Gambling Against the Dollar

By DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: November 1, 2006

A couple of years ago, Robert E. Rubin — éminence grise at Citigroup and the Democratic Party’s economic wise man — decided that the United States dollar was headed for a fall.
Nearly everyone who spends time thinking about the American economy believes that the value of the dollar has to fall at some point.

The United States has been borrowing enormous sums of money from other countries, largely so that American consumers can turn around and buy the computers, clothing and other goods those countries make. Like all borrowing booms, this one will eventually subside. When it does — and foreign investors stop buying so many dollars to lend back to us — the dollar will drop.

With this chain of events in mind, a former colleague of Mr. Rubin’s at Goldman Sachs had been whispering in his ear that anybody who didn’t have 20 or 30 percent of his holdings tied to other currencies was “out of his mind.”

Yet as Mr. Rubin told me last week, his finances at the time were “totally dollar-based.” (As are yours, in all likelihood.) So he decided to bet against the dollar by buying options on other currencies. It turned out to be a very bad bet.

This is a column about why Mr. Rubin’s logic made perfect sense — why it still does, in fact — yet why most people who have made similar bets in recent years have taken a bath. Warren E. Buffett cost Berkshire Hathaway almost $1 billion last year shorting the dollar. On the opposite end of the investing spectrum, I put a small amount of my retirement savings last year into a T. Rowe Price mutual fund that is linked more directly to foreign currencies than most foreign-stock funds are. It has delivered a return of negative 7 percent.

But it really is worth trying to understand what’s going on. In the end, the value of the dollar will go a long way toward determining how well Americans live: which food we can afford to eat, which cars we can buy, which foreign policy we can pursue. As Mr. Rubin says: “It is vitally important. It has the potential to affect all of us.”

The simplest way to explain the problem is to say that the United States has been living beyond its means. Both the federal government and American families have been spending more money than they take in, leaving both in debt. To close the gap between our resources and our spending habits, we have borrowed from abroad. It’s the only option.

The net amount of money leaving the United States — that is, the amount of money we need to borrow back to support our lifestyle — has soared to $800 billion a year. “It’s just stunning,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. “It’s unprecedented.”

The big question now is how will the situation reverse itself. It could happen gradually, with other countries slowly reducing their purchase of dollars. This wouldn’t be horrible, as Americans discovered when the dollar dropped in the 1980s. But most of us would be worse off for the simple reason that foreign loans would no longer be letting us live beyond our means.

The other possibility is that an unexpected event — a spike in oil prices, say — could cause foreign investors to cut their dollar purchases sharply, bringing all sorts of economic havoc. Edwin M. Truman, an economist who spent a quarter-century at the Federal Reserve, compares the situation to a merry-go-round that is moving too fast for its underlying mechanics. It gradually loses speed, leaving its riders disappointed but unscathed, or it stops suddenly and throws some of them off their horses.

Whatever the outcome, a decline in the dollar will probably be part of it. That’s why Mr. Rubin made his bet. But the dollar didn’t cooperate. While no longer at the highs it reached in 2002, it has stayed strong. Mr. Rubin ended up losing more than $1 million (which, certainly, he can afford) before getting out of the currency market.

Throughout his career — as an arbitrage trader at Goldman, as the Treasury secretary who led the 1995 bailout of Mexico — he has argued that decisions should not be judged solely on the outcome. Somebody could do a perfectly good job of weighing the relevant risks, make a call that maximizes the chances of success and still not succeed, because the world is a messy, unpredictable place.

Mr. Rubin and the other dollar bears look a little like the skeptics of the real estate boom back in 2005. For years, those skeptics warned that things had gotten out of hand and that reality would soon reassert itself. And for years, they were wrong. The longer they were wrong, the more out of touch they sound.

How is that housing boom going, anyway?

Email: leonhardt@nytimes.com

Things I need to find out.

1. Why do we need religion?

2. Why do people propagate religion? Why are there so many Christian Missionaries under expensive funding to convert people to their religion? What purpose does it serve/What are the motives behind it?

ISLAM, THE POPE & THE OPERA

MOST EURO MUSLIMS SICK OF EXTREMISTS MICHAEL MEYER

By MICHAEL MEYER

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Benedict: If he listened, he’d find surprising agreement.

October 2, 2006 — ONCE again, Europe is grappling with explosive questions. How to deal with the religious sensitivities of Islam? Where does free speech and open debate leave off, and offense begin?

Consider the controversies of recent days. In Rome, Pope Benedict XVI apologized to those who may have “misunderstood” a speech he recently gave during a visit to his native Germany, where he quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor condemning Muhammad for the “evil he spread by the sword.” Violence, Benedict insisted, “is incompatible with the nature of God and soul.” Days later, in Berlin, the venerable Deutsche Oper opted not to stage a production of Mozart’s “Idomeno” – featuring a scene with the severed heads of Jesus, Buddha and the Prophet – for fear of inflaming Muslim sensibilities.

Angry fingers quickly pointed. “Appeasement,” the pope’s critics howled – the pontiff was merely stating an obvious truth, they argued, and shouldn’t retreat in the face of political correctness. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said much the same on the opera affair: “Self-censorship out of fear is intolerable,” she declared. “Violent radicals” must be confronted, not coddled.

Two important points were all but lost in the uproar. First: Benedict’s “apology” was, in fact, not one at all. Muslim leaders from across Europe were summoned to the Vatican for a “summit,” only to hear the pope read a prepared statement affirming his respect for Islam. Photos of the event told the real story. There sat the leader of Christendom, resplendent on a golden throne and separated from the assembled dignitaries by a vast expanse of polished white-and-black marble floor. He did not take questions.

If this was hardly appeasement, neither was it the “dialogue” the pope had promised. If he had invited conversation (or, better, simply listened), he’d have heard something other than criticism – for the majority of the Muslim leaders gathered there agreed with him, al most entirely. (As, for the record, did Merkel.) They, too, decry extremism. There is no place in civilized life for violence, they would have said, let alone terrorism.

The pope can be forgiven his reticence. After all, “Cartoon-gate” – the bloody riots that erupted last spring after a Danish magazine published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad – was fresh in his mind. So it was as well for the Berlin opera producers, who cancelled their performance after receiving an anonymous bomb threat. (They’re now reconsidering, depending on whether sufficient security arrangements are practical.)

This raises the second neglected point: Yes, Germany’s more radical Islamic activists welcomed the opera company’s move (suggesting it had headed off potentially ugly protests) – but a vastly larger number of moderates took a different view.

The day after the opera announced the scrubbing of its production, a conference of German Muslims happened to convene in Berlin. Rather than spouting condemnations, they called on Deutsche Oper to restore its program. Some even suggested the entire group attend, en masse.

Kenan Kolat, leader of the country’s 2.1-million Turkish community, spoke for most when he declared that it was high time for Muslims of all ethnic stripes to accept principles of free speech and other tenets of European democracy. “This is about art, not politics,” he told Bavarian radio, adding that anything else represented a retreat to “the Middle Ages.” Shades of Pope Benedict?

The lesson in both incidents, perhaps, is to recognize that Islam is no monolith, in Europe or anywhere else. What’s more, moderates represent an overwhelming majority of Muslims living in Europe – a majority that’s increasingly unhappy with the radicals in their midst.

So, if the pope could be faulted, it had little to do with anything he said: The mistake was his failure to engage with Muslims who would otherwise be allies.

The Berlin opera erred, too – by playing to the wrong audience. The anonymous hot-head who called in his terror threat was an enemy not only of the West but also the multitude of fellow Muslims who largely embrace a German way of life.

Merkel and the pope are right. We should not coddle extremists, let alone kowtow to them.

Michael Meyer is Europe/Middle East editor for Newsweek International and a member of Benador Associates.

Has the West been silenced by Islam?

In an age scarred by flashpoints between cultures and religions, it is easy to make accusations of prejudice or bigotry. But, argues Paul Vallely, we have all got something to gain from developing new sensitivities

Published: 04 October 2006

A cartoon in Private Eye neatly summarised one side of the argument. First Muslim: “The Pope says Islam is a violent religion.”Second Muslim: “Let’s kill him then.”

Cartoons, as we have come to learn, can be dodgy guides through the minefield in which European and Islamic cultures meet. But there are fears of a clash of civilisations in which Europe’s enlightenment values are under attack from religious obscurantism. Cherished traditions, such as freedom of speech, the alarmists complain, are being surrendered out of political correctness and appeasement.

Thus we see this week that Spanish villagers who have for centuries donned medieval costumes to re-enact battles between Moors and Christians are now abandoning the custom of burning effigies of the Prophet Mohamed to celebrate the end of 800 years of Muslim rule in the Iberian peninsula.

Meanwhile, in France a philosophy teacher is in hiding after publishing a newspaper article critical of Islam. In Germany a production of Mozart’s opera Idomeneo has been cancelled for fear of angering Muslims. And in Rome, Benedict XVI continues to issue apologies – he’s done four so far – for his ill-judged quotation from a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who had called Islam “evil and inhuman”. The Pope clearly still isn’t sorry enough in the view of the two hijackers.

By contrast, in the West, even those who judged that the Pontiff, and others, may have gone too far have been rushing for their dictionaries of quotations to find the exact words of Voltaire about disapproving of what you say but defending to the death your right to say it. (They were actually written by one Evelyn Beatrice Hall, a biographer of that icon of the European Enlightenment). Everywhere have sprung up champions of freedom of expression and crusaders against religious darkness in the name of Western values. Yet the truth is somewhat different. This is not so much a clash of civilisations as one between religious and secular fundamentalists. For our world is very different from even that of our fathers, let alone that of Voltaire, In his day, religion was the dominant oppressive culture against which emerging rationalism struggled. Today, by contrast, Islam embodies the identity of one of the most vulnerable, and alienated, minorities in Europe.

That is not all. The reality of a multi-faith multicultural Europe, in which many feel threatened by the fear of new and growing waves of immigration, is provoking a crisis of identity characterised by increasing insularity and fear. It is in that context that the simplistic polarisation between “the inalienable principle of freedom of speech” and “the sphere of divine duty” is taking place. The result is all too often a dialogue of the deaf.

Take the article in Le Figaro written by the French high-school philosophy teacher Robert Redeker. In it he complained that France was “more or less consciously submitting itself to the dictates of Islam” by banning string bikinis during this summer’s annual beach party in Paris, setting up times when only women can visit public swimming pools and allowing Muslim schoolchildren – horror of horrors – to get halal food in school cafeterias.

These are all reasonable issues for debate. The problem was that, for good rhetorical measure, he also added that the Koran was “a book of extraordinary violence”. And that the Prophet Mohamed was “a pitiless warlord”, a “murderer of Jews” and “a master of hate”. His vocabulary was not quite as vile as that of the Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, who routinely described Muslims as “goatfuckers” before one of them murdered him. Nonetheless Redeker, who immediately began to receive e-mail death threats, feared that some Islamic zealot might try to carry them out.

The trouble with debate carried out in this adolescent fashion is that it obscures rather than enlightens. Though it purports to open a dialogue with Muslims about the values of a pluralist society, in reality it is simply gratuitously offensive. And it merely reinforces the prejudices of the fundamentalists on both sides. See, say the Islamists, the West is inherently anti-Muslim. See, say the Enlightenmentists, Islam has an intrinsic propensity for violence.

The Pope has not helped here. Though he has apologised for not distancing himself from the “evil and inhuman” quote he has not resiled from the substance of his Regensburg address. In it he insisted that, thanks to the influence of Greek philosophy, there was no conflict between faith and reason at the core of Christianity. The Christian God is incapable of actions which are not good: hence He could never endorse the use of violence to spread religion. In Islam, by contrast, he said, God is not bound by any human categories, even that of reason, which is why Islam sees no contradiction on spreading religion by the sword.

To back his argument he selectively drew on Christian theologians who endorsed his view, niftily omitting those like Tertullian or Calvin who leaned towards the “God beyond reason” view. And he cited a marginal medieval Muslim theologian, Ibn Hazn, who said that God is not bound even by his own word, ignoring the many Muslims, such as the Mu’tazilite school, who have said God must act in accordance with reason.

This is all high-brow stuff but it boils down to the same kind of triumphalism, without the gross insults. Both say that Islam is alien and can never be truly European.

Others are less narrow-minded. The decision in Spain to scrap the burning of effigies of Mohamed reveals that a new sensitivity is developing in many quarters. It was evident in the cancellation of the production of Mozart’s Idomeneo at the Deutsche Oper. The Hans Neuenfels production, which inserts a scene not in Mozart’s score – in which the heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha and Mohamed are pulled from a bloody sack – may have been unexceptional when it opened in 2003 but that was before the riots that erupted around the world after a Danish magazine last year published a series of puerile cartoons of Mohamed, including one in which the prophet’s turban contained a bomb. Not everyone is so convinced. Wolfgang Boersen, the German government’s culture spokesman, accused the opera house of “falling on its knees before the terrorists”. One Austrian newspaper spoke of the “high point of self-censorship”. But in many places there is a growing realisation that freedom of expression is not absolute but needs to be governed by a sense of social responsibility. To elevate one right above all others is the hallmark of the single-issue fanatic. Sometimes it is wise to choose not to exercise a right.

There are signs too of a growing maturity among the Muslim community. The wild men have been in evidence – and much quoted by a confrontation-hungry media – but many Muslims are coming to see that they must respect the traditions of the culture into which they and their fathers have immigrated. And if cynicism, irony and indeed blasphemy are – going back to Voltaire – part of the culture they have decided they must observe it with detachment. A group of German Islamic leaders, meeting in Berlin for a routine forum with the government, called unanimously for Idomeneo to be performed as scheduled next month. One imam even said they would all attend the performance.

That was a refreshing contrast to the hyperbole about art and free speech being “the elixirs of an enlightened society”. Instead of a power struggle, or a test of wills, it opens the way to a more mature approach. Instead of an emotional debate which closes down rational discourse, it is the way to build common values – ones which recognise the inalienable right to freedom of expression but which, at the same time, demand it be exercised in a measured way.

Voltaire, the great deist, had something to offer here too. Calling out to God, he wrote, “you did not give us hearts to hate nor did you give us hands to kill. May our differences in attire, our ridiculous customs, our imperfect laws and our nonsensical opinions, may all these nuances not be interpreted as signs of hatred and persecution”.

Now there is a European inheritance which perhaps all might embrace.

The festival

This year villages around Valencia have dropped the ancient custom of burning effigies of the Prophet Mohamed to mark the reconquest of Spain from the Moors. Mayors in a number of villages near Valencia said they did not want to offend Muslim sensibilities. “It wasn’t necessary and, as it could hurt some people’s feelings, we decided not to do it,” Antonio Valdes, the mayor of Bocairent, said.

Majed Kadem, the president of the Islamic Community of Alicante, said the tradition was viewed by most Muslims as a “healthy diversion”. But Asid Farrod, the Imam of Barcelona, said the fiestas were offensive and should have been stopped years ago. “That they have gone on so long is a disgrace. We are living in a country where hatred of our Prophet is everywhere,” he said.

The Reconquista (Reconquest) holiday in February celebrates the victory of the Catholic King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella over the Muslims in 1492 and the expulsion of the Moors after seven centuries of Muslim domination of Spain.

The Pope

Pope Benedict XVI astonished moderate Muslims, and infuriated extremists, when he used a learned address to a German university to quote a Byzantine emperor describing Islam as “inhuman and evil”. The Pope characterised the quotation as “brusque”, but did not otherwise suggest that he disagreed with it, provoking protests across the Muslim world from Turkey to Pakistan to Turkey to Jakarta in Indonesia, left.

The Vatican moved into withdrawal mode, with the Pope’s spokesman, then the Pope himself, on two separate public occasions, saying he did not endorse the emperor’s words, and that he was “very sorry” for the misunderstanding.

Such corrections were damaging to the Pope’s image among Catholics of infallibility.

After the Pope summoned ambassadors to his residence and pledged himself to peaceful dialogue, the row finally died down. But the central paradox remained: if Muslims react so violently when their religion is identified with violence, doesn’t it prove the accusation right?

The politician

John Reid, the Home Secretary, was heckled by protesters as he gave a speech in east London last month urging Muslim parents to watch their children for signs of extremism.

Abu Izzadeen called Mr Reid an “enemy of Islam” and asked how he could “dare” come to a Muslim area after so many had been arrested under the terror legislation. “Shame on all of us for … listening to him,” he said.

It later transpired that Mr Izzadeen has been investigated over comments about the London suicide bombings, after describing the attacks as “mujahedin activity” which would make people “wake up and smell the coffee”, during an interview on the BBC’s Newsnight last year.

Mr Izzadeen’s actions were regarded with contempt by moderate Muslims. Khalid Mahmood, the MP for Perry Barr, condemned a planned visit to Birmingham this month by Mr Izzadeen and his followers for an Islamic rally. He said: “The people who follow Izzadeen are idiots and he should be banned from ever entering Birmingham.”

The opera

Germany’s first case of self-censorship in the face of a perceived Islamic terrorist threat provoked uproar last week when one of Berlin’s opera houses banned a production of the Mozart opera Idomeneo, which depicted the beheading of the world’s spiritual leaders, including Mohamed. (The head of Jesus is pictured left). The scene does not appear in the original plot.

Kirsten Harms, the director of the city’s Deutsche Oper, quit because she had been warned by police that the work would pose an “incalculable security risk” if it was shown, provoking criticism from politicians, theatre directors and the majority of Muslim community leaders. Kenan Kolat, the head of Germany’s Turkish community, said: “The opera should be shown. Art must be free.” Ali Kizilkaya, the head of the Islamic Council, disagreed. “The ban is right because the scene offends the feelings of Muslims,” he said. “Whether it’s an opera or a cartoon, it makes no difference.”

The radio show

Being funny about fatwas on the radio has not got down well with defenders of Muslim civil rights in the United States. In recent weeks the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has taken action twice to chide those it believes have crossed the line from humour to abuse.

First to be reprimanded was a Minnesota radio station which aired a skit called “Muslim Jeopardy” hosted by DJ Dave Ryan (left). With a mangled South Asian accent, an anonymous announcer named three categories of questions: “infamous infidels”, “smells like Shia” and “potent portables”. A female host was threatened with beheading if she got an answer wrong. After a letter of complaint from CAIR, the station apologised.

Then came a radio commercial from an Ohio car dealership which was withdrawn after complaints. It declared a “a jihad on the automotive industry” and said sales representatives would be wearing burqas.

The intellectual

Robert Redeker, a French philosophy teacher, and his family have been living in hiding under police protection since he wrote a newspaper article critical of Islam in mid-September. He has received death threats, and Islamist websites have carried his description and directions to his home.

In his article – inspired by Muslim reaction to the Pope’s comments in Germany – he complained that Islam was trying to destroy the West by attacking its liberties.

Soheib Bencheikh, the director of the Institute of Islamic sciences in Paris, said: “Anyone should have the right to criticise Islam, just as Christianity was attacked during the enlightenment in the 18th century… Not to criticise Islam would be a form of segregation.”

But Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a member of the French Council of Imams, said: “The liberty of expression is invoked every time someone wants to stigmatise Islam. There is a climate of Islamophobia in France.”

A cartoon in Private Eye neatly summarised one side of the argument. First Muslim: “The Pope says Islam is a violent religion.”Second Muslim: “Let’s kill him then.”

Cartoons, as we have come to learn, can be dodgy guides through the minefield in which European and Islamic cultures meet. But there are fears of a clash of civilisations in which Europe’s enlightenment values are under attack from religious obscurantism. Cherished traditions, such as freedom of speech, the alarmists complain, are being surrendered out of political correctness and appeasement.

Thus we see this week that Spanish villagers who have for centuries donned medieval costumes to re-enact battles between Moors and Christians are now abandoning the custom of burning effigies of the Prophet Mohamed to celebrate the end of 800 years of Muslim rule in the Iberian peninsula.

Meanwhile, in France a philosophy teacher is in hiding after publishing a newspaper article critical of Islam. In Germany a production of Mozart’s opera Idomeneo has been cancelled for fear of angering Muslims. And in Rome, Benedict XVI continues to issue apologies – he’s done four so far – for his ill-judged quotation from a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who had called Islam “evil and inhuman”. The Pope clearly still isn’t sorry enough in the view of the two hijackers.

By contrast, in the West, even those who judged that the Pontiff, and others, may have gone too far have been rushing for their dictionaries of quotations to find the exact words of Voltaire about disapproving of what you say but defending to the death your right to say it. (They were actually written by one Evelyn Beatrice Hall, a biographer of that icon of the European Enlightenment). Everywhere have sprung up champions of freedom of expression and crusaders against religious darkness in the name of Western values. Yet the truth is somewhat different. This is not so much a clash of civilisations as one between religious and secular fundamentalists. For our world is very different from even that of our fathers, let alone that of Voltaire, In his day, religion was the dominant oppressive culture against which emerging rationalism struggled. Today, by contrast, Islam embodies the identity of one of the most vulnerable, and alienated, minorities in Europe.

That is not all. The reality of a multi-faith multicultural Europe, in which many feel threatened by the fear of new and growing waves of immigration, is provoking a crisis of identity characterised by increasing insularity and fear. It is in that context that the simplistic polarisation between “the inalienable principle of freedom of speech” and “the sphere of divine duty” is taking place. The result is all too often a dialogue of the deaf.

Take the article in Le Figaro written by the French high-school philosophy teacher Robert Redeker. In it he complained that France was “more or less consciously submitting itself to the dictates of Islam” by banning string bikinis during this summer’s annual beach party in Paris, setting up times when only women can visit public swimming pools and allowing Muslim schoolchildren – horror of horrors – to get halal food in school cafeterias.

These are all reasonable issues for debate. The problem was that, for good rhetorical measure, he also added that the Koran was “a book of extraordinary violence”. And that the Prophet Mohamed was “a pitiless warlord”, a “murderer of Jews” and “a master of hate”. His vocabulary was not quite as vile as that of the Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, who routinely described Muslims as “goatfuckers” before one of them murdered him. Nonetheless Redeker, who immediately began to receive e-mail death threats, feared that some Islamic zealot might try to carry them out.

The trouble with debate carried out in this adolescent fashion is that it obscures rather than enlightens. Though it purports to open a dialogue with Muslims about the values of a pluralist society, in reality it is simply gratuitously offensive. And it merely reinforces the prejudices of the fundamentalists on both sides. See, say the Islamists, the West is inherently anti-Muslim. See, say the Enlightenmentists, Islam has an intrinsic propensity for violence.

The Pope has not helped here. Though he has apologised for not distancing himself from the “evil and inhuman” quote he has not resiled from the substance of his Regensburg address. In it he insisted that, thanks to the influence of Greek philosophy, there was no conflict between faith and reason at the core of Christianity. The Christian God is incapable of actions which are not good: hence He could never endorse the use of violence to spread religion. In Islam, by contrast, he said, God is not bound by any human categories, even that of reason, which is why Islam sees no contradiction on spreading religion by the sword.

To back his argument he selectively drew on Christian theologians who endorsed his view, niftily omitting those like Tertullian or Calvin who leaned towards the “God beyond reason” view. And he cited a marginal medieval Muslim theologian, Ibn Hazn, who said that God is not bound even by his own word, ignoring the many Muslims, such as the Mu’tazilite school, who have said God must act in accordance with reason.

This is all high-brow stuff but it boils down to the same kind of triumphalism, without the gross insults. Both say that Islam is alien and can never be truly European.

Others are less narrow-minded. The decision in Spain to scrap the burning of effigies of Mohamed reveals that a new sensitivity is developing in many quarters. It was evident in the cancellation of the production of Mozart’s Idomeneo at the Deutsche Oper. The Hans Neuenfels production, which inserts a scene not in Mozart’s score – in which the heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha and Mohamed are pulled from a bloody sack – may have been unexceptional when it opened in 2003 but that was before the riots that erupted around the world after a Danish magazine last year published a series of puerile cartoons of Mohamed, including one in which the prophet’s turban contained a bomb. Not everyone is so convinced. Wolfgang Boersen, the German government’s culture spokesman, accused the opera house of “falling on its knees before the terrorists”. One Austrian newspaper spoke of the “high point of self-censorship”. But in many places there is a growing realisation that freedom of expression is not absolute but needs to be governed by a sense of social responsibility. To elevate one right above all others is the hallmark of the single-issue fanatic. Sometimes it is wise to choose not to exercise a right.

There are signs too of a growing maturity among the Muslim community. The wild men have been in evidence – and much quoted by a confrontation-hungry media – but many Muslims are coming to see that they must respect the traditions of the culture into which they and their fathers have immigrated. And if cynicism, irony and indeed blasphemy are – going back to Voltaire – part of the culture they have decided they must observe it with detachment. A group of German Islamic leaders, meeting in Berlin for a routine forum with the government, called unanimously for Idomeneo to be performed as scheduled next month. One imam even said they would all attend the performance.

That was a refreshing contrast to the hyperbole about art and free speech being “the elixirs of an enlightened society”. Instead of a power struggle, or a test of wills, it opens the way to a more mature approach. Instead of an emotional debate which closes down rational discourse, it is the way to build common values – ones which recognise the inalienable right to freedom of expression but which, at the same time, demand it be exercised in a measured way.

Voltaire, the great deist, had something to offer here too. Calling out to God, he wrote, “you did not give us hearts to hate nor did you give us hands to kill. May our differences in attire, our ridiculous customs, our imperfect laws and our nonsensical opinions, may all these nuances not be interpreted as signs of hatred and persecution”.

Now there is a European inheritance which perhaps all might embrace.

The festival

This year villages around Valencia have dropped the ancient custom of burning effigies of the Prophet Mohamed to mark the reconquest of Spain from the Moors. Mayors in a number of villages near Valencia said they did not want to offend Muslim sensibilities. “It wasn’t necessary and, as it could hurt some people’s feelings, we decided not to do it,” Antonio Valdes, the mayor of Bocairent, said.

Majed Kadem, the president of the Islamic Community of Alicante, said the tradition was viewed by most Muslims as a “healthy diversion”. But Asid Farrod, the Imam of Barcelona, said the fiestas were offensive and should have been stopped years ago. “That they have gone on so long is a disgrace. We are living in a country where hatred of our Prophet is everywhere,” he said.

The Reconquista (Reconquest) holiday in February celebrates the victory of the Catholic King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella over the Muslims in 1492 and the expulsion of the Moors after seven centuries of Muslim domination of Spain.

The Pope

Pope Benedict XVI astonished moderate Muslims, and infuriated extremists, when he used a learned address to a German university to quote a Byzantine emperor describing Islam as “inhuman and evil”. The Pope characterised the quotation as “brusque”, but did not otherwise suggest that he disagreed with it, provoking protests across the Muslim world from Turkey to Pakistan to Turkey to Jakarta in Indonesia, left.

The Vatican moved into withdrawal mode, with the Pope’s spokesman, then the Pope himself, on two separate public occasions, saying he did not endorse the emperor’s words, and that he was “very sorry” for the misunderstanding.

Such corrections were damaging to the Pope’s image among Catholics of infallibility.

After the Pope summoned ambassadors to his residence and pledged himself to peaceful dialogue, the row finally died down. But the central paradox remained: if Muslims react so violently when their religion is identified with violence, doesn’t it prove the accusation right?

The politician

John Reid, the Home Secretary, was heckled by protesters as he gave a speech in east London last month urging Muslim parents to watch their children for signs of extremism.

Abu Izzadeen called Mr Reid an “enemy of Islam” and asked how he could “dare” come to a Muslim area after so many had been arrested under the terror legislation. “Shame on all of us for … listening to him,” he said.

It later transpired that Mr Izzadeen has been investigated over comments about the London suicide bombings, after describing the attacks as “mujahedin activity” which would make people “wake up and smell the coffee”, during an interview on the BBC’s Newsnight last year.

Mr Izzadeen’s actions were regarded with contempt by moderate Muslims. Khalid Mahmood, the MP for Perry Barr, condemned a planned visit to Birmingham this month by Mr Izzadeen and his followers for an Islamic rally. He said: “The people who follow Izzadeen are idiots and he should be banned from ever entering Birmingham.”

The opera

Germany’s first case of self-censorship in the face of a perceived Islamic terrorist threat provoked uproar last week when one of Berlin’s opera houses banned a production of the Mozart opera Idomeneo, which depicted the beheading of the world’s spiritual leaders, including Mohamed. (The head of Jesus is pictured left). The scene does not appear in the original plot.

Kirsten Harms, the director of the city’s Deutsche Oper, quit because she had been warned by police that the work would pose an “incalculable security risk” if it was shown, provoking criticism from politicians, theatre directors and the majority of Muslim community leaders. Kenan Kolat, the head of Germany’s Turkish community, said: “The opera should be shown. Art must be free.” Ali Kizilkaya, the head of the Islamic Council, disagreed. “The ban is right because the scene offends the feelings of Muslims,” he said. “Whether it’s an opera or a cartoon, it makes no difference.”

The radio show

Being funny about fatwas on the radio has not got down well with defenders of Muslim civil rights in the United States. In recent weeks the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has taken action twice to chide those it believes have crossed the line from humour to abuse.

First to be reprimanded was a Minnesota radio station which aired a skit called “Muslim Jeopardy” hosted by DJ Dave Ryan (left). With a mangled South Asian accent, an anonymous announcer named three categories of questions: “infamous infidels”, “smells like Shia” and “potent portables”. A female host was threatened with beheading if she got an answer wrong. After a letter of complaint from CAIR, the station apologised.

Then came a radio commercial from an Ohio car dealership which was withdrawn after complaints. It declared a “a jihad on the automotive industry” and said sales representatives would be wearing burqas.

The intellectual

Robert Redeker, a French philosophy teacher, and his family have been living in hiding under police protection since he wrote a newspaper article critical of Islam in mid-September. He has received death threats, and Islamist websites have carried his description and directions to his home.

In his article – inspired by Muslim reaction to the Pope’s comments in Germany – he complained that Islam was trying to destroy the West by attacking its liberties.

Soheib Bencheikh, the director of the Institute of Islamic sciences in Paris, said: “Anyone should have the right to criticise Islam, just as Christianity was attacked during the enlightenment in the 18th century… Not to criticise Islam would be a form of segregation.”

But Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a member of the French Council of Imams, said: “The liberty of expression is invoked every time someone wants to stigmatise Islam. There is a climate of Islamophobia in France.”

http://ndtv.com/debate/showdebate.asp?show=1&story_id=213&template=&category=International

What can I say? Things like this happen in India too, in the remote villages where the word of the Upper Caste is the law. Women are taken advantage of just as easily as it is being done in Pakistan. US citizens express shock at the lack of human rights in India while we dont much give a damn about it. We express our righteous indignation about the state of affairs in words but we do not have the balls to do anything about it.

But yes as much as I have said, if what Mr. Vikram Johri has written is true  and I see evidence, there is a chance I might vomit right now.

http://faustasblog.com/2006/09/article-that-may-cost-man-his-life-and.html

Kindly refer to the article above in fausta’s blog. It is indeed shocking that things like these happen in these modern times. So a citizen of a democratic country does not have freedom of speech and expression in his own state! Has the world come to that and what hope may future citizens of any democracy have?

The plight of the Professor Robert is indeed terrible and I fervently hope this is not a pre-cursor of what the world is coming to.

IHT – Asia Pacific by N.R. Kleinfield published September 12, 2006
CHENNAI, India There are many ways to understand diabetes in this choking city of automakers and software companies, where the disease seems as commonplace as saris.

One way is through the story of P. Ganam, 50, a proper woman reduced to fake gold.

Her husband, K. Palayam, had diabetes do its corrosive job on him: Ulcers bore into both feet and cost him a leg. To pay for his care in a country where health insurance is rare, P. Ganam sold all her cherished jewelry. Gold, as she saw it, swapped for life.

She was asked about the necklaces and bracelets she was now wearing.

They were, as it happened, worthless impostors.

“Diabetes,” she said, “has the gold.”

And now, Ganam, the scaffolding of her hard-won middle-class existence already undone, has diabetes too.

In its hushed but unrelenting manner, Type 2 diabetes is engulfing India, swallowing up the legs and jewels of those comfortable enough to put on weight in a country better known for famine.

Here, juxtaposed alongside the stick- thin poverty, the malaria and the AIDS, the number of diabetics now totals around 35 million, and counting.

The future looks only more ominous as India hurtles into the present, modernizing and urbanizing at blinding speed. Even more of its 1.1 billion people seem destined to become heavier and more vulnerable to Type 2 diabetes, a disease of high blood sugar brought on by obesity, inactivity and genes, often culminating in blindness, amputations and heart failure.

In 20 years, projections are that there may be a staggering 75 million Indian diabetics.

“Diabetes unfortunately is the price you pay for progress,” said Dr. A. Ramachandran, the managing director of the M.V. Hospital for Diabetes in Madras.

For decades, Type 2 diabetes has been the “rich man’s burden,” a problem for industrialized countries to solve. But as the sugar disease, as it is often called, has penetrated the United States and other developed nations, it has also trespassed deep into the far more populous developing world.

In Italy or Germany or Japan, diabetes is on the rise. In Bahrain and Cambodia and Mexico – where industrialization and Western food habits have taken hold – it is rising even faster. For the world has now reached the point, according to the United Nations, where more people are overweight than undernourished.

Diabetes does not convey the ghastly despair of AIDS or other killers. But more people worldwide now die from chronic diseases like diabetes than from communicable diseases. And the World Health Organization expects that of the more than 350 million diabetics projected in 2025, three-fourths will inhabit the third world.

“I’m concerned for virtually every country where there’s modernization going on, because of the diabetes that follows,” said Dr. Paul Zimmet, the director of the International Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia. “I’m fearful of the resources ever being available to address it.”

India and China are already home to more diabetics than any other country. Prevalence among adults in India is estimated about 6 percent, two-thirds of that in the United States, but the illness is traveling faster, particularly in the country’s large cities.

Throughout the world, Type 2 diabetes, once predominantly a disease of the old, has been striking younger people.

But because Indians have such a pronounced genetic vulnerability to the disease, they tend to contract it 10 years earlier than people in developed countries. It is because India is so youthful – half the population is under 25 – that the future of diabetes here is so chilling.

In this boiling city of 5 million perched on the Bay of Bengal, amid the bleating horns of the auto-rickshaws and the shriveled mendicants peddling combs on the dust-beaten streets, diabetes can be found everywhere.

The conventional way to see India is to inspect the want – the want for food, the want for money, the want for life. The 300 million who struggle below the poverty line. The debt-crippled farmers who kill themselves. The millions of children with too little to eat.

But there is another way to see it: Through its newfound excesses and expanding middle and upper classes. In a changing India, it seems to go this way: Make good money and get cars, get houses, get servants, get meals out, get diabetes.

In perverse fashion, obesity and diabetes stand almost as joint totems of success.

Last year, for instance, the MW fast- food and ice cream restaurant in this city proclaimed a special promotion: “Overweight? Congratulations.”

The limited-time deal afforded diners savings equal to 50 percent of their weight in kilograms. The heaviest arrival lugged in 135 kilograms, or 297 pounds, and ate lustily at 67.5 percent off.

Too much food has pernicious implications for a people with a genetic susceptibility to diabetes, possibly the byproduct of ancestral genes developed to hoard fat during cycles of feast and famine. This vulnerability was first spotted decades ago when immigrant Indians settled in Western countries and in their retrofitted lifestyles got diabetes at levels dwarfing those in India.

Now westernization has come to India and is bringing the disease home.

Though 70 percent of the population remains rural, Indians are steadily forsaking paddy fields for a city lifestyle that entails less movement, more fattening foods and higher stress – a toxic brew for diabetes.

In Madras, about 16 percent of adults are thought to have the disease, one of India’s highest concentrations, more than the soaring levels in New York, and triple the rate two decades ago. Three local hospitals, quaintly known as the sugar hospitals, are devoted to the illness.

The traditional Indian diet can itself be generous with calories.

But urban residents switch from ragi and fresh vegetables to fried fast food and processed goods. The pungent aromas of quick-food emporiums waft everywhere here: Sowbakiya Fast Food, Nic-Nac Fast Food and Pizza Hut. Coke and Pepsi are pervasive, but rarely their diet versions.

The country boasts a ravenous sweet tooth, hence the ubiquitous sweet shops, where customers eagerly lap up laddu and badam pista rolls. Sweets are obligatory at social occasions – birthdays, office parties, mourning observances for the dead – and during any visit to someone’s home, a signal of how welcome the visitors are and that God is present.

“When you come to the office after getting a haircut, people say, ‘So where are the sweets?’” said Dr. N. Murugesan, the project director at the M.V. Hospital for Diabetes.

The sovereignty of sweets can pose ticklish choices for a doctor.

Trying to set an example, Dr. V. Mohan, chairman of the Diabetes Specialities Centre, a local hospital, said he had omitted sweets at a business affair he arranged, and nearly incited a riot.

Last year, his daughter was married. Lesson learned, he laid out a spread of regular sweets on one side of the hall and on the other stationed a table laden with sugar-free treats. Everyone left smiling.

In the United States, an inverse correlation persists between income and diabetes. Since fattening food is cheap, the poor become heavier than the rich, and they exercise less and receive inferior health care. In India, the disease tends to directly track income.

“Jokingly in talks, I say you haven’t made it in society until you get a touch of diabetes,” Mohan said. He points out that people who once balanced water jugs and construction material on their heads now carry nothing heavier than a cellphone. At a four-star restaurant, it is not unusual to see a patron yank out his kit and give himself an insulin injection.

The very wealthy have begun to recoil at ballooning waistlines, and there has been a rise in slimming centers and stomach-shrinking operations. In high- end stores, one can find a CD, “Music for Diabetes,” with raga selections chosen to dampen stress.

The rest of urban India, however, sits and eats.

In Madras, workers in the software industry rank among the envied elite. Doctors worry about their habits – tapping keys for exercise, ingesting junk food at the computer. Dr. C.R. Anand Moses, a local diabetologist, sees a steady parade of eager software professionals, devoured by diabetes.

“They work impossible hours sitting still,” he said.

S. Venkatesh, 28, a thick-around-the- middle programmer, knows the diabetes narrative. Much of his work is for Western companies that operate during the Indian night. So he works in the dark, sleeps in the day.

“The software industry is full of pressure, because you are paid well,” he said. “In India, if you work in software, your hours are the office.”

His sole exercise is to sometimes climb the stairs. A year and a half ago, he found out he had diabetes.

Who Should Apologize?
Another view of the Pope-Islam controversy. By Kirsten A. Powers
Web Exclusive: 09.25.06

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The week before last, Pope Benedict cited an ancient text that criticized Islam for being too violent. The Muslim reaction was swift and violent: An Italian nun in Somalia was murdered, four Christian schoolgirls were beheaded in Indonesia, churches were burnt, mosques in Iraq were plastered with posters threatening to kill every Christian in the country, and death threats against the pope were made. Following the pope’s comments, al-Qaeda militants in Iraq vowed war on “worshippers of the cross” and protesters burned a papal effigy. Seems the Pope may have been on to something — but at any rate, he apologized.

Meanwhile, on ABC’s “The View,” Rosie O’Donnell was offering her insight on Islam, arguing that “radical Christianity is just as dangerous as radical Islam.” The audience clapped enthusiastically as Rosie aggressively made her ill-informed and irresponsible case. Christian groups complained. Nobody was beheaded. To date, no mass burnings of A League of Her Own have been reported.

The pope’s comment was ironically borne out by the reaction to it; Rosie O’Donnell’s false analogy was also borne out by the (non-)reaction to it. It seems perhaps the wrong person has apologized.

It’s true that the pope’s views of Islam carry more weight than Rosie’s of Christianity, yet many in the Muslim world have shown that no slight is too small for them to retaliate with violence. Danish cartoons deemed offensive to Islam ignite rioting and burning of embassies. When Christians are mocked or their most cherished symbols desecrated, they put out press releases and engage in boycotts.

NBC just announced that they will be running Madonna’s “Confessions” tour where the Material Girl crucifies herself on a mirrored cross. No worry. Tower Records will not be burnt to the ground for carrying Madonna’s CD, and NBC employees can safely go about their business without fear of death threats from The Catholic League. And the chances of A League of Her Own burnings will still remain remote. Madonna’s publicity machine should have figured out by now that if she really wants to cause a stir, she should insult Islam.

Rosie’s — and apparently “The View” audiences’ — fear of “radical Christians” makes clear they understand neither fundamentalist Christianity nor radical Islam. Whatever criticisms one can make of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell — and there are many — fundamentalist Christians are not flying planes into buildings in the name of God, nor are they plotting to blow up ten airplanes over the Atlantic Ocean. Radical Muslims are threatening and slaughtering “infidels” around the world. They murdered Theo Van Gogh and drove a member of the Dutch government into exile for their perceived slights against Islam. In Iraq, they recently kidnapped a Catholic priest and tortured him. They kidnapped and beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. It was reported today that Safia Amajan — a fierce critic of the Taliban’s repression of women — was murdered in the street in Afghanisan. It’s believed she was targeted by Taliban militants because of their opposition to women taking part in politics and education.

In just the last few years, Islamic terrorists have targeted and murdered Westerners in the bombing of the Madrid subway; the bombing of the London underground; and the bombing of an Indonesian night club. They murdered almost 3,000 people on 9-11. They killed 240 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983. In 1993, they bombed the World Trade Center, killing 17 and injuring more than a thousand people. In 2000, they bombed the USS Cole, killing 17 Americans.

In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, there has been ongoing persecution and murder of Christians in an attempt to wipe them out and impose Sharia law. Christians who refused to convert to Islam were killed; those who did convert were separated from their families and forcibly circumcised, without anesthetic. Christian pastors have been beheaded for the crime of being Christian.

Rosie’s beef with Christian opponents of gay marriage would presumably pale should she find herself living in many Islamic countries. Perhaps she missed former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami’s speech at Harvard recently saying that, “Homosexuality is a crime in Islam and crimes are punishable. And the fact that a crime could be punished by execution is debatable.” And he’s considered a reformer. Just being a woman in an Islamic country is enough to get you sent to jail or killed. In Pakistan last week, the parliament was debating whether they should continue to jail women for being raped. In Saudi Arabia, the religious police stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress. Seventeen girls burned alive. Under Islamic law, women who seek a divorce — even from abusive husbands — can still be lawfully murdered by their families in so-called “honor killings.” The U.N. Population Fund estimates that the annual worldwide total of honor killing victims may be as high as 5,000.

Adele Stan argued in these pages that “to throw a rhetorical bomb such as that the pope tossed into the teeming cities of the Muslim world is to commit an act tantamount to violence. It appears to be a taunt designed to provoke a response, and provoke one it did.” It’s a curious world where liberals decline to focus condemnation on a violent reaction perpetrated in the name of a religious ideology (Islam) that jails women for being raped or declares it legal for women to be murdered in the streets by angry male relatives. Even stranger to side against a religious ideology (Catholicism) that has vigorously opposed the Iraq war, torture, the mistreatment of detainees, and the death penalty.

Attempts to falsely equate the Catholic Church and Islam usually lead to a discussion of the Crusades — which, of course, happened in the 11th century. Pope John Paul II renounced them, along with the Inquisition, which ended 200 years ago. The Vatican isn’t out celebrating the Crusades while criticizing Islamic violence. It condemns both. Indeed, according to a Vatican spokesman, the pope believes that that there must be a “clear and radical rejection of the religious motivation for violence.” Thank God someone is willing to say it.

Stan also argued that U.S. military operations in the Middle East are partly to blame for Muslim violence. It’s true the United States has engaged in activity in the Middle East that has stoked Muslim rage. But the idea that Islamic culture would be pristine but for the interference of ugly America is an analysis that ignores how repressive Islamic governments can be even with their own people.

Are U.S. military operations responsible for Islamic governments torturing their own citizens, killing gay citizens; stoning women for adultery; amputating thieves’ hands; murdering schoolgirls who violate Islamic dress or jailing people for “insulting” the government? In 2004, a 16-year-old Iranian girl was hanged in the public square for “crimes against chastity.” Is the United States to blame for that?

The only people responsible for acts of violence against innocent victims are the perpetrators. In this, as in far too many other cases, those perpetrators are Muslims acting in the name of God.

Kirsten A. Powers served as deputy assistant U.S. Trade Representative for public affairs in the Clinton administration and is a New York-based Democratic consultant. In addition, she writes the blog PowersPoint.

Mathematical methods and terrorism: Institute hosts conference this week
Social scientists often overlook the vital role of mathematics in national security and counterterrorism. This week the Institute of World Politics is hosting the Third Conference on Mathematical Methods in Counterterrorism, sponsored by the Rochester Institute of Technology and Stanford University.

Cryptography, game theory and military planning are among the disciplines that demand skilled mathematicians working in close collaboration with professionals in the social sciences. Areas include strategies for detecting terrorist cells, terrorist cell formation and growth, data analysis of terrorist activity, terrorism deterrence strategies, information security, and border penetration and security.

The conference, from September 28-30, is by invitation only but interested parties may make an inquiry about attending to strating@iwp.edu.

Comment:
Philanthropy and Movements

By Robert Kuttner
Issue Date: 7.15.02Print Friendly | Email Article

Recently I was invited to be the token liberal at a major national conference of conservative foundations. The invitation was to debate Bill Kristol, The Weekly Standard editor, TV pundit, and conservative grand strategist, as the after-dinner entertainment. Presumably, conservative donors wished to view the face of the enemy, close up. The better I did, the deeper they would dig into their ample pockets. The dinner was held at one of New York’s most elegant hotels, the Pierre. The sponsors put me up at the nearby Hotel Roosevelt, a spartan midtown hostelry one cut above fleabag. I gamely accepted this lesser billeting not as demeaning confirmation of the right’s two-class vision for society, but as recognition of my esteem for FDR. But I digress.

The debate itself was good fun, but the real treat was the before-dinner event: a panel discussion of four presidents of major right-wing research factories, titled, “Philanthropy, Think Tanks, and the Importance of Ideas.” The heads of the Heritage Foundation and the Cato, Manhattan, and American Enterprise institutes were there to tell their patrons what political gains a billion dollars had bought. This session I would have paid to attend.

The panel was chaired by none other than Roger Hertog, a mega-rich center-right philanthropist and new part-owner of The New Republic recently profiled in these pages as exemplar of a new kind of “velvet conservatism.” But there was nothing velvet about the discussion that followed. Most foundations, Hertog began, spend their money on brick-and-mortar institutions — museums, hospitals, symphonies, universities. These are all fine, Hertog continued, but the four panelists have achieved something far more consequential. They have changed the course of American politics, and they “only” cost, collectively, $70 million dollars a year. “You get huge leverage for your dollars,” Hertog affirmed. The panelists smiled.

The first to present was Ed Crane, head of the Cato Institute. Crane complimented his patrons in the audience for recognizing that these battles of ideas take two or three decades. Cato has been pushing Social Security privatization since 1979, Crane noted. Cato allies such as the Federalist Society labored long years in the wilderness before they became powerful enough to literally pick the Bush’s administration’s federal judges.

Edwin Feulner of the Heritage Foundation emphasized his institution’s strategic planning in building a conservative movement. He emphasized “the four M’s”: mission, money, management, and marketing. Heritage places hundreds of op-eds, all devoted to reinforcing the conservative message. On the money front, Feulner raises millions not just from conservative foundations, but from corporations and individuals. Like the Republican Party, the conservative think tanks use big money to raise small money. Heritage, for instance, gets contributions from 200,000 small donors.

Christopher DeMuth, president of the American Enterprise Institute, spoke of how the right-wing think tanks had reframed national debate by investing in and then promoting idea-mongers for the long term. The right has been investing in Robert Bork’s challenge to antitrust since the 1970s. By the 1990s, his contention that antitrust enforcement often backfires had become conventional wisdom. Charles Murray’s claim that welfare actually caused poverty was widely viewed as an outrage when Murray’s 1985 book, Losing Ground, was first published. Though Murray’s arithmetic was dubious and his timing backward (poverty came first), the message had a willing audience. The right-wing publicity machine turned the obscure Murray into a policy celebrity. Soon, said DeMuth, Democrats as well as Republicans were saying that Murray was right. Investment in ideas and ideological marketing changed the course of politics.

“There are three lessons,” DeMuth told the conservative benefactors in the audience. “First, things take time. It takes at least 10 years for a radical new idea to emerge from obscurity.” DeMuth pointed to school vouchers and Social Security privatization as still incomplete revolutions. But his funders got it, and were with him for the long haul.

“Second,” DeMuth added. “Unintended consequences are not enough.” For years, a staple of conservative ideology has been the claim that liberal social engineering backfires: Welfare makes people poorer, antitrust enforcement retards competition, safety regulations make people behave more carelessly, etc. “But nobody claims EPA makes the environment worse,” DeMuth cautioned. So the conservative movement also needs affirmative ideas. It needs better ways, conservative ways, to achieve popular social goals.

“Third, all fundamental changes are bipartisan when they happen,” DeMuth concluded. So the right makes great efforts to co-opt New Democrats. Right-wing think tanks such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies make sure their ventures include (safely conservative) Democrats. The bipartisan CSIS National Commission on Social Security Reform had no official standing, but with high-profile Democrats as well as Republicans it successfully masqueraded as a bona fide national commission, and received extensive press coverage.

The final panelist, Larry Mone of the Manhattan Institute, spoke of the importance of targeting opinion-elites. The Manhattan Institute underwrote Charles Murray’s work, but the institute focuses mainly on New York City, as a lab to advance policies such as school vouchers and getting tough on crime. Mone claims credit for Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s embrace of the George Kelling-James Q. Wilson “Broken Windows” thesis — that a crackdown on minor lifestyle crimes would also reduce major crimes.

The Manhattan Institute is especially nimble at co-opting liberals, who are regularly invited to its events both as foils and potential converts. How much money, Mone pressed me, would conservatives need to put into city schools for liberals to support vouchers?

The Philanthropy Roundtable, which sponsored the conference, also likes to include a few token liberals. One observed that liberal funders would never speak a language of movement building. “We promote policies piecemeal,” he said, “but we don’t think of it as building a progressive movement.”

What was impressively revealed here was precisely the right’s movement consciousness. When I was young, the people who spoke of “the movement” and who used “radical” as an affirmative word were progressive. The movement, at first, referred to the civil-rights movement; by the mid-1960s, it referred to a generalized movement for social justice. “Movement people” boycotted nonunion grapes, worked on voter registration, opposed the war in Vietnam.

Today, one hears the phrase “movement conservatism.” The right’s think tanks and philanthropists alike understand that the enterprise is — above all — political. IRS rules for foundations and research institutes don’t allow them to be partisan or primarily legislative, but don’t mind if they are ideological or politically strategic. Heritage, which pushed the envelope about as far as one prudently can, got an extensive IRS audit in the 1990s, which Heritage claimed was politically motivated. Eventually, the IRS relented. The nonprofit right is also perfectly willing to use the Republican party as its vehicle, and let the lawyers worry about how to do it legally.

By contrast, mainstream foundations have a tradition of emphasizing research and reform. Often, the social-change goals are impeccably liberal — empower the poor, clean up the environment, improve the welfare of children — but the political dimension leaves many senior foundation executives uneasy. My tablemate was right: You would never hear senior officers of big mainstream foundations talking about building a movement. The enterprise is rather understood as philanthropic. If you research and model good policy, social change will somehow occur. This tradition harkens back to the Progressive Era conceit that social problems have technical solutions. By some alchemy, the research findings will lead to policy reforms through a messy political process whose ignition is somebody else’s affair.

This propensity is also reinforced by the composition of mainstream foundation boards, which tend to be patrician and corporate. Activist grantees need to shade their purpose to reassure even liberal program officers, who find themselves looking over their shoulders at their presidents, who in turn must answer to their boards. It is anomalous, after all, that large private fortunes should be looked upon to underwrite progressive politics. On the right, by contrast, the advocates, strategists, and funders march to the same tune.

Lately, liberal funders have been more willing to acknowledge that their enterprise is necessarily political, and to underwrite core progressive infrastructure for the long term. The progressive counterparts of the big right-wing strategy groups — such as the Economic Policy Institute, the Center for Law and Social Policy, or the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — no longer have to justify their existence de novo each time they apply for a grant. But the gold standard of grants — long-term general-operating support — is still hard to find on the liberal side, and the institutions that the big foundations support are far smaller and less numerous than their conservative counterparts to begin with.

Of course, intellectual energy and political energy feed on each other. And it has been a while since a progressive idea, per se, transformed politics. A generation ago, activists in the streets were energized by books such as Betty Friedan’s The Feminist Mystique, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed, and Mike Harrington’s The Other America. These in turn transformed national policy. Earlier in the century, progressive foundation-sponsored reports, from the Flexner Report on medical education to Gunnar Myrdal’s groundbreaking work on racial relations, An American Dilemma, led to changes in the national discussion and, eventually, policy.

Still, it was breathtaking to see the policy strategists of the other side preen for the edification of their steadfast funders — the culmination of a 25-year strategic alliance between organized business, ideological conservatism, advocacy research, and the Republican Party. Hertog was right: $70 million a year is chump change to the American elite, but invested strategically in the battle of ideas, it yields a bountiful political harvest. On our side, though strategic foundation support would be most welcome, it may be that we need to rekindle the politics first.

Robert Kuttner

Copyright © 2002 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Robert Kuttner, “Philanthropy and Movements,” The American Prospect vol. 13 no. 13, July 15, 2002 . This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org.