Book Review: "The Social Contract" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Now that I have been able to properly enjoy the summer, having essentially finished my PhD work, I've recently read the book The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (translated from French to English by Willmoore Kendall); this was a book that I got from a friend who moved away a few years ago, but never got around to reading until now. This is one of the classic texts of political philosophy from the European Enlightenment era, and came before many of the seminal events of world history, including the American & French Revolutions and the European colonization & subsequent independence of much of Asia, Africa, Australia, and South America. The author provides his own refutations of many of the arguments for hereditary monarchy and instead forcefully argues for a legislature, separate from the executive, that is conducted as a direct democracy, even while acknowledging that different circumstances for different states may suggest different forms & sizes for the executive. The book includes many examples from ancient & medieval European history, and while much of the discussion of cultures outside of Europe seems antiquated or racist to modern eyes, I imagine it was typical of its time & place.

It was really interesting to see such broad imagination of democratic & republican societies before they came to be in Europe & North America. However, the book itself is not an easy read: it basically feels like a polemical political treatise written in the terse style of the textbooks by the physicists Landau & Lifshitz, in which every definition and proposition must be carefully parsed & understood individually and also as part of a broader whole. The arguments are built up slowly, so patience is required too; frequently, I found myself wondering how the author could fail to acknowledge certain seemingly-elementary rebuttals to his arguments, only to find such acknowledgments after several pages. Originally, I thought the translator's introduction about how to read the book were basically excuses meant to cover for bad writing, but as I read through more of the book, I came to appreciate it more.

There are a few comments that I have about the contents. The first is that it isn't clear to me how citizens, in the author's view, are supposed to resume the exercise of natural rights, which have been pooled into the sovereign & redistributed as civil rights, when the social contract is thought to be violated, especially as it also isn't clear to me how to distinguish a violation of the social contract from an individual's unhappiness with the general will going against that individual's private will. Related to this, it isn't clear to me how a citizen, acting to debate & make laws for the sovereign to further the general will, is supposed to act completely separately, as a sort of Jekyll/Hyde situation, from that person's thoughts as an individual, because the execution of laws furthering the general will may affect that individual and others perhaps not particularly naming those people but naming a certain group affiliation, and it becomes hard then to define the general will in that context. The second is that so many of the author's arguments regarding the formation of a new state seem to depend on their being a full vacuum of power beforehand, with only the barest acknowledgment that new societies & nations don't emerge from a vacuum; to be fair, many of the great upheavals that figure prominently in my imagination regarding this point came after the publication of this book, but enough had happened which the author mentioned that this sparing treatment of the issue seems odd. I also have some more minor comments, namely that I'm not sure if the author's specific claims about the intertwined nature of politics & religion in ancient societies would be validated by modern scholarship, and the author's claims about there being no "true" Christian soldiers seems to rely too much on a no-true-Scotsman fallacy.

I would certainly need to reread this book carefully to better appreciate it, and perhaps that could address at least some of my comments. In any case, I'd only recommend this book to people with a serious deeply-rooted interest in political philosophy, who can appreciate the book and the context of its time & place, as opposed to novices like myself.

Book Review: "Red Notice" by Bill Browder

Recently, I was able to read the book Red Notice by Bill Browder. It is a detailed exposition of his career in finance, specifically his interests and investments in Russia (as well as other parts of Eastern Europe earlier in his career). He discusses how he and his business partners were able to find so many amazing investment opportunities in Eastern Europe after the fall of the USSR just because few other people had seriously considered those countries for investment. This leads to his company being the victim of fraud perpetrated by corrupt government officials and oligarchs in Russia, and once his business partners and lawyers come under threat from governmental and extrajudicial shakedowns, he turns his focus away from his investment company and toward the broader issue of human rights abuses in Russia, thereby going from a friend to an enemy of Vladimir Putin.

The book, though it may seem long due to the page count, is a fast-paced, gripping tale of intrigue and suspense, reading so much like a James Bond-esque spy thriller novel that it is easy to forget that this is all a true story. It was also enjoyable for me to read this because I hadn't really given much thought to the issues of economic inequality, oligarchy, and investment in Russia after the Cold War, and I certainly hadn't considered it from the perspective of a financier who could make both friends and enemies in high places.

What's more interesting to me is to consider that at the beginning of his career (as the story is mostly a chronological account of his career), his actions are essentially amoral, being driven primarily by greed; his exposure of the fraudulent practices of corrupt government officials and oligarchs in Russia was driven not by high-minded morality but by his desire to ensure the success of his company and to do right by his investors/business partners who were counting on him. In a sense, there may have been a weird tribal morality that one could associate with his close kinship with his business partners and his initial desire to push forward with exposing such corruption despite the high personal and business risks of doing so. This is further justified by considering that his focus turns away from his company and toward broader issues of human rights abuses when his business partners and lawyers start becoming targets of extrajudicial shakedowns, most notably including Sergei Magnitsky, whose cruel and inhuman torture and neglect before even going to trial (which culminated in the insane posthumous show-trial of Magnitsky in Russia) made him a cause célèbre in the US and EU, leading to the passing of laws recognizing his work and financially sanctioning those in Russia involved in his torture and murder.

That said, he shows himself throughout the book as believing in the ideals of the rule of law and justice while simultaneously understanding that these are hard to come by in Russia, and as a result, he portrays himself as having some moral core that overrides business and personal considerations as his friends come in danger; it is only his initial naïveté about Putin that makes him initially think of Putin as an ally in the crusade against the oligarchs, and these illusions are shattered quickly enough when Putin co-opts the remaining oligarchs and enriches himself in the process. By contrast, he shows the oligarchs to be thoroughly corrupt in their quest for material enrichment and their ability to shamelessly lie, cheat, steal, and hurt people to that end; they operate at a totally different level of amorality. Of course, this depiction is his own, so it's not surprising that it would elevate his own moral standing, potentially at the expense of others, and the same can be applied, for example, to his rather negative portrayal of John Kerry as desperate to hang onto as well as enhance his existing power; with that in mind, his story seems somewhat more credible to me given the independent validation by all of the different people and news organizations of his accounts of Russia. It's worth noting too that the verb "corrupt" comes from the Latin word meaning "break from within", and can also mean "rot" or "spoil". In this case, the oligarchs may have some thin veneer of seeming morality (if that), but this is quickly eaten away by having a lot of money and power, revealing only the atavistic amoral lizard brain at the inner core; by contrast, the author seems to maintain some moral core throughout the story, and while he is initially motivated by amoral greed at a surface level, once things hit him in a deeply personal level, that surface is stripped off (though again, it is necessary to bear in mind that this portrayal is the author's own). Overall, this book is a very interesting and intriguing read, and I'd recommend it to pretty much anyone.

Kennedy, Edward Moore (1932-2009)

Folks, Ted Kennedy died last night. He was suffering from brain cancer and had been out of the Senate for a few months.
I really admired him because he was able to back up his natural charisma and his heritage with real legislative accomplishments (which was something his brothers didn't really do, to be followed). He was truly committed to helping the poor through health care reform and bringing them up the economic ladder. He really wanted to help immigrants get decent jobs in this country and work their way towards citizenship. He helped outlaw most forms of discrimination against the disabled and helped them have a better life through more supportive school and work environments (I directly benefit from this). He wanted to make sure racial and ethnic minorities are not targets of discrimination.
However, though I am a liberal, I do not worship JFK like so many other liberals do. I find it somewhat appalling and on the same level as GOP worship of Ronald Reagan. He never really had any notable legislative accomplishments like Ted did. As President, he totally botched the Bay of Pigs invasion and was only saved by the waiting game (or, as the Germans say it, sitzkrieg) that was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Though he tried to contain communism in Latin America through humanitarian means, he started the disaster that was the Vietnam War. His mediation of the conflicts between Britain and Ireland were tainted by his own Irish background. His efforts to rid Iraq of communism brought the Baath Party (and ultimately Saddam Hussein himself) in power through bloody civil wars. He allowed the FBI to wiretap MLKJr because J. Edgar Hoover suspected he was a communist (and Hoover and JFK were close friends, somewhat negatively affecting JFK's progress with civil rights). Furthermore, he essentially wiped out the Seneca nation through relocation due to the building of a dam, making him break a campaign promise.
Please comment if you are a liberal who does not admire JFK (or even comment anyway)!

Torture as of 25 August 2009

The biggest news out there now seems to be about the recent decision by the Obama Administration to investigate the actions from the previous Administration regarding "enhanced interrogation techniques" (i.e. torture). There has been a litany of articles out there both for and against investigation. I'm sure many of the articles against it are because investigations will taint the author, but some have legitimate concerns about how it will affect the country if it is done at the same time as the economic recovery, health care reform, and energy reform. My take follows.
President Obama pledged in his Inaugural Address that the government would do the right thing, even (or especially) if it wasn't the easiest or most expedient thing to do. I would say health care reform and the investigation of the previous Administration's actions regarding torture are the best examples of this that exist right now. Most opinions that argue against investigation argue for expedience and moving on. I beg to differ. This is a nation built upon the rule of law, so if we don't at least investigate the actions in question if not prosecute the people in question, we are essentially letting off the previous Administration for actions that could have more easily occurred in a dictatorship. They smashed the law to pieces and we can't let that slide as a nation.
Furthermore, many against investigation, some within the previous Administration (most notably Dick Cheney), have said that the memos about torture would vindicate the means by showing the successful ends (i.e. that torture really did provide valuable information about future terrorist threats). They also add that torture would be invaluable in the ticking time bomb scenario, in which a terrorist suspect who is caught must spill all the beans if a terrorist attack were to happen a few hours later. Both are patently false.
Look at the case of FBI interrogator Ali Soufan (the torture was carried out by the CIA, who essentially dumped FBI interrogators and ignored the information they got though the FBI interrogators were far more experienced with this than their CIA counterparts). He was tasked with interrogating terror suspect Abu Zubaydah; he did not torture once, and he even managed to get the respect of Zubaydah through kinder (that's relative) but persistent questioning. When Zubaydah kept denying his identity, Soufan searched through Zubaydah's files and found that his [Zubaydah's] mother called him "Hani" as a pet name; when Soufan used this against him, he was stunned and gave out a whole lot of information. Soufan managed to gain his respect by giving him sugar-free cookies at a meeting once (due to Zubaydah's diabetes) and they managed to share a laugh at Zubaydah's request for a Coke after he railed against capitalism. Later, when Soufan showed a bunch of photographs of other terror suspects to Zubaydah, the latter identified that of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed by the alias "Mukhtar"; the FBI knew who K. S. Mohammed was but was stumped by the persistent appearence of the alias "Mukhtar" in al-Qaeda's internal communications and could not make the connection until then - no torture required. Then, CIA interrogators essentially kicked out Soufan and began waterboarding Zubaydah; they got 0.0 useful information from him.
Then consider the idea of the ticking time bomb scenario. The idea is that under such constraints of time, torture is the easiest, fastest, and most effective method of interrogation. This is also false, in that rarely does the ticking time bomb scenario occur (it's more of a thought experiment, really), and when it has occurred, regular interrogation has proved as useful if not more so than torture in the same scenario. Look at the case of when Saddam Hussein was captured. Soldiers in Iraq did a few on-the-spot interrogations (on the streets or in homes) of terror suspects and ordinary citizens, using classic psychological methods such as threatening shame upon the person and his family if they didn't talk (among other methods). Successful interrogation led to the capture of Saddam 6 hours later - no torture required.
I'm glad that Obama is pursuing investigations of these actions, as that should bring up our moral standing in the world again.