimate success by the number of disciples they leave behind.

If Socrates epitomizes my preferred "method" of teaching, it is a much later educational thinker, John Henry Newman, who most eloquently expresses my ideal of a university. For Newman conceived of the university as above all the institutional setting most conducive to fulfillment of the Socratic injunction to know oneself. Granted that Newman shared the gender and class biases of his age with respect to who "merited" higher education -- granted, too, Newman's wholly subjective conviction that a "proper" education would inevitably lead its recipients to embrace his own particular religious creed -- he recognized, and celebrated, the value of knowledge for its own sake -- or, to be more precise, for the intellectual, social, and moral welfare of the individual who "knows" and thus, ultimately, for the good of the larger community to which all individuals belong. The contrast with today's university, where teachers and students alike place primary, often exclusive emphasis on the tangible or vocational benefits of whatever they study, could not be more striking. That, however, is no reason to treat yesterday's ideal as merely so much extra fodder for tomorrow's dissertations.

The above allusions to ancient Greece and Victorian Britain notwithstanding, my thoughts on education derive chiefly from personal experience and education. As such, I lay no claim to "absolute impartiality" or "scientific detachment." But I do believe that, in education as in so much else, some personal viewpoints have more to recommend them than others. For all the undoubted technological and economic and political advances that have been made over the past century, nobody has bettered Socrates as a practitioner or Newman as a theorist of what educators should strive to accomplish. That two such renowned pedagogues, lacking a PhD and other "professional credentials," would be spurned by most contemporary academics as unworthy of joining their ranks, offers an all too ironic commentary on just how far educational standards have fallen.

Oscars 2009

Watching the Academy Awards live yesterday (for the first time in fifteen years) inspires me to the following note:

Like millions of moviegoers worldwide, I am delighted by the decision of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences to honor "Slumdog Millionaire" as the best picture of 2008. While the Academy has from time to time demonstrated comparable ability to place "art" above "commercial appeal," too often its members confuse transient popularity with enduring cinematic greatness. Let's just hope that Hollywood restrains itself from churning out "Slumdog Millionaire II"!

Exceptions to the Rule

Among the most pervasive of human characteristics is the tendency to define oneself by whom one is NOT. To the extent such self-proclaimed distinctiveness rests on measurable differences in accomplishment or ability, it is as natural as it is, perhaps, desirable. In a race as competitive as ours, the urge to run faster, jump higher, sing or write or rule "better" than anyone else may be as much a spur to activity as the more elemental needs for food and shelter. But when people extend their (more or less) innate differences in deed to perceived differences in kind, when they equate "difference" with "otherness" and thereby set themselves apart from those deemed irretrievably outside their circle, trouble results.

History is replete with examples of the barbarities to which sentiments of "otherness" may give rise. From the denial of citizenship to Native Americans and African-Americans and Asian-Americans in the United States to the near-extermination of European Jewry (whom the Nazis explicitly regarded as just so many vermin) to contemporary terrorist attacks against "the infidel," the human race has repeatedly demonstrated its own moral unfitness for survival. Infinitely more prosaic, yet in its way equally indicative of humankind's intellectual primitivism and psychological immaturity, is the widespread tendency among people of one nationality or country to boost their own sense of superiority by denigrating those born elsewhere. Such a tendency has been sadly evident in most of the countries I've visited over the past fourteen years. The Slovaks hate the Hungarians; the Hungarians belittle the Jews and the Gypsies; the Latvians despise the Russians; the Russians look down upon virtually all non-Russians; the Chinese disparage the Russians -- and everyone else; the Azeris loathe the Armenians to literally genocidal extremes. While I myself experienced little of this "other"-directed hostility --as an American, as a Jew, or even as the generic foreigner -- such bigotry in and of itself belied any and all claims to superiority over any creature except a severely brain-damaged cockroach.

That the penchant for derogating others who are not "like us" is no more intrinsic to the human species than, say, love of music or addiction to cocaine was brought home to me by my sojourn in Mongolia. Though imbued with a perhaps excessive pride in Genghis Khan and a historically understandable distrust of the Chinese, the Mongolians do not appear to define themselves at the expense of other cultures, other peoples, other countries. On the contrary, the Mongolians -- at least the ones I met -- were quite open to (if, to be sure, often not very interested in) ideas and practices, beliefs and traditions alien to their own background and experience. This openness, far from reflecting any lack of respect for their own heritage and achievements, demonstrated a cultural and ethnic self-confidence that did not depend on denigration of "the other" for its survival. Such non-chauvinistic partiality was all the more welcome after my stay in three countries -- China, Russia, Azerbaijan -- where prejudice toward "the other" is almost a prerequisite for acceptance into the national community.

Like Mongolia, Korea displays a level of cultural and ethnic tolerance seemingly at odds with its longstanding reputation in the West as the Hermit Kingdom. While yielding to none in the intensity of their identity as a separate nation, the Koreans -- again, to judge from my admittedly limited experience -- refrain from making "anti-otherness" a necessary component of that identity. Even the occasionally mooted proposal to make English the country's second official language, though widely resisted, is not accompanied (as it would be in China or Russia) by hyperbolic (and hypocritical) denunciations of "linguistic imperialism"; Korean represents a vibrant and indispensable part of the country's uniqueness, not a sign of its superiority over everyone else.

None of which is meant to suggest that xenophobia is entirely unknown in Mongolia or Korea -- or, conversely, that every Chinese, every Russian, every Azeri views their own kind as the ne plus ultra of human civilization. Nor am I blind to the intolerance and discrimination that continue to greet many groups worldwide, wherever their members reside. Ongoing disrespect for and maltreatment of women, homosexuals, the poor represent a global scourge absent the removal of which any claim to be "civilized" is a half-truth at best. But when it comes to perceiving coexistence as something more than a geopolitical convenience, as an ideal capable of enriching all humanity without impoverishing anyone, some people (and peoples) are certainly far ahead of others. Whatever those "others" might insist to the contrary.

"Dialogue" with Andre

Of the nine countries where I have taught since 1995, the one which (besides the U.S.) has left me the most ambivalent is China. On the one hand, the people were quite friendly and the students refreshingly diligent. As a teacher, moreover, I (like other foreigners) seemed to be generally respected for my contributions to Chinese development. And in a material sense life passed comfortably enough for an archetypal bourgeois like myself: lodgings were spacious and replete with every modern convenience, the food was delicious, and DVDs were dirt cheap. On the other hand, the authoritarian nature of the political regime deeply offended some of my own innermost principles. Disturbing in a more practical sense was the repeatedly demonstrated untrustworthiness of my university employers (with respect to scheduling, meeting contractual terms, etc.). And behind the undeniable friendliness of the people lay a subtle but distinct standoffishness, a clear tendency to perceive their own "kind" as somehow apart from everyone else.

For approximately one year following my departure from China at the start of 2006, my positive impressions of the country and its people remained dominant, helped in no small measure by my infinitely worse experiences in the next two places I worked, Russia and Azerbaijan (especially the latter). My subsequent year in Mongolia, however, provided a much pleasanter contrast against which to view my Chinese sojourn, a contrast further accentuated by my current country of residence, Korea. But what has really solidified my unfavorable assessment of China and the Chinese -- what has sealed my determination never to return to China, even as a tourist -- is a lengthy e-mail I received from a former student of mine in the spring of 2007. The English name of this student was (and, as far as I know, remains) Andre.

Andre was my best student at the best university where I taught in China, China Foreign Affairs University. Indeed, Andre is one of the best students I have ever had anywhere. Not only were his speaking, writing, and other academic abilities commendably above average, he showed an intellectual curiosity and adventurousness rare even (or, rather, especially!) among tenured professors, let alone among job-obsessed students. More than once we spoke about history, about movies, about literature, about subjects far removed from the daily fare of our respective classes. (He's the only person I've ever met who shared my fondness for Thomas Mann!) Andre's stated intention to pursue his studies in Europe, getting degrees in international relations and law, then perhaps in art history, before returning to his home country to teach, was thus no more than I believed him to be capable of. That he subsequently applied for -- and won -- a scholarship to a prestigious German university shows he is well on his way to achieving the goals he has set for himself.

For some time after my departure from CFAU, Andre and I remained in intermittent e-mail contact, writing chiefly about matters related to our respective careers. Then Andre fell silent for about a year -- until one day in April 2008. After explaining that he'd lost my e-mail address and just refound it, Andre proceeded to spew forth a polemic that, on balance, would not have been out of place in the state-controlled China Daily (or in any one of the myriad Chinese-language equivalents thereof). Among the writer's main contentions:

• there was absolutely no basis for comparison between the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and those in Berlin 1936
• the Chinese authorities were absolutely right in insisting that politics and sports be kept totally separate
• Chinese actions in Tibet, though perhaps unduly harsh, were justified, and in any case "Tibet" was a strictly domestic issue in which no outsiders had any right to interfere
• Western reportage on China was hopelessly biased and unfair
• given its own record of imperialism exploitation, racism, poverty, etc., etc., etc., the West had no right to criticize China for anything -- unless and until the West first acknowledged all its own sins
• over the past sixty years Mao and his successors had done more on behalf of their people than any other government in history
• people outside China have no legitimate reason to distrust China or the Chinese

And so it went. To be fair, though, Andre did profess an eagerness at the end of his diatribe to get my feedback.

Which profession I accepted at its face value. Stung less by the actual content of Andre's philippic -- as noted, it was no different from standard Chinese propaganda -- than by its emanating from someone who had seemed above such crude nationalistic fervor, I responded in a correspondingly implacable tone: that in my view China should never have been awarded the Olympics in the first place; that, unlike the average Chinese (or, for that matter, American), I subscribed to the Martin Luther King dogma that an injustice against one man anywhere was an injustice against all men everywhere; that the legacy of the West, though admittedly reprehensible in many ways, was more than simply racism, poverty, and imperialism (as his own decision to study at a German university attested); that Mao had killed more Chinese than all the "foreign devils" put together; that China's undeniable economic growth had not come without severe cost to people within as well as (environmentally speaking) outside China; that the West's past imperialism did not in itself justify China's present actions in places like Darfur or Zimbabwe (or, I might've added, gainsay China's own centuries-old record of imperialist conquest -- as attested by the 50+ "official" minorities residing in contemporary China); that neither Chinese history nor China's current authoritarian regime gave other Asian countries any reason to accept China's growing power without trepidation. In short, I concluded, his largely uncritical appraisal of China's actions past and present, his wholesale (and hypocritical) denunciation of the West, his implicit but obvious conviction that China and the Chinese were somehow "better" than any other nation and any other people on earth -- bespoke a spirit, a mindset, a Weltanschauung totally at odds with the humanism, the internationalism, the moral breadth of someone like (the later) Thomas Mann.

Less than 24 hours later Andre responded -- but to no avail. Never one to waste time trying to combat views rooted in willful ignorance and irrational prejudice, still less to engage in serious discussion with someone whose moral sensibilities are subordinate to considerations of country or class or religion, I tossed Andre's response into the "trash," unread. Apart from a brief letter Andre sent some four months later, in which he admitted that I was not the only person to look askance at the Beijing Olympics but did not otherwise make reference to our earlier exchange, there has been no further contact between us.

Nor can there be. For all his reading, all his ostensible openness to other cultures and other civilizations, all his apparent interest in expanding his mental horizons, Andre is at heart unwilling and, I suspect, unable to accept any idea, any creed, any point of view which runs counter to -- or at any rate does not support -- the belief in Chinese superiority that lies at the core of his intellectual being. Hence my placement of the word "dialogue" in quotation marks at the head of this entry.

To be sure, such racist/nationalist sentiment is hardly unique to China. Nor would I claim that all Chinese think this way; on the contrary, one frequently reads (in the "biased" western press) of Chinese who are genuinely desirous of making their homeland a respected and admired (rather than merely feared) contributor to humanity's welfare, and whose willingness to engage in dialogue with others is not circumscribed by reverence for Confucianism, Maoism, Sinocentrism, or other staples of China's past. But these, I'm afraid, are the exceptions rather than the rule; rarely have I encountered a people so singularly averse to criticism either of self or of country. The concrete policy implications of such unfettered arrogance on global warming, economic growth, arms proliferation, respect for human rights, and other issues affecting an entity which to this day China refuses to acknowledge -- the world community -- I leave for relevant experts to forecast. For myself, I shall simply refrain from returning to a land where ignorance and bigotry are cherished even among the elite.

UPDATE

...or where bloggers non grati are stabbed

A lifelong love affair

I fell in love with history on the same day as, though for reasons unconnected to, Richard Nixon's resignation from the White House. (Or, rather, it was reading about history that I fell in love with; the actual content of history, goodness knows, often has little "lovable" about it.) On August 9, 1974, finished (or bored) with my schoolwork and having nothing else to do, I picked up volume "C" of the World Book Encyclopedia and started browsing through it; within minutes, I was absorbed in the entry about the American Civil War. For the next two or three years I read every book I could find on the war, culminating in Shelby Foote's magnificent trilogy. Gradually, my historical interests expanded -- chronologically, geographically, thematically. While I cannot claim to be equally fascinated by every country, every era, every facet of the human experience (business and economics leave me especially uncaptivated), my interests are broad enough to preclude me from joining the ranks of the dryasdust pedants (in many disciplines besides history, of course) who have made a career (if little else) out of penning monographs that compete with each other to see which can gather the most dust on the most library shelves in the least amount of time. For better or worse, that is one competition I have neither the temperament nor the credentials to enter. More a generalist than a specialist, and more an autodidact than a creature of academe, I read whatever I think will add to my overall knowledge of the human race -- hopefully in at least a mildly felicitous fashion.

And what do I find so absorbing about history? Well, in the first place, it tells a story, a story complete with plot, setting, atmosphere, characters (even if those characters be inanimate objects like "love" or "violence" or "progress"). Focusing on people "in action," as it were, history also allows us to assess human nature on the basis of concrete observations and (David Hume notwithstanding) more or less "objective" realities. That the average human being (i.e., 99.9% of the race) has little inclination and less ability to make such assessments is itself a conclusion to be drawn from study of human history -- as is humanity's almost habitual incapacity to derive the proper lessons from the past. (And yes, these generalizations on my part are themselves open to dispute -- but only by those whose historical knowledge is limited to what they've read in the encyclopedia, or Sunday newspaper supplements, or recent monographs devoted to their particular field of expertise).

Last but not least, history offers a never-ending source of antidotes to counter the belief that we live live in either the best or the worst of all possible worlds. However great or awful today may seem, rest assured that there's always been a yesterday even more so.

3 observations

Living and working in different countries I was also experiencing different cultures, different peoples -- and the lessons imparted by these experiences may form the basis of many a posting. At the moment, I shall confine myself to three brief observations.

(1) Of all the places I have lived and worked since 1995, far and away the most appealing -- from an aesthetic point of view -- has been the capital of Hungary. With its Old World architecture and 19th-century layout, its restaurants and cafes and coffeehouses, its theatres and museums, its parks and, yes, even cemeteries, it evokes an (admittedly tarnished) golden age of civilization and cultivation that disappeared in the cataclysm of 1914.

(2) Of all the peoples I have lived among since 1995, the friendliest have been the Koreans and the Mongolians. To be sure, I've encountered little personal hostility wherever I've visited. But Koreans and Mongolians seem especially open to meeting individuals who are not part of their respective cultures.

(3) Years abroad have reinforced my longstanding conviction that human nature is fundamentally the same everywhere. However great the differences in governmental systems or social norms or cultural traditions, human psychology doesn't change from one border to another. This may seem a commonplace observation, but the persistent tendency -- among people from all walks of life, not just political leaders -- to see the world in terms of "us" vs. "them" does not bode well for the future of the race (the human race, that is). (As for my own analysis of what human nature amounts to, that, again, is a subject for future postings -- or, if you prefer, diatribes.)

A brief introduction to me

Two score, five years, and about nine months ago I was born in the city of Cleveland, Ohio. Looking back at what I have undergone since then, I would divide the course of my life into four distinct (though obviously connected) periods: Years of Childhood and Adolescence (1963-1981); University Years (1981-1989); Years of Drift (1989-1995); Years of (Voluntary) Exile (1995-present). While each period contains its own special features, peculiarities, and traumas, the last and most recent (i.e., from 1995 to today) is probably the most readily graspable --at least on the surface -- by those just becoming acquainted with me. So I will begin with a brief overview of the past fifteen years.

In early 1995, living in the D.C. area and unable fo find even remotely challenging work, I responded to an ad in the Washington Post for English teachers to work in Korea. Though my academic background was in history, not language, and though I had virtually no pedagogical experience, this seemed to offer an interesting challenge -- more interesting and more challenging, certainly, than doing occasional temp jobs as an office clerk or furniture mover. So I applied to the agency which had placed the ad -- and by mid-February was aboard a flight for Seoul. Unfortunately, due to visa problems beyond my control (and caused, in fact, by the school for which I had agreed to work), I had to leave Korea after only three months. But this my initial exposure to teaching abroad sufficed to convince me that here, if far from an ideal profession, was something I could do tolerably well without unduly exacerbating my entrenched existential dissatisfaction (of which more -- much more -- in subsequent entries). Fourteen years and eight countries later, that conviction, though severely shaken from time to time, still stands.

Anyway, six weeks after returning to the States, I was headed overseas again -- this time across the Atlantic. One year in Slovakia was followed by five years in Hungary followed by one year in Latvia followed by six months back in Hungary followed by fourteen weeks in Thailand followed by two-and-a-half years in China followed by five months in Russia followed by another summer in Hungary followed by five months in Azerbaijan followed by six months in the Baltic states followed by one year in Mongolia. Through most of this period -- interrupted by only two brief visits to the U.S. -- I was teaching English, academic writing, and American studies, chiefly at the university level.

Though not exactly homesick after so much time away from the land of my passport, I did miss being in an environment where meeting people who shared my interests (as well as my language!) would be (I thought) a bit easier -- to say nothing of being able to enter a library the majority of whose holdings were in English. So on June 29, 2008, I departed Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, for my favorite American city, San Francisco, hoping to find a job there that would allow me to remain for a while. But six months of failing to find any long-term employment obliged me to put this particular ambition on indefinite hold. Accordingly, toward the end of 2008, I resumed my travels/travails abroad, in the same country where they had begun over fourteeen years before: Korea. This time around, hopefully, my stay will last longer than three months, while the overall duration of this second stage of my existence as a latter-day equivalent of the medieval wandering Jew could well prove another fifteen years . . . or more.

For better or worse, I don't know how closely my life expectancy adheres to the American average.

Historical Parallels

Many of late have taken to comparing Barack Obama with Abraham Lincoln, encouraged by no less a figure than the new president himself. But how many have paused to consider the possibly even greater similarity between the two men's immediate predecessors?


To be sure, the resemblance is not exact. James Buchanan enjoyed an at least nominally distinguished career as a diplomat and senator before stepping into the Oval Office, whereas prior to 2001 George W. Bush was known chiefly as the unremarkable son of a mediocre president.

Moreover, the problems confronting Buchanan during his administration were problems of long standing, for which more than one eminent policymaker could justly claim responsibility, while the major part of Bush's maleficent legacy can rest comfortably on his shoulders alone. Then, too, Buchanan was unmarried. But nothing, absolutely nothing, ought to detract from the single biggest fact uniting the 15th U.S. president and the 43rd: both men left the country infinitely worse off than when they entered office.

To what extent, if any, Obama's presidential tenure will bear comparison with Lincoln's it is much too early to say. As fresh assessments of the latter continue to be put forth even today, over 150 years after his death, surely we should try to refrain from judging a man --for good or for ill -- who has held the reins of executive power for less than a week. James Buchanan, on the other hand, has been consistently deemed one of the worst U.S. presidents ever -- and this despite his insistence that history would "vindicate" him. Perhaps the record of the latest ex-president will force historians to reconsider.